Christmas Crime

by Alex A King

The door opened. Xander’s hair was rumpled and his face hadn’t seen a razor since this morning. He was a man who needed to see a razor regularly or he risked being smothered by a face hedge. He looked tired but he looked good.

  “You always bring me things, so this time I’m bringing pie.”

  He eyed the glass. “With milk?”

  “It’s the American way.”

  “Greek pie and American milk?”

  My gaze skittered around him to check out the spare room. He’d barely made a blip in his surroundings. There was a military duffel by the closet and he’d unpacked a laptop, which was currently open on the desk. I tried to sneak a peek at the open tabs but my Steve Austin eyeballs hadn’t arrived in the mail yet. Not snooping. More like … curious. Was Xander one of the people tapped in to the Crooked Noses at Grandma’s behest? That wouldn’t surprise me.

  “I’m half and half and I turned out okay,” I said.

  His mouth said nothing but the light in his eyes said he agreed, even though I’d almost zapped him in the shower.

  “Do you want to share?” he asked.

  I did. I really did. But I wasn’t done grilling BangBang, who was waiting patiently for a reply.

  “Maybe later.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  Downstairs, I forked pie into my mouth and messaged BangBang.

  Let’s start with family members who aren’t Grandma.

  Your aunt, your father …

  Dad was a Crooked Nose? The Dad I knew had issues with the internet. In his day—he told me every time he saw me researching online—he had to consult an oracle if he wanted to know anything. If the oracle didn’t know, he had to ask his elders. Books were a last resort, for fancy people with things like money and ambition—never mind that his family owned a serious chunk of the world’s money. He thought Google was a cat coughing up a hairball.

  I get it, I wrote. The whole family stalks the board.

  Not the whole family. BangBang made a smiley face.

  What about Xander?

  He’s not your family.

  He was right-ish. Xander wasn’t blood but we were still connected.

  What do you know about Xander? I asked him.

  Depends. What kind of information are you looking for?

  I don’t know.

  True story. Xander was a mystery I wanted to solve but at the same time what if the mystery was the allure? I already knew some of his secrets—he was a government agent, and his birth father was Baby Dimitri, one of Greece’s other most infamous mobsters and salesman of shoes and souvenirs. None of that dampened my attraction. I wasn’t that shallow. But I worried anyway because humans are just bonobos with anxiety and birth control.

  The pie on my plate vanished. Ditto the milk. I felt stuffed and empty at the same time, so I sawed off more pie and ate that, too. My eyes cut to an anomaly behind the pie dish. Grandma’s phone. She’d forgotten to grab it after all the cooking and cleaning.

  I picked it up. The screen came on. Grandma’s lock screen was Zeus leaning against a cow. Grandma had issues. I really hoped those issues weren’t genetic.

  Probably I should return the phone to her right now.

  Of course it wouldn’t hurt to take a sneaky peek, right?

  I hit the Home button.

  Locked.

  Duh. Grandma wasn’t the kind of person who left her phone unlocked. Trust no one, not even granddaughters—probably especially granddaughters. She was practically Fox Mulder, and she knew a lot of cigarette-smoking men.

  I grabbed my coat, two phones, my keys, and trotted up the street to Grandma’s house, a two-story craftsman painted beige and white. I never saw a For Sale sign. How much had she paid the neighbors to sell their house and vanish in a weekend?

  The house was dark. I stood on the front lawn and waved at the windows.

  Nothing.

  With cupped hands I peered through the window. Too bad the house had curtains; I couldn’t see a thing. I let myself into the backyard. A light was on upstairs in one of the bedrooms. I knew it was a bedroom because I found a ladder in the shed and used it for its intended purpose. Grandma was propped up in bed reading a novel. She licked her finger and flipped a page. I tapped with my forehead. My faith in ladders was skimpy.

  “Come in, Katerina.”

  “Window,” I said, pointing out the obvious obstacle.

  “Unlocked.”

