by Anne George
“James Butler would know about it.”
“Of course.” I looked over at my picture of Abe and thought about the look on his face when the handsome James had shown up at the gallery. Pure love and pride.
“The police know all this,” Mary Alice said.
“Sure they do. They’ve probably already questioned him.”
“It’s sleeting,” Fred said from the door. “And it’s sitting right on freezing. Roads are going to be bad in just a few minutes.”
“Thurman could have gotten it from James,” Mary Alice said, ignoring Fred.
“Or found out about it from James and bought it at a farm store. And Thurman takes digitalis.”
“It may turn into snow,” Fred said.
“I’ll bet they’re cold in Atlanta at the ball game.” Mary Alice bit into another cookie. “These are good, Fred.”
“I’m glad you like them,” he said, and went back down the hall.
“You probably should go,” I said. “Your driveway will be a sheet of ice in a little while.”
“I know it.” Mary Alice stood up and brushed cookie crumbs onto my newly vacuumed rug. “You know what, Patricia Anne? I wonder what they’re going to do about the gallery. All those folks have their stuff out there they were planning on selling for Christmas and the police have it cordoned off.”
“You mean like Leota Wood’s quilt ‘The ’60s’ you were getting me?”
“You wish. I was thinking of an Abe painting for Debbie, though, and maybe some of that silver jewelry for Haley. And I loved those dream-catchers that old lady had made. I’d like one of them for myself. Hang it in my bedroom and catch all the good dreams. Didn’t you like them? That Indian look?”
I admitted that I had and made a mental note to tell Haley that a dream-catcher would be a good Christmas present for her aunt Sister. “Maybe they’ll let Thurman or somebody open up the gallery long enough for the artists to get their work out. It couldn’t have happened at a worse time, could it?”
“Not a good one.” Mary Alice reached for her coat and the lights on her chest quit blinking.
“How’d you do that?” I asked.
“Just lucky.” She stuck some cookies in her pockets as she went through the kitchen.
“Be careful driving,” I said.
She stopped on the back steps and looked up at the outside light. “Snow!” she exclaimed.
I rushed out and saw she was telling the truth. Mixed with the sleet and rain were some snowflakes.
“Snow!” we both squealed, sticking our tongues out to catch the flakes. “Snow!”
“How terrible,” Mary Alice said, turning in circles, holding out her hands.
“How awful. We’ll be snowed in.” I jumped down the steps.
“We don’t have enough groceries. I need to make soup.”
“And stew. Lots of stew to heat on the fireplace.”
Snow. Snow that would bring the whole town to a halt. That would cause all kinds of problems. Snow. Terrible snow. Two old Southern women who had seen so little of the white stuff danced around the yard, celebrating the glorious Christmas gift. Woofer came out of his igloo to see what the excitement was about, barked once declaring us crazy, and went back inside.
“I better hurry. No joke.” Sister headed toward her car and I darted back inside the warm kitchen.
“It’s snowing!” I yelled down the hall to Fred. “Come look at it.”
Like it is to Mary Alice and me, the mention of snow is galvanizing to Fred. Born and raised in south Alabama, he’s seen even less than we have. We turned on the back lights and sat in the bay window to watch the flakes. The fact that we could have counted them didn’t make it any less exciting.
“Tomorrow night, we’re definitely putting up the Christmas tree,” he announced. “And this weekend we’ll finish our shopping. Why didn’t we go the other night like we’d planned?”
“Haley came to supper.”
“What did she say about that DMSO stuff?”
“It would have worked. Somebody could have put digitalis in it and it would have absorbed it into the body. Vets use it a lot. Like for horses’ knees when they’re swollen.”
“I’ll bet that’s what Mort Adkins puts on his knuckles before we play golf. He’s got a little bottle that looks like stuff you put in your eyes. Dropper and all. He won’t tee off until he squeezes a drop or two on each knuckle.”
“Could be.” Mort Adkins is our vet and an avid golfer. So avid that his office hours are becoming more and more abbreviated. “You don’t even have to have a prescription for it.”
