by Kit Frazier
Chapter Eleven
Logan had helped the Colonel set up tables around an open area around the baby grand piano so that the sitting room was transformed a cabaret complete with a cozy little dance floor.
The welcoming sleigh bells rang at the door and Faith and Ethan arrived, coats on their arms, and the sight of Faith took my breath away.
Her dark, patchy hair was growing back, her dark eyes clear and sparkling, and she wore a simple white gown with feathered wings and a tilted halo. Ethan wore a black tee shirt that read “Xmas=3xHo.”
“Faith, my ba-a-aby!” Mama sang as she planted a big kiss on the girl’s rosy cheek. “It’s so good to see you - I hope you came prepared!”
Faith blushed and ducked her head, and Ethan said, “Hey, what am I, leftover ham?”
Mama kissed him, too. “Well come on in, get some food - the Colonel’s grilled the Free World supply of jalapeno poppers!”
Logan took their coats, and they accepted a small plate of Mama’s hors d’oeuvres and wandered into the parlor.
Then Mama wiped her hands and shucked off her apron.
She turned to me. “Go get Mia,” Mama said. “Time to get dressed.”
Clairee turned to Logan. “Will you be a darlin’ and bring that box to the bedroom?”
Logan raised a brow at me.
“Just go with it,” I said. “Resistance is futile.”
“Who’s resisting?” he said. “Costumes? This I gotta see.”
#
In Mama’s bedroom, she and Clairee were fussing with their sexy Mrs. Claus outfits. I smiled.
Southern women seem to age into separate genus: the nice little old Baptist ladies who outlive their husbands, pay their own bills, eat macaroni and cheese when the money gets tight and always keep a dresser drawer clear just in case one of the progeny, or their progeny’s progeny, need a place to stay.
Then there are the wilting, pale magnolia, the Blanche DuBois types who were born to be coddled, cared for and chauffeured around, and are at a total loss as to why people aren’t lining up in droves to do so.
And then there are the Ann Richards-Molly Ivins variety, the last of the big-haired, big-shouldered broads, who can give and take a lickin” better than any big talkin”, boot-wearin” Texas boy who has the bad sense to cross them.
Then there are the women like my mother and Clairee, the mercurial, gently aging beauty queens who could arguably fit rather nicely into all of those categories.
As they pulled up their silk stockings beneath their short, red, faux fur lined, petticoated skirts, I wondered if I would be like them one day.
Mama turned to me. “Well, don’t just stand there, zip me!”
I smiled and did as she asked.
“Now,” she said, pulling my costume from the bottom of the box. “Isn’t this just lovely!”
It was lovely.
If you call dressing like a sparkly, slutty elf lovely.
“Why does Mia get to be a reindeer?” I said.
“Because she actually showed up for rehearsals,” Mama said.
I shrugged. “It’s the same every year, grapevine, grapevine, step-ball-change, kick.”
“The costumes and songs are different,” Mama huffed, tossing me a pair of green and red cheerleading panties with two white hoof prints on the behind.
“Nice,” I said. “I got kicked in the rear by a reindeer?”
Mia took a sip of eggnog and whinnied like a horse.
“I’m not sure reindeer whinny,” I said, and Mia shot me a look over her shoulder and pranced toward the full-size mirror.
I sighed while I got dressed, and visions of beauty pageants past flashed before my eyes, with Mama standing offstage saying, “Smile, baby, smile!”
“Hello…” Logan called, knocking on the door. “Jenks said to tell you he’s starting the show.”
I groaned, rolling up the sparkly, thigh high stockings. “We’re coming,” I growled, partly at him, and partly at my mother.
“This is not a way to make Number Four on my list,” I said to my mother.
She kissed my cheek and said, “A lot you know. Ready?”
I stood and made last minute adjustments, then called toward the door, “Avert your eyes.
As the door swung open, I tugged my skirt down to hide the reindeer paw-prints on my butt.
Logan shot me a wicked grin and said, “Yeah, right.”
He’d put on a Santa hat, and he looked so damn sweet I wanted to take him up the stairs and into my old bedroom.
Logan offered me his arm, a wicked grin playing at his lips.
“I didn’t know Santa was a letch,” I said and he laughed.
“A lot of things you don’t know about Santa,” Logan said, and it was my turn to laugh.
In the parlor, Beckett and Jenks were doing a pretty good “Blue Christmas,” Beckett was dressed as Young Elvis, while Jenks wailed away on the piano dressed in a white jumpsuit, ala Fat Elvis.
Marlowe, ever the music lover, lay at Jenk’s feet, tail swishing, gnawing on the ham bone Mama had given him.
Logan had set up a small card table by the fireplace for us, Mama, The Colonel, Mia and Shiner.
