Naughty or Nice

by Barbra Annino

  Fagan was awake and ready to go when I walked inside. “Did you find anything?”

  I shook my head. “Not a damn thing, but it had a weird feeling. All of this has a weird feeling.” I chewed on the thought for a while before I could articulate it. “Why hasn’t he attacked any of you? Why just leave or do these weird things? Everything that is being done feels very specific.”

  “Okay, well let’s talk it out. We started with dead Santa.”

  “Right. Then two broken windows and three weird phone calls.”

  “And now the four pictures. And you really can’t get around the fact this guy really has a thing for Christmas.”

  Of course. Christmas. Why hadn’t I seen it sooner? “You’re a genius, Fagan.”

  “I agree. What did I do?”

  “It’s the Twelve Days of Christmas” He looked blank. “This is a countdown. A count down to what, I have no idea. I would be willing to put money on the fact this whole charade probably ends with Gabriel’s death.”

  “So if you are right, tonight five of something will happen.” I nodded. “This is one jacked up song, you know?”

  I was on edge the rest of the day while Fagan and I tried everything we could think of to get ahead of this, but with no clues and no leads there wasn’t much we could do, but speculate—some more plausible than others. By the time Gabriel made it home from work, I had ordered pizza and had turned my office into a war room. I cleared off all my plotting boards and was ready to map out everything we knew to be true.

  He dropped two heavy boxes down on my desk. “You sure you want to spend the evening doing this?”

  “No. I would rather wait for him to kill us.” I rolled my eyes. “What’s this?”

  His left hand touched one of the boxes. “These are my personal files on my cases from when I worked in the city.” He touched the other box. “These are my Montgomery cases.”

  The three of us divided them, Gabriel and I splitting Chicago and Fagan taking Montgomery since it had less in the box. I sat on the floor, Fagan on the couch, and Gabriel was at my desk. I scanned the files, not entirely certain what I was looking for. Some of the cases sounded like they could have been interesting, but most were boring and straightforward.

  I pulled out my phone and looked at the picture of my door from the night before. Somewhere there was a clue.

  “Can you turn the lights off twinkle?” Gabriel asked. “They’re giving me a headache.”

  I moved toward the tree when a thought struck. “Christmas.” Neither guy said anything, apparently not sharing in my fantastic epiphany. “It’s been staring us in the face the whole time. This guy is obsessed with Christmas.”

  “Obviously,” Fagan said. “So what?”

  “Christmas is the clue,” Gabriel said. “Look for cases I worked on or having to do with Christmas. This should narrow things down.”

  We all went through our stacks with renewed interest. By the time the pizza came we only had ten files that really fit what we were looking for. Gabriel looked at each of them then looked through them again. “We’re missing one.”

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  “I remember. There was one my first year as a detective. It was a hit and run.”

  “And that’s connected to Christmas, how?” Fagan asked.

  “I found the driver. It was Santa Claus.” His phone rang and he fished it out of his pocket. “Troy—what? Are you sure? I’ll be right over.”

  He looked back at us. “My house is on fire.”

  So much for my Twelve Days of Christmas theory, unless this person burns down four more houses for the hell of it. Gabriel and I went back to his house. Fagan stayed at mine to keep an eye on things. The fire department was already there working on putting it out. The fire chief came over and shook Gabriel’s hand.

  “Sorry about your house,” he said.

  Gabriel nodded. “Any idea how it started?”

  “Not yet.”

  The heat from the flames made my face warm despite the cold air. Tear slipped down my cheek as I watched his house burn. Whoever this bastard was, we were going to make him pay. Gabriel put his arm around me.

  “It’s just a house, El. My home is with you.”

  I slipped my arm around his waist and leaned my head against his chest.

  When the fire was finally out for good, after a couple restarts, the fire chief came back to us. “There were five points of origin. Looks like Christmas trees maybe?”

  Gabriel shook his head. “I didn’t have Christmas trees.”

  The house was severely damaged, but probably repairable. Luckily most of Gabriel’s belongings, at least the sentimental ones, were at my house. However, if day five was burning down a house, I didn’t want to see what this person had planned for the next seven days.

  “I have a theory. Want to hear it?” I asked him when we were back in the car.

  He sighed. “I’d love to.”

  “This asshole is doing a messed up Twelve Days of Christmas with us. Like tonight there were five trees, yesterday four pictures, etcetera.”

  “That could be.”

  “I also think the missing file is key. Someone had been in your house. I know there wasn’t evidence, but I swear I could feel it.”

  “I believe you. I just don’t know how it possibly could have been related. That case was pretty much textbook.”

  “What do you remember about it?”

  “Not a hell of a lot. There was a hit and run. We had to track down the driver who it turned out was a department store Santa on a bender. He killed a woman.”

  “What happened to the driver?”

  “He went to jail.”

  I nodded. “We need that case file before tomorrow.”

  Gabriel nodded. “’I’ll make some calls.”