  Oh. So it was. I shimmed through the window, landing on the carpeted floor. Plush carpet. New.

  “Nice carpet,” I said.

  “I am going to rip it all out and put marble, like civilized people.”

  “Here in Portland civilized people use something eco friendly like bamboo flooring.”

  “Bamboo? Do I look like a panda?”

  Normally I might have said yes. Tonight I was more worried about security. No one had stopped me from entering the yard. When I mentioned it to Grandma she flipped another page.

  “If you were not family you would have no head right now.”

  “Sniper on the roof?”

  She held up two fingers.

  Because Grandma couldn’t travel like a normal person: without muscle and guns.

  “Good thing I’m family.”

  “What do you want, Katerina? I am reading a book.”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Not at first. I needed a moment to process what I was looking at beyond Grandma’s book. My brain blipped. Grandma had abandoned her omnipresent black and was wearing a nightgown that was positively pink. With a single wardrobe change she’d managed to violate one of Greece’s biggest social rules: No colors for widows—ever. Only black. Until death. Anything brighter and you’re a garbage human crapping on your dead husband for everyone to see.

  “That’s pink!” I said, outraged, curious, and impressed.

  “You know your colors, very good. What else did they teach you in kindergarten this year?”

  “That’s pink! You’re wearing pink!”

  She shrugged against the pillows propping her up. “It is my favorite color—so?”

  “But you’re in mourning!”

  “If you keep saying things I already know then we will be here all night, and I want to finish my book.”

  The book. Yes, the book. Reading was something else I’d never seen Grandma do. “What is that? Horror? True crime? Is it about you?”

  She rolled her eyes so hard and high that there was no doubt we were blood. “A book. Have you never seen a book before? What do they teach in American schools?”

  I squinted. “Wait a minute, is that … a romance novel?”

  “No.”

  “No, no, no, it is a romance novel!” I gawked at the title. The Greek Billionaire Bodyguard’s Secret Baby’s Secret Island Fortune. Aww … Grandma loved romance novels. Maybe she was here on vacation after all.

  Wrong. This was Grandma. She didn’t do casual vacations, no matter what the suitcase in the corner said. Speaking of suitcases … I nudged hers with my toe. The lid flipped up, revealing stacks of Arlekin—Greece’s Harlequin—novels.

  “Tell nobody,” she said in a tone that paired well with a little light murder.

  A grin spilled across my face. “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. This is perfect blackmail material.”

  “You are terrible, just like me.”

  I nudged the suitcase shut. “Why are you really here?”

  “To spend Christmas with my only granddaughter. Can you think of a better reason?”

  I set her phone on the bedside table. “No. But you’re not a normal grandmother.”

  “You asked me a question, now I get to ask you a question.”

  “Hit me with it.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Eh?”

  “It means go ahead and ask your question.”

  “Then why did you not say that in the first place, eh? Why are you here?”

  “I brought your phone back.”

  “In America.”

  Oh. That. Gue
ss who didn’t want to have this conversation? Me. I didn’t want to answer the question or any of the follow-up questions that were bound to happen. Unfortunately, Grandma wasn’t one of those people who could be placated with flip humor. Back in the day, and maybe still, she’d employed Kyria Mela, who glared until people bubbled sweat, tears, and snot.

  “I killed a man.”

  “So what? I have killed men. Lots of men. And some women, too. You do not see me hiding in America.”

  Now probably wasn’t a good time to mention the pink, the romance novel, and her presence in the United States.

  “So you’re saying I shouldn’t run away from my murder scenes?”

  She flipped the page. “Good that you understand. That way I do not have to waste reading time explaining it to you. Now go home. I want to see what happens.”

  “They live happily ever after. They always do.”

  “Nobody lives happily ever after.”

  “I plan to. That’s why I came back to Portland.”

  Grandma raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “My Happily Ever After is still under construction.”

  Chapter 11

  It was a Mexican standoff without Mexicans. Standing in for Mexicans were two Greeks. The Greeks were armed and I had mounting bills, which made them woefully underpowered.

