calliopes_pen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
calliopes_pen) wrote2013-01-01 04:14 pm
calliopes_pen) wrote2013-01-01 04:14 pm
Entry tags:
Fic: Santacide Is Coming To Town
Title: Santacide Is Coming To Town
Author:calliopes_pen
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Pushing Daisies
Pairing: Hints of Chuck/Ned
Characters: Digby, Chuck, Emerson, Ned, The Narrator, The Coroner
Word Count: 7706
Author’s Notes: This fanfic was written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
flatlanddan, for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
yuletide. The following is the prompt: “Someone murders Santa. The team investigates and discovers the true meaning of Christmas.” A huge thanks goes out to seandc and persiflage_1 for beta reading.
Summary: While shoveling snow, Ned discovers a murdered body dressed in a very familiar red suit. What will the Pie Hole denizens do next?
At the age of five and a half years, four weeks, twenty-four days, fifteen hours, and thirty-six minutes old, the future Pie Maker and all around soon to be raiser of the dead stopped believing in the myth of old Saint Nick. Even before the dreadfully desolate Longborough School For Boys, he learned the lesson. He knew that stockings, while indeed hung by the chimney with care, would not be filled by a fictional creation of parents the world over. Perhaps billions of parents bent on keeping a story going, but not that creation.
It became obvious once the boy caught a glimpse of his mother, in ill-fitting clothing and slack beard, attempting to fool him one night. A certain story told by Phoebe Cates in Gremlins also cast a dark shadow across the holiday. Couple that with an accidental midnight viewing of Silent Night, Deadly Night, and he was particularly wary of the legend.
In the past for Ned, the facts were these. The Pie Maker did, in point of fact, grow up, ceasing to believe in Jolly Old Saint Nick once he thought of the process that had to be involved in delivering presents to children across the globe. He pondered the logical conclusion of disappointment, when someone was required to give that many toys away in one night. Time traveling clones and a sleigh that was bigger on the inside with the addition of breaking the sound barrier with an ease that mangled faces were required. Clones who would, perhaps, melt without a resurrecting touch. The mental leaps involved in the blind belief were astounding to him after that realization and his worryingly frightening films.
The boy grew to be the Pie Maker and continued to avoid Christmas films such as The Santa Clause, believing with an unshakeable certainty that if a fictional man were false, he could not die and would be out of touch forevermore.
Now, however, it had been nearly one year, eight months, one week, two days and forty-five minutes since that Pie Maker’s talents had been put into action. A temporary dry spell on the forensics front in a town that had a morose number of people dropping or being ushered into the arms of Death, which had happily dwindled the need to resurrect and question. It was a dry spell that had coincided with a flourish of pie purchasing.
Today was Christmas Day. The snow, having gathered the most along the upper most layer of the Pie Hole’s crust, was now picking inopportune moments to shift. Anyone entering or exiting the premises had to be careful to avoid the freezing cascade, carry an umbrella, or risk looking like a snowman coming in for a pie to thaw him out as they wandered through town for the rest of the day. Ned had learned this first hand upon stepping outdoors to shovel a path along the sidewalk.
The resulting human-shaped lumpy collection of snow from those previous occasions marked the place of impact, so that a solemn stranger had neatly sidestepped the next clump. Well, that, and Chuck’s warning point from a window.
The crunching noise beneath his winter boots lent credence to his theory that he was walking across a thin layer of ice just barely concealed by the snow. His sweeping grew slower now, so he wouldn’t need to learn if he could resurrect himself from a broken neck.
Ned’s half-brothers had offered to bring some chicken to go with whatever pie he felt like making either that evening or on whatever holiday type of event they could catch him for. Ned was still reluctant, even at the promise of no prying questions, or talk of their shared father.
It was now one year, one day, thirty-three minutes, and twenty three seconds ago, when Ned had, at long last, broken the news to Charlotte Charles that he had been the one to kill her father. All because he had brought his mother back to life with a touch…only to lose her again to a motherly kiss that long ago evening. This year, Chuck would not disappear into the night, angry and saddened at a confession, for he had nothing else to confess. Nothing that immediately sprang to his conscious thoughts at this late date, anyway. Except the fact he had remembered to light the furnace for Lily and Vivian, in advance of the bitter cold—two weeks in advance of it, when it was still so warm that they would sweat out the heat until the oncoming chill, became welcome.
It wasn’t a confession as abrupt and earth shattering as last year’s. It had instead brought a warm smile to Chuck’s face, rather than a dash into the night.
Ned kept the back scratcher strapped to a slot in his belt as he swept more of the walkway. Now, however, he removed it to give Digby a good scratching. The dog had taken to barking once in warning whenever a clump of snow was about to bean him or another nearby human being. It was slightly different from the regular ‘caution, imminent Charlotte Charles collision’ bark, a little higher pitched keening thrown in. This way, Ned knew he didn’t have to pull all limbs to himself in a panic, lest he send someone he loved straight back into the arms of the Grim Reaper. A towel was waiting in case of the dog lying down for a nap, and missing out on the warning.
Digby would receive a treat and frolic with Pigby through the fields later in thanks.
Fields far as far from traffic as he could get, so that he wouldn’t need to bring back Pigby as a long-time, never dying companion for the dog of the same persuasion. That would just be adding to the unholy pyramid of accidental deaths that made up his brain.
Something hard and firm blocked his shovel then, causing the Pie Maker to raise an eyebrow. He scraped at it with a frown, before he quickly scrambled backwards. He now realized it was a person. Yes, it was a dead person, for no breath was coming from it. But good news for him, he hadn’t resurrected it. He had only touched it with metal! Certainly nothing physical like a finger or a nose or his little toe brushing into the beard that was now all too plain to see. The beard. The beard, with those Christmas lights wrapped like a noose around the throat. The red suit. The boots. The chest with…something impaled through, starting at the back. Without the rest of the snow cleared away, he couldn’t be certain.
He shoved his shovel into the snowdrift in disgust, and crossed his arms with a sigh. He raised his voice, so Chuck and Emerson could hear him from out here. “Hey, guys? Christmas isn’t going to be so merry and happy for people this year!” A moment’s hesitation, before he added, “And bring a wheelbarrow as fast as you can!”
Saint Nicholas. Kris Kringle. Father Christmas. Whatever moniker you thought to tack onto the man over the millennia, Ned knew what had happened here on this day.
Someone had committed…Santacide.
--
Death didn’t vacation. It didn’t sleep when Christmas came calling. It wrecked its parents’ home in a breathtaking Bacchanal before digging up the elderly neighbor’s priceless petunias in spite.
Ned wondered if they in fact had a higher murder rate per capita than other cities. Or maybe it was just because so many had been decidedly different in the last year and a half that it felt that way. As he waited for the door to open, he carefully made his way around the dead man. His feet were far enough back; his pacing wide enough that nothing was bumped.
The body was impaled by what he knew to be a stuffed head. Deer or moose? Until they moved the body, (destroying potential evidence, part of his mind cried; even if it was the only method of learning anything of use) he would go with reindeer, if only because it would fit a crime of passion this season. He touched his own neck with a shudder, seeing the twisted cord tight enough to kill.
That method of death was always a possibility lurking like a gnawing little mouse, scrabbling at the rear of his mind. Lose your footing while hanging the lights, swing, strangle, snap and thud to the ground.
Even if he knew it wasn’t as simple as that in this instance.
And while a reindeer head was once found on his premises, it was unlikely anyone could trace this back to Ned. It wasn’t his, since he had personally taken that one to the dump after it gathered dust in a back room for months. It was a different one, one with an old bar code stamped on the bottom. Unless you were a regular customer, coming in often, staring at the disconcertingly disturbing severed head whenever you went for a bathroom break, seeing the panic before death deep within its unblinking gaze, and wondering if there would come a day when it laughed demonically from its preferred perch, to let loose a barrage of evil, take no prisoners vengeance upon the land. Ned finally shook his head, knowing it could not happen now.
There could be grunting, baying, snorting, and general moaning to rival that of The Gump if it thought it were coming unglued, for reindeer, as recorded by scientists who knew they must make certain of the fact, did not laugh.
Why worry? Because for all he knew, there could be a prowler stalking through the winter night, spurred on by carols and pie, and the incessant music they played in the mall while someone was waiting in line. Jingle Bell Rock could be a trigger for all manner of evils. The bodies of elves and reindeer could litter the streets downtown!
Or Ned had just heard that song played too many times over the radio himself, and transferred his own feelings to the killer. That was a cause for concern to him, too.
While he was occupied with the current crisis and terrible ways to die, he belatedly realized that his lack of warning of slick surfaces could cause calamity. Two feet east south east of Ned, a jump to the left, and a skip to the right, Charlotte ‘Chuck’ Charles’, untouchable love of the Pie Maker would be the one to take a detour across the newly formed ice, followed by a trip over the cold form of the one soul Ned believed did not exist in reality.
A gasped mutter from Chuck of “tripping,” to Ned’s “avoiding!” while shielding himself with a shovel enabled the duo to prevent an accidental brush of skin.
As the Pie Maker stared in mild horror, knowing he could not be the one to helpfully lift her to her feet, like a poorer Clark Gable while caressing the chestnut hair, he nodded his thanks to the man close by. For Emerson Cod had seen the hazards that lay ahead as he reached them, flashing like a broken stop light, and reached her first. He had become tangled in the flailing limbs that would have caused Charlotte Charles to rejoin the land of the dead, just as the festively dressed deceased fellow slumped across her feet.
