Christmas Shop Murder Read online

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  About the Author

  Other Books in the Series

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  A giant roasted turkey, a big bowl of mashed potatoes, canned cranberry sauce and a pumpkin pie were all at the forefront of my thoughts. Unfortunately, Thanksgiving wasn't until tomorrow and I still had a few hours left of unpacking boxes of Christmas decorations at the new all Christmas, all the time Christmas store in downtown Shady Lake.

  Well, it wasn't going to be all Christmas, all the time. But it was going to be all Christmas from Black Friday until January 2nd when it would revert back to being the Used-A-Bit store. My mother's friend Sue Peterson had opened the Used-A-Bit when I was a child and we had often gone to the second hand store to shop for new to us clothing. With five kids in the family, my parents had to bargain shop. Owning a motel didn't exactly make them millionaires.

  But this year, Sue decided to change things up a little bit. Her husband Tom had passed away a few years ago and the holiday season had been hard for her every year since. This year she had decided to take the bull by the horns and get ahead of her holiday blues by boxing up all of the second hand stuff and selling exclusively holiday themed products for the month of December.

  Sue was nearing retirement age, but she was still just as vibrant and spry as ever. She was one of those people that you would have trouble guessing their age just by looking at them. Even given some context, it is difficult. She wears her hair in a short, youthful cut and the blond color appears to still be natural. I thought about the gray hairs I keep plucking out of my head and wondered if it was impolite to ask her about her hair.

  When Sue had asked my family to help with her new venture, I jumped at the chance. For one thing, it helped get me off of desk duty at the bed and breakfast that my parents owned. "Desk duty" meant sitting at the desk with only a ancient desktop computer to provide any entertainment while I waited for the phone to ring. Seeing as most reservations came from online, the phone almost never rings. So I usually sit bored out of my skull with some headphones on listening to true crime podcasts on the computer. I know most people listen on their phone, but somehow my flip phone doesn't have that capability.

  The other reason that I had said yes to helping out was that I love the holidays. I love anything seasonal or holiday themed. And I love them all. Not many people can get excited about an Easter TV special, but I will be there with a bowl of popcorn wearing a pair of bunny ears on a headband as it starts. Setting up a Christmas store was like a dream come true to me.

  The only bad part so far was that I had eaten one too many donuts this morning. My best friend Mandy owns The Donut Hut and right now she has adorable round donuts decorated with frosting turkeys. It was a lot of sugar in one of those and I had eaten two, which I can see now was a terrible mistake, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I just can't control myself when it comes to seasonal things.

  I had even gotten to decorate a Christmas tree that sat by the entrance to the store. Sue had given me free rein over decorating it and while it had taken me a while to decide, I had gone with a red and gold theme. I had cruised around the stock room and pulled out anything red and gold that I could put on a tree. I had spent a few glorious hours hanging red and gold ornaments on the tree and wrapping it in a big red ribbon. There were some wonderful gold ornaments that looked like icicles, but they were made out of sturdy, heavy metal. Classic red and gold Christmas ball ornaments were sprinkled up and down the tree, but the best part of all had been topping it all off with a big gold star that twinkled and glowed.

  Now I was back to stocking the shelves but I really couldn't complain. I was currently taking out big bubble wrapped packages and unwrapping them to get out some adorable Santa Claus knickknacks that I lined up on the shelf. I was almost done with this box and then I was going to move onto figuring out how to display a large nativity set we had for sale.

  The best part about The Christmas Shop was that along with lots of mass produced but cutesy Christmas decorations, Sue was also sourcing locally made things. There was an entire table of holiday jewelry made by Jill Rooney, who lived in the upstairs apartment of the Used-A-Bit/Christmas Shop. Jill had moved to Shady Lake not long ago and while she was only able to find a part time job waiting tables, she supplemented her wages by making adorable jewelry.

  I was absolutely dying over some of the things she had made to sell in the shop. There was a simple silver chain necklace with three, small wire charms hanging from it: a bell, a Santa outline, and a snowflake. Another necklace was made of red and green wires that had been bent into chains and linked together. It was thin and delicate. I had already been hinting heavily to anyone that would listen that I would love any of the jewelry being sold at the shop.

  Ding ding

  The bell over the door rang. It was just a regular bell, but somehow being inside a Christmas themed shop made it seem much more festive.

  I looked over to see my brother Tank coming in the door. Tank is seventeen and his actual name is Tank. He is the fifth and final child and by the time my mom was pregnant with him, my parents were tired of choosing names so they gave that task to us. All of us have a name starting with T, so that was the only rule we were required to follow. His name had predestined him to now be shaped like a tank, but he made a great linebacker on the high school football team. He must have come straight from school. Unlike my volunteering, Sue was going to pay Tank to work part-time in the shop.

  "Hey Tank," I called out with a wave.

  "Hey Tessa," Tank said. "Where can I start?"

