A Lot Like Christmas

by Dawn Atkins

  She asked a woman holding a big malls out sign how she’d heard about the demonstration. The woman fished out a printed email from her purse with the information from Take Back Our Neighborhoods. The email had been sent out at 8:00 a.m. on the very day of the news story. That was impossibly fast action.

  Thanking the woman for the email, Sylvie noticed she wore one of Abernathy’s jai alai pins on her windbreaker. So did several of the men walking in the slow circle, waving signs.

  Could Abernathy’s group have set this up? Or had Collins asked for his help? Were the two men working together?

  Her first stop was Tracer’s to find out what Talley could tell her about the signs. Talley’s assistant promised she would arrive momentarily, so Sylvie waited in the open alcove that held a desk, files and computer. She noticed a box of Godiva chocolates on Talley’s desk with a note clipped to it. Twisting her head, she read, “Thanks for…everything!” The note was signed Pete.

  “Sylvie? What’s up?” Talley clearly was startled to find Sylvie in her office.

  “So is Pete your new guy?” she asked, embarrassed at being caught snooping.

  Talley flushed. “No, uh, he’s just a friend.”

  “My male friends don’t usually give me Godiva,” she teased.

  “Anyway, what is it you wanted to ask me?”

  That was odd. Talley had been very open about her boyfriend the last time she and Sylvie had talked. Now she was clamming up?

  Sylvie decided to be direct. “The protestors outside are carrying signs made from Tracer’s posters. Are you or any of your employees involved with the picketing?”

  “Heavens, no,” she said, but her eyes darted away. “Someone must have grabbed old ad boards from our trash.”

  “That’s possible, I guess.”

  “Is there anything else?” Talley’s smile seemed false and her fingers lay protectively over the note from her “friend” Pete. She was lying. Why? Sylvie thought she knew a way to find out more.

  “ARE YOU CRAZY?” Chase couldn’t believe what Sylvie had just asked him. “You want us to sneak into shops again?”

  “Tonight. Yeah. To look for evidence.”

  “Really? I don’t get why you care. If the MegaMalls sale collapses and we can’t find another buyer, you get the mall back, safe and sound.”

  “Someone’s using Starlight Desert and I want to know who and why. It’s my job to look out for the mall.”

  “Your loyalty means a lot, Sylvie, especially under these circumstances. We’ve been damned lucky to have you—”

  “Please, no farewell speeches, okay? Let me tell you what I know and what we need to do….”

  She launched into an explanation about jai alai club pins on protestors, too many male demonstrators, the suspiciously early email about the protest and the signs being made from department store posters, ending with how evasive Talley had been about a box of chocolates that might have come from someone at Reggie Collins’s office.

  “How do you figure that?” Chase said, overwhelmed by the rapid-fire tale, just happy to have Sylvie sitting close by, determination back in her eyes. He’d missed her these past few days. Her spirit, her energy, her heart. “Because Pete could be Peter. And Peter Anderson is the guy who set up the community meeting for Collins. He’s his assistant. The chocolates could be a thank-you for helping with the protest.”

  “Pete’s a common name.”

  “True, but Talley loves to talk about her men and she shut me down right off. She’s hiding something, I know it.”

  “Okay…say Talley did help Anderson with the protest by making the signs. Why would she do that?”

  “Because they’re lovers and he asked her to. Or maybe because he promised her a job. When she told me Tracer’s might close, she said her new boyfriend knew important people, suggesting that he’d help her get a new job.”

  “Okay. And you think Peter Anderson gave Talley pricey chocolates to thank her for picket signs or sex or both?”

  Sylvie laughed. “I know it’s complicated, but the pieces fit somehow. All we need to do is establish links between these people, figure out their scheme and expose it.”

  “And you want us to sneak into Tracer’s and the jai alai club for…”

  “Evidence, yes.”

  “Why not confront Talley and Abernathy in broad daylight?”

  “They’d just lie and hide the proof. This is best. The police couldn’t do this without a warrant, but we own the property, so we have the right to enter. Sort of.”