One foot of the aforementioned splendiferous and now forever solemn fellow was sliding like a marionette with cut strings for longer than was tasteful or normal for a corpse to coast cleanly, due to the wheels attached to the heavy boots.
“Well. Merry Christmas, here’s your regularly scheduled body. We should be glad he wasn’t tinseled to death,” Emerson complained with a sigh. It wasn’t like last year’s murders, so it had that going for it.
The put upon Pie Man could feel an annoyed look contemplating crossing his face while they considered options, just as he knew that Chuck must be preemptively thinking ‘don’t scowl, you’ll stick that way.’ However, when one had just found the corpse of someone in an unanticipated Santacide, it was difficult to keep a face free of scowls or petulant looks. Santacide warranted scowling faces the world over. He patted a piece of plastic, imagining it was Chuck’s hand…a piece of plastic, which he kept nearby lately for just such an occasion. Well, not a Santacide. Just difficult times, when he was uncertain as to whether stroking the palm of a glove would elicit a smile, or an accidental second, permanent death for his precious Chuck, due to that ever so tiny hole that marred its surface.
The trio returned to staring down at the corpse for a long moment, before the silence, which had grown overwhelming, was finally punctured by a voice.
Gumshoe Emerson Cod pondered the luck, both good and bad, that had brought this corpse upon their doorstep, as the Pie Maker drew nearer to giving the body a swift poke. He shook his head. It shouldn’t be done here, out in the open where someone might see.
Whatever Jolly Old Saint Nick had been doing that night, did not seem especially directed towards gift giving. A defensive wound and bruise on the arm and throat respectively, cord almost tied into a magnificently large bow around the throat and reindeer antlers piercing cleanly through the chest, well. These things did not point towards a calm, peaceful hug as you were ushered to Death’s waiting arms.
It was fortunate indeed for the trio that Olive Snook, persistent waitress to the Pie Hole establishment, was away for the holidays. Randy Mann had dragged her away on a holiday filled with taxidermy and romance...with the promise that the two would never overlap during intimate moments, following a near miss with a stuffed chipmunk overseeing the scene, and a negligee.
“Flyin' Fish of Finkleson's Fjord. Damn it!” While the fjord did, in fact, have trout and mutated minnows, and several larger than usual breed of goldfish, none of them flew. It was an urban legend that made the rounds throughout the town, and nobody knew the origin of—but it still sounded great to Emerson’s mind.
So, they all mused with trepidation. It was another one of those days, was it?
“Right,” Ned began with a shake of his head. “If the dual roller skate impressions are any indication, then the killer of Santa’s identical twin was also on roller skates? A bigger pair, since it looks like horror movies with the werewolf tracks, with the footprints slowly turning into different prints. Bigger prints. Or, in this case, bigger and taller prints.”
“He went that way, to the south side of the block away from the Pie Hole…unless those tracks are backwards. Which really isn’t likely, not even a little.” Unfortunately, the trail that led ‘that way’ had been obscured, covered by snow falling in immense clumps. Unless their pace quickened, they would lose sight of their killer. Just…not so quick that it would lead to them sliding across the ice and into the path of an oncoming semi in their last moments. End up on their very own slabs in the morgue.
It was the sort of thought tangent Ned regularly observed, given the strangeness of his life. And unless someone else out there had a magic touch, unless someone formed a super powered group to save the world weekly, then there was nobody who would briefly steal them from Death’s door to ask them questions. They would remain embedded in Death’s bosom.
Now what should they do about getting the body out of there?
“I’ve got a van and gurney,” Emerson offered with a sigh as he aided Chuck away from the ice with concern. At Ned’s stare, he shrugged. “What? We find dead people, sometimes. I borrowed it from a guy that owed me one. We aren’t always going to meet them after the cops find them. My car’s too small to cart around the recently deceased, and I refuse to get that man’s blood on the upholstery. Or on my coat. Your pie freezer’s the midway point until I get things ready, and we get to the coroner’s!”
They weren’t bringing a dead person back to life inside the Pie Hole’s freezer, at least. Police and health inspectors couldn’t possibly be dropping by on a day like this, between the ice, snow, and holiday season. Not again. What sort of world was it that the three of them were actually contemplating chipping in to help with the purchase of a hearse?
Carting a dead body into a place dedicated to serving delicious pie wouldn’t look good once the police came into the picture. Ned didn’t want to be falsely accused of this unique method of death, just as he disliked being accused of drowning Billy Balsam in a vat of bubbling taffy. The current circumstances didn’t involve sweet confectionaries or not-so-sweet competition.
Chuck quickly placed an old jump rope around where the body was once located once the plan was in motion. She thought it was better than a chalk outline for those working undercover. There might be fewer questions requiring answers they weren’t willing to give, if any innocent types should happen by. Her heart went out to the saccharinely sweet Santa symbol, slain sadly on Christmas Eve.
--
“Did anyone see?” Ned knew that it was suspicious being seen with improvised methods of dragging a body, even as his grip on the gurney’s handle slipped, allowing the still form to tumble terribly haphazardly along the edge. Emerson successfully prevented more movement by grasping the rear of the reindeer horns, which were not, currently, peeking through the suit.
The fact there was a corpse in this room, this bakery, this Pie Hole, would make his customers believe he put people in his pies. Or it would, if he happened to be open today. Which he wasn’t. This wasn’t Soylent Green, he wasn’t Mr. Sweeney Todd of Fleet Street. The health inspector would be upset if he so much as entertained a niggling notion like that prior to another upsetting return inspection. People weren’t in his pies, just his freezer! Only one body could fit at a time. How close the deceased in question was to his pie making process—even if it wasn’t currently in use due to the holiday season—was completely and entirely irrelevant.
“No, because if they’d seen us we would have been told by the police when we saw them. We’re going to leave this sucker here on the morgue’s slab when we’ve got our answers. And then move on,” Emerson ground out with a shudder, as he threw down a glove. They had come in the back way. He hoped good karma was in store for this. One and all were wearing the preferred winter ensemble, as was appropriate in these frosty winter months. Any gore accumulated could be disposed of elsewhere, maybe outside of town. Buried in quicksand, sucking down the evidence on the other side of the country. Uncertainty as to their next move grasped Emerson Cod then, causing him to fear this was neither smart nor good.
Still, whatever kept them in business was the thought of the day, as the feeling was shaken aside. If they were observed or followed by a drunken reveler, perhaps Drunken Dan Deerling, it was doubtless not to be believed.
Ned looked from one friend to the other with the utmost of seriousness as he leaned against the cold wall of the morgue. “Okay. I’m more a wry chuckler over in the corner than a ho-ho-ho belly laugh kind of guy. So if he’s the real Santa Claus, I’m not going to replace him. That’s just a warning before I do my thing. My name is not Tim Allen, and I did not distract him just as he hit a patch of ice when he was delivering his toys. I will not risk giant Dobermans attacking and mauling me, or people with shotguns. Lily is scary enough. No offense, Chuck.” Lily and her trusty old rifle would frighten anyone, be they large and hulking, or tiny enough to fit into your pocket.
Charlotte Charles was not one to argue about the impressiveness of Lily’s gun. “None taken,” she said with a weak chuckle.
If it weren’t for this body, and the need to shovel the walkway, they could have watched the snow falling gently from the comfort of their warm beds. A veritable snow coma.
Ned wisely retreated to a safe distance in one swiftly smooth motion, which would resemble frantic scrambling backwards to any onlookers. A shared look between Ned and Charlotte Charles showed that they were remembering her own violent return. No person would be grabbing at articles of his clothing, a loose scarf or button, on this day.
“You two bond over the scariest stuff,” Emerson muttered. It was like an anniversary for them or something every single time he touched a dead body.
The man on the table gasped, flinging an arm out in self-defense, before realizing he was no longer in the killer’s hands. Emerson glanced at Ned, muttering ‘good call.’ “Okay, people, we’ve only got sixty seconds,” he reminded the Pie Man. “No stupid questions, no going over our limit, no killing me.”
As Ned resurrected the once jolly man, so too did he bring back what that man was affixed to. The befuddled reindeer, life having balefully, brutally been shortened with a rifle and an enthusiastic, but lonely and morbid taxidermist, now rejoined life…as naught but a head.
A head with no view but that of the red suit dangling before its eyes. It snorted, moaning in fear and bafflement before giving up its futile efforts to wrest itself from the clutches of whatever beast may have held it.
The Pie Man blinked once as he tilted his head, taking in the sight before his disbelieving eyes. Charlotte Charles gasped, stopping herself just short of going to calm the animal, understanding the danger and lack of time. She instead awed in wrenching sympathy at the brutally befuddled animal, while Emerson Cod raised his eyes to the ceiling in a blatant silent plea of ‘why me?’ that ended with a sigh. So that was two chances to kill him, he thought bleakly with a huff. “I’ll watch the timer. Hurry it up before old Rudolph eats him.” The timer from his kitchen was placed, easily viewed, on the closest table.
The merrily robed man craned his neck over one shoulder as best he could, consternation apparent. He wanted to get away, but that was impossible.
