Christmas Stalkings

by Charlotte MacLeod

  I miss the old-fashioned telephone booths, with doors you can close, but Grannie’s sunbonnet was a big help; it kept the rain off my face and kept passersby from hearing my end of the conversation.

  First I called Jaz’s office. Mary Jo was on that day. She wanted to talk, but I cut her short. I sure as heck didn’t want to be the one to tell her about Jaz. I asked her where he was due to be that morning, before he came to me. Some of the names I knew, some I didn’t. But they made a pattern. After I hung up I called Rick. He wanted to talk too. Everybody wants to talk. I told

  him what I wanted. He gasped. “G——d d n it,

  Liz—”

  “Watch your mouth, Rick. You know my readers don’t like dirty words.”

  “Oh—oh, yeah. Sorry. But what—”

  “Never mind what. Just be there. I’ve cracked the case. You can make the arrest. I don’t want the credit. I never do.”

  “But—”

  I hung up.

  Rick already owed me a couple. This would make three—no, four. You could call our relationship a social one—at least you’d better call it that. We’d met at a party, one of those boring Washington affairs writers get sucked into; I was sulking in a corner, nursing my drink and wondering how soon I could cut out, when I saw him. And he saw me. Our eyes met, across the room . . . Later, we got to talking. He asked me what I did for a living, I politely reciprocated—and that’s how it began. He’d been promoted a couple of times since I started helping him out and he was man enough to give me credit— privately, if not to his boss at the Agency—so I knew he’d respond this time.

  It would take him an hour or more to get there, though. I dawdled in the drugstore, picked up a package of Di-Gel and a few other odds and ends I figured I would need, and then headed back to town at a leisurely thirty miles per hour. The rain slid like tears down the cracked facade of the windshield. Tears for a good man gone bad, for a sick world that teaches kids to get high and cop out. I felt sick myself. I chewed a Di-Gel and lit a cigarette.

  I had to circle the block three times before I found the parking spot I wanted, right across from the sheriff’s office. No hurry. Rick wouldn’t be there for another half hour, and I sure as heck wasn’t walking into the lion’s den without him. I’m tough, and I’m smart, but I’m not stupid. I ate a couple of Hershey bars while I thumbed through the latest issue of Victorian Homes. Then I lit a cigarette. I had smoked three of them before Rick showed up. I watched him as he trotted up the stairs. He was a big man. (I like big men.) I waited till he’d gone in, then pulled my sunbonnet over my head and followed.

  A fresh kid in a trooper’s uniform tried to stop me when I headed for Bludger’s office. I straight-armed him out of the way and went on in. Rick was sitting on the edge of the desk and Bludger was yelling at him. He hates having people sit on the edge of his desk.

  When he saw me, his face turned purple. “D n it,

  Grannie, how’d you get past—”

  “I don’t allow talk like that,” I told him, whipping off” my sunbonnet. “And I’m not Grannie.”

  His eyes bulged till they looked like they’d roll out of the sockets. Rick was grinning, but he looked a little anxious. The third man started to stand up, and fell back into his chair with a groan. I sat down on the other corner of Bludger’s desk..

  “Hi, Jaz,” I said. “Feeling better?”

  Bludger got his voice back. “You’re under arrest,” he bellowed.

  I raised one eyebrow. “What’s the charge?”

  “Attempted murder!”

  “With this?” I picked up the plasticine envelope. The hatpin had been cut down from ten inches to about two. “Darn it,” I said. “I paid ten bucks for this. It’s ruined.”

  “You shoved that thing into him—” Bludger began.

  “Is that what he says?” I looked at Jaz.

  He ran his fingers through his thick dark hair. “I don’t ... I can’t remember ...”

  I lit a cigarette. “Oh, yeah? Well, let me refresh your memory. You stuck that pin into your own back just before you walked into my house. It’s three and a half miles from the previous stop on your schedule; you couldn’t possibly have driven that far without noticing that you had a sharp object in your back. My cleaning woman is a friend of yours; she stole that hatpin for you, several days ago. I was getting too close, wasn’t I, Jaz? And I made the mistake of discussing my ideas with you—my questions about how drugs were being delivered in the county. What better delivery system than good old reliable National Express? You’re on the road every day, covering the same territory. You’ve got your own private delivery schedule, haven’t you?”

