“Hut-hut!” he said, kicking the camel. They disappeared around the corner of the barn.
“That was too easy,” the chief said.
In the distance, we heard Werzel shouting, “Hoosh! Hoosh!”
“He’s not going away,” I said. “He’s just dumping the camel.”
The chief muttered something indistinguishable.
Sammy Wendell, one of the chief’s deputies, appeared from the other side.
“Debbie Anne paged me and said to meet you here,” Sammy said. “What’s up?”
“Homicide,” the chief said. “Keep that damned reporter at bay while we work the scene, will you?”
Just then Werzel appeared from around the barn, notebook in hand.
“I’m sorry, sir, ma’am,” Sammy said. “You’ll have to watch from behind this line.”
Sammy held out his hands to define an imaginary line about twenty feet from the shed door. The ma’am, I realized, was directed at me. I went over and stood behind Sammy’s line, with an ostentatiously cooperative look on my face. Werzel didn’t like it, but he followed suit. For now, at least—if I were the chief, I’d keep my eye on him.
“What happened?” Werzel asked.
“Homicide,” the chief said.
“Whoa!” Werzel exclaimed. “Someone offed Santa?”
“The name of the deceased is being withheld, pending notification of next of kin,” the chief said. “What makes you think Santa Claus is involved?”
“Stands to reason,” Werzel said. “That’s the shed where I saw Santa kicking the dog,”
“What do you mean by ‘kicking the dog’?” the chief asked. From his frown, I realized he thought “kick the dog” might be a hip, new synonym for “kick the bucket.”
“Santa had a close encounter with Spike,” I said.
The chief closed his eyes and shuddered. He’d met the small evil one before. Then he opened his eyes again.
“We need Smoot, damn it,” he said.
“You need what?” Werzel asked.
The chief frowned but didn’t answer him.
“It’s a who, not a what,” I said. “Dr. Smoot is the county’s medical examiner.”
“Acting medical examiner,” the chief said. “Any idea where he is?”
“He’s over there on the Dickens float,” I said, pointing.
The Caerphilly Clarion, our local weekly, was taking its turn at photographing the Dickens float. Not surprising—thanks to Mother’s decorating skills, it was one of the highlights of the parade. It featured an enormous Victorian Christmas tree at one end and a London street scene, complete with mountains of fake snow, at the other. Mother and the rest of the improbably well-dressed Cratchits were seated in a pair of velvet sofas at the foot of the Christmas tree, toasting each other with plastic champagne flutes and pretending to open elaborately wrapped presents. At the other end stood Scrooge, surrounded by the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Yet-to-Come. The Cratchits may have gone upscale, but the ghosts’ costumes more or less matched the book—Christmas Past was a tiny blond child in a choir robe; Christmas Present was an enormous robed figure with a crown of holly, and Christmas Yet-to-Come was a specter whose face was hidden in the shadows of his hooded black robe. Okay, the text did say that Yet-to-Come was “shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand.” But couldn’t Dr. Smoot have found a way to look a little less like the grim reaper? I’d always thought the costume at odds with the holiday spirit of the parade—though strangely appropriate for our present problem.
“I don’t see Smoot,” the chief said.
“In the hood,” I said.
“Oh, good grief,” the chief muttered and strode over toward the float.
“What’s wrong with him?” Werzel asked,
“We don’t get a lot of crime in Caerphilly,” I said. “Chief Burke takes it very seriously and very personally when someone breaks the peace in his county.”
I didn’t see him taking notes.
“Right,” he said. “I mean what’s wrong between him and this Dr. Smoot?”
I shrugged and tried to look puzzled by the question. I knew exactly what was wrong. The chief was a very by-the-books guy, and Dr. Smoot had recently developed an active interest in the supernatural. There was no way the chief or the town council would offer a permanent appointment to a medical examiner who, in addition to determining the manner and means of death, would occasionally venture an opinion on the likelihood of the deceased’s return as a ghost, vampire, or zombie. But since the job paid almost nothing, none of the county’s other medical personnel had shown the slightest interest in doing it. The way things were going, the chief could be stuck with Dr. Smoot as acting medical examiner for the rest of his career.