by Amy Vansant
“Oh that’s good.”
“Yep. Here’s your man.”
Declan’s voice returned. “Okay, gotta go.”
Charlotte sighed. “Shoot. Feel free to call back anytime you’re bored. I have a lot of time to kill here.”
“Okay. Will do. Hey...”
“Yeah?”
“Love you.”
Charlotte made a little squeaking noise in the back of her throat as her jaw worked but no words formed.
“Later. Bye.” Declan disconnected.
“I love you, too—”
He was gone.
Charlotte lowered her phone to her lap.
Wow.
What did Stephanie do or say to him that he trotted out the L-word?
Declan’s tone hadn’t sounded like guilt or like he was trying to convince himself his words were true. If she had to pick a word to describe his tone it would be sincere.
Unable to wipe the smile from her face, Charlotte settled into her surveillance. Jason remained in clear sight, shoveling eggs into his mouth. It didn’t look as if he had plans to ruin Stephanie’s case today, but she’d have to watch him either way.
I need to think of a Christmas gift for Declan.
Sitting quietly in utter forced boredom would be good for thinking.
She ran her hand over the leather of the passenger seat and sighed. The last thing she needed to be doing now was follow around an assistant district attorney. Things were heating up in the Kris Rudolph case. She wanted to be searching for the gingerbreads and interviewing people, if for no other reason than to flash them her deputy badge.
Charlotte heard her back door open and whirled to find Darla and Mariska sliding into her backseat.
“What are you two doing here?”
“We brought you breakfast,” said Darla, handing her a Tupperware.
Charlotte stared at the clouded image of pierogies and kielbasa pressed against the lid of the container. Mariska could sneeze and a pan of pierogies and kielbasa would appear.
Mariska closed her door and Charlotte winced at the noise. “How did you find me?”
“Bob told me about the car and that you were on a stake-out and here we are.”
“I don’t remember telling Bob who I was watching.”
Mariska scowled. “Of course you did.”
“How else could we have found you?” asked Darla, slamming shut her own door.
Charlotte winced again. She was embarrassed she hadn’t heard the ladies coming. They had to have slammed their own doors, too. She’d been distracted. It must have been the same time Declan said I love you...
She glanced down the road to see if all the slamming had caught Jason’s attention. He remained intent on his paper. She slid a little lower in her seat. “It’s hard to be inconspicuous when you have ladies delivering pierogies to your stakeout car and slamming doors left and right.”
“Sorry. Did Bob tell you your mother had a car like this?” asked Mariska.
She nodded. “He did.”
“It’s in lovely shape. Bob said you were a very good negotiator, too.”
Charlotte tittered. “Bob did all the hard work. He got me free car washes for life.”
Mariska nodded. “He’s very good with car salesmen.”
Darla skootched to the end of her seat and peered through the front window. “How’s it going? Did your victim make any suspicious movements yet?”
“He’s not my victim, he’s my target. Or subject. And no. He hasn’t done anything but drink coffee, eat eggs and read his paper.”
Darla clapped her hands together. “This is so exciting. It makes me feel like a spy.”
Mariska poked Darla in the shoulder. “You need to tell Frank we need badges.”
Charlotte glanced in her rearview. “Would you two like to be my secret operatives today?”
“What do you mean?”
Charlotte twisted to face them. “First, let’s get one thing straight. I never told Bob who I was surveilling today. You drove around until you saw this car, didn’t you?”
Mariska’s face morphed into the passive, expressionless mask she adopted whenever she wasn’t being exactly truthful.
“Bob told us where you were.”
“Because he followed me.”
Mariska pressed her lips together and looked away.
Darla slapped the seat next to her. “It’s so nice being in a car without a possum in it.”
Charlotte turned. “A possum? What are you talking about?”
“We trapped a possum and drove it to the forest down from the outlet mall to release it. We were almost there when Mariska thought she saw giant cookies driving a truck and almost killed us both.”
Mariska scowled. “I did see giant cookies. And it was a stupid idea.”
Charlotte’s eyes grew wide. “Giant cookies? Gingerbread men?”
Mariska gasped. “Yes! How did you know?”
“Three gingerbread men tried to rob Declan’s shop yesterday.” She left out the part about Kris Rudolph being found dead in a gingerbread costume.
“I told you,” Mariska slapped Darla’s arm. “I told you I saw giant gingerbread men in that truck.”
Darla leaned forward and put her hand on Charlotte’s shoulder. “You know you shouldn’t encourage her craziness. She needs our help.”
Mariska slapped her friend a second time. “I’m not crazy.”
Charlotte decided she should sidetrack them before they started wrestling in the back of her new Volvo. “What kind of vehicle were they in?”
Mariska pinched her lips into a knot. “It was a truck, but I don’t know what kind. I was so distracted by the cookies...I want to say black? Yes, I’m sure of the color because I remember thinking it wasn’t very Christmassy for gingerbreads. But I don’t know what kind of truck. Something newish. It looked like the sort that has a back seat. Big.”
