Cozy Christmas Shorts
Page 43
"Want me to go with you?" I asked. Not that I wanted to be the one to find the poor old guy lying at the foot of the stairs or anything. But I really didn't expect that. The house looked empty. Probably Jack was out Christmas shopping.
The wind took a shift and suddenly came in harder and icier. I was about to retract my offer and go straight upstairs to a mug of hot chocolate and a pair of warm sweatpants when Curt showed me his dimple and nodded. I was a sucker for that dimple. At least that wasn't hidden under his Michelin Man coat.
It took us a few minutes of poking through the snow to locate the spare key inside a little garden gnome by the back door. Inside, the house was dark but warm. No sign of Jack. No sign of a struggle. The coat rack was empty of Jack's red goose down coat. An unlit Christmas tree stood in a corner of the living room, beautifully decorated. No wrapped gifts underneath. We went upstairs and found more of the same, minus the tree. The master bedroom was neat as a pin, the bed a smooth, wrinkle-free field of cotton. The bathroom toiletries were corralled neatly into a little basket on the vanity counter.
We stood in the upstairs hallway, considering our next move. The furnace fired on, providing white noise in the otherwise silent house. Usually I didn't like empty houses. Probably some neurosis going back to my childhood. I didn't feel settled in them and felt the need to constantly look over my shoulder.
I glanced through an open doorway into what I guessed must be a guest bedroom, fully made up in coordinating ocean blue drapes and comforter. Even the neck roll and throw pillows piled on the bed complemented the South Sea vibe. "He makes me look like a slob," I said, thinking out loud.
Curt grinned. "Honey, you are a slob."
"I am not," I said hotly. "I just have better things to do than dusting." Like sleeping. Apparently I couldn't get enough sleep. I didn't like getting up before eight, and I was usually asleep by ten. It was like I was trapped in perpetual adolescence. Lord knows I was built that way.
Curt sighed. "I guess we should check the basement while we're here. Then I can give Pete the all-clear."
I did a gallant hand wave. "After you."
"Don't push me down the steps," he said over his shoulder. "I don't really think you're a slob. I think you have a time management problem."
"Maybe you're right." Still, my palms itched to plant themselves on his back as I followed him down. "For instance, it might've been a bad time management decision to come here when I could be home, eating dinner."
"There'll be a hot plate of ravioli waiting for you when this is done," he said, and I took my hands back and shoved them in my pockets.
Jack's house was a carbon copy of Curt's but flipped around, so that where Curt's basement door was toward the left of the kitchen, in Jack's it was to the right. We stood in front of it, Curt's hand on the knob, hesitating.
"He's not down there," I told him, my fingers firmly crossed behind my back.
"Yeah. I know he's not." Curt didn't open the door. "So where is he in this weather? Where do we look when we don't find him?"
My chest tightened because the obvious answer was local hospitals. "Let's worry about that if we need to," I said.
"Yeah." Curt twisted the knob but didn't pull. "You know Jack's been slipping a little. Forgetting things."
I blinked in surprise. "I hadn't noticed."
"He tries to hide it. Sometimes he can." A shadow crossed Curt's face. "And sometimes he can't." Curt had lost his Aunt Ronnie to Alzheimer's. Years later, it was still a painful place for him to go.
"But he lives alone," I said. "How bad can he be?"
"Bad enough that his kids are thinking of moving him into assisted living," Curt said.
My heart sank at the thought of Jack gone from the neighborhood. "Then he probably ran away," I said. "And I don't blame him." I tipped my head toward the door. "Let's find out for sure."
I don't like empty houses much, but I don't like basements at all. Too many spiders and dark corners and weird sounds. I hadn't met a basement yet that I liked. Until Jack's. Going down the steps into Jack's basement was like stepping into a cozy kitchen filled with the good smells of chocolate chip cookies and gingerbread on a cold day. It was warm and welcoming and, when Curt flipped a switch, it was bright. We stood in the center of the room with our mouths hanging open. A model train track ran around the perimeter of the room, the train now sitting silently in its miniature depot, all the little buildings of the town shuttered and still. The miniaturized landscape was sprinkled with fluffy white cotton and silvery glitter to simulate snow. A second Christmas tree, grander than the one upstairs, stood to the right, fully decorated and sparkling with yards of tinsel and garland. Two metal folding tables stood dead center, loaded with toys in various stages of assembly. A pegboard on the wall held an array of hand tools. A single box sat on the table, wrapped in shimmering red gift paper. No name tag. "Wow," I said. "Would you look at all this. It's Santa's workshop."
"I didn't know Jack built toys." Curt picked up a few random pieces, studied them, and put them back where he'd found them. "He does good work."
"Who do you think all this is for?" I asked. "This is an awful lot of toys."
"Maybe he's a closet do-gooder." Curt walked over to take a closer look at the train set.
"You know, he might be one of those people who everyone thinks is dirt poor," I said, "and when he passes away, it turns out he's got a million dollars stuffed in his mattress." That was a lot of dollars. Probably if a few of those disappeared, they'd never be missed. I backed casually towards the stairs. "I think I have to run upstairs and use the bathroom."
