Claus for Celebration

by Laura Durham

"We all have keys," Kate said, reminding me again I should probably change my locks.

  "Maybe it's Fern?" I had a good feeling it wasn't Richard, since he'd mentioned giving Hermès a bath when we'd talked earlier. I knew the little dog's bathing ritual included a hot oil treatment and a blowout, so Richard's evening was booked solid.

  "Yoo hoo," the voice called through the door.

  "Leatrice," Kate and I said at the same time.

  Kate motioned to the door. "If you don't open it, she'll just use the key you gave her."

  "I didn't give her a key," I reminded her. "She made one using her spy key mold."

  Kate rolled her eyes. "You know I don't know any of my neighbors on a first-name basis. You should try it."

  "I think that ship has sailed," I said as I opened the door.

  Leatrice clapped her hands when she saw us. "Oh, good. You're both here. I need you to give me your honest opinion on my caroling costume."

  Her green velvet hoop skirt swung from side to side as she entered my apartment, causing us to move out of the way. The matching cape was lined in white fur, as was the ruffled velvet cap that flopped around her face, and her hands were buried inside a white fur muff.

  "It's very..." I began.

  "Green," Kate said.

  "Too green?" Leatrice asked. "My honeybun is wearing a red velvet suit and a red ribbon around his top hat, and I was going to put Hermès in green and red."

  "Hermès is going caroling?" I asked.

  Leatrice bobbed her head up and down, and her cap sunk lower on her forehead. "He loves Christmas carols. I haven't run it by Richard yet, but I'm sure he'll agree once he sees the tiny top hat I found."

  "As long as you make sure I'm there when you ask him," Kate said.

  Leatrice looked us up and down, taking in our attire for the first time since walking inside. "Where are you two off to dressed like Johnny Cash?"

  Kate looked down at her outfit and mouthed, Johnny Cash?

  "Just a work thing," I lied.

  My neighbor narrowed her eyes at me. "Kate would never wear this much clothing for a work event."

  She had a point. Even though Kate's black pants and scoop neck long-sleeved bodysuit were tight, they did cover her from ankle to wrist. With the black knit cap covering her blond hair, she looked every bit the cat burglar. Emphasis on cat.

  Leatrice rubbed her hands together. "You're doing something covert, aren't you?"

  "No," I said, at the same time Kate nodded her head.

  "I knew it." Leatrice bounced up and down on her toes, making her hoop skirt swing back and forth. "Is it a stakeout? You know I'm excellent at stakeouts."

  "It's not a stakeout," I told her. The last time we'd staged an unofficial and probably illegal stakeout, it had ended in my car getting torched and the wrong person being arrested.

  "We're trying to find some stolen flowers," Kate said, shrugging when I shot her a look. "What? She would have dragged it out of us, anyway. I'm just saving us all a few tedious steps."

  "Stolen flowers?" Leatrice rubbed her chin. "Do you have an idea where they are?"

  "We have a guess," I admitted. "But we aren't certain, so we're going to scout it out."

  "Understood." Leatrice spun around and headed for the door. "Give me five minutes, and I'll be ready to go."

  "Wait," I said, waving my hands. "You can't go with us."

  "Why not?" she asked. "I have all the spy and surveillance gear you could ever need, plus I can be your wheelman."

  "We don't have a wheelman," Kate said.

  "We don't need a wheelman," I insisted.

  "What if we can't find parking or have to park blocks away?" Kate asked. "This is Georgetown, after all."

  "See?" Leatrice beamed before turning and hurrying out the door and down the stairs, holding up her voluminous skirt as it filled up the width of the staircase. "You need me."

  I sighed, shooting Kate a look. "What I need is to have my head examined."

  "You plan weddings for a living, Annabelle," Kate said. "That's a given."

  Chapter 24

  “Why are we turning here?" I asked Leatrice, clutching the passenger side door handle as she took a wide turn in her ancient Ford Fairmont, the back of the long car seeming to swing around a few seconds after the front.

  "To pick up Fern, of course," Leatrice said, adjusting her black fedora and craning her neck around as Kate slid from one end of the back seat to the other. "You okay back there, dear?"

