MacKinnon 02.5 A MacKinnon Christmas

by Kit Frazier

“Hey,” he said, closing and locking the door behind him. “What’s the matter?”

  “Ben Rayburn,” I said. “John Doe. That’s his name.”

  “Okay,” he said, sinking to his knees so he could put his arms around me. “That’s great. So why the tears?”

  “It’s just everything. He was arrested for dealing drugs, he just got out of prison, and look,” I turned the computer screen so he could see it. “That tattoo? I knew I’d seen it before. One of the Colonel’s friends has one just like it.”

  “Special Forces,” Logan said, reading the text on the monitor.

  “I had a gut feeling he wasn’t a drug dealer…” I snuffled, and Marlowe leaned in to lick the tears from my face.

  “You know,” Logan said, “he may have been Special Forces, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a drug dealer.”

  “I know. How else do you explain the drugs I saw The Shooter take from his pocket on the security video?”

  Logan tipped my chin and looked into my eyes. “Follow your gut,” he said. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

  I blinked. “A literate Fed.”

  “Don’t spread it around. So what’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know, it’s just everything,” I said, and to my horror, the tears kept coming. “I feel like such a Grinch. My Christmas cards aren’t done, I’m not dressed, you’re leaving, and I smell like a dead body.”

  He put his arms around me and he felt strong and solid and sure. “That’s in your head.”

  I sniffled. “You think I’m going crazy?”

  “Olfactory hallucination,” he said. “It’ll go away after a little while. You do smell like Vicks, though.”

  He looked around at the mess on the floor and said, “What’s all this?”

  I used my forearm to wipe my face. “My Christmas cards,” I choked out. “I hoped to get them in the mail tonight so they’d be postmarked - “

  Logan picked up one of the cards. “You’ve got the names on them.”

  I nodded, still sniffling.

  He went to the laundry room and came back with a wicker basket and began scooping up the cards.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  He looked up from the cards and grinned. “Aren’t most of these people going to be at the party tonight?”

  I blinked and nodded.

  “Go,” he said, and kissed me on top of my head. “Get ready. We’ve got a party to get to.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Wow,” Logan said as he pointed his big Dodge truck down the hairpin bend in Hamilton Pool Road.

  I started to ask him, what? But then I saw his “wow.”

  My mother’s 3,000 megawatt Christmas Spectacular unfolded on the horizon.

  Coming over the hill, even I was thunderstruck - and I’d seen versions of the vista all my life.

  It was like an MGM, Technicolor extravaganza exploded on a quarter acre of my mother’s front yard.

  “I told you so,” I said as the Lone Star-sized light show blinked in two-step time to holiday Texas music. “Mama takes Christmas very seriously.”

  In front of the wide front porch, an illuminated Mrs. Santa sat like a tipsy floozy on the porch swing, while Santa and his sled clambered about on the front lawn, pulled by a team of glittering orange longhorns.

  “How many lights are there?” he said, unable to take his eyes off the house, which looked like it’d been hosed down with holiday cheer.

  “Last year there were more than 50,000, but the longhorns are new this year.”

  Logan shook his head. “How long does something like this take?”

  I shrugged. “The Colonel starts untangling cords the day after Halloween.”

  Logan stared at me, and I had a feeling he was sizing me up, looking to see how far the chestnut falls from the tree.

  “Am I going to meet the famous Aunt Kat?” he asked.

  “She’s touring Ireland with Nana MacKinnon,” I said. “Aunt Kat’s working on her new romance series - The Rogues of Regent Street.”

  “Too bad,” he said. “I was looking forward to meeting her.”

  “Right,” I said. “Like my mother isn’t enough?”

  “I like your mother,” he said. “She’s cute.”

  I shook my head. “My mother is a lot of things, but cute is not one of them.”

  On the console between us, Marlowe was shifting from paw to paw, warbling his excitement - probably had visions of holiday ham sandwiches dancing in his head.

  Logan pulled the truck past the wide wrap-around front porch to the back of the house.

