WG2E All-For-Indies Anthologies: Winter Wonderland Edition

by Scott, D. D.

  “So,” Olivia said. “I don’t have the Ice Queen, and I didn’t take it.”

  “That’s cutting to the chase,” I said.

  She laughed.

  I couldn’t help but smile with her. “I noticed the teeny purse you were carrying at the party,” I said, “as well as your red dress, and I know you couldn’t have slipped the vase into either of those.”

  “No,” she said, “not without it being obvious.”

  “But I don’t smell cigarette smoke in your house, and I don’t see ash trays around.”

  “I just have a smoke every now and again, so it’s a rare occasion when I light a cigarette.”

  “Like your sister’s annual party?”

  Olivia rolled her eyes. “Smoking, for me, is a stress reliever, and being around Penelope stresses me out. It’s the same reaction a lot of people have to her.”

  “But,” I said, “you being outside just before Penelope realized the vase was missing is kind of strange.”

  She shrugged.

  “And then you and Gregory coming back inside at practically the same time. What’s that about?”

  “I didn’t see him outside. I just came inside when my cigarette was done.”

  “I didn’t see any cigarette butts outside. I checked when I last visited Penelope’s house.”

  “January wind,” Olivia said. “Or maybe a squirrel or bird took it.”

  “And I don’t suppose you’ll comment on your relationship with Gregory.”

  “As his sister-in-law?”

  I decided not to push her to flesh out Penelope’s allegation—not quite yet. “So help me clear this up. Where’s your cigarette stash?”

  Olivia leaned over the couch and pulled the top of the desk down, revealing the inner framing. The desk contained countless slots and drawers for holding all sorts of desktop essentials. In addition to paperwork and writing pens, Olivia had stashed keys, a chewed dog bone, and a foot-long flashlight. She opened a top-row drawer, pulled out a box of cigarettes, and tossed it to me. I opened it. Inside, a few cigarettes were missing; most remained.

  “Satisfied?” she asked.

  “You’ve shown me your cigarettes,” I said. “Now where’s your dog?”

  “Dog?”

  “Don’t you have a dog?”

  “No. Why would you—” her eyes fell on the bone inside the desk. “It’s Sadie’s bone.” She shook her head and ran her fingers over her bandana. “Yes, I’m good friends with Gregory, and sometimes he comes over to vent or unwind, and I like to make sure Sadie doesn’t chew on my furniture while we chat.”

  “Is that what you and Gregory were doing outside at the party?” I asked. “Unwinding?”

  She blew air out her nose in a laugh. “Unwinding in the frigid January night air? No. Gregory is my friend. Always has been, more or less, since we met in college. Our relationship irks her—Penelope—which, I suppose, is understandable, given our history.”

  “You and Penelope’s history or you and Gregory’s history?”

  “Does it matter? Both. Their marriage is on the rocks, and Gregory talks more to me, his college sweetheart, than he does to his own wife, not that I blame him. He’s finally realized that speaking with Penelope is like trying to talk to an ice cube.”

  “Their marriage has lasted long enough for their girls to grow up and enter college,” I said. “Maybe they can resolve their differences.”

  “Maybe,” Olivia said. “But when their daughters both left the house, and Sadie became too old to take hunting, Gregory wasn’t so distracted anymore, and he realized what a cold, empty-hearted woman he was stuck with. At least he has Sadie. I don’t know what he’d do without the dog; who’d keep him company at night. He and Penelope don’t sleep in the same bed, you know.”

  “Why did you call your sister the ice queen?”

  “Because that’s what she is. Her heart is just like that vase—icy cold, hard, and dead. She and that vase are a match, and far be it from me to separate the two.”

  “Penelope mentioned you were bitter when you found out she inherited the vase, though.”

  “True. But you’ve lost your parents. I imagine you’ve seen for yourself that dividing up family possessions can be touchy.”

