Mitch heard footsteps on the stairs behind him almost as soon as he got down there. “That didn’t take you long at all,” he said. Only it wasn’t the old postmaster. “Oh, hey, I thought you were Rut.”
“Nope, still me,” Bryce Peck said, dragging deeply on a cigarette. “For now, anyhow. Just an awkward stage.” Bryce had a strange, elliptical way of talking. He often seemed to be not all there—not all there as in part of him was somewhere else that was far away and incredibly scary. “If Josie catches me smoking she’ll skin me alive. But I’m desperate, man. Cigarettes are the only vice I have left.” His eyes flicked warily into the cellar’s darkened corners. “Damn, I haven’t been down in a basement this small since I left Bozeman.”
“What were you doing there?” Mitch asked. Bryce had never mentioned Bozeman before.
“Working construction,” he replied. “Until I fell off a roof. Broke my collarbone. Learned a valuable lesson though.”
“What was that, Bryce?”
“Stay off of roofs.”
Mitch knew that Bryce had cracked up a motorcycle in his youth and that it still caused him a lot of back pain. Hence the Vicodin. He hadn’t known about the roofing accident. Bryce never talked about his past—until he suddenly chose to.
Upstairs, the partygoers erupted into raucous laughter.
Bryce shot a worried glance at the stairway. “I hate parties. Hate having to pretend. Especially clean and sober. It ain’t easy, man.” He stubbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another one. “I have to remember to breathe. That’s what Josie’s always telling me.”
“I know,” said Mitch, who’d suffered from panic attacks after Maisie died. The attacks didn’t go away until he rented his cottage on Big Sister and met Des. “Parties have always given me the jim-jams.”
“Other people seem to enjoy them.”
“Don’t kid yourself. They’re just here for Rut,” Mitch said, hearing footsteps on the cellar stairs again.
This time it was Rut, puffing and wheezing as he came slowly down. “Have you taken up smoking cigareets, Mitch?”
“That would be me, sir,” Bryce said.
The old man smiled at him genially. “How are you, young fella?”
“Doing okay, sir.”
“Sure you are. We’re all doing okay. And you don’t have to ‘sir’ me. Your dad was my second cousin. And a Peck is a Peck. Good to have you back in town, son. You belong here.”
Bryce looked at him curiously. “Do I?”
“Yes, you do. My young friend and I are about to tear into the last of my home-brewed stout. Can I interest you in a bottle?”
“None for me, thanks. I’d better head back up. Josie worries about me.”
“Treat her right, son. That one’s a keeper.”
Bryce smiled faintly. “Yes, she is.” He stubbed his cigarette out under his heel, carefully picked up both butts and carried them upstairs with him.
Rut watched him go, shaking his head sadly. “That boy could have done anything he wanted to—if he’d just learned how to like himself a little bit. But he never figured out how.”
“Any idea why?”
Rut peered at him through his thick glasses. “You don’t know the story?”
“I know he has a rich older brother.”
“Preston’s his half-brother, actually.”
“Beyond that he doesn’t talk much.”
“Me, I like to talk. Makes me awful thirsty though. You’ll find what we’re looking for in that jelly cupboard over there.”
Mitch opened the cupboard and pulled out a heavy, old-fashioned wooden case that held twenty-four brown bottles of Rut’s prized stout. He set it down gently on the workbench.
Rut opened two bottles and handed Mitch one. Then he settled himself down on a steamer trunk with his and took a long gulp. “Ahh, that’s the good stuff. Just the right temperature, too. If it’s too cold you can’t taste it.” He took another gulp before he said, “Bryce never had a chance. Wasn’t his fault. That’s why I feel so sorry for him. His father, old Lucas, must have been close to sixty when Bryce was born. Lucas was an investment banker in the city. He and his wife, Libby, had themselves a big apartment on Park Avenue. Their boy Preston was in his senior year at Cornell when Lucas fell head over you-know-what for a twenty-three-year-old lingerie model. He divorced Libby, married the girl and had Bryce with her. Less than a year after Bryce was born she took off with some tennis player. Abandoned Lucas and her baby.”
