The Snow White Christmas Cookie

by David Handler

  “You’ll be sorry you did that,” Casey vowed, shaking his fist at him.

  “Look at me—I’m quaking with fear.”

  Casey slunk back to his truck and drove off, his wheels spinning in the deep snow.

  “Mitch, that wasn’t necessary,” Josie said scoldingly.

  “I know, but it was fun.”

  “This is a side of you I’ve never seen before. You have anger issues.”

  “No, I don’t. I wasn’t the least bit angry.” He looked at her curiously. “He’s the client who you were with when Kylie went boom?”

  “Yes.”

  “He seems to have a major crush on you.”

  “It happens. Some of my male clients, especially the younger ones, can get emotionally involved. Casey’s lonely. He needs a girlfriend.”

  “He needs a new personality, too.”

  Another vehicle was approaching the causeway now. This one was the black Cadillac hearse from Dousson Mortuary.

  “Oh, good, they’re finally here.” Mitch inserted his coded plastic card in the security slot to raise the barricade.

  The driver, a young black guy, rolled down his window and said, “Sorry it took us so long, bro. It is some kind of a mess out there.”

  Josie drew in her breath. “Mitch, is Bryce still here?”

  “I’m afraid so. That’s why I’ve been clearing the causeway.”

  “Where do I go, bro?”

  “Just follow the pathway that I’ve cleared to the big, natural-shingled house. He’s in the downstairs bedroom. I’ll be right behind you.” Mitch stepped aside so that the hearse could start its way out to the island.

  “I-I can’t believe he’s still…” Josie started to shake. Her breathing was shallow and rapid. “This whole day … it’s some kind of a nightmare. I’m going to lose it, I swear.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re doing great.”

  “Mitch, I’m not doing great at all. My life is a total mess.” She let out a grief-stricken sob and then threw herself into his arms.

  Mitch put his arms around her as she cried and cried, hugging him tight. She was more compactly built than Des but strong for her size. It was like being hugged by a python. “I know it all seems overwhelming,” he said. “But it’ll work out. We’ll work it out together. What you need right now, more than anything else, is a nice heaping bowl of Cocoa Puffs.”

  She pulled away from him, laughing through her tears. “You always know how to make me feel better. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Mitch.”

  “You’d do fine. You are doing fine.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m going to be awfully clingy for the next few days.”

  “Be as clingy as you want.”

  “I won’t send you running for the hills?”

  “Not a chance. I’m your naybs, remember?”

  She gazed at him with her one good eye, which was huge and shiny. Then she hugged him again, gently this time. “Mitch, you are so much more to me than the guy next door. Don’t you know that?”

  CHAPTER 7

  WHAT IN THE HELL am I doing?

  Des pulled around behind the firehouse and used her key to the back door. She went directly up the stairs to the meeting room, which had a window that offered a panoramic view of the entire Dorset Street Historic District buried under its blanket of pure white snow. The village’s highest concentration of mailboxes was situated directly across from her—the boxes for the Captain Chadwick House condo colony and the four houses that adjoined it on Maple Lane. More than a dozen mailboxes bunched together right there. The flags on three of them were raised, meaning the residents had left something for Hank to take.

  Des set a folding chair in front of the window and parked herself there, testing out the zoom lens on her Nikon D80. It was so powerful that she could make out the words Approved by the Postmaster General on the boxes halfway to Town Hall. She’d brought her lunch—a container of steaming-hot clam chowder from Mitzi’s fish market. Des opened the container and helped herself to some. It was chilly in the firehouse. And the wind was starting to pick up, rattling the windows. She kept her jacket on as she settled in.

  Why am I doing this?

  Because this was her town. These were her people. If someone was preying on them then she wanted to be the one to handle it. True, the jurisdictional boundaries were pretty clear. If a crime involved the U.S. Postal Service then it was a job for the postal inspectors. If an illegal prescription drug ring was targeting Dorset, then that was a job for the state’s Narcotics Task Force. But Des didn’t like the idea of reaching out for help. So she was giving herself this day to see what she could see. If nothing jumped out at her then, okay, she’d play it by the book. But she needed to do this her way. If she didn’t then she’d just be an empty uniform.

