Cozy Christmas Shorts

by Halliday, Gemma

Visitors had continued drifting into the activity room in twos and threes the whole time Helen had been chatting with her friends. There were hugs and laughter and excited chatter. Just like any holiday celebration anywhere. No one except Helen had come to visit Betty and Josie, though. "Wouldn't you rather be with your families?"

  Betty and Josie looked at each other and then spoke simultaneously, "We are with our family."

  "I'm still deciding what to do," Helen said. "It's not like I ever did much for Christmas in the past. My husband and I were usually so exhausted from the various holiday events that we slept until late afternoon and then had dinner with my nieces."

  "You can't be alone on Christmas," Josie said. "It's not right."

  "I won't be entirely alone," Helen said. "I've got my cat now, and I'm sure Tate will be out in the garage, working on his lathe. He couldn't possibly go a whole day without turning expensive wood into piles of sawdust."

  "Speaking of Tate," Betty said. "When are we going to meet him?"

  "He'll be here soon. He had some errands to do, so he offered to give me a ride home after the judging."

  "I bet he's a hunk," Josie said. "Is he as gorgeous as Ralph Decker? Ralph's going to be looking for a wife soon, or at least a girlfriend."

  Ralph was as gorgeous as Josie claimed, and Helen respected him, but she wasn't interested in him romantically. She would have said the same about Tate too when she first met him, but that might have been because she hadn't completely recovered from her divorce.

  Martha Waddell entered with the latest batch of visitors. She paused to break up a couple of residents engaged in a bit of overly enthusiastic smooching beneath one of the mistletoe balls before hurrying over to Helen's side. "Mr. Wharton and Edie are looking for you. They're ready to finish the judging, and everyone's anxious to see who won ribbons."

  * * *

  Someone—presumably Kolya—had moved a massive leather recliner into the dining room and set it up at the head table for Mr. Wharton. The chair's size seemed to emphasize its occupant's frailty, even as its placement suggested he was the most powerful person in the room. Edie stood at his right hand like a doting spouse. Kolya stood on the other side, like what he actually was: a nurse. Or, if the rumor was true, like a bodyguard/assassin. Geoff Loring, who might otherwise serve as the court jester, hadn't returned and was probably still interviewing some of the contestants.

  Edie handed Helen a scribbled list with two signatures on it. "Mr. Wharton and I have agreed on the order of the top three finalists. All you have to do is sign off on it, and we can announce the winners."

  Helen had never known three people to reach a unanimous decision that easily, so she wasn't entirely surprised to find that she disagreed with the proposed ranking. It looked like Edie and Mr. Wharton had simply narrowed down the possibilities to the three least controversial entries and then listed them in random order. They were voting for the falling tree that Edie had initially disdained, a poisoned gingerbread man, and a gingerbread grandma who was run over by a sleigh. Apparently the fact that the last one portrayed the wrong song no longer bothered Edie. Helen wouldn't have cared either if the execution had been as painstaking as the other entries. The house in the background was just dabbed with a little snowy frosting, and then commercially made chocolate reindeer and sleigh had been plunked in the front yard.

  Helen agreed that the falling tree belonged in the top three, but the list should also have included the two remaining finalists: one where the house had been turned into a barn, with the front of the structure opened to reveal a barn dance going on inside, while a gingerbread man fell out of the loft to his death, and another depicting a gingerbread man electrocuted while hanging holiday lights. All of the semi-finalists had good concepts, but these two, along with the falling tree, also had extensive, detailed embellishments that must have taken hundreds of hours to do. That hard work deserved recognition.

  It was nice to think that all the entrants cared about was making the finals, but Helen doubted it. The number of visitors collected in the activity room made it clear that this contest was important to the participants and their families. The winners of the three top prizes were going to be the celebrities of the nursing home for a good long while. This contest didn't have the huge cash awards of some of the events she'd judged as the state's First Lady, but the emotional rewards were every bit as substantial.

  "I'd like to discuss this a little more."

  Edie sighed dramatically. Mr. Wharton wilted deeper into his recliner, and Kolya remained solidly planted, unmoving and expressionless, behind his patient.

  "We can agree on one entry," Helen continued. "The falling-tree scene should definitely be in the top three. But I don't see how you can ignore the barn dance or the electrocution. Did you see the detailed work on them? Perhaps we could go over there and take another look."

  Mr. Wharton shook his head apologetically. "I'm much too exhausted to move." He glanced up at his nurse. "Kolya, be a dear and bring the two entries Ms. Binney described over here so I can look."

  Kolya jogged the length of the tables, and picked up the two entries, one in each hand, his biceps bulging noticeably despite the bulky bomber jacket. The houses were built on three-foot-square MDF bases for stability, and Helen doubted she could have lifted even one of them.