Mitch leaned against the workbench and drank his stout, which was even tastier than he remembered. “What happened to her after that?”
“She died in a car crash down in Mexico a few months later. Left Lucas with a baby boy he really didn’t want. Libby sure didn’t want anything to do with Bryce. Neither did Preston, who considered him a bastard child. So the boy ended up being raised in the house out on Big Sister by an elderly governess. He went to school here in town. Made friends here. Dorset was his home. He was a nice boy, too. Not a mean bone in his body. He was just unloved, I guess you’d say. Lucas died when Bryce was twelve or so. Libby was dead by then herself. Bryce was pretty much on his own after that. Lucas did leave him a small trust fund but it was Preston who controlled the purse strings. He still does. And Preston is a coldhearted SOB. First thing he did after he took over his father’s financial affairs was kick Bryce out of the only home he knew. Shipped him off to a military academy. The boy came home to Dorset every summer. But Preston, who had a wife and family of his own by now, didn’t want him with them on Big Sister. Bryce had to bunk with childhood friends. Until one day he took off and never came back. Boy’s been roaming the world ever since, working odd jobs, living hard. This is his home. He belongs here. I hope he can find himself some happiness with that nice blonde.” Rut drank down the last of his stout, smacking his lips contentedly. “Ready for another?”
“You talked me into it.” Mitch opened two more bottles and handed one to Rut, who seemed to be in no hurry to go back upstairs to his own party.
“Mitch, there’s … something I need to talk to you about,” he said, clearing his throat. “This is on the quiet. Don’t want anyone else to hear about it—except for one special person.”
“Would that one special person be our resident trooper?”
“Correct. But she isn’t hearing this through official channels. It’s strictly the man in her life passing along a little something he heard about, okay?”
“Okay, Rut. What is it?”
The old postmaster took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “We have us a grinch working the Historic District again. This happened once before when times were hard, back when Bush One was president.”
“I’m going to need you to translate that for me, Rut.”
“Somebody’s been stealing the mail from the curbside boxes on Hank Merrill’s route.”
“So the snow’s not to blame for why people like Bella Tillis haven’t been getting their mail?”
“That’s correct. It’s a grinch. And Paulette’s real upset about it. I’ve never seen her so upset.”
“Does she know you’re talking to me about it?”
“Well, sir, she does and she doesn’t. I told her I might have a quiet way of tiptoeing the matter in through the back door. The key word is ‘quiet.’”
Mitch looked at him curiously. “Forgive me for being dense, but why does this have to be such a deep, dark secret?”
“Because stealing the U.S. Mail is a serious federal crime, my young friend. Any sort of official inquiry would have to be conducted by the postal inspectors. That’d mean strangers who don’t understand our local customs swooping in from God knows where and making a mess of things. Not to mention leaving a black mark on Paulette’s record. That wouldn’t be fair to her. I mean, hell, it’s not as if the grinch is actually going after the U.S. Mail.”
“What is he going after?”
Rut lowered his voice to a whisper. “Hank’s Christmas tips.”
> “Oh, I see…”
The tipping of mail carriers at Christmas time violated the rules of the U.S. Postal Service. Members of the public weren’t supposed to put money or gifts out for carriers. And carriers weren’t supposed to accept them. But it was a time-honored tradition in Dorset to leave a little something out for a popular carrier like Hank. An envelope with twenty dollars in it. A plate of home-baked Christmas cookies. Or a marble cake like the one Bella had told Hank she’d made him. Pretty much everyone in the Historic District left something out for Hank. The cash he donated to the Food Pantry. The cookies got passed around at the Post Office. And the higher-ups at the U.S. Postal Service were none the wiser.
“And Hank’s tips aren’t all that this grinch is after,” Rut confided. “Quite a few of Lem Champlain’s customers transact business with Lem by way of their mailboxes. I don’t have to tell you Lem’s been a busy man this month. I also don’t have to tell you that those mailboxes aren’t supposed to be used for anything except officially stamped and posted U.S. Mail.”
Mitch sipped his stout, nodding. “How much money is Lem out?”