  He came around and opened the door for me and Marlowe leapt straight from my lap to the back porch, knocking over a dancing elf as he nosed open the screen door, screaming like the he was being chased by the Ghost of Christmas Future.

  The sound of jangling sleigh bells reverberated across the lawn the moment Marlowe hit the door.

  Logan raised a brow.

  “Mama has The Colonel rig the door to jingle all through the house.”

  Logan smiled and shook his head as he reached for me.

  “I’m wearing jeans,” I said. “I can get down.”

  “I know,” he said, scooping me out of the pickup anyway. “Why miss an opportunity?”

  Heat flooded my cheeks as he set me down on the crunchy, brown December grass, and I went to my tiptoes and kissed him, then realized Clairee was at the door.

  “Yoo hoo!” she caroled from the porch. “Come on in here you lovebirds - did you bring the pomegranates?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Logan said while I grabbed my purse and went for the grocery bags.

  “I got it,” he said, piling them on top of the box of costumes, cards and presents we’d brought from my house.

  I trailed along behind him, bracing myself for the holiday drama that was about to explode all over us.

  Clairee was wearing an apron imprinted with a Marilyn Monroe Diamond’s are a Girl’s Best Friend hot pink dress. She held a pink martini in her left hand and the door with her right, and as Logan reached the threshold, she pointed up.

  “Mistletoe,” she sang out, and plopped a big wet kiss, right on Logan’s mouth.

  “Hey,” I said in a mock jealous tone and then she laughed and kissed me, too.

  “Here,” she said, and wrapped a red boa around my shoulders. “Your mother’s in the kitchen.”

  Like she’d be anywhere else three hours before the Soiree.

  “Let me get those,” The Colonel said, taking the boxes from Logan. I smiled at his “Commander in Beef” barbecue apron. Mama had struck again.

  “Good to see you, Agent Logan. I see Cauley’s got you running errands.”

  The Colonel put the boxes on a chair in the corner of the mudroom and Clairee started rummaging as she crooned a naughty version of Walking in a Winter Wonderland.

  “What’s a holiday without a few errands?” Logan said, as he and The Colonel exchanged a handshake like they were old friends that melted my heart into puddle on the mudroom floor.

  Already the house hummed with activity - the sounds of Christmas music and happy chatter sent me tumbling back in time, and I suddenly felt less Grinchy.

  Logan followed me into the kitchen, where the scent of cinnamon, sugar cookies and generations of Christmas sent my stomach rumbling.

  “Agent Logan!” Mama exclaimed as she sashayed over to give him a kiss right smack on his lips. She was brandishing a wooden spoon and wearing an apron with a Grace Kelly-style strapless dress on the front, complete with pearls.

  “Get out your Chapstick,” I warned Logan. “Holidays in the MacKinnon household, mistletoe is implied.”

  Mama leaned in to kiss me on the cheek and stopped short. “Good gawd, Cauley! You smell like Vap-o-Rub!”

  Tossing the spoon in the sink, she pressed her manicured fingers to my forehead. “Are you ill? I knew it! You’ve come down with the Bubonic Plague! Clairee!” she yelled
, right in my ear. “Get me the Vap-o-Rub!”

  “I’m not sick,” I said. “I was at the morgue earlier and Dr. Marshall gave me some Vicks to stop the smell.”

  “Is this that dead person Mia told me about?” Mama said. “The young man who interrupted a convenience store robbery?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Mama rolled her eyes heavenward. “No wonder you’ve been depressed.” “I don’t know why you can’t have a normal job like your sister, Suzanne.”

  “She doesn’t have a job,” I said.

  “She’s a senator’s wife,” Mama said. “And she has three children. That’s plenty job enough.”

  I supposed that was true. Suzanne’s husband Roger was trotting his little family like show ponies to all the Houston holiday fundraisers.

  Mama reached across the counter and produced an apron with a replica of Ingrid Bergman’s scoop-necked gown from Notorious.

  “Where did you get these?” I said to Mama.

  Logan grinned as he watched me wrestle into the thing.

  “Here,” he said stepped behind me and helped me tie the back.

