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

by Kelly Rey

  Which made me stop and turn around. "Can you ask your father about this?"

  Her mouth twisted. "I can't ask him anything. He's never home, and he won't talk about his work when he is." She turned her face toward the window. "I think he's even working on Christmas."

  "He's got a tough job, Maizy," I said gently.

  "Yeah. Whatever." She ran the back of her hands under her eyes and set her shoulders. I didn't know what else to say, so I decided to give her some privacy. I ducked into the bathroom to get dressed. While I was in there, I did a superficial sink and toilet scrub, refolded the towels, took a quick look at the tub and decided my industry ended there. I yanked the shower curtain closed.

  "Hey, can we stop at the ATM?" she asked when I came out. "I've got no cash, and I've got my eye on this cute belly button ring at—"

  I stopped in my tracks. "You've got an ATM card?"

  "Doesn't everyone?"

  I didn't have an ATM card. I barely had a bank account. I had more of a revolving door. My pay came in, and my bills went out, and other than that, it was tumbleweeds.

  "Fine. We'll stop at the ATM. But we're not going to the mall to shop. We're going to the management office."

  "Whatever you say," she agreed, but she had a look in her eye that told me she'd be leaving the mall with a belly button ring.

  I slipped my shoulder bag across my body and found my keys. "We should get an early start."

  She followed me out the door and waited while I locked up. "You sure you don't want me to drive?" she asked. "I'm a pretty good driver. My dad says I drive better than my mom."

  "I'll do the driving," I said. "The roads are probably icy."

  As it turned out the roads weren't the only thing that were icy. My metal stairs were icy, too. When my foot hit the top step, it immediately flew out from under me, and I went down hard. Maizy hurried back up to kneel beside me. "Are you alright? What happened? Can I drive you to the hospital?"

  "I'm fine," I said through gritted teeth. And I was, mostly. I was also miffed that Curt hadn't put ice melt on my stairs while he was shoveling. Maizy helped me to my feet, and I tested out my ankle, and my knee, and my hip. Everything seemed to be where it belonged. Except when I took one step down, my left ankle protested just enough that I stopped in my tracks to reconsider. It wasn't broken. It probably wasn't even sprained too badly. Still, it hurt, and I wasn't at all sure I could handle the clutch.

  Maizy watched me from four steps down with a concerned expression. "You could wrap it. Do you have an Ace bandage? Uncle Curt might have an Ace bandage. Want me to go see?"

  I thought about it. I'd just added another thing I wanted to talk to Curt about, but it could wait. It was more important to me to find Jack. "I think it'll be okay if I just get off of it for a couple of minutes." A shudder ran through me as I held out the keys to my car. "Do not drive too fast. Do not tailgate. Use the turn signals. Leave plenty of room for braking."

  "I know. You sound like my dad. God." She scrambled up the steps to snatch the keys. "You won't regret this."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  "This is your car, really?" Maizy asked five minutes later, after she'd managed to find "reverse" and back out of the driveway. "What is this thing, anyway?"

  "It's an Escort," I told her. "Use your windshield wipers. There's plenty of washer fluid."

  She ground the car into first gear, and we skidded off down the street. The plows had come through, leveling the snow to a single smooth surface, but they'd also distributed sand so that there seemed to be some traction.

  I was still white knuckling it. I clutched my handbag in my lap and willed my ankle to stop aching so I could take the wheel.

  "My dad drives an Explorer when he doesn't have the cruiser." Maizy slid to a stop at the corner, swung an overly wide right turn, then put on her turn signal. "It's like he's trying to make some macho statement or something. I mean, why not just drive a school bus."

  Right now a school bus didn't sound so bad.

  "It's not the least bit green," she went on. "I told him he could feed an entire village with what he pays for gas every month."

  I was impressed by her civic consciousness. "What'd he say?"

  She shrugged. "That it costs him enough to feed his own kids. I think he means my little brother. My little brother eats like a jackal. He's trying to gain weight so he can play football next year. So where are we going, anyway?"

  "Mapleton Mall. After that, we'll check the hospitals."

