“A sort of Santa Hood?” Nellie said quickly. She was almost too eager to lay claim to the name she’d coined.
“Stealing Christmas from the haves to give to the have nots? Perfect,” Mel said.
People laughed at the idea—I did too. Ever since she came up with the idea Nellie had been dying to find a way to put it out there without implicating Billy herself.
“Are you saying that you think Billy is the thief?” I asked.
She puckered her face. “I guess he could be. Robbing is extreme, but it would depend on how strongly he felt about the poor deserving Christmas goodies. He might fancy himself as a Santa Hood, robbing from those that have and giving to those that don’t?”
“You really think Billy Jasper could commit all those crimes without getting caught?” Nellie asked. “I’m not suggesting he wouldn’t want to do it, but I think his sneaky quotient is pretty low.”
“You are saying he didn’t do it?” I asked.
“I’m tossing out an idea—that if Billy were the thief he would’ve been caught long ago. Even Digby Hayes would have nabbed him.”
There was recognizable truth in that.
“Remember how easily he got caught when he ate the mushrooms that Mrs. Lacey’s class were using for and art and science project?” Pete said. “She said that all she had to do was mention mushrooms and his face gave him away.”
Selina scowled. “Yeah. I can’t really see him as a successful thief. But what if whoever is the thief doesn’t want the decorations up and gives them to Billy and he passes them out. He might know who the thief is.”
“So a team effort—team Santa Hood?”
“Exactly!”
“That means my argument about it being the Grinch would work. She takes the stuff and gives it to Billy. If he gives it to the poor then Selina’s question is answered.”
We all considered it for a time before Betina stated the obvious. “I don’t think that makes a lick of sense,” she said.
“Why is that?” Mel asked.
Betina shook her head. “Mel, if a person, any person, was stealing Christmas things because seeing them up offends or irritates them, why would they give them to Billy? They’d know he gives them to other people and they put them up somewhere else. If you put than much effort into stealing Christmas you want to wreck it, not just to relocate it.”
Sanders burst out laughing. “Point to Betina. That’s game and match against the Santa Hood team idea. Seems to be a solo operation.”
“And while we are on the subject of Grinches, you can’t discount Art Granger,” Pete said.
“Art?” I asked. “What’s the reasoning for making him a suspect?”
“Not that he hates Christmas, but he can’t stand seeing people be wasteful and he’d like to teach us all a lesson. He’s got totally different reasoning, but at the end he is just as much against Christmas as Janet Tikkermann. Either one could be the Grinch.”
“He hasn’t said a word when he’s been here and heard people refer to Janet Tikkermann as the Grinch. He just smiles.”
Pete grinned. “Why would he challenge that? He could do the deed and let her take the fall. Those two sure aren’t friends. If he was merrily stealing Christmas and saw she was getting the blame, even just from us, I doubt he’d mind that at all. They are oil and water, those two.”
I had to smile. The expression of oil and water was one of my daddy’s favorites. He never like the old ‘cats and dogs’ metaphor. “Our dogs and cats always get along better than most people do,” he’d say. “I figure that a metaphor, if it’s gonna mean something, needs to be pretty generally true.” And the fact that oil and water didn’t mix met his standard.
“I’d have to agree that there is no love lost between those two,” I said.
Angela Ladecky had been hovering in the front doorway listening and waiting for a lull in the conversation. Now she wandered in the room carrying a bag of muffins that she began setting out. The smell of blueberries was strong and made my mouth water. “I must admit that I’m not so keen on Christmas myself these days,” she announced.
“Oh Angela,” Dolores said, “why on earth not?”
“It’s the shapes of things.”
“The shapes?”
“Try as I might, I can’t find any Christmas shape that works for muffins. Trees, Santas, even bell shaped muffins crumble as soon as you pick them up. You saw how bad those trees I brought in were.”