"Don't even think about it," Curt said. "We've done what we came here to do. Jack's not here. I'll call Pete back and let him know, and then we'll go eat."
"Are you sure?" I asked. "'Cause I can be gone and back like that."
"Do you want dinner or not?" Curt hustled me toward the stairs, flipping the light switch on his way past so the basement was draped in darkness again. Now that I knew what was down there, it didn't scare me in the least.
I took the steps two at a time anyway. Never hurts to be careful.
CHAPTER TWO
We were halfway through dinner when someone passed by the window, huddled up against the storm, head down, bright blue Smurf hair whipping around in the wind. Whoever it was looked to be heading up to my apartment. I didn't need any good will toward men tonight.
Curt muttered something under his breath and went to open the door. "Maizy, what are you doing out in this weather?"
The Smurf skidded to a stop and turned. "Oh, you live downstairs?"
"I live downstairs," Curt said, his jaw tight. "You might know that if you bothered to visit once in awhile. Get in here before you catch pneumonia."
He stepped aside, and Maizy clomped in, shook the snow off her Doc Martins, slid out of her coat and gloves and hat, and unwound about seven feet of scarf, leaving all of it in a heap in the corner along with a floppy satchel the size of a suitcase. Taking off the winter gear shaved about twenty pounds off of her. She was built like an anorexic palm tree, skinny and straight all the way up, with a huge sprout of unruly blue hair up top. Despite the weather, she was wearing torn jeans and a cropped shirt. Her belly button was pierced. Her lower back was tattooed.
Curt pushed her toward a seat at the table. "Jamie, this is my niece Maizy. Cam's daughter."
Cam Emerson was a police officer by day and a superhero by night. He had pure testosterone running through his veins alongside the ice water. He and Curt were as dissimilar as brothers could be, but they made it work. I wasn't sure about Curt and Maizy. There seemed to be a strange tension there. Probably because Curt had never had to relate to a teenaged girl before. Having been one of them once, I could sympathize.
I smiled at her. She hiked up a lip and eyeballed the Italian bread halfway across the table. I pushed it toward her. She snarfed a piece in two bites and eyeballed my ravioli. I had my limits, so I sat on my hands and stopped smiling.
"I don't want to go home. I'm going Christmas shopping." She stabbed at a ravioli and it shot off her plate onto the floor, along with about a quart of marinara sauce.
She made a move to pick it up, and Curt said, "Don't," with such sharp authority that I put down my own fork immediately.
Maizy sat back, her lower lip pooched out. "Fine. I'll just starve. Look at me. I look like a twelve-year-old boy." She turned her attention my way. "You ever seen a grown woman built like a twelve year old boy?"
Every time I looked in the mirror. "You're just slender," I told her. "You'll fill out." In about thirty years. At least that's what I was hoping.
She just stared at me.
Curt sopped up the mess, lobbed the wad of paper towels into the trash, and came back to the table. "You're not a grown woman. You're seventeen years old."
"That's old enough to drive," Maizy said, pushing her plate away uneaten. "Yet I don't have a car. I'm still walking everywhere." She looked at me. "You ever heard of a grown woman having to walk everywhere?"
Who was she kidding? My car was in the shop every other week. "Walking is good exercise," I told her.
She rolled her eyes. "Not in a blizzard. There's got to be two feet of snow out there."
We all turned toward the window. Four snowflakes drifted by lazily and came to land amid the half inch of snow already on the ground.
She shrugged. "Anyway, if I had a car, I wouldn't have seen that carjacking. I'd have been nice and warm at the mall where I belong."
Curt stopped chewing. "What carjacking?"
"I'm probably traumatized," she said, examining her fingernails. They were green with tiny jeweled wreaths glued on both middle fingers. Probably not a coincidence. "Childhood trauma can stay with you for life, you know," she added. "I saw that on Dr. Phil."
Did this girl have a time machine? Ninety seconds ago she'd been a grown woman.
Curt put down his fork very deliberately. "What carjacking?"
Maizy did another eye roll. "Santa Claus. He got carjacked near Third and Grant. I saw the whole thing. It was some skinny dude wearing a weird suit. Except Santa wouldn't get out of the car, I guess 'cause he had all that stuff in the back, so the skinny dude just took him, too. It just happened a little while ago. Didn't you hear about it on the news?" She glanced around the kitchen, where the refrigerator hummed and the clock ticked and utensils clattered. No TV. "God, Uncle Curt, don't you have anything from this century?"
Curt and I looked at each other in disbelief. "You mean some guy in a Santa suit," Curt told her. "You're too old to believe in Santa Claus."
She studied him for a long moment before giving a sad little head shake. "What's wrong with you old people? I mean Santa Claus. White beard, fat face, red suit, ho-ho-ho. I know what Santa Claus looks like, Uncle Curt."
White beard? Fat face? Red suit? That sounded familiar, especially if the red suit was actually a red coat. I nudged Curt with my toe and mouthed Jack?
He just shrugged. "Those Santa suits can look pretty realistic," he said. "I'm sure it was just a guy on his way home from the mall or something. What would Santa Claus be doing at Third and Grant?"
"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