“Criminy,” Nellie said.
I stared at my friend. “My thoughts exactly.”
Sarah walked over to the reception desk. “I’d better call the police,” she said, her voice firm.
“Sure,” Nellie said. “Why not? It won’t get our Christmas stuff back, but it will be entertaining. Digby can ask where the donuts are while Chief Tanner swoops in with his spool of crime tape and tell us the tree was stolen.”
“Reporting crimes is a civic duty,” Sarah said. Then, rather officiously she made the call speaking stiffly in her imitation of us growner-ups being serious.
“Oh yeah.” Nellie didn’t sound convinced.
“We have to do something and calling the police is better than nothing,” I said.
That stopped her for a moment. “It is?”
“Well, maybe not, but we have to do something. Sarah’s right that we are supposed to report a robbery.”
Nellie walked dazedly into the back room to look around. I was standing in the doorway like a deer in a car’s headlights. Sarah came over and took my hand. I squeezed it.
“The till is still there,” Nellie said. “It doesn’t look touched. In fact nothing that didn’t smell of Christmas seems to be missing.”
“That suggests it was the Grinch,” Sarah said quietly.
“How did you get to that conclusion, Holmes?” Nellie asked.
“The Grinch stole Christmas. This thief didn’t take anything else.”
Nellie went to make coffee and Sarah put the cookies on the table. I thought about handing cookies around, but there are far too many excuses for comfort food in this world. I needed to cut back.
It’s debatable whether calling our rapid-response police force produced any results that could be construed as better than nothing, as I had suggested, but the response itself made Nellie’s point for her. According to Sarah, when she called the police Miz Nadine Hines, who was the secretary to Chief Tanner, but considered her his assistant, instructed her to make sure that no one touched anything. Assuming that didn’t include the coffee pot, we were pretty good about that. Hildegarde Botowski, who runs the hardware store a few doors down saw us standing around and poked her head in to say good morning.
“Ready for a shiny new week?” she asked.
“Not sure yet,” Nellie said.
I pointed toward our coffee urn. “Ask again after we’ve had coffee,” I said.
For the next hour we turned people away, sending them off with vague comments about not being ready for business. Finally, after only an hour, Officer Digby Hayes arrived looking hungry. “Are there any donuts?” he asked me. “I stopped at Parambets’ place for a taco on my way over, but they all looked moldy.”
Digby has been the sole patrolman on the Knockemstiff police force since I was little. He likes his work, and he’s a nice man, but he doesn’t inspire confidence that whatever crime has been committed will be quickly resolved.. or perhaps ever resolved. Still… “We don’t have any donuts yet.” I’d hidden the Christmas cookies Sarah made for later. “But I don’t think that was mold on the tacos, Digby. You know the Parambets keep their place spotless. They’d never sell moldy food.”
“Then how come when I went in this morning all the tacos are green.”
Pete was coming in the door and laughed. He held up a bag. “Isn’t that wonderful? Only the Parambets would come up with Christmas tacos. They have red ones too. Not only do they make the best tacos in Louisiana, they are creative.”
Digby made a face. “They looked moldy to me.”
Nellie poked Digby in the arm. “Hang in there, copper. Betina is supposed to bring the donuts this morning. Thing is, she’s running late. So while we wait for her to arrive can we get to solving the crime?”
“Crime?” Pete looked around. “We were robbed? All our Christmas stuff is gone?”
“Right and right.”
“Dang. I’ve heard of low crimes but who the heck steals Christmas?” Pete said.
“The Grinch,” Sarah told him.
“Oh, right.”
“Grinch?” Digby asked.
“Didn’t you read the book or see the Christmas show?”
Digby scowled, remembering. “I thought it was the grasshopper. The ants were working hard all summer and the grasshopper didn’t do any Christmas shopping… something like that.”
“You are mixing up two completely different stories,” Sarah told him, her hands on her hips. “The grasshopper didn’t work to provision for winter. The Grinch stole Christmas.”
“Christmas is in winter,” Digby said.