  “Beckett made them,” Mama said. “Aren’t they darling? Now, take this and make yourself useful.” She handed me a wooden spoon and pointed at the cookbook that lay open next to a big bowl of cookie dough.

  “That’s a cook book?” Logan said as I leafed through the pages, careful not to disturb the pictures, scraps of paper and pressed flowers tucked into the book.

  “The MacKinnon Family Cookbook,” I said, smiling at one of the pictures from last Christmas.

  “Looks like a scrapbook,” Logan said and I nodded.

  “It kind of is,” I told Logan, lifting the cookbook carefully and smiling at the scent. “It smells like Christmas.”

  Mama never made it past canapes at Miss Mona’s School for Fine Young Ladies, but the woman could bake like she’d been possessed by Betty Crocker.

  Clairee was spooning Parmesan on her famous bacony cheesy pencil dicks, and I wandered over and snitched some bacon.

  She smacked me with her spoon, then turned on Logan.

  “The Colonel is in the War Room setting up the bar,” Clairee said to Logan. “Why don’t you go help him?”

  I rose to my tiptoes and kissed his cheek and said, “They want to talk about you behind your back, which is kind of difficult when you’re standing right here.”

  I handed him a piece of bacon.

  Logan raised his eyebrows. “War Room?”

  “All the weaponry he confiscated during tours of duty overseas,” I explained. “It’s actually pretty cool. Ask him about the headhunter’s ax.”

  Logan left, and I flipped through the cookbook as Clairee handed me a martini as Marlowe lay under the table, ever alert for wayward crumbs of cookie dough or escaped bits of bacon.

  I shook my head. “I haven’t eaten,” I said and Clairee said, “Oh, piff. There’s fruit in there.”

  I shrugged and accepted the pink concoction and turned to the recipe for Bourbon Pecan Pie. If I was going to have to wear a costume and sing in front of Logan, I was going to need all the confidence I could swallow.

  “I can’t believe you sent Logan all over Hell’s half acre running your errands,” Mama said.

  “Actually, they were your errands, and he offered,” I said.

  Clairee said, “That’s all right, Cauley darlin.” God invented men to step and fetch. And just remember, men are like tile - lay “em right the first time and you can walk on them for life.”

  Ignoring Clairee, Mama continued to roll out her cookie dough and said, “What are you giving Logan for Christmas?”

  “I got him this really great coffee mug,” I said.

  Mama stopped mid-roll. “You’re giving him a coffee mug?” she said, like I’d just told her I was giving him a pair of old gym socks.

  “It’s got the Bill of Rights on it,” I said. “When you put coffee in it, the Civil Rights disappear.”

  “That’s not very nice,” Mama said.

  “Trust me, he’ll think it’s funny.” What I didn’t tell her was the real thing I was going to give him was going to have to wait. He was leaving, after all.

  “Well,” Mama huffed. “What did you put in the cup?”

  I shrugged, cutting shortening into the flour for pie crust. “Nothing.”

  Mama’s hand flew to her heart. “You can’t give someone a mug with nothing in it! Do you want people to think you were raised by wild animals?”

  “You mean I wasn’t?” I said, but Mama was already directing Clairee to raid my Christmas stocking for chocolate kisses to fill the offending mug.

  Mama was tutting about where she’d gone wrong when I moved in beside her and turned the ball of pie crust dough out on a wooden cutting board.

  I thought about Logan and the Colonel in the War Room - about all of the artifacts the Colonel had acquired, and how much I used to love to hear the stories.

  As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realize that each artifact came at a price - he’d confiscated the big AK-47 from an Afghani drug lord and the headhunter’s ax he’d acquired in Malaysia after local insurgents tried to storm the base accusing him of several serious crimes.

  “Was the Colonel really charged with killing, wife stealing and horse thieving before you met him?” I asked as she worked the cookie dough, her delicate fingers dusted with sugar.

  “Don’t be silly,” Mama said. “The Colonel never stole a horse.”

  I started to laugh, then realized she wasn’t kidding, and I remembered all the evenings Mama kept his place at the table set and the porch light on, knowing in her heart he’d be back.

