Mistletoe Mysteries

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “Martha, I’ve known you a long time, right?”

  “A few summers. Yes. Why?”

  “There’s part of this you won’t tell me. Come on, why don’t you want to go to the cops? This is Benny, remember? Tell Benny.”

  “Aw, Benny, it’s because I think I know the kids who did it. I’ve watched them grow up. They used to shovel the snow off my sidewalk and sell me chocolate bars I didn’t need for their basketball teams. There has to be a gentler way than going for the heavy artillery.”

  “They could have cut your throat in church, Martha, and you’re worried about getting somebody new to do your sidewalk. Come on!”

  “Jason Abbott was always a nice kid. So was Lester Garvey and that other one, that Larry, whatever-his-name-is: Storchuck, I think. I think they were surprised to see me there, Benny. What am I going to do? You’re the private detective.”

  “Private investigator. I’m not a detective. Look, Martha. This is a big drug drop. This isn’t nickel and dime stuff. Those kids were making a big connection. Unless you were exaggerating about the size of that package.”

  “Well, I didn’t actually weigh it. Maybe it’s closer to a dozen ounces or so. Benny, if you’d seen their faces when they ran away—”

  “You’re breaking my heart, Martha. Tell me about the Little Match Girl.”

  “Tell me when you ever rang the bells at St. Mary’s on St. Andrew Street West? That’s not your local synagogue, is it?”

  “I’ll make this brief. Just long enough for me to check the number for Chris Savas at Niagara Regional Police. When we lived at 40 Monck Street, our neighbor, Jim O’Reilly, was a butcher until he retired. After that he was the bellringer at St. Mary’s. When I was three or four, we were great pals. He used to take me on his shoulder into the church tower and I’d help him with the ropes.”

  “And I’ve lived in that parish all my life and I didn’t know that, Benny. I guess the poet didn’t go far enough when he said, ‘Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.’”

  “You can always toll a bell, Martha, but you can’t tell it much. Let’s get back to your problem. The solution is in calling Chris Savas at 555–6000.” I repeated the number and she grudgingly wrote it down. I ended the conversation by telling her that I’d come over in about an hour. She was getting stubborn and fractious at her end of the line. She didn’t want me sitting in her kitchen, she wanted the package of dope out of her house without having to send a couple of kids to jail on Christmas Day. But she agreed at last and I rolled out of bed, showered, shaved, and did all the things I didn’t think I was going to do on Christmas, beginning with stepping out into the freezing world.

  St. Mary’s Church on St. Andrew Street West was cool and dim, the way churches should be. There was some light coming through tall pointed windows, glazed with small panes of window glass. The stained glass would come after the roof had been fixed and the steeple had been raised up to the height the architect had had in mind. There wasn’t much light coming off the frozen streets anyway; even the best stained glass would have failed to inspire much in this light.

  I found the column with the poor-box on the left-hand side of the church and checked the pew where Martha had been sitting. Somebody had carved a small recess in the angle of the seat, where it met the supporting plank. Long sermons and idle hands, I thought. As I was coming out, three teenagers were on their way in. They checked me out by pretending to show a keen interest in a statue of the virgin in a candle-lit side chapel. They looked about sixteen years old, maybe younger. The boy in the middle was a light-skinned black with his hair shaved close to his head up the sides. He wore it longer at the crown. The other two boys had similar cuts, except that one of them, the dark-haired one, had chevron-like cuts all the way up his skull, where the barber had cut closer to the scalp than elsewhere. They were all wearing black leather jackets and chewing gum. I stood behind them watching them and the elevated statue. As soon as I stopped, their attention was divided.

  “What do you want?” asked the black kid.

  “That was a royal screw-up. We heard what happened.” I was trying on a part I rarely play. It might get me some information, it might get me shoved into the altar rail. “We’re very cross with the three of you,” I said with deliberate understatement. “What are you planning on doing about it?”

  “The broad was starting to shout. We had to get away!” said the kid with the chevron haircut, who was now looking a little younger than the other two.

  “You let that old bag make a monkey out of you! You know who she is at least?”

  “She’s—” began the black kid, then he stopped himself. “She’s just somebody came to hear mass, is all. We don’t know her from nobody.”

