A DEAD END CHRISTMAS, page 1
A Dead End Christmas
A Tiger’s Eye Mystery
Alyssa Day
This book is dedicated to Nichelle Nichols, whose Lieutenant Uhura made young girls around the world—including me—dream of reaching for the stars. Boldly go to your new explorations, Ms. Nichols. Boldly go. And thank you.
When I started this series, it was with the idea of doing some fun mysteries with Jack the tiger shifter going home to the quirkiest town in Florida. Light and fun and suspenseful!
Somewhere along the way, though, things changed. Dead End became more than an odd little town filled with funny characters. And the Tiger's Eye Mysteries turned into books about more than laughter, mystery, magic, and mayhem.
They became books about family. And community. And home.
I've been fighting depression for a long time, and you've all been so kind and patient with me. It makes me feel like we're all in our own community together, and my life is richer for it. Thank you also for the gift of sharing your stories about your struggles with me; I'm sending all my best wishes that you're doing well.
And now, every time I sit down at my computer or with a notebook and start thinking and daydreaming about these novels, I feel so happy to be coming home to Dead End. Coming home to Jack and Tess. Finding out what Aunt Ruby and Uncle Mike are up to these days. Or which delicious meal Lorraine is going to serve as the special at Beau's. How little sister Shelley's magic is progressing. And, always, what weird and wonderful items will show up at Dead End Pawn to keep Fluffy company.
So, this book is for everyone who wishes they lived in a quirky town like Dead End.
Come on down—y'all are welcome here. We have pie.
(And shout out to Lorna Drury, who gave me Pickles the pug's name.)
Xoxo
Alyssa
St. Augustine, Florida, September 2019 to December 2022 (This one took a while…)
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Epilogue
Thank you!
Books by Alyssa
About the Author
1
Tess
A wild-eyed elf ran into my pawnshop, threw a bag of donuts at me, and started shouting:
"Tess! Santa Claus is in a fistfight at Mellie's Bakery!"
Nobody can say we don't have Christmas spirit in Dead End.
The elf wasn't an actual elf—they prefer to be called Fae, and I hadn't seen a human-sized one of those since we gave a Fae queen the key to the city in November. This elf wasn't a Keebler elf, either, which was too bad, because it was ten o'clock, and I'd love a few post-breakfast chocolate-covered cookies.
No, this was my friend Lauren, who owned and ran Lauren's Deli. She wore a Santa's helper costume in green, red, and white stripes, complete with a triangle-shaped hat and curly-toed shoes. She'd dyed her hair candy-cane red, with the corresponding white stripes, which looked kind of cool on her spiral curls. My long, normal-red hair, blue jeans, and Dead End Pawn sweatshirt suddenly felt boring in comparison.
She'd even sprayed silver glitter on her dark brown cheeks, because Lauren was definitely a person who seriously committed to a role.
I took in this North Pole sartorial splendor with just a glance, because my brain needed time to catch up to "Santa Claus is in a fistfight."
"Okay. But why are you telling me about it?" My pawnshop was clear out on the outskirts of our quirky little town of Dead End, Florida, population 5000. We could all fit in a single cruise ship, in other words, if anybody in town trusted cruise ships.
Town motto: Your neighbors are weird. Get over it.
Not the closest place to either the bakery or the sheriff's office.
She paused, looking puzzled. "Huh. I don't really know. While I was there, I got you some donuts, though. I know the sheriff is out of town, and I just … I guess I'm used to you and Jack being sort of unofficial problem solvers this past year."
While Jack Shepherd—shapeshifter, former soldier, current private investigator, and my new boyfriend—and I had been in the middle of more than one mystery during the year, it hadn't been by choice. Things just kept happening.
"When Susan is out of town, Andy is in charge. Did you call him?"
She shrugged. "I'm sure somebody did. Anyway, it was pretty crazy, even for Dead End."
Since the shop was in an afternoon lull and empty of customers, I waved Lauren to follow me to the back room, where I started coffee.
"Thanks for the donuts! Gingerbread?"
She grinned. "Is there any other kind in December? I already ate two, so the two in the bag are for you. I need to stop my daily donut run, anyway, or I won't fit in this costume anymore."
"You look great," I said, admiring her generous curves. "If anybody can pull off an elf costume, it's you."
She glanced at the small mirror on the wall and smiled. "You're not wrong. I thought the striped hair might be a bit much, but it's Christmas, and—"
"It's Dead End," I finished, handing her a mug of coffee.
"Thanks! Oh, is this the new shop logo? It's so cute!"
My little sister Shelley had helped design a logo for the shop, with a picture of our mascot, a somewhat beat-up taxidermied alligator named Fluffy, surrounded by the shop name Dead End Pawn. The tourists who escaped Orlando and traveled a little south to explore the "real Florida" loved buying Dead End Pawn merchandise. It still surprised me, but I was more than happy to provide shirts, tote bags, mugs, and whatever else Shelley could dream up.