  Betty and Josie had told her about how the kitchen staff had to remove the houses and embellishments every February, so as to reclaim the bases for storage until the next year's event. By then, the gingerbread was as hard as cement, and the staff struggled to get everything off the boards, while the nursing home residents watched and cheered them on. One year, when sledgehammers hadn't been enough, there had been an incident involving firecrackers and exploding gingerbread. "Much more satisfying for the audience than a sledgehammer," Josie had concluded.

  Once the entries were set down in front of Mr. Wharton, he leaned forward and squinted at the two houses. After a couple minutes he turned to Kolya again. "Did you remember my reading glasses?"

  Even before Mr. Wharton finished the sentence, Kolya was placing the glasses on his patient's head. Edie watched Mr. Wharton rather than bothering to look at the two entries.

  "Ah, much better." Mr. Wharton looked at each of the two entries again before turning to Edie. "I can't remember now. Were the other two as nice as these?"

  "They're all very nice," Edie said. "Well, except for the blood and death, of course. But the workpersonship is excellent on all of them."

  "Perhaps I should take another look at the first two we chose."

  Kolya grabbed the sleigh-slaying and poisoning scenes.

  Mr. Wharton looked at the two new offerings. "Maybe you're right, Ms. Binney. The sleigh scene really isn't up to scratch compared to the electrocution. I'd be willing to switch my rankings of those two entries."

  Helen looked at Edie, who didn't even pretend to review the art on display.

  "Of course." Edie spoke through gritted teeth and a clearly fake smile. "I don't know why I didn't see it originally. The strings of Christmas lights are remarkably detailed, and…" While she paused for inspiration, the nursing home's music system played the theme song again, this time a country version by Alabama. "And look. There's an approaching group of carolers, and the song talks about caroling. Definitely a nice use of the contest's theme."

  "Exactly my thought," Mr. Wharton said. "But I just don't see what is so special about the barn dance. I'm sorry, Ms. Binney, but I just can't agree with you there. Perhaps you could humor me in this one little thing."

  "I gave up humoring people when I got divorced," Helen said. "The barn dance is, without question, the very best entry. I'm prepared to defend it to the death."

  "Oh, dear," Mr. Wharton said. "I'm not sure I have that much energy. Kolya, be a dear and get me a blanket. If we're going to be here for a while, I need protection from the drafts. Old buildings are just so uncomfortable. I don't know how the poor dears here manage."

  "While Kolya is gettin
g the blanket," Edie said, heading for the exit, "I need a cigarette."

  * * *

  Mr. Wharton insisted he'd be fine alone for a few minutes if Helen needed to take a break too. She decided to go see if Tate had arrived and rescue him from Betty and Josie if necessary.

  She headed for the reception area to see if Tate had signed the guest log and found Detective Hank Peterson signing in. He was the local homicide cop, a short, stocky, and condescending thorn in Helen's side.

  "You must be having a wonderful time today, Ms. Binney, nosing around all the crime scenes," he said with a smirk.

  "I don't need to be a professional detective or a genius like Sherlock Holmes to deduce from your presence that your uncle is one of the semi-finalists," Helen said. "I can't talk about the entries or the judging until the results are announced."

  With a wink, he said, "I'm sure you'd sing a different tune if I took you down to the station for some questioning."

  "I'd sic Tate on you if you did that," Helen said. "Meanwhile, I don't want to hear one more word from you about the contest. I'll excuse myself from the judging if you say anything at all that might give away which one of the entries your uncle worked on."

  "We wouldn't want that," Detective Peterson said.

  Actually, now that she thought about it, getting disqualified might have been a perfect solution. She could excuse herself, leaving two judges who were unanimous in their choice of winners, and the losers could blame Peterson. In the eyes of the nursing home residents, the ensuing scandal might be almost as entertaining as winning a ribbon.

  But she just couldn't quit. The barn dance entry was really extraordinary. The poisoning scene wasn't anywhere nearly as well done. The only thing it had in its favor was the lack of any blood. A casual viewer might think the gingerbread corpse with his face in a plate of teeny-weeny sugar cookies was just taking a nap and never even notice the little bottle of arsenic next to the mixing bowl. Death was much more upfront with the barn dance entry, where several feet of miniature crime scene tape immediately signaled the likelihood of death, or at least mayhem, clear across the expansive dining room.

  The makers of the barn dance deserved one of the top three ribbons, not a face-saving but ultimately disappointing honorable mention. The use of butterscotch-coated Chinese noodles for the hay around the corpse was brilliant. The miniature mistletoe strung for the Christmas party hop perfectly illustrated the first stanza of the official theme song, which should have garnered the entry some extra points, even though the song was now officially an earworm that Helen knew would keep playing in her head even when it wasn't on the nursing home's music system.

  "So," Detective Peterson said. "Nothing to do with contest, but you'll appreciate this, with your fascination for true crime and all. I just found out that I'm going to be on the task force to catch the real, live Gingerbread Man."

  "I'd heard someone reported being victimized by him in Springfield," Helen said, taking care not to incriminate her source. "I didn't think there was any real reason to believe he was heading this way, though. Besides, isn't your experience with homicide, not fraud?"