  "Sue is in the warehouse," I said, jerking my thumb towards the back. "I'd ask her because she has a whole plan for the rest of the day."

  Tank nodded and as he lumbered towards the storeroom, I noticed that two more people were coming in behind him. Rich Blanchard was the owner of the new bar and grill next door, the Loony Bin. It wasn't brand new, but in a town where you only get something different every few months, it would probably be known as the "new bar" for a while. Rich was a widower who opened the bar with his adult children, but I doubted he'd be just a widower for long. He was handsome with silvery hair. Not my type but in a small town, he was quite the catch.

  Jill also came in with a box in her hands that I assumed was full of more holiday jewelry. I really wanted to see what was in that box, but Sue said it wasn't fair if I set aside all of it for myself. She meekly held on to the box, shifting her weight from side to side as she looked around. Her beady
eyes flicked around the room nervously. She always seemed friendly, but ready to run away at any moment.

  "Hi Mr. Blanchard," I said. I had known Rich since I was a child and still fell back into my old habits. It was weird to call someone like that by their first name. "Hey there Jill."

  "Hi there Tessa," he said. "You know you can just call me Rich now. It is always so nice to see you around town. We all missed you while you were away."

  I smiled at Rich, but I didn't know how to answer. The time I was away was when I had been living in the Cities married to my husband Peter. But after he died in a car accident, I had been lost in life; I had forgotten how to take care of myself. I ended up back in my childhood home in Shady Lake because my parents could see I needed the help. And honestly, it has been so great to be back. The only major difference now was that my childhood home was also a bed and breakfast, but my parents always did like to keep things interesting.

  "If you're looking for Sue, she's in the warehouse," I said. "Jill, she'll probably want that box back there too, so you may as well go back there as well."

  Rich smiled and waved a thank you my way before heading to the back, holding the door for Jill. Once again, I was alone in the front of the store. I put the Santa I had been unwrapping onto the shelf and sat back for a moment. I breathed in the wonderful scent of peppermint and pine tree. If I could live in The Christmas Shop for the month of December, I think I would.

  Chapter Two

  The nativity set I was setting up was huge. It was meant to be a sort of advent calendar where you put one new piece out each day leading up to Christmas. That meant there were twenty-five pieces to it. It was made of solid, polished wood and would be beautiful as just a regular nativity set also. The pieces were available for purchase separately for anyone who just wanted some. I was puzzling over how to display all of the pieces without taking up too much space. Every time I got to about the twelfth piece of the thing, it started to look overwhelming on the shelf.

  I stood back, puzzling about how to do it when the bell over the door rang again. I turned around and was amazed to find that I didn't recognize the woman standing in the entry. That doesn't happen often in Shady Lake. She was looking around with a sort of sneer on her face. The woman looked to be about the same age as me, which is to say an official adult who is not to middle age yet. She was wearing tight jeans with fashionable snow boots that just barely came out the bottom of a long, winter jacket. She had a hoity-toity hairstyle that made me immediately peg her as being a suburbanite. I made a mental note to see if anyone new had checked into the B&B because I would bet good money that she was probably staying there.

  "Hello there," I called, waving my hand with a smile. "I'm sorry, but we aren't open yet. We open in two days, on Black Friday so you'll have to come back then."

  The woman turned and looked at me with disgust like a rat had just started speaking to her.

  "I certainly hope it is open for me," she said. "My name is Claire Freeman and I am the owner of this building. Are you the Sue that runs this tacky shop?"

  I was pretty taken aback by the upfront rudeness. Minnesota is known for their nice which means that when we are mean, we are very passive aggressive about it and mostly smile at each other while complaining behind people's backs. It takes some getting used to, but I prefer it to people who bluntly say what they think.

  "No, my name is Tessa," I started to say, but was cut off by Claire.

  "If you aren't Sue, I don't care who you are," she said. "Just get Sue for me. I'm assuming she is here somewhere in this mess of holiday gladness."

  I stared at her for a beat as she stood with her arms crossed, throwing off a "don't mess with me" vibe. I didn't want to mess with her, but I was also worried about how she would treat Sue. I went back to the storeroom and found Sue unpacking the jewelry with Jill at a small table while Rich was helping Tank take a few heavy boxes off of a shelf.

  "Hey Sue, somebody named Claire is here to see you," I said. "She says she is the owner of the building."

  "Claire?" she said. Sue stood up, puzzled. "The owner of the building is named Renee."

  "Well, that is just what she told me," I said before dropping my voice to a whisper. "And between us, she was incredibly rude."

  "In that case, I'll come along with you," Rich said.

  Sue and Rich walked through the door into the front end while I trailed behind them, partly because I was still trying to figure out how to display that nativity scene and partly because I wanted to hear what was about to go down. I was not surprised when Jill grabbed some packets of jewelry and Tank grabbed a box and they followed me into the store. In a small town, everyone comes to look when something is happening. We just all do it in a way like we really aren't looking. By the time we got to the front, we had missed the initial greeting.

