Trouble Under the Tree (A Nina Quinn Mystery) Read Free Page A

Christmas all
year? Those people should be committed.”
    I smiled and sipped my drink. At this point
it was more rum than eggnog. Old high school friends Jenny and
Benny Christmas (honest-to-goodness, those are their real names)
had sunk their life savings into opening Christmastowne, an indoor,
year-round Christmas village. It was supposed to have opened in
early November, but it had been plagued by delays. It finally
opened its doors two weeks ago, a soft open, to work out any kinks,
but the kinks kept on coming.
    With the grand opening tomorrow, the place
was bound to be packed. Benny, a former pro football player, had
called in favors from local sports celebrities who promised to make
appearances. There was going to be plenty of media coverage, prize
giveaways, and the lighting of the thirty-foot-tall live Christmas
tree.
    Jenny and Benny had hired me to deck the
halls. And even though it wasn’t a job I would normally take on,
the money was too good to pass up. Plus, they were old friends. How
could I say no? Taken by Surprise only had a few last minute
touches before the village opened its doors tomorrow morning.
    “I just hope there’s no more trouble
brewing,” I said.
    But unfortunately, I was suddenly feeling
that something was bound to go wrong.
    Horribly wrong.
     
     

Chapter Two
     
    If I never planted another poinsettia again
in my life, it would be too soon.
    Slowly, I rose from my kneeling position and
took off my gloves. I looked around in wonder. Christmastowne was a
sight to behold. Jenny and Benny had done the impossible. They’d
created an enormous retail space—three floors of shops and
restaurants—without sacrificing the cozy warmth and spirit of
Christmas. The halls were decked with boughs of holly (including
sprigs from the plant Kevin had given me) and twinkling lights,
soft carols played, and the scent of fir, peppermint, and
gingerbread mingled in the air.
    It should have been too much. Christmas
overload. But somehow it wasn’t. It felt magical.
    In the grand atrium, I backed up to get a
better look at the tree in all its glory and almost knocked over a
toy donation bin. I set it right and looked upward. The spruce was
a live tree and stood thirty feet tall. The floor around the tree
had been specially crafted to be removed in a few years when the
tree grew too large for the building. An intricate watering system
was in place as well. It had been an incredible design feat by
landscaping engineers and architects to get it done.
    Above the tree was a glass snow globe-type
dome that gave the tree plenty of headroom and light to thrive. The
dome’s construction was one of the main reasons the opening of
Christmastowne had been delayed—it had been a snowy year,
especially for this part of Ohio.
    “It looks lovely, Nina. What a wonderful job
you did.”
    I turned and found Jenny Christmas at my
side. “The whole place is gorgeous.”
    Jenny and I had been friends all through high
school at St. Valentine’s, mostly because our names put her
alphabetically behind me in homeroom, hers being Chester and mine
being Ceceri. Somewhere during junior year, she’d started paying
more attention to who was behind her , football star Benjamin
(Benny) Christmas, than me. Later that year, he’d asked her to prom
and they’ve been together ever since. She’d followed him to Ohio
State where he’d been chosen for the All-America team twice,
through the draft process, and finally into the NFL, where he
played for the hometown Bengals. When a car accident that broke
nearly every bone in Benny’s body ended his career two years ago,
they decided it was time to follow Jenny’s dream—ever since she met
Benny she’d wanted to open a retail Christmas village one day. They
used his accident settlement as startup money and Christmastowne
was born.
    Her bright blue eyes glistened. “It’s been a
dream come true.”
    I looked around, soaked in the atmosphere. “I
have a feeling this place is going to