The Blonde Before Christmas: a Barb Jackson Mysteries holiday short story (6 page)

Nothing elicits fear in someone like the phrase
we need to talk
.

I blinked up at Detective Smith and put on my best
I'm totally innocent
face.

"What about?"

"Not finished shopping?" he asked.

"Nope." I shook my head. "Still hard at it."

"I don't see any bags."

Crap. 

I shrugged my shoulders. "I haven't found anything I couldn't live without yet."

Detective Smith ran his hand through his hair. "Barb, this is a murder investigation. I'm doing everything I can to solve it."

"I know that," I said on a sigh. "I just
need
to help."

Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed the handsome detective soon to replace Smith talking to one of the security guards. Why couldn't I stop finding him in a crowd?

"I know how to take care of myself. Besides"—I brought my attention back to Smith and smiled—"the case of who killed Santa has me intrigued. I've never been able to turn away from a mystery, and I'm not about to start now. So, no."

He blinked. "What?"

"I'm sorry, Detective Smith, but no. You need help solving this one, and I'm going to be that help. Some Santa-killing jackass isn't going to destroy Christmas for any of us, especially your wife and kids. So I'm sorry, but no. I'm going to keep poking around until one of us figures out who the killer is."

Smith stared at me without saying a word, so I pressed on.

"We have some good leads, and I'll stay out of your way."

"Come with me." He grasped my hand. "You too." He pointed at Kelly. His tone left no room for argument.

Kelly followed us as Detective Smith led me down a long offshoot hallway beside the food court. Near the middle of the hallway he opened a door built into the wall.

"What is this?"

"Surveillance area."

We followed Smith to the last door on the right. He didn't bother knocking but instead just walked in. 

"This is all of the feed from all of the cameras in every one of the stores playing in real time. I know that you've talked to Bambi, Addie, and now Chelsea."

"Have you talked to them?" I asked.

"Detective Black and I talked to them this morning. From what we gathered, Marvin liked the ladies and wasn't shy about flitting from one to the other."

"Sounds like the girls told us the same story," Kelly said.

"But none of them have given a solid alibi," I said.

"No, they haven't." He shook his head.

"Okay. So then, why are we here?"

Smith smiled. "You want to help solve this case? Then you can help. I've already cleared this with the Captain. I need the two of you to review the tapes from around the time that Marvin was killed."

"You want us to sit and watch surveillance tapes?" I asked with confusion. "You were dead set against us helping you this morning. Why the sudden change of heart?"

"This morning when I caught you nosing around the first time, I got this idea." Smith said. "I had to run it by the Captain first. He remembers you from some case you solved a while back and agreed to let you help."

"All right, but the camera by the tree is a dummy, so it's not like we're going to see who shoved Marvin under the tree. And another thing…isn't reviewing these videos someone else's job?"

"Yes, normally it is, but with the holidays we're running a little shorthanded. We've had guys watching cameras from the stores closest to the tree, but they haven't seen anything that can be of use to us. Since the cameras don't show the tree head-on, only the surrounding areas, finding anything on the tapes in these areas is a long shot, but we need to turn over every stone."

"What will you be doing?"

"My job." He grinned.

I propped my hands on my hips and shook my head. He just wanted us out of his way, but I didn't care. There could be a glimpse of something on one of the tapes closest to the tree that could lead us to Marvin's killer.

"Look, I don't know about you," Kelly said, "but we were just about at a dead end. I say we grab some lunch and watch the tapes. We might find something helpful."

I looked between Kelly and Smith then sighed and held up my hand. "Fine. Fine. You win this time, but don't get used to it."

"Don't worry about lunch. I already picked something up for you." Smith pointed to two white Styrofoam takeout boxes and two steaming cups of coffee sitting on a small table situated in the corner of the room. "I hope you like Chinese."

"It is my favorite."

Smith showed us how to use two of the spare screens to view the surveillance tapes.

"I have some things to take care of. Let me know if you see anything that might be of use. My cell is on." He jotted his number down on a napkin.

"I'll let you know if we find anything."

He nodded curtly then left us to our own devices.

Kelly and I sat down at the table and sorted through the boxes of food.

"So, let's go over what we know." I reached behind me and grabbed a pen and paper from the desk.

"We know that Marvin liked the ladies," Kelly said and then popped a cream cheese wonton in her mouth.

"He was a huge cheater. No monogamous relationships for him. He was stringing Bambi, Addie,
and
Chelsea along at the same time."

I jotted down notes as we spoke.

"Marvin was killed at 11:00 pm on the night of the twenty-second. Chelsea said she was at home waiting for Marvin to show up. Addie said she had to pick her mom up from the airport that day, but we still don't know where she was that night."

"From what Smith said, none of the ladies have an alibi for that night," Kelly said.

"But the odds of Addie being able to move Marvin's body under the tree is miniscule. She's barely half his size."

"True," Kelly agreed. "So Addie being the killer is highly unlikely."

I chewed a bite of noodles then tapped the box with a chopstick. "I think one of the other two women did it. A lover scorned and all of that, but without any real evidence, there's no way to know for sure," I said. "I wish we knew what the cops have found so far, if they even have any evidence."

I took a bite of a pot sticker and continued to tap the box with the chopstick. "Chelsea said that the mall closed at 9:00 pm on the night that Marvin was killed. According to Chelsea, the only people still in the mall after that time would've been those whose job it was to straighten up the winter wonderland scene in preparation for the next day."