Charlotte Charles, compassionate no matter how humiliating the conga line of death could be, placed a hand upon his cheek gently to redirect his attention. Their time was limited thanks to the distraction. But what was his name? She’d call him something related to the clothing he wore. “Sir…Mr. Kringle…could you tell us who did all this to you? Well, not who almost put you into the freezer section of a pie place, that was definitely, a hundred percent our fault, so sorry if you’re colder. The rest involving who killed you!” She had spoken the last rapid fire, desperate not to waste time. The deadline inched closer.
Before he answered the first question, she asked another major one. “Was your death an accident or a murder? Because people can fall off something tall, lose a boot, get strangled by the nearby Christmas lights, and swing and swing until they slam into the formerly hanging reindeer head in the alley!”
“My real name’s Jolly Jim Jiminy. Yes, my parents named me Jolly, but call me Jim,” Jim corrected quickly. A thick layer of frost had gathered around his now blue lips from the conditions of his death, but as he began to speak some began to crack and flake off. If one looked carefully, beneath the knotted cord one that nobody dared to remove one could make out the deep, mottled and sickly purple-grey bruising from strangulation. A few sickly, wet inhaled gasps here or there thanks to the difficulty of speaking that accompanied a partially crushed windpipe were to be expected, but he handled it admirably. What other choice did he have?
“Yeah, I saw him and yeah it was murder. If I’m dead. Happened after I left the roller derby, when I was on the way to the mall Santa gig. It’s why the beard’s longer than most, I bruise like a peach and that sucker can blunt the impact. But I had a plan!” He hurried onward, explaining all at a manic, frantic, increasingly distressed pace. He didn’t know the rules of the game, but knew he couldn’t be long for this world with antlers through the chest.
Simultaneously, at the back of his mind, the recently deceased man came to the realization that his Über-Life Life Insurance Policy had been up for renewal in just two weeks. There would be a furious CEO shaking his fists at the sky, railing against the loss of a client.
The seconds were ticking down with great care, in the hopes that come one minute Jolly Jim Jiminy wouldn’t be there. Or not his spirit, at any rate.
The facts were these. Jolly Jim Jiminy had the loftiest of ambitions, and a stolen ruby he hoped to use to reach them. He wanted to open a year-round entertainment soiree of Santa Clauses, all focused on entertaining a particular set of clients. A particular breed of client, which desperately wanted to get a movement started, that would end with the use of his newly created invention. An invention to make everyone have the same white beard as he so desired to grow himself. Even women, and children, for two and a half weeks, long enough for the Christmas season to come and go. Children nestled snug in their beds, kept warm by an itchy white beard. That’s why he wanted the ruby, but his opponents needed it for real things like keeping a roof over their heads.
The inspiration had come from that unlikeliest of culprits—the Chia Pet.
A movement would allow the elves of mall Santa Clauses the world over to rise up and be proud to wear their tightly binding green tights, clutch their jangling bells proudly, and try to make something that was ridiculously awkward not nearly as awkward. It would be a trading emporium in donating the toys of children to people who wanted to collect the toys the children were not prepared for. How this might be achieved had involved a spider web that continually branched off, somehow involving betting on him losing in each round of the Ruby Red Rocking Roller Derby.
While he collected payment, payment was also due from other quarters, eventually resulting in the loss of more money than Jim Jiminy had, between donating to actually needy children.
Loan sharks came next. A man named Snuffy had been his go-between until he washed his hands of the chaos…and Jiminy Crispies revealed his hand. The loophole, seen in the finest of fine print and a Christmas tree decoration, was death for Jolly Jim Jiminy.
Emerson’s befuddled, awestruck whisper of ‘What the hell?’ at this juncture went largely unnoticed as brains not newly resurrected tried to grapple with the truth. A truth they weren’t sure they could handle.
A truth that made them wonder just how the world would look if the man was successful, and Chuck had a beard.
The timer finally dinged, shaking them from the stupor the news had brought with it. With a second fleeting brush of a magic finger, trophy animal and man crossed over to the other side together. Emerson wiped his brow. They were safely pining for the fjords now. He sighed with heartfelt relief, another person (namely him) saved from a stupid death, another mess. At the thought of the next step for them, he sighed again. “Next time it’s a major holiday, just get the fool to write it out. We can pin it to their lapel or collar, and be done with it.”
At least it wasn’t the real Santa. Then they’d be locating workshops, and cracking a whip to make real tiny elves work double time to pick up the slack.
Ned was primarily stuck on the killer’s very name. A name all of his friends knew. “His…his name is Jiminy Crispies? When he isn’t the Gingerbread Man or the Santa Slayer secretly slaying sliding Santas from roller derbies, committer of Santacide in our fair town. That’s…I always say that name, Olive always says that, people say that when they don’t want to say that other big guy’s name in the presence of certain people. Certain people like nuns and elderly women, and tiny dogs. Did his parents know that when they picked it?”
While it left the heads of Ned, Emerson, and Chuck whirling with bafflement, they knew they could dump the details onto the police, and allow them to untangle it all. If they were forced to know more details, they could learn whether or not Ned’s particular set of skills extended to holding successful séances by himself, knowing what he knew about his life-giving touch. Or if that would result in scenario that involved the messier apocalypse of the live agains synching up with the spiritual realm, pouring demons out the wrong end, and making him responsible for Hell on Earth.
The intent beneath the convoluted plan was honorable, provided you squinted between the lines and tilted your head at just the right moment. They were free and clear to scram now.
But still, they wanted to find Jiminy Crispies themselves. Plus the coroner was in just the next room, waiting to talk to them.
--
The coroner walked through the newly remodeled swinging doors, then, disapproving eyebrow (and eyes) looking on disapprovingly. Emerson had his own keys by this point, he’d seen to that. “Even strange Death doesn’t sleep on Christmas,” he sighed as he sank into a chair. After the body was delivered, he had looked in at the antlers, the Santa costume, the wheels, and the lights, which would have blinked so merrily if they had been placed upon a tree and not around a throat, and merely nodded in resignation. He’d seen stranger ways for people to go out in Coeur d'Coeurs.
A fleeting smile was shot in the private detective’s direction, before the look they knew best returned to his tired features. He knew the way of things. “And, I see, neither does Emerson Cod, waiting for a cut of action for solving it.” Emerson did, indeed, have a hand outstretched for the reward money. At the chiding remark he casually placed it back on the desk.
The private detective passed the coroner a slip of paper with a shrug and passing smile, belatedly realizing he hadn’t committed the other man’s name to his memory.
Excuses like he hadn’t had the time, or he immediately thought of him as Sir Coroner just wouldn’t cut it. Luck was with him, however, as the man always had his nametag on his chest. Even if he did behave coyly to Emerson Cod’s mind, covering it with a stack of papers in amusement.
“There was a note in his pocket,” he sighed. “Told us everything, and I mean everything. If you found him laid out like that, the main suspect.” Before he had died, with mere seconds to spare, they’d managed to get the guy to scribble out who had done the dastardly deed. Sure, it looked like chicken scratch, but a doctor could decipher the wall of text.
It was amazing how fast a man could write when Death itself was nipping at his heels.
Wryly, as he pushed up his glasses, Silas Syl (for that was his name, Emerson finally read) replied, “Mmm hmmm. Even the answer to life, the universe, and everything?”
“Not that,” Emerson Cod frowned. “That’s not due until the dolphins leave. More like names, dates, times, weapons…although, you can probably see what did him in just fine.” At least it wasn’t exploding pop-up books.
“I’ll just get word to the police force to get to the House of Gingerbread.” All assumptions were that there would be a distinct lack of evil witches being shoved head first into ovens, or little abandoned children gnawing off the front of the place. It was gingerbread in name only, the better to prevent mold or weather related mishaps. Nobody needed a lawsuit from a piece of gingerbread landing on someone’s head.
Someday Silas Syl, coroner for the conundrum causing corpses of Coeur d'Coeurs, would ask the big questions. On the day Ned and Emerson couldn’t talk their way out of telling the truth in a way that either satisfied the man or just kept him entertained, things would get really rough for everyone. Maybe. This crafty man already suspected his methods. You just never could tell if someone was going to scream about that dreaded Z word, flail and grab a shotgun—or blink calmly—or sell the story to the media.
“Are you three pretending to be experts in Santa Clauses that have been impaled and strangled today? Santacide, you called it. Or are you long lost Christmas elves today?” One hand was calmly held up to halt any explanations well in advance. Christmas was one of those days when you just didn’t want to know. The others were still back there anyway, ready and able to sneak out the back way to the car. Even if the sneaking was obvious and noisy. “Don’t tell me, just get yourselves out there and get to it with the whys and wherefores while I’m distracted and staring pointedly at the flowers that I know shouldn’t be blooming in December. The plastic ones, half shaped like roses.”
He had been tempted to see what they got up to in those little morgue visits that always hit the jackpot, but decided he just didn’t want to be the one to ruin the streak of cavalierly solved formerly due for the unsolved bin cases that had overjoyed so many policemen and morgue assistants around the city. Not today. He knew they hadn’t slain Santa on this sacred day. He didn’t know the methods to their obvious madness, but it worked…for now. “I’ll just leave the name and address of the perpetrator on the bulletin board now that you’ve mysteriously cracked it,” he muttered. He had some dry Christmas chicken to work on eating.
They knew the way out. And they would probably grab the killer before he got the hell out of Dodge.