The Colonel stood and nodded at Logan, who turned to me and said, “If you’ll excuse me.”
And then he joined the Colonel at the piano.
“I thought Mama would let him off the hook since this is his first Soiree,” I said to Mia, who scooched her chair closer to me.
“Hell-oo-o-o-o,” Mia said. “How long have you known your mother?”
Jenks ran his fingers up the scales of the keyboard, then transitioned into a rousing rendition of Good King Wenceslas.
I sat with my mouth open as Logan and the Colonel boomed out the song about the benevolent king.
“Did you know he could sing?” Mia said and I shook my head.
“No,” I said. “I’m not sure why I’m surprised.”
The two came back to the table and the Colonel said, “Let me freshen this up,” taking Mama’s martini.
“I’ll help,” I said, scooting my chair back while nabbing my phone from my bag.
In the kitchen, the Colonel pulled an ice bucket from the freezer, and I sidled in beside him.
“That was pretty great, you and Logan,” I said and the Colonel smiled and said. “Uh huh. What’s up, Cauley Kat?”
“What? I was just saying y’all were really good.”
His sharp blue eyes narrowed.
“Okay,” I said. “I was wondering if you could take a look at something.”
I clicked on my cell phone and scrolled to the picture of the Ben Rayburn’s tattoo.
“This is like Lane’s tattoo, right?” I asked and he put on his reading glasses to get a better look at the arrowhead with three lightning bolts, and the numerical equation at the bottom.
“Army Airborne,” he said, nodding. “Where’d you get that?”
“The dead guy who busted up the convenience store robbery,” I said. “His name is Ben Rayburn, his last known address was in Fallujah.”
“An Iraqi vet,” he said and I nodded.
“Except, we ID’d him from prison records,” I said.
The Colonel frowned. “A convict who busted up a convenience store robbery?”
“Yeah, I don’t get it either,” I said.
He looked more closely at the numbers inscribed inside the tattoo.
“You run the numbers?” he asked and I nodded.
“I can’t figure them out and I’ve tried everything - Bible verses, telephone numbers, addresses…”
“Not everything,” The Colonel said, tapping the display. “Did you try GPS coordinates? Special Forces deploying behind enemy lines sometimes get tattoos that refer to their home base.”
He pulled up Google and entered the numbers. I blinked as he showed me the address on a map.
“That’s the headquarters for the Texas Rangers,” I whispered.
“Be careful with this Cauley. By now the Rangers’ll
be circling their wagons, and if this guy was undercover, they aren’t gonna want a reporter nosing around.”
I shook my head, thinking of Detective Clark. “I’m just doing my job. Besides. They’re going to have their hands full with a certain police detective who’s somehow involved in this mess.”
The Colonel frowned. “You talk to Agent Logan about this?” he said.
I nodded. “And Cantu.”
He looked at me for a long moment and said, “I know you have a lot of friends on the force, but don’t underestimate how cops react when one of their own is murdered.”
For the first time since I’d worked on the story, a streak of fear skittered up my spine - not just the shooter who’d killed Rayburn, but Clark.
I was about to bang my head on a blue wall without a helmet. Again.
“What are y’all doin’ in here - havin’ a powwow?” Mama said, poking her platinum head into the kitchen. “Come on, Cauley. We’re up next.”
From the living room I heard Jenks rolled into a jazzy Jingle Bell Rock, and I followed Mama back to the piano.
Sleigh bells rang just as we linked arms, and Cantu stepped into the living room, his eyes tired, his face drawn.
Jenks stopped mid-stanza, and every face in the room turned toward Cantu.
“Are you all right, Detective?” Mama said, and I unlinked myself from Mia and moved toward him.
Cantu motioned to me and Logan, and we followed him into the kitchen.
“Rayburn was a Texas Ranger,” he said.
I nodded. “I know.”
Cantu shook his head. “There’s more. There was no robbery. It was a setup.”
I frowned, not understanding. “Who would do that?” I said and my voice sounded small. Logan moved forward and put his arm around me.
Cantu nodded. “Syndicate. They’ve done this kind of thing before,” he said. “Test the new guys - see how they react.”
“To see if they’re cops?”
“Or to see if they’ll bleed for the team.”
“Where’s The Shooter now?” I said.
“I got him,” he said, his face grim, and I swallowed hard.
When Cantu said he got him, it meant he got him.
Mama had drifted into the kitchen, her pretty face pale, her pulse visibly quickening at her throat.
Cantu rubbed his face. “The Rangers are notifying his wife and children now.”
Light flashed, as a Ghost from Christmas past stole all the oxygen from the room, and in that instant, I saw the very young Cantu giving my mother that same news. That daddy wouldn’t be home - how she’d fainted. How our lives were changed in that moment. In that one, small blink of an eye.
I blinked and went to my mother, put out my hand.