  Kate gave a thumbs-up as she righted herself, leaning her head between the driver's and passenger's front seats. "Glad I skipped dinner."

  Leatrice glanced over, her face lighting up. "Should we stop for a bite to eat first?"

  "We're on a mission to steal back an entire floral order," I said, trying to keep my impatience in check as I eyed the petite woman in a trench coat. "We're not going to the theatre. And tell me why we're picking up Fern."

  "He's an excellent lookout." Leatrice didn't slow the car as we bumped up and down over the cobblestoned street and occasionally ran up onto the old trolley rails. "Don't you remember what a help he was when we staked out that murder suspect?"

  "I remember him napping," I said.

  Leatrice ignored me, pointing ahead of her to a figure all in black standing on the sidewalk. "There he is."

  Fern waited outside his salon, although the lights inside the narrow, glass-fronted shop were out and it looked locked up tight. I blinked a few times as we slowed down next to him.

  "Did you tell him to dress like a cat?" Kate asked.

  Leatrice stopped the car, waving at him through the window. "I told him we were going to be cat burglars."

  "That explains the dominatrix outfit," I said as Fern hopped in the back seat in his skintight black catsuit complete with Catwoman face mask with small pointy ears.

  "Nice suit." Kate nodded appreciatively. "I might have to borrow it from you someday."

  "It's a perfect size eight." Fern smoothed one hand over the shiny fabric. "Just like me."

  I twisted around to face the back seat as Leatrice pulled away from the curb. "Just to be clear, we are going to Brianna's office to look for the flower order that was stolen from the wholesaler this morning. It's crucial that no one sees us and even more crucial that no one tells my fiancé about this."

  Fern mimed zipping his lips closed. "You can count on me, sweetie. I'm the soul of discretion."

  Coming from Georgetown's biggest gossip, this was rich.

  "Are you sure you should keep secrets from your fiancé?" Leatrice asked, darting a glance at me as the car bounced over a dip in the cobblestones. "My sugar muffin and I tell each other everything."

  "Your sugar muffin isn't a cop," I said. "If you were secretly part of an acting troupe that competed with his business, it might be a different story."

  Leatrice tapped her chin. "I never thought of that."

  "It's not that I like sneaking around behind Reese's back," I said. "But he has to do everything by the book, and if we wait for things to go through the proper channels, our flowers will be dead and our client's wedding will be ruined."

  Kate popped her head between our two seats again. "Nothing motivates Annabelle like the possibility of a wedding disaster and an unhappy client."

  She was right. Not only was an unhappy client bad for business, I couldn't stand the idea of not being able to solve a problem. The urge to fix things seemed to be baked into my DNA.

  "I'm with you, sweetie." Catwoman reached up and patted me on the shoulder. "I can't do a bride's hair while she sobs uncontrollably about having no flowers for her wedding. It would stunt my creativity."

  "So what's the plan?" Leatrice asked, hooking a left and pumping the brakes as the car dipped down a steep side street.

  "The building is around the corner on the right," I said, "but I'd park around here."

  Leatrice veered down a narrow alley, and we all sucked in our breath as the car barely missed scraping against one of the bric
k buildings. She jerked to a stop before hitting a green dumpster.

  I braced my hand on the dashboard. "This works." I peered up at the back of the four-story buildings pressed close to each other. "This must be the back of Brianna's building."

  "She's on the top floor of one of them," Kate said. "I know it from the front, but they all look the same from back here."

  I caught sight of Fern's mask in the rearview mirror. "Maybe we should approach it from the back. That way we won't be seen."

  Kate nodded and pointed to the metal stairs clinging to the buildings. "The fire escapes."

  Leatrice shuddered. "Again?"

  We'd had to hurry down three flights of my rusty fire escape on her wedding day, and I knew it wasn't her fondest memory of the day.

  "You should stay here,” I told her. "I need you ready to fly when we come out. Just in case we set off alarms or there are guard dogs."

  "Guard dogs?" Fern put a hand to his black, leather chest. "Kitty doesn't like dogs."