“I can see how that would be stressful,” I said. “But other holidays are a problem that way aren’t they? I’m trying to think of what you do then. I mean muffins just don’t hold together well in fiddly bits like arms and legs.”
“Or even broomsticks. That’s absolutely true, Savannah. It’s an incredible challenge and mostly I haven’t stepped up properly. I’m ashamed. For Thanksgiving I wound up making blueberry cookies shaped like pilgrim hats. It was an awful time. I’m just not good at cookies.”
“I remember those, Angela,” Pete said. “I didn’t know that’s what they were though—hats.”
She sighed. “I’ve made lots of other things, simply because I’ve been unwilling to acknowledge the difficulty of dealing with holiday symbols when what you do is make muffins. So, I’ve decided to be true to my muse. I’m sorry to be a disappointment. I just made these sparkly. It’s the best I can do to capture the Christmas spirit. I hope no one minds.”
No one did. I got Angela a cup of coffee and she settled into a seat while the rest of us evaluated her muffin offering. Within minutes the entire bag of muffins had found their way into grateful mouths that muttered their appreciation despite the ordinary muffin shape. I thought they were even better than normal but that was probably my imagination.
“You don’t always know how people really feel about a time that has lots of emotions attached to it,” Nellie said.
I glanced at her wondering where in our multi-threaded conversation, that comment fit in. She grinned and gave a subtle Nellie nod toward Betina.
“Or what they might do,” Angela said. “If you watch those reality police shows, well you can see that seemingly ordinary people are capable the most dreadful things.”
“I don’t need television to teach me that,” I said. Nellie grinned at me. I doubted that anyone but me noticed her head nod. I couldn’t imagine that Nellie seriously thought that Betina might be the thief. She was a little young and flighty, but I couldn’t picture her stealing anything. No, the head nod had been a reminder of our conversation about Betina being down and that we didn’t know why. I was pretty sure it was the not knowing that had Nellie bugged.
“It’s upsetting to watch those programs,” Angela said.
“That’s why the television has an off switch, Angela,” Nellie said, shaking her head. “Don’t watch.”
“But, Nellie, I don’t know the show will upset me until after I’ve seen it,” she said.
“How is the play coming, Pete?” I wanted to change the topic, at least for a time. Subject matter can get toxic if you don’t get away from it periodically and give it a chance to breath. I knew we’d be back to the thefts soon enough.
“Pretty well,” he said. He looked up from the trim he was giving a man named Clark who lived in Paudy but drove a delivery truck and always got his haircut when he was in town. I suspected he had a crush on Pete, but Pete was so caught up in Leander he probably didn’t notice the way the man looked at him, or think about someone coming all that distance for his haircut. “I think some of the others on the cast resent me getting the part, or the way I got the part. It gets a little intense at times when we aren’t actually working on the play. I’ve gotten some looks that are unpleasant.”
“The price of success?” Nellie asked. “Maybe they are jealous of your role.”
Pete put down the scissors he’d been using and reached for the electric trimmer. “Jerry has been with the cast for a number of years and a lot of them are his friends. I think it’s more that—they resent me because
they are unhappy Jerry isn’t there.”
“That’s schoolyard stuff,” Nellie said. “Let it go by you.”
“Doing my best,” he said.
And so our day passed in the usual mix of hair cutting and coloring, nail grooming and gossip. Of course, no matter what subject came up, soon enough we’d be back on the topic of who would steal Christmas. By the end of the day, with everyone tossing in some speculation on who was the guilty party, I think we’d successfully determined that everyone in town with the possible exception of Officer Digby Hayes, had plenty of reason to run amok stealing presents and decorations.
I think I even heard Nellie getting into the spirit of things by suggesting reasons we should suspect her as the culprit; Betina put forth the idea, being silly, I hope, that I might have insured my Christmas decorations and then stole them for the insurance money.