  She gave me a sad little smile. "Why not make it easy on yourself? I have an iPhone that can—"

  "Drive," I said. "And cut off the turn signal. You know that's supposed to come before the turn, right?"

  She wrinkled up her nose. "Now you sound like my mom."

  That hit a little close to home. Sometimes I sounded like my own mother, and that was bad enough.

  There wasn't much traffic except for a few plows, and before long we were on the interstate heading south.

  "Where'd you learn to drive a stick shift?" I asked her after she ran smoothly through the gears.

  "Uncle Curt taught me."

  That surprised me. "Really? You don't seem to get along too well with your Uncle Curt."

  "I don't think he likes me much," she said, sounding so much like a forlorn little girl that something caught in my throat.

  "I'm sure you're wrong about that," I told her, but how would I know? Like every other man on the planet, Curt wasn't inclined to talk about his feelings.

  Another shrug. "I get a vibe."

  "Maybe your vibe is wrong."

  She rolled her eyes. "Whatever."

  The classic song of the teenager.

  * * *

  She managed to find a parking spot close to the mall entrance. She angled the Escort carefully into the spot, checked all the mirrors, leaned out her door to assess the car's position, and shut off the engine. "We're here." She came around the car to open my door. "I guess you want these back." She offered me the keys.

  I smiled at her. "You hold on to them. I'm not quite feeling up to driving yet."

  She caught herself before smiling back, but she couldn't hide her pleased expression as she tucked the keys carefully into her ginormous satchel.

  Five minutes later we were sitting in front of the mall manager, a squatty little man with disproportionately short legs, sparse blond hair, and eerily light blue eyes. Give him another two feet of torso and some shoulders, he'd be a Nordic god.

  His hands were folded primly on the desk blotter, behind his Patrick Peacock nameplate. There was little else on the desk. The entire office was so uncluttered, it looked as if he'd just wandered into an empty room and sat down. "I'm sure you know this is an unusual request."

  "I understand," I said. "But I'm not asking to see a personnel file. I'm just asking if a man named Jack Angelino works here. He's gone missing, and I'm looking for him."

  "Are you his daughter?"

  "I'm his next door neighbor."

  He angled his gaze toward Maizy. "You must be his granddaughter, then."

  "Don't know the man," she said.

  "I see," he said, although he clearly didn't. "Under the circumstances, I don't see—"

  Maizy gripped the arms of her chair tightly, her face a mask of anguish. "But my daddy knows him. Mr. Angelino practically raised my daddy. He'd be here himself, except he's made himself sick over this. Please, if you could just give us this little bit of information, it might be enough for him to finally manage to eat some crackers."

  Patrick Peacock clucked in sympathy. "You poor dear. Give me a moment." He pushed back his chair and stood. "Let me see what I can find out."

  When he was gone, I stared at Maizy. "What was that all about?"

  "He just needed a reason to help us." She looked at her nails. "You think I ought to get little candles on my nails? Maybe with tiny garnets for flames?"

  I shook my head. "You constantly surprise me."

  "Yeah," she said. "I get
that a lot."

  Patrick Peacock bustled back in, rifling through a manila file folder. "It turns out our mall Santa this year is not your Mr. Angelino."

  I felt a stab of disappointment.

  "However," he went on, "Angelino did fill in for our regular Santa, Horace, recently. Horace actually recommended him as a temporary replacement when he had to…uh…" His eyes flitted to Maizy and away. "…have a colonoscopy," he whispered at me. He glanced at the clock on the wall. "Horace's first appearance is at eleven, if you want to ask him. He'll be in the atrium. Just look for the elves."

  I thanked him, shook his hand, and limped away with Maizy on my heels. "Now we've got time to stop at Rings and Things," she said. "Want to get anything pierced?"

  I choked back a laugh. "Thanks, I've got enough holes. I'll just sit over there and wait for you." I pointed to a low concrete wall that ran around the perimeter of a gurgling fountain. "Don't take too long."

