Mistletoe & Misdemeanors (a Jamie Winters Mysteries holiday short story)

by Kelly Rey

  "Whatever," she said, sulky now. Curt looked at me with a plea in his eyes. I had a moment of panic. I couldn't relate to teenagers. I didn't speak their language. But I couldn't leave Curt blowing in the wind. Not when he controlled my rent.

  "Do you believe in Santa?" I asked her.

  Her gaze was fixed on the ceiling. Her arms and legs were crossed. Her foot was bouncing up and down in the typical rhythm of teenaged exasperation. She couldn't have been more closed off if she'd had a wall around her. "Do I believe in peace and joy and generosity of spirit?" She shook her head. "Nah. Sounds like a bunch of crap to me."

  I sat back, a little surprised. There was more to this girl than blue hair and body piercings.

  "Watch the language," Curt told her, oblivious.

  Maizy didn't even look at him, but her foot increased its tempo. I moved my legs farther to the left, out of her range. "I bet it wasn't Santa," I said gently. "I'm sure he and the elves are busy making toys. You know, for all the girls and…boys." Or something like that. I was a little shaky on my Christmas poetry. Since my job paid in sofa change, Christmas was sort of a hit-or-miss thing for me. This year it was a definite miss, since we'd gotten no Christmas bonus at all.

  Maizy shrugged. "Maybe he ran out of epoxy and hadda go to Walmart." She took another piece of bread, sloshed it through her marinara sauce, and stuck it into her mouth.

  "But Santa has a sleigh," I said. "What would a carjacker do with a sleigh?"

  "And eight tiny reindeer," Curt said, his expression suggesting he thought Maizy had been out in the cold a little too long.

  "He wasn't in the sleigh." Maizy scrubbed at her mouth with a napkin. "He was in an El Camino."

  Wait. An El Camino?

  Curt started laughing. "Santa doesn't drive. The reindeer do the driving. Rudolph is his nav system."

  That couldn't be a coincidence. I hadn't seen an El Camino in years. What were the chances there'd be two in the same area on the same day, with boxes in its bed?

  I gave him the stink-eye. "Will you forget about the reindeer?"

  He shrugged. "Easy for you to say. You're not the one trying to make an El Camino fly."

  "Are you sure you saw a red suit?" I asked Maizy. "And a white beard?"

  "No, I could be wrong," she said. "Sometimes my cataracts get in the way."

  I ignored that. "So maybe it was a red coat instead," I suggested.

  She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling and blew out a sigh. "Fine. It was a red coat. Satisfied?"

  "Not yet," Curt said. It took a lot to satisfy Curt. "Did Rudolph get carjacked too?"

  "No Rudolph," Maizy said. "But I think I saw Donder on my way over here."

  "I don't think it's Donder," he said. "I think it's Donner."

  "It's either one," I hissed through my teeth. "Either one is right."

  "A reindeer with two names? When so many reindeer go to bed nameless?" Curt grimaced. "There's nothing right about that."

  I'd decided until about five minutes ago that Maizy had fallen in the snow and hit her head on the way over. Now I was wondering if Curt had done the same thing.

  Maizy jumped up and began putting her coat and gloves and scarf back on.

  "Where do you think you're going?" Curt asked her. "I'll drive you home."

  "I can walk." She wrapped the scarf around her neck a dozen times and shoved it inside her coat. It still hung down to her knees. She hoisted the satchel like it held cinderblocks and slung it across her body with a grimace. I don't know how she could walk with the weight of all of it on her tiny frame.

  "You live two miles away." He patted his pockets and glanced toward the counter. No car keys. "Give me a second," he said. "I can take you."

  "Fine." She tried to cross her arms, but with the enormous scarf bulge they weren't long enough, so she dropped them by her sides. "Hurry up, will you?"

  Curt went to look for his keys, and Maizy disappeared out the door. I jumped up, grabbed my coat, and followed her. "Maizy, wait!"

  "What for?" she yelled over her shoulder. "I've got nothing to say to him."