Charlotte nodded, processing this new information. Now she had two vehicles to find. She grabbed her phone. “I’m going to forward Darla the text Arnie Jr. sent me with the details of his missing car—” Mariska opened her mouth to speak and Charlotte cut her short. “I’m sending it to Darla because your phone only accepts faxes from nineteen seventy two.”
Mariska humphed.
“While you drive around, keep an eye out for the gingerbread’s truck, too. Might as well kill two birds if we can.”
Darla’s phone dinged and she glanced at it. “Got it. It will have to wait about twenty minutes and then we’ll be on the case.”
“Why do we have to wait?” asked Mariska.
“We have to go find Frank and make him give us deputy badges in case we have to make a citizen’s arrest.”
Chapter Twenty
Gingerbread One used his key to enter the motel room and rubbed his gray head with the other hand.
He’d driven by the pawn shop and knew they were done. Nothing had turned out like he planned. He felt beaten and old. It was time to go home.
Old Kris had won again.
“How’d it go?” asked Four. With his fiery red hair and boundless energy, he looked a lot more confident out of his costume. In his costume, the top of his foam head drooped due to his diminutive stature, making his cookie look as if it was depressed and staring at the ground.
One tossed the car keys on the bureau and pulled a chair away from the table in front of the window to sit. “There was a police car parked out front. They had opened the back of the bureau. If there was anything in there, they found it.”
“Maybe they won’t know how to open the drawers,” suggested Four.
One snorted a laugh. “Once you find the boxes in the back, a child could figure out how to open them.”
“You said there was a trick to it.”
He nodded. “There is. But I didn’t say it was a difficult trick.” He looked up and spotted Two standing outside the bathroom door, listening to their conversation.
“So we’re done?” Two asked. His voice remaine
d monotone. One couldn’t tell if he looked forward to leaving or considered it their final failure.
One picked at the cracked top of the laminated table. “We’re done. There’s nothing left to do. Maybe they’ll manage to get whatever they find in the bureau back to the owners.”
“We can send an anonymous note giving them hints about the places we know,” suggested Four.
One frowned. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. We don’t want anyone knowing we were involved. They might put two and two together. There’s still a murder to answer for.”
Four swung at the air. “This was over the moment that bastard choked. Without him to tell us where he put the money, the cars—”
Two’s shoulders slumped.
Four threw his back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling. “Maybe they’ll find money in the chest of drawers. Maybe a lot of it.”
A piece of the table gave way beneath his fiddling and One pushed it back into place, embarrassed he’d been vandalizing the room. “Maybe.”
Two headed for the door. “I’m going to go look for Karen. I think she went to get coffee.”
Two walked by and left the room.
One looked at Four. “How’s he doing?”
Four shrugged. “Not good. I caught him crying this morning.”
One sighed and leaned over to rest his forearms on his knees. “What a mess. I just wanted to get our things back. Give that bastard what he deserved.”
“You could say he got that.”
“I meant prison.”
“I know. Still.”
“We’ll head for home when they get back.” One’s gaze settled on the top of the bureau. He scowled.
“Where are the keys?”
“Huh?”
“I threw the truck keys there. Next to the lamp.”
Four looked at the empty bureau top. “I don’t know—” He glanced at the door. “Randy.”
One stood and flung open the front door. He spotted the back of his black double-cab pickup truck pulling out of the parking lot and on to the street.
“He’s got the truck.”
“What is he up to now?”
One sighed. “I have an idea.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Jason Walsh finished his coffee and disappeared somewhere in the bowels of his home. The motion detection camera Charlotte set in the crook of a tree overlooking Walsh’s fenced backyard triggered, and Charlotte watched the live video feed on her phone. Jason exited the back of his house in a faded red t-shirt and cargo shorts. He walked out of frame. Ten minutes later he appeared in his front yard pushing a lawn mower.
Charlotte thunked her head against the Volvo’s headrest and closed her eyes. As long as she could hear the lawnmower, she knew where Jason was.
“Master criminal,” she mumbled to herself.
Stephanie had her watching Jason, the all-American dad, on the weekend.
She sat up.
Was that the point? Had Stephanie wanted to mess with her? Force her to do something boring? Keep her away from Declan so she could work her claws into him somehow?
She sighed.
It didn’t matter. Declan was a grown man who could take care of himself, even against the likes of Stephanie. And if Stephanie’s point was to bore Charlotte to tears in exchange for the fingerprint book, then that was the price she had to pay. At least they had the whole book now. She wouldn’t have to make another compact with the devil to get the second half.
She could use the time in her new car to think. For one, she hadn’t come up with a Christmas present for Declan yet and she was running out of time.
Plus, she had the gingerbread men to consider. It couldn’t be a coincidence they’d found Kristopher Rudolph in a gingerbread suit, and then identical cookies tried to rob Kris’s unique chest of drawers from Declan’s shop. Then Mariska spots gingerbreads driving through town? They had to be the ones responsible for Kris’s death.
There had been three cookies at Declan’s. Though, she felt confident the woman who came into the Hock o’Bell right before the robbery attempt was connected. She’d been too squirrelly. Too desperate to hide her face from them.