“Tina told me he’s short nearly two grand that his customers swear they put out for him. Mitch, I’d sure hate to see Paulette get in any kind of trouble with the Postal Service over this. I’m the one who hired her, you know—thirty years ago this past November. I’m real fond of that young lady.” He shifted his weight around on the trunk uncomfortably. “More than fond. I’ve been madly in love with that gorgeous, leggy creature from the first moment I set eyes on her.”
“Are we talking about Paulette Zander?”
“We are. All you see upstairs right now is a tired middle-aged lady. You should have seen her back in the day. My God, what a willowy thing of beauty she was.”
“Did you two ever?…”
“No, sir. I was a married man. Also old enough to be her father. She’s never once thought about me that way. But I used to dream about her and me together. Still do when I’m lying in bed all by myself at night. That’s what you do when you get to be my age. You lie in your bed at night thinking about the women who you wish you’d slept with but never did. It’s pretty much all you think about. Just you wait and see.” He let out a sigh of regret. “That ex-husband of hers, Clint, didn’t know what a treasure she was. Took off for Florida back when Casey was a young’un and left her to raise him on her own. She was single for a long, long time before she took up with Hank.”
“Hank seems like a decent guy.”
“People seem to think so,” Rut responded with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “Tina’s been cleaning for me for a lot of years. She keeps Lem’s books, too. And she tells me things.”
“What kind of things, Rut?”
“Lem hasn’t been able to pay his men this month. It seems he’s been blowing a whole lot of money in Mystic.”
“What’s in Mystic?”
“Not what—who. Debbie Leto, his old high school flame. Lem dated Debbie before he got Tina pregnant with Kylie. A lot of folks believe Lem never got over Debbie, and Debbie’s rich dentist husband just dumped her for his young hygienist. Tina thinks Lem’s wining and dining her. They aren’t exactly happy together anymore, truth be told. Tina’s got herself someone, too.”
“Anyone we know?”
“He’s not local or I would have heard. But she’s got someone. I know that girl. She’s got a new spring in her step.”
Mitch sorted his way through the choice morsels of gossip that Rut had fed him, moving them around this way and that way. “Rut, are you suggesting that Lem Champlain is our grinch?”
Rut lowered his gaze. “Lem would give you the shirt off of his back if you needed it. But he’s also a horse thief, same as his father was. Let’s say he wanted to hide a nice chunk of change from Tina and spend it on Debbie. He could claim that a grinch has been stealing it from those mailboxes right along with Hank’s tips and no one would be the wiser.”
“Is Lem that crafty?”
“Lem’s twice that crafty. And he’s crazy in love with Debbie. Or so Tina says.” Rut drank down the last of his beer, sighing. “A man in love is liable to do some mighty stupid things.”
Mitch studied the old man carefully. He kept sensing that there was more to this that Rut wasn’t telling him. Rut seemed unsettled. And he couldn’t quite look him in the eye. “Rut, what’s really going on here?”
The old postmaster stayed silent for a long moment, his eyes fastened on the concrete floor. “Mitch, that’s what I’d like your lady friend to find out.”
* * *
“Okay, wait, I’m missing something huge here.”
“Give me a few more minutes and I’ll be ready for you again, I promise.”
Des swatted at him playfully as they cuddled in his bed beneath the down comforter and Clemmie and Quirt, listening to the surf crash against the rocks. It wasn’t unusual for Clemmie, Mitch’s ottoman-shaped house cat, to snuggle with them in the sleeping loft. But it was rare for Quirt, his lean, mean, outdoor hunter, who’d only taken to joining them after the island’s snow cover became knee-high.
“I don’t get it. What does Rut want me to do?”
Mitch nuzzled her neck, inhaling her intoxicating scent, which was one part cinnamon, two parts her. “Have a conversation with Paulette, I guess.”
“But if we have a grinch…”
“We definitely have a grinch. No if about it.”
“Why hasn’t she said something to me?”
“Because then it would qualify as the postmaster of Dorset officially reaching out to the Connecticut State Police. Rut doesn’t want her to get in trouble with the postal inspectors over our quaint, small-town ways. He has a genuine soft spot for Paulette, it turns out. And I don’t mean the sweet, fatherly kind.”