  "You don't have to talk to him," I yelled back. "You can talk to me." I wasn't really sure why I didn't want her to leave, but it seemed important, and I was sure I couldn't fall back on any of the stale lines I'd heard from adults when I was a teenager. So I tried the truth. "I saw the carjacking," I told her. "It was a red El Camino, wasn't it."

  "So what?" She threw up her hands. "It's a cruel world. Crime happens. Just ask my dad."

  Right. It was a crime that I hadn't gotten to finish my ravioli and have dessert because she'd decided to act like a brat. If this was how I used to behave, I really had to call my mother and apologize.

  But that was for another time. "So I think we need to find Santa," I said. "We can help each other." Not that I'd actually be looking for Santa. I hadn't believed in Santa since the sixth grade. But I would be looking for Jack Angelino, who looked enough like Santa that anyone could be fooled with just a quick glimpse, and who might be in harm's way. I couldn't forgive myself if I did nothing. Curt didn't believe his niece, but I did. I'd seen the speeding El Camino.

  She didn't answer right away. I jammed my hands into my pockets and tried to ignore the biting cold and stinging sleet as I followed her around the corner of the house, stepping into the teeth of the wind. It slowed her down immediately and turned her around so her back was to it, and she was now facing me. "Help each other? You mean you want my help? Don't you old people know everything?"

  Okay, we were going to have to work on that "old people" thing.

  "Not all of us," I said. "And yes, I want your help. But can we talk about it inside? I'm freezing."

  She thought it over. "I'm freezing too," she said finally. "And I'm hungry."

  Couldn't help her there. I hadn't gone on a real food shopping trip since the Clinton administration. I grinned. "I think I've got Froot Loops."

  It took her a second, but she finally grinned back. I think. Her face was burrowed into that anaconda of a scarf, but her eyes narrowed in a good way. "That's pathetic."

  "Tell me about it. Why do you think I was eating at your uncle's place?" I turned and headed for the stairs to my apartment.

  She scuffed along behind me. "I guess I figured you two were doing it."

  I spun around to give her my impression of a stern adult figure, but this time she was definitely grinning, and it looked good on her. "Come on," I said. "I'll make some hot chocolate, and we can watch the Kardashians."

  "I hate the Kardashians," she said, but she followed me anyway.

  CHAPTER THREE

  "Is this what you needed my help for?" Maizy asked later, after hanging the last ball on the Christmas tree. "Manual labor?"

  "Of course not." I handed her the final icicle. She stepped back to get the big picture, then placed it very precisely in just the right spot. I was impressed. I couldn't have done that good of a job if I'd spent the night working on it. "This looks like something in a department store," I told her. "You have a real knack."

  Her cheeks went pink. "I like decorating. The smallest detail can change everything."

  That didn't just go for Christmas trees. I held up the star. "Want to do the honors?"

  She took it, looking pleased, and clambered on top of the kitchen chair that was serving as our step stool. "Turn it on," she said when she was done. "I want to see it."

  I snapped off the table lamp and turned on the tree lights, and it looked even better than before. I'd never had a tree that looked this good. I whipped out my cell phone and took a picture to remember it by when I got around to taking it down in March. "Do you do living rooms?" I asked her.

  She gathered up the empty ornament boxes. "This place isn't so bad. It just needs a little color."

  She was right about that. Curt had given me the go-ahead to paint, but I never seemed to get around to it. If I painted, I'd have to buy new furniture, and if I bought new furniture, I'd have to buy new window coverings
and on and on. It was way too complicated. And because I'd invariably make the wrong color choices, there'd be do-overs, and I didn't have the energy for all that.

  "Maybe I could tweak a couple of things." She glanced around. "Give it some flair."

  "Not too much flair," I said. "I couldn't live up to it."

  She avoided looking at me. "I think you could. So." She put the boxes on my coffee table. "So are we gonna talk about it or what?"

  I took the boxes to the kitchen and stuffed them in a trash bag. She stayed in the living room, and I heard the television come alive to Family Feud, the old Richard Dawson version. I waited a beat for her to change it to MTV or some silly reality show, but it stayed on Family Feud. Good for her.