--
Another not-so-strangely festive residence, this time with stranger overtones. Gingerbread overtones somehow made into a façade across the front of the house. “I don’t think this is another dead end,” Ned muttered unnecessarily but matter-of-factly as he took in the sight.
Indeed, it wasn’t a dead end. Due to an all-encompassing obsession with gingerbread, which had started in childhood, when he had nearly burned his house to the ground at the age of six, Jiminy “Gingerbread” Crispies, Slayer of Santa, had reshaped his home into the semblance of a giant Gingerbread Man. The elements were not kind to it, causing it to become crumbly.
Why weren’t they waiting for the police to come down to The Gingerbread House again? Oh, that’s right. They only had the word of a twice dead man dressed as Saint Nick, and they couldn’t be certain if the right fingerprints were on the lights until later. That, and Ned seemed to consider it a personal crusade to know as many facts as he could, since the deceased party had been found on his doorstep. Plus a few feet, once you turned left into the alleyway. Digby accompanied them, nobody having the heart to leave the pooch home alone. Chuck had been sneaking him dog treats the whole ride over.
So that was how the Pie Man and his friends came to be knocking firmly, if nervously, upon the door to a place that was, in all probability, closed. With a knocker in the shape of the Gingerbread Man just to keep the theme going.
Or not, Emerson amended mentally. A rather tall man who bore a strong resemblance to Lurch opened the door with a jerk just as he had been preparing to suggest they wait until regular business hours. Behind him, he dragged two large gingerbread decorations. Or, at least, he fervently wished they were merely headed for the side of the road for an advertisement, and not destined for anything more insidious. For instance, being repeatedly beaten against someone’s head.
Emerson was startled from his reverie when Ned and the gingerbread fellow simultaneously shouted “You!” For Ned had been witness to snow crashing down upon him earlier. Before Digby became his early warning system. The stranger had appeared frazzled, frantic, and just plain frightened.
“Yes, me,” Ned frowned. “I’m working on the avalanche thing,” he hurriedly added, before wondering why he was apologizing to the man who was the top suspect for the killing of a Santa with incredibly strange intentions. “You said your name was Darren Durwood III.”
“Thanks,” the other man shrugged. “It makes getaways harder if you give a real name. And yeah, I did it. I killed Jim. The stuffed animal head was an accident. I—I was going for the ruby, you know? But couldn’t find it!” This was a man moments from cracking. “The ruby was in the light, right? The one place I didn’t look?” At their nod, he sat down on the front stoop and continued, “I just…panicked and ran, and then the snow fell down and I ran some more.” Was he merely moments away from the shedding of a tear?
Nobody knew what to do—they had expected guns and running. Madcap hijinks filled with a dash of terror.
Just for extra guilt, Ned declared, “Because of you, I will never be able to hear Santa Claus Is Coming To Town without thinking of what was behind my Pie Hole. Dead.” The lyrics were warping within his mind. Seeing a mall Santa was fine—a Rolling Roller’s Roller Derby mall Santa might take some time, if it weren’t a rarity already. There wouldn’t be sugar plum fairies dancing through their heads next year. In their place would be figments of Santacides.
Digby, standing calmly at Chuck’s side until now, gave one warning growl.
There was the gun.
Nobody made any sudden movements. Emerson gave him the once over, asking, “Gingerbread shaped, huh? Specially made for the Gingerbread Man?”
“Right,” he grumbled. He didn’t seem to know what to do next. One death was enough for him, and bullets from that sort of gun would point a giant neon arrow straight at him. Emerson didn’t have to tell him that, he seemed to get it.
“Give it—now,” Emerson ordered. The fool didn’t even have his finger on the trigger yet. Disorganized criminals were great for business. He calmly plucked the gun from his hands, staring at the uniqueness of it. “You aren’t a super villain, and this ain’t Gotham City. You might be new here, or you might just be bored, but theme guns aren’t usually good things around here. Unless you’re completely into wearing a costume or cape?”
“I don’t have a Pie Gun. Never will,” Ned said with a wry, yet oddly resigned twitch of a smile. While he secretly wanted one deep down in a place that would never see the light of day without extreme measures like a truth serum being devised, it would only be ludicrous to own one. Well, more ludicrous than usual, he granted.
The dulcet tones of screaming sirens filled the air then, getting louder as they drew nearer. They were signaling the summons from Silas Syl, coroner, to the strangest death of the day, had been heard and received. Here would be cranky officers. It looked as though he would turn himself in willingly without his toys…he was currently slouching against the wall, resigned to his fate.
“You’re goin’ to jail for Santacide,” Emerson said as he kept a firm grip on his arm until the men could get out of their vehicles. “Which…since it’s not the real Santa, gives you about the same as a regular murder rap. A few centuries longer if he’d been the real guy, with them somehow getting around the human lifespan, making it feel longer.” He shrugged. “Elves.” And if they dared to joke about payment in cookies and milk, well…there would be Hell to pay in Coeur d'Coeurs on this sacred Santa holiday.
“Hands on your head! Step slowly away from the gingerbread and keep away from the crumb bullets,” one officer called out. He had lived in this town long enough. Nothing shocked him anymore. For all he knew, there could be a detachable piece of pastry rigged to explode when the oven reached the right temperature.
As he was led away in handcuffs, Jiminy Crispies pleadingly whispered to Ned, “Take care of my Gingerbread Statues. Make sure nobody shatters them when the Roller Derby expands.” He was led to a squad car before anyone could reply with an affirmation or rejection of the idea.
Ned frowned, wondering how it would expand all through town, streets, and boulevards. Could a roller derby be created inside someone’s house, without the customers falling down the stairway? It would all lead to broken necks, and great deals of agony. It was all just a crime of passion, spurred on by mad science, greed, and a heaping dollop of Christmas terror.
Thanks to the murder of Jolly Jim Jiminy and a tiny red ruby, Jiminy Crispies—aka Darren Durwood III—was now squarely on Santa’s naughty list.
“I was honestly afraid we would have to follow him to the Ruby Red Rocking Roller Derby…and join in one of those rock ‘em, sock ‘em times on the rink.”
Emerson, however, merely chuckled. “It’s not as bad as you think.” He paused, and reconsidered. “Maybe it would be for you,” he shrugged. “My mom went undercover at one of those. I watched, being a bit too young for there. According to her.” He had even included it in that pop-up book he’d made for his missing daughter, with one scene of his mother elbowing a beefier woman while he carried the camera. “They don’t all want you dead, or maimed. Just a slim minority. Usually the hard nosed ones, in some cities I could name, haven’t checked them out here outside of that guy.” Before his next words, he chuckled evilly. “I’ll get you a copy of the rules, and some knee pads.”
“Please don’t.” Ned was not begging, he told himself. He wasn’t. He was merely requesting flatly, but insistently. He was positive that Chuck, however, would pay to see that. Even if she would never admit to it, he still knew. “If they broke my hands, I couldn’t make pie. Pie is my livelihood.” That would, he hoped, deter Emerson. Briefly. Until a case required it, and oh, God, would he even regret bringing up the topic.
Even if he knew he was joking.
Mostly.
He was pondering the preciousness of the season’s developments; he was grateful to be among people he didn’t have to explain his hang-ups to. He also pondered the amount of snow that had fallen over the course of their investigation, and how long it would take to navigate their way home. He hoped to divert all thoughts from roller derbies he would fail miserably on the course of.
The Pie Maker had embraced the Christmas spirit…or just given it a good pat on the back…and was looking forward to the rest of the holiday season. So long as there weren’t any other dead people lingering hidden along the sidewalk.
“So, who’s up for this particularly peculiar Pie Man’s special Christmas pie? Pecan Pumpkin Pie with little strawberries.” Formerly rotten since they were now out of season, resurrected with a touch to juicy perfection. It could transform into a romantic dinner for two…make that one, as he could never participate in the tasting. He could only watch ensuing pleasure developing like an old-fashioned Polaroid picture across Charlotte Charles’ beautiful face.
“Oh, my, yes. Yum,” Chuck agreed with a smile, always ready for a custom Christmas dessert from her Ned.
Upon the eventual notice in the pages of the News of the World News of the death of Jolly Jim Jiminy due to the efforts of Jiminy Crispies, alias Darren Durwood III, the offices received approximately twenty-five letters devastated by the death of Saint Nick, and thirty-five asking who would be crowned his replacement. Several citizens from the Elderly Townsfolk Center of Coeur d'Coeurs contained the suggestion that his successor be that of a handsome young man, a pie maker whom they had seen wearing the green tights of holiday cheer with great care in another holiday year.
He turned them down with great haste, fearing someone might one day die upon his lap, resurrecting and thereby killing one of the other children or parents before it could be rectified. Or, if he were out shopping, Emerson. There was only so much progress you could make, so far up the slowly moving escalator and through the stores you could get in under a minute, even running. There was only so far you could dash through a parking lot if you were close to the doors.
Chuck’s first thought had been to agree to become a Christmas elf despite Ned’s turning down the offer. Her second thought was the chances of Vivian and Lily seeing her increasing greatly unless she were the one wearing the snow white beard and padding, risking being crushed in a stampede of horror as people recognized her, and the consequences of those actions.
Olive Snook would happily agree to be an elf in her stead, upon returning from her Christmas vacation. Even if was post-Christmas by then, there would always be next year.
