Mrs. Claus and the Very Vicious Valentine

Book 6: Mrs. Claus Mystery

by Liz Ireland

Genres: Mystery; Animal Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

As Valentine’s Day approaches, love is in the air with April Claus’s friend, Claire, getting married to Jake Frost—but when a cold-blooded killer strikes, it sends shivers through Santaland . . .

It’s the wedding of the winter—Claire and Jake—and April and Juniper will be bridesmaids. Everyone’s feeling the love. Even the reindeer who pull April’s sleigh are feeling the Valentine’s vibes: both Wobbler and Cannonball fancy Flouncy, a doe from the Vixen herd. As for April, of course she couldn’t be happier being married to Nick (aka THE Santa Claus), but now that they’re no longer newlyweds, has their romance been a bit backburnered?

As the bridal party assembles at the Order of Elven Seamstresses for a fitting, Juniper’s new boyfriend, Sterling Redwinkle, stops by with a corsage. While he’s pinning it on Juniper, he’s pricked by a rose thorn and collapses. Though he’s rushed to the Santaland infirmary, he dies within hours. It turns out the thorns were covered in deadly poison. But who was the killer’s target—sweet Sterling or the now heartbroken bridesmaid?

With Ivy the florist immediately the chief suspect—even being called “Poison Ivy” by naughty gossipers—it’s up to Mrs. Claus to uncover the North Pole poisoner in time to salvage Claire and Jake’s wedding at Castle Kringle . . .

Release date: September 30, 2025

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

“Ruffles suit mademoiselle.”

Madame Neige made the declaration in her usual French cadence. How the North Pole’s doyenne of dressmaking had acquired this exotic accent was a mystery to everyone in Santaland, but no one would dare question the no-nonsense elf in her black, immaculately tailored clothes. The formidable elf’s austere gaze could shrivel a person’s ego faster than a clothes dryer could shrink a wool sweater.

Her perfectly plucked, black eyebrows arched as she took in my friend Claire Emerson modeling her wedding dress. “But perhaps its effect would be better without zee cone of snow?”

Claire barely seemed to hear her. When Snappy’s Snow Cones and Slushies opened as a food cart in Christmastown three months ago, Claire had been incensed to find a competitor to her ice cream business, the Santaland Scoop. Lately, however, the two proprietors seemed to have reached a rapprochement. Now Claire rarely seemed to go anywhere without a paper snow cone dripping in her hand, or slurping on a slushy.

Madame Neige eyed today’s cherry red cone with disdain bordering on panic, as if the creamy white of Claire’s wedding dress was in imminent peril.

As I took in my friend Claire in the wedding dress that Madame Neige and her harried assistants at the Order of Elven Seamstresses had created, I couldn’t see that a few streaks of color would do too much damage. The explosion of ruffles on the otherwise slinky dress were … odd. Chiffon ruffles curled up the bias-cut, form-fitting white dress, culminating in a full ruff at her neck. The overall impression was half velvet negligee, half circus clown.

I glanced over at my fellow bridesmaids: our friend Juniper Greenleaf, and Dolly Frost, the groom’s cousin. Both had glazed, blissful looks on their faces as they gazed upon the bride-to-be. Wedding fever had taken hold of their senses.

“Claire, you’re so beautiful,” Juniper gushed. For Valentine’s Week, her curly locks had been newly styled into an updo piled on top of her head. “This is going to be the most gorgeous ceremony. And you know what they say: weddings beget more weddings.”

It was clear Juniper hoped that would be the case. According to her, her current beau, Sterling Redwinkle, a fireman with the Santaland Fire Brigade, was the one.

There had been other the ones before, so I was trying to be supportive while maintaining my silent skepticism.

“Do you think Sterling will pop the question?” Dolly asked Juniper.

Juniper’s cheeks reddened. “We’ll see. I’m going to dinner at his mother’s house tonight.”

That answer threw me. “Would he propose in front of his mother?”

Juniper looked thoughtful. “I don’t know. Her opinion means a lot to him. He’s devoted to her.”

“Sounds like he’s having you over to see if you’ll pass muster.” Claire tipped her snow cone to slurp some of the icy sugar water from the tip, sending Madame Neige into a panic.