  "I'm so sorry to hear that Renee passed away," Sue was saying. She looked genuinely sad. "Your mother was a good friend of mine in high school and even though she didn't live in town, we always got together to catch up when she was here."

  "Yes, it is very sad, but I prefer not to dwell on it," Claire snapped. "I'm a woman of action. And I'm taking action now. I want you packed up and out of here first thing so I can get a jump start on getting this dump fixed up."

  Sue looked like she was about to cry. Rich immediately stepped forward to put himself between Sue and the nasty woman. I heard Tank roughly set down the box he'd been holding and he strode past me to stand next to Sue also.

  "If I were you, I'd rethink how you were talking to this nice woman," Tank growled. Tank is typically a teddy bear, but he can get himself worked up into a grizzly if you hit his buttons enough.

  "He's right," Rich said, waving his finger in Claire's face. "You watch what you say. I knew Renee also and she would be ashamed by what you just said."

  "Okay, maybe I went a little too far, but she would be proud of my entrepreneurial spirit," Claire said with a smirk, refusing to back down. "I've noticed this town has a lot of dogs, but is sorely lacking any place to wash and groom those dogs. So I'm turning this place into a self-service dog washing place with a few groomers. I'm sure it will make more of a profit than this place does. Not that it will be hard to do that."

  I heard a noise behind me and turned to see that Jill had dropped a bunch of necklaces onto the table. Thankfully they were all made of metal so they weren't broken, but they were a jumbled up mess right now.

  "You are going to make this a dog washing place?" Jill asked. "My apartment is going to smell like wet dog."

  "Oh, are you the girl that lives upstairs?" Claire asked with a mysterious smile. "At least you pay your rent on time. I'll allow you to stay."

  Rich started to sputter. He looked madder than a wet hen and his face was as red as a tomato. He looked about ready to explode. Sue stepped up and gently put her hand on his arm. Rich turned and look at her before taking a deep breath.

  "Claire, I understand why you would like me to be out of this building," Sue said quietly. "And I will vacate, but not until January. My lease goes through December and you have no legal reason to evict me immediately. Let me get through the holiday season and then we can talk."

  "I suppose that is true," Claire said. I could almost read her mind as she rolled her eyes at us. She had been hoping she could just march in and demand to shut the store down and that Sue would just give in. "I will give you until the end of this year and then I'd like you out."

  With that, she turned on her heel and marched out of the door. Her foul mood had affected the room so much that the bells on the door didn't even sound cheerful anymore as they sounded for both her exit and Max Marcus's entrance. Tank and Rich decided they had to have the last say on the matter before Claire was too far out of sight.

  "You just try and get Sue and her store out of here and you'll be sorry," Rich growled after her.

  "How dare you," Tank said. "You better watch your back."

  "Whoa whoa, what happened? What's with the thre
ats?" Max asked, his hands full of a stack of papers he momentarily forgot about. Max worked for the sheriff's office and was currently wearing his uniform, so he must be on duty. In Shady Lake, even on duty didn't mean much if nothing was happening. Max had been my high school boyfriend and unfortunately, we lost our spouses at about the same time. So now we were back to dating. In a way, it was good because we both knew what the other was feeling. Grieving a spouse is weird and nonlinear. We had agreed not to rush into anything too soon. We were just dating for fun right now.

  "It's a long story, but tell us what you are doing," I said, motioning to the papers in his hands.

  He handed me one and I saw it was for the annual Christmas decorating contest. Each year, the police department hosts a decorating contest and picks the top three houses to showcase. Whoever won first place was put into a statewide contest. It has become quite the competition. In fact, my own mother had tried desperately the last few years to place so that the bed and breakfast could be showcased, but she had fallen just short each year.

  The houses and businesses who placed in the top three were each featured in a front page story of the local newspaper and, if you were lucky, it would also be picked up by the regional newspaper. As much as I wanted to make my mother's wish come true so that we could get the Shady Lake Bed and Breakfast featured regionally, I couldnt' stand that thought of Chelsea Goodman writing the story about it.

  I had known Chelsea for years and for a reason I've never been able to quite figure out, she hates me. In return, I've grown so I can't stand her either. If she was tasked to write a story about the B&B, she would probably sabotage it in some way.

  "I was just coming to see if we could hang a flyer in your window and leave some by the register," Max said, still confused. "But I can see I did not come at the right time."

  I grabbed some of the flyers out of his hands and put them on the counter. Sue was still upset, but Rich nodded at me which I took as a sign that he would take care of them.

  "Why don't you come with me to pick up some coffee and donuts," I said, throwing my arms into my winter jacket. "We could use a little pick me up. I'll explain what happened on the way."