Finis
Author:
calliopes_penRating: PG-13
Fandom: Pushing Daisies
Pairing: Hints of Chuck/Ned
Characters: Digby, Chuck, Emerson, Ned, The Narrator, The Coroner
Word Count: 7706
Author’s Notes: This fanfic was written for
flatlanddan, for yuletide. The following is the prompt: “Someone murders Santa. The team investigates and discovers the true meaning of Christmas.” A huge thanks goes out to seandc and persiflage_1 for beta reading. Summary: While shoveling snow, Ned discovers a murdered body dressed in a very familiar red suit. What will the Pie Hole denizens do next?
At the age of five and a half years, four weeks, twenty-four days, fifteen hours, and thirty-six minutes old, the future Pie Maker and all around soon to be raiser of the dead stopped believing in the myth of old Saint Nick. Even before the dreadfully desolate Longborough School For Boys, he learned the lesson. He knew that stockings, while indeed hung by the chimney with care, would not be filled by a fictional creation of parents the world over. Perhaps billions of parents bent on keeping a story going, but not that creation.
It became obvious once the boy caught a glimpse of his mother, in ill-fitting clothing and slack beard, attempting to fool him one night. A certain story told by Phoebe Cates in Gremlins also cast a dark shadow across the holiday. Couple that with an accidental midnight viewing of Silent Night, Deadly Night, and he was particularly wary of the legend.
In the past for Ned, the facts were these. The Pie Maker did, in point of fact, grow up, ceasing to believe in Jolly Old Saint Nick once he thought of the process that had to be involved in delivering presents to children across the globe. He pondered the logical conclusion of disappointment, when someone was required to give that many toys away in one night. Time traveling clones and a sleigh that was bigger on the inside with the addition of breaking the sound barrier with an ease that mangled faces were required. Clones who would, perhaps, melt without a resurrecting touch. The mental leaps involved in the blind belief were astounding to him after that realization and his worryingly frightening films.
The boy grew to be the Pie Maker and continued to avoid Christmas films such as The Santa Clause, believing with an unshakeable certainty that if a fictional man were false, he could not die and would be out of touch forevermore.
Now, however, it had been nearly one year, eight months, one week, two days and forty-five minutes since that Pie Maker’s talents had been put into action. A temporary dry spell on the forensics front in a town that had a morose number of people dropping or being ushered into the arms of Death, which had happily dwindled the need to resurrect and question. It was a dry spell that had coincided with a flourish of pie purchasing.
Today was Christmas Day. The snow, having gathered the most along the upper most layer of the Pie Hole’s crust, was now picking inopportune moments to shift. Anyone entering or exiting the premises had to be careful to avoid the freezing cascade, carry an umbrella, or risk looking like a snowman coming in for a pie to thaw him out as they wandered through town for the rest of the day. Ned had learned this first hand upon stepping outdoors to shovel a path along the sidewalk.
The resulting human-shaped lumpy collection of snow from those previous occasions marked the place of impact, so that a solemn stranger had neatly sidestepped the next clump. Well, that, and Chuck’s warning point from a window.
The crunching noise beneath his winter boots lent credence to his theory that he was walking across a thin layer of ice just barely concealed by the snow. His sweeping grew slower now, so he wouldn’t need to learn if he could resurrect himself from a broken neck.
Ned’s half-brothers had offered to bring some chicken to go with whatever pie he felt like making either that evening or on whatever holiday type of event they could catch him for. Ned was still reluctant, even at the promise of no prying questions, or talk of their shared father.
It was now one year, one day, thirty-three minutes, and twenty three seconds ago, when Ned had, at long last, broken the news to Charlotte Charles that he had been the one to kill her father. All because he had brought his mother back to life with a touch…only to lose her again to a motherly kiss that long ago evening. This year, Chuck would not disappear into the night, angry and saddened at a confession, for he had nothing else to confess. Nothing that immediately sprang to his conscious thoughts at this late date, anyway. Except the fact he had remembered to light the furnace for Lily and Vivian, in advance of the bitter cold—two weeks in advance of it, when it was still so warm that they would sweat out the heat until the oncoming chill, became welcome.
It wasn’t a confession as abrupt and earth shattering as last year’s. It had instead brought a warm smile to Chuck’s face, rather than a dash into the night.
Ned kept the back scratcher strapped to a slot in his belt as he swept more of the walkway. Now, however, he removed it to give Digby a good scratching. The dog had taken to barking once in warning whenever a clump of snow was about to bean him or another nearby human being. It was slightly different from the regular ‘caution, imminent Charlotte Charles collision’ bark, a little higher pitched keening thrown in. This way, Ned knew he didn’t have to pull all limbs to himself in a panic, lest he send someone he loved straight back into the arms of the Grim Reaper. A towel was waiting in case of the dog lying down for a nap, and missing out on the warning.
Digby would receive a treat and frolic with Pigby through the fields later in thanks.
Fields far as far from traffic as he could get, so that he wouldn’t need to bring back Pigby as a long-time, never dying companion for the dog of the same persuasion. That would just be adding to the unholy pyramid of accidental deaths that made up his brain.
Something hard and firm blocked his shovel then, causing the Pie Maker to raise an eyebrow. He scraped at it with a frown, before he quickly scrambled backwards. He now realized it was a person. Yes, it was a dead person, for no breath was coming from it. But good news for him, he hadn’t resurrected it. He had only touched it with metal! Certainly nothing physical like a finger or a nose or his little toe brushing into the beard that was now all too plain to see. The beard. The beard, with those Christmas lights wrapped like a noose around the throat. The red suit. The boots. The chest with…something impaled through, starting at the back. Without the rest of the snow cleared away, he couldn’t be certain.
He shoved his shovel into the snowdrift in disgust, and crossed his arms with a sigh. He raised his voice, so Chuck and Emerson could hear him from out here. “Hey, guys? Christmas isn’t going to be so merry and happy for people this year!” A moment’s hesitation, before he added, “And bring a wheelbarrow as fast as you can!”
Saint Nicholas. Kris Kringle. Father Christmas. Whatever moniker you thought to tack onto the man over the millennia, Ned knew what had happened here on this day.
Someone had committed…Santacide.
--
Death didn’t vacation. It didn’t sleep when Christmas came calling. It wrecked its parents’ home in a breathtaking Bacchanal before digging up the elderly neighbor’s priceless petunias in spite.
Ned wondered if they in fact had a higher murder rate per capita than other cities. Or maybe it was just because so many had been decidedly different in the last year and a half that it felt that way. As he waited for the door to open, he carefully made his way around the dead man. His feet were far enough back; his pacing wide enough that nothing was bumped.
The body was impaled by what he knew to be a stuffed head. Deer or moose? Until they moved the body, (destroying potential evidence, part of his mind cried; even if it was the only method of learning anything of use) he would go with reindeer, if only because it would fit a crime of passion this season. He touched his own neck with a shudder, seeing the twisted cord tight enough to kill.
That method of death was always a possibility lurking like a gnawing little mouse, scrabbling at the rear of his mind. Lose your footing while hanging the lights, swing, strangle, snap and thud to the ground.
Even if he knew it wasn’t as simple as that in this instance.
And while a reindeer head was once found on his premises, it was unlikely anyone could trace this back to Ned. It wasn’t his, since he had personally taken that one to the dump after it gathered dust in a back room for months. It was a different one, one with an old bar code stamped on the bottom. Unless you were a regular customer, coming in often, staring at the disconcertingly disturbing severed head whenever you went for a bathroom break, seeing the panic before death deep within its unblinking gaze, and wondering if there would come a day when it laughed demonically from its preferred perch, to let loose a barrage of evil, take no prisoners vengeance upon the land. Ned finally shook his head, knowing it could not happen now.
There could be grunting, baying, snorting, and general moaning to rival that of The Gump if it thought it were coming unglued, for reindeer, as recorded by scientists who knew they must make certain of the fact, did not laugh.
Why worry? Because for all he knew, there could be a prowler stalking through the winter night, spurred on by carols and pie, and the incessant music they played in the mall while someone was waiting in line. Jingle Bell Rock could be a trigger for all manner of evils. The bodies of elves and reindeer could litter the streets downtown!
Or Ned had just heard that song played too many times over the radio himself, and transferred his own feelings to the killer. That was a cause for concern to him, too.
While he was occupied with the current crisis and terrible ways to die, he belatedly realized that his lack of warning of slick surfaces could cause calamity. Two feet east south east of Ned, a jump to the left, and a skip to the right, Charlotte ‘Chuck’ Charles’, untouchable love of the Pie Maker would be the one to take a detour across the newly formed ice, followed by a trip over the cold form of the one soul Ned believed did not exist in reality.
A gasped mutter from Chuck of “tripping,” to Ned’s “avoiding!” while shielding himself with a shovel enabled the duo to prevent an accidental brush of skin.
As the Pie Maker stared in mild horror, knowing he could not be the one to helpfully lift her to her feet, like a poorer Clark Gable while caressing the chestnut hair, he nodded his thanks to the man close by. For Emerson Cod had seen the hazards that lay ahead as he reached them, flashing like a broken stop light, and reached her first. He had become tangled in the flailing limbs that would have caused Charlotte Charles to rejoin the land of the dead, just as the festively dressed deceased fellow slumped across her feet.
