Mrs. Claus and the Trouble with Turkeys

Book 4: Mrs. Claus Mystery

by Liz Ireland

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

Jessica Fletcher meets Tim Burton in this creative and witty cozy mystery series filled with unconventional characters, a year-round Christmas setting, and a unique heroine who’s married to the real-life Santa Claus—and this time, there are two holidays in the mix.
 
At Castle Kringle, the elves are excitedly arranging their first ever Thanksgiving day feast. April’s husband, Nick—the real Santa—has some misgivings, since it’s tough to get ready for Christmas when everyone is obsessed with helium balloons and pie recipes. Chaos erupts when Gobbles, the live turkey imported for the castle feast, is bird-napped. That crime is quickly overshadowed at a pre-Thanksgiving potluck when Nick’s cousin, Elspeth, face-plants into her mashed potatoes—dead.
 
Someone poisoned Elspeth, and April believes Constable Crinkle is hauling the wrong suspect off to jail. An ominous message, written in what seems to be blood and urging April to stop investigating, only convinces her more. But who’s really to blame? Where is Gobbles the turkey? And can April solve a double helping of mystery in time for everyone to sit down to a non-deadly dinner together?
 
Praise for Mrs. Claus and the Evil Elves

“Funny, well-paced . . . Ireland’s bizarre series conceit works, a tribute to her deft juggling of sleuthing and satire. Fans of Leigh Perry’s Family Skeleton mysteries will be tickled.”
—Publishers Weekly

Release date: September 26, 2023

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

Gobbles had vanished.

When I looked inside the fancy turkey cage Salty the groundskeeper had built just outside Castle Kringle, the wrong bird stared back at me.

“Grimstock.”

The vulture was the result of a mix-up that had occurred when Butterbean the elf, in anticipation of Santaland’s first Thanksgiving, sent off for a live bird from a scam turkey-by-mail company. Eventually an actual live turkey had been procured and installed in the cage to be fattened up for the big day, but due to a strict no-returns policy Grimstock remained stuck in Santaland. Now it looked as if, like a cuckoo, he had managed to push the turkey out of its cushy nest. Gobbles wasn’t there.

“Someone’s stolen Gobbles,” Salty and Jingles blurted at me in unison.

Their words landed in my ears like a Greek chorus of Thanksgiving doom. One thing I’d learned in my first years as Mrs. Claus was that even the most festive holiday was bound to have a few troubling hiccups, and turkey theft—if Gobbles truly had been stolen—was a bad omen for Santaland’s first-ever Thanksgiving celebration.

“Stolen him?” I asked. “Why would you say that?”

Both elves sounded upset, but by far the most visibly distraught was Salty, who stood red-eyed, twisting his cap in his hands. Even his large ears seemed to droop. “What else could have happened?” he asked. “The cage was locked.”

More caustically, Jingles added, “The bird didn’t just decide to let himself out and go for a stroll.” Castle Kringle’s steward was Salty’s opposite, fastidious in his castle uniform of red tunic and green piping, with a matching cap.

I nodded toward the buzzard, who stared at us defiantly. “If the cage was locked, how did Grimstock get in?”

“We let him stay in the cage if he wants to,” Salty said. “He’s good company for Gobbles.”

It was hard to imagine Grimstock being good company. The red-headed buzzard with his feathery cowl and long, white-tipped beak resembled a turkey’s evil cousin. “Do they really get along?”

“Oh sure,” Salty said. “Well, about as well as Grimstock gets along with anybody. He’s not the friendliest of birds.” In a lower voice, he added, “He doesn’t have Gobbles’s pleasing personality.”

Grimstock might like Gobbles, but he obviously hadn’t been inclined to follow his wattled buddy to freedom, or to a different captivity, or wherever Gobbles had gone to.

The other elf present with us out in the cold by the fowl house—Felice, the castle cook—had been annoyed since the Thanksgiving scheme had been floated. It had taken some persuasion to get her on board with roasting a kind of giant bird she’d never laid eyes on, but now she was irritated that her careful meal planning might be thrown for a loop. “It was bad enough having to figure out how to cook all the things on the ridiculous menu Butterbean gave me. Now what am I supposed to do?”

With tears in his eyes, Salty rounded on her. “How can you be so heartless? Gobbles is missing.”