Fortunately, we don’t record our sessions or crackpot ideas. Once in awhile someone gets very serious, or lands on a good, thoughtful insight into something, but at Teasen and Pleasen most of the talk is more to pass the time with wild speculation. We don’t go in for the serious backbiting gossip that sometimes circulates. At least I hope we don’t. And Christmas crimes, courtesy of Santa Hood or some nefarious duo, was too weird to inspire that sort of thing anyway, and too juicy not to talk half to death.
Toward the end of the long day I found my brain bubbling with concerns. I wanted to find a way to make her birthday special. Having your birthday on Christmas Day seemed like it was almost guaranteed to have it get lost. We could give her presents, but everyone was getting presents. We could bake a cake but the world would be overfilled with good food that day already. I was looking for something that would make it about her and separate from all the Christmas chaos.
One thing I could do was partition the day. I had decided that Christmas morning would be Christmas, but the afternoon would be Sarah’s time. The morning we’d celebrate Christmas but in the afternoon I’d put the focus on her. I’d see if I could get some of her friends to come over to the house.
Having a plan made me feel better. It also made me aware that making Sarah’s birthday special was just the tip of the iceberg that was the things bothering me. Sarah and I were getting close. Very close. But I had no real relationship to her—nothing legal or even moral. I’d agreed to take care of her, but she was becoming a big part of my life and I needed to know if Sarah and I were going to continue as a team. I owed it to us both not to let things drift.
I went to the telephone and dialed the only number I had for the one person who could answer my questions. It was disconnected. The number was a dead end.
“Who are you calling?” Nellie asked.
I rolled my head, indicating the room full of people and gave her a look she’d understand. When we’d been in high school we used it to warn each other that a teacher was listening, or maybe a boy that we were talking about. It let the person know to wait before blurting something out. These days, free of the tyranny of teachers we used it just to mean that someone was around we didn’t want to talk about whatever it was in front of. In this case, I just meant it was private, not for public consumption. I wanted Nellie’s advice but not in a room full of semi pro gossips.
Nellie nodded, picking up on my meaning. “Listen, Savannah, we never get a chance to have girl talk anymore. Why don’t you and Sarah come out to my place after work tomorrow? We can have a couple of beers while Sarah runs wild with my kids. With luck some of Sarah’s smart and civilized manners will rub off on my boys.”
“That sounds good to me and I think she’d like that.” Her kids were rather wild, but they were really good kids, and quite a bit smarter than Nellie pretended. She was justifiably proud of the website the boys had put together for the family distillery.
“It’s a date then.”
I sighed with the thought that going to Nellie’s was the only date looming in my future. That made for a sad bit of commentary on my life. Not that it wasn’t a full life in many ways, but in terms of romance… well, the pickings in Knockemstiff weren’t exactly robust.
Still, Knockemstiff was where I called home and I wasn’t motivated to leave.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Open Mic
“Rudy took the boys to Paudy for a horror movie marathon,” Nellie said when we met at the Bacon Up that night.
Leander and Pete were sitting in the next booth, chatting animatedly. Pete smiling might be a small thing in the universe of things, but it was good to see he was rallying from the suspicions about his role in getting his leading part.
“They are running a horror marathon for the holiday season?”
She shrugged. “They’ve already run through all the sappy Christmas movies.”
“And you’d rather be here?” I asked Nellie. “Open mic is better than horror movies?”
“Trust me… being in the same room with those four when they are watching classic horror movies is not my idea of fun. It’s like going to a sporting event you know nothing about with rabid fans. They get out of their minds, chant things I don’t get, and half the time they are reciting the lines with the actors. It’s only a fifty-fifty proposition they won’t get tossed out during the first movie. It all depends on if the rest of the crowd is like them.”
“Like the fans for Rocky Horror Picture Show?”
“Right, but this is for WEST OF ZANZIBAR.”
“Isn’t that a Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, and Bing Crosby movie?”
“No that’s ROAD TO ZANZIBAR. This is Lon Chaney—a classic horror flick from the twenties. He plays a crippled magician avenging his wife’s death. Sort of.”