One foot of the aforementioned splendiferous and now forever solemn fellow was sliding like a marionette with cut strings for longer than was tasteful or normal for a corpse to coast cleanly, due to the wheels attached to the heavy boots.
“Well. Merry Christmas, here’s your regularly scheduled body. We should be glad he wasn’t tinseled to death,” Emerson complained with a sigh. It wasn’t like last year’s murders, so it had that going for it.
The put upon Pie Man could feel an annoyed look contemplating crossing his face while they considered options, just as he knew that Chuck must be preemptively thinking ‘don’t scowl, you’ll stick that way.’ However, when one had just found the corpse of someone in an unanticipated Santacide, it was difficult to keep a face free of scowls or petulant looks. Santacide warranted scowling faces the world over. He patted a piece of plastic, imagining it was Chuck’s hand…a piece of plastic, which he kept nearby lately for just such an occasion. Well, not a Santacide. Just difficult times, when he was uncertain as to whether stroking the palm of a glove would elicit a smile, or an accidental second, permanent death for his precious Chuck, due to that ever so tiny hole that marred its surface.
The trio returned to staring down at the corpse for a long moment, before the silence, which had grown overwhelming, was finally punctured by a voice.
Gumshoe Emerson Cod pondered the luck, both good and bad, that had brought this corpse upon their doorstep, as the Pie Maker drew nearer to giving the body a swift poke. He shook his head. It shouldn’t be done here, out in the open where someone might see.
Whatever Jolly Old Saint Nick had been doing that night, did not seem especially directed towards gift giving. A defensive wound and bruise on the arm and throat respectively, cord almost tied into a magnificently large bow around the throat and reindeer antlers piercing cleanly through the chest, well. These things did not point towards a calm, peaceful hug as you were ushered to Death’s waiting arms.
It was fortunate indeed for the trio that Olive Snook, persistent waitress to the Pie Hole establishment, was away for the holidays. Randy Mann had dragged her away on a holiday filled with taxidermy and romance...with the promise that the two would never overlap during intimate moments, following a near miss with a stuffed chipmunk overseeing the scene, and a negligee.
“Flyin' Fish of Finkleson's Fjord. Damn it!” While the fjord did, in fact, have trout and mutated minnows, and several larger than usual breed of goldfish, none of them flew. It was an urban legend that made the rounds throughout the town, and nobody knew the origin of—but it still sounded great to Emerson’s mind.
So, they all mused with trepidation. It was another one of those days, was it?
“Right,” Ned began with a shake of his head. “If the dual roller skate impressions are any indication, then the killer of Santa’s identical twin was also on roller skates? A bigger pair, since it looks like horror movies with the werewolf tracks, with the footprints slowly turning into different prints. Bigger prints. Or, in this case, bigger and taller prints.”
“He went that way, to the south side of the block away from the Pie Hole…unless those tracks are backwards. Which really isn’t likely, not even a little.” Unfortunately, the trail that led ‘that way’ had been obscured, covered by snow falling in immense clumps. Unless their pace quickened, they would lose sight of their killer. Just…not so quick that it would lead to them sliding across the ice and into the path of an oncoming semi in their last moments. End up on their very own slabs in the morgue.
It was the sort of thought tangent Ned regularly observed, given the strangeness of his life. And unless someone else out there had a magic touch, unless someone formed a super powered group to save the world weekly, then there was nobody who would briefly steal them from Death’s door to ask them questions. They would remain embedded in Death’s bosom.
Now what should they do about getting the body out of there?
“I’ve got a van and gurney,” Emerson offered with a sigh as he aided Chuck away from the ice with concern. At Ned’s stare, he shrugged. “What? We find dead people, sometimes. I borrowed it from a guy that owed me one. We aren’t always going to meet them after the cops find them. My car’s too small to cart around the recently deceased, and I refuse to get that man’s blood on the upholstery. Or on my coat. Your pie freezer’s the midway point until I get things ready, and we get to the coroner’s!”
They weren’t bringing a dead person back to life inside the Pie Hole’s freezer, at least. Police and health inspectors couldn’t possibly be dropping by on a day like this, between the ice, snow, and holiday season. Not again. What sort of world was it that the three of them were actually contemplating chipping in to help with the purchase of a hearse?
Carting a dead body into a place dedicated to serving delicious pie wouldn’t look good once the police came into the picture. Ned didn’t want to be falsely accused of this unique method of death, just as he disliked being accused of drowning Billy Balsam in a vat of bubbling taffy. The current circumstances didn’t involve sweet confectionaries or not-so-sweet competition.
Chuck quickly placed an old jump rope around where the body was once located once the plan was in motion. She thought it was better than a chalk outline for those working undercover. There might be fewer questions requiring answers they weren’t willing to give, if any innocent types should happen by. Her heart went out to the saccharinely sweet Santa symbol, slain sadly on Christmas Eve.
--
“Did anyone see?” Ned knew that it was suspicious being seen with improvised methods of dragging a body, even as his grip on the gurney’s handle slipped, allowing the still form to tumble terribly haphazardly along the edge. Emerson successfully prevented more movement by grasping the rear of the reindeer horns, which were not, currently, peeking through the suit.
The fact there was a corpse in this room, this bakery, this Pie Hole, would make his customers believe he put people in his pies. Or it would, if he happened to be open today. Which he wasn’t. This wasn’t Soylent Green, he wasn’t Mr. Sweeney Todd of Fleet Street. The health inspector would be upset if he so much as entertained a niggling notion like that prior to another upsetting return inspection. People weren’t in his pies, just his freezer! Only one body could fit at a time. How close the deceased in question was to his pie making process—even if it wasn’t currently in use due to the holiday season—was completely and entirely irrelevant.
“No, because if they’d seen us we would have been told by the police when we saw them. We’re going to leave this sucker here on the morgue’s slab when we’ve got our answers. And then move on,” Emerson ground out with a shudder, as he threw down a glove. They had come in the back way. He hoped good karma was in store for this. One and all were wearing the preferred winter ensemble, as was appropriate in these frosty winter months. Any gore accumulated could be disposed of elsewhere, maybe outside of town. Buried in quicksand, sucking down the evidence on the other side of the country. Uncertainty as to their next move grasped Emerson Cod then, causing him to fear this was neither smart nor good.
Still, whatever kept them in business was the thought of the day, as the feeling was shaken aside. If they were observed or followed by a drunken reveler, perhaps Drunken Dan Deerling, it was doubtless not to be believed.
Ned looked from one friend to the other with the utmost of seriousness as he leaned against the cold wall of the morgue. “Okay. I’m more a wry chuckler over in the corner than a ho-ho-ho belly laugh kind of guy. So if he’s the real Santa Claus, I’m not going to replace him. That’s just a warning before I do my thing. My name is not Tim Allen, and I did not distract him just as he hit a patch of ice when he was delivering his toys. I will not risk giant Dobermans attacking and mauling me, or people with shotguns. Lily is scary enough. No offense, Chuck.” Lily and her trusty old rifle would frighten anyone, be they large and hulking, or tiny enough to fit into your pocket.
Charlotte Charles was not one to argue about the impressiveness of Lily’s gun. “None taken,” she said with a weak chuckle.
If it weren’t for this body, and the need to shovel the walkway, they could have watched the snow falling gently from the comfort of their warm beds. A veritable snow coma.
Ned wisely retreated to a safe distance in one swiftly smooth motion, which would resemble frantic scrambling backwards to any onlookers. A shared look between Ned and Charlotte Charles showed that they were remembering her own violent return. No person would be grabbing at articles of his clothing, a loose scarf or button, on this day.
“You two bond over the scariest stuff,” Emerson muttered. It was like an anniversary for them or something every single time he touched a dead body.
The man on the table gasped, flinging an arm out in self-defense, before realizing he was no longer in the killer’s hands. Emerson glanced at Ned, muttering ‘good call.’ “Okay, people, we’ve only got sixty seconds,” he reminded the Pie Man. “No stupid questions, no going over our limit, no killing me.”
As Ned resurrected the once jolly man, so too did he bring back what that man was affixed to. The befuddled reindeer, life having balefully, brutally been shortened with a rifle and an enthusiastic, but lonely and morbid taxidermist, now rejoined life…as naught but a head.
A head with no view but that of the red suit dangling before its eyes. It snorted, moaning in fear and bafflement before giving up its futile efforts to wrest itself from the clutches of whatever beast may have held it.
The Pie Man blinked once as he tilted his head, taking in the sight before his disbelieving eyes. Charlotte Charles gasped, stopping herself just short of going to calm the animal, understanding the danger and lack of time. She instead awed in wrenching sympathy at the brutally befuddled animal, while Emerson Cod raised his eyes to the ceiling in a blatant silent plea of ‘why me?’ that ended with a sigh. So that was two chances to kill him, he thought bleakly with a huff. “I’ll watch the timer. Hurry it up before old Rudolph eats him.” The timer from his kitchen was placed, easily viewed, on the closest table.
The merrily robed man craned his neck over one shoulder as best he could, consternation apparent. He wanted to get away, but that was impossible.
Charlotte Charles, compassionate no matter how humiliating the conga line of death could be, placed a hand upon his cheek gently to redirect his attention. Their time was limited thanks to the distraction. But what was his name? She’d call him something related to the clothing he wore. “Sir…Mr. Kringle…could you tell us who did all this to you? Well, not who almost put you into the freezer section of a pie place, that was definitely, a hundred percent our fault, so sorry if you’re colder. The rest involving who killed you!” She had spoken the last rapid fire, desperate not to waste time. The deadline inched closer.