  I poured two mugs of hot chocolate and took them back to the living room. We sat together on the sofa. "I think the person you saw getting carjacked is my next door neighbor," I told her. "And I want to find him."

  "Why?"

  I blinked. "Because I care about him."

  "Are you a detective or what?"

  "I've had some experience with investigations." Yeah, okay, it had been one experience, and it had been inept and clumsy, and I'd lucked into staying alive while not really solving anything, but how hard could it be to find Santa Claus?

  "What, you lost an earring once?" I think she was teasing me, but she did it with a snarky teenaged smirk.

  "It was a murder investigation," I informed her with matching snark. "And the killer is in jail right now." No thanks to me, really, but she didn't have to know that.

  "Prob'ly be out on parole in five years," she muttered, and again I was struck by her split second ability to transition from teenager to cynical sophisticate. "But that is pretty cool," she admitted. "Uncle Curt told me you were just a gofer for a bunch of lawyers."

  I was going to have to have a talk with Curt. His stock was dropping by the hour. "Well," I said, "if you're not interested, you could always go back to school in the morning and forget all about the carjacking."

  She took her time thinking about it, sipping her hot chocolate and studying the Christmas tree. Just when I thought I'd lost her, she said, "Well, I am on Christmas break this week." She shrugged. "It's not like I have anything better to do."

  "That level of enthusiasm is just what I'm looking for," I told her.

  She abruptly lifted her left hand to show me the jeweled wreath inset into her nail, in a most impolite way. "Do you know what this costs?"

  I reached out and folded her finger down to her palm. "I have no idea. And don't do that again."

  "Plenty," she said. "It cost plenty. And I've got two of them."

  "Don't need to see them," I told her. "Where you going here?"

  She gnawed on her lip. "Say I'm willing to help you. I can't do it for free."

  I gnawed on my lip to keep from smiling. I liked this kid.

  "I'm thinking I need a car," she went on. "You can't cover much ground without a car."

  "That's true," I agreed. "You can't have a car."

  Out came the lower lip again in a pout. "But all my friends have cars. Becky has a car. Allison has a car. Patti has a car, and she's only sixteen!"

  "Do you have a license?"

  She splayed her fingers in her lap and studied them. "Well…"

  "Talk to me when you get a license," I said. "And you can tell me what kind of car your parents bought you." I took a sip of hot chocolate. "What makes you think I should give you a car, anyway? I don't even know you." And my own car was barely a car. If I was buying anyone a car, it would be me.

  "Let's not say give," she said. "Let's say lend."

  "Let's say no."

  She crossed her arms and flopped back against the cushion. "It's just so unfair. I have my learner's permit, you know."

  "Good for you." I stood up. "I'm taking a shower and calling it a night. We'll start in the morning. Do you want a ride home?"

  She squinted at the window. "I don't know. It's pretty bad out there. Maybe I should just stay here. You know, for safety reasons."

  I glanced around at my little studio apartment, made for one person, lived in by one person, and furnished for one person. "I don't have a bedroom, Maizy."

  "You have a bed, right?" She patted the sofa. "In here? Looks like a queen. That's plenty big enough."

  Damn those interior design shows. But I didn't want to go back out in the storm any more than she did. I blew out a sigh. "Fine, you can stay here tonight. Call your parents and tell them you're at your Uncle Curt's."

  "I already texted them," she said. "When you were in the kitchen."

  That kind of forward thinking was going to get us both into trouble.

  "Go ahead and take your shower." She pulled off her boots and sat back. "I'll just sit here and watch Family Feud. I won't steal anything. It's bad karma to steal."

  "You are an interesting girl," I told her.

  She nodded gravely. "But an interesting girl without a car."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  By the time I woke up at almost ten the next morning, Maizy had made more hot chocolate, and a bowl of Froot Loops waited on the kitchen table when I padded in from the living room, yawning. She poured milk into the bowl. "This is for you, Jamie. I was going to make you toast, but you only have one piece of bread left."

  I sat down. "Don't you eat breakfast?"

  "I found a pack of Butterscotch Krimpets in the fridge. I had those."