  Working beside her, I pressed the pie dough into a circle. “Logan’s leaving tonight,” I said, and my voice caught in my throat.

  “Yes,” Mama said, continuing to roll the sugar cookies into submission. “But he’ll be back.”

  “And then he’ll leave again,” I said, and to my horror, a tear trickled down my cheek.

  “Here now,” Mama said in her magnolia-mouthed voice. She wiped her hands on her apron and turned and lifted my chin. “Yes, he’ll leave again, but he’ll always be back.”

  I looked into her eyes, and they were so clear and blue I thought I might find the words to the questions I’d been wanting to ask her.

  “I just - ” I started, not knowing what to say or how to say it. “How did you do it all these years, even now, when he’s consulting, and it’s even more dangerous? Knowing that he’s leaving, not knowing when he’ll be back, of if he’ll come back at all?”

  Mama went back to her cookies.

  “Remember when the Colonel went to Montana as an advisor for Homeland Security?” Mama said, and I nodded. “There was a group of separatists threatening a siege on Elk Ridge City Hall.”

  I dropped my pie crust. “I thought he was just advising. I thought it was some kind of weird anniversary vacation.”

  Mama let out an elegant snort.

  “There was a rally of about fifty people, and the rally started going violent - right there in front of the courthouse,” Mama said, incensed at the disrespect. “And Stephen just marched right up those courthouse steps, and stood looking out over the crowd.

  She shook her head. “There were fistfights breaking out, and the police had just started lobbing tear gas. They had their riot shields up and were advancing on the crowd and your stepfather…”

  She stopped fussing with the cookies, and she was looking out into space, as though she could see the scene unfolding, right there in the kitchen.

  “What happened?” I said, breathless.

  She turned to me and said, “He started belting out God Bless America.”

  I blinked at her. “And?”

  “The crowd went quiet,” Mama said. “He didn’t even need to go into the second verse.”

  “What, and they went home?”

  “Eventually,” Mama said. “But the thing is, he diffused the tension. After that,
nobody was throwing punches or lobbing tear gas.”

  “You were there?”

  Mama chuckled. “I was at the hotel on the Town Square. The state authorities misrepresented the danger, and it was our anniversary, after all. I insisted on tagging along. Saw the whole thing from my hotel room.”

  “And the Colonel just took you with him?” I said.

  “Well, the local authorities misrepresented what was really going on,” Mama said.

  “Weren’t you afraid for him?” I said.

  “Terrified,” she said.

  I shook my head. “What if his plan backfired?

  “I asked him that,” she said. “He said he had already identified their leader, and he would have cold-cocked him right in front of his followers.”

  “And that would have helped, how?”

  “Cut off the head and it has a pretty big impact on the rest of the snake.”

  I stood there, speechless.

  “Here’s the thing, Cauley Kat. Your stepfather is a very smart man. And so is your Agent Logan. They’re not going to put themselves, let alone us, in any kind of situation they can’t handle.”

  My throat went tight and I stifled a sob. For Mama, for the Colonel, and for Logan.

  Mama put her arms around me and petted my hair. She smelled like sugar cookies and pomegranates and hope and miracles. “Oh now,” she clucked.

  Then she pulled away and brushed my hair from my eyes. “Yes, they leave. And yes it’s dangerous. But I know I have always slept better at night knowing the Colonel is out there making the world a safer place.”

  I thought about Ben Rayburn being shot trying to protect a clerk, about the Colonel and his war room, about Logan leaving. I shook my head. “I don’t know if I can do this - I don’t know if I can go there,” I said.

  “Darlin’ girl, it is a done deal. You’ve been there since the day you met Logan.”

  I shook my head. “And now he’s leaving tonight,” I said. “I was kind of hoping for a miracle.”

  “Number Four on your list?”

  I blinked. “You peeked at my list?”

  “Of course I peeked at your list.” Mama kissed my cheek. “Anyway - it’s still early. You’ve got time.” She reached for a Kleenex. “Here now, you’ll ruin your makeup,” she said, and went back to her cookies.