Mistletoe Mysteries

by Charlotte MacLeod

  Flora smiled. “Perhaps not by American standards. Doris had the day off, and we went to church in the morning, and then had our roast beef for dinner. She gave me bath powder, and I gave her a new umbrella. She’s always losing umbrellas. I suppose that’s a rather subdued holiday by your lights, but when I was a girl, Christmas wasn’t such a big festival in Scotland. The shops didn’t even close for it. We considered it a religious occasion for most folk, and a lark for the children. The holiday for grown people was New Year’s.”

  “Good idea,” grunted Louis. “Over here, we get used to high expectations when we’re kids, and then as adults, we get depressed every year because Christmas is just neckties and boredom.”

  Flora nodded. “Oh, but you should have seen Hogmanay when I was a girl! No matter what the weather, people in Dundee would gather in the City Square to wait out the old year’s end. And there’d be a great time of singing all the old songs …”

  “‘Auld Lang Syne’?” asked Louis.

  “That’s a Scottish song, of course,” nodded Flora. “But we sang a lot of the other old tunes as well. And there was country dancing. And then just when the new year was minutes away, everyone would lapse into silence. Waiting. There you’d be in the dark square, with your breath frosting the air, and the stars shining down on the world like snowflakes on velvet. And it was so quiet you could hear the ticking of the gentlemen’s pocket watches.”

  “Sounds like Times Square,” said Louis, inspecting the bottom of his cup.

  Flora took the cup and ladled another het pint for each of them. “After the carrying on to welcome in the new year, everyone would go about visiting and first footing their neighbors. My father was always in great demand for that, being tall and dark as he was. And he used to carry lumps of coal in his overcoat to be sure of his welcome.”

  “What,” said Louis, “is first footing?”

  “Well, it’s an old superstition,” said Flora thoughtfully. “Quite pagan, I expect, if the truth were told, but then, you never can be sure, can you? You don’t have a lump of coal about you, by any chance?”

  Louis shook his head.

  “Ah, well. First footing, you asked.” She took a deep breath, as if to warn him that there was a long explanation to follow. “In Scotland the tradition is that the first person to cross your threshold after midnight on Hogmanay symbolizes your luck in the year to come. The first foot to enter your house, you see.”

  Louis nodded. It’s lucky to be burgled? he was thinking.

  “The best luck of all comes if you’re first footed by a tall, dark stranger carrying a lump of coal. Sometimes family friends would send round a tall, dark houseguest that our family had not met, so that we could be first footed by a stranger. The rest of the party would catch up with him a few minutes later.”

  “I guess I fit the bill all right,” Louis remarked. He was just over six feet and looked more Italian than Tony Bennett. His uncles called him Luigi.

  “So you do,” smiled Flora. “Now the worst luck for the new year is to be first footed by a short blond woman who comes in empty-handed.”

  Louis remembered the first thing the old woman had said to him. “So Doris is a short blond?”

  “She is that. Gets her height from me. Or the lack of it. And she can never remember to hunt up a lump of coal or bring some wee gift home with her to help the luck. Ever since Colin passed away, Doris has been first foot in this house, and where has it got us? Her with long hours and precious little time off, and me with rheumatism and a fixed income—while prices go up every year. We could use a change of luck. Maybe a sweepstakes win.”

  Louis leaned back in his chair, struggling between courtesy and common sense. “You really believe in all this stuff?” he asked her.

  A sad smile. “Where’s the harm? When you get older, it’s hard to let go of the customs you knew when you were young. You’ll see.”

  Louis couldn’t think of any family customs, except eating in front of the TV set and never taking the last ice cube—so you wouldn’t have to refill the tray. Other than that, he didn’t think he had much in common with the people he lived with. He thought about telling Flora about his work at the animal shelter, but he decided that it would be a dangerous thing to do. She already knew his name. Any further information would enable her and the police to locate him in a matter of hours. If she ever cottoned on to the fact that she had been robbed, that is.

  “Do you have any pets?” he asked.