Before he answered the first question, she asked another major one. “Was your death an accident or a murder? Because people can fall off something tall, lose a boot, get strangled by the nearby Christmas lights, and swing and swing until they slam into the formerly hanging reindeer head in the alley!”
“My real name’s Jolly Jim Jiminy. Yes, my parents named me Jolly, but call me Jim,” Jim corrected quickly. A thick layer of frost had gathered around his now blue lips from the conditions of his death, but as he began to speak some began to crack and flake off. If one looked carefully, beneath the knotted cord one that nobody dared to remove one could make out the deep, mottled and sickly purple-grey bruising from strangulation. A few sickly, wet inhaled gasps here or there thanks to the difficulty of speaking that accompanied a partially crushed windpipe were to be expected, but he handled it admirably. What other choice did he have?
“Yeah, I saw him and yeah it was murder. If I’m dead. Happened after I left the roller derby, when I was on the way to the mall Santa gig. It’s why the beard’s longer than most, I bruise like a peach and that sucker can blunt the impact. But I had a plan!” He hurried onward, explaining all at a manic, frantic, increasingly distressed pace. He didn’t know the rules of the game, but knew he couldn’t be long for this world with antlers through the chest.
Simultaneously, at the back of his mind, the recently deceased man came to the realization that his Über-Life Life Insurance Policy had been up for renewal in just two weeks. There would be a furious CEO shaking his fists at the sky, railing against the loss of a client.
The seconds were ticking down with great care, in the hopes that come one minute Jolly Jim Jiminy wouldn’t be there. Or not his spirit, at any rate.
The facts were these. Jolly Jim Jiminy had the loftiest of ambitions, and a stolen ruby he hoped to use to reach them. He wanted to open a year-round entertainment soiree of Santa Clauses, all focused on entertaining a particular set of clients. A particular breed of client, which desperately wanted to get a movement started, that would end with the use of his newly created invention. An invention to make everyone have the same white beard as he so desired to grow himself. Even women, and children, for two and a half weeks, long enough for the Christmas season to come and go. Children nestled snug in their beds, kept warm by an itchy white beard. That’s why he wanted the ruby, but his opponents needed it for real things like keeping a roof over their heads.
The inspiration had come from that unlikeliest of culprits—the Chia Pet.
A movement would allow the elves of mall Santa Clauses the world over to rise up and be proud to wear their tightly binding green tights, clutch their jangling bells proudly, and try to make something that was ridiculously awkward not nearly as awkward. It would be a trading emporium in donating the toys of children to people who wanted to collect the toys the children were not prepared for. How this might be achieved had involved a spider web that continually branched off, somehow involving betting on him losing in each round of the Ruby Red Rocking Roller Derby.
While he collected payment, payment was also due from other quarters, eventually resulting in the loss of more money than Jim Jiminy had, between donating to actually needy children.
Loan sharks came next. A man named Snuffy had been his go-between until he washed his hands of the chaos…and Jiminy Crispies revealed his hand. The loophole, seen in the finest of fine print and a Christmas tree decoration, was death for Jolly Jim Jiminy.
Emerson’s befuddled, awestruck whisper of ‘What the hell?’ at this juncture went largely unnoticed as brains not newly resurrected tried to grapple with the truth. A truth they weren’t sure they could handle.
A truth that made them wonder just how the world would look if the man was successful, and Chuck had a beard.
The timer finally dinged, shaking them from the stupor the news had brought with it. With a second fleeting brush of a magic finger, trophy animal and man crossed over to the other side together. Emerson wiped his brow. They were safely pining for the fjords now. He sighed with heartfelt relief, another person (namely him) saved from a stupid death, another mess. At the thought of the next step for them, he sighed again. “Next time it’s a major holiday, just get the fool to write it out. We can pin it to their lapel or collar, and be done with it.”
At least it wasn’t the real Santa. Then they’d be locating workshops, and cracking a whip to make real tiny elves work double time to pick up the slack.
Ned was primarily stuck on the killer’s very name. A name all of his friends knew. “His…his name is Jiminy Crispies? When he isn’t the Gingerbread Man or the Santa Slayer secretly slaying sliding Santas from roller derbies, committer of Santacide in our fair town. That’s…I always say that name, Olive always says that, people say that when they don’t want to say that other big guy’s name in the presence of certain people. Certain people like nuns and elderly women, and tiny dogs. Did his parents know that when they picked it?”
While it left the heads of Ned, Emerson, and Chuck whirling with bafflement, they knew they could dump the details onto the police, and allow them to untangle it all. If they were forced to know more details, they could learn whether or not Ned’s particular set of skills extended to holding successful séances by himself, knowing what he knew about his life-giving touch. Or if that would result in scenario that involved the messier apocalypse of the live agains synching up with the spiritual realm, pouring demons out the wrong end, and making him responsible for Hell on Earth.
The intent beneath the convoluted plan was honorable, provided you squinted between the lines and tilted your head at just the right moment. They were free and clear to scram now.
But still, they wanted to find Jiminy Crispies themselves. Plus the coroner was in just the next room, waiting to talk to them.
--
The coroner walked through the newly remodeled swinging doors, then, disapproving eyebrow (and eyes) looking on disapprovingly. Emerson had his own keys by this point, he’d seen to that. “Even strange Death doesn’t sleep on Christmas,” he sighed as he sank into a chair. After the body was delivered, he had looked in at the antlers, the Santa costume, the wheels, and the lights, which would have blinked so merrily if they had been placed upon a tree and not around a throat, and merely nodded in resignation. He’d seen stranger ways for people to go out in Coeur d'Coeurs.
A fleeting smile was shot in the private detective’s direction, before the look they knew best returned to his tired features. He knew the way of things. “And, I see, neither does Emerson Cod, waiting for a cut of action for solving it.” Emerson did, indeed, have a hand outstretched for the reward money. At the chiding remark he casually placed it back on the desk.
The private detective passed the coroner a slip of paper with a shrug and passing smile, belatedly realizing he hadn’t committed the other man’s name to his memory.
Excuses like he hadn’t had the time, or he immediately thought of him as Sir Coroner just wouldn’t cut it. Luck was with him, however, as the man always had his nametag on his chest. Even if he did behave coyly to Emerson Cod’s mind, covering it with a stack of papers in amusement.
“There was a note in his pocket,” he sighed. “Told us everything, and I mean everything. If you found him laid out like that, the main suspect.” Before he had died, with mere seconds to spare, they’d managed to get the guy to scribble out who had done the dastardly deed. Sure, it looked like chicken scratch, but a doctor could decipher the wall of text.
It was amazing how fast a man could write when Death itself was nipping at his heels.
Wryly, as he pushed up his glasses, Silas Syl (for that was his name, Emerson finally read) replied, “Mmm hmmm. Even the answer to life, the universe, and everything?”
“Not that,” Emerson Cod frowned. “That’s not due until the dolphins leave. More like names, dates, times, weapons…although, you can probably see what did him in just fine.” At least it wasn’t exploding pop-up books.
“I’ll just get word to the police force to get to the House of Gingerbread.” All assumptions were that there would be a distinct lack of evil witches being shoved head first into ovens, or little abandoned children gnawing off the front of the place. It was gingerbread in name only, the better to prevent mold or weather related mishaps. Nobody needed a lawsuit from a piece of gingerbread landing on someone’s head.
Someday Silas Syl, coroner for the conundrum causing corpses of Coeur d'Coeurs, would ask the big questions. On the day Ned and Emerson couldn’t talk their way out of telling the truth in a way that either satisfied the man or just kept him entertained, things would get really rough for everyone. Maybe. This crafty man already suspected his methods. You just never could tell if someone was going to scream about that dreaded Z word, flail and grab a shotgun—or blink calmly—or sell the story to the media.
“Are you three pretending to be experts in Santa Clauses that have been impaled and strangled today? Santacide, you called it. Or are you long lost Christmas elves today?” One hand was calmly held up to halt any explanations well in advance. Christmas was one of those days when you just didn’t want to know. The others were still back there anyway, ready and able to sneak out the back way to the car. Even if the sneaking was obvious and noisy. “Don’t tell me, just get yourselves out there and get to it with the whys and wherefores while I’m distracted and staring pointedly at the flowers that I know shouldn’t be blooming in December. The plastic ones, half shaped like roses.”
He had been tempted to see what they got up to in those little morgue visits that always hit the jackpot, but decided he just didn’t want to be the one to ruin the streak of cavalierly solved formerly due for the unsolved bin cases that had overjoyed so many policemen and morgue assistants around the city. Not today. He knew they hadn’t slain Santa on this sacred day. He didn’t know the methods to their obvious madness, but it worked…for now. “I’ll just leave the name and address of the perpetrator on the bulletin board now that you’ve mysteriously cracked it,” he muttered. He had some dry Christmas chicken to work on eating.
They knew the way out. And they would probably grab the killer before he got the hell out of Dodge.
--
Another not-so-strangely festive residence, this time with stranger overtones. Gingerbread overtones somehow made into a façade across the front of the house. “I don’t think this is another dead end,” Ned muttered unnecessarily but matter-of-factly as he took in the sight.
