Midnight Mischief at Gingerbread Square
The devastation was complete. Across the elegant table inside the Darlington Hills Banquet Hall lay the ruins of Izzy Frost’s once-exquisite gingerbread village. Miniature walls crumbled into spiced debris, spun-sugar windows had melted into distorted pools, and delicate royal icing decorations were smeared like snow across the white tablecloth.
“I’m so sorry, Izzy,” I said, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I know how hard you worked on this.” The elaborate display—an enormous gingerbread castle surrounded by a miniature Christmas village—had taken her three weeks to construct. As the interior designer overseeing decorations for the annual Snowflake Festival, I had commissioned Izzy, knowing her reputation as Darlington Hills’ most talented gingerbread architect.
Izzy stared at her ruined masterpiece, now a wasteland of broken candy and crushed dreams. “The Snowflake Festival opens in three hours,” she sobbed. Her hands trembled as she lifted a fallen lamppost, its striped candy surface warped beyond recognition. “Two hundred people will be here, expecting to see my village as the centerpiece.”
Queenie Harris, the banquet hall’s owner, hurried toward us, her expression twisted with confusion. “Hadley? Izzy? I heard crying—” She stopped abruptly at the sight of the sugary carnage.
“This was deliberate,” Izzy said through clenched teeth. “Someone wanted to destroy my work.”
I removed my winter coat, draped it over a nearby chair, and turned to Queenie. “I finished the decorating and left at nine last night. Did anyone else have access to the hall after that?”
“Yes,” Queenie said, whipping out her phone. “And believe me, we’ll find out who did this.”
Fifteen minutes later, three more people joined us in front of the wreckage: Nicole Chen, the banquet hall’s ambitious new event coordinator; Thomas Brooks, whose family-owned candy store had recently lost considerable business to Izzy’s modern bakery; and Robert Martinez, the night watchman who’d served at Darlington Hills for three decades.
“My midnight and 3 AM rounds showed nothing unusual,” Robert said, consulting his logbook. “No signs of forced entry. The place smelled like peppermint, but I didn’t think anything of it.”
Nicole stepped forward with her phone. “I was here until one, arranging the lighting. Look.” She displayed a photo of the intact village, its white sugar surfaces shimmering unnaturally. “Perfect when I left—I even posted it on our social media sites.”
“I came by at four to deliver candy canes and gumdrops for the gift bags,” Thomas said quietly. “But I swear, I only used the service entrance and went straight to the storage room.”
I circled the table slowly, noting how the castle had fallen. Pausing at scattered peppermint shards, I knelt to examine a peculiar puddle of icing. My gaze traveled from the walls to the windows, then up to the ceiling.
“Was the heater turned up last night?” I asked.
“No,” Queenie replied. “We keep it off overnight to save money. I only turned it on fifteen minutes ago.”
I picked up a piece of fallen gingerbread, holding it up for everyone to see. “I know exactly what happened—and who’s responsible.”
How did Hadley identify the culprit? (Scroll down for the answer!)
Story Copyright 2024 by Emily Oberton
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Answer: Hadley knew Nicole Chen was the culprit. The key evidence was in the lighting she’d arranged “perfectly” at 1 AM, and then failed to turn off. She didn’t realize the spotlights she positioned above the gingerbread village would create a deadly combination.
The evidence Hadley gathered told the story of a gradual collapse from heat damage rather than deliberate vandalism: the melted spun-sugar windows, the warped lamppost, the smeared royal icing, and the peculiar puddle of icing.
Nicole’s social media photo actually helped prove her guilt—the castle’s white sugar surfaces shimmered unnaturally under the lighting she’d arranged above the village—something any experienced event coordinator would have known to avoid with sugar-based displays.
Nicole’s rush to document her “perfect” setup for social media revealed both her pride and her inexperience.
Want to dive into a longer cozy mystery? Follow Hadley on all of her adventures in the small town of Darlington Hills! Get started today with the first book in the series, Lemon Yellow Lies.
Hadley Home Design Cozy Mysteries
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