A truck. Mariska had seen a truck. And the gingerbreads had tried to take the whole bureau. They couldn’t fit that chest of drawers in a sedan; they had to have a truck. They hadn’t parked in the Hock o’Bell lot, but they couldn’t have parked very far away if their plan was to carry off that monster of a bureau. Maybe if Frank collected the CCTV footage from the shops around Declan’s he could find the gingerbreads’ truck and get a license plate—
Hold on.
CCTV.
Tilly. How did I forget Tilly?
While Pineapple Port had no official security other than the volunteer neighborhood watch—which served more as an excuse to drive around on golf carts drinking cocktails than any real security measure— Tilly’s personal network of cameras and logs more than covered the area. She had the neighborhood wired with cameras and kept a meticulous log of comings and goings, known and feared as The Book.
No one had an affair, a tete-a-tete or a bad hair day, without Tilly knowing.
Granted, Tilly’s inspiration for the network was her family’s past ties to organized crime and her fear of being found, but it still proved a good resource for Charlotte.
Maybe Tilly had caught an image of a truck in the neighborhood on the night of Kris’s murder. If Tilly hadn’t captured the vehicle or the cookies digitally, maybe she’d jotted down something that would help.
Jason started down another strip of lawn as Charlotte called Tilly.
“Hello?” Tilly answered in her unique raspy baritone cultivated through years of smoking.
“Tilly, it’s Charlotte. I need you to check your tapes for a truck entering or leaving Pineapple Port last Saturday night.
“The night of the fire?”
“Exactly. Do you have footage of Kris’s house?”
“No. I scaled back the cameras. I don’t have as much time to worry about them now. Harry is always taking me on trips.”
Charlotte sighed. Tilly had recently reunited with an old love and it seemed the romance had bloomed. Unfortunately, her new relationship had eaten into her surveillance time.
“I think I’m looking for a black truck sometime before or after the time of the fire.”
“Oh you know what? I might have that. Hold on.”
Charlotte heard rustling on the other end of the line.
“I remembered it because it was Nebraska. Don’t see a lot of those.”
“What was Nebraska?”
“The license plate of the truck. I wanted to add it to my license plate game sheet. I’ve got it mostly filled out except Hawaii and some of the Midwest. All these long drives Harry takes me on. Game changer. I spotted an Iowa the other day.”
Charlotte allowed Tilly to rattle off the states she was missing on her sheet while her mind wandered back to the truck.
Nebraska. The cookies had come thousands of miles to kill Kris and steal a bureau?
“What color was the truck?”
Tilly droned on in her gravelly baritone. “...Montana’s always a hard one, what?”
“What color was the Nebraska truck?”
“Eh. Hold on. I’m almost there... Black by the look of things. Hard to tell exactly at night, but I’m pretty sure it’s black. That’s what I wrote down in The Book.”
“Thank you, can you give me that plate?”
“Sure.”
Tilly rattled off the plate number and Charlotte chanted it in her head so she wouldn’t forget.
“Okay. Got it. Thank you, Tilly.”
“No problem, kid.”
Charlotte hung up and typed the number into her phone’s notes so she wouldn’t forget it. She’d give it to Frank to—
She realized the sound of the lawn mower had stopped and looked up to find Jason gone.
A second later the back camera tripped and she watched him ree
nter the house. He’d been out of frame. Probably putting away the lawn mower.
Charlotte tapped the faux leather backing of her cell phone cover against her teeth, deep in thought. Nebraska. Someone, possibly four giant cookies, drove from Nebraska to Florida to kill Kristopher Rudolph.
Why?
The previous evening she and Declan had spent some time researching reports of Christmas scams with missing items that matched treasure in the drawers. They’d found a handful, all of them in small towns. Sometimes tiny towns.
Charlotte used her phone to search for reported Christmas scams in Nebraska. Nothing came up. Of course, if Kris ran a con every year and he was on year thirty one, the Nebraska scam could have happened during the very earliest years of the Internet. News that old probably never made it to the Web.
What was the first knob on the bureau?
She closed her eyes and tried to remember.
A beaver with a red ribbon around its neck.
She typed “Nebraska cities with beaver in the name” into her phone.
Beaver City, Nebraska popped up. Population five hundred and eight.
“That is small,” she murmured to herself.
Charity had something like twenty thousand people. Maybe Kris had worked his way up to larger cities. No doubt he’d honed his skills over the years.
But who would have known about the bureau? The gingerbreads knew he’d hidden things inside it.
His ex-wife had been the obvious suspect, but she never would have sold the furniture to Declan if she knew the treasures were inside it.
Who else would be close enough to him that he might share his secrets? Did he have kids? The will his wife had shared with Declan declared her his only beneficiary, so maybe no kids. Any kids he didn’t like enough to leave something to, he probably didn’t tell about his hiding spots.
Charlotte slapped her forehead.
The chest of drawers was Christmas-themed. Even the beaver had a red bow around its neck.
She’d been running under the assumption Kris had built the piece, but there was no reason to assume he possessed woodworking skills on that level. Maybe the chest had been one of the gifts donated. Maybe a local craftsman had given it to Kris to raffle for charity, and then the con man had walked away with it.