  His eyes narrowed. I wondered why I’d never noticed before how empty they were, like pale marbles in the head of a wax dummy. “You’re bluffing,” he snarled. “You can’t prove—”

  “I never bluff,” I told him, brushing a lock of shining auburn hair away from my forehead. “The truck will be clean, but you had to package the garbage somewhere. Your own apartment probably.

  I’d try the kitchen first, Bludger. There’ll be traces left. Men don’t know how to clean a kitchen properly.

  And, as I have reason to know, neither does Jaz’s cousin.

  I didn’t expect him to break so fast. He got to his feet and started toward me. Rick moved to intercept him, but I shook my head. “Don’t dirty your hands, Rick. Come any closer, Jaz, and you get this cigarette right in the face.”

  “You don’t understand,” he groaned. “It was her idea. She made me do it.”

  “Sure,” I said bitterly. “Blame the dame. You and that MCP Adam.”

  “Adam?” He looked like a dead fish, eyes bulging, mouth ajar. “How many guys do you have dropping by for some—”

  “Never mind.” It was all clear to me now. I felt a little sick. Men, I thought bitterly. You try to be nice, offer a guy some milk and cookies, listen to his troubles, and he starts getting ideas.

  I lit a cigarette. “He’s all yours, boys. You’ll have to figure out who has jurisdiction.”

  “I’m sheriff of this county,” Bludger blustered.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if a state line got crossed,” Rick drawled. “And the DEA has jurisdiction—”

  “Fight it out between yourselves,” I told them. “Frankly, I don’t give a darn.”

  Jaz dropped back onto his chair, face hidden in his hands. A lock of thick black hair curled over his fingers. I headed, fast, for the door.

  Rick followed me out. “What say I drop by later for some—”

  “You’re all alike,” I said bitterly. “Wave a chocolate-chip cookie in front of you and you’ll do anything, say anything.”

  He captured my hand. “For one of your chocolate-chip cookies I would. They’re special, Liz. Like you.”

  “Sorry, Rick.” I freed my hand so I could light . another cigarette. “I’ve got a chapter to finish. That’s what it’s all about, you know. The real world. Putting words on paper, spelling them right . . . All the rest of it is just fun and games. Just . . .”

  The words stuck in my throat. Rick leaned over to look into my face. “You’re not crying, are you?”

  “Who, me? Pis don’t cry.” I tossed the cigarette away. It spun in a glowing arc through the curtain of softly falling snow. Snow. Big fat flakes like fragments of foam rubber. They clung to my long lashes. I blinked. “Rick. Isn’t there a reward for breaking this case?”

  Rick blinked. He has long thick lashes too. (I like long thick lashes in a man.) “Yeah. Some guy whose kid died of an overdose offered it. It’s yours, I guess. Enough to buy a lot of cigarettes and chocolate chips.”

  I took his arm. “You’ll get your chocolate chip cookies, Rick. But first we’re going shopping. Toys ‘R’ Us, and then a breeder I know whose golden retriever has just had a litter. A tree, a great big one, with all the trimmings, the fattest turkey Safeway has left . . . Pick up your feet, Rick. We’ve got a lot to do. It’s Christmas Eve—and it’s snow
ing!”

  I lit a cigarette. What the heck, you only live once.

  MEDORA SALE - ANGELS

  Naturally we expect somebody who’s specialized in Medieval Studies to be well-informed on the subject of Angels. But Medora Sale’s not just another pretty Canadian M.A., Ph.D. How many aspiring writers have fathers who filled their infant ears with bedtime stories about the quiddities of criminal courts, and even, as a special treat, used to take them, on school holidays when court was sitting, to watch actual trials?

  With this highly specialized background, is it any wonder that Medora, after having tried free-lance writing, social work, and advertising, took to a life of crime herself? She won the coveted Arthur Ellis Award for first novel with Murder on the Run in 1986. Since then, she’s published three more mysteries with Scribner’s and has recently completed a term as president of the Crime Writers of Canada. When not engaged in criminous literary pursuits, Medora Sale lives quite angelically with her husband Harry Roe, a professor at the University of Toronto, and their daughter, Anne.