"If Marvin was killed at around 11:00 pm, then everyone had to be out of the building or else someone would've witnessed Marvin being killed," Kelly said around a mouthful of rice.

"Unless he was killed somewhere else and then moved to the tree," I added.

"True," Kelly agreed. "We need to watch the tapes of the areas closest to the wonderland scene around the time of death, between 10:00 pm and 12:00 pm."

"Sounds like as good of a place to start as any." I shrugged and took a sip of coffee.

We finished off the tasty Chinese food Detective Smith had left us and turned our attention to the monitors.

"Which camera is closest to the wonderland area?" Kelly asked.

"That would be"—I rolled my chair over to look at the paper directory hanging on the wall—"the food court." I rolled back to the desk.

She clicked on the computer screen, scrolled to the one labeled
food court
, and clicked on play.

We waited a minute then a grainy black and white picture of the area just outside of the food court popped up.

I reached up and hit the fast-forward button until the time at the bottom right corner of the screen hit the 10:00 pm mark.

The camera panned the entire food court and about twenty feet outside of the area. We could see a small portion of the tree but not the actual murder scene.

We leaned back in our chairs and settled in to watch the next two hours of tape. We watched in silence as the camera panned the food court, then to the area just outside of it, and back to the starting point again.

"I don't think any of the women murdered Marvin," Kelly spoke up.

"What? Why not?" I looked at her like she was crazy. The killer was almost always a scorned lover. Didn't she watch
CSI
?

"Well." She propped her feet up on the corner of the desk and laced her finger across her midsection. "Usually when a woman really loves a man and he's been murdered, she's pretty distraught. None of the women we talked to today looked like they had shed even a single tear over the guy. There were no shaky voices, no sniffles, not even any bad acting to pretend they cared when we talked to them. It was like none of them really gave a damn about Marvin."

I thought about what she said for a second. "Maybe he'd cheated on them so much, treated them so poorly, that they didn't care anymore. It would serve him right if all three women stopped giving a darn about him." I shrugged and took a sip of my coffee, my eyes never leaving the screen. "That alone might be enough for one, or all of them, to take Marvin out."

"I just don't see it." She dropped her feet and waved a hand in the air. "They didn't even seem all that angry about him cheating. It was like they had just washed their hands of him."

Kelly was right. The women, with the exception of Addie, who had only seemed disappointed and not really upset, hadn't shown any signs of despair over losing Marvin.

"Okay, so say that none of the women killed him. Who else have we talked to that would have wanted him dead?" I asked.

"The only other person we've talked to is Reginald, the mall supervisor," Kelly answered.

"Reginald said he didn't know him, that Marvin had only been hired on to work the holiday season, so he hadn't interacted with him. What reason would he have to kill Marvin?" I asked.

"None, that we know of," Kelly answered.

"Right. So we're back at zero." I shook my head. "I hope Smith is having better luck with this than we are."

I settled back into my chair, tried to enjoy my coffee, and glued my eyes to the screen as Kelly did the same. We watched the screen for another hour. Mall workers came and went without us really being able to see some of their faces due to the angle of the camera. Around the 10:30 pm mark, the mall fell silent, and the lights dimmed. I felt my pulse tick up as the time of Marvin's death inched closer and closer. 

I was seriously starting to wonder if studying the tapes was going to be worth the time and effort since we couldn't see most of the people's faces or the crime scene itself. Then something caught my eye.

"Wait. Go back." I sprang forward in my seat.

"What? How far?" Kelly sat forward and hit the rewind button on the player.

"There! Stop there." I patted her arm with enthusiasm. "Watch."

I leaned forward and pressed my forearms into the desktop.

We watched the screen with baited breath then I saw it again.

"Who is that?" Kelly asked. "Do you think that's our guy?" I could hear excitement creeping into her voice.

We watched an arm then a leg move into view.

The rest of the scene played out right in front of the camera.

Dressed in full Santa garb, Marvin ran into full view of the camera. He turned and raised his arms to shield his face, but it was too late. Countless small pieces of something blasted him in the face, and he fell. His head slammed into the hard cement floor. We couldn't see who was shooting him or what he was being shot with because the person was out of the camera's range.

Marvin lay motionless, a pool of blood forming around him as the camera started to pan back to the food court.

"What in the hell just happened? What blasted him in the face?" Kelly asked and fast-forwarded the tape. When the camera was pointed back at Marvin's body, he was being hoisted over the shoulder of a large man.

"Who is that?"

I studied the man. He was tall, muscular, and wore a pair of black slacks and a dark-colored shirt with a collar.

"Oh my God," I whispered. "I know who that is."

Kelly looked at me and shook her head, then looked back at the screen. "I don't recognize him. How do you? We haven't even seen his face. Just his body."

I grabbed my cell phone from out of my jeans pocket and dialed Smith's number. It rang then went to voicemail.

"Damn it, detective. Why did you give me this number if you weren't going to answer the stinking phone when I called? I know who killed Marvin," I shouted when the voicemail beeped for me to leave a message.

I shoved the phone back into my front jeans pocket and jumped to my feet.

"Barb? Who is that guy?" Kelly started to stand, but I was already headed toward the door.

"Just come on. I'll explain on the way," I called behind me as I grasped the doorknob. "We have to find Detective Smith."