  Flora shook her head. “We used to have a wee dog, but he got old and died a few years back. I haven’t wanted to get another one, and Doris is too busy with her work to help in taking care of one.”

  “I could get you a nice puppy, from—” He stopped himself just in time. “Well, never mind. You’re right. Dogs are more work than most people think. Or they ought to be.”

  Flora beamed. “What a nice young man you are!”

  He smiled back nervously.

  Louis nibbled another piece of shortbread while he considered his dilemma. He had been caught breaking into a house, and the evidence from the rest of the evening’s burglaries was in the trunk of his Volkswagen. The logical thing to do would be to kill the old dear, so that he wouldn’t have to worry about getting caught. Logical, yes, but distasteful. Louis was not a killer. The old lady reminded him of one of the sad-eyed cocker spaniels down at the shelter. Sometimes people brought in pets because they didn’t want them anymore or were moving. Or because the kid was allergic to them. Often these people asked that the animal be destroyed, which annoyed Louis no end. Did they think that if they didn’t want the pet, no one else should have it? Suppose divorce worked like that? Louis could see putting an old dog to sleep if it was feeble and suffering, but not just because the owners found it inconvenient to have it around. He supposed that his philosophy would have to apply to his hostess as well, even if she were a danger to his career. After all, Flora was old, but she was not weak or in pain. She seemed quite spry and happy, in fact, and Louis couldn’t see doing away with her just for expedience. After all, people had rights, too, just like animals.

  He wondered what he ought to do about her. It seemed to boil down to two choices: He could tie her up, finish robbing the house, and make his getaway, or he could finish his tea and leave, just as if he had been an ordinary—what was it?—first footer.

  He leaned back in his chair, considering the situation, and felt a sharp jab in his side. A moment’s reflection told him what it had been: the tail of the pheasant salt shaker. He had stashed the pair in the pillowcase, now concealed under his coat. He couldn’t think of any way to get rid of his loot without attracting suspicion. Then she might realize that he was a burglar; then she might panic and try to call the police; then he would have to hit her to keep himself from being captured. It was not an appealing scenario. Louis decided that the kindest thing to do would be to tie her up, finish his job, and leave.

  Flora was prattling on about Scottish cakes and homemade icing, but he hadn’t been listening. He thought it would be rather rude to begin threatening his hostess while he still had a mouthful of cake, but he told himself that she had been rather rude, too. After all, she hadn’t asked him anything about himself. That was thoughtless of her. A good hostess ought to express a polite interest in her guests.

  Flora’s interminable story seemed to have wound down at last. She looked up at the kitchen clock. It was after one. “Well,” she said, beaming happily at Louis. “It’s getting late. Can I get you a wee doch and dorris?”

  Louis blinked. “A what?”

  “A drink, lad. Wee doch and dorris is a Scottish expression for the last drink of the evening. One for the road, as you say over here. Scotch, perhaps?”

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid not,” he said. “I do have to be going, but I’m afraid I will have to tie you up now.”

  He braced himself for tears, or, even worse, a scream, but the old lady simply took another sip of her drink and waited. She wasn’t smilin
g anymore, but she didn’t look terrified, either. Louis felt his cheeks grow hot, wishing he could just get out of there. Burglars weren’t supposed to have to interact with people; it wasn’t part of the job description. If you liked emotional scenes, you became an armed robber. Louis hated confrontations.

  “I hope this won’t change your luck for the New Year or anything,” he mumbled, “but the reason I came in here tonight was to rob the house. You see, I’m a burglar.”

  Flora nodded, still watching him closely. Not a flicker of surprise had registered on her face.

  “I really enjoyed the cakes and all, but after all, business is business.”

  “In Scotland, it’s considered unlucky to do evil after you’ve accepted the hospitality of the house,” the old lady said calmly.

  Louis shrugged. “In America it’s unlucky to miss car payments.”

  She made no reply to this remark, but continued to gaze up at him impassively. At least she wasn’t being hysterical. He almost wished that he had given up the whole idea.

  Louis cleared his throat and continued. “The reason I have to tie you up is that I have to finish getting the stuff, and I have to make sure you can’t call for help until I’m long gone. But I won’t beat you up or anything.”

