Naughty or Nice

At the Whit's End Christmas party, Zoe Grant arrives limping and admits it hasn't been her week: she fainted in science class a few days ago, and she hurt her ankle in what she calls a completely separate incident. Whit explains that since no night worked for everyone, there will be two gift exchanges, and tonight's gifts are anonymous with a fifteen-dollar spending limit. Just as Connie finishes handing out presents and Emily Jones realizes she doesn't have one, Jay Smouse bursts in late, announcing, "I'm here! Christmas is saved!" and slips his gift into Emily's hands.

The unwrapping quickly gets strange. Zoe receives a lovely necklace, Wooton gets a wireless microphone with a built-in speaker that he gleefully uses to make announcements all evening, and Jason opens a wristwatch, all clearly over the spending limit, which bothers Whit, who made the rule. Connie gets a fifteen-dollar gift card. Emily opens Jay's present to find $2.75 and a used ice cream scoop. Whit receives a car key with a remote clicker and a card thanking him for all he's done, which embarrasses him even more. Then Jay opens his gift: a broken Elvis record with a note reading, "I'm gonna get you." The party goes quiet, and Whit borrows Wooton's microphone to ask whoever sent it to come forward.

The guests split into investigations. Connie and Jason wonder who could afford to give Whit a car, since he has helped so many people. Emily and Wooton discover the remote doesn't light up, and when they pry it open, they find a round magnet where the battery should be. Delighted, Emily declares it a Christmas mystery, and she happens to be a detective. Meanwhile Jay lists everyone who might want revenge on him, since his pranks have wronged nearly everybody in the room, from insulting Emily at an aquarium to mailing loose ketchup to every Burger World employee, which got mail carrier Wooton briefly suspected of foul play. Connie interrogates Wooton about the car, watching his ears, which twitch when he keeps a secret, and clears him.

When Emily learns a replacement remote battery costs exactly $2.75, she confronts Jay. He confesses that his odd gift wasn't from his couch cushions at all: knowing Emily loves mysteries, he had a secret helper design one for her, and he only did what he was told. In exchange, Emily teaches him to look for opportunity, means, and motive, though Jay glumly admits his suspect list is long. Emily cracks her puzzle at the ice cream counter, where the menu board lists a brownie fudge sundae at $265 because its decimal point, the round magnet, is missing. Adding ten cents of cherries makes $2.75, and inside the cherry canister she finds the battery.

Off to the side, Zoe finally can't stand watching Jay worry. She makes him unfold the threatening note, which continues, "I want to get you one that's not broken." Zoe was his gift giver; she tripped on the way over, hurting her ankle and breaking the record, and she promises a replacement. She also knows Jay's secret: he got detention for being late to class because he waited outside the nurse's office to make sure she was okay after she fainted. She informs him she will never, ever be his girlfriend since he annoys her 99.6 percent of the time, and Jay replies, "I'm focusing on the .4%." Still, she admits she likes having someone who would take a detention for her.

Emily summons everyone to the parking lot, where Whit presses the remote and hears beeping from his own car. The mystery key is a duplicate of his, disguised with a strip of silver tape, and Whit immediately knows Jason is behind it. On the back seat sits the real present: a framed copy of the proposal Whit once wrote to save the Fillmore Recreation Center, the mission statement of Whit's End, signed by many of the people Whit has blessed over the years. Everyone else asks to add their names, and Jason has left room for them all. Connie asks whether the fake-car trick was risky, but Jason knew his dad would love this far more than any car. Whit quietly invites Jason and Connie to the house later for a little something extra, since he didn't want to break his own spending rule in front of everyone. Nobody kept the fifteen-dollar limit, Whit observes, because people simply wanted to show how much they mean to each other, and that is one of the great parts of Christmas.