  “This isn’t Greece. You can’t come to work with me with your guns and your glares.”

  “I never glare, boss,” Elias said.

  “Smile.”

  He glared.

  “See?”

  “That was my best smile.”

  “Then you’re definitely not coming.”

  “Fire,” Elias said. “Explosions. Strangers leaving notes with awful words on them.”

  He had a point. I had a bigger point.

  “Forget it. I need money to survive, and to get money I need to work. I’ve already lost two jobs to random acts of fire. I’m not losing the next one because of bodyguards with surly dispositions.”

  “One bodyguard. Xander is just tagging along because he wants to be me when he grows up,” Elias said, winking at me.

  Xander presented him with a full, five-fingered moutsa. Elias flung one back at him. Both men laughed because nobody ever fully grows up.

  “Probably the fires were random,” I said, not believing any of those words in that particular combination. Since was my new job on the line, so I could live with my own fib.

  “Then we are coming with you so it does not happen again,” Elias said.

  I stared at him. He stared back. Xander stared, too. I tried making my stare harder and meaner but ultimately it was two against one.

  “Fine.” I sighed like they were destroying my whole world. “But stay in the parking lot. You can’t come in.”

  They followed me across town to the building loitering in St. Johns. From the outside it looked guilty, like it had something to hide. Serial killers, maybe. Or counterfeiters. I’d met both in Europe so this was my jam.

  “I do not like the look of this place,” Elias said. “Stay with Xander and I will check it out.”

  My index finger shot up in the warning position. “No—no checking it out. Sit. Stay.”

  Truthfully I would have felt better if he’d checked it out first, but now wasn’t the time to show weakness, otherwise they’d treat me like fine china from hereon out. I wasn’t china. I was more like rubber.

  I’d dressed business casual for the first day on the job. Black pants, black button down shirt, black low-heeled boots I’d scored from Baby Dimitri. I’d trapped my hair in a bun so it wouldn’t sneak out and cause havoc. Portland’s damp winters made my hair spring out like wild pubes, even with central heating doing its best to suck the air dry. With confidence I didn’t feel, I strode up to the peeling door and yanked the handle.

  Nothing happened.

  I checked my phone. I was on time. Francis hadn’t fired me by text. Recalling my childhood fire safety lessons, I pressed my hand to the door. No heat. No fire. That made a nice change.

  A low whirring above my head jerked my attention upward to a one-eyed security camera.

  “Name?” a disembodied voice asked.

  “Katerina Makris. With an S.”

  “It doesn’t sound like there’s an S.”

  “It’s silent, like the B in lamb.”

  “I liked that movie.”

  “Movie?”

  “Silence of the Lambs. I went to a Halloween party as Buffalo Bill once. Nobody guessed who I was, can you believe it? It’s like people don’t enjoy good movies anymore. It’s all Thor this and Star Wars that.”

  An image of this guy I’d never met clad in a suit of women’s skin flashed through my head. “Can I come in?” And did I want to?

  There was a pause, followed by a click. The door swung open.

  Without glancing at my backup waiting in the car, I stepped inside. My mouth fell open. You’d think by my age I’d know not to judge buildings by their slummy outsides. The exterior was a dump one step up from Grandma’s inherited hovel. Inside was money. Polished wood floors. Bright lighting. Art on the corridor’s walls. Indoor plant tended to by someone with a green thumb. The place smelled like coffee—in a good way. No front desk, no receptionist to ask for directions. Only this boulder with eyes and a t-shirt that said he was security.

  “You carrying a gun?”

  This was the guy who wasn’t a fan of movie franchises.

  “No.”

  “We’ll see about that.” He waved me to a rubber pad on the ground. “Stand there.”

  I stood still while he waved a wand over me. Xander had waved a similar doodad over my Ferrari weeks ago when he was checking for bombs.

  “If you’re a fairy godmother you’re doing it wrong,” I said.

