Rest Ye Murdered Gentlemen Read Online Free PDF Page A

the crowd. (Glad-handing the locals anyway. She ignored the obvious tourists.) Sue-Anne hadn’t declared her candidacy yet, but she made no secret of the fact that she would be challenging Fergus Cartwright for the mayoralty in the forthcoming elections. She was going to run on the slogan “Rudolph can do BETTER!” Our town was prospering, but the number of visitors had dropped off from the heights of a few years ago and sales were down. Nothing we could do about the recession that had stung theentire state, but Sue-Anne wanted everyone to know it was all Fergus’s fault.
    Fergus had been mayor for seven years, and a lot of people—including me—thought he was getting a bit too comfortable with the job. He hadn’t had a fresh idea in a long time. In fact, most of his ideas (when he had them) were handed to him by my dad, who’d decided not to run for another term. But I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted Sue-Anne as mayor. I suspected she had a nasty streak that she kept well hidden under her sprayed helmet of gray-blond hair and pastel power suits that always matched her shoes. Today she wore a boxy pink suit with three-quarter-length sleeves and a skirt cut sharply at the knee. I doubted that the suit, or the pink and black ankle boots, had been bought at Jayne’s Ladies Wear, Rudolph’s premier women’s fashion store. Sue-Anne’s only concession to the season was a tiny brooch representing a decorated Christmas tree pinned on her collar. Maybe that was one of the reasons I didn’t trust Sue-Anne. I didn’t think she truly
loved
Christmas.
    In Rudolph we lived and breathed Christmas all year long. You might think that would make us hard and cynical when the time arrived, but somehow it made me love the real thing all the more. And I knew the majority of my fellow townspeople felt the same.
    I glanced around the room. Most of the women, locals as well as tourists, not in some sort of costume had accented their outfits with the worst (meaning the best!) of Christmas jewelry. Gaudy flashing-light necklaces that the Nook sold for two dollars (five bucks for three), earrings of wreaths or trees, giant brooches. More than a few men were in the sort of homemade Christmas sweaters fashion magazinesridiculed. I spotted Betty Thatcher slithering along behind Nigel Pearce, trying to worm her way into every conversation he attempted to have or every picture he tried to take. I watched as Nigel snapped pictures of three attractive teenage singers when it was their turn on stage, and decided that Betty, fifty years old, totally without curves, and dressed in her usual frumpy style, didn’t have a chance. I almost felt sorry for her, and then she caught me watching and gave me a look of such disdain, my sympathy dissolved.
    â€œYou’re a thousand miles away,” a voice said at my side; Alan Anderson with two glasses of steaming hot chocolate. He passed me one. A single giant marshmallow, homemade at Candy Cane Sweets, floated on the surface.
    â€œThanks. I might have been at the North Pole. I was thinking that I love Christmas.”
    He laughed. It made a strange sound: the notes of a young man, the appearance of one about a hundred years old. No doubt I presented a similar paradox.
    All part of that Christmas magic.
I grinned at him and took a sip of hot chocolate. Thick and rich. The toymaker gave me a warm smile. The young blue eyes sparked from beneath his spectacles and under bushy gray eyebrows. I took another sip as I wiggled my toes, trying to get some circulation back into them. My sodden skirt weighed about a ton and my lower appendages felt as though ice might be forming on them. The room was freezing, with the door constantly opening, and most people were dressed in heavy winter clothes and parade-suitable costumes.
    â€œHaving a break?” I asked.
    â€œYup. Even Santa has to answer the call of nature.”
    My dad had returned from the restroom and