“Sounds dangerous to me.”
“It can be. Obviously.”
We sat admiring the snow and thinking.
“Bonnie Blue’s brother, James, is a vet,” I said. “Owns a twenty-four-hour clinic in Indian Trails.”
“That’s interesting. You know anything about him?”
“I didn’t even know he was a vet until Sister told me. You can buy the stuff anywhere, though.”
“But who would know about it?”
I shrugged. “Let’s talk Christmas. Let’s get a live tree this year.”
“Absolutely not. Too dangerous. You remember how that tree flamed up at the Camellia Dance. It’s a miracle the whole place didn’t burn down.”
“So I need to pull the old bottlebrush tree down again.”
“Patricia Anne, a Christmas tree is like popcorn.” This was a speech I had heard so much I mouthed the words with him. “The only difference is what you put on it.”
“And the smell. Our tree smells like formaldehyde and mothballs.”
“Get some of that spray. Hey”—Fred leaned so close to the window he frosted the glass—“you think it’s getting harder out there? Look how that deck railing’s shining.”
“How about an evergreen wreath,” I said. “We could hang it over the mantel and it would smell.”
“We’ll see.”
I had already planned on getting one the next day, a big one I had spotted at the Green Thumb. One that cost a fortune.
“You’re right,” I agreed. “I think the snow’s getting harder.”
At two o’clock, I awoke to an unusual sound, Woofer barking. I got out of bed and grabbed my robe.
“What’s the matter?” Fred mumbled. “You okay?”
“Woofer’s barking.” I put on my robe as I rushed down the hall. He was hurting, I thought. Sick.
I turned on the back light and saw him standing by the chain-link fence of his dog yard. I found my sneakers and opened the back door. The snow had stopped. In fact, a hazy moon was shining, too dim to see by. On the deck, however, there was a light white powdering.
“What’s the matter, boy? You okay, my angel?” I hurried across the yard.
Woofer barked in delight at my appearance. He jumped up on the fence to greet me.
“Are you sick, baby boy?” He obviously wasn’t. He ran around in a couple of circles and ended up in front of me with his red ball in his mouth. “You want to play?” I asked in amazement. “At two o’clock in the morning? Are you crazy?”
He nudged the ball toward me and I threw it once. “Enough,” I said. “Go to bed. It’s freezing.”
Woofer brought the ball back to the fence and watched me go into the house. Fred was standing in the kitchen drinking Maalox from the bottle.
“Chinese,” he explained. “Woofer okay?”
“He’s fine. Wants to play. I can’t believe it.”
“He didn’t have sweet-and-sour shrimp and egg rolls for supper,” Fred said.
I reached over and got a swig myself. “But it was good.”
Fred patted me on the behind. “I think I’ll read a while.”
He picked up the new Time and settled on the sofa. I knew about how much of that magazine would get read.
I went right back to sleep, too. Sometime later, I heard, or thought I heard, Woofer barking again. But I was dreaming too good a dream to be disturbed.
“Come here, Patricia Anne. You’ve got to see this.” Fred shook my shoulder.
“Did it snow deep?” I asked, turning over and awakening immediately. “Are we snowed in?”
“No. The sun’s shining. But come here. There’s something I want you to see.”
“What?” I asked, reaching for my robe, but he had already gone down the hall. I padded barefooted behind him.
“Look,” he said. He was standing at the bay window in the kitchen pointing at the deck.
“What?” I asked again.
“The footprints.”
“I made those when I went out to see why Woofer was barking.”
“You made these.” He pointed to the left side of the deck, where three short steps led to the dog pen. “Somebody else made those.” He pointed to the steeper steps that led to our driveway, the steps where Claire had sat waiting for me. Through the light dusting of snow was a perfect path of footprints that came up to the den and then over to the bay window. A second path led back down the steps, sometimes becoming one big or misshapen foot as the intruder stepped on his own tracks.