  He didn’t laugh.

  Someone else did though. I turned around to see Francis sauntering down the hall in one of his snazzy suits, looking like he was on his way to swindle a widow out of her life savings. He’d taken a detour via the 1980s to grab a black t-shirt to wear instead of a button-down.

  “Standard operating procedure. She’s good,” he told the security meathead. He tilted his head toward the corridor’s other end. “Come on. Let’s get you to work.”

  “I still don’t know what the work is.”

  “Just some garden variety surveillance.”

  “So I do … what?”

  “Watch a camera feed.”

  “Do I get an office?”

  “You get a cubicle. That’s kind of like an office, except smaller.”

  “A cubicle isn’t remotely like an office.”

  “There’s a desk and a computer and a comfortable chair. Plus you can put up posters if you’re into that sort of thing.”

  “I guess that’s kind of like an office.”

  “See?”

  All the time we’d been talking he’d been steering me toward a wide-open space filled with cubicles and other office-y things. The place was sparsely decorated with warm bodies, all of them fixated on their tasks. Whatever was going on here, nobody was messing around.

  “There’s a kitchen over there with everything you’ll ever need.”

  “Chips and Netflix?”

  He grinned. “Yes. Sometimes when work gets hectic, employees will spend the night. The other floors are mostly bedrooms.”

  “Mostly?”

  “Bathrooms, recreation room, and a full-size kitchen.”

  “So what do you do here?”

  “We watch. And speaking of watching, this is where you’ll be.”

  My cubicle was a cubicle. Square. Semi-private. It came with the promised chair and a shiny new computer. There was a coffee mug with my name on it. “So … are you going to bury me in paperwork, tell me about benefits, and all that legal mumbo jumbo?”

  “I know who you are and I know where you live.”

  Yikes. That sounded ominous. Or it would have if I hadn’t heard it from bigger, scarier people.
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br />   He grinned. Oh. It was one of those joke things. It’s hard to tell with people who resemble bit players in Scorsese movies.

  “I know your name—well, your first name,” I said. “Or is Francis your last name? I still don’t know. Anyway, as soon as I’ve got a first name and a last name Google will spit out your address for the kingly sum of a few dollars.”

  He pointed a finger gun at me. “And that’s why I hired you. Here …” He swiveled the chair around and motioned for me to sit. “You’re looking for this guy.”

  Francis clicked on a file. A photograph popped open, displaying a ball of over-baked bread with a gold cross around a fleshy neck. The cross was the size of a saucer and crusted with enough diamonds to induce a tsunami of saliva in a rapper’s mouth. This guy loved God and wanted everyone in a five-mile radius to know it. Too bad it wasn’t big enough to cover his body because he was flossing his bronzed groin with a scrap of fabric originally intended to be swimwear.

  I inspected the devout man’s surroundings. Teak planks. Watery background. Semi naked and barely legal girls in the background, their faces blank as they mentally constructed shopping lists.

  “This is a yacht?”

  He smiled. “It is.”

  “So you’re some kind of private security?”

  “Sure,” he said. “If that makes you feel good.”

  Yikes. That sounded ominous. Who was this guy and what was I doing here?

  I waved a hand at the guy in the photo. “Who is he?”

  “You don’t know him?”

  “Would I be asking if I did?”

  His lips quirked. “The name is Sotiris Papadopoulos. He’s connected.”

  “To what?”

  He stared. At me.

  Oh. That kind of connection.

  “Aren’t you connected, too?” I asked. He had that Godfather thing going on. Not Don Corleone, but maybe a Sonny, before Sonny had more holes than a golf course.

  “I’m connected to a lot of things.” He clicked around and brought up video footage of a Greek marketplace. Not one I recognized, but then I’d only seen a small shard of Dad’s homeland. The camera was mounted high over the market, focused primarily on an arc of coffee shops. The tables were sparsely occupied; the bodies were hidden under layers of winter clothing. The footage was recent.