She planted her hands on her ample hips. “He’s a bird—and a bird marked for death, at that.”

A tear trickled down Salty’s cheek, which gave me pause. Gobbles had only been on the castle grounds for a few weeks, but during that brief time the bird and his elf keeper had apparently developed a close bond. The thought crossed my mind that Salty might have him cached away somewhere until after Thanksgiving dinner . . . except the elf seemed genuinely upset about not knowing his charge’s whereabouts.

“Now, let’s not talk about death.” Jingles’s white-gloved fingers drummed on the soft pot belly against his livery tunic. “Thanksgiving is about gratitude and joy, not death.”

“You should ask this turkey everyone’s so fond of about that,” the cook grumbled. “How much joy will he feel when his neck’s on the chopping block?”

“Felice, please.” I nodded toward an increasingly upset Salty. The words chopping block nearly caused him to swoon.

“I just want to know what I’m supposed to do with all the turkey fixings and no turkey,” the cook huffed in frustration. “I’ve spent two weeks hunting down recipes. We were going to have turducken. Now what am I supposed to do? Goose-ducken?”

“A nice walrus steak is always my family’s go-to for special occasions,” Salty suggested.

“Wal-ducken?” That sounded less than appetizing to me.

Felice glowered at us. “I’ve got ten pounds of cranberries ready to sauce. I can’t see eating cranberry sauce with walrus, can you?”

“No,” I said, happy to put the notion of a holiday meal of walrus to rest.

Her face contorted in thought. “I suppose there’s always musk ox roast.”

My heart sank. Musk ox again?

A feast is about more than food. And of course, Felice was a fantastic cook, and her musk ox roast was to die for—but my taste buds were primed for a traditional turkey dinner, like the ones I’d grown up eating in the United States. Turkey, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, three kinds of pie . . .

And to think I’d actually hesitated when Jingles and Butterbean had floated the idea of having a Thanksgiving feast at the castle. Importing American customs to Santaland hadn’t always worked out well, but Butterbean, who was nearing the end of his first year working at Castle Kringle, had taken charge. Every day it seemed that Santaland Postal Express delivered holiday goodies to the castle’s service door: the aforementioned cranberries, pecans for pie, a crate of yams, and—most important of all—Gobbles.

Now it appeared that the castle’s celebration was unraveling even as Thanksgiving was taking hold everywhere else in Santaland. Once the elves in Christmastown had gotten wind of the castle’s celebration, they’d launched plans of their own. Twinkle’s Fried Pie shop had collected and cooked down enough of the town’s leftover Halloween pumpkins to supply the whole land with pies and pumpkin pie filling. Bella Sparkletoe, who owned Sparkletoe’s Mercantile, read about the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and now everyone was in a frenzy of preparation for the Sparkletoe’s Thanksgiving Day Parade down Festival Boulevard in Christmastown, which would include floats, a marching band, a giant helium balloon, and of course, Santa on his sleigh pulled by nine reindeer.

Santaland’s parade had one advantage over New York City’s: We had the real Santa Claus. My husband, Nick, wasn’t wild about inserting a big celebration right as Santaland was gearing up for the big Christmas push, but I sold him on the idea by assuring him that it would just be a one-day disruption. Then the Events Committee decided that having the parade the day before Thanksgiving made more sense, given that everyone would be busy cooking and visiting on Thanksgiving Thursday. So the one-day celebration had morphed into two days . . . and then another Thanksgiving event had cropped up.

Nick was the only Claus who lacked enthusiasm for the new holiday. His cousin, Amory, and his wife, Midge, were planning their own pre-Thanksgiving feast—a potluck, no less—up at Kringle Lodge at the summit of Sugarplum Mountain. “To kick off Thanksgiving week,” Amory had said when he extended the invitation. I’d tried to explain that Thanksgiving was a single belt-popping meal. But in Santaland, celebrations are never done in a small way.

Amory discovered that Americans sometimes took as much as a week off. “They must eat something in all that time.” He’d vowed to leave the turkey dinner for Thursday’s feasting but promised to make his pre-Thanksgiving event special in other ways.

Now, though, the castle’s turkey had flown the coop. Or he’d been stolen.

Who would steal a turkey?