“Really?” Her almond-shaped pale green eyes shined at him in the candlelight. “At his age?”
“There’s no expiration date on a man’s erotic yearnings. Or so I’ve been informed. It’ll be a few decades before I can confirm that.”
Des laid her head on his chest, wrapping her arms around him. “I just realized something truly heinous. I have to get dressed and go home.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yeah, I do. I’ll be on fender-bender detail once the snow gets here.”
The newest blizzard was supposed to arrive a couple of hours before dawn. At least eighteen inches of the white stuff were expected to fall before a warm front moved in by late afternoon and the snow turned to sleet, frozen rain and then just plain rain. Buckets of it.
“Besides, if I don’t leave now I might get stranded out here.”
“Sounds good to me. There’s plenty of food, wine and firewood. We can finish decorating my Chanukah bush. Or Christmas tree, as you prefer to call it.”
It was a six-foot balsam fir that he’d felled with an axe in the island’s dense forest and lugged home through the snow just like an old-time Yankee. He’d adorned it with seashells, pinecones and other found objects, including the teeny-tiny yellow string bikini that Des had worn last summer. Although for some mysterious reason it kept vanishing from the tree and showing up back in the wardrobe cupboard.
“Or we could just hide here under the covers. I still have that magic feather in the nightstand.”
“Baby, I have to go. The snow is going to start any minute.”
Mitch ran his hands up and down her impossibly smooth, sleek body, caressing her gently. “Are you sure there’s no way I can convince you to stay just a little while longer?”
She let out a soft whimper and then they didn’t talk about much of anything for quite a while longer.
Fat snowflakes were starting to patter against the skylight over the bed when she left at 4:00 A.M. Mitch dozed off after that, but when dawn arrived Quirt woke him back up, anxious to take care of some personal business. Mitch went down the narrow stairs and let him out. The snow was coming down hard now. Within seconds Quirt was scratching at the door, wa
nting back in. Mitch obliged him, then put the coffee on and built a fire in the stone fireplace. His post-and-beam cottage was basically one big room with bay windows facing the water in three different directions. There was a kitchen and bath, the sleeping loft and that was it. The moth-eaten overstuffed chairs and non-matching loveseat had been taking up space in one of his neighbor’s barns. The coffee table was an ancient rowboat with an old storm window over it. Mitch’s desk was a mahogany door that he’d found at the dump and set atop two sawhorses. His sky blue Fender Stratocaster and monster stack of amps filled one corner of the room, waiting there for whenever he felt like cutting loose. Books and DVDs were piled here, there, everywhere.
While the coffee brewed he did some thermal layering for his beach run. First an undershirt and long johns of Capilene. Then polar fleece sweat pants, a cotton turtleneck and his Columbia University hoodie. On his feet he wore heavy merino wool socks and his New Balance Gore-Tex trail runners. Properly swaddled he poured himself some coffee, fired up his computer and got to work. Mitch had been the lead film critic for the most distinguished daily newspaper in New York City until it was bought out by a media empire that tried to morph him into a cable news quote slut. Now he wrote quirky essays for an e-zine that had been launched by his old editor. This morning he was saluting some of the greatest unheralded movie scores of all time. In today’s connected online world that meant showing his readers what he was talking about, not just telling them. As Mitch sipped his coffee he poked around until he found a YouTube video link of the Los Angeles Philharmonic performing the incredible chase music that Bernard Herrmann had composed for On Dangerous Ground, Nicholas Ray’s noir classic. And another of David Amram at the Montreal Jazz Festival playing his profoundly heartbreaking score to Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass. Mitch had just created links to three of Kris Kristofferson’s original songs from Cisco Pike, the 1972 cult classic, when he heard a pounding on his front door.
“Come on in, naybs!”
“It’s go time, naybs,” Josie exclaimed as she came bounding through the door, her Bates College hoodie dusted with snow. She wore a stocking cap under the hood to protect her ears and mittens on her hands. For leggings she had on water-resistant rain pants.
The Snow White Christmas Cookie Page 3