  I nodded. Most everyone in Sweetwater knew my story, but being reminded of my parents’ deaths so casually and suddenly still stung.

  “Imagine you really wanted one of their possessions,” Olivia said. “Something of meaning—something particularly special to you that you thought was coming to you, that your siblings knew as common fact was coming to you. It had been discussed and settled. And then you go to take it home. And it’s just gone.”

  “But Penelope has the vase now.”

  “That’s right. All of a sudden it showed up again. Five years after the funeral. Surprise! Penelope had it all along. She claimed she didn’t want to make us feel unloved or not favored by revealing she had the vase.”

  I nodded. I sympathized with Olivia.

  “Daddy wasn’t with it in his final days. Penelope knew that and took advantage.”

  “Penelope did spend a lot of time helping him out.”

  “I don’t contest that,” Olivia said. “I would have if I could have. But I had classes at a school an hour away, and a part-time job, too. Here’s my hang-up: if Daddy had really given Penelope the vase, she simply would have been more up front about it.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t herself following her father’s death,” I said, remembering how I’d earned my bad-girl reputation—complete with a permanent tattoo memento—after my own father died. “Maybe Penelope thought revealing the vase would cause a rift.”

  Olivia shook her head. “No, Penelope knew what she was doing, just like she knows what she’s doing now. She’s tearing Gregory apart slowly, piece by piece. She’s hiring you to humiliate Ricky and Tara and now sending you to harass me. Having fun yet?”

  “My intention is to find the vase, not humiliate or harass anyone,” I said. “I’m sorry. So since you didn’t take the vase, and neither did Ricky or Tara, who do you think stole it?”

  “No idea. There were so many guests at the party.”

  “They were in the backyard with no access to the house,” I said.

  “It doesn’t take much to wander around at a party.”

  “The doors were locked, and Sarah was manning the kitchen within full sight of the only unlocked, open entryway to the house. She said no one, other than her staff, passed through that doorway.”

  “What about your sister-in-law and her catering staff?”

  “Which includes myself.”

  “I know at least one of Sarah’s employees has a record for shoplifting.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I caught her trying to leave my studio with an item in her pocketbook, and I made a deal with her so it wouldn’t be counted against her; after all, she’s not a juvie anymore.”

  **

  Back at Grayson Investigations, I popped open one of the office filing cabinets and began to riffle through it. The low afternoon sun’s slanted beams glowed on the yellow wall beside another investigator’s desk, one of four in the room. In my peripheral vision, I saw Mack bob back in his desk chair to watch me. I pretended not to notice.

  “Giving up and resuming background checks so soon?” he asked.

  I looked up from the files. The other investigator glanced at me, waiting to hear my response to Mack.

  “You’re doing it again, Mack, doubting my skills.”

  “Look who’s talking about skills,” he said.

  I forgot a retort in the momentary glee at finding the file I needed with the background checks Grayson Investigations had completed on Sarah’s employees in her catering service.

  “I got in 32 years on the force,” Mack said, “and more than a decade here as a PI, with training that included courses on—”

  “Save it, Mack,” I said. “I’m not giving up; I’m doing research. And I’d be able t
o concentrate better if you stopped yapping.”

  “I’d have found the vase by now and saved your sorry reputation from the embarrassment of not solving the case if Captain would have put me on it first thing,” Mack said, standing up and walking out of the room. After a moment, the bathroom door slammed.

  At least I was left in peace. I’d spoken with Sarah in person after my visit with Olivia. She’d been decorating a cake in her kitchen when I approached. And when I explained to her that a vase had gone missing during Penelope’s party and then asked if she thought any of her employees had the opportunity to take it, she’d set her squeeze-tube down, wiped her hands on her apron, looked me straight in the eye, and told me that, unless I had stolen the vase when I was supposed to be eating cake in the pantry, neither of the two ladies working for her paused long enough to even so much as take a bathroom break that evening. I’d assured her I was merely being overly diligent and asked her again if any guest had passed through the kitchen.