  “She was kicking up and making a racket. You gotta see it from our side,” said the boy who’d been silent until now.

  “We thought you kids could handle this.”

  “We told you we never done nothin’ like this before. Nothin’ this big.”

  “You never saw me before in your life and you better remember that.”

  “He means that’s what we told Eddie Manion.”

  “Eddie didn’t tell you to give the stuff away to women who get a little high on Christmas Eve.”

  “Look, mister, we didn’t even want to take the stuff from Eddie.”

  “That’s right, he twisted our arms. Said he’d tell Father Daeninckx on us if we didn’t play along.”

  “And what did he tell you to do with it?”

  “Just hold it over the long weekend and then give it back to the Dittrick Hotel.”

  “That’s right. Now what are you going to do? Eddie’s got a long memory and a short temper.”

  “Maybe you could explain …” The black kid let the words die on his tongue. The two others looked at him.

  “You could do hard time getting mixed up with Eddie Manion in this.”

  “Yeah, we’ve been talkin’ about that all night.”

  “Hey, who are you working for anyway, mister? Are you with Manion in this or what?”

  “Listen you three. Manion is finished. He’s all washed up, hung out to dry, and you’ve just had the escape of your lives if it happens. That’s a big if, I’m tellin’ you. You’ve been playing Russian roulette with an automatic and you don’t even know it.”

  “What the hell can we do about it?”

  “If I were the three of you, I’d bury myself in homework over the holidays and forget about the street action for about six months for a start.”

  “Are you a nark or a cop or what?”

  “Listen up, the three of you. The cops know who you are. You’ve been identified. Which one of you is Lester?” The two white boys fingered their black pal. “Everything depends on what you do from now on.”

  “Okay, okay, mister, we’ll be cool, right?” The other two agreed with Lester and began backing away from me.

  “Just a minute! Where can I get news to you if something should come up? I may need to get in touch over the weekend.” The three huddled and when they came up for air one of them gave me the Storchuck phone number. I wrote it down and let the boys casually retreat down the aisle of the nave and through the felt-covered doors in the permanently temporary baffle that surrounded the front doors. In a moment, I heard the muffled slam of one of the three big front doors. On my own way out, I was tempted to set alight all of the candles that had gone out overnight, but I decided not to meddle in which prayers got answered and which were put on hold. I also avoided dipping my fingers into the scallop shell of holy water that stood near the entrance. I’d just spent more time in church than my whole family for the last thousand years.

  When I got to Martha’s, I could see that she was nursing an impressive hangover. On top of that, she seemed nervous. She reported that she had talked to a Corporal Harrow on the phone. From her face, I could see she hadn’t been happy with the conversation. “Some cops ask you questions that make you feel that it’s your
own fault for being robbed, Benny, like you’d drawn a target on yourself and aimed the gun.”

  “Is he coming over?”

  “That’s what the man said.”

  “What’s bothering you, Martha?”

  “Does it show? I must be getting old, Benny.” She was puttering about in her kitchen, wiping the perfectly clean counter with a blue cloth again and again. In the end, I managed to out-wait her and she told me about her doubts. “That Harrow fellow is convinced that the boys are part of a gang of dope peddlers.”

  “Well, if that package was full of dope …”

  “I know, I know,” she said, rinsing out the blue cloth. “But, Benny, he talked like they were the kingpins of the drug market. He said he’d get them if it cost him his badge.”

  “Excessive zeal, is that what you’re complaining about?”

  “Benny, look. Harrow scared me more than the kids did.”

  “Did you give him their names?”

  Martha avoided my face. “They slipped my mind. That corporal is very intimidating. And I didn’t want to get them in any more trouble than they’re already in. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” I said, watching Martha make a couple of cups of her specialty, instant tap-water coffee. “The corporal used to be a sergeant until he lost his spurs trying a fast one. I guess it’s still eating him.” Martha gave me a look with one of the cups. “We go back a long way together,” I explained. “As a matter of fact, I don’t think it will do those kids any good if Harrow finds out that I’ve been involved in this. I’ll check back with you in a couple of hours. Okay?”

  “M’yeah, I guess. Bring some pizza if you can find a place open. This town’s got no consideration for single people.”

