CRIME AND CANDY CANES

Chapter 1

Susie

“I demand that the Elf on the Shelf Committee be disbanded!”

I tried to keep my expression pleasant but neutral as I faced the irate business owner.

It was Christmas in the small town of Harrogate, and yuletide tension was in the air.

“My ‘Gnome for Christmas’ cookie jar is missing, and I know one of them took it.”

Ida, one of the many small-business owners in town, pointed an accusatory finger in the direction of the Elf on the Shelf stall. It advertised keeping the traditional Harrogate Christmas alive and had been the source of many of my headaches this holiday season.

“We’re barely off of Black Friday weekend. This cannot go on,” Ida insisted.

“I’ll handle it,” I assured her.

The elderly woman nodded. “See that you do, Deputy Mayor.”

“But,” I added, “you need to stop selling moonshine bombs disguised as Christmas ornaments to tourists.”

“I don’t know what this town is coming to,” Ida complained as she left the Be Your Best Elf stall. “You can’t make an honest living here anymore.”

I set down the cookie I was decorating, wiped my hands, and untied my apron. I had set up the Be Your Best Elf stall at the center of the Christmas market to be a welcoming presence from city hall. Additionally, I had hoped it would be an authoritative influence and keep the Christmas market from devolving into a complete madhouse.

Wrapping my arms around myself, I stomped down the snowy path to the Elf on the Shelf Committee headquarters, hoping no one recognized me.

“Are you going to confront that woman?” one irate stall owner demanded. “My icicle lights were missing this morning, and I know Biddy took them.”

“Yes, Mrs. Johnson, I’m going to talk to her.”

Why had I ever wanted to be deputy mayor of a small town? I could have remained a police officer and, in all likelihood, just continued to field calls of the small-town-drama variety:

Someone was mad because pansies instead of mums were planted in front of the town hall.

Mrs. Horvat stole Art’s zucchini. Allegedly. He’s not sure, because his eyesight is terrible.

There was a wild animal in the town square. Oh, wait, it was just Mr. Gandalfi’s poodle with a new haircut.

Small towns weren’t all that exciting, and the townspeople found their drama where they could.

“Yoo-hoo! Deputy Mayor!” Dottie, another elderly stall owner, power walked up to me. “I’m so glad I found you. I was on my way to file a complaint.”

“Do you also have Christmas decorations missing?” I asked her. “I’m looking into it.”

“No, I carry.” She pulled up her sweater. “Karissa’s stall was ransacked last night, and that is not going to be me.”

“Do you have a license for that?”

“You don’t need a license if all you shoot at are thieves and pigeons. I was just going to see if you could rearrange the Christmas cop schedule so that I had a hot one near my stall.” She blew a kiss to a nearby man sitting on a large black horse.

I glanced over before I knew what I was doing then looked quickly away.

Remington Svensson. Definitely a hot Christmas cop.

The Harrogate police force was small and couldn’t handle the influx of tourists during the holiday season. Hence the Christmas cops.

I had spent way too much time staring at him during the last few days. Actually, I had spent too many years desiring him from afar. He, of course, had never picked up on my inept signals of interest. And I’d never gotten a read on him to see if he was willing to be anything more than casual friends.

Tall, a cowboy’s body, a thick blond beard I wanted to run my fingers through—Remy looked better than a freshly baked cookie in the black-and-red Christmas cop outfit. The uniform was another change Biddy had pitched a fit about.

His ass also looked much better than that of Peter Tinkler, who had barely managed to make it up onto a horse before falling off.

I snuck another glance.

Remy was still staring at me. He caught my eyes in his gray ones, the same shade as the winter sky, and tipped his hat.

I waved. Awkwardly. With a floppy wrist.

“Lovely day for a posse,” he called.

I froze. Did he just say…you know? Like, was he coming on to me? Brazenly? Not like I hadn’t fantasized about him when I was alone in my cabin. My face was hot.

Someone coughed behind me.

Oh, wait, no. He did not say, you know, that. He meant posse, that is, the large group of drama-addicted small-town folk gathered around me, waiting for a big confrontation.

“The deputy mayor’s going to take down Biddy,” one of the townspeople hollered.

Remy raised an eyebrow and pulled his sunglasses back down over his face.

“Wish you luck.”

“I’m not taking anyone down,” I said to the crowd.

“I voted for you,” another woman complained. “If you let Biddy run rogue, I’m not doing it again.”