  “No,” she answered again. “Absolutely not.”

  I looked through the files of her two employees, both young women, both local. They both appeared clean. Their social security numbers matched their addresses. Neither had active warrants, and of course neither was listed as a sex offender. Standard background criminal checks at Grayson Investigations covered seven years. Either Olivia was lying about the alleged shoplifting incident at her store, or perhaps Sarah’s employee had her juvenile record expunged—completely, physically destroyed. But even if the employee had wanted to steal the vase, Sarah had insisted that neither employee got the opportunity.

  I slapped the file down on my desk, cupped my face in my hands, and stared out the window into the quickly darkening winter sky. I cleared my mind and then tried to remember everything from the evening of the party. The bell above the office’s front door jangled, and I heard Dale’s voice greeting our elderly receptionist.

  “Dale Pickles, you old sweetie,” our receptionist said. She laughed. “Go on back before I sweep you off your feet and wed you myself.”

  In walked Dale. Not bothering to ask if I could spare the time, he rolled Mack’s vacated chair to my desk and sat down.

  “Brought you a bagel, figuring you’d be hungry as a wolf,” he said, passing me a bag. “Gave Louise at the front desk one, too.”

  “I overheard,” I said. “And now Louise wants to marry you. Wasn’t I telling you just the other night that there’s a woman in this town for you?”

  “There’s a woman in this town for me, all right,” he said, looking at me as if I was the bagel and he was the wolf.

  I shook my head and looked inside the white paper bag. Wrapped in wax paper, my favorite bagel from the corner store bakery beckoned—plain cream cheese on a garlic-salt bagel, toasted. “Thanks,” I said. “But I think I detect some strings attached to this bagel.”

  “No strings, but the Shack’s doing a buy-one, get-one partners’ deal tonight. Come with me.”

  The Shack was Sweetwater’s best local seafood restaurant and bar, popular among common folk such as myself, who liked going out to enjoy good food and cheap beer without having to hassle with dressing up. Named appropriately for its long, faded wood siding and past-prime interior decorations—including its very own jackalope with hunks of gray fur missing—the Shack had been my bar of choice ever since I’d turned legal drinking age. Most Friday and Saturday nights, a band played, and once a month, line dancing was scheduled, though I mostly just watched.

  “You can’t say no to the drink deal,” Dale said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s tempting, but I’ve got this case I’m working.”

  “So take a night off.”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re still trying to track down Penelope’s vase.”

  I frowned and wondered how he knew what I was looking for. Maybe Penelope had given up on me and Grayson Investigations and had reported the missing vase to the police.

  “Don’t look so freaked,” Dale said. “Everyone knows about the vase. It’s Sweetwater, after all.”

  I shrugged.

  “Well, I’m going to the Shack tonight, alone,” he said, giving me his blue, pouting puppy eyes again. “And maybe I’ll find another buy-one, get-one partner once I get there.”

  “Dale,” I said, momentarily wanting to give in to his pity party before catching myself. “You know what? I hope you do.”

  Dale shook his head slowly, took the empty, crumpled bagel bag, and flung it on top of the office’s full trash can on his way out. The bag rolled off the top and fell to the floor. I glanced at the other investigator in the room, who appeared to be studying his paperwork with forced fervor, no doubt in an attempt to try to ignore my personal drama. I appreciated his efforts.

  Since my encounter with Dale had momentarily blown my ability to think about the missing vase, I retrieved the roll-away bag and again placed it on top of the trash can, using it to try to push the trash down deeper into the can. But the can was already compacted as much as possible with bundles of discarded paperwork, squished Styrofoam coffee cups, stinking take-out containers, and who knew what else. Since Grayson Investigations’ cleaning service wasn’t due for a visit until the next week, I decided I’d be the investigator to break first and take out the trash, a regular occurrence at our office. I was used to taking out the trash here. And growing up with three older brothers, I understood the typical male aversion to removing a trash bag until the task was undeniably inevitable. And that got me thinking. And the more I thought, the more I realized that my night was going to stink.

