“Where were you when you heard this?” I asked. The Halloween season had ended the second weekend in November, and I wondered how recent this was.
“It was the final weekend of the Halloween season. We were both working that day, which really wasn’t very common, but I guess Charlie thought he needed a second person to work that day. It was so busy that weekend. Do you remember?”
I nodded. “Yes, we ran out of candy before the end of the day. It was disappointing, but we just couldn’t keep up.”
“Right, it was probably the busiest we’ve ever been, and we had long lines at the haunted house. So Charlie asked her to come in that Saturday and Sunday evening. She was on one side of the haunted house and I was on the other. When we got a short break, that’s when I heard the phone conversation.”
I thought about this. “Had there been other instances when they didn’t get along?”
“Oh yes,” she said, nodding. “The two of them fought like cats and dogs. Every time Suzanne would come to work, she would complain about her. I guess with them not having much family, they ran into one another frequently, just pretending to be close to one another.”
It seemed like Katrina might be reading more into the family dynamic than she really knew, but I wasn’t sure. “Maybe not having somebody else to argue with in the family, they only had each other to focus on,” I said.
She chuckled. “I bet that was it. Anyway, I thought I’d mention it. I had forgotten all about it.”
“Well, I appreciate you telling me about it. I don’t know if it means anything, but you never know.”
“That’s what I thought,” she said and picked up her bag of candy. “I guess I better get to work now.”
“Katrina, how do you like working with Lawrence Deal?” I still couldn’t get over the fact that he had lied to me. Enough people had mentioned he and Suzanne had argued the night she died that I knew he had lied.
She shrugged. “I guess he’s okay. To be honest, he’s kind of a control freak. But, he is Santa, right?”
I nodded. “How much of a control freak?”
“He’s always telling me where to stand, or what to say, or what to do. It’s like this constant verbal barrage of what I should be doing. It gets old, but what am I going to do about it? It’s a part-time job, and it’s temporary, so I’m not going to make a fuss over it.”
I nodded slowly. “Has he ever been rude to you?”
She thought about it a minute. “Well, I guess it is kind of rude the way he’s always on me about what I should be doing. It’s not like he’s the real boss, you know. I could see where someone might think he was rude. Why do you ask?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, I was just wondering.”
She looked at me, and for a moment I thought she was going to say something else. “Well, I better get going. I’ll talk to you later.”
“See you,” I said as she left the candy store. Was there something she wasn’t telling me?
Christy came to stand beside me. “I was standing by the kitchen door and heard what she said. What do you make of that?”
“I don’t know. Sounds like Suzanne had family troubles, and then some Santa troubles to boot.”
Christy snickered. “Santa’s boot.”
I chuckled. “I hope we don’t have a murdering Santa on our hands.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” she said.
“I’m going to go back and get some more fudge to put into the display case.” We were open until eight o’clock in the evening, and people were out walking around and looking into the shop display windows. We would sell a lot more fudge before the evening was over.
Chapter Thirteen
“What are you getting Devon for Christmas?” I asked Christy.
She glanced. She was looking through the men’s shirts hanging on a rack. “I have no idea. Honestly, what do you get a guy that you’ve only been dating for a couple of months? It feels like Christmas gift buying is either personal, for close friends and relatives, or completely impersonal, like when you buy your coworker a coffee cup filled with candy.”
I chuckled. “I hear you. It’s tough.” I picked up a nice pale blue button-down shirt. Then I turned to her. “Wait a minute. You aren’t buying me a coffee cup and filling it with candy, are you?”
She chuckled. “You’ll have to wait until Christmas to see.”
I shook my head. “I can see where you’d have a problem since you and Devon haven’t been together very long. But what does he like to do in his spare time?” Devon worked at the local power company and I wasn’t sure what he did when he wasn’t at work.
“He likes to snowboard in the winter.”
I pointed a finger at her. “Ethan loves snowboarding. That’s what I bought him last year. A snowboard. You could get him one of those.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Does he need another snowboard? How many snowboards does a guy need?”
“It’s not that he needs another snowboard, although he might. It’s that you know him well enough to know what he enjoys doing in his spare time. And it will be from his new girlfriend, so he is going to love it.”
She didn’t look convinced. “I don’t know. What are you getting for Ethan?”
I sighed and hung up the shirt. “I have no idea. He’s hard to buy for. Or maybe I just have a hard time deciding.” I glanced
