Free Trouble Under the Tree (A Nina Quinn Mystery) by Heather Webber

non-judgment pleas going on these days.
    I passed them both trowels and a brown lawn
refuse bag. “Well, thanks for coming. Just dig up as many dead
poinsettias as you can find.”
    “They look so sad,” my mother said, glancing
around. Then her gaze hardened. “But not as sad as that Santa on my
roof after I get my hands on it.” She stomped off, cursing
loudly.
    I looked at my dad. “Did you see the
snow?”
    He nodded.
    “You might want to give her one of those
pills now so she doesn’t have a stroke.”
    He patted my cheek. “I’ve got it covered. She
has about twenty minutes before she’ll be down for the count. We’ll
keep this between us?”
    I nodded.
    “Good girl.”
    As he followed my mother’s trail of curse
words, I turned my attention back to work.
    I’d dug up four plants before the fire alarm
went off.
    Followed by the sprinkler system.
     
     

Chapter Seven
     
    “At least the new plants are well-watered,”
Kit said an hour later.
    I was still damp from head to toe. “Har.
Har.” My sense of humor had been drowned out of me. I looked like
something washed ashore and just wanted to go home and crawl into a
hot bath.
    Kit had arrived after the fire department.
The fire hadn’t been in Glory Vonderberg’s kitchen as I assumed,
but in a trash bin in the men’s room.
    Apparently, someone had dropped a lit
cigarette into the trash and it had ignited crumpled paper towels.
The fire had been contained, thankfully, and the sprinklers had
only been on for a few minutes, but the damage had been done.
    Christmastowne was a soggy mess.
    “Chop, chop!” Jenny shouted from across the
atrium as she clapped her hands loudly. “Get to work. We have one
hour to get this place bone dry.”
    Kit looked at me. “Is she serious?”
    “Delusional is more like it.”
    I didn’t know how Jenny planned on explaining
damp merchandise to her customers. Thankfully, the biggest draw,
pictures with Santa, wasn’t going to suffer. Santa’s Cottage didn’t
have sprinklers inside it, so it had escaped the deluge.
    “Uh-oh, she’s headed this way,” I mumbled,
looking around for a place to hide.
    “I’m out of here,” Kit said.
    “Don’t leave me,” I pleaded.
    “You don’t pay me enough to deal with that,
Nina.” He grabbed a pallet of poinsettias and trotted off.
    I didn’t pay myself enough to deal with it,
either.
    “Nina!” Jenny yelled as I turned to slink
away.
    Slowly, I pivoted and plastered a phony smile
on my face. “Hi, Jenny.”
    “Look,” she said, touching my arm, “I’m sorry
if I snapped at you this morning. You cannot imagine the stress.
And now the sprinklers?” She shook her head. “I feel like someone
is out to get me.”
    And I felt like collateral damage. The sooner
I wrapped things up at Christmastowne the better, but what she said
resonated. It really did feel like someone was out to get her. “Do
you have any enemies? Besides the thirty workers currently giving
you dirty looks?”
    She scowled. “They’ll get over it.”
    I wasn’t so sure. She was turning into a
boss-from-hell.
    “And no, I don’t have any enemies. That’s
ridiculous. I was only kidding about someone out to get me. Why?”
she eyed me. “Do you think someone’s out to get me?”
    Totally. “It just seems a little
coincidental, all these things going wrong.”
    She chewed on her lip. Little bits of pink
lipstick stuck to her teeth. “It does, doesn’t it?”
    “Is there any chance the fire this morning
was set on purpose?”
    Her brow crinkled. “I don’t think so. The
fire chief would have said so, right?”
    I shoved another three, now soggy,
poinsettias into the bag. “Probably. Has anyone admitted to
dropping the cigarette?”
    “Not yet.” She glared at her scurrying
employees. “Coward.”
    Whoever it was probably feared for not only
his job but his life. There was a dazed, crazed look in Jenny’s
bloodshot eyes that left me suspecting she was, in fact, capable