  “You’re serious about this.”

  “Deadly serious.” She managed a brief smile, so familiar and welcome it made Chase’s chest burn.

  “So what’s Abernathy after? If the MegaMalls sale fails, he’ll lowball us to build an arena? And why is Collins involved?”

  “That’s what we have to find out. Are you in?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t miss it,” he said, knowing he’d do any fool thing Sylvie suggested.

  LATE THAT NIGHT, Chase found himself once again unscrewing the vents to the ductwork, Sylvie next to him, swamping him with her cherry-pie smell, burglars for real this time.

  “Hurry,” she whispered. “The last thing we need is Leo catching us sneaking in.”

  “After you,” Chase said, motioning for Sylvie to crawl into the tunnel. He immediately regretted that because he had to watch her backside sway before his hungry eyes. She hurried past the stores they’d visited together—the candy store, Heaven Scents and the toy store—then banged on the vent into Tracer’s. “It’s stuck,” she said.

  He moved closer to help and their bodies brushed. Sylvie trembled at the contact. Their eyes caught and held for a moment. Then, with a sharp palm strike, he forced the vent open.

  They stepped down into the stockroom. Security lights lit the area enough that they could find the main switch. Then they searched every shelf and corner.

  “Look!” Sylvie said, pointing at a stack of stakes tucked behind a counter, some with blank signs already attached. “Doesn’t look like anybody robbed the trash to me. My guess is they had an assembly line here.”

  Using a small digital camera, Sylvie took photographs of the signs as evidence. They then headed to Talley’s office, where Sylvie turned on the computer. While the machine booted up, she flipped through the few upright folders on the mostly bare desk.

  “Nothing here that I can see.”

  “Desk drawers are locked and so is the file cabinet,” Chase said after checking both.

  “Damn,” Sylvie said, staring at the computer screen. “Password protected.” She tried a few possible codes, but got nowhere, then sank into the chair. “So all we have so far are the picket signs she lied about. And maybe Pete’s chocolates. Let’s see what we get from Abernathy.”

  They made their way down the passageway to the small booster club office. The space looked like a telemarketer boiler room, crowded with desks and phones, each with a call sheet with marked out numbers and comments. The walls held jai alai posters and a white board that seemed to track donor contributions.

  Sylvie made a beeline for a big wooden desk at the back of the office. “This has to be Abernathy’s.”

  Unlike Talley’s, this desk was messy with paper. Sylvie sat at the chair and began flipping through the sheets. “Just like I figured. He’s one of those old-fashioned guys who prints out his email to read on paper. Wow, here’s one. It says, ‘I’ll be there.’” She skimmed the note. “It’s about the protest. The header shows a ton of names and the message is a forward from Take Back Our Neighborhoods. So they were part of the march for sure.”

  Chase wandered through a door to a small room that held office supplies and a small kitchen. He flipped on a light. The room smelled of chemicals. Varnish or paint?

  Then he saw it, a can of spray paint next to cardboard alphabet stencils. “Check this out.”

  Sylvie joined him. “Oh, my God. Abernathy did the lettering for the signs. They were all in red paint.”
/>
  “So that’s a strong link between Abernathy and the protest.”

  “Also Talley, since she provided the signs.”

  “We still don’t know if Pete is Peter Anderson or if his connection to Talley involves Reggie Collins.”

  “Wait a second,” Sylvie said. She turned and grabbed his arms. “Where else have we seen red spray-paint?”

  It came to him instantly. “The graffiti in the mall the night we camped out.”

  “Exactly. Up until that incident, the paint had been black. Jesse denied breaking into the mall. He didn’t have a key, either, as far as I know, but Abernathy sure would have. That attack was different, remember? It was a threat aimed at our tenants…talking about us being a dead mall.”

  “That’s true. We know he was poking around about buying the place. We might be getting somewhere here.”

  Sylvie took photographs of the stencils, taking one with her as evidence, along with the spray can, wrapping the items in plastic wrap from a box she found on top of the fridge.