Pete grinned. “Oh, Dr. Seuss, yeah. Now I remember. But I sort of took that as fiction, like green eggs and ham.”
Digby chuckled. “Well, if the Parambets have very real green tacos…”
Pete went to his station. “Okay. I’m not going there. I need my world a bit more orderly than this one seems right now. I’ll be over here pretending this didn’t happen.”
“You seem stressed,” Nellie said.
Pete shrugged. “I guess I am, a little. It’s the play.”
“Santa versus the Pelican,” Nellie said. “I read about it on the city website.”
“That doesn’t sound very traditional,” Digby said.
“Sure it is, Digby,” Nellie told him. “There was a pelican in the manger, don’t you remember? Some of our best decorations this year were pelicans.”
As Digby tried to process that, Sarah smiled. “Miz Phlint is teasing you, Officer Hayes. All of our decorations were Santas and bells and the usual things.”
“Thank you, Sarah Jameson,” he said looking relieved. “That play sure sounds like something different, Pete.”
“Different, but interesting and clever. This theater group is very tight though and competitive, almost contentious. Everyone is picky and wanting to upstage each other. I’m the new guy, and don’t really fit in yet. I have to learn two parts but fortunately one is easy.”
Sarah scowled. “That doesn’t make sense to me. If you have two parts you might have to be in two places on the stage at once.”
“That would be hard but I don’t play both parts at once, Sarah. I’m playing a small part, but I’m also the understudy for the lead.
“Understudy?”
“I have to learn his lines as well as mine so I can take his place if something happens and he can’t go on.”
“Go on where?” Sarah asked.
“On the stage,” Pete explained. “Being understudy just means that he has a key role. If he got sick or something, someone else has to be prepared to play that role. That’s me. Someone else could easily take my other part—there aren’t that many lines for them to remember. It probably will never be necessary, but I have to know the part as well as Jerry does.”
“That makes you the just-in-case person,” Sarah said.
Digby was roaming around the salon. “The tree was here,” he said pointing to the pile of spruce needles and icicles on the floor.
“Great discovery, Sherlock,” Nellie said. “The suspect spruce was last seen at precisely that location. What tipped you off?”
Ignoring her, Digby followed a trail of debris that had fallen off the tree into the back room. “You said you put the tree up on Friday evening, right?”
“That’s it. Right after we closed. We had a little party.”
“Did you sweep the needles up after you brought it out?”
“Of course we did,” I told him.
“Then it escaped in this direction.”
“The tree didn’t escape,” Nellie told him. “It was planted in a pot, not held prisoner.”
Digby nodded. “Yes, Ma'am. I meant it was taken, probably dragged against its will, in this direction.” He held up a finger. “Shall we follow the trail?”
“I need to set up my station,” Pete said. “I’ve got a client coming in soon. I’ll need a recap later.” So everyone but Pete followed Digby into the back room and then out the back door and into
the alley near the dumpster, where the trail stopped.
Wrinkling his nose, Digby lifted the big metal lid on the dumpster and peeked in over the edge. A few flies buzzed his face. “Nope.”
“Nope what?” Nellie asked.
“There’s no tree in there now, although it looks like it was here for a while.” He pointed at something in the bottom but none of us was enticed to look. “There’s a bunch of needles, more icicles and some tinsel in there, but that’s it. The tree is gone now.”
I wasn’t sure if the dumpster being empty was good news or bad. Once the tree had been in the dumpster I wasn’t sure putting it back in the salon would be a smart thing to do.
Billy nodded. “I sort of noticed all those things when I found the back door open, Officer Digby.”
Digby looked at Billy, putting his hands on his hips, which made his oversized belly seem even bigger. He really needed to cut back on the junk food. “Okay, I need you to tell me what happened here, Billy.”
Billy is shorter than Digby and he had to look up at him. “Well, I was walking over to the school to start work. I was supposed to clean up Mrs. Lacey’s kitchen this morning. She called me because she had a party and it’s a mess. I took this alley as a shortcut. When I walked past the door,” he said pointing, “I saw it was open.”