  I left, avoiding the broken front step, and went back home. Half an hour later, Martha called: “Benny, is it you?”

  “No, it’s Donner and Blitzen. What happened?”

  “Well, he came over and grilled me about the whole thing, and managed to get me to give their names. Damn it, I knew I would under pressure. It’s the way I’m made, Benny.”

  “Well, that settles their hash, I guess. Christmas in the cells. Hark the herald from the basement of the cop shop.”

  “It may not be as simple as that, Benny.”

  “You mean he still has to get you to pick them out of a lineup?”

  “More than that. I opened the package before Harrow got here.”

  “And?”

  “And I made up another package with the same sort of freezer bags. And I gave that to Harrow.” Martha’s voice was trailing off so that I could hardly hear her.

  “What did you put in the bags, Martha?”

  “Talcum,” she whispered.

  “Talcum!”

  “Well, I had an extra supply from the time I had athlete’s foot a year ago.”

  Martha never ceased amazing me, but I didn’t tell her and I didn’t bore her about tampering with evidence either. I was too busy with a scheme that was coming together in my own head. Over the phone I gave Martha the Storchuck boy’s phone number. I briefed her on what to say to him. She mumbled agreement that with Martha often means the opposite and I went out to track down a very special pizza.

  In the end, I had to settle for a run of the loom model that looked like it had collected the anchovies from at least fifty earlier jobs. When I got it to Martha’s place, I checked the landscape for patrol cars. The coast was as clear as the night that was beginning to fall. I could count sharp, untwinkling stars overhead between the wisps of clouds. Lack of cloud cover let the cold in, or at least that’s what I’ve always been told.

  The broken step nearly undid my sore back, but I managed to get to her door without further injury. I could hear her coming before I laid a glove on the door. “Pizza!” I announced and handed in the cardboard box, which was beginning to sag. Martha carried it to the porcelain-topped old-fashioned kitchen table and opened the lid.

  “Perfect,” she said. “Help yourself to beer in the icebox.” A lot of people in Grantham still say icebox even though they’ve never seen one. Martha had, so I made allowances as I took the tops off two ales. Martha hated what she called the “play-beer” that was advertised on television.

  Martha and I toasted one another and helped ourselves to the first of the gooey wedges of dripping cheese and pastry. Martha was drinking her second beer by now, and telling me, as she often did, about the time she came to her senses next to a provincial cabinet minister in a roadhouse outside Fredericton, New Brunswick, staring down into the remains of a congealed pizza. It must have been the sad story of her life judging by the number of times she recounted the tale.

  “Do you think your scheme will work, Benny?”

  “We won’t know until we hear about it on TV or read about it in the paper on the day after Boxing day,” I said. “I can even see the headline, Martha: DRUG KINGPIN NAILED WITH KILO OF COKE.”

  “Manion will be the most surprised guilty party the cops ever pulled in in a raid,” said Martha. “It took a twisted mind like yours to think up such a diabolical plot.”

  “Martha, you did most of it when you made the fake package of talcum. I mean the talcum was real, only—”

  “I can read your mind. Don’t bother to finish.”

  “Manion wanted the stuff out of his place, the Dittrick Hotel, until after the long weekend. That meant he’d been tipped off that the hotel was going to be raided.”

  “What better time than Christmas?”

  “When it happens, he’s going to get the surprise of his life. The kid will know where to hide the stuff where even a dumb cop can’t miss it.”

  “And the three kids? Don’t forget Harrow is hot on their trail.”

  “Yes, and when he catches them, he can arrest them for possession.”

  “No he can’t. They are not in possession.”

  “Well, he could get them on conspiring to commit an indictable offense. Only, once the lab checks it out, Harrow will find his case against the guys has exploded in a puff of talcum powder.”

  “Even if they’d been caught with a ton of it, there’s no law that says you can’t own as much talcum as you want.” Here Martha’s face fell. If I hadn’t been almost nose to nose with her across the table, I might have missed it.

  “What is it, Martha?”

  “I was just trying to remember. No. I’m sure it was the talcum I gave him. I’m eighty percent sure of it.”