  Annabel Cousins looked at her watch. “We’re on in five minutes. Where is that wretched girl?” Her eyes fell on the last set of angel wings spread over the huge table in the vestry. Angels. She hated angels. They went on at the very beginning, and they had to be dressed at the very last minute or the stupid creatures would smash their wings—magnificent structures made from a clever mix of real and fake feathers, at least six feet wide and over three feet high.

  “Ashley?” said a muffled voice. “She might be in the washroom.”

  “For the last twenty minutes, Heather?” said Annabel, trying very hard not to reveal her panic to her already highly nervous charges. “She hasn’t even picked up her costume yet. Are you two sure you saw her downstairs? Stand still, Jennifer!” she snapped in exasperation. “And don’t sit down. Or lie down, or lean against that wall or do any of the other things* you were thinking of.”

  “I thought I saw her,” said Jennifer. Her voice was also muffled behind her gold-and-white angel mask.

  Annabel’s heart sank. “Thought? You said you had seen her.”

  “Do you want me to go down and look?”

  “No, I don’t want you to move. Where’s Mrs. Toomey? She’s supposed to—damn it all. Erica,” she said, grabbing a short, thin girl preposterously garbed as a shepherd, “run down to the washroom and get Ashley. Tell her she’s dead meat if she isn’t up here in thirty seconds.”

  Erica, current holder of the Independent Schools Track and Field Association record for the 1500 meters (sixteen and over), disappeared without a word in a blur of brown wool and greasepaint.

  Two painful minutes ticked by. “I can’t find her, Miss Cousins,” said Erica, whose arrival was as silent and as swift as her departure. “She isn’t in the washroom, the furnace room, or the other dressing room, and she isn’t up in the choir loft either.”

  Annabel Cousins allowed herself half a second to appreciate Erica’s speed and thoroughness before panicking. She sat down on the only available chair. “My God, what do we do now?”

  “We get someone else.” The speaker was a tall, dark-haired woman engaged in sewing up a ripped hem for another shepherd. This one was standing on the vicar’s desk, barefooted, on top of a page from tonight’s sermon. “No one will know the difference. As long as she’s taller than Jennifer and Heather, relatively reliable, and has long hair. There certainly aren’t any more tall redheads around, so blond, don’t you think?” She turned to the already garbed angels. “You two—out into the corridor and stand where I put you on Friday. Sideways, remember!” She whipped the thread around a couple of times and broke it off. “You’re done, Laura. Keep your feet out of your hem, please. Off you go.”

  The two teachers looked at each other. “I should have known those wretched girls were covering for Ashley,” said Annabel gloomily. “Where do we find another angel? The entire senior school is in there singing.”

  “Who’s closest?” The two teachers slipped out of the room and up the stone passage to peer in at the students crowded into the chancel. They were in the middle of a long, difficult carol in the modern mode, hanging desperately on the conductor’s every movement, including those of his lips, as he mouthed the words for those who had not, in spite of threats and pleadings, managed to memorize them. Every girl within discreet grabbing range appeared to be short and dark. Or hopelessly unreliable.

  Helen Armstrong, who had learned during fifteen years of working on the pageant just what could—and could not—be expected from the average senior at the school, shook her head at the selection available. “We’ll go on with two,” she whispered. Because as soon as the girls finished this interminable number, the entire school, from the babies in kindergarten up, would start a medley of traditional carols, and the pageant would begin its stately and gradual progression into the center of events.

  Everyone loved the graduating-class pageant, except the drama coach and the English teacher who were responsible for producing it. Every year it was exactly the same; every year the kindergarten babies would ooh in astonishment and parents would sniffle sentimentally. And every year it was seen by at least twenty-five hundred people, crowded into the largest church in the city, for the Kingsmede Festival of Carols was justly famous.