  Well, that was a buzzkill first thing in the morning, and just when I'd finally been able to scratch together a little Christmas spirit, thanks to my beautiful tree.

  The hell with Christmas spirit. "You ate my Butterscotch Krimpets?"

  She gave me a look of alarm. "What, were they bad or something?"

  "They're never bad. That's the point. I was saving those."

  "For what? Just go buy some more."

  "You know, Maizy," I said with exaggerated patience, "First a car, now Butterscotch Krimpets. Adults aren't made of money."

  She glanced around. "Tell me about it."

  Maybe I didn't like her quite as much as I'd thought last night.

  "So I've been up for hours already." She sat down across from me. "I looked up the numbers of all the area hospitals. You know, in case you wanted to call about your neighbor."

  I nodded and chewed, hunched over my bowl like a gargoyle. Mornings weren't my best time. And there was the Butterscotch Krimpet thing. "They won't tell me anything," I said. "HIPAA laws."

  She brightened. "That's no problem. You got a computer, right?"

  "You're not hacking into any hospital databases," I told her. "We're finding him legally."

  "It's not like we're changing any of their records. God."

  "We'll do it the old-fashioned way," I said firmly. "We'll pretend we're visitors and ask for his room number. Then we'll know if he's there or not."

  She rolled her eyes. "So you want to drive to every one of these hospitals." She slid a paper across the table. It had five names on it. "You might want to talk to an efficiency expert about the way you conduct your investigations."

  "It'll take two hours, tops," I told her. "Unless we find him, and then we're done. And what do you know about efficiency experts?"

  "I know they'd use the tools available in this century," she said. "And something else. I watched the news this morning. They didn't have a report on the carjacking. It's like it never happened. I mean, it's not like there were no witnesses. How come there was no report?"

  I shrugged. "The weather?"

  "But they have people standing outside in the weather to tell you it's snowing," she said. "And that roads get slippery when it snows." She waited a beat. "You know, for people with cars."

  I lifted an eyebrow. "Careful, Maizy."

  "Worth a try," she said. "You really aren't a morning person, are you?"

  I pushed my bowl away. "Have you called your parents to let them know when you'd be home?"

  She gave an exaggerated sigh. "Yes, Jamie, I cal
led my parents. My mother said I had to check in with Uncle Curt every now and then. I'm off from school all week, you know."

  I nodded. "So we need to put together a plan."

  "I already did that." She pulled out a folded piece of paper. "Uncle Curt already shoveled, so we're good to go. Since there was nothing on the news, we really don't have anywhere to start, so I started thinking if I carjacked a car, where would I take it. And I think—"

  "He took the driver," I cut in, thinking aloud. "I mean, you usually hear about the driver being pulled out of the car, but this time he was taken with the car."

  "More like he went with the car," Maizy said. "He just refused to get out." She shrugged. "But he was nice about it. I would've gone all ninja on the skinny dude's ass. I mean, that was the old guy's car, you know? You don't mess with someone's car."

  "So he moved to the passenger seat." I tried to remember if I'd seen a passenger, but I couldn't. I'd been too focused on the things in the back.

  She nodded. "I know because I remember noticing the red coat with the white trim."

  I sat up straighter. "You mean he was in a Santa suit?"

  She seemed surprised. "Well, yeah. I told you guys that last night." She tapped the paper. "Anyway, like I said, there's this place— "

  I leaped to my feet. "We're going to the mall."

  Maizy beamed at me. "That's what I'm talking about." She followed me into the living room. "Why? I mean, it's not like I don't want to go, but why?"

  I grabbed my clothes and headed for the bathroom to dress. "We have to find out if he works at the mall. Maybe he was hired as seasonal help." Malls could hire senior citizens to play Santa, right? Kids expected Santa to be old. But where did the El Camino fit in? I couldn't remember him driving anything other than a generic little four-door sedan. That didn't mean he didn't have another car garaged somewhere else, like at one of those auto storage places. But if Santa was Jack, maybe he'd mentioned any plans he'd had to a co-worker. I didn't really know what good that did if he got spirited away by a carjacker, but I needed someplace to start and someone to talk to.