15. Lottie

LOTTIE

A re they bonding? I muse mostly to myself as Carlotta and Eudora Fairbanks laugh at a joke in poor taste that involved the deceased.

"Are you looking for your real mom?" Suze asks me point-blank as the crowd thickens here at the Jolly Holly Tree Lot. And since this is Suze, she comes by her rudeness honestly. "She's back there yacking it up with Clara," Suze says Clara's name as if she were talking about a colonoscopy.

" Clara ," Eudora chuffs as she averts her eyes.

"Clara Dickens Greenmantle," Suze points out. "The woman never goes by her first name. It's always every name under the sun to go along with it."

"That's because she's prideful," Eudora adds. "And if I hear one more time how she's related to the Charles Dickens on her father's side…" She averts her eyes at the thought. "Charles Dickens, my foot."

Suze chortles. "I like to call her Clara Dickens Greed mantle."

Eudora cackles so loud I think I heard a wolf howl back in response—probably a werewolf knowing Ivy's bloodline.

"Clara is just such a goody-goody, Ms. Priss, know-it-all." Eudora doesn't hold back. "Of course, she's buddying up to Miranda. Now that Glenda is gone, it's Miranda who holds the keys to the purple kingdom."

"Hear that, Lot?" Carlotta pushes up against me. "We're practically purple hat jiggety junk royalty." She shrugs over at the elf sitting on Suze's shoulders as he gives her a kick in the chin every now and again with his pointy shoe. "I gave Lot away when she was a tiny whiny, so that makes me royalty by proxy."

"I was adopted by the Lemons," I quickly tell Eudora in hopes of defusing some of Carlotta's insanity. "And they loved me as if I were their own."

"Speaking of love…" Carlotta raises a brow at the elf on the Suze shelf. "How about we bolt out of this one-cow tree lot and make hay? There's nothing like a little mistletoe to get me going in the right direction, if you know what I mean."

Thimblewick frowns my way. "Is she always like this?"

I give a covert nod.

Always.

"You know"—Eudora holds up a finger—"I'm with you on this one. There's just something about the holidays that makes me hanker for some hanky-panky. I know a great bar where the gentlemen are plentiful and always willing."

"A bar?" Thimblewick chuckles. "After a few steins of hops and barley, I'm up for just about anything myself."

"Then that's where we're headed." Carlotta points right at him.

"Why are you looking at me that way?" Suze growls. "I'm not going to some filthy bar. Besides, I can hardly stand men as it is. The only thing I have a hankering for this time of year is to cuddle up in bed with a good cozy mystery. A holiday cozy mystery to boot. And maybe a box of chocolates or two. There's nothing like a good holiday murder."

Spoken like a true killer—and one who happens to strike in December .

Although the cozy mystery and chocolates do sound rather nice.

Suddenly, I strive to be Suze Fox. And somewhere out there a pig is flying.

Hey? I bet he's flying right through the portal to the North Pole.

Ha! As if.

"I'm only here for another ten minutes," Eudora tells Carlotta. "My shift is about to end."

"Then I'd better hurry and get my picture taken with Santa," Carlotta says. "Nothing like starting a naughty night off by way of getting a little naughty with the naughtiest elf of them all." She looks up at Thimblewick and points. "Don't you dare go anywhere. You're coming with me tonight."

"Oh, all right," Suze growls as her shoulders sag and Thimblewick nearly slides right off. "I guess it's true what they say. There is no party without me."

Carlotta takes off and Thimblewick leans my way. "Cut to the chase. I've got a bar downtown calling my name."

"Oh, good grief," I mutter.

"It's true," Suze says with a shrug.

"Say, ladies—" I lean in as much as my overgrown belly will allow. "Any word on what may have happened to poor Glenda?"

Eudora huffs a laugh right at me. "Boy, you really are as daft as Ivy tells me. Lottie, you were the one who found Suze with the knitting needles in her hand."

"Did she just call you daft?" Thimblewick inches back and I give an aggressive nod his way. A light laugh bubbles from him. "I like her more already."

My mouth falls open and I have half a mind to throw one of these janky beanies at him. But instead, I collect myself. I have a killer to catch. And right now, I'd love for it to be Ivy's daft mother.

"Yes, I did see Suze holding the knitting needles." I clear my throat as Suze stiffens. "But we all know Suze is innocent."

Not of most things, but probably this. And honestly, it would be a shame if Lyla Nell's grandmother went away for Murder One. I really do need someone else to pin this on.

"I am innocent," Suze shrills the words out and they sound more like a question than a fact. "Glenda Dasher was my very best friend in the whole wide world. And besides, everyone and their mother had it out for Glenda, for Pete's sake." Her face turns a startling shade of purple and it darn near matches her Santa hat.

Speaking of mothers, Noah's mother is looking pretty darn guilty right about now.

"Clara hated the woman," Eudora says, glancing back to where my mother is speaking to the elfish brunette.

"Oh?" I tip my ear her way. "Why is that?"

Eudora glowers at me a moment before her lips curl into a malevolent smile—and I can see Ivy right there in her face. So creepy.

"Because Glenda knew all of her secrets." Eudora lifts a brow at Suze. "Glenda made it her business to know everyone else's business. She had a way of sucking a secret right out of a person." She glowers out in the direction of the woods. "Anyway, whatever she had on Clara must have been big. I heard the two of them going at it at the B&B about a week ago during our monthly tea party."

They have monthly tea parties? The Purple Bonnet Society isn't sounding so bad after all. And knowing my mother, I bet they serve those tea sandwiches with the crusts cut off and little petit fours and all sorts of scrumptious goodies. My stomach begins to claw at me, and I promptly dig another cookie out of the bag I'm holding.

"So Glenda was sort of the keeper of secrets, huh?" I ask and both Suze and Eudora exchange a glance and laugh.

"We said she collected them," Suze hoots. "We never said she knew how to keep them."

Eudora nods. "Come to think of it, it's probably best she's been silenced." She winks my way. "As the saying goes, two can keep a secret if one of us is dead."

"Spoken like a true killer." Thimblewick breaks out into a spontaneous applause. "Now unravel a few of these janky beanies and cuff her."

My heart gives an unnatural wallop just hearing Eudora's words, but before I can respond, the crowd behind me breaks out into screams.

We turn around and I let out a short-lived scream myself.

Barreling this way on the back of a rogue reindeer is Carlotta, still firmly seated in Santa's lap and holding onto the head elf for dear life. And on their tail, the rest of the petting zoo is stampeding after them as well.

It looks as if Carlotta's night is already off to a wild start.

I glance back just in time to see Clara Dickens Greenmantle ducking into the parking lot and jumping into a red sedan.

Drats.

It looks as if my next suspect just made a clean getaway.

But I won't fret about it.

She can run, but she can't hide—at least not for long.

If she has any deep, dark secrets, I will certainly take a page out of Glenda's book and suck them right out of her.