  She hurried off, and I eased myself down onto the wall to people-watch. Despite the lousy weather and the fairly early hour, there were a lot of people moving a lot of shopping bags around. I couldn't help but be a tiny bit jealous. They had families to buy gifts for, and money to buy gifts with, and maybe spouses or boyfriends or girlfriends to get gifts from. I had my apartment and life-for-one, a sister who was dating one of my bosses, and not the good one, and an ankle that was starting to look like a Kong toy. Not that I was feeling sorry for myself or anything. But I was so wrapped up in, let's call it introspection, that I almost didn't notice the little green man who was flitting among the shoppers off to my right.

  When I did notice him, I couldn't stop watching. He had a peculiar little hunched way of moving, accentuated by the skin-tight Morphsuit he was wearing that covered his entire body, including his head and face. He had on a Santa hat, black boots, and a string of small red and gold balls hanging around his neck. And he was passing out candy canes with one hand while deftly pickpocketing or handbag-pocketing with the other. Everyone seemed either too charmed or too distracted to notice.

  I was neither. I shook my finger in his direction and yelled, "He's taking your money!"

  "Isn't that the truth." A woman sat down to my left with a sigh, arranging her bags at her feet. "The prices in this place are outrageous."

  "No, not—well, yes, they are," I agreed. "But that green man is robbing those people!"

  She looked in the direction of my point. "Green man?"

  I swung my head back the other way. The green man had vanished, the only one who had caught on to my warning. "He must have got away."

  The woman next to me was gone, too. Only I could still see her, hugging her bags to her stomach and hurrying as far away from me as she could get.

  "I'm back," Maizy announced. "What do you think?" She opened her coat to reveal a new turquoise and silver belly ring.

  "Did you see the green man?" I asked, getting to my feet. I started limping off in the direction he must have gone.

  "The green man?" Maizy zipped up and followed me. "Have you been smoking something?"

  I caught a glimpse of green up ahead, lurching across the lot, and pointed. "There he goes!"

  "Are we investigating now?" she asked, easily keeping pace with me while I pushed my sore ankle to its limit.

  "Where's mall security?" I scanned the mall while I half-trotted, half-shuffled along, trying to keep an eye on the pickpocket. Naturally, there wasn't a mall cop in sight. I gritted my teeth and forced myself into a slow jog while Maizy speed-walked beside me. We pushed through the exit and immediately I spotted green against the backdrop of the snowy parking lot. I pointed. "He's just went behind that Navigator. He must be parked somewhere over there." I rummaged in my handbag for my cell phone. If no mall cops were available, maybe I could get the real thing.

  Maizy shielded her eyes with her hand to look in that direction. We both heard the roar of an engine and the grinding of gears, and suddenly a red El Camino lurched backward into view from behind the Navigator. Brake lights flashed while he tried to find first gear, and then the car jerked forward. With any luck, he'd stall the thing.

  Maizy and I looked at each other, and she broke into a dead run toward my Escort. Seconds later, she screeched to a stop in front of me, I jumped in, and we rocketed off after the El Camino.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It wasn't exactly a high speed chase. The El Camino seemed to stay in second gear through the parking lot, onto the mall service road, and out onto the two-lane highway that fed eventually into the interstate. Either the green man couldn't find third gear, or he didn't realize he had it, because we sailed along behind him at a sedate 25 miles an hour. We even stopped for stop signs and red lights.

  After five minutes, Maizy said, "This looked more exciting on TV."

  I was still foraging in my handbag. "I forgot my cell phone. Do you have a cell phone? We should call the police."

  She snorted. "What for? They'll only blame us for endangering the public welfare by chasing him. Can't we do a citizens' arrest?"

  I glanced out the window, wondering who we were endangering. Sledders were moving faster than us.

  She pounced on my hesitance. "Trust me. My dad's a cop. We can do this ourselves." She glanced at me. "Please?"

  I frowned. "You're not giving me your cell phone, are you?"

  "You'll only get me in trouble if you call," she said. "I'm supposed to be home with Uncle Curt. I'll be grounded for a year if my dad finds out I've been in hot pursuit." We eased to a stop behind a Honda Civic that was behind the El Camino at a red light. "Well, pursuit," she amended.