  Chapter 6

  Gabriel took the next day off work. An old friend of his from Chicago was going to e-mail us the case file and it finally felt like we were making headway. I went to get the paper to a new surprise. Six rats were nailed to the door in a gruesome “H.” Next to it an “O” was written in blood. Terrific start to the day.

  “Asshole,” I muttered as I continued out to get the paper, ignoring the dead animals. Something else caught my eye in the front yard. A glistening spot of red in the thin white layer of snow. I took a step forward, but hesitated. The thought that I should probably tell Gabriel or Fagan, but we had been up so late, I wanted to let them sleep—what if whatever this was melted or distorted if I waited for them to wake up. It couldn’t hurt to take a quick look.

  Wrapping my sweater around me a little tighter, I briskly walked out into the yard. There was perfectly round circle of blood. It looked like it had been poured out purposefully. But why?

  “You’re not the one I want, but you’ll do,” a voice said behind me.

  Shit.

  I didn’t look behind me. I dove to the left and rolled until I could get my feet under me again. A man dressed from head to toe in black including a ski mask stood between me and the house. Snow was seeping into my shoes, but I could hardly feel it. “What do you want from us?”

  “I don’t want anything from you. Collateral damage, I am afraid. He must understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “Loss.” The man raised a gun, pointing it at my chest.

  I held up my hands. “Killing me won’t bring her back. Just like killing the man who hit her didn’t change anything.”

  He tore off his mask. Red rimmed eyes met mine. “You know.”

  “I’ve deduced.”

  “He wasn’t even in jail a decade before they released him. Criminally negligent manslaughter is what they called it.” Tears spilled over the edge. “She was my wife!” he screamed.

  “But why Gabriel? He’s a good man. He found the person who hit her. He brought them to justice.”

  He shook his head. “There was no justice. Not for her. He allowed him to hide behind the law. He has to know too.”


  “You know it’s wrong. That’s why you haven’t attacked us. Sure you have been a huge pain in the ass, but you haven’t tried to hurt any of us. You know that he didn’t do anything, but try to help you. Think of your wife. Would she want you to do this?” His hand wavered slightly. “What about me? I didn’t have anything to do with this. Why should I die?”

  His arm stiffened again. “Because he loves you. He will learn what it is like to live with loss.”

  A shot rang out. I waited for the impact, but it never came. I opened my eyes one at a time and saw the man had fallen to his knees clutching his arm. Fagan stood on the porch with no shoes and only his pajama pants on.

  “Do you mind getting that, Ella?” he asked, indicating the man’s gun on the ground.

  Gabriel came bursting through the door gun drawn. I picked up the man’s gun and took it to the porch. I handed it to Gabriel then went back to the man. I squatted down in front of him, tears still streaming down his face. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I told him quietly.

  Chapter 7

  The man who had been stalking Gabriel was named was Gregory Jennings. He had been checked into a psychiatric facility and was undergoing evaluation. The body he left on our porch was a homeless man who he apparently found dead. We didn’t know exactly what set him off. He had been living in Montgomery for a few years, but judging by what Eric found in his apartment, he had been watching Gabriel for longer than that. The rest of his plan for the Twelve Days of Christmas was mapped out. It was mostly smaller acts of vandalism, but the ending was supposed to be my death. I asked why he broke the pattern and tried to take me early, but no one had been able to tell me. Maybe he wanted to be stopped. Maybe somewhere among the grief that had festered and poisoned him, he knew he needed help.

  Had it not been for Fagan, I may have died that day. I asked him what woke him up since his room was on the opposite end of the house from the front yard. He said it felt like a cold hand grabbed his foot. I smiled, knowing Grant had once again come through for me in a time of need. Eric apologized to me soon after Greg’s arrest. While we were never going to be best friends, I still forgave him. It was Christmas after all and I had had a tumultuous but truly blessed year. Perhaps January would come and things would go back to how they always were, but for right now I was happy and that was all that mattered.

  Christmas music played softly through the main floor of the house and the presents had been opened. I picked up a bowl of popcorn and took it to the living room, ready to watch our final Christmas movie of the season. Gabriel sat on the couch while Fagan lounged the chair. Grant took up residence on the other end of the couch though he was only visible to me. They may have been a strange group of people to surround myself with, but I wouldn’t trade any of them for the world.

  “Start the movie,” Fagan said when he spotted me staring at the group from the doorway.

  The soft glow of the trees and the people I loved the most sitting in my living room, smiling, healthy, and laughing, brought a tear to my eye. Our first Christmas may not have been perfect by a sane person’s standards, but it was perfect to me.

  The End

  About the Author

  Many authors claim to have known their calling from a young age. Liz Schulte, however, didn’t always want to be an author. In fact, she had no clue. Liz wanted to be a veterinarian, then she wanted to be a lawyer, then she wanted to be a criminal profiler. In a valiant effort to keep from becoming Walter Mitty, Liz put pen to paper and began writing her first novel. It was at that moment she realized this is what she was meant to do. As a scribe she could be all of those things and so much more.

