Jingle Spells

By Christine Pope

Sweet baby Jesus, someone’s stolen a lot of Christmas dough!

All is calm and bright as Globe, Arizona’s holiday celebrations approach. Selena Marx should have known it wouldn’t stay that way. The painted snowflakes on her shop window are barely dry when her best friend, Josie Woodrow, bursts in with news that the baby Jesus is missing from the crèche in front of St. Ignatius.

Selena has enough on her mind without having to use her psychic powers to suss out the culprit. Her boyfriend Calvin Standingbear’s parents are still on the snow-covered fence about accepting her, which throws a dimmer on the town’s highly anticipated Festival of Lights. And when Calvin springs a surprise on the solstice, Selena realizes she has some work to do to reconcile the two men in her life: Calvin, and her cursed cat, Archie.

The last thing she needs is a spontaneous vision that indicates the baby Jesus theft was more than just a prank. And if someone doesn’t spill the beans soon, someone’s getting away with...well, not murder (this time), but a whole lot of dough — and we’re not talking cookies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christine Pope
• Release date: Dec 1, 2021

Christine Pope

A native of Southern California, Christine Pope has been writing stories ever since she commandeered her family’s Smith-Corona typewriter back in grade school and is currently working on her hundredth book.Christine writes as the mood takes her, and so her work includes paranormal romance, paranormal cozy mysteries, and fantasy romance. She blames this on being easily distracted by bright, shiny objects, which could also account for the size of her shoe collection. While researching the Djinn Wars series, she fell in love with the Land of Enchantment and now makes her home in New Mexico.

Book preview

1

Invasion of the Baby Snatchers

The front door to my shop was flung open, and Josie Woodrow, real estate agent extraordinaire and current head of the Globe Chamber of Commerce, strode inside, lifted her hands, and exclaimed, Baby Jesus is missing!

I’d been just about to take a sip of peppermint latte, my current seasonal indulgence from Cloud Coffee. However, I set the go-cup back down on the counter and said, Um…what?

Baby Jesus, she replied, now looking irritated, her light blue eyes snapping. She approached me where I stood behind the store’s counter, then stopped and crossed her arms. A Christmas tree pin made of multicolored rhinestones glittered on the lapel of her bright green jacket. Josie was serious about dressing for the season, and now, with the holiday only a little over a week away, she was pulling out all the stops. I went to check on the decorations at the crèche in front of St. Ignatius, and Jesus was gone!

This was my first Christmas in Globe, but I’d known as soon as all the decorations started going up right after Thanksgiving that this was a town which took the holidays seriously. All of Broad Street had holly leaves and red velveteen bows attached to the street lamps and even swagged across the roadway from building to building, and the Chamber had politely informed all of us shop owners that we needed to decorate our front windows to keep the spirit of the season going.

This request applied even to pagan heathens like me, although Josie — who’d written the letter — had been careful to refer to them as holiday decorations without specifically calling out Christmas.

Which was fine. I loved the winter holiday, even though I celebrated Yule on the solstice, rather than Christmas Day. I’d hired my friend Hazel Marr to paint the front window of Once in a Blue Moon with a glittering border of snowflakes, and I’d bought ornaments in silver and gold to highlight my current display of books and minerals and jewelry.

One of the showpieces of the town’s Christmas spirit was the large crèche that took up residence on the front lawn of St. Ignatius, complete with a carved Mary and Joseph and the three wise men, along with a complement of barnyard animals.

And of course, baby Jesus, who was placed in his cradle every year by the church’s presiding priest.

I’m sure it was just kids, I told Josie, doing my best to sound both concerned and soothing at the same time. This was her first year as president of the Chamber, since she’d taken over those duties after the former president, Miriam Jacobsen, had been arrested — and now convicted — for conspiracy to commit murder. Her trial had taken place at the beginning of December, and she was currently spending ten years in the Florence correctional facility…a far cry from the stately house where she’d lived on Bailey Street up on the hill.