Felice sized up Grimstock and pointed at him with a wooden spoon. “What about him?”

The bird’s red, leathery head poked higher out of its feathery cowl neck. He let out a guttural hiss.

“We are not serving buzzard to our Thanksgiving guests,” I said.

Felice’s lips screwed up. “Don’t come complaining to me about having roast musk ox again, then.”

I wasn’t giving up on Gobbles quite yet. “Where was the bird last seen?” I asked Salty.

“Right here in this cage.”

“Cage? It’s more like a turkey chalet.” Felice shook her head. “I’m too busy to bother over a missing bird. Let me know if he shows up.”

She stomped away.

“I don’t see what’s so wrong with providing a nice cage,” Salty said. “Gobbles is an honored guest.”

Honored and doomed.

And now gone.

I peered at the cage. Come to think of it, it did look a little like a chalet. The structure was made of wood frame and glass, with a vaulted roof that allowed for easy movement to care for Gobbles. Easy elf movement, that is—I was a foot taller than the average elf and had to duck my head inside of it. Given how cold it was at the North Pole, the turkey house was heated enough that Grimstock had his wings extended to cool himself. Fresh wood shavings were strewn all around, giving the bird dwelling a surprisingly clean smell.

“Well, I can see now why you think Gobbles didn’t leave on his own,” I said, inspecting the digs with an almost envious eye. “No bird in his right mind would abandon such nice accommodations.”

“We should call Constable Crinkles,” Salty said. “Don’t they always say that the first twenty-four hours after someone goes missing are the most crucial?”

I wasn’t sure that Constable Crinkles would be that great a help in this instance. Santaland’s premier lawman wasn’t famed for his investigative prowess. “Maybe before we alert the law, we should make double sure Gobbles isn’t around here somewhere.”

Jingles nodded. “I’ll have Butterbean direct a thorough, castle-wide search just as soon as he gets back.”

“Back from where?” I asked.

“He’s picking up some helium canisters for his parade balloon,” Jingles said.

I frowned. “Does Butterbean know about helium balloons?”

Jingles waved a hand. “Oh, Butterbean knows about everything. It’s amazing the things he comes up with.”

Butterbean had come up with some questionable projects in the past, but since he was the mastermind behind Santaland Thanksgiving, I was willing to cut him some slack. It was he who had found Gobbles online and ordered him—not without a hitch, of course. I didn’t fault him too much for that. Grimstock had turned out to be more of a curiosity than a nuisance.

“If anyone can locate Gobbles, it’s Butterbean,” Jingles said.

I lacked his confidence. Castle Kringle and its grounds were vast enough for a whole flock of turkeys to get lost in. The castle rose behind us like something out of a Bavarian fairy tale. Its gray walls, towers, and turrets had the perfect backdrop of Sugarplum Mountain, which overlooked picturesque Christmastown in the valley below. One wing of the castle, the Old Keep, was unused now, but even in the “modern” section I still occasionally stumbled across a room or stairwell new to me, and I’d lived there for over two years.

Of course, for a turkey to have gotten into the castle would indicate that he really had been stolen—either by someone on the staff or a Claus family member. That seemed unlikely, too.

I floated another possibility. “Maybe someone just accidentally left the cage open, and Gobbles wandered off.”

Ever since the word of the live turkey’s arrival had spread in Santaland, people curious about the bird had trekked up Sugarplum Mountain from Christmastown and sometimes from the even more distant elf sister village of Tinkertown to get a glimpse of him. That was why it was impossible to tell from the ground near the cage who might have taken him. The snow outside the turkey chalet was covered in bootie prints.

“It was locked,” Salty said.

“Someone could have locked it after Gobbles was gone without seeing that he wasn’t inside,” Jingles said.

“If he wandered off,” I said, “it’s the grounds we should be searching, not the interior of the castle.”

Salty shuddered. “I hate to think of what could happen to him alone outside.”

I hunched in my puffy coat. Like Gobbles, I was from “the south”—what Santalanders called any place below the arctic circle. “He probably doesn’t like the cold.” I wasn’t very cold tolerant, either.

Jingles clucked. “And heaven help him if Lynxie finds him before we do.”