Indeed, it wasn’t a dead end. Due to an all-encompassing obsession with gingerbread, which had started in childhood, when he had nearly burned his house to the ground at the age of six, Jiminy “Gingerbread” Crispies, Slayer of Santa, had reshaped his home into the semblance of a giant Gingerbread Man. The elements were not kind to it, causing it to become crumbly.
Why weren’t they waiting for the police to come down to The Gingerbread House again? Oh, that’s right. They only had the word of a twice dead man dressed as Saint Nick, and they couldn’t be certain if the right fingerprints were on the lights until later. That, and Ned seemed to consider it a personal crusade to know as many facts as he could, since the deceased party had been found on his doorstep. Plus a few feet, once you turned left into the alleyway. Digby accompanied them, nobody having the heart to leave the pooch home alone. Chuck had been sneaking him dog treats the whole ride over.
So that was how the Pie Man and his friends came to be knocking firmly, if nervously, upon the door to a place that was, in all probability, closed. With a knocker in the shape of the Gingerbread Man just to keep the theme going.
Or not, Emerson amended mentally. A rather tall man who bore a strong resemblance to Lurch opened the door with a jerk just as he had been preparing to suggest they wait until regular business hours. Behind him, he dragged two large gingerbread decorations. Or, at least, he fervently wished they were merely headed for the side of the road for an advertisement, and not destined for anything more insidious. For instance, being repeatedly beaten against someone’s head.
Emerson was startled from his reverie when Ned and the gingerbread fellow simultaneously shouted “You!” For Ned had been witness to snow crashing down upon him earlier. Before Digby became his early warning system. The stranger had appeared frazzled, frantic, and just plain frightened.
“Yes, me,” Ned frowned. “I’m working on the avalanche thing,” he hurriedly added, before wondering why he was apologizing to the man who was the top suspect for the killing of a Santa with incredibly strange intentions. “You said your name was Darren Durwood III.”
“Thanks,” the other man shrugged. “It makes getaways harder if you give a real name. And yeah, I did it. I killed Jim. The stuffed animal head was an accident. I—I was going for the ruby, you know? But couldn’t find it!” This was a man moments from cracking. “The ruby was in the light, right? The one place I didn’t look?” At their nod, he sat down on the front stoop and continued, “I just…panicked and ran, and then the snow fell down and I ran some more.” Was he merely moments away from the shedding of a tear?
Nobody knew what to do—they had expected guns and running. Madcap hijinks filled with a dash of terror.
Just for extra guilt, Ned declared, “Because of you, I will never be able to hear Santa Claus Is Coming To Town without thinking of what was behind my Pie Hole. Dead.” The lyrics were warping within his mind. Seeing a mall Santa was fine—a Rolling Roller’s Roller Derby mall Santa might take some time, if it weren’t a rarity already. There wouldn’t be sugar plum fairies dancing through their heads next year. In their place would be figments of Santacides.
Digby, standing calmly at Chuck’s side until now, gave one warning growl.
There was the gun.
Nobody made any sudden movements. Emerson gave him the once over, asking, “Gingerbread shaped, huh? Specially made for the Gingerbread Man?”
“Right,” he grumbled. He didn’t seem to know what to do next. One death was enough for him, and bullets from that sort of gun would point a giant neon arrow straight at him. Emerson didn’t have to tell him that, he seemed to get it.
“Give it—now,” Emerson ordered. The fool didn’t even have his finger on the trigger yet. Disorganized criminals were great for business. He calmly plucked the gun from his hands, staring at the uniqueness of it. “You aren’t a super villain, and this ain’t Gotham City. You might be new here, or you might just be bored, but theme guns aren’t usually good things around here. Unless you’re completely into wearing a costume or cape?”
“I don’t have a Pie Gun. Never will,” Ned said with a wry, yet oddly resigned twitch of a smile. While he secretly wanted one deep down in a place that would never see the light of day without extreme measures like a truth serum being devised, it would only be ludicrous to own one. Well, more ludicrous than usual, he granted.
The dulcet tones of screaming sirens filled the air then, getting louder as they drew nearer. They were signaling the summons from Silas Syl, coroner, to the strangest death of the day, had been heard and received. Here would be cranky officers. It looked as though he would turn himself in willingly without his toys…he was currently slouching against the wall, resigned to his fate.
“You’re goin’ to jail for Santacide,” Emerson said as he kept a firm grip on his arm until the men could get out of their vehicles. “Which…since it’s not the real Santa, gives you about the same as a regular murder rap. A few centuries longer if he’d been the real guy, with them somehow getting around the human lifespan, making it feel longer.” He shrugged. “Elves.” And if they dared to joke about payment in cookies and milk, well…there would be Hell to pay in Coeur d'Coeurs on this sacred Santa holiday.
“Hands on your head! Step slowly away from the gingerbread and keep away from the crumb bullets,” one officer called out. He had lived in this town long enough. Nothing shocked him anymore. For all he knew, there could be a detachable piece of pastry rigged to explode when the oven reached the right temperature.
As he was led away in handcuffs, Jiminy Crispies pleadingly whispered to Ned, “Take care of my Gingerbread Statues. Make sure nobody shatters them when the Roller Derby expands.” He was led to a squad car before anyone could reply with an affirmation or rejection of the idea.
Ned frowned, wondering how it would expand all through town, streets, and boulevards. Could a roller derby be created inside someone’s house, without the customers falling down the stairway? It would all lead to broken necks, and great deals of agony. It was all just a crime of passion, spurred on by mad science, greed, and a heaping dollop of Christmas terror.
Thanks to the murder of Jolly Jim Jiminy and a tiny red ruby, Jiminy Crispies—aka Darren Durwood III—was now squarely on Santa’s naughty list.
“I was honestly afraid we would have to follow him to the Ruby Red Rocking Roller Derby…and join in one of those rock ‘em, sock ‘em times on the rink.”
Emerson, however, merely chuckled. “It’s not as bad as you think.” He paused, and reconsidered. “Maybe it would be for you,” he shrugged. “My mom went undercover at one of those. I watched, being a bit too young for there. According to her.” He had even included it in that pop-up book he’d made for his missing daughter, with one scene of his mother elbowing a beefier woman while he carried the camera. “They don’t all want you dead, or maimed. Just a slim minority. Usually the hard nosed ones, in some cities I could name, haven’t checked them out here outside of that guy.” Before his next words, he chuckled evilly. “I’ll get you a copy of the rules, and some knee pads.”
“Please don’t.” Ned was not begging, he told himself. He wasn’t. He was merely requesting flatly, but insistently. He was positive that Chuck, however, would pay to see that. Even if she would never admit to it, he still knew. “If they broke my hands, I couldn’t make pie. Pie is my livelihood.” That would, he hoped, deter Emerson. Briefly. Until a case required it, and oh, God, would he even regret bringing up the topic.
Even if he knew he was joking.
Mostly.
He was pondering the preciousness of the season’s developments; he was grateful to be among people he didn’t have to explain his hang-ups to. He also pondered the amount of snow that had fallen over the course of their investigation, and how long it would take to navigate their way home. He hoped to divert all thoughts from roller derbies he would fail miserably on the course of.
The Pie Maker had embraced the Christmas spirit…or just given it a good pat on the back…and was looking forward to the rest of the holiday season. So long as there weren’t any other dead people lingering hidden along the sidewalk.
“So, who’s up for this particularly peculiar Pie Man’s special Christmas pie? Pecan Pumpkin Pie with little strawberries.” Formerly rotten since they were now out of season, resurrected with a touch to juicy perfection. It could transform into a romantic dinner for two…make that one, as he could never participate in the tasting. He could only watch ensuing pleasure developing like an old-fashioned Polaroid picture across Charlotte Charles’ beautiful face.
“Oh, my, yes. Yum,” Chuck agreed with a smile, always ready for a custom Christmas dessert from her Ned.
Upon the eventual notice in the pages of the News of the World News of the death of Jolly Jim Jiminy due to the efforts of Jiminy Crispies, alias Darren Durwood III, the offices received approximately twenty-five letters devastated by the death of Saint Nick, and thirty-five asking who would be crowned his replacement. Several citizens from the Elderly Townsfolk Center of Coeur d'Coeurs contained the suggestion that his successor be that of a handsome young man, a pie maker whom they had seen wearing the green tights of holiday cheer with great care in another holiday year.
He turned them down with great haste, fearing someone might one day die upon his lap, resurrecting and thereby killing one of the other children or parents before it could be rectified. Or, if he were out shopping, Emerson. There was only so much progress you could make, so far up the slowly moving escalator and through the stores you could get in under a minute, even running. There was only so far you could dash through a parking lot if you were close to the doors.
Chuck’s first thought had been to agree to become a Christmas elf despite Ned’s turning down the offer. Her second thought was the chances of Vivian and Lily seeing her increasing greatly unless she were the one wearing the snow white beard and padding, risking being crushed in a stampede of horror as people recognized her, and the consequences of those actions.
Olive Snook would happily agree to be an elf in her stead, upon returning from her Christmas vacation. Even if was post-Christmas by then, there would always be next year.
no subject
I haven't read any Pushing Daisies fanfic before and you nailing the narration so well reminds me of how much I miss the show.
Well done.
no subject
Yes, it was one of those that was sadly gone too soon. Even if I didn't get into the show until a year after it was cancelled, I loved it.