“That’s why Woofer was barking,” I said. “Somebody was out there when I went to see about him.” I shivered.
Fred opened the kitchen door.
“Don’t go out there,” I said. “You’ll mess them up. We’ve got to call the police.”
“I’ve already called them. This snow isn’t going to last long. I just want to look at the prints.”
“You’ve already called the police?”
“They’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“I’ve got to go brush my teeth and comb my hair.” I heard the snow give a crunchy sound as Fred stepped out of the door. I hurried into the bathroom, tended to the necessities, and pulled on my sweats. That sweet Woofer, I thought. Trying to protect us.
When I got back to the kitchen, Fred was still outside, kneeling beside the tracks closest to the window.
“Come in,” I said, opening the door. “There’s not a thing you can do out there except catch cold.”
He crunched back to the door, almost falling on the ice. “Bastard,” he said. “Right up here looking in on us.”
I shivered again. “I’ll fix us some coffee.”
Fred pulled off his wet shoes and looked at them. “Small feet,” he said.
“You’re calling size twelve small?”
“The person on the porch. Some kind of running shoe with whorls on the bottom.”
“The police will know.” I poured water into the coffeemaker.
“I’m gonna get us a goddamn alarm system,” he said. “Like Mary Alice’s.”
I didn’t point out to him that Sister’s alarm system had been effectively bypassed by a murderer a couple of months ago.
“Dopeheads. Damn thugs.”
While he sat at the table and groused, I looked out of the bay window again. Was it possible the tracks were Claire’s? That she had been trying to reach me? The thought was gone as soon as it entered my head. There was nothing here threatening to Claire. She would have knocked on the door or rung the doorbell, not skulked around looking in windows.
The doorbell rang and I jumped.
“The police,” Fred said, and went to let them in.
“Good morning,” Bo Peep Mitchell said brightly as she came into the kitchen behind Fred.
“Do you work all the time?” I asked ungraciously.
“Where duty calls.”
Fred gave us a questioning look. “She’s the one who lost Claire,” I explained.
“Mea culpa.” She turned to Fred. “What’s the trouble, Mr. Hollowell?”
“Out here,” Fred said, opening the kitchen door.
I poured a cup of coffee and watched them through the window. Bo Peep took out a small camera and snapped some pictures. Then she rolled out a measuring tape. The two of them squatted and bent and measured and even laughed at one point. I reached into the cabinet for the Cheerios. I was hungry.
“Whew,” Fred said, stamping his feet on the floor I had mopped just the day before. “Cold.”
“Whew,” Bo Mitchell said, following his example.
“Y’all want some coffee?” I asked.
“That would be great.”
I left my half-eaten bowl of Cheerios and poured them each a cup of coffee.
“Thanks,” Bo said. She was sitting at the kitchen table filling out what looked like a triplicate form. I went back to my cereal.
“What did I say, Fred? About the heel?” Bo Mitchell chewed on her pen.
“There was a square pattern right in the middle.”
“But it was worn on one side. You remember which one?”
“The inside.”
“Aren’t you supposed to take plaster casts of footprints?” I asked. Bo’s methods seemed haphazard, to say the least. Not at all like TV cops.
“Snow’s melting too fast. Don’t have the stuff anyway.” Bo put three teaspoonfuls of sugar in her coffee and stirred it. “Ahh,” she said, tasting the resulting syrup.
“You hypoglycemic?” I asked.
“Just love sugar.” She put the mug down and picked up her pen again. “Okay, tell me about the dog barking last night and if you heard anything else. What time was it?”
“About two o’clock,” Fred said.
“And I went out to see about him,” I said. “I was scared he was sick. He’s old and never barks at night, especially when it’s cold. But he was fine. Wanted to play.”
“And you didn’t see anything unusual?” Bo asked.
“I wasn’t looking. I was worried about Woofer. I think I heard him barking later, too.”
“I did, too,” Fred added.
Bo Mitchell wrote this into her notes. “Any idea of the later time?” We both shook our heads. She drank some more of her decaffeinated syrup. “The dog was probably just excited. There was just one set of footprints up to the deck.”
