The Case of the Missing Elf: a Melanie Hart Mystery (Melanie Hart Cozy Mysteries Book 2) (2 page)

A
fter my 911 call, Officer Debbie Barker arrived quickly at the coach house. Paramedics soon joined her and just as quickly departed. Debbie, who was a new hire with the city, performed her duties competently and calmly. Soon Wendy and I were back inside her kitchen nursing cups of hot, sweet tea, while Debbie and the coroner did who knew what next door.

But if peace was what we were after, peace isn’t what we got as a short time later, Police Chief Andy Gossford showed up at Wendy’s door. He was a tall, robust man, who simply from his size tended to stand out in any setting.

We greeted each other warily. I’d beaten the chief to the murderer the last time we’d had a killing in Cloverton, a fact he remained a bit touchy about. He wanted to know what I was doing in Wendy’s kitchen.

“Scroggins didn’t show up today at Santa’s Cabin. So as a favor to Ginger, I set off to find him.”

“When you were in the bedroom,” he asked, “did you touch anything?”

“Not that I can recall.”

“And what about outside of the bedroom?”

“I don’t think so,” I answered carefully. “I made my way through all the rooms hunting for Barnaby. All the doors were open until I came to the bedroom. That door was closed. I recall needing to grasp the handle to open it. But I can’t remember coming into contact with anything else.”

Gossford turned his gaze to Wendy. “And you?”

“Oh,” she said. “After we were inside the apartment, I went almost immediately to the sofa and sat. I didn’t touch anything. Not a table. Not a chair. Not anything.” She nodded emphatically. “And I didn’t leave the sofa until after Melanie found the body.”

“Had you seen any unusual activity around your cousin’s apartment recently?” he asked her.

Wendy blinked. “Unusual? What do you mean?”

“Had anyone been hanging about? Maybe strangers or maybe even somebody you know? Or had Barnaby had any odd visitors lately?”

Wendy’s eyes grew large. “Goodness, no. But why are you asking me these questions?”

Gossford’s expression grew grim. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, ma’am, but your cousin didn’t die peacefully. He was murdered.”

Wendy gasped. I placed my hand atop hers on the table. Then, I returned my attention to Gossford. “But how do you know that? I was in the bedroom. I saw the body. I didn’t see anything that made me suspect a murder.”

“You’d noticed he’d been sick?”

“Yes, I had, but I thought that sometimes happened with strokes or heart attacks. I’m not really certain which.”

“It can also be a sign of poisoning,” Gossford answered.

“Now that you mention it,” I said, “I do remember that there was a cup sitting on his nightstand.”

Gossford nodded. “That was probably how the poison got into his system. I’ll know more after the lab results come in.”

Wendy pulled a deep breath. “In the meantime, what do we do?”

He turned to my friend. “Stay here. Be good to yourselves. You’ve had a shock. Let the police handle the rest. Please, don’t go into the apartment until we tell you it’s okay.”

Scroggins murdered, I thought.
Why would anyone want to kill a harmless old man?

~~~

Ginger’s face was thunderous. “That’s not what I wanted to hear.”

I was back in Santa’s Cabin, but I’d left the place more than an hour ago. And a little thing like coming across a dead body wasn’t about to deflect Ginger from her most pressing concern. “Just who is going to keep an eye on Santa and the children?” she demanded.

“Ginger, a man you worked with is dead. Have a heart.”

My comment blew right past my friend, and her scowl deepened. “How dare that man die on me?”

“He didn’t do it to spite you.”

“Meaning?”

“He was apparently murdered. Poisoned.”

Ginger mulled the information over briefly. “Doesn’t matter. I’m still the one left in the lurch.”

“Honestly, Ginger.”

“Hey, I’ve got a cabin to run. I can mourn the dead man later.” She glanced over at a pair of twins playing quietly in the corner. “No way around it now. I’m going to have to hire a new elf. I sure can’t spend six weeks locked up inside this cabin with that man.” She cast a disdainful look at Santa.

“As a stopgap, why don’t you hire a high school girl to come in and help out for the weekend?”

“That’s not a bad idea, but I’d die before I left a young girl alone with our Santa Claus.”

I lowered my voice. “The man has vices beyond drinking?”

“I mean, Santa not only likes gin, he has no manners at all when it comes to women… no matter what their age.”

“No manners?”

Ginger looked at me disbelievingly. “He likes coming on to us, okay?”

“What about a teenaged boy, then?”

“That might work. You don't happen to know any, do you?”

Our receptionist was raising three teenaged sons. I was sure one of them would be willing to help out. I told Ginger so.

She nodded. “Having someone for weekends and after school would be a plus. But it still leaves me on my own when school is in session.”

  “If you intend to hire a new elf. I’ll talk to Dad. I’m sure he’d be happy to put an ad in the paper without charge for the DBA.”

Ginger grimaced. “The pay’s awful. The hours dreadful. I always thought we were lucky to have found Barnaby. It’ll take a miracle to get any applicants… let alone someone who might actually work out well.”

“You won’t know until you try. And there must be someone in Cloverton who could use some extra cash. Especially at Christmas.”

“But the costume? Who’s gonna fit into that thing?”

“If you can’t find someone Barnaby’s size, you can always have a new costume made.”

“At this short notice?”

“I’ll bet you could find someone who’d be glad to stitch up a new outfit in a couple of days. In the meantime, you could pull a temporary costume together. We’re talking about kids, here. What do they know about how elves dress?”

“You’ll write the ad?” she asked warily.

“If I know Dad, he’ll do it up himself.”

“That would be good. Still, this is Friday. The earliest the ad can come out is Monday. Then, mix in the time it will take me to interview the applicants... if there are any... and I could be stuck alone in this lousy place for more than a week.”

“Beats spending all of your time here right up to Christmas day.”

“Good point.”

“I’ll have a word with Betty. In addition to asking after a babysitter, I’ll explain the problem with Santa. With her kids out for Thanksgiving break, one of the boys might even be able to start this afternoon.”

“That would be wonderful. Please tell Betty I can handle Santa if one of her sons will take on the kids.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “If Santa’s such a problem, why don’t you fire him?”

Ginger lowered her voice to a whisper. “Because he’s the husband of the DBA president, that’s why.”

“Valerie Farmer?”

Ginger nodded.

“Poor woman.”

“You got that right.”

A noise from the far end of the cabin caught my attention. It sounded suspiciously like snoring. Apparently our Santa had fallen into a blissful, gin-induced sleep.

I thought about Ginger struggling through the next six weeks with a drunken Santa Claus and wished her luck. From what I’d seen so far, I figured she was going to need it.