Madame snapped her fingers and an elf flitted in to drape a snowy white napkin around Claire’s neck like a bib. Just in time, too. A blob of red blossomed on the white cloth. Claire didn’t seem to notice.

The whole fitting had me flummoxed. Was I the only one who thought Claire’s dress was like something you’d see on the runway at Milan fashion week? The kind of dress you’d look at and think, No one would ever wear that in real life.

Yes, real life in Santaland still seemed surreal sometimes. In this magical realm, snowmen talked, reindeer flew, and elves … well, they were elves. But I couldn’t imagine any reality in which Claire would think that dress was okay. We’d logged a lot of hours in dressing rooms during a decade of friendship that had taken us both from Cloudberry Bay, Oregon, to Christmastown, and never once had she expressed a desire to wear exploding clown ruffles. Yet here she was, staring at her reflection like someone hypnotized.

Actually, she didn’t seem pleased so much as dazed. Like a body-snatched bride. Maybe Snappy was lacing those snow cones with something.

Come to think of it, maybe I needed one of those snow cones. Between bridesmaid duties and my job as judge of the first rounds of the Valentine’s Tournament of Chocolate, an icy narcotic might be just what this week called for. The tournament was a four-night event—Night 1 was Nougats and Creams; Night 2, Nuts and Caramels; Night 3, Fudge; and Night 4, Brittles and Truffles—that culminated in a final competition the morning of Valentine’s Day, to be judged by my husband, Nick.

Madame Neige turned to me. “What do you think of zee dress, madame?”

Why ask me? Because I was Mrs. Claus? Because I was Claire’s maid of honor? Because Madame Neige’s client, the actual bride-to-be, seemed hypnotized by an icy dessert?

I hitched my throat. “It’s certainly different.”

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. Mrs. Claus, you’re a coward. I’m not completely spineless, but until Claire weighed in, I couldn’t be sure if criticism would be a friendship ender. Brides could get spiky about their dresses. Not to mention ruffled—literally, in this case.

Juniper sighed. “Exactly. It’s so unique!”

“Dreamy,” Dolly chimed in. “And marrying Jake would be a dream, so it’s perfect.”

Dolly had just moved to Christmastown from the Frost family home in the Farthest Frozen Reaches. Jake was one of the few social connections Dolly had in Christmastown, so Claire had felt obligated to ask her to be a member of the wedding party. The trouble was Dolly’s weird fixation on Jake. She never failed to look dewy-eyed when she talked about him. And she was so over-the-top eager for this wedding, you’d be excused for thinking she herself was the bride.

At the moment, she seemed more enthusiastic than the bride.

Claire pivoted nonchalantly to eye the dress from a side angle, ignoring the red-stained bib. “I guess it works.”

I couldn’t stifle myself any longer. “Even with that ruff thing?”

Dolly gasped in shock. “I love the collar! And if anyone in Santaland can pull it off, Claire, it’s you.”

Madame Neige eyed me disdainfully over her round, black-rimmed glasses, before pivoting back to the bride. “Of course, if you’ve changed your mind and you want a typical, frothy wedding cake kind of dress, I’ll send Blanchette to the office to bring some more traditional designs. Those we can have made in no time at all.”

Blanchette, Madame Neige’s second-in-command, tensed to dash off to do her mistress’s bidding.

Claire waved a dismissive hand. “No, this is fine.”

Since when was fine the standard for bridal gowns? The bar for saying yes to the dress was supposed to be a little higher than “meh, okay.” In our younger days, I’d seen Claire spend longer picking out socks at Target.

“But do you love it?” I asked her.

“It’s original.” She frowned toward a little cooler sitting outside her dressing room. “Can somebody bring me the slushy I brought with me?”

Dolly was happy to oblige.

Satisfied that the main fitting was done, Madame Neige clapped her hands, and without further instruction, two assistant elf seamstresses grabbed the dress’s slinky train and steered Claire back toward the dressing room.

“Now for our bridesmaids,” Madame Neige announced. She turned to her assistant. “Blanchette, I leave them to you.”

She turned and marched away. The founder of the Order of Elven Seamstresses, a fortress of the fabric arts, instilled a strange devotion in her apprentice elves. Some of them had joined her as teenagers and planned to spend their lifetimes here in this place that was equal parts house of haute couture, craft-centric convent, and sewing boot camp.

