Ghosts of Christmas Past

by Corrina Lawson

  She walked past the high windows darkened with the storm’s gloom and reached her own corner. She looked over at Graham’s workspace. The remains of a book, pages and spine separated, sat on his workbench, which was basically plywood over two sawhorses. In a few days, that book would be transformed into something three-dimensional representing the story inside. The project must be holiday related—red and green paint sat next to the pages.

  For now, it just looked like a mess. So was Graham, slumbering under a throw rug on his old couch.

  Lucy sat at her stool and ran her hands over the tilted workbench. Her own easel and artist’s table, and her own supply of pencils and brushes and crayons and papers.

  Her parents had bought most of her supplies, eager to make up for lost time, especially since it’d been an argument about her need to be an artist that had first led her to run away at seventeen. They’d offered to build her a whole studio in their home on the last visit. She had said she’d think about it, but it seemed like a step backward, not forward. She was a full adult now, not an angry teen.

  Her mother had nearly cried at her answer. Her parents didn’t understand why she stayed in the Double C instead of moving back home. They offered her the studio, the fancy college, anything, really to get her to come back and live closer to them. And she put them off, without being able to explain why. She was caught between here and what they wanted.

  This whole mess is my fault.

  No, Beth Nakamora had told her to stop with the negative thinking. Yes, she’d run away at seventeen, but she’d been ready to go back home and deal with her parents when she’d been nabbed off the street and made into a lab specimen for six years. Blame her captors for that.

  Al would definitely agree on blaming the killers. His broken arm, suffered while fighting her former captors, still ached, especially when the weather was bad. Good thing he wasn’t an artist, he’d joked, because some days he couldn’t hold a pencil. Never once had he even hinted his injuries were her fault. She suspected that thought had never occurred to him.

  Lucy picked up her drawing pencil and flipped open her sketch pad. She’d told him to put the book away because she didn’t want to show him the subject of her drawings.

  Him.

  She liked these last two sketches the best. The first was Al, standing at the entrance to a bank that had been the scene of a horrific crime. His hands were tucked into his pockets and his gun butt peeked out at his waist from the open overcoat. His tie was askew.

  His eyes stared at an area marked Crime Scene, missing nothing. He stood as she’d first seen him, the first person she’d thought could actually be competent enough and would care enough to give a damn about helping her.

  The overcoat, though unbuttoned, concealed much of what he really was. Oh, the broad shoulders were clear but the full physical strength of the man was hidden. What was evident was that whoever he was looking for had better start saying some prayers.

  She labeled the drawing Detective Fixit, the ironic nickname given to him by other members of the force because he was called in on all the weird cases. Hardly anyone called him Captain James, and she never heard anyone use his full first name, Aloysius.

  She flipped to the next page, labeled Al. He stood in the kitchen, wearing only his jeans. No shirt, no shoes, plenty of service because he was cooking her eggs for breakfast. Al was fine. Plus, he noticed things.

  And she wasn’t normal, anyway. They worked. Even Al had to admit that. For now. He was worried whether they’d work a year or even ten years from now.

  “This is your guy? He’s black?” Cassandra said from over her shoulder.

  Lucy turned. “Yeah, is that a problem?”

  “Nope, I just wanted to make sure I had it right,” Cassandra said. “Wait, he’s a cop?”

  “He’s my cop.” Lucy flipped back to Detective Fixit. “See?” And she went back to shirtless Al. “And this is my guy.”

  Cassandra whistled. “Okay, he’s a feast for the eyes, but I don’t know. A cop? You know what they’re like in this city.”

  The sculptress was wearing a tie-dye dress today, her long white hair pulled back by a similarly dyed scarf.

  “Al’s not like other cops,” Lucy said.

  “Cops are the man. They’re all kinda the same that way.”

  “Not Al.”

  “Maybe not now. Wait until power corrupts. That’s what happens to all of them.”

  “You’re generalizing, Cassandra.” This is why she hadn’t revealed Al was a cop until now. She liked Cassandra but the woman could be pedantic about “the man”. Though, she was right about most of the local police.

  “Al would be the first to tell you way too many Double C cops are ill trained, incompetent or on the take. He’s been trying to change that since they promoted him to captain, but it’s only been a few months. Give him time.”

  And Noir had helped him. Quietly, sneaking into homes here and there to collect evidence, using her invisibility to follow around suspects, among other things.

  When she was Noir, Al never complained about their relationship. She liked being Noir. But she liked her art as well. Al’s work consumed him. She needed her art and Noir. Why should she choose?

  Cassandra nodded and patted Lucy’s shoulder. “If he’s your guy, okay, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. For now.”

  “You’d like him, Cassandra.”

  “Maybe I would,” she said. “So, you going to use these sketches in the show?”

  “I don’t know. You think they’re that good?”

  “They have life in them. You picked a great subject, even if it wasn’t one I’d have picked. He must have been thrilled when he saw them.”

  “I didn’t show them to him. He’d be…” What? Angry? Embarrassed? Confused?

  “He has a problem with your art?” Cassandra leaned against the easel. “Cops can be controlling.”

  “Quit it, okay? Al’s not controlling.” The opposite, actually.