  She spotted Hank as soon as his white Grumman LLV turned onto Dorset Street from Big Branch. The mail truck was pretty hard to miss with those red and blue stripes and postal insignias stamped all over it. Especially when it was the only vehicle out on the road. Through her zoom lens she watched Hank nose it slowly from curbside box to curbside box. The LLV’s steering wheel was on the right-hand side. Hank used his right hand to open the mailbox, his left to grab the mail from the tray next to him. Then he reached across his body to stuff the mail in, closing the box with his right hand before he moved on. It was not an easy or natural repetitive motion. She wondered how many carriers developed rotator cuff problems from doing it hundreds of times every day. She also wondered how they dealt with the monotony of performing the same exact task the same exact way, day in and day out. Then again, she supposed that someone could say the same thing about her job or Mitch’s or a brain surgeon’s. Every job had its share of sameness. The challenge was to find a way to keep it fresh.

  So what was Hank’s way?

  Now he pulled up directly across from her at the Captain Chadwick House. Her zoom lens gave her a straight-on close-up view of Hank filling the mailboxes with the catalogues, junk mail and packages that had arrived on the early truck from Norwich. As he inched his way forward, box by box, Des watched his every move, snapping pictures in case she needed them. When he reached a box with a raised flag he paused to remove two unstamped envelopes. One he held on to. His Christmas tip, Des figured. The other he returned to the box. Lem’s plow money, she assumed. Maple Lane’s residents were still leaving cash out, grinch or no grinch. That was Dorset. Cranky Yankees did not, would not, change their ways.

  Now Hank stopped and got out and went around to the back of the truck. He opened it and removed a carton from L.L. Bean. A big one, at least two feet square, though it didn’t weigh much judging by the way he was handling it. He locked the truck, just like he’d told Des he did, and clomped his way through the snow to Nan Sidell’s little farmhouse next door to Rut Peck’s. He set the box down on the front porch under the overhang and rang the bell. He was starting back to his truck when the front door opened and Nan, a middle-school teacher, called out to him. Hank stopped to accept a paper plate of cookies from her. They chatted there for a sec, both of them very animated.

  Meanwhile, back at the Captain Chadwick House, one of its elderly residents was waddling through the deep snow down to the curb—none other than her good friend Bella Tillis, looking like Nanook of Nostrand Avenue in her hooded down jacket, fleece pants and duck boots equipped with bright orange Yaktrax snow grippers. The old girl must have been watching for Hank. Didn’t want to give that damned grinch a chance to snatch her mail. She collected it and went tromping back inside, her precious bubble-wrapped packages of meds clutched to her chest. Des couldn’t help smiling.

  Hank had unlocked his truck and moved on. As he neared Town Hall a red Champlain Landscaping plow pickup turned onto Dorset Street from Big Branch and began working its way slowly along in Hank’s wake. It wasn’t there to plow—its blade was raised high up off of the ground. No, its driver was there to check out the contents of each and every mailbox, leafing carefully through t
he mail Hank had just delivered before returning it to the box. Sometimes all of it, sometimes not. Sometimes he held on to an envelope and took it with him back to his truck. Des sat there watching him through her zoom lens. He was incredibly calm as he stood there rummaging through other peoples’ mail. So damned calm she almost couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

  She went back downstairs to her cruiser. Pulled it around to the street and caught up with the red truck, flashing her lights at him. When he came to a stop she got out, big Smokey hat planted firmly on her head, and approached him.

  Pat Faulstich, the thick-necked young Swamp Yankee with the reddish see-through beard, sat there behind the wheel looking nervous. Same as he had at McGee’s Diner earlier that morning.

  “How’s it going, Pat?” she asked, tipping her hat at him.

  He cleared his throat, swallowing. “Was I speeding or something?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then why’d you pull me over?”

  “You tell me. What in the heck are you doing?”