Digby wrote it all down in his notebook. “I’ll confirm that, Billy. What else did you see?”
“Just this trail of needles and icicles.”
“What did you do first?”
Billy shrugged. “Well, I wondered if someone had tossed out a perfectly good, or maybe slightly damaged tree, so I looked in the dumpster.”
Digby snorted. “You’d pull a tree out of the dumpster, Billy?”
“Of course.” His look said he didn’t understand why someone would ask that.
“Why would you want a damaged tree?” I asked.
He smiled. “I don’t but there are lots of people in town, and living just outside town who can’t afford any kind of tree. So I keep my eye out for any they can use. I recycle Christmas.” He turned back to Digby. “So, after I check and see there’s no tree in the dumpster, I remembered what happened the last time someone broke into Savannah’s place.” He pointed to a window next to the door that was broken. “Looks like someone broke that and reached in to open the door.”
“Oh that little incident,” Nellie said with a sigh.
Digby drew himself up. “Yeah. There was the break-in and then we had to solve the murder when that girl got killed with hair coloring that Burt Botowski poisoned in an attempt to kill his wife.”
I cringed. The shelf life on stories like that is infinite. They never expire, it seems, no matter how much you want to forget them. Having Digby recite chapter and verse just refreshed it in the local lore. Not that a murder or two hurt business any—it was just a painful reminder.
Billy nodded gravely. “So, I decides to investigate. I walks in through the open door…” he glared at Digby, “…not touching nothing in the place, see, not even the door. I went on into the salon. I thought it was just neighborly to make sure things was okay. Just about then Savannah and Nellie come trotting in the front door.”
“He’s lying,” Nellie said, catching everyone’s attention.
“What do you mean?” Digby asked.
“We walked in the door in a dignified fashion. The only trotting I’ve ever done is the Foxtrot and that was a long time ago.”
“Finnegan trotted,” Sarah said.
“Point taken. But Billy didn’t mention him in his account of the events.”
Sarah considered that. “True. But it’s more that his explanation was inaccurate than that he was actually lying.”
“So we get to be inaccurate?” Nellie asked. “Can I lie and call it inaccurate?”
Sarah shrugged. “Adults do it all the time.”
Except for us trotting, Billy’s story fit the facts we had and made sense, at least from a Billy perspective. I can’t say what Digby thought, but none of the rest of us doubted his version of events.
Everyone knew that Billy liked to find ways to help people who have less than he does. Not that he has much, but there are a lot even worse off. Billy thought it was unfair for people to do without when things were going to waste. Once you start thinking that way, about the unfairness of it, I imagine that it gets to you really bad at Christmas time. There’s such an emphasis on things, and things cost money. So if he’d seen a tree in the dumpster, he would’ve taken it. But he was no thief… at least I doubted it.
Digby was still dutifully writing down everything Billy told him. Then he handed him the notebook and a pen. “I want you to sign this, Billy. It’s your official statement.” That’s one nice thing about small towns — even official things aren’t always particularly officious. A signed statement in his notebook wasn’t going to hold up in court, but who cared?
“Can I go to work now?” Billy asked. “Mrs. Lacey will be mad at me.”
“Sure,” Digby said. “But don’t leave town without telling me.” We all stared at Digby and he gave us a sheepish grin. “It’s just that I’ve always wanted to say that.” He grinned at Billy.”If she gives you a hard time, tell her to call me and I’ll explain that you were being questioned.”
“Thanks Officer Digby,” Billy said. Then he looked at me. “I’m going straight to the school now. Sarah can walk with me if you like, save you the trip.”
Since they were going to the same place it made perfect sense, and Sarah was already giving me her “do that” nod. “Thanks, Billy. I appreciate that.”
“What happened to Chief Tanner?” I asked Digby. “He usually can’t resist a crime scene.”
“He’s at another one. There are some other reports of Christmas things missing around town.” He shrugged. “Two weeks left before Christmas and this going on. It isn’t like our little town.”