“Let’s solve this like civilized people.”

“We need pitchforks,” a man yelled.

I needed wine and a plate of freshly baked cookies.

Biddy was ready for a fight when I approached the stall.

The crowd surrounded us.

“Can you all please return to your businesses?” I told the crowd.

They ignored me. Several people had their phones out, recording.

“Get out of my stall,” Biddy yelled when she saw me. She shoved me. She was a petite older woman, and it didn’t faze me.

“Biddy, we need to discuss the missing items in the—”

“I’m trying to restore the Christmas market to its former glory, to how it’s supposed to be,” she said stubbornly. “Under the last mayor, we wouldn’t have white lights everywhere and ugly gnome cookie jars. This Christmas market is supposed to be inspired by Victorian traditions. It looks like a Walmart.”

“You take that back,” one woman shouted.

“Make me.” Biddy blew a raspberry at her.

“You cannot steal from other people’s stalls,” I said firmly. “If you have a problem with how this Christmas market is run, then you can come talk to me. Do not take matters into your own hands.”

“You’re the worst offender,” she scoffed. “Your stall is giving out cookies and maps.”

“You and I have been over why we give out maps.”

“It’s encouraging tourists,” she yelled, spittle flying out of her mouth. “That and the Christmas ball. I’ve seen what you and Hannah are doing, and it’s terrible. You need to just cancel it. Boycott the Christmas ball!” She raised a fist.

“We are not canceling the Christmas ball,” I barked at her, using my Marine sergeant voice. It carried around the Christmas market, and the crowd went dead silent.

Biddy seemed taken aback.

I was trying to keep it professional now that I was an elected official, but I was about to lose it. I had been working on the Christmas market and accompanying events since February, and Biddy was throwing a wrench into all my plans.

“You are making my life extremely difficult,” I snarled, getting in her face. “I do not have time to cater to you. Biddy, you are ruining Christmas. Stop it this instant, or you will have a bigger problem than what color lights someone has on their stall.”

There were apprehensive murmurs, and the crowd parted as I turned away from Biddy.

Remy, a few paces away, loomed large as he watched from horseback.

See, this is why he’s not interested in you, I reminded myself. Guys like him don’t want an oversized ex-Marine; they want a waifish Christmas elf.

I had probably looked threatening and angry.

There would be some new drama to catch everyone’s attention soon, I assured myself as I veered away from Remy and my stall to flee to city hall.

An emergency stash of cookies and hot chocolate waited for me in my desk. What I really wanted was wine, but it was only ten in the morning, and I was on the clock.

No one was in the city hall building. During Christmas, most people tended to “work” from the Christmas market. I paced around my office, which overlooked the festive scene.

The ball had to do well. It was a big fundraising event, and the town needed the money. I couldn’t afford to have Biddy drive everyone off. I also didn’t need her as an enemy. She was unhinged.

“Just take her some cookies and listen to her complain for an hour,” I told myself. “Most people just want to be heard.”

Hannah, who was helping me plan the ball, ran a shop that sold Christmas-themed gifts. She’d just gotten a set of vintage plates, and I was sure Biddy would like one of them.

“Just get it over with,” I told myself as I forced myself to put on my coat and head down a back staircase.

I pushed through the side door of the historic city hall building and took a shortcut along the rear of a row of stalls to get to the Be Your Best Elf booth. On the way, I passed Karissa’s stall and knocked on the back door. She didn’t answer. I made a mental note to ask her what had been vandalized when I saw her.

Maybe I could give Biddy a job, like have her do a town Christmas-history story hour or something, I mused as I walked into the Be Your Best Elf booth. In the stall, we baked cookies in a mini oven and decorated them to hand out to tourists. We needed the town to feel welcoming. A story hour would fit right in.

My boot hit something soft.

I looked down and barely believed what I was seeing. If this were Halloween, I would have thought someone was pranking me with an inflatable corpse. But this was a real live person.

At least, I hoped they were alive.

“Excuse me?” I said loudly, gingerly moving the scarf away from the person’s face.

I gasped.

It was Biddy, eyes unfocused. Going into Marine mode, I felt for a pulse. Then I pulled out my phone to call 911 before I started CPR.

But I knew. I’d seen combat. Biddy was cold and dead.

This is going to be the worst Christmas ever.

Chapter 2

Susie

Meghan, Harrogate’s mayor, new mom to an adorable little girl and wife to a rich, handsome, and mildly-sociopathic-but-in-a-good-way husband, rushed into my office in city hall.