  I sighed. "Alright, we'll follow him, but we are not doing a citizens' arrest. We'll see where he goes, and then we'll report him. Anonymously. Fair enough?" I tried to get a good look at the green man through the windows of the Civic. "He's got a lot of nerve, driving around in a stolen car."

  "Where do you think he ditched Santa?" Maizy asked.

  Jack. That was the question I was afraid to ask myself.

  "I bet he runs a chop shop. He probably steals cars and ships them overseas, whole or in parts." She nodded knowingly. "It's a huge market."

  I pointed. "Green light. How do you know all this?"

  "Last year, the cops busted a ring working out of Newark," she said. "I heard my dad and Uncle Curt talking about it."

  "He's turning," I said.

  "I got this." The Civic went straight, and Maizy swung into the turn behind the green man, slowing a little to allow more distance between us. I had to admit, she was pretty good at this stuff. A few minutes later, we followed him into the parking lot of a nondescript two-story clapboard building with residential space upstairs and a bar downstairs. A tattered American flag hung from a makeshift PVC pipe flagpole near the entrance. A decrepit Ford LTD without doors or tires sat on cinderblocks in the side yard.

  I looked up at the sign, a frosty mountain-scape on a black background, the plastic riddled with holes from time or weather or bullets. "The North Pole?"

  Maizy parked next to a pickup and killed the engine. "Maybe Santa's in there."

  Maybe. But I wasn't about to take the underaged daughter of a cop inside to find out. I turned to her. "Now would be the time to make that call," I said.

  "No way!" She hopped out of the Escort and pocketed the keys. "We came to investigate, and I'm investigating!"

  I got out of the car. "You're not old enough to go to bars!"

  "Age is just a number," she said over her shoulder, on her way across the parking lot. The green man was nowhere in sight, but the El Camino was empty. He was a slippery little sucker. I peeked inside. No sign of Jack. No bloodstains, either. That was promising.

  Maizy was already inside, so I hurried after her as fast as I could. The North Pole turned out to be a cozy neighborhood bar, with a couple of red-felted pool tables and a few pocked wood tables scattered around. A mahogany bar ran the length of the far wall with stools lined up along its face and a mirrored back bar, in which I
was able to see my own relief when I realized it wasn't a biker joint. The lighting was dim. The crowd was sparse and mostly geriatric. No green men in sight.

  Maizy stood just inside, digging for some quarters. "Dibs on the next game of pool."

  "We can't stay here," I told her. "We'll ask a few questions and move along."

  Her shoulders drooped. "I'm not allowed to have any fun."

  "Not on my watch." I walked up to a weather-beaten old man at the bar. "Excuse me, sir, I was wondering if you might have seen someone in a green bodystocking come in here a few minutes ago."

  No reaction.

  "Sir?" I tapped him on the forearm. "Have you seen a green man today?"

  "Not yet," he said without looking at me. "But I'm working on it." And he took another sip of his beer.

  Moving on. I made my way down the bar. No one had seen a green man. I ran out of people to ask and stood by the pool table, considering my next move. It wouldn't hurt to ask if anyone had seen Santa. So I started all over again, working my way back up the line. I got a few eye rolls and a smirk or two but little else until the man at the end surprised me by saying, "Yeah, he was here recently. Last coupla days. Him and those big damned dogs of his."

  "He had dogs with him?" Jack didn't have any dogs.

  The man nodded. "Called them Thunder and Lightning. Strangest thing, they waited outside for him the whole time, didn't bark or nothing. Just watched through the window." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the window. I glanced that way and noticed Maizy racking pool balls on the far table.

  "Thanks for the help," I told the man. "Let me buy you a beer for your time." I put a five dollar bill on the bar. Without looking down, he scooped it up and stuffed it into his pocket. Whatever.

  I pulled Maizy away from the pool table. "We're done here."

  "This place is death, anyway," she said, following me outside. "I know a club over in Jefferson County—they have karaoke at—"

  "How could they not have seen him?" I cut in. "The guy's wearing a green bodysuit, for God's sake!"