~~~

Once I made it back to the newspaper, Dad behaved exactly as I’d known he would, volunteering to run a free ad for the DBA.  “I’ll work one up right away. Tell Ginger it will be in Monday’s paper.”

Dad’s promise of a Monday publication date might sound like an unnecessary delay. But ours was a small newspaper. We only published on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. There wasn’t any way we could get the ad out sooner. I said goodbye to Dad. With my first mission now completed, I headed to the reception desk, where I dropped Ginger’s babysitting problem on our receptionist’s lap.

“What happened to Barnaby Scroggins?” Betty McCracken asked. “I thought he adored playing the elf.”

Somewhere in her late forties, Betty had always struck me as the ultimate mother. She not only managed to take good care of her brood, but she also tended to minister to our needs as well. I knew she’d come through for Ginger.

I explained about Scroggins and how he had come up missing and eventually dead.

Betty gasped. “How dreadful, and what a shock for Wendy… not to mention you.”

“Wendy’s devastated, but she’s strong. As for me, I’m beginning to think I’m oddly attracted to corpses. Or maybe they’re just drawn to me.”

Betty chuckled, then asked, “So, for the moment it’s Ginger you’re worried about?”

“Frankly, the thought of her trapped alone in a cabin with a drunken Santa Claus and Christmas-hyped kids terrifies me. I told  her she should hire a teenage babysitter to give her a hand after school. Do you know anyone who could fit that part?”

Betty smiled. “My middle son, Toby, has lots of free time. I’m sure he’d enjoy earning some money. He likes kids, too, and has lots of experience with them. He’s been babysitting for a few neighbors for more than a year now.”

“He sounds almost perfect.”

“I hate to brag, but I’m sure he’d do a good  job. I’ll call home. If he isn’t there now, I’ll tell him to ring me when he comes in.”

I thanked her and headed for my office. It’s a small thing, with plain white walls and a banged up desk, but most days it felt like home to me. It had one thing that was missing in most offices, a large window. That window,  combined with similar ones in Dad’s and Betty’s walls, meant we could all see each other from our desks. That ability worked wonderfully well in a small newspaper like ours where many hands could sometimes be needed to get a paper out

After settling in at my desk, I checked my email, then opened a blank screen to write an article about Santa’s Cabin and the kickoff of the shopping season.  Tomorrow, I’d have to shoot the photos I’d been planning to take today. But that couldn’t be helped. Then, I’d follow that up by checking with merchants late Sunday afternoon to learn if sales were brisk or sluggish. For now, I’d write up a few tidbits about the day, the decorations, and the number of shopping days left until Christmas. It would serve as the base of my Santa’s Cabin story.

I decided to wait to start writing up the murder report until Sunday, when, hopefully, Gossford would be able to send some additional information my way. Then, I’d double check with him Monday morning to ferret out the latest details on the killing and update the story.

In the meantime, I scribbled notes from my discovery of the body into a small notebook. I doubted I’d use any of what I’d seen in a news story. But I wanted to record my impressions anyway.

I hadn’t been at work long before I heard a knock on the office door. I glanced up to find Gossford filling the doorway. I was stunned. He’d never visited me in my office before. Besides, we’d only parted company a little over an hour ago.

“May I come in?” he asked rather unnecessarily, I thought. I couldn’t imagine him not taking himself wherever he pleased.

Gossford proceeded into the room and  sat facing me in the chair beside my desk. “The coroner thinks he may and identified the poison.”

“That sounds promising.”

I wondered where Gossford was going with this? He rarely offered me inside information. And why the rush? He knew my story on Scroggins’ death wouldn’t be published until Monday.

“Actually,” Gossford continued, “I’ve come to ask for your help. Doc Kirkwood has narrowed the poison down. He thinks what killed Scroggins was something called digitalis.”

“The heart medicine?”

“Maybe, but apparently that form of medicine isn’t as popular as it once was, making it harder to come by. Kirkwood thinks it’s more likely our killer used parts from  the plant the medicine’s made from.”

“Which is?”

“A common garden flower called foxgloves. We think the murderer might have used the leaves, but the whole plant is poisonous, including flowers and roots. Then again,  parts of the plant might have been distilled down to a super high dosage, and the resulting liquid slipped into the victim’s tea. I’m hoping the state lab report will provide more specifics. For now, the information is pure speculation, so I can’t officially say anything until it’s been confirmed.”

“But you say you need our help?”

“Yes, I’d appreciate it if you took a look back in your gardening stories. I’d like to know if any of them mention the names of gardeners with a passion for growing foxgloves.”

Normally, when someone came requesting information from old stories, we pointed them to the microfilm cabinet and let them search for themselves.  But we had at least two years worth of material stored on our computers. A few clicks and a few keywords, and we’d be able to pull the old stories up easily enough. Plus, this was a cop who was asking, a cop who was tracking a killer.