  “Kind of you,” she said dryly. “There is some spare clothesline in the bottom drawer of the left-hand cabinet.”

  He looked at her suspiciously. “Don’t try anything, okay? I don’t want to have to do anything rough.” He didn’t carry a gun (nobody was supposed to be home), but they both knew that a strong young man like Louis could do considerable damage to a frail old lady like Flora with his fists—a candlestick—almost anything could be a weapon.

  Keeping his eyes on her, he edged toward the cabinet, squatting down to pull out the drawer. She watched him steadily, making no move to leave her seat. As he eased the drawer open, he saw the white rope clothesline neatly bundled above a stack of paper bags. With considerable relief at the ease of it all, he picked up the rope and turned back to the old lady.

  “Okay,” he said, a little nervously. “I’m going to tie you up. Just relax. I don’t want to make it so tight it cuts off circulation, but I’m not, like, experienced, you know? Just sit in the chair with your feet flat on the floor in front of you.”

  She did as she was told, and he knelt and began winding the clothesline around her feet, anchoring it to the legs of the chair. He hoped it wasn’t going to be too painful, but he couldn’t risk her being able to escape. To cover his uneasiness at the silent reproach from his hostess, Louis began to whistle nervously as he worked. That was probably why he didn’t hear anything suspicious.

  His first inkling that anything was wrong was that Flora suddenly relaxed in her chair. He looked up quickly, thinking, “Oh, God! The old girl’s had a heart attack!” But her eyes were open, and she was smiling. She seemed to be gazing at something just behind him.

  Slowly Louis turned his head in the direction of the back door. There was a short blond woman of about thirty standing just inside the door. She was wearing a dark blue uniform and a positively menacing expression. But what bothered Louis the most about the intruder was the fact that her knees were bent, and she was holding a service revolver in both hands, its barrel aimed precisely at Louis’s head.

  Louis looked from the blond woman to Flora and back again, just beginning to make the connection. A jerk of the gun barrel made him move slowly away from the chair and put his hands up.

  “This is my daughter Doris,” said Flora calmly. “She’s a policewoman. You see, you were lucky for us, Louis. I’m sure she’ll get her promotion after this!”

  HENRY SLESAR

  THE MAN WHO LOVED CHRISTMAS

  Henry Slesar is one of the busiest authors in the field. He’s written an incredible number of short stories, along with many motion picture and television scripts for Alfred Hitchcock and others. He’s even been head scriptwriter for a long-running daytime serial show. So it’s hardly surprising that when Henry sat down to write a Christmas story, he chose as his principle character an overachiever who carried his holiday celebrating to the ultimate extreme … and one step beyond.

  When Lev Walters felt the waking touch of his wife’s hand on his shoulder he was sure it was about the baby. Wow! he thought, his kid might be born on Christmas after all! They had discussed that possibility for weeks, wondering if John Alexander Walters would resent sharing his day with a better-known Birthday Boy. (They knew the baby’s sex because of Elly’s amniocentesis. She was thirty-two and it was her first kid, so why take chances?) But as soon as Lev was fully awake, a process which took longer than usual since he had been wrapping packages until two A.M., he knew that contractions weren’t the reason for the wake-up call. Elly was holding a telephone in her left hand. That always meant the same thing. Lev Walters was a cop.

  Captain Ab Peterson answered his first question before he asked it. “No, Sam isn’t here. There was a three-car accident on the Interstate, too many eggnogs I guess. I’ve only got Lutz and the Kid, and neither one of them has the brains for it.”

  “For what?” Lev asked.

  “A vanishing act,” Ab said. “A man named Barry Methune, lives on Holly Road, disappeared last night.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Lev said. “Nobody qualifies as a Missing Person in less than forty-eight hours.”

  “This guy vanished out of his own bed, and his wife is pretty hysterical. He’s got two kids, they haven’t even opened their presents yet, and Daddy is just plain gone … At least talk to the woman, okay? She’s ten minutes from your house.”