  **

  Sometimes when someone unfamiliar with my profession finds out that I’m a private investigator, they squeal about how exciting my job must be, imagining high-adrenaline covert operations and action-packed stakeouts where I document secret transgressions quickly and easily. If they’d shivered with me for four hours in my car on the dark road near Gregory and Penelope’s house, waiting for Gregory to finally wheel the trash can to the side of the road, they’d understand that my profession isn’t nearly as glamorous as they thought. And if the mind-and-nose-numbing wait didn’t faze them, the two hours I spent back at the office sifting through reeking trash surely would.

  Our state’s policy is that once trash is left beside the road, it’s considered abandoned property, free and legal for anyone to take. So I’d returned to Grayson Investigations with my windows down, choosing to fight frostbite rather than inhale more of the rank odor of trash than necessary. In the parking pad behind the building with the spotlight turned on, a mask covering my mouth and nose, and latex gloves shielding my fingers, I sifted through rotten food and used tissues and plastic baggies wrapping massive amounts of dog poop. Of course Gregory couldn’t be bothered with a compost pile, I thought.

  But I finally found what I was looking for: jagged pieces of opal-colored glass. I collected all the glass in an empty cardboard letterhead box I got from the office’s supply closet. I poked around the trash pile some more and found none of the gems or silver handles that flanked the vase. But I hadn’t expected any.

  After I cleaned up the mess, I examined the glass fragments from the vase. The amount of glass pieces I’d found appeared to constitute almost the entire vase. Under the spotlight, the pieces flashed sinister and otherworldly, like splinters from a shattered moon. Gregory hadn’t just been taking out the trash to keep the party running smoothly. He’d been covering up. And I thought I knew who he’d been covering up for.

  **

  Early in the morning, so early the frost crystals on the grass twinkled rainbow in the rising sun, I walked up the wide stairs to Gregory and Penelope’s house. The glass vase pieces clinked against each other in the box I carried. I was eager to reveal that I’d found the vase but not quite ready to witness the fight that I assumed would follow. Penelope answered the door wearing a plum pantsuit and a necklace of large pearls, perfect for a junior league meeting. With S
adie at his heels, Gregory approached us from the hall, face unshaved, wearing his bulky camouflage jacket over a Sweetwater sweatshirt and khakis. The Vizsla’s soft cinnamon-colored fur had been washed since I last saw her.

  “Thank you for accommodating me so early,” I said, knowing that I wouldn’t be lying if I needed to excuse myself in time to make the morning meeting at Grayson Investigations.

  “Actually, you’ll have to excuse me,” Gregory said. “I was on my way out.”

  Penelope pressed her hand against his chest, stopping him. “Jade said she wanted to speak to both of us.”

  “That’s right.” I stepped inside.

  Penelope closed the front door. “Can I take your coat?” she said.

  “I’ll only be a moment,” I said. I looked Gregory square in the eyes. “I found the vase.”

  His mouth twitched, though the rest of his face remained frozen. Sadie whined and looked up toward her master.

  “Where?” Penelope asked. “Who stole it?”

  “Do you want to explain?” I asked Gregory.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, crossing his arms.

  I opened the box, revealing the glass pieces.

  Penelope reached for the box, then stopped herself. “Is that my—she’s destroyed!”

  “This is the glass from your vase,” I said.

  “How do you know?” Gregory asked. He furrowed his brows, as if he was trying to figure out if the glass shards actually were from the Ice Queen.

  “I found this glass last night. I began to piece together the bigger chunks, and by laying them out I was able to see that the pieces form the same shape as the Ice Queen,” I said. “Unless you’ve got another vase with the same color of glass and the same general shape—”

  “Where’s the rest of it?” Gregory asked. “The silver, the gems? Were they in the trash can, too?”