Being a new business owner meant I had to focus on the bottom line. Especially since I'd had to discontinue selling the unlabeled potions left over from my former boss's tenure—it had hurt; they were pure profit.
Turn one woman's prize show cat into a ferret, and you'd think the world had ended.
It had been only temporary, after all. And not my fault that the National Cat Association judges didn't let Zanzibar compete in the annual championship. All the other cats had gone after the ferret, who'd been lucky to escape unscathed.
Jack, who was a Bengal tiger sometimes, had laughed his head off when he'd heard about it.
"Tess. Cats are predators. They would have seen the ferret as an intruder in their territory."
Whatever. Not my fault. There had been a warning on the potions case, after all:
Ingest at your Own Risk.
And the guy who thought he was getting a sunburn cure and instead woke up with a fresh sunburn every day for a week? That's why they have Super Target—for aloe. And Noxzema, which, as my Aunt Ruby has told me over and over and over, "actually lowers the skin temperature."
Anyway, the shop merchandise was a nice additional source of revenue, especially in slow months. The pawn business wasn't a huge moneymaker in a small town, after all. And I had to look at myself in the mirror at night, so I was always fair and honest, which ruled out any huge scores. I'd watched some of those pawnshop shows on TV and wound up turning them off in disgust. Cheating the customers would never be the way I did business.
"Glad you like the mugs. Want one? I have plenty." I handed her a new mug in its box. "But back to Santa. Who in the world would get into a fight with Santa Claus?"
Lauren's eyes widened. "That's the wildest part. Santa was fighting another Santa!"
The bells over my door rang, so we headed out into the shop before I could respond. Eleanor, my part-time employee, and World's Greatest Grandma, according to the sweatshirt she wore, walked in and stopped at the sight of Lauren.
"Oh, honey! You look adorable! Was the battle of the two Santas over which one got you as a helper?"
I didn't bother to ask how she'd heard. In small towns, gossip is an Olympic sport, and the folks of Dead End are all gold medalists.
"Who were they, though? Don't tell me Rooster Jenkins was fighting! He's the gentlest guy in the world!" I said, shaking my head. Rooster may have looked scary to somebody who didn't know him, but he'd played Santa at Town Hall every Christmas since I'd been a little girl, and at the Holiday Lights Festival. He was in his late sixties and built like an offensive lineman—nearly seven feet tall and probably over four hundred pounds. But he loved kids, and I'd never seen him act violent a day in my life.
I mean, he'd threatened to shoot the earless goat, but he'd been kidding.
"Yes! It was Rooster," Lauren said, putting her empty mug down on the counter. "This is what I was trying to tell you before we got distracted. Rooster and
"No," I said, shocked. "Darryl from Nashville? He never struck me as the fighting type."
Eleanor shrugged, pragmatic as usual. "You just never know about people. I heard they were shouting about which one of them was the real Santa, and then it turned into a fight."
"In their Santa Claus costumes? Please tell me there weren't any kids there."
Lauren shook her head. "No, not in their red suits, luckily. But still. It was unexpected and just wrong somehow. Santas shouldn't be fighting in the bakery."
"More like they shouldn't be fighting at all, really. Not just in the bakery, right?" I said dryly.
"Eat your donuts," Lauren said, blowing me a kiss. "I have to get back downtown and see if I'm going to have an elf shift this afternoon or not. With all the excitement, I forgot to check. I'll let you know what Andy has to say about the Santa situation if I run into him. Later! Bye, Eleanor."
With that, she hurried out the door, leaving a trail of floral perfume and glitter in her wake.
"I love that woman," I said, biting a donut and closing my eyes in bliss. I also loved donuts and didn't get enough of them, since Jack ate enough for any six normal people.
And he had a sneaky tendency to steal sweets. No donut, cookie, or pie was safe from the man.
Eleanor put her purse away, picked up a cloth, and started wiping the already spotless glass counter. We both spent a lot of time keeping the shop sparklingly clean, because nobody wants to hang out in a dusty, ratty-looking place.
Also, we were both stress cleaners, and there had been an awful lot of stress this year, so Dead End Pawn was probably sterile enough to do surgery in.
Not that I wanted to do surgery, I silently added, before a situation that required it turned up. Oddly enough, random thoughts had a surprising tendency to manifest into reality in my town. Not the kind where I wished I could win the lottery, sadly. Just the "oh, no, I hope an alligator doesn't show up in my house" thoughts. (One had.)
So, it was better to be clear, even in the privacy of my mind.
"Did you hear where Andy was? Did he arrest anybody?" Andy Kelly was Dead End's chief—and usually only—deputy.
