Mrs. Claus and the Halloween Homicide by Liz Ireland

Author:Liz Ireland [Ireland, Liz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2021-06-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Hearing Louie name Chip as the elf who’d fought with Tiny over property already had me reeling. Then, as I left the Bootery, I walked right into him.

“Whoa,” he said, grabbing my elbows to steady me. “Are you all right, April?”

“I’m fine,” I lied. Seeing him so soon after I’d talked to Louie about him flustered me.

Chip darted a glance around me, then met my gaze in mock inquiry. “Buying some booties?”

“No, I was just checking . . .” I didn’t want to tell him what I’d just heard. Not outright. “I paid a condolence call on Pixie Sparkletoe this morning, and I sensed that she was a little concerned about the shop . . .”

Chip held up his gloved hands. “Say no more. Just Lady Bountiful, checking up on things.” The backhanded barb was delivered with an ingratiating smile. “Well, whatever brought you to Sparkletoe Lane, I’m glad it’s given me the chance to run into you. Literally!” He chuckled. “Seriously, though, I’ve wanted a chance to speak to you. On our own, I mean.”

I didn’t like the sound of this. “Without Juniper?”

“I’ve always sensed that you . . . well, I won’t presume to say you don’t like me, because why should you? Right now you just know me as Chip Pepperbough, Juniper’s boyfriend. Or maybe as Chip Pepperbough, optician. I’d like you to get to know me as Chip Pepperbough, elf and friend in his own right.”

Oh, brother. “That would be fine, but I was just heading back to the castle—”

“Wonderful! I’m going to the library. We can walk together a little ways.”

He gestured for me to accompany him down the sidewalk. What could I do? I didn’t relish his company. All that eagerness to be liked made me ill at ease . . . especially after I’d just heard about his screaming fight with Tiny Sparkletoe. On the other hand, this was an opportunity to verify what Louie had just told me.

We covered half a block in strained silence.

“Juniper said you met through the band,” was his conversation opener.

“That’s right.”

“I have to confess, I’m a little jealous of that band,” he said. “It eats up a lot of her time.”

It takes time she could be spending with me, I translated. As if spending half his afternoons at the library weren’t enough togetherness during her day.

“I’m always curious about what she’s up to,” he said. “I guess that shows how in love with her I am.”

“Maybe you should take up an instrument.”

“I wish I were musical. Unfortunately, I’m tone deaf and don’t even have a good sense of rhythm.”

“Excuses, excuses,” I joked.

He laughed. “That’s right—you’re rhythm challenged, too.”

My smile disappeared. “What?”

“That’s what I heard, anyway.”

“From Juniper?”

“Oh, no,” he said quickly. “I must have heard it from . . . well, I can’t remember now. Okay, maybe it was Juniper, but”—he smiled—“on the whole she has nothing but glowing things to say about you.”

On the whole.

Rhythm challenged.

It’s not that a lot of my ego was wrapped up in my dubious percussion skills, but they had improved.

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