  MARY HIGGINS CLARK

  THAT’S THE TICKET

  People like to dream of a white Christmas, but the chances are that a good many would settle happily for a green one. Who hasn’t dreamed also of hitting the lottery? And who other than that kind and generous lady, best-selling author Mary Higgins Clark, would have thought of making one lucky player’s dream come true? But collecting on a lottery ticket is like getting gold from a leprechaun—you mustn’t let yourself be distracted for one single instant, or you may find Christmas green has turned to poison ivy.

  If Wilma Bean had not been in Philadelphia visiting her sister Dorothy, it never would have happened. Ernie, knowing that Wilma had watched the drawing on television, would have rushed home at midnight from his job as a security guard at the Do-Shop-Here Mall in Paramus, New Jersey, and they’d have celebrated together. Two million dollars! That was their share of the special Christmas lottery.

  Instead, because Wilma was in Philadelphia paying a pre-Christmas visit to her sister Dorothy, Ernie stopped at the Friendly Shamrock Watering Hole for a pop or two and then topped off the evening at the Harmony Bar six blocks from his home in Elmwood Park. There, nodding happily to Lou the owner-bartender, Ernie ordered his third Seven and Seven of the evening, wrapped his plump sixty-year-old legs around the bar stool, and dreamily reflected on how he and Wilma would spend their newfound wealth.

  It was then that his faded blue eyes fell upon Loretta Thistle-bottom who was perched on the corner stool against the wall, a stein of beer in one hand, a Marlboro in
the other. Ernie thought Loretta was a very attractive woman. Tonight her brilliant blond hair curled on her shoulders in a pageboy, her pinkish lipstick complemented her large purple-accented green eyes, and her generous bosom rose and fell with sensuous regularity.

  Ernie observed Loretta with almost impersonal admiration. It was well known that Loretta Thistlebottom’s husband, Jimbo Potters, a beefy truck driver, was extremely proud of the fact that Loretta had been a dancer in her early days and was also extremely jealous of her. It was hinted he wasn’t above knocking Loretta around if she got too friendly with other men.

  However, since Lou the bartender was Jimbo’s cousin, Jimbo didn’t mind if Loretta sat around the bar the nights Jimbo was on a long-distance haul. After all it was a neighborhood hangout. Plenty of wives came in with their husbands and as Loretta frequently commented, “Jimbo can’t expect me to watch the tube by myself or go to Tupperware parties whenever he’s carting garlic buds or bananas along Route 1. As a person born in the trunk to a prominent show business family, I need people around.”

  Her show business career was the subject of much of Loretta’s conversation and tended to grow in importance as the years passed. That was also why even though she was legally Mrs. Jimbo Potters, Loretta still referred to herself as Thistlebottom, her stage name.

  Now in the murky light shed by the Tiffany-type globe over the well-scarred bar, Ernie silently admired Loretta, reflecting that even though she had to be in her mid-fifties, she had kept her figure very, very well. However, he wasn’t really concerned about her. The winning lottery ticket, which he had pinned to his undershirt, was warming the area around his heart. It was like having a glowing fire there. Two million dollars. That was one hundred thousand dollars a year less taxes for twenty years. They’d be collecting well into the twenty-first century. By then they might even be able to take a cook’s tour to the moon.

  Ernie tried to visualize the expression on Wilma’s face when she heard the good news. Wilma’s sister, Dorothy, didn’t have a television and seldom listened to the radio so down in Philadelphia Wilma wouldn’t know that now she was wealthy. The minute he’d heard the good news on his portable radio, Ernie had been tempted to rush to the phone and call Wilma but immediately decided that that wouldn’t be fun. Now Ernie smiled happily, his round face creasing into a merry pancake as he visualized Wilma’s homecoming tomorrow. He’d pick her up at the train station at Newark. She’d ask him how close they’d come to winning. “Did we have two of the numbers? Three of the numbers?” He’d tell her they didn’t even have one of the winning combination. Then when they got home, she’d find her stocking hung on the mantel, the way they used to do when they were first married. In those days Wilma had worn stockings and garters. Now she wore queen-sized pantyhose so she’d have to dig down to the toe for the ticket. He’d say, “Just keep looking; wait till you see the surprise.” He could just picture the way she’d scream and throw her arms around him.