  When Liz isn’t writing or on social networks, she is inflicting movie quotes and trivia on people, reading, traveling, and hanging out with friends and family. Liz is a Midwest girl through and through, though she would be perfectly happy never having to shovel her driveway again. She has a love for all things spooky, supernatural, and snarky. Her favorite authors range from Edgar Allen Poe to Joseph Heller to Jane Austen to Jim Butcher and everything in between.

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  Santa Stole My Ghoulfriend

  SANTA STOLE

  MY GHOULFRIEND

  A Merry Matchmaker Story

  by

  Rose Pressey

  Dedication

  This story is dedicated to my beloved Chihuahua Elvis. He loved to help me write. 3-31-2005–11-29-2013

  “What do you think of this?” my best friend Mindy Winters asked.

  I stared at the bold typed font on the sign that hung in the home furnishings shop window. In big black letters were the words: NO CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS HERE.

  “I heard she hates Christmas.” I pulled my coat up tighter around my neck to thwart off the chilly wind.

  The shop windows along Main Street were all decked out in holiday decorations—silver, gold, green, and red. There were snowmen and Santa figurines and even his reindeer displayed. Each store had taken part in the annual holiday decorations presentation—all but Deanna Snow’s shop.

  “Yeah, I heard the same thing,” Mindy said as she stared at the darkened window.

  I turned my attention back to the blank window. “I guess that’s obvious by the lack of decorations.”

  My name is Larue Donavan. I own the bookstore next door to the aforementioned Fancy Furnishings. Deanna Snow had opened her shop just a couple months ago. I’d met her and spoke with her a couple times, but she mostly kept to herself. Rumor in town had it that she moved here from Lexington, but other than that I knew nothing about her.

  To the outside world my life appeared rather boring—most people didn’t know that I talked to the dead. By day, I ran my bookstore, and by night, I tracked down ghosts—and talked to them.

  Large fluffy snowflakes had just started to fall like sparkling crystals in the historic town of Magnolia, Kentucky. Mindy and I had been shopping for Christmas gifts all evening and my feet were now beginning to protest. It was time for a cup of hot chocolate by the fireplace.

  Mindy turned to face me. “Okay, I have to go home, but I’ll see you for class later.”

  She ran a fitness studio in town. I’d given up on fighting her about attending classes. At least she was keeping me healthy, even if I embarrassed myself regularly at the pole fitness class. But tonight was out of the question.

  I adjusted the shopping bags in my hands and headed toward my car. “No way. I’m exhausted. There’s nothing you can say or do to get me to that class tonight.”

  Her brow furrowed, but it would do no good this time. She must have sensed my determination because she shrugged and said, “Fine, but you’ll regret it after you scarf down an entire pecan pie and then can’t fit into your jeans.”

  “That’s a chance I’m willing to take. I’ll talk to you later,” I said as I climbed behind the wheel of my car.

  Usually I have a ton of ghosts following me around, waiting to chat, or wanting me to help them cross over into the light. But it had been quiet lately … unusually quiet. I couldn’t relax and enjoy the peace because I found it was a little disturbing. It was like the calm before the paranormal storm, and I was waiting for the next spirit to pop into my life. It didn’t take long ….

  I’d just settled under the soft covers and drifted off to dreamland when something startled me awake. It wasn’t Santa and his reindeer on my rooftop either. I sat up in bed and looked around the room. The moon cast off a gentle white glow that bounced off the snow-covered ground outside my bedroom window and lit up the area.

  “Over here,” the faint voice called.

  Ghosts had been visiting me since my childhood, bu
t the sudden pop-ins never stopped startling me. I scanned the area and finally spotted the petite woman sitting in the corner of the room. Her white hair fell to her shoulders in bouncy curls and she wore a long white dress. The woman’s small eyes were fixed on me.

  A tiny grin spread across her round face. “Please accept my apology for startling you this evening, but I can’t control the time that I’m sent for these jobs.”

  Okay, I had no idea what she was talking about, and I’d learned from past experience that ignoring the ghosts would do absolutely no good. Much to my chagrin, I had to ask what she wanted.

  “What is your job?” I managed to squeak out.

  She didn’t stand, but instead shifted in the chair. “I was sent here to help someone rediscover Christmas.”

  I stared for a moment while I allowed what she’d said to sink in. Finally, I asked, “Who are you here to help?” I pulled the covers up closer as if they would act as a barrier between us. “I love Christmas,” I added.

  The woman waved her hand. “No, not you. I’m here for Deanna Snow.”

  My mouth dropped a little. “But she hates Christmas.”

  She shook her index finger in my direction. “Yes, and that is exactly why I’ve been sent here.”

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “My name is Trixie.” She wiggled her eyebrows.

  “Trixie? Trixie who?” I asked.

  “It’s just Trixie,” she said with a nod.

  “Okay, just Trixie, who sent you?” I asked.

  “Let’s just say I was sent by the person in charge.”

  Finally it hit me that I had to be dreaming. I’d had visits from strange ghosts in the past, but never like this. Heck, I’d even been followed around by Abraham Lincoln and Mae West, but this time was just too odd. I collapsed back onto bed and pulled the covers over my eyes. When I woke, I knew she would be gone.