  "I doubt there are dogs," Kate said. "It's Georgetown. Everyone has purse dogs like Hermès. The most they could do would be piddle on your shoes."

  I turned and leveled a finger at Fern. "You'll stay outside and be our lookout while Kate and I go inside."

  "And how are we getting inside?" Kate asked. "And please don't say bobby pins."

  Leatrice held up a wallet-sized leather pouch. "Use my lock-picking set."

  I stared at her. "Should I ask where you got this?"

  She beamed at me from under the brim of her fedora. "Amazon. They aren't illegal."

  "I'll bet using them is," Kate said under her breath.

  I reluctantly took the pouch, feeling like I was falling farther down the rabbit hole. "Let's hope we don't need it."

  Kate opened her car door. "Let's do this before I come to my senses or lose my nerve."

  "We'll be back," I told Leatrice as I followed Kate's lead, joining her and Fern at the bottom of one of the fire escapes. Although the metal stair systems were no longer required for buildings in DC, most of the older buildings still had them, and Georgetown was chock full of old buildings.

  "Here goes nothing." Kate clambered up onto the hood of Leatrice's yellow car, then onto the top of the dumpster before climbing the ladder to the first landing of the fire escape.

  I followed her, my arms shaking from both nerves and exertion as I pulled myself rung over rung, and Fern brought up the rear. Climbing the stairs was easier, but I was still breathing heavily when we reached the top. Luckily the lights were off in the building, since it wasn't residential and the businesses had closed for the day, so we didn't need to worry about anyone seeing us.

  Kate's hands were on her hips as we gathered around the tall windows at the top. "I'm pretty sure this is it."

  I squinted to see inside, but all I could see were dark shapes. "I don't see the outlines of branches or bunches of hydrangea, but they could be in another room."

  Kate tugged at one of the windows, and it lifted with a groan. "It's open!"

  I paused with a hand on her arm, waiting for the sound of an alarm, but none came. "And there's no security system."

  "At least not one we can hear," Fern said in a stage whisper, glancing around us as if there was anyone else in the alley to overhear us.

  I stole a quick glance down at Leatrice's car, her hat clearly visible through the windshield, and instantly regretted it. Four flights felt a lot higher than it sounded.

  Kate pulled the window up all the way and ducked her head inside. "I'm going in."

  "Stay out here and keep watch," I told Fern, who nodded solemnly and folded his arms over his chest, before I crawled into the building behind Kate.

  When I was inside the room, I paused to let my eyes adjust to the dark. "Where are you?"

  "Over here," Kate said.

  I tracked her voice to the open door and saw her silhouette appear. We left the room that appeared to be storage, with nothing but a few boxes and a bookshelf, and proceeded down the hall. I heard Kate's shoes tapping on the hardwood floors and realized that even her black boots had heels.

  As we approached the front of the building, lights from M Street spilled in through the large windows, and it was easy to see sleek desks against the walls and a large drafting table in the middle of the room. No surprise that even in the dark, the furnishings looked chic and cutting-edge.

  "No flowers," Kate said.

  Crap. My initial nervousness was replaced with disappointment. If the flowers weren't here, where were they? I was still convinced Brianna had taken them, but now I had no idea where she'd stashed them.

  "Now what?" In the shadowy lighting, Kate's face looked fierce as she scanned the office space. "Time for a little payback?"

  "No. All I wanted was our flowers. We aren't here for revenge. It's not our style."

  "It might be my style," Kate mumbled, thumbing through a pile of papers on one of the desks. "You aren't the one whose tires were slashed."

  I understood Kate's desire to extract a pound of flesh, but we weren't criminals, despite all current evidence to the contrary.

  "Psssst."

  I hurried back down the hallway to where Fern's head protruded into the room. "What's up? Is someone coming?"

  "I hoped you two were coming," he said. "I'm getting bored out here."

  I glanced back to Kate coming down the hall. "There's nothing here. We're ready to go."

  Fern held out a hand for both of us as we crawled out the window and slid the glass back down. Despite the fact that we'd come up empty, I was glad we'd managed to get in and out of Brianna's office without anyone being the wiser. Reese would never even need to know about tonight, I thought as I wiped my hands on the front of my black jeans.