I felt a twinge of foreboding about my bridesmaid dress. I’d seen sketches, so I knew the design was perfect for a Valentine’s wedding—red raw silk with velvet trim to complement the bridal gown’s fabric. The question was whether I’d be able to fit into it.

My anxiety increased when the considerable muscle power of both Blanchette and another assistant, Snowbell, were required to zip up my back. I had to suck in my breath, my gut, and practically every corpuscle I possessed. Even so, I heard the poor elves grunting.

“I hope this dress has reinforced seams,” I said.

Blanchette’s Cupid’s bow lips formed a moue as she stared at me in the mirror. “Those seams will have to be let out. Give me your tape measure, Snowbell.”

Snowbell scrambled to unloop her tape measure, a common accessory around the necks of the assistants of the Order of Elven Seamstresses.

Before the underling could hand over the tape measure, however, Blanchette hopped back in horror. “Snowbell, you’re bleeding!”

Snowbell looked down at her little hands and gasped. “I’m so sorry, Miss Blanchette—it must be from the roses. I was working on them all morning.”

Because hothouse roses were difficult to come by at the North Pole, the seamstresses made an annual February ritual of fashioning artificial ones to supply florists for Valentine’s Day. These roses appeared realistic right down to the dyed, dried rose stems that were used. Madame Neige even scented the buds with rose oil. It was time-consuming, painstaking work. And apparently could lead to thorn cuts.

Blanchette didn’t show a lot of pity for the assistant’s injury. “What if you had bled on the bride’s dress?”

I didn’t particularly want anyone bleeding on my dress, either. I dug in my bag for a moist towelette—essential for those of us prone to clumsiness. I offered it to Snowbell, who quickly wrapped it around her finger.

“Go find a real bandage,” Blanchette ordered, her lips curling in disgust. “And be more careful.”

“Yes, Miss Blanchette.” Snowbell sent me an apologetic glance and scurried away.

Blanchette turned her attention back to me and my dress. Her lips didn’t uncurl.

“The dress shouldn’t be this tight,” I said with the hiccup of air I’d managed to wheeze into my lungs.

“It was made exactly to the measurements we took in November.”

November was one Christmas and several million calories ago.

“I usually lose a little weight after the holidays,” I said, “but this year I’m judging the Valentine’s Tournament of Chocolate.”

Blanchette’s perfectly plucked brows arched. “So you’ve been practicing?”

Ouch. The humor in her eyes made me laugh, though—as much as my bridesmaid sausage casing would allow. “When you know you’re going to be consuming chocolate for a solid week, dietary fatalism sets in, you know?”

She nodded.

“If you just let it out an inch all over, it should work, right?”

Her lips twisted. “Madame has worked miracles before.”

“Great.” I backed toward the dressing room. “I’ll just change back into my clothes.”

“Not yet, Mrs. Claus. We must have a viewing.” Blanchette had mastered her boss’s brook-no-argument stare. Small wonder that it was rumored that Santaland’s foremost couturier was grooming Blanchette to be Madame Neige’s successor. Not that Madame Neige looked as if she was in danger of kicking off anytime soon.

I wheezed in more air and returned to the viewing room.

Juniper was pirouetting before the three-way mirror, admiring her dress. It was identical to mine, but she didn’t resemble a plump mouse being strangled by a boa constrictor.

Her eyes shone in the mirror. “Don’t you just love, love, love it?”

“Mmm,” I responded thinly.

“I love it!” Dolly bounded out of her dressing room like a silk-and-velvet-clad golden retriever puppy. “We are going to make an awesome trio at Jake’s wedding.” She hurried over to stand between Juniper and me before the mirrors. “I think you both look fantastic! You should show off those curvy figures. You’re not too old yet.”

It was impossible to miss the flash in Juniper’s eye—it was the same as mine. Between the two of us and the multiple mirrors, we created a funhouse exhibit of irritation.

Dolly blinked. “Did I say something wrong?”

Before I could answer, Snowbell rushed back in a flutter, holding a long, thin white box tied up with creamy pink ribbons. A white bandage was wound around her trigger finger. “Look what was left at the door,” she said, breathless. “There was no name on it. It must be for one of our guests. A sticky note on it just had the words ‘Wedding Party.’”