“I’m sorry. I know I promised I was going to meet you for lunch,” Meg said, slightly breathless. “I don’t know where she found it, but the baby brought a very large beetle in the house, and it jumped out of my purse, and I spilled my peppermint mocha everywhere. Do you want to grab coffee? Did you already eat?”

I blinked at her. I hadn’t eaten, because I had been dealing with the police and the ambulance and the crush of onlookers.

Should I tell her?

Meg would find out anyway.

“I didn’t have lunch,” I said slowly.

“You want to grab sandwiches?”

“Biddy Jefferson is dead,” I said flatly.

“Oh dear,” Meg said, eyes widening. She sat down on my sofa. “What happened? How did she die?”

“I don’t know.” I suddenly felt very tired. “Likely, she was murdered.”

“Murdered? In Harrogate? People don’t just get murdered here. This is a nice town. Well,” Meg amended, “it’s not like a rich resort town, and people drink too much, but murder? We need to make a statement. The next town hall meeting is going to be insane. Where did they find the body? I hope it’s not in the Christmas market. I know that sounds mean, but the town budget needs the tourist money.”

I winced.

“It was in the Christmas market. In the Be Your Best Elf stall.”

“In the city’s stall?” Meg shrieked then lowered her voice. “How many people know?”

“Are you kidding me, Meg? This is a small town. Everyone knows. I think you’re the last person to know. Half the town was gawking while I was talking to the police after finding the body—”

“You found the body?” Meg was horrified.

“She did.”

We both screamed when a large figure loomed in the doorway.

“Remy, hi,” I said, clapping a hand to my chest. I was more on edge than I’d thought.

The large man frowned. “I’m sorry to startle you. I came to talk to you about the death of Biddy.”

“The murder?” I blurted out.

“Now, Deputy Mayor,” Remy drawled, “you know better than to make statements that could be misconstrued in this small town.”

“So you think she just keeled over and died in my stall?”

“No,” Remy said, piercing me with his steel gaze. “Contrary to what the rest of the police force thinks, I believe there was someone else in that stall with her when she passed.”

“You don’t think it was Susie, do you?” Meg asked, concerned.

“Like I said, I don’t want to misconstrue anything before we have all the facts. But I, along with half the Christmas market, heard Susie threatening Biddy, so I’m sure the rumor mill is going full steam ahead.” His voice was tense.

“I didn’t kill Biddy,” I snapped at him. How had I ever thought he was attractive? Well, I mean, he was still attractive, even if he was practically accusing me of murdering a town resident. But I totally wouldn’t be in a relationship with him. Casual hookup? Sure, I was only human.

I had bigger issues to deal with than my suppressed attraction to Remy. Especially if he thought I was a murderer. Screw him.

His mouth parted, and his eyes softened as if he was going to ask me something.

“I need to deal with this crisis,” I said harshly. “If you could please leave.”

His face hardened. “Of course.”

Chapter 3

Remy

Had Susie murdered Biddy? I wondered as I headed back home later that evening. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to her the rest of the day. Susie and Meg had been busy dealing with the hysterical stall owners, who were sure that the Christmas market was cursed, not to mention the influx of townspeople wanting to see where the action had gone down.

News of the murder had spread quickly, and the Facebook group for the small town was awash in gossip. After trying and failing to restore order, Susie had finally snapped and told the townspeople to line up so they could all take a walk past the “Christmas murder stall,” as they’d taken to calling it.

One enterprising café was selling alcoholic beverages to the people in line.

It was more action than I originally thought I’d see when I agreed to help out with security at the Christmas market. It should have been a fun way to give back to the community.

But now a woman was dead.

My brother Hunter and half brother Crawford were talking in hushed whispers in the sitting room off of the foyer when I walked into the large mansion I shared with my brothers.

The former Harrogate estate had been built by the industrial scions of old and picked up for a steal by Hunter and Greg to house the ever-growing collection of our father’s offspring. The great irony of his being the head of a polygamist cult was that his unions produced almost exclusively boys and only the occasional girl. Though he was now in prison, thank goodness, our father had sent his male offspring to us in Harrogate like clockwork. When one was running a polygamist cult, boys were not desirable, for obvious reasons.

In defiance of our upbringing, we had decorated the estate for Christmas. I loved having Christmas with the kids. In the cult compound, Christmas had consisted of everyone huddling in a freezing barn, waiting for the world to end while my father ranted. Now there were decorations and presents and hot cocoa and all-you-could-eat Christmas buffets.