Salty looked more panicked than ever. Lynxie was my sister-in-law Lucia’s pet—a cat-lynx hybrid that was one hundred percent hellcat. My calves had the scars from his claws to prove it. If the cat loved to ambush me, no doubt he would be over the moon to find a fat, helpless turkey bumbling around.

And Lynxie was an indoor-outdoor cat. Nowhere would be safe from him.

“I’ll talk to Lucia,” I promised Salty. “We can keep Lynxie confined somewhere until Gobbles is located.”

Jingles folded his arms. “Good luck with that.” He’d also been the victim of Lynxie’s pounces, and he knew how stubborn Lucia could be about that animal.

“I’m going into Christmastown this afternoon,” I said. “If Gobbles hasn’t turned up by then, I’ll stop by the constabulary and report him missing.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Claus,” Salty said.

“We’ll find him.” Maybe this was promising too much, but the poor elf looked like he needed a dose of optimism. And, Lynxie notwithstanding, I truly didn’t want to believe anyone in Santaland would harm Gobbles.

I headed back into the castle to get warm and search for Lucia. It was November, but the castle, as always, had signs of Christmas everywhere: Twinkle lights graced the ceiling, evergreen bows and candles festooned side tables and doors, and now seasonal sprigs of holly and mistletoe had begun to appear, attached by colorful ribbons to the finials of stair rails and lampshades, and over doorways.

Outside Nick’s office, raised voices caught my attention. It wasn’t often that anyone yelled at Santa Claus. I stopped, leaning in to eavesdrop more closely. Lucia’s voice rose above the others. “Why argue over this?” she asked. “It’s ridiculous!”

When I ducked my head in to see what the problem was, a wave of animal musk hit me. Nick’s office was filled with reindeer—two of them large, muscled bucks that would have made the room feel crowded all on their own. I could tell at once that they were leaders—old, proud reindeer who’d earned the right to be called by the name of their herd. One I recognized was Comet, and the other was the head of the Dasher herd. You could always distinguish a Dasher because they were notoriously vain—coats shining to a high gloss, hooves blackened with polish, work done to augment antlers.

Next to them stood Lucia, and behind her, near the door as if he didn’t quite want to be involved in the discussion, was Lucia’s reindeer friend, Quasar. Quasar, unlike the other two, was a misfit reindeer. He walked with a crooked gait and would never win any speed or agility prizes. His erratically fizzling red nose marked him as a descendent of the great Rudolph, but he chose to live here in the castle as Lucia’s friend, not with his herd. He nodded hello to me.

At the end of the office, Nick sat at his desk, strikingly handsome and Santalike in his red coat with its snowy white wool trim. Even when he was sitting down you could tell he was a tall man, with dark hair and a beard starting to go salt-and-pepper. Not the portly, jolly Santa of the Clement Moore poem and Madison Avenue—his cousin Amory better fit that description. Of course, I preferred the real flesh-and-blood Santa.

“We are not show ponies to be trotted out for some idiotic pageant,” Comet was saying, holding his muzzle high. “This parade was sprung on us after our autumn reindeer games were well underway.”

“They’re always underway,” I couldn’t help blurting out.

The large reindeer swung their heads toward me and dipped their antlers in greeting, but turned back to the subject at hand quickly. Lucia, Nick’s sister, who had the appearance of a Viking queen kitted out in the clothes of a reindeer wrangler, shot me a look that conveyed how unwelcome my interjection into the conversation was. Her job within the Claus family was to liaise with the reindeer herds, and she clearly didn’t appreciate any caustic remarks.

“We can’t ask our herds to sit out vital contests in order to flounce about in this parade,” Comet said. “Of all the elves and people in the North Pole, Santa, you know best what’s at stake.”

The whole point of the reindeer games—which truly went on all year long, and heated up to a frenzy in the last months of autumn—was to choose the strongest reindeer with the most stamina to pull Nick’s sleigh on Christmas Eve. Reindeer took these competitions very seriously.

“I do,” Nick agreed. “Believe me, no one wants reindeer to participate in the parade if they would rather not.”

The other large reindeer snorted. “And pray tell, who would be pulling your sleigh in the parade if not us? Musk oxen?”

Nick shifted uncomfortably. He obviously didn’t want to tread on any hooves. “Surely the games are far along now. Those reindeer not in contention for the finals could be in the parade.”