  “Is everything okay?” The high-pitched whisper came just as the modern carol was drawing to its pianissimo close, and earned a vicious glare from the conductor. It issued from a tall, thin, elegant woman with pale-red hair skewered into a bun—a beautiful woman with a voice of hideous timbre and formidable carrying power. “Sorry,” she went on, “I got talking to Jeff and lost track of the time.”

  Annabel Cousins winced before pivoting her head in the direction of the whisperer. For a moment, she froze, fixing her with a glassy-eyed stare, and then turned in amazement to Helen Armstrong, who nodded. “No,” said Annabel, “it isn’t okay. But you’re just in time.”

  “O Come, All Ye Faithful” saw Helen Armstrong in the narrow passageway behind the altar, herding Mary and Joseph ahead of her. Mary’s name was Mary and she looked more like an Icelander than an Israelite, but she had bagged the job because she was head of the Drama Club. Joseph’s name was Deborah, Deborah Levinson. She knew full well why she had suddenly been handed the part. It had been someone’s notion of broad-minded equality to choose a Jewish girl, and the vision of herself in a Christmas pageant tickled her so immensely that she was having trouble maintaining the gravity of expression proper to an old man with a pregnant wife who was on his way to pay his taxes. She conjured up a vision of her father at tax time and settled her countenance appropriately.

  The ending of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” brought on Mary and Joseph; with “Angels from the Realms of Glory,” Annabel shoved the three angels toward the wooden dais on which they would spend ten agonizing minutes with their hands raised aloft. Three heads of golden-red hair and three sets of wings moved with great care until they reached their posts. As they raised their arms on Annabel Cousins’s vigorous cue, Mary sank—a little too gracefully—into her chair and discovered, with much too much astonishment, the infant Jesus in the crib.

  “That’s the last time I let someone who thinks she’s Sarah Bernhardt play Mary,” muttered Annabel to Helen Armstrong, who had just finished creeping back from the other side of the altar. “Deborah makes a good Joseph, though.”

  Helen nodded. “Are the kings in position yet?”

  “Omigod,” said Annabel, “I haven’t checked their makeup.” And she tore downstairs.

  “Shepherds in the Fields Abiding” brought two light-footed shepherd boy-girls frolicking joyously up the side aisles, carrying an improbable number of toy lambs. Erica appeared last, careening up the center aisle as if she had been entered in the Bethlehem Olympics. Helen Armstrong sighed; she knew it had been a mistake to tell Erica Henry to run, no matter how gladsomely. The side-aisle shepherds caught sight of their speedy companion and broke into a panicked race for the f
ront. All three came skidding to a halt at the chancel steps, giving the unfortunate impression that they were escaping prisoners who had just been nabbed by a posse of their schoolmates. Erica finally remembered to point at the angels before she dashed through the narrow pathway between the second sopranos and the altos.

  The organ ran through a graceful modulation in key and mode, and the senior school altos started “We Three Kings.” From her strategic spot behind the latticework, Helen Armstrong saw with great relief that Annabel Cousins was standing at the back with three completely attired Orient kings. They looked impressive, she reflected complacently. Of course, the three tallest girls in the senior class swathed in black velvet and scarlet-and-gold brocade were bound to look impressive.

  Melchior paced solemnly up the aisle, apparently unaware of the three thousand or so people watching her, and took her place slightly to the left of the narrow passage up the chancel steps. The junior-school treble voices took up Caspar’s verse, sounding perilously frail and alone in a cruel and hostile world. The second king seemed to panic and hastened to take her place in the center, as if she could hear Herod’s soldiers at the door. The richer voices of the senior sopranos picked up Balthazar’s mournful wail and the third king paced ahead steadily, like one who had traveled at this same speed for years through the desert. They stood at last shoulder to shoulder, facing the altar. In a huge outpouring of sound, the organ screamed and every voice cried out the triumphant last verse; the three kings raised their offerings high above their heads.

  It was at this rather noisy point that the Kingsmede School Annual Festival of Carols suffered its first alteration in procedure in seventy-five years. The center angel staggered slightly, dropped her arms, and collapsed on top of Joseph, before tumbling onto Mary’s lap.

  “Omigod,” said Helen Armstrong, and hurried behind a line of senior second sopranos to rescue Mary from her angelic burden.