"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 to
ld 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 called 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.
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."
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