I laughed. “Considering the low level of tech in those, I’m surprised the kids like them.”
“They adore them. I think they appreciate the silly story lines and the bad tech.”
Margie came by to take our orders. With all the focus on food that went with the season, I was feeling heavy, so ordered a salad, which had Margie and Nellie both staring at me.
“A salad and what?” Margie said.
“Just a salad? It’s Thursday. I’m saving room for a beer at the open mic,” I said. “Maybe two.”
Margie nodded. “Save me a seat. I intend to sneak over to the tavern on my meal break to hear Leander play.” She said it loud enough to make sure Leander heard.
The sentiment earned her a big grin. “Smart girl,” he said, letting her know he’d heard her.
“I love the blues.”
“And I love fans. Do you have a favorite tune? I’d be glad to play it.”
“Walking My Blues,” she said.
“Are we talking Blind Boy Fuller or the often confused Robert Johnson tune.”
“Blind Boy,” she said firmly.
“The real title is Keep on Trucking, Mama. I can do that.”
“How about both?”
“You got it.”
“Be sure you wait until you see me to play them. It’ll be dead here right after the open mic starts so I won’t be late.”
“I can’t start without my fans can I?”
So we chatted and ate.
“How was Sarah’s sleepover?” Nellie asked.
“I think she has a new best friend.” I told her about the plans.
“That’s good.”
“I still haven’t heard from Bea though.”
“Think you will?”
“If I don’t, I might have to hire someone to track her down.”
“I’ll bet Woodley would help.”
“That isn’t his line of work.”
Nellie stared at me, then shook her head. “The man digs you girl. He would do it for you. All you’d need to do is ask him.”
“I don’t know why you say that.”
She grinned. “I say it because it’s true.”
I wondered. But asking him about finding Bea could be a good idea. If nothing else he would know someone in New Orleans I could hire. It seemed likely they were still in the city. They
hadn’t had much money and probably had found jobs there.
I hoped.
CHAPTER NINE
Friday, December 15: Nine days before Christmas
“The world can be a cruel and miserable place,” Pete said as he came in the next morning.
Nellie looked up from her coffee. “Guess who had a rotten time last night. And to be so grouchy on a pretty December day.”
He made a face. “Sorry, I guess that’s a crumby way to say good morning. And it is beautiful outside.”
“So tell us what makes you sound melodramatic as heck for a Friday morning. Where does that sour face come from?” I said.
Nellie spun her chair around. “Sit down and tell your nosy aunties what’s wrong.”
Pete sat. He didn’t look like he hadn’t slept much and he sat there gathering his thoughts.
“Just spill,” Nellie said. “No speech.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I thought having this lead role in the play would be exciting for you, but you look down in the mouth.”
“Having that part is exciting, Nellie Bell. It’s a good part and I know I’ll do it well. Unfortunately that’s overshadowed by all this vicious gossip about what happened to Jerry.”
“Gossip? What are they saying?”
“Some people are saying that I deliberately caused Jerry’s accident. I’ve gotten some phone calls.”
“How would you do that? Voodoo? Did you cast a spell on him?”
“Well apparently Digby’s official report said that someone deliberately loosened the step that made him fall.”
“That’s awful.”
“Digby isn’t saying much more because he doesn’t have any evidence as to who did it, but the fingers are being pointed at me.”
“Wow! Why would they say that?”
“Only because his broken leg handed me the big part. That and my big mouth. The day before the accident, I made the mistake of saying that I knew the lines better than he did and suggested that if he got sick the play would be the better for it. I didn’t mean for everyone to overhear it. That’s coming back to haunt me and it hurts that people think I’d injure someone just so I could have his part in the play.”
Holiday Hooligans: Cozy Mystery (The Teasen & Pleasen Hair Salon Cozy Mystery Series Book 3) Page 7