Eleanor looked up from her polishing. "I don't know. Where is the sheriff?"
I shook my head. "She said she had to go out of town for a while, because something from her past reared its 'ugly, stupid head,' but that's all she told me."
I'd been a little hurt. The newish Dead End sheriff and I were on the way to becoming close friends, or so I'd thought. If I'd had an emergency out of town, especially just before Christmas, I would have told her about it.
Not everybody was as open as me, though. I tried to remember that most days. Other people's boundaries were there to respect, not to breach. Growing up in such a small town, it hadn't been the easiest lesson to learn.
"I see you made real progress on decorating for Christmas," she said, looking around the shop at the tinsel, twinkling lights, and trees.
"Speaking of which, thanks for decorating the new tree and putting the fake presents beneath it. You didn't have to do that on the evening of your day off," I told her. She'd wrapped the profusion of gifts in beautiful, shiny paper with big, glittery bows.
Glitter was turning out to be my word of the day, apparently.
I glanced at Eleanor when she said nothing, only to find her staring at me with her mouth open.
"What? What is it?" I whirled around, scanning the shop for danger. Nobody could blame me for being paranoid after the year we'd had. People really had been out to get us.
"Tess. I didn't decorate the tree. And those gifts … I had nothing to do with them." She hesitated. "Ah … do you think this has something to do with the Fae? The last time Frazzle visited us in the shop, she mentioned gifts."
Frazzle—not her real name, of course, because True Names had power over the Fae—was a pixie I'd rescued from freezing in my front porch flowerpot after a wonky portal had tossed her into our world. She loved, in order of passion: my cat, honey, bread, and daffodil tea, and she liked to visit, but I hadn't seen her since before Thanksgiving.
"I think she meant we should give her gifts," I said grimly. "Also, the Fae are not huge fans of Christmas. No, this is something else."
I started toward the tree and then stopped, realization washing over me. "It must have been Jack! It's our first Christmas together, and our first big holiday together. I mean, if you don't count Thanksgiving—"
She groaned. I'd told her about the Thanksgiving disaster.
"And he likes to go above and beyond," she said, starting toward the tree. "I mean, he gave you a swimming pool for your birthday, for goodness'sake."
"Okay, it was Jack. Problem solved. And just in time because we have customers." I could see the shadows of people walking up to the door. When the young family came in, I was ready with a smile and absolutely no donut crumbs on my face.
"Welcome to Dead End Pawn! If you have questions, let me know."
They smiled and nodded, then browsed the aisles. Mom and Dad held their two little boys by the hand, I was happy to see. Unsupervised kids in the store had made me nervous ever since that time a little girl had climbed up on the shelf of magically taxidermied animals. She'd bitten the stuffed rabbit, which had been bad enough.
When the rabbit bit her back, things got dicey.
Eleanor, standing by the tree and holding a present, cleared her throat. "Tess? I have a question."
That sinking feeling began in my stomach. "What is it?"
"If Jack put these gifts here, why does this one say, 'to Jeri Lynn from Mommy and Robby Lee and Daddy and Bugle the Beagle'?"
Crap. I knew that family.
There was only one logical explanation.
My new enchanted Christmas tree was stealing presents.
2
Jack
A year ago, nobody in Dead End had really remembered who I was. Now, they were bombarding me with text messages about a fistfight between Santa Clauses at the bakery.
I ignored the texts and missed calls and tossed my phone over onto the passenger seat of my truck, because I had plans. Plans that didn't include trying to solve the mystery of the fighting Santas. I'd gotten myself into enough trouble the year before over a Santa.
That one somebody had shot.
A fistfight seemed mild in comparison.
Yeah. Back to my plans.
Important plans.
I paused at the stop sign. Left would take me to Tess's Uncle Mike and Aunt Ruby's farm. Right would take me to town, and I could use the Santa situation to avoid talking to Mike.
Alone.
For the first time since Tess and I had started sleeping together.
I sighed. I wasn't a coward, and the man was in his seventies. Even in human form, I could take him.
Probably.
I turned left.
Mike was home alone, and I'd called first. I'd even brought a pizza in case he was hungry. Difficult conversations always went better on full stomachs.
He was sitting on the porch in his usual flannel shirt and jeans when I drove up, waiting for me. I considered myself lucky that he wasn't holding a shotgun.
Holding the pizza in front of me like a shield, I climbed out of the truck. "I come in peace."
He said nothing, just studied my face, and I suddenly felt more nervous than I had during a fight with a trio of rogue vampires during the rebellion.
"I'm only here about building Tess a garage for Christmas."
Aha. That got him. His blue eyes—the same bright blue as Tess's—lit up in his weathered face, and he grinned at me. "Why didn't you say so? I've been wanting to add a garage to that house ever since she bought it. She's twenty-seven now. A woman that age should have a garage."