  After that, she and Chase worked together checking out the papers on Abernathy’s desk, fingers flying, eyes skimming page after page.

  Fifteen minutes later, Sylvie yelped. “Jackpot! It’s an email from Abernathy to the club’s officers about forming a Reelect Reggie Collins’s political action committee. It says Collins promises to clear red tape out of their way. That could be bribery, right?” She jumped to her feet. “They’re paying off Collins to help them get an arena built here. Maybe the condo developer who got stopped wouldn’t pay up or something.”

  “Slow down, Sylvie. They can claim they’re just exercising their legal rights to support a candidate who agrees with them. This suggests a bribe, but it’s business as usual in politics.”

  “What about the mall vandalism? That’s a felony. I’m sure Detective Lawson could get a warrant to search this office for more evidence.”

  “If we could prove Collins’s office is behind that neighborhood group it would help build our case.”

  “I bet we have enough to interest Shelley Clark,” she said. “As a reporter, she could investigate—maybe confirm the link between Collins and the protest group. I wish we knew for sure that Talley’s Pete is Peter Anderson.”

  “That would take too much time. What if we tell Collins and Abernathy we have evidence that we’re taking to the media and the police?”

  “You think the threat would be enough to stop them?”

  “It might. All I need is an end to the protests and for them to come clean with MegaMalls so the sale will still fly.”

  “Yeah.” Sylvie sighed. “If we win, I lose the mall.”

  What could he say to that? She was absolutely correct.

  She took a deep breath and set her jaw, determination back in place. “It doesn’t matter. It’s the right thing to do. Tomorrow we’ll pin down our strategy for the confrontation.”

  “You’re something else, Sylvie.” Chase had broken her heart and killed her dream, but she’d volunteered to crawl through dusty tunnels and paw through emails to do the right thing. God, he would miss her.

  A TAP ON SYLVIE’S OFFICE door made her look up.

  “Got a minute?” Mary Beth stuck her head in.

  “Sure, come on in,” Sylvie said. Chase was due soon to talk through their plan.

  “First off, I want to thank you for taking me on here like you did, Sylvie. You really saved my ass.”

  “We’re lucky you were available to help us out. How’s your mother doing?”

  “Much better. She’ll be moving in with me next week and she’ll be pretty independent, which means I can go back to work full-time. So, here’s the deal. I got a job offer.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. It’s at that new mall on the west side. Roberta, the GM, is going on maternity leave and she recommended me as her fill-in. It’s only for six months, but that might change if Roberta decides she wants more time at home.”

  “That’s great, Mary Beth. I’m happy for you.”

  “Are you? Really? I feel kind of guilty because I realized you might want the job.”

  “I don’t have your experience.”

  “Not in years, but after all this and the sale and transition, you’ll have quite the résumé.”

  “You think so?” The idea of hunting for a new job made Sylvie sick at heart.

  “Oh, yeah. I’ll keep an eye out for any opening that would suit you. I know I let you down by not recommending you to take over for me, though it didn’t turn out so great, after all. Looks like I got out in the nick of time. Funny how life works, huh?”

  “Yeah. Funny.” Sylvie wanted to smack the woman, but Mary Beth was her most recent supervisor, so her recommendation mattered. “Any tips you can give me would be great.”

  “No problem. You know me, always helping people out. I could have gotten Talley an interview for a store manager job out there, but she says her boyfriend’s going to get her something with the city.”

  “Really?” Sylvie sat forward. “You mean Pete?”

  “That’s him. I think she said he works for Councilman Collins.”

  “How did they meet, do you know?”

  “I guess he was looking for a tie one day in her store and she helped him. It was love at first sight.”

  “How romantic,” Sylvie said. No doubt, Anderson had figured out how to use Talley to get what his boss wanted from the mall. Talley might have been the one who alerted Collins’s office about the vandalism incident where he’d shown up so fast.

  “Anyway, I don’t envy you all the hassles ahead,” Mary Beth said. “What with stores leaving, owners acting flaky, tempers flaring, all the rigmarole with closing and inspections. What a nightmare.”