“The losers, you mean,” Comet said acidly.

Comet had always reminded me of all the frustrated coaches who’d taught my PE classes in school. Personally, I found the Comet herd annoying, but reindeer, as Lucia often reminded me, had a different mindset from elves and people. They were the Spartans of Santaland, competitive and prickly, and their ways were older even than the elves’. Reindeer lived outside in the cold, braved polar bears and snow monsters, and provided both the muscle of daily transportation and, since the day Blitzen the Great first leapt through the air and flew, the magical lift beneath Christmas itself.

That, apparently, entitled them to be competitive jerks. At least, their leaders were jerks, and the herds went along with the survival of the fittest mentality. Yet I’d met many rank-and-file reindeer who were more laid-back.

Nick rubbed the full whiskers at his chin for a moment. “Some of the floats are going to be motor powered. I could ask that my appearance be on a mechanical float, not the ceremonial sleigh.”

The reindeer reps nearly went apoplectic.

“And make it look as though the reindeer are shirkers?” Comet asked, aghast.

Lucia finally stepped forward. “So you don’t want to lower yourself to appearing in a mere parade, but you don’t want Santa to appear without you, either?”

“I never said that,” Dasher said. “All of Santaland is going to be at this event. Reindeer should be involved.”

“Then do as Nick suggested and involve the reindeer who aren’t in contention for pulling the sleigh on Christmas Eve,” Lucia said. “Hold a mini tournament to decide, if it makes you happier.”

“Or better yet,” I piped up, “let any reindeer interested put their names forward and draw nine reindeer from a hat.”

Comet and Dasher gaped at me as if I’d just sprouted horns. “Not have a contest?” they asked in unison.

“What would be the point of that?” Comet added.

“It would just be a random selection,” Dasher said. “What would it prove?”

Lucia crossed her arms, twisting her lips thoughtfully. “It wouldn’t prove anything, but it would let other reindeer participate for once. Even the misfits.”

They gasped. So did I—but only because Lucia and I rarely agreed on anything.

“Misfits?” Comet was beside himself. “Pulling the great sleigh?”

She laughed. “The sleigh’s just going to fly down the mountain and land on Festival Boulevard, where it will move in a straight line for half a mile. Even fawns could handle that.”

Dasher’s nostrils flared as he swung back toward Nick. “You said this is going to be a ceremonial event—the opening of the Christmas season.” He added in a lower voice, “A Cupid told me that there would be a photographer from the Christmastown Herald at the event. Surely we don’t want misfits on the front page of the newspaper?”

He spoke so witheringly of misfits while Quasar was right there. I felt furious on Quasar’s behalf, and Lucia practically had steam coming out of her ears.

Nick stood before the room could erupt into a clash between his sister and the leaders of the two largest herds. Lucia was a reindeer advocate, but she was partial to all reindeer, not just the fastest and fittest.

“My sister makes an excellent suggestion,” Nick said. “No one, least of all myself, wants this new holiday to disrupt longstanding reindeer traditions. And as April said, a drawing would give more reindeer an opportunity to step up and take a more visible role.”

Comet and Dasher were two gobsmacked reindeer. “B-b-but—”

“The newspaper!” Dasher said. “They might even feature a photograph on the front page.”

Nick nodded. “I’ll call Snug Brighthearth over at the Herald and ask him to give the reindeer games extra prominence this month.”

It was hard not to roll my eyes. Reindeer games already took up most of the sports page.

“That is my decision,” Nick continued. “The parade team will be decided by random drawing.”

The two emissaries were conditioned to follow orders from Santa, but there was no disguising the fact that the edict rubbed their fur the wrong way.

“It will be as you say.” Dasher bowed his head.

“But the great herds will not be happy,” Comet added. “And if I have my way, they will not be participating.”

“Then the lesser herds and the misfits can step up,” Lucia said.

The other two shuddered from wither to flank, but said no more before they clopped out of the office.

When they were gone, Nick let out a breath and sat down again.

“That was tense,” I said.

Lucia laughed and flopped into a chair opposite the desk, stretching out her long, booted legs. “That was nothing. You should have been around the day the Comets and the Prancers tied for the reindeer relay. There was almost a war.”

“W-will . . .