  “So what is it then? If you want a way to mellow him out about these sketches, I know some great sex tips that will have him agreeing to anything in the afterglow. Even for a cop.” She smiled.

  “Sex isn’t the problem,” Lucy said. “And he loves that I’m an artist. Al thinks…um, I think he thinks I deserve something better in my life. I’m not sure what he means by that. He said something about this being a transient-artist place this morning and asked why I was spinning my wheels here.”

  “I’ve wondered the same myself. This is last-chance saloon, kid. Why would a nice girl from the suburbs hang out with the misfits?”

  “I am a misfit. I just hide it better than the rest of you.” Al had said she didn’t belong with him; now Cassandra was saying basically the same thing. Ouch. This morning blew chunks.

  “So what’s your latest project becoming, Cassandra?” A change of subject was definitely needed. “Are you going to put it in the big show? You’re cutting it close with the timing.”

  The director of the city’s art museum had decided the best way to encourage new visitors was to have the local artists involved. So for six months, artwork from their group and a few others in the city would share space with the classics at the once-great Charlton City Museum of Art. The opening was in three days.

  Just because they weren’t being paid, it didn’t make all this work a waste of time. Art was made to be experienced. Theirs would be.

  “You can’t rush art, but I’m going to try to have it ready. I’m calling it the Soul of the Double C,” Cassandra said.

  Lucy tilted her head to get a different angle on the steel monstrosity, um, thing. Sculpture. “It’s twisted and eye catching,” she allowed.

  “Exactly!”

  Cassandra’s phone, tucked in a sling around her shoulders, sounded a train whistle. She started fumbling for it. The whistle was loud
enough to startle Graham out of dreamland. He rolled over, fell off his couch and woke with a muffled cry of pain. Cassandra rushed over to help him.

  Graham waved her off and stumbled to his feet. “I’m fine. Just answer your phone, Cassandra.” He rubbed his eyes, knocking some sleep from them. He scratched his skinny soul patch, black hair against his dark skin. “And keep it down next time, please.”

  “It’s no louder than your Christmas music,” Lucy said.

  “Music isn’t the same as a train whistle,” Graham said and frowned. “Cass, what’s wrong? I was only teasing.”

  Cassandra’s face was pale, with her phone pressed to her ear. She attempted to sit on Lucy’s stool and missed it, knocking it over. Lucy put her arm around Cassandra and led her over to Graham’s couch.

  “Yes, I’ll call the second I see him. Yes, yes.”

  Cassandra put the phone back in her sling and her head in her hands. Lucy knew that look. Somebody Cassandra loved was in trouble or worse.

  “Honey, what’s wrong?” Graham asked.

  “Salvatore’s missing. He never showed up for work today,” Cassandra whispered.

  Salvatore. Lucy remembered a short, pudgy guy who sometimes visited the warehouse. He’d beamed at Cassandra. Or maybe doted on was a better way to put it. Cassandra said they’d been living together for two years. “Imagine, love after all my years alone? I’m just so grateful,” Cassandra had said.

  “Maybe he’s just skipping work,” Lucy said.

  “No, Sal’s very conscientious about work,” Cassandra said. “And I haven’t seen him since yesterday morning when he left for work. This is bad.”

  “Didn’t you see him last night?” Lucy asked.

  Cassandra shook her head. “I went to bed early and he’s been working OT, so I thought he left early this morning to get more done at the office. Why wouldn’t he call me? He always calls when something happens to upset the routine. He knows I worry.”

  She put her head back in her hands.

  A ton of reasons her guy might not call, Lucy thought, and most of them bad, from merely cheating on Cassandra to being dead. “Did you talk to him yesterday at all?”

  “He called from work about two in the afternoon,” Cassandra said.

  So they had a time frame for his disappearance, at least. Last heard from by his live-in girlfriend at 2:00 p.m.—that’s what Al would write down. Then he’d find out when Salvatore had left work. “Did Sal say anything about leaving the office? Maybe to an appointment somewhere?”

  “Absolutely not! Yesterday afternoon was a big meeting to go over the city’s budget. Everyone in his department had to attend, and he was working OT, like I said. Sal would never miss that meeting on purpose. He’s solid.”

  From bad to worse. “Call the police to report him missing,” Lucy said.

  Cassandra shook her head. “Like the cops would care if a city budget worker is late for his job. Sal’s not even been missing for forty-eight hours.”

  Al would care, Lucy thought, but Al had homicides to investigate that took priority.

  But surely finding someone alive was a better use of time than solving a crime where someone was already dead? Cassandra, for all her hippie flakiness, wasn’t a hysterical sort. If she was worried about her guy, she was worried with good reason.

  “Lucy, could your cop help?” Cassandra asked.

  Lucy winced because the answer would only confirm the woman’s bad opinion of cops. “He’s jammed with work. But I’ve hung around him long enough. I know how to start looking. We can do it.”

  “How?”

  “First, we retrace his steps. We go to his office and ask about when he left and check what he was working on. Maybe there’s a note or reminder at his desk or his computer that could help us.”