  “Picking up Lem’s money.” He grabbed a dozen or more envelopes from the seat next to him and showed them to her. “Lem’s the one who usually picks ’em up but he’s at the hospital on account of Kylie so he told me to. I didn’t take anything. It’s all there, I swear. And I don’t have a thing in my pockets except my own money, which is like maybe seven dollars, okay?”

  “You seem a bit defensive, Pat.” Agitated was more like it. “Why is that?”

  He colored slightly. “I’m not. I just … why are you hassling me?”

  “Mind if I look behind your seat?”

  He shrugged his big shoulders. “Go right ahead. I got nothing to hide.”

  The storage area behind his seat was a messy tangle of food wrappers, work gloves, sweatshirts, tools and jumper cables. She saw no U.S. Mail parcels back there. Nor on the floor beneath the dashboard. Nor on the seat next to him. There was a sheet of paper on the seat that appeared to be a computer printout of addresses. Several had been crossed out with a pen.

  “Looking for something special, ma’am?”

  Des showed him her smile. “Just looking.”

  “I do what Lem tells me to. Ask him if you don’t believe me.”

  “Thank you, Pat. I just may do that.”

  “I got like forty-three driveways to do. Can I go now?”

  “I don’t see why not. Are you planning to visit Kylie?”

  Pat frowned at her. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “I heard you two were tight.”

  “We’ve hung out a few times. But she’s the boss’s daughter, you know? Plus Tina doesn’t like me.”

  “Is Kylie tight with anyone else?”

  “You’d know that better than me.”

  “Would I?”

  “Well, yeah. Nothing goes on around here you don’t know about, am I right?”

  “Some days you are totally right, Pat. But then there are other days, days like today, when I realize that I haven’t got the faintest idea what’s happening.” She tipped her hat at him again. “Drive safe, okay?”

  * * *

  It took her nearly an hour to make it to Lawrence and Memorial on I-95. The state’s plow crews were doing their best to keep an emergency lane open in each direction, but a good fifteen inches of snow had fallen and the howling wind was starting to blow it right back into the freshly plowed and sanded lane. If she tried to push her cruiser up over twenty mph she could feel it start to fishtail on her.

  She found Lem and Tina seated in the surgical waiting room, a big room that on most days was crammed with relatives and loved ones. Today there were only a few families there. When hospitals got advance warning of a major blizzard they postponed most elective procedures. The only patients who were in surgery right now were emergency cases like Kylie.

  Tina’s dark, protruding eyes grew wide when she saw Des approaching them. Quickly, she lowered her gaze and went back to doing what she’d been doing, which was texting. Lem sat and stared right at Des like a hulking, menacing bear. He must have rushed there straight from work. He was wearing a pair of filthy tan coveralls and oil-stained work boots.

  “I’m probably the last person in the world you want to see right now.”

  “I’m not blaming you,” he grumbled. “It was Kylie’s own stupid fault.”

  “I tried to get her to stop. I got out of my car and begged her to stop.”

  “I’m sure you did,” Lem said.

  Tina said nothing at all. Just kept on texting.

  “How is she doing?”

  “Her ankle’s busted into a million pieces,” he replied, running a thick hand over his shiny shaved head. “The orthopedic surgeon said he’d have to insert titanium screws and plates and stuff like that. She’s only eighteen years old. This’ll bother her for the rest of her life.”

  “I’m real sorry to hear that. Can the three of us talk somewhere for a few minutes?”

  “Why not? She’ll be in surgery for at least another hour.” Lem got his huge self up out of the molded plastic chair and looked down at Tina, who was still sitting there texting. “Could you stop doing that for thirty goddamned seconds and come with us?”

  “I’m telling my mom what’s going on, you mind?” she huffed at him. But she did get up and join them.

  Down the hall was a small room that used to be the smoking lounge. Now it was used for private conversations between physicians and families. Nobody was in there. There was a table with a half dozen chairs set around it. The three of them sat down. Tina immediately glanced down at the screen of her cell phone. Lem immediately glared at her. There was definite hostility between them. Part of it was the strain of Kylie’s not-so-excellent adventure. Part of it was that same sour vibe that Des had picked up on at Rut’s party.

