A Wee Christmas Homicide. Kaitlyn Dunnett
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Thorne folded his arms across his chest but ended up looking sulky rather than resolute.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Nobody has teddy bears!”
At the aggrieved outburst, everyone turned to look at Angie Hogencamp, owner of Angie’s Books and secretary of the Moosetookalook Small Business Association. Seated beside the small telephone table on which her notebook rested, Angie ignored the startled silence in the room. She fished in her tote until she came up with a small pencil sharpener. In her agitation, she’d broken the point of the pencil she’d been using to take minutes of the meeting.
Joe Ruskin cleared his throat. “You want to explain yourself, Angie?”
She finished sharpening her pencil before she answered him. “Do you have any idea how annoying it is to have to keep writing the words ‘teddy bears’ when those…those toys are clearly not teddy bears. Teddy bears are a very specific sort of stuffed bear. They have beads for eyes and stitched noses and arms and legs that move…oh, what do any of you care!”
Angie collected designer teddy bears, Liss remembered. She’d never bothered to ask the bookseller exactly what that meant, but apparently those who engaged in the hobby were particular about nomenclature.
She got that. No one could nitpick better than a person passionate about an activity pursued for pleasure. She saw the same thing all the time among those who had chosen to celebrate their Scottish heritage. Debates on the proper way to wear the kilt—and who could or could not wear one—had been known to go on for hours!
“Can we agree to call these bears Tiny Teddies,” she suggested, “and move on?”
Angie gave a curt nod and returned the pencil sharpener to her tote bag.
“Whatever you call them,” Thorne said in a loud, belligerent tone of voice, “the idea is to make it easy for shoppers to find them. Spread them out and you create confusion. Nobody wants that.”
“On the other hand, we do want to keep people moving from store to store,” Liss interjected. “The Twelve Shopping Days of Christmas promotion, with a ceremony every evening, will help with that. Then the pageant will draw everyone to the town square on the final day.”
She’d spent hours last night—who needed sleep?—working on the logistics. Each evening they’d add a new “day” to the festivities. The twelfth would now fall on the twenty-first of December, the beginning of winter. That seemed appropriate.
“How does the shopping days thing get them to stop in at every business?” Betsy asked.
“They probably won’t need my services,” Jim Locke of Locke Insurance commented, “and I hope there won’t be any call for Doug’s.” He and Doug Preston of Preston’s Mortuary sat side by side on two more of Liss’s kitchen chairs.
Laughter helped ease the tension but Stu wasn’t about to give up. While he continued to lobby for a consignment of bears and others tried to talk him out of his stand, Liss kept mum. Her gaze roamed over the rest of the gathered businesspeople. Her eyes locked momentarily with Patsy’s and the coffee shop owner sent a sympathetic look and a shrug her way, then mouthed, “Some people could find things to argue about till doomsday.”
At least they were discussing the twelve days proposal, Liss told herself. That was good, right? She resolved to let them have at it for a few more minutes before attempting to restore order and take a vote.
She jumped when something heavy bumped against the back of her calf. Liss looked down into the malevolent gaze of the big yellow Maine coon cat she’d inherited along with her house. Lumpkin glared back at her, obviously displeased by the presence of all these noisy people in his domain.
“Go back into hiding,” she advised.
She couldn’t blame the cat for disapproving of all this noise and confusion. Truthfully, She hadn’t expected to see him again until everyone had left. At the first sight of strangers approaching, he’d taken shelter under the kitchen sink.
When Lumpkin stayed put beside Liss’s chair, she reached down to scratch behind his ear. A deep, rumbling purr made his entire body vibrate.
Meanwhile, Stu had progressed to waving his arms in the air as he expostulated. With one particularly emphatic gesture, his hand came within an inch of the end of Marcia’s nose. She sent a withering glance in his direction, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“My toy store should be the only place to sell Tiny Teddies,” Thorne declared in a loud voice.
“You just want to jack up the price!” Betsy snapped at him.
“You say that like price gouging is a bad thing.” The wounded look on Thorne’s face was far too theatrical for anyone to take seriously.
Marcia cut short that incipient debate by rising abruptly to her feet. “If you idiots can’t agree, then I’ll just go ahead and sell my Tiny Teddies in an online auction.” She reached behind her for the coat she’d been sitting on.
Stu bounced up, ready to square off with her. “I thought you were in favor of this one-for-all and all-for-one deal?” Since Stu Burroughs was only an inch or two over five feet tall, going nose-to-nose with Marcia was a physical impossibility. He only succeeded in making himself look foolish.
Liss took a deep breath. This was going nowhere. Someone had to step in before the meeting dissolved into total chaos. “Enough!”
Startled by the volume she’d managed—all those years onstage had included more than dancing—everyone shut up. Lumpkin streaked back into the kitchen.
“I’m calling for a vote,” Liss said. “Yea or nay—will the Moosetookalook Small Business Association support this project or not?”
Dan Ruskin had taken pains to stay out of the fray, but as soon as Liss made her demand, he put it into the form demanded by Robert’s Rules of Order and asked for a show of hands. Liss had already told everyone how much money she needed. No one questioned her math, and the vote to authorize funding a group ad and a pageant was unanimous. In spite of their differences, Moosetookalook’s businesses were all desperate for customers.
A second vote, much closer than the first, left the matter of displaying and pricing Tiny Teddies entirely in the hands of the three individuals who actually had supplies of the toy.
That settled, everyone was in a hurry to leave. They all had businesses to run or jobs to go to. Even Dan did a rapid disappearing act, escaping before Liss had the opportunity to thank him for his help.
“Marcia, wait,” Liss called as the other woman made a beeline for the front door. She caught the sleeve of Marcia’s coat, drawing her back inside until everyone else had gone. “Are you still set on online auctions?”
“Why not? Good money there.”
“Also a lot of hassle. You’ve got to make sure the buyers’ credit is solid. Then you have to ship and insure the merchandise. There’s always a chance of something getting lost in transit.”
Marcia’s frown told Liss that her arguments were getting through. Who hadn’t heard at least one horror story about an online auction gone wrong?
“You can always auction off your Tiny Teddies at the last minute if they don’t sell here.”
“True.”
“And you’re free to price them as you see fit.”
“Also true. Okay. I’ll wait.” That said, she took off at a fast clip.
Liss wondered what her hurry was. Second Time Around was open only “by chance or appointment,” although Marcia usually hung out the OPEN sign around ten.
Lumpkin sauntered into the living room as soon as he was sure Liss was alone. “Why do I have the feeling,” she asked him, “that Marcia’s bears are not going to be sold for $9.99?”
Liss spent a few minutes clearing away coffee mugs and paper