  Cassandra nodded and cleared her throat, as if to stifle tears. “Okay. Thanks.” She curled her hand around Lucy’s arm. “He’s all I’ve got. I thought all the bad stuff was gone. I can’t handle more bad stuff.”

  Lucy hugged her. “No one should have to handle bad stuff. I can help. Trust me.”

  And now she’d really done it. Lucy had a feeling looking for Salvatore wouldn’t be easy. This was work for her alter ego, Noir. No, work for Noir and Al, but he was busy, and after this morning, she didn’t feel like calling him.

  This felt like something she should do alone, if only to see what being Noir on her own was like.

  “Let’s go,” she said to Cassandra. “The sooner we start looking, the sooner we find him.”

  Chapter Three

  Al stared down at the dead man’s face through the top of a glass box, which resembled nothing so much as a coffin.

  It was the freakin’ strangest place for a corpse that Al had ever seen. Not gory, just damned weird. He supposed he should have expected that in an art museum. But it was even weirder in this Holidays of the World exhibit.

  “Maybe someone thought he was the evil Scrooge before the ghosts visited,” Al muttered.

  The victim’s see-through grave was parked in front of an exhibit devoted to all things A Christmas Carol, including full-size reproductions of the Scrooge & Marley building, Bob Cratchit’s small home, Scrooge’s bedroom, where the ghosts all came to visit him, and a graveyard where the deathlike Ghost of Christmas Future confronted Scrooge with his own gravestone.

  No expense had been spared to make the place resemble Victorian London.

  This was the central piece of an entire exhibit devoted to winter holidays from all cultures. He recognized the Kwanzaa decorations across from Scrooge & Marley, and the Hanukah display. He was less familiar with what he thought was a Hindu holiday on the far end and what he assumed was some sort of pagan treefest to the left.

  All these careful displays would make processing the crime scene difficult, if not impossible.

  The glass coffin, however, didn’t seem to be part of any exhibit. At least the glass box saved time in burial. Though, they had to get the stiff out of there to determine why he was dead. Al wasn’t even sure yet if this was a murder, even if the press gathered in front of the museum had already smelled blood. Another day, another crime story for the one newspaper remaining in the Double C.

  But if this wasn’t murder, it was definitely a very public way to commit suicide. Or maybe the victim had crawled in for a nap and died of a heart attack?

  Al walked around the glass box, looking for signs of a struggle on the body.

  The corpse wore expensive loafers, gray wool slacks and a light-blue dress shirt. No blood on any of it. His clothes definitely marked him as successful, so maybe whoever put him in the coffin had been deliberately drawing a parallel to Scrooge? Al had muttered the idea in passing but now he wondered if that might be the truth.

  Al caught a splash of red out of the corner of his eye and knelt down near the head. He got as close as he could to the glass without pressing against it and contaminating the crime scene.

  Yep, definitely blood pooling behind the head.

  Murder, then.

  He straightened and looked around at the gallery. He wanted to think this was just a weird killing, but who was he kidding? This killer put the body here for a reason, either to make a statement about the victim or about the exhibit. Since he doubted anyone hated A Christmas Carol, he bet it related to the victim.

  “Any idea what our victim was doing in there?” Al asked the uniform who had faded into the background when he’d arrived on scene.

  The rookie just shook her head, her ponytail slightly bobbing. He gave points to her for remaining quiet while he did his work. Most rookies talked or, worse, asked dumb questions. She’d watched and paid attention. Very like Noir, who noticed everything.

  He missed working with her.

  “So the dead subject is a curator of the museum?” Al asked the rookie.

  “Yes, si
r.” She flipped open a notebook. “One Sholly Johns, curator of the Modern Art wing, according to him.” She pointed left. Al zeroed in on a guy wearing a blue suit, standing off to the right near an ordinary display of an American Christmas.

  “Who’s he?”

  “Scott—short for Prescott—Matthews, Johns’ assistant. He called this in.”

  “Get him over here.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Al raised his eyebrows as the rookie turned to follow the order, her ponytail still bouncing. Instant respect. That was not like Noir at all, but a nice change. He could get used to that. Of course, the young officer was a rookie yet, and maybe impressed by his title.

  He knelt to get a look at the controls to the coffin. If the dead guy was inside, there must be a way to get him out of it, though Al couldn’t see any seams in the glass. But there were levers on one side. Al pushed aside the curtain covering the wooden base on which the coffin sat and found a nice round button.

  He took a moment to put on plastic gloves. He should wait for the crime scene techs to push the button. But who knew how fast they would arrive? They were even more shorthanded than the police. He could be cooling his heels for hours, waiting on them, and every second counted when tracking a killer. On the other hand, the techs might be so pissed at him for doing their work they’d take even longer to process the scene.

  Crap. Al split the difference and left the button alone but moved the curtain aside. He clicked on his flashlight and stuck his head underneath the coffin.

  The square box to the right looked like a battery cover. Document, document. He pulled out his brand-new smartphone—a gift from Noir—and took several photos of the mechanism. Let the techs yell at him, assuming they ever arrived. At least he had a chain of evidence now.

  He took out his Swiss army knife and used the screwdriver to open up the box. Inside was a nine-volt job with wires headed to the button. Except these wires were cut.