  Des took off her hat and set it on the table. “Talk to me. Why did Kylie try to steal those Ugg boots?”

  “Because we took away her charge cards,” Lem answered.

  “We had to,” Tina explained. “The girl’s a shopaholic. She becomes totally obsessed with this jacket or those boots and she will not think about anything else. Or do anything else. She won’t work. Won’t go to college. She just sits around the house all day dreaming her stupid dreams. Wants to be like that Kim Kardashian or one of those ‘Real Housewives’ who lives in a big mansion somewhere and spends all day getting pedicures and planning fancy parties. I keep telling her, sweetie, that’s television. It’s not real. You got to work for every little thing you get in life. But she doesn’t want to hear that.”

  Lem tugged uneasily at his long beard. “Is she in bad trouble?”

  “Possibly. There’s the shoplifting charge. She also shoved Joanie Tooker to the ground and dislocated her elbow. Joanie can call that criminal assault if she chooses to. And then she fled the scene of a crime and engaged me in a pursuit that endangered the lives of several drivers before she plowed into that building. We’re talking hit and run, reckless endangerment…”

  “Are you saying she may go to jail?” Tina’s dark eyes searched Des’s face apprehensively.

  “That’ll be up to the district prosecutor.”

  Lem let the weight of this soak in for a moment. “We’ll have to get her a lawyer, won’t we? Damn, this is just what I don’t need right now. I can barely make my payroll. You don’t suppose if she apologized to Joanie and, say, we offered to repair the building that maybe that’d do the trick, do you?”

  “Like I said, it’ll be up to the district prosecutor.”

  Tina’s cell phone vibrated on the table in front of her. She squinted at the screen and said, “It’s my mother again. Back in a sec, okay?”

  “Whatever,” Lem growled.

  She was already thumbing out a text as she took off down the hall.

  Des sat there with Lem, growing increasingly aware of his powerful scent. The man smelled as if he’d been marinating in beef broth for a week.

  “I ran into Pat Faulstich on Dorset
Street before I came here. He was collecting your money from your customers’ mailboxes.”

  “Yeah, I asked him to. Was he leaving those flyers, too?”

  “I didn’t see any flyers.”

  He looked at her in disbelief. “He didn’t pick up the flyers? I told the damned mo-ron to get ’em from my house. They’re right there on the dining table. Big stack of yellow flyers saying we got to tack on an ten extra bucks from now on. It’s because my supplier keeps jacking up the price of road salt. Pat promised me he’d put ’em in the boxes. And he’s my best man, can you imagine?”

  “Does he have any money problems that you’re aware of?”

  “He hasn’t got any of it, if that’s what you mean.”

  “How about drugs? Is he into drugs?”

  “Smokes a little weed now and then. All of those boys do. But he’s never been in trouble with the law or had an accident on the job. And he shows up every morning, which is more than I can say for a lot of them. They stay up half of the night boozing at the Rustic and some of ’em are still so wasted when they show up that I have to send ’em home. You got to have your head on straight when you’re manning a plow truck. If you don’t you’ll sideswipe a telephone pole. But those boys just don’t give a damn. I call ’em boys but they’re not. Pat’s twenty-six. When I was his age I already had a wife and an eight-year-old daughter.” He peered across the table at her. “Why are we talking about this?”

  “You have routine access to the mailboxes on Hank Merrill’s route.”

  “So?…”

  “So someone’s been stealing from those boxes. They’ve taken mail, small packages, Hank’s tips…”

  “And my money.” He stabbed himself in the chest with a blunt thumb.

  “Do you know anything about this, Lem?”

  “You bet I do. I know that some bastard’s taking food out of my mouth. I know that if I ever get my hands on him I’m going to-to…” Lem broke off, glowering at her. “You think I’m the thief? Why would I do something crazy like that? No, don’t tell me. I already know the answer. You think I’m hiding money from Tina so I can spend it on Debbie, am I right? That is total bull. How does this stuff even start? I’ll bet it’s Rut Peck. That old geezer’s always flapping his gums. Especially after he gets a glass of stout in him. Let me ask you something—why is my marriage any of your business?”