  "Um, Annabelle," Kate said, leaning over the metal railing. "Where's Leatrice?"

  Chapter 25

  I followed Kate's gaze over the side of the fire escape. Leatrice's car was still in the same place, but even from four stories up, I could see that she was no longer sitting in the driver's side.

  "Where could she have gone?" Fern asked. "She was just there a second ago."

  I made a quick scan of the alley but didn't see my neighbor's trench-coated figure anywhere. I tuned back to Fern. "You didn't see her leave? Or hear anything suspicious?"

  He shook his head, his eyes wide behind his mask. "I did poke my head inside the building when I called for you, but before that, nothing."

  My pulse quickened as I started down the escape. "She couldn't have gotten far."

  "She wouldn't have wandered off," Kate said, falling in step behind me. "You know she takes her job as wheelman seriously."

  That was what scared me. I knew Leatrice wouldn't have walked off. Not when we were relying on her as our getaway driver. At least we weren't in need of a fast getaway.

  When I reached the bottom, I descended down the ladder and dropped onto the dumpster.

  "Annabelle?"

  The muffled voice came from beneath me. I crouched down as Kate landed beside me, her boots making a loud echoing sound on the metal lid.

  "I think she's inside the dumpster," I said, holding a hand above me to stop Fern from jumping down.

  "What?" Kate dropped to her knees. "Leatrice? Are you in there?"

  "Yes, dear. I'm so glad you're back," she said, her voice faint through the steel.

  I waved for Fern to join us, then we all hopped from the dumpster onto the hood of the car. We lifted the lid and peeked in. Sure enough, Leatrice stood in the dumpster, along with piles of birch branches and bundles of white hydrangea.

  "Our flowers!" Kate nearly dropped her side of the lid as she gaped inside.

  I coughed from the putrid scent of garbage and flowers that had been sitting inside a metal box all day, while Fern put a hand over his mouth and gagged.

  "Brianna stole them all right," I said. "She just didn't bother schlepping them up to her office."

  "She put thousands of dollars worth of
imported flowers in a dumpster," Kate said, shaking her head with a hand clamped over her own nose. "Now I'm really sorry we didn't trash her office."

  "How did you think to look in here?" I asked my neighbor.

  "It was the strangest thing," Leatrice said. "I was sitting in the car waiting for you when this Santa walked up and tapped the top of this dumpster."

  Kate exchanged a look with me. "A Santa?"

  Leatrice nodded. "I didn't see his face because of the beard and hat, but he made sure to catch my eye before pointing to the dumpster. I got out, but he was running away, so I peeked inside and found all of this. Unfortunately, the lid was too heavy for me to hold up and I leaned over too far."

  "Brilliant, sweetie," Fern said, through his hand. "Too bad we're going to have to wash you in tomato juice to get rid of this smell."

  "Are you okay?" I asked.

  She nodded with a smile. "Just fine, dear. The flowers cushioned my fall."

  "At least she found them," I said under my breath to myself as much as to anyone, as Fern and I held out hands to pull her out.

  "I think you mean Santa found them," Kate muttered.

  I was pretty sure Leatrice didn't hallucinate seeing Santa, but why was someone dressed up as Santa creeping around Georgetown at night, and how had they known something was in the dumpster? Something we were there to find? My first instinct was that it had been Kris, but his Santa suit was still with the cops. Of course, he could have gotten a new one, but just how many Santa suits were floating around in the city for everyone to be turning up in one?

  Leatrice passed us a bundle of branches wrapped in brown paper. "Let me hand you the flowers before you pull me up."

  Kate took the bundle and jumped down from the hood. "We can put these in the trunk."

  "I told Buster and Mack that I'd call them if we found the flowers," I said. "They can bring their van."

  "Do you really want to hang out in the alley any longer than we need to?" Kate asked as she leaned into Leatrice's car and popped the trunk. "Besides, have you seen how big this trunk is?"

  Knowing the overall dimensions of the old car, I suspected it was sizable. "Okay. I guess the flowers can't get banged up any more than they already have."