In fact, Miriam’s sister Beth Faulkner and her nephew Jack had descended on Globe a few days earlier, apparently to pack up her belongings so the house could be sold. Town gossip reported that Miriam had used up most of her savings paying for her defense, and so there was no way she’d be able to hold on to the house during the tenure of her prison stay, even if she managed to get released early for good behavior.

Considering what I knew of Miriam’s standard haughty attitude, I had a feeling that a good behavior release wasn’t in the cards for her. Prison guards tended to take a dim view of that sort of conduct.

Josie sniffed. Well, that was my first thought, too. But Henry has talked to the most likely suspects, and they all said they don’t know anything about it.

Henry Lewis, Globe’s chief of police — and a man I tended to regard as my nemesis, since he wasn’t exactly a fan of the way I kept solving murders under his nose — was exactly the sort of person I’d believe had a list of usual suspects among the youth of Globe. No doubt he thought that riding skateboards on the sidewalk or sneaking a cigarette under the bleachers during a football game was just the first step in a life of crime, and escalating to stealing Jesus out of the St. Ignatius crèche seemed like a logical progression of those misdeeds.

It’s got to be a prank, I said. Even if the kids Henry talked to didn’t know anything about it, there has to be someone who does. Maybe someone is trying to rattle your cage.

That suggestion made Josie draw herself up to her full five feet, two inches, light blue eyes snapping. "I do not rattle," she replied sternly.

Most of the time, I would have agreed with that self-assessment. In this particular situation, however, while I wouldn’t have said Josie had bit off more than she could chew, I still knew she was probably feeling just a little over-extended. She’d taken over running the Chamber in addition to managing her busy real estate business, and one of Globe’s biggest events, the Festival of Lights, was now only a few days away.

Held the Saturday before Christmas each year, the festival was a time when the people of Globe and the people of the San Ramon Apache tribe mingled to create an event that sounded truly special. While the San Ramon Apache tended to keep to themselves — which was understandable, since everyone in the tribe was a coyote shifter, and therefore had to work hard to make sure their secret wasn’t discovered — they did come out to participate in the Festival.

We’ve been doing it for almost fifty years now, my boyfriend Calvin had told me one night as we sat in front of the fireplace at his house. Although he was a member of the San Ramon Apache tribe, he obviously didn’t have the same qualms about getting involved with an outsider that the rest of his people did.

Too bad we had yet to get his parents on board with the idea. He’d acted as though their disapproval of our relationship was no big deal, but I could still tell it bothered him.

It bothered me, too, more than I wanted to admit. At the same time, though, I knew I had to let it go. Either they’d come around eventually, or they wouldn’t.

Anyway, Calvin had explained to me that the Festival of Lights was held in the Besh-Ba-Gowah Archeological Park, which was the site of a Salado Native American village, now more than eight hundred years old. The Salado were the people who’d inhabited the land before the San Ramon Apache moved in, although no one knew precisely what had happened to that ancient tribe. Now the site was on the National Register of Historic Places, and each December the people of Globe and of the San Ramon tribe held the festival, which sounded like a mishmash of indigenous and American activities, with Apache storytellers and dancers, and also a visit from Santa Claus and carols sung by the high school’s choir. Luminarias — paper bags weighted with sand and with votive candles set inside — were placed all through the ruins.

I had to admit that the images I’d seen of the festival online looked pretty magical, and because it was one of Globe’s pre-eminent events, people from all over Arizona came to town to participate…which meant Josie had to make sure everything went off without a hitch.

Oh, I know you’ve got everything under control, I said hastily, since one of the quickest ways to get Josie’s dander up was to suggest she didn’t have a particular situation firmly in hand. I’m just saying that it’s probably someone trying to play a joke.

She released an annoyed huff of a breath. "Well, if it’s a joke, it’s not a very funny one. We’re going to have literally thousands of people descending on Globe in just two days, and now baby Jesus has vanished into thin air!"

I allowed myself a sip of peppermint latte so I could contemplate the conundrum. Mmm…so good. I knew I was going to be sad when the seasonal drink disappeared off Cloud Coffee’s menu at the beginning of January.

But they’re coming here for the Festival of Lights, I pointed out. Are they even going to notice that the crèche at St. Ignatius doesn’t have a Jesus?

Josie shot