The box bore the green foil label of Flock and Ivy’s, the biggest florist in Christmastown. From the expression on her face, Juniper noticed the green sticker at the same time I did. Looking as if she’d bitten into a raw cranberry, she poured herself a tall glass of sparkling wine that Madame Neige had left out for us.

Ivy, the co-owner of Flock and Ivy’s, was currently going out with Juniper’s ex, Smudge Candymint. Juniper and Smudge’s on-again, off-again relationship had baffled me for years. It was currently off, and Juniper swore she’d found true love with Sterling Redwinkle. Judging from her reaction, though, maybe the past wasn’t as deeply buried as she wanted us to believe.

Dolly snatched the slender box from Snowbell. “I bet it’s a single rose. I’ve always read about those in books, though of course I’ve never received anything romantic like that myself. We don’t even have roses where I come from.”

Claire emerged from the dressing room, back in her own clothes, which today was her uniform of black jeans and a red turtleneck sweater with the Santaland Scoop logo on the front. Though she owned the Scoop, she was also there every day serving ice cream. Business was the only reason she would appear in public with a grinning ice cream cone across her chest.

She’d heard what Dolly said, and looked understandably be-mused as she sipped her slushy through a candy-cane striped straw.

“I don’t think that’s for me,” she said. “Jake’s not a single-red-rose type.”

A private detective, Jake Frost was the kind of guy who showed his affection by making sure his lady love’s deadbolts functioned properly.

Juniper colored to the roots of her hair. “Maybe Sterling sent it to me. I told him we had a fitting today.”

“I know it’s not for me,” Dolly said with an exaggerated pout. “I’m new here.” She turned to me with bright eyes. “But maybe Santa sent it to April.”

Every gaze in the room turned toward me. I’d also informed Nick that we were having a fitting today, but I didn’t think for a moment that he would send me a rose—at least not until Valentine’s Day itself. We’d been married for four years and loved each other as much now as we did the day we said “I do”—more, maybe—but spontaneous romantic gestures were already fewer and farther between.

When was the last time we’d done something fun, romantic, and spontaneous?

Juniper snapped her fingers to get my attention. “April, you’ve zoned out.”

I shook my head. “Let’s just open it and see if there’s a card inside.”

Dolly reached for the box, but Blanchette jerked it out of her grasp. “It was delivered to the Order, so I should open it.”

Not “Madame Neige should open it,” I noticed.

She carried the box to a table and carefully untied the bow. Then she removed the lid and pulled the tissue paper aside, revealing the expected, perfect, fragrant rose—probably created right here before it was sold to Flock and Ivy’s. But on top of the rose lay a piece of white paper with a message written in red marker, made to look like dripping blood.

Violets are blue,

Roses are red,

Surprise, surprise,

Someone wants you dead.

Surprise didn’t begin to describe it. We all gaped at the message in full-blown shock.

Taking in the expressions around me, I discerned the same silent calculation in each face: Could someone want me dead?

Dolly was the first to speak. “It can’t be me. I’m new here. I barely know anyone except Jake—and you three.”

“I sell ice cream,” Claire said, as if that fact exempted her from being a target.

I sort of agreed with her. Surely no one would want to kill the sole ice cream maker in Santaland. Who didn’t like ice cream? Snappy, the sno-cone and slushy maker, was a rival—but presumably that tension had been resolved now that Claire was his best customer.

“Maybe someone wants to kill April,” Dolly suggested.

Juniper shook her head. “Golly doodle, that makes no sense. She’s Mrs. Claus. April is very popular here.”

Juniper was a loyal friend and tended to wear rose-colored glasses with people she loved. I’d probably made an enemy or two during my years in Santaland. For one thing, I’d helped Constable Crinkles collar a few naughty elves. And some of my own in-laws were none too fond of me. The arctic chill between my mother-inlaw, Pamela, and me had never completely thawed. But we weren’t at a poison-pen level of conflict.

“I know,” Dolly continued. “Someone’s probably jealous of Claire. I bet all sorts of elves were in love with Jake before she came along.”

“I can’t think of anybody,” I said.

Juniper agreed. “Jake was always a loner.”

“He never mentioned any ex-girlfriends or unrequited crushes to me,” Claire confirmed.