  Lev knew he would, despite the pout he saw on Elly’s face. There were only six officers serving the town of Lewisfield, and holidays were always a headache, logistically and emotionally, and none worse than Christmas. Lev had traded off two days for the privilege of staying home on December twenty-fifth, but here he was, yanking up his socks and stumbling into his pants, preparing to hold the hand of some housewife whose husband had probably gotten too full of Christmas spirits to remember where he lived.

  “Don’t be gone long,” Elly told him. “I don’t want to have this baby without you.”

  “You couldn’t have done it without me,” Lev said.

  He got as close to her as he could to kiss her.

  Lev Walters had lived in Lewisfield for all of his thirty-four years, and watched his town spread out like a stain to become the suburb of a neighboring city. Growth had made the town prosperous, but less of a community. It had also created new neighborhoods, and Holly Road was one of them, a stretch of cookie-cutter houses with lawns like green stamps.

  Christmas had imposed another kind of conformity on Holly Road. There were wreaths on almost every door, and Christmas trees glowed or blinked in almost every window. But when his station wagon turned into the driveway of the Methune house, Lev started to blink himself. If there had been a contest for the most Christmas-decorated house in Lewisfield, the Methunes would have taken first prize. There was a life-size sleigh on the front lawn, with a plastic Santa holding the reins of four plastic reindeer, one of which boasted a tiny red light bulb in its nose. There was an almost life-size creche on the patio, strung with colored lights that made baby Jesus look jaundiced and his admirers green, orange, and blue. Lights bordered all the gutters and downspouts, the windows, the front door. There were two light-festooned trees on the lawn, but neither rivaled the one inside, a seven-footer draped with every conceivable decoration, rising out of a jumble of brightly wrapped packages, all of them still unopened.

  “Somebody likes Christmas,” he mumbled when Mrs. Methune let him in.

  “My husband,” the woman said, catching a sob. “That’s what makes it so terrible. That this could happen today!”

  “That what could happen?” Lev said.

  She was a thin, pretty woman with pulled-back hair and slightly protruding teeth that gave her an endearing, rabbity look. Fortunately, her eyes were dark and her mouth stron
g, although the former was tearstained and the latter quivery.

  “We went to bed after midnight, Barry and me. The kids usually go to sleep around nine, but they were so excited we let them stay up until ten. That gave us a couple of hours to put out all the presents. We were both exhausted, naturally, but Barry was happy, happy the way he always is this time of year. That man loved Christmas so much, I swear he’d start planning next year’s Christmas on December twenty-sixth.”

  “What time did you wake up?”

  “Seven o’clock. I set the alarm because I didn’t want to sleep too late; I knew Dodie and Amanda—those are my little girls—would be up at the crack of dawn, dying to open their presents. I wasn’t surprised when I saw my husband was already out of bed. Barry is usually a heavy sleeper, but this was his favorite morning of the whole year …”

  “Your bedroom is upstairs?”

  “Yes. I threw on a robe and came down here, and sure enough, there were the kids, shaking and rattling all the packages, trying to guess what Santa had brought them. I mean that literally, by the way, Dodie is five and Amanda is not quite seven, and they still believe in Santa, or at least do a good job of faking it … That’s the way Barry wanted it, for them to believe.” She gulped down a sob. “Oh, my God, I’m talking about him in the past tense! Tell me I don’t have to do that, please!”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Lev said with firm conviction. “There are dozens of possible explanations for your husband’s disappearance, Mrs. Methune, and the odds are terrific that he’ll walk through that door in the next couple of hours.”

  “I’ve been trying to think of one explanation,” she said. “Just one that I can hang on to. But I can’t. I can’t!”

  “All right, I’ll take a crack at it. He woke up and realized he had left one of his presents at his office. He figured he could hop into his car—”

  “No,” the woman said sharply. “That’s one thing he didn’t do. We have two cars, his Ford, my little Mazda. They’re both in the garage. He didn’t walk to his office, it’s in the city, in Dayton. He runs a small surgical supply house. He does own a motor bike, but that’s here, too.”