My younger brothers raced to greet me. They had a horrible habit of mobbing the foyer whenever someone was at the front door. It was a holdover from living in the compound, where someone’s arrival was a rare and exciting event. Here, of course, people came and went all the time. Still, the novelty hadn’t worn off—especially for the younger ones.

The Svensson house was chaotic. Now that Hunter was here only part-time, it was even more so. With two dozen kids and however many adults decided to be in town and not help, we had a full house. The estate was huge, comprising hundreds of acres with a large mansion and several outbuildings. We needed the space to accommodate all my brothers.

Since this was the Christmas season, my adult brothers liked to breeze in and out, dumping truckloads of Christmas presents for the kids while Hunter barked at them about spoiling the younger ones.

Somehow, in the chaos, Hunter had convinced Meghan not only to marry him but also to have a baby with him. Said baby was chasing several of our other little brothers, because nothing said “trashy” like having siblings the same age as your kids.

Now that Hunter was married and not living at the estate full-time, it fell on me to be the primary caretaker.

Several of my smaller brothers climbed up my uniform like raccoons, tugging at the fabric as they raced up to my head.

“Get off of him,” Hunter barked at them.

“Heathens,” Crawford snickered.

“I’m burning all those presents Walker brought over yesterday,” Hunter added.

This drew a chorus of protests from the boys and shrieks from his toddler daughter Annabelle, the only brunette in the bunch of rowdy blond brothers.

I bent down so they could climb off of me. I gently tumbled and spun them on the hardwood floor.

Little Annabelle jammed a sprig of garland into my beard. I beamed at her, and she giggled.

My heart clenched. I desperately wanted a wife and a little girl of my own.

You should be grateful for what you do have, I reminded myself. Over a hundred brothers and sisters should be enough for anyone.

“Did you have another fun day of listening to old women complain about the prices and helping tourists find their way around the Christmas market?” Crawford asked mildly.

I stood up. “Don’t act like you didn’t hear the news,” I said.

Crawford smirked.

“You mean the M-U-R-D-A-”

“That is not how you spell that word,” Hunter snapped at Gunnar, who was coming through the doorway with a large Christmas tree.

In town to manage the production of The Great Christmas Bake-Off, my brother was sporting a beard of his own, with long hair to match. He had just returned from Alaska and was really embracing his wild side.

Hunter, in his bespoke suit and expensive leather shoes, scowled up at him.

“You’re too old to be making that face,” Gunnar said cheerfully. “You’re going to get wrinkles, and Meg’s going to dump you for a younger, hotter Svensson brother.”

“You’re dripping pine sap on the carpet,” Hunter warned.

“Hey!” Gunnar whistled, and several kids popped out from under the huge tree. “You guys need to hold up your end.”

“It’s heavy,” one of the kids squeaked, trying to lift the end of the tree.

I scooted him aside with my foot and easily hefted the large spruce.

“Everyone is saying Susie did it,” Crawford said to me, sporting the definition of a shit-eating grin. “I thought you were dating her.”

“Meg’s been hinting she doesn’t see her friend as much outside of work hours.” Hunter blinked up at me. “Your dating her would be an obvious solution.”

“Nope,” I said firmly as I navigated the tree through the large doorway to the living room.

“That’s right, Remy,” Gunnar told me. “Don’t let Hunter drag you into the relationship trap.”

“Especially if it’s with a murderer,” Bruno, one of my teenage brothers, said with a snicker.

I cuffed him lightly. “Don’t make false accusations.”

“Yeah,” added Isaac, another high schooler. “No one liked old Biddy. I was doing some work for Rose, helping her put up decorations at the café, and Biddy came over and screamed at me. Said I was ruining Christmas, that I couldn’t use pink ribbons because it wasn’t a Christmas color, even though that’s what Rose wanted. She gave me a ticket and said I had to pay a fine.”

“Give it to me,” I said, exasperated. “She’s not allowed to ticket people.”

“Biddy’s been causing a huge headache for Meg too,” Hunter said as Bruno handed me the ticket. “Meg said she’d been dreading going into her office because she knew Biddy was going to accost her.”

“Guess sometimes these problems just take care of themselves,” Crawford remarked. He and Hunter exchanged a look.

I scowled, my eyes flicking between them. “Yes, it’s funny how things work out.”