Dolly’s complexion turned a little redder. “Jake never mentioned anybody close to him back in the Farthest Frozen Reaches?”

Juniper, Claire, and I shook our heads.

While we were talking, Blanchette had been investigating the handiwork of the artificial rose. “This rose is not one of ours,” she said. “The handiwork is shoddy. The petals are already becoming unstuck from the stem.”

I picked up the box and investigated it. “Snowbell said that there was a sticky note attached to the box,” I said. “Where is it?”

Snowbell scurried forward and pulled the note out of her uniform smock’s pocket. The yellow note did indeed have the words Wedding Party written on it, but the deep blue, almost purple ink was smeared—almost as drippy looking as the red words in that poem.

“What smeared the writing?” I asked.

“It’s snowing outside, ma’am,” Snowbell said, still breathless. She wasn’t used to being the center of attention. “Button, the elf minding the door, said that it must have been put there after you all arrived, or else she would have seen it when she let you in. But no one rang the bell.”

I considered the blurred words again. The two words had been fashioned to look like the letters in a first-grade handwriting primer, with perfect round printing. No one wrote like that. “The handwriting won’t be much use to us.”

“Use as what?” Blanchette asked.

“As a clue to who left it,” I said. “But the blue ink might be helpful.”

Snowbell frowned at the note.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, ma’am.”

“The box is from Flock and Ivy’s florist.” Blanchette nodded at the label.

Juniper paled, no doubt thinking of Smudge’s new love interest. Would Ivy have done such an unhinged thing? “That could be just a coincidence, couldn’t it? There aren’t many florists in Christmastown. The person who sent this probably just had one of their boxes around …”

I chewed my lip in thought. “Even so, I think we need to have a word with Ivy.”

“Yes, I think you should,” Blanchette said with a nod. “And I need to let Madame know that this terrible thing has happened here. She will not be pleased.”

I was ready to dash right over to Flock and Ivy’s. Unfortunately, my transportation wasn’t. When we all trooped out to where I’d parked outside the Order of Elven Seamstresses, my sleigh was sitting where I’d left it, but Cannonball, the reindeer who’d pulled us here, had slipped his harness. For a reindeer of Cannonball’s rolypoly size, wriggling out of a harness was no small feat.

The Order of Elven Seamstresses was housed in a mansion a half mile up Sugarplum Mountain’s winding snow path, just below where Kringle Heights began. The Christmas Tree Forest, which threaded through Santaland like a giant green ribbon, skirted the edge of the property. The evergreen branches were almost disguised by new snow, a little of which was falling now. It was bitter cold. Not a good day for sleigh trouble.

Claire gave the empty harness in the snow a deadpan stare. “Looks as if your reindeer’s been raptured.”

“Cannonball’s been acting flaky lately,” I said. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

“It’s Valentine’s Week,” Juniper said. “The reindeer have their big All-Herd Muzzle Nuzzle coming up.”

“Love is in the air for everybody,” Dolly said wistfully. “Except for me, of course.”

“I don’t see why a reindeer social that’s four days away means we have to walk today,” Claire grumbled. “It’s cold.”

Said the woman who’d been sucking on ice all morning.

Not that I didn’t feel a little annoyance, too. Cannonball was susceptible to crushes, but he’d never abandoned me because of one before. Luckily, my sleigh was a hybrid that worked on both battery and reindeer power.

“Hold on,” I told my companions. “I just need to put the harness away and fire up the motor.”

Hopefully it was juiced up enough to get us downtown.

At that moment, though, the jangling harness of the Sugarplum Mountain sleigh bus reached our ears. Claire was already backing away. “Actually, April, I really need to get back to the Scoop. I’m going to hop on the bus.”

We’d run out of power on a trip to Tinkertown recently. Clearly I hadn’t yet earned back her trust.

“And I need to hurry back to the library,” Juniper said, joining her.

I suspected Juniper didn’t want to be with me when I talked to Ivy. I could see how it might be awkward for her.

That left Dolly and me.

“Good thing I don’t have a job to go to,” Dolly said brightly. “I’ll be able to tag along with you.”

“Great.” I tried to inject a little enthusiasm into my voice. Dolly wasn’t my favorite elf in . . .