I had to agree. “It’s unusual.”
“I better go file this report and see if Nadine has anything else I need to investigate.”
Nellie chuckled. “Investigate is a pretty big word for peeking in a dumpster, Digby.”
He drew himself up. “I followed the clues I could find, Nellie Phlint,” he said, which was true. So, with his investigation complete and seeing as we still didn’t have any donuts, Digby left. Pete’s client arrived, and other people, curious because of Digby’s car parked out front, began to wander in.
Betina hadn’t arrived yet. She’s usually punctual and there was the matter of the donuts, so I put on my concerned employer face and called her. I got her sleepy voice.
She was surprised when I told her what time it was. “Oh sorry, Savannah,” she said. “I overslept. I’ll come right in.” She did sound groggy.
“Are you okay?”
“I just didn’t sleep all that well and forgot to set my alarm. I’m on my way now.”
“Please stop on the way and get some donuts. In fact get a double order. I think that when the news gets out about our robbery…”
“What robbery?”
“The salon. We came in to find we were robbed, probably over the weekend.”
“All our stuff is gone? How will we work?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make it sound so bad. They didn’t take anything but the Christmas stuff. They stole our tree, the presents and all the decorations. Nothing else is missing.”
Betina was quiet for a moment. “Well, that’s too bad,” she said finally. I thought she sounded almost relieved. “I’ll be in soon. With the donuts.”
I hung up and said,“Betina said she overslept. She doesn’t sound unhappy about the things going missing. And what’s that smell?”
Nellie muttered something. She was putting Lucille Braxton’s fingernails in a dish of warm grape seed oil. “Grapeseed oil. We are using to soften those cuticles,” Nellie said. “Lucille read an article about the benefits of warm oil manicures and wanted to try one. People use lots of different kinds of oil for them and
we decided it would be fun to experiment with different oils and see how each one worked. Today its grapeseed.”
“It’s fun to see if one is more effective or even just smells better,” Lucille said. “This sure feels nice.”
“It’s faintly sweet with a touch of a nutty smell,” Nellie said. “Grapeseed is supposed to be an antioxidant and have anti-inflammatory properties as well.”
“Next time we are going to try almond oil,” Lucille said. “We have a long list of oils to try—avocado, hazelnut, sunflower…”
Nellie frowned. “You know it seems to me that Betina was in a bad mood last Christmas too. She didn’t say anything, but she sort of withdrew. Last year I assumed she was just having a bad week, but maybe she doesn’t like the holiday at all.” She bit her lip. “You don’t think…?”
“No, of course not.” I blurted my objection out reflexively and far too quickly to be believed. We both liked Betina a lot. Nellie gave me her look that said she realized this wasn’t a place to talk about Betina. I saw her bite her lip, pretending to concentrate on Lucille Braxton’s hands.
“I wonder why that sweet girl would have a problem with Christmas?” Lucille Braxton said. “It’s a time of goodwill and all that.”
“Except for the stealing part,” Nellie muttered.
“Maybe she doesn’t have a problem with Christmas,” I suggested. “Maybe it’s the time of year. Unless she tells us, we can’t know.”
And so the chatter went. Finally Betina came in carrying a plate piled with enough donuts to feed an invading army, which meant that a few of them actually made it to the covered plate that we keep on the table. She’d barely gotten her hands out of the way before Art Granger made sure that the remaining ones didn’t have a chance to get stale either. It was an example of good teamwork.
Mrs. Ourso had been waiting for her turn in Betina’s chair. Soon she was seated and Betina was trimming her bangs and chatting with her about lots of nothing. Still, her friendly manner was low powered for Betina and it was easy to see that she hadn’t cheered up any. Her normal spark just wasn’t sparking.
“How does she do that?” Nellie whispered to me.
“Do what?”
Holiday Hooligans: Cozy Mystery (The Teasen & Pleasen Hair Salon Cozy Mystery Series Book 3) Page 3