I took my cereal bowl to the sink. “Is it a man’s or woman’s footprints out there?”
“Can’t tell. Could be some neighborhood teenager snooping around.” Bo Peep shrugged.
That ruled out infants and toddlers. I glanced over at Fred, but he was looking at Officer Mitchell as if she had spoken pearls of wisdom. There’s nothing like a uniform to impress a man, I thought. Especially at the breakfast table.
“Thanks.” Bo Mitchell drained her coffee and stood up. “I’ll get this on file. To tell you the truth, I don’t expect anything will come of it. But I wouldn’t worry if I were you. Lock up and close your blinds. You know. The usual stuff. I’ve got an idea it’s just a neighborhood Peeping Tom and you wouldn’t even have known it if we hadn’t had the snow flurries. I’ll check and see if there have been any more complaints.”
“Just a Peeping Tom?” The idea of someone looking in on us appalled me.
“I’ll see you to the door,” Fred said.
I took the empty coffee mug Bo Mitchell was holding out to me. “Maybe it was Claire Moon,” I said.
“It wasn’t Claire.” A look of worry flickered across her face for a second.
“She’s dead, that’s what you think, isn’t it?”
“She’ll show up,” Bo Mitchell said, and followed Fred through the door.
But in what condition? I wondered, putting the dishes in the dishwasher.
It was my morning to tutor at the local junior high school. Math, of all things. At first, when they called me and asked me to help, I was hesitant. English, sure. But math? I confessed I had avoided it like the plague in school and that my checkbook never balanced. But surely I knew more than these failing kids did, the recruiter assured me. And besides, I was used to working with students.
I think it was the phrase “failing kids” that hooked me. I agreed to try it and it had turned out to be a wonderful experience. Not having been a math teacher, I wasn’t hobbled with the vocabulary. Negative integers were the ones down in the hole and fractions should b
e turned on their heads to divide them. The kids and I got along fine.
This morning would be the last sessions before Christmas, so I took each kid some fruit drop cookies and an amazing calculator I had found at Radio Shack that was about the size of a credit card.
“Isn’t that defeating the purpose?” Fred asked when I showed it to him.
“It’s called ‘getting the job done.’” I didn’t feel at all guilty.
All the bulletin boards were decorated for the holidays. One unusual one had Santa shouting “Happy Hanukkah” as he and the reindeer sailed across the sky by the light of what could only be the Star of Bethlehem. A card stapled in the corner said this board had been decorated by Ms. Felix’s homeroom and had won second place. I made myself a mental note to look up the first place winner before I left.
The kids were pleased with their calculators and cookies. They were also full of plans for the holidays, plans that included much TV, Nintendo, and sleep.
“Hey, there’s a whole world out there,” I reminded Stevie Grayton, a sharp thirteen-year-old with a tough veneer.
“You’re right, Mrs. Hollowell,” he agreed. “I’ll watch the Discovery Channel some. I promise.”
The winning bulletin board was a traditional nativity scene, nice, but lacking the charm and confusion of the Jewish Santa. There were reindeer among the flocks of sheep, which was interesting. Ms. Felix’s class had been gypped, though.
I was in an upbeat mood when I left the school, and decided to go pick up Mary Alice’s jacket at the Big, Bold, and Beautiful Shop. It was time to do some serious getting ready for Christmas.
Bonnie Blue was busy with a customer when I walked in, so I wandered around looking and admiring. The accessories were particularly pretty. I held a pair of large gold earrings made like sunflowers against my ear and checked them out in a mirror.
“Too big,” Sister said.
“I was just looking at them.” I turned around and saw she was standing right behind me. “What are you doing here? Have you given up your career?”
“Getting something to wear to Mercy’s funeral. One of the Magic Maids is filling in for me at the mall this afternoon.”
“Tiffany?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Mrs. Claus would not be named Tiffany. And when did you decide to go to the funeral?”