She shook her head. Still dressed in her Mrs. Claus skirt, Mama stood silently in the archway, and for a moment, I thought her knees would buckle.
Then she cleared her throat and said, “Cauley, help get me out of this skirt.”
Then she called over her shoulder into the living room, “Stephen, get me a box, Clairee, you load up the food. We’ve got a family to feed.”
And my heart swelled.
Some magnolias really are made of steel.
Chapter Twelve
“You didn’t want to go with the Charity League?” Logan said, driving me and Marlowe home.
I shook my head. I thought about my list, and how badly I’d wanted to cross off all my To Do items, but not like this.
“I’ve got phone calls to make an obituary to write, and I just want to go home,” I said, feeling morose. I’d wanted to know the identity of Ben Rayburn, and how it was that he came to thwart a robbery.
And now that I knew, I felt sick and empty. And about to be very alone.
Marlowe had forgone the console and had squeezed in next to me in the passenger seat, accepting my weight as I leaned into him.
“Are you okay?” Logan said.
The sobbing came full force then.
“It could have been you - you could have been the one in the morgue this morning.”
He reached over and patted my back and stroked my hair and he felt so strong and solid and true.
“But it wasn’t me,” he said. “And what about you? Since I’ve known you, you’ve been kidnapped, shot at and stabbed in the ass.”
I laughed in the middle of a sob and choked. Dang, why couldn’t I cry pretty?
He pulled up the steep hill to Arroyo Trail and parked in my drive. With my seat belt still on, I opened the door and Marlowe leapt out to go pee on my neighbor’s rosemary bush.
I turned to Logan, who was still wearing his Santa hat. “Before I forget, I got you a Christmas present,” I said, and handed him the red and green gift bag that contained the coffee cup with Mama’s chocolate kisses.
His brows rose and he seemed genuinely surprised.
“What is it?” he said and I said, “I don’t know, open it and find out.”
He removed the tissue paper from the bag and extracted the cup.
“The Bill of Rights?” he said.
“Yeah, the Civil Rights disappear when you put coffee in it.”
He laughed then, deep and strong, and I thought in that moment I could listen to that laugh the rest of my life.
His smile widened and he picked up a silver-wrapped chocolate kiss. “And I get all of your kisses?”
I shrugged. “Mama’s idea.”
He nodded. “I love it,” he said, and reached over the console to kiss my cheek.
The he said, “Come on,” and he came around the truck, and he scooped me out of the passenger seat, set me gently on the ground and walked me up the stairs and to my front porch.
On the porch, I turned to face him.
“I’m coming back,” he said, and I looked up into his dark eyes and smiled.
“You’re still wearing your Santa hat,” I sniffled, and it occurred to me that he had family in Fort Worth who may or may not know he was alive.
“Hey,” I said. “If your whole family is in Fort Worth, why did you come here for the afternoon when you have to go right back to Laredo?”
He looked at me.
“Oh,” I said, and felt blood rush heat to my cheeks. “Um, you want to come in?”
“If I go in I’ll never leave.”
I nodded slowly and gave him a sad smile.
“I’m coming back, Cauley,” he said and he stepped close, so close I could smell the scent of pine and leather and something else that was pure Logan, and a tear streaked down my cheek. “I promise.”
I nodded.
“When you get inside, flick your porch light so I know you’re all right. And don’t forget to lock your door.”
And then he tipped my chin up and kissed me, slow and deep and sure.
Then he opened my front door and the dog and I went inside.
I was about to flick the light when Marlowe nearly knocked me down.
“What the - ?”
The dog raced into the open living room and turned three circles under the tree.
I stared at the twinkling lights on the spindly little pine.
“I didn’t leave the lights on,” I said, and a streak of panic stabbed me in the stomach. And then I saw what the dog had seen.
A pair of red Nocona cowboy boots.
And for the first time in my life, I knew how The Grinch felt when his heart grew three sizes.
Then I heard the unmistakable static of a .45 dropping onto the turntable in Aunt Kat’s old Juke Box, and Aretha Franklin wailed that she’d be home for Christmas.
I went to the jukebox, where Muse sat, wearing a ribbon that I hadn’t put on her, her twitching to the beat.
Marlowe yipped and danced to the music, and I noticed a Post it stuck to the colorful Wurlitzer.
I pulled it off and read, Lock your door.
I smiled then, and slipped the cowboy boots on, feeling like a real life Cinderella.
I raced outside to catch him before h
e left.
He was sitting in his truck in front of the house, grinning.
I blew him a kiss.
He flashed his headlights, backed out of the drive and was gone.
Then I went in and flicked on the porch light and left it on.
And I would leave it on until Logan got back.
And as I closed and locked the door, I knew in my heart that he that he would be back.
He’d promised.
