Abigail Browining - Murder Most Merry

If that was the case, however, Culhane wouldn’t have told him to come to this room. It was already nearly eleven and Nick decided to wait till noon to see what happened. He positioned himself behind the clothes rack, but at the far end, away from the television camera. Exactly at eleven-thirty, the door opened and someone came in. He could see a tall, fairly broad-shouldered person carrying a large canvas tote bag. There was a flash of red as a Santa Claus suit came into view.

Nick Velvet breathed a sigh of relief. The white beard came out of the bag and he saw the prize within his grasp. He stepped from his hiding place, ready to deliver a knockout blow if necessary. “Keep quiet and give me the beard,” he said.

The figure turned and Nick froze in his tracks. Santa was a woman.

She was probably in her late thirties, large boned but not unattractive, with dark brown hair that was already partly covered by the Santa Claus wig and cap. Nick’s sudden appearance seemed not to have frightened her but only angered her as any unexpected interruption might. “You just made the mistake of your life, mister,” she told him in a flat tone of voice.

“I don’t want to hurt you. Give me that beard.”

“I have a transmitter in my pocket. I’ve already called for help.”

He realized suddenly that she thought he was the Santa strangler. “I’m not here to hurt you,” he tried to assure her.

But it was too late for assurances. The dressing-room door burst open and Nick faced two men with drawn revolvers. “Freeze!” the first man ordered, crouching in a shooter’s stance. “Police!”

“Look, this is all a mistake.”

“And you made it, mister!” The second man moved behind Nick to frisk him.

Nick decided it was time for a bit of his own electronic technology. He brought his left arm down enough to hit the small transmitter in his breast pocket. Immediately there was a sharp crack from the direction of the furniture department, and billowing smoke could be seen through the open dressing-room door. The first man turned his head and Nick kicked the gun from his hand, poking his elbow back simultaneously to catch the second detective in the ribs. As he went out the door he made a grab for the white beard the lady Santa was holding in her hand, but he missed by several inches.

“Stop or I’ll shoot!” one of the detectives yelled, but Nick knew he wouldn’t. The floor was crowded with shoppers, and the cloud from Nick’s well-placed smoke bomb was already enveloping everyone.

Five minutes later he was out of the store and safely away, but without the beard he’d been hired to steal.

Later that afternoon Nick returned to the office of the Intercontinental Protection Service. Grady Culhane was not in a pleasant mood. “That was you at the store this morning, wasn’t it?” he asked pointedly. “The radio says someone set off a smoke bomb and two shoppers were slightly injured in the panic.”

“I’m sorry if anyone was hurt. You didn’t tell me Santa Claus was a woman. That threw off my timing and enabled a couple of detectives to get the drop on me.”

“What about the beard?”

“I didn’t get it.”

Culhane cursed. “That means Santa will be back in place as soon as they get the smoke cleared out and things back to normal.”

Nick was beginning to see at least a portion of the scheme. “You wanted the beard stolen so Santa couldn’t appear.”

“Sure. It was easier than stealing the whole costume, except that you bungled it.”

“They could have found another beard quickly enough,” Nick argued.

Grady Culhane shook his head. “They don’t sell them in the store. I checked. The delay would have been an hour or two, and that was all I needed.”

“For what?”

He eyed Nick uncertainly for a moment before deciding to yield. “All right, I’ll tell you about it. But I want something in return. I want that beard tomorrow, and no slip-ups this time!”

“You’ll have it, so long as you play square with me. What’s this all about? Does it involve the Santa Claus killings?”

The dark-haired young man reached into a desk drawer and extracted a sheet of paper which he passed across the desk to Nick. It was a copy of a crudely printed extortion letter addressed to the president of Kliman’s department store: “Tuesday, December 15—I have just come from killing my second Santa Claus of the Christmas season. The deaths of Bajon and Averly were meant as a demonstration. A third Santa Claus will die in your store, in full view of the children, unless you are prepared to pay me one million dollars in cash within forty-eight hours, by noon Thursday.” There was no signature.

“Sounds like a crackpot,” Nick decided, returning the letter. “He doesn’t even give directions for paying the money.”

“This letter was hand-delivered by a messenger service Tuesday afternoon. A second letter came yesterday, with instructions. They haven’t shown me that one.”

“You’ve been hired by Kliman’s store?”

Culhane nodded. “Frankly, it’s the first major client I’ve had. Even though the police have been called in, the store is paying me as a personal bodyguard for Santa.”

“Or Mrs. Santa.”

He smiled. “She’s an unemployed actress named Vivian Delmos. I just met her yesterday after I talked with you. There are some female Santas around. They’re good with children. If their voices are deep enough and the suit is padded enough, no one knows the difference. I didn’t know the cops would be guarding her too.”

“How much are they paying you?” Nick asked.

“That’s proprietary information.” the young man answered stiffly.

“I figure fifty thousand, at least, if you can afford to pay me twenty-five.”

“I don’t get a thing if the Santa strangler kills her.”

“You thought he’d strike right at noon, so you needed me to keep her from going out there then. That means they decided not to pay.”

“It’s not just them. There are other stores involved. The killer is trying to shake down the largest stores in New York.”

“The police must have a description from the messenger company that delivered this note.”

Grady Culhane shook his head. “They deny any knowledge of it. One of their messengers was probably stopped in the street and paid to deliver it. Naturally he won’t admit it now and risk losing his job.”

“What happens after the smoke is cleared out?”

“The Delmos woman puts on her beard and goes back out there. I’ll probably have to be standing next to her, and I’m too big for those elves’ costumes.”

“Don’t worry,” Nick promised. “This time I’ll get the beard.”

On his second visit to the store Nick Velvet wore a grey wig and a matching false moustache. He was taking no chances on coming face-to-face with one of those detectives again. In the atrium at the center of the main floor where Santa’s throne was in place, a sign announced that he would not return until noon the following day due to the illness of one of his reindeer. Nick found a pay telephone and called Culhane at his office.

“You’re off the hook until tomorrow,” he said.

I just heard from the store.”

“Do you still want the beard?”

“Of course—unless the police come up with the extortionist by then.”

Nick hung up and decided he should know more than he did about the Santa Claus killings. He went down to the subway newsstand and bought all the local papers. It wasn’t the lead item anymore but the unsolved killings still filled several columns inside each paper. The first victim, Russell Bajon, was a young homeless man—a would-be actor—who’d been staying at the men’s dorm maintained by a charitable organization. He’d been collecting money for the charity at one of their Christmas chimneys when he’d been strangled. One of the other Santas, a man named Chris Stover, had come by in a van a few minutes later to find a crowd gathering around the fallen man. No one admitted to having seen the actual killing.