  “I don’t imagine it will be fun.”

  “Oh, no. It will be hell.” Mary Beth seemed to catch herself and looked at Sylvie’s face. “No one blames you, Sylvie, I hope you know that. For the mall closing, I mean. The timing was just bad, what with me leaving and you taking over right when it happened.”

  “Funny how that works,” she said wryly.

  “The stores will find homes. Nothing’s certain in this life.”

  “That’s absolutely true.” Sylvie had learned that lesson in early childhood and nothing since had proved differently.

  “I was wondering whether you and Chase were still okay with each other, considering all that’s happened.” Nosy Mary Beth was looking for gossip.

  “We’re fine, Mary Beth. We’re professionals and we’ll both do our jobs and get through this as best we can.” Despite the doubt on Mary Beth’s face, Sylvie was determined to do exactly that.

  Chase arrived soon after Mary Beth left and Sylvie felt the familiar zing in her heart. When would this stop?

  “I have news about Peter Anderson,” he said, dropping into a guest chair and sliding it to the side of her desk to be close by, as he used to do.

  “Me, too,” she said. “He’s definitely Talley’s Pete. Talley told Mary Beth he promised her a job with the city.”

  “Perfect,” he said. “He’s one busy guy. I checked public records on the neighborhood group and guess who founded it? None other than Mr. Peter Anderson.”

  “Wow. So we have the connection between Collins and Talley and the protest. Also Abernathy with Collins and the protest. Not to mention Abernathy and the mall graffiti. That’s enough to confront them with, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe we should start with Talley? If she caves, she’ll give us more ammunition for the meeting with Collins, Anderson and Abernathy. I’ll set that up for tonight.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Chase held up a hand for a high-five. “Team Starlight Desert running one last play down the field.”

  Sylvie’s smile almost hurt.

  FOUR DAYS LATER, the MegaMalls deal was back on track, thanks to Sylvie and Chase.

  “I’m glad we could work this out,” Reggie Collins said to the MegaMalls CEO, vigorously shaking
his hand. Chase had to fight back a smirk. Work it out? Really?

  The politician had been terrified he would be arrested.

  The culprits had folded like bad poker hands as soon as they heard the evidence. Horrified that she’d been part of a crime, Talley had happily filled them in on all she knew of the master scheme, confirming what they suspected, and promising to talk to any official they needed her to.

  Collins, Anderson and Abernathy turned white as ghosts when Chase laid out what he knew of the vandalism, the bogus protest and the bribery. Sylvie played bad cop, threatening to call the Attorney General and the reporter anxious for the scoop as soon as the meeting ended.

  In minutes, the men were falling over themselves to, as Collins put it, “correct any misapprehensions we may have inadvertently created about Starlight Desert Mall with MegaMalls executives.”

  So that was how Chase and Fletcher came to be meeting with the MegaMalls CEO and Reggie Collins, who had assured the CEO that the mall sale had his full support and that Take Back Our Neighborhoods was ready to organize a “Welcome MegaMalls” rally on any date of his choosing.

  Once Abernathy had promised to make a sizable donation to Free Arts, Chase agreed not to report the spray-paint incident to the police. He would urge leniency with the AG’s office for Collins, though he’d already learned that such a small-potatoes case in a swamped office was unlikely to ever be pursued.

  Chase hoped the incident would put enough fear of God in Collins that he’d stay clear of corruption from now on.

  He could hope anyway.

  As soon as Collins left the room, the MegaMalls CEO turned to Chase and Fletcher. “Well handled, gentlemen. Assuming Mr. Collins does what he’s agreed to, we’re ready to make a deal with you. My people will get back to you with our revised offer.” He shook their hands and left.

  “Nice rescue,” Fletcher said to Chase. “I’m impressed.”

  “It was mostly Sylvie. She was with me all the way.”

  “She’s a special lady,” Fletcher said. “You sure you don’t want to work things out with her?”