  Detective Peterson had a habit of looking down on people, even when they were taller than he was. Helen was an easy target for that, but at the realization he'd let slip something he probably shouldn't have, he puffed himself up in an attempt to look bigger than he was. His expression contained all the disdain he felt for amateurs who thought they knew something that professionals in law enforcement might have missed. "There's more to the Gingerbread Man's crimes than is generally known."

  In other words, Helen thought, the Gingerbread Man had killed at least one of his victims, so they were bringing in homicide detectives to work with the fraud specialists. Did Hank really think she couldn't figure that out? No wonder she caught killers before he did.

  She just hoped Geoff Loring didn't hear Hank's news. Geoff might not be so amused by the gingerbread houses if he knew there was a real story in the making, one that might indeed lead to some violence. He'd probably destroy his camera's memory card if he found out, just to be sure no one could accuse him of having information about a violent crime.

  The nursing home residents mustn't have known that some of the victims had been murdered. Otherwise, she suspected the depictions would have turned more violent and gory, commensurate with their increased fear and anger. Instead of the instant, relatively painless deaths, the poor gingerbread man might have died more slowly and painfully. On the plus side, Edie would have been so disgusted that she'd have quit in protest, and Mr. Wharton would probably have fainted into Kolya's strong arms, leaving only Helen to decide the winners.

  Maybe hearing that the residents had a good reason to want to assure themselves they were safe from the living, breathing Gingerbread Man would be enough to convince Edie and Mr. Wharton to change their vote. It was worth a try. Helen was reasonably certain she could get Edie to promise to go along with whatever Mr. Wharton decided, and that could be leveraged to convince Mr. Wharton to change his vote, so he could be carried back to his waiting car and his nice, warm, draft-free home.

  She took a couple of steps toward the hall leading to the outdoor smoking area before she remembered Rebecca's lecture about the dangers of severely cold weather. Helen wasn't afraid of winter, but, despite what Tate might think, she wasn't foolish either. Her lightweight suit was no match for the frigid temperatures outside. She went back to the coat room to grab her parka before heading outside

  * * *

  Martha Waddell had situated the employees' outdoor smoking area toward the back corner of the building. She'd probably chosen the spot so she could keep an eye on which staff members were out there and how long they stayed. It was adjacent to her own office, which had originally been a sun room attached to the back corner of the mansion. Three of the walls were entirely made of glass, giving Martha a panoramic view of the back yard. An eight-foot tall wood-panel fence ran the width of the property, separating the smoking area from the remainder of the side yard where a brick patio stretched all along the outer walls of the kitchen and dining room and out about a hundred feet to a stone wall, where the property suddenly sloped downward toward a creek.

  What Martha didn't know, but Helen had heard from Betty and Josie, was that one section of the fence was loose and could be moved to create about a one-foot gap in the barrier. Enterprising staff members, and probably a few of the residents, would slip through the emergency exit of the dining room for a private smoke in the hidden corner of the patio outside the kitchen. The door would automatically lock, but a look-out inside the nursing home would send the smoker a text when Martha was out of her office so they could go through the broken fence and into the official smoking area to use its unlocked door to get back inside.

  Edie was in the official smoking area, chatting with a nurse who glanced guiltily at Helen and then quickly stubbed out her cigarette and scurried off looking like she'd been caught doing something wrong. Perhaps Martha had been pressuring her staff to quit smoking. The cold weather was certainly a good time to do it. It was freezing out here, even with her hat, scarf, gloves, and a parka that made Helen look three times as wide as she actually was.

  "Sorry to interrupt," Helen said. "I thought you'd be alone."

  "Usually I am. Smokers are an endangered species these days," Edie said with a rueful smile. "I didn't know you smoked, though. I thought you had some autoimmune disease, like Mr. Wharton."

  Helen felt a little guilty for plotting to take advantage of his weakness to get him to fall in line with his vote. Only a little, though. The barn dance scene really did deserve first place. "I was wondering what his condition was. No one seems to know."

  "I don't remember if he ever mentioned the official diagnosis." She took a drag on her cigarette and blew it out slowly before continuing. "I think it's one of those unpronounceable things that no one really understands and comes with a variety of vague symptoms."

  "We have that much in commo
n then." Lupus symptoms ranged from skin rashes and joint inflammation to serious organ damage, and its official name was systemic lupus erythematosus, which was definitely a challenge to say out loud.

  Edie patted her pockets. "Do you need a cigarette?"

  Helen shook her head. "I don't smoke. I wanted to have a word with you."

  "You've changed your mind about the winners?"

  "I was hoping to change your vote," Helen said. "You've got to admit the barn scene portrays more of the lyrics than any of the other entries."

  Edie shuddered. "It's just so…so…so morbid."

  "They're all morbid," Helen said. "It's a reasonable reaction to the nursing home residents' fear of the real, live Gingerbread Man, the one who's stealing from their peers. They're trying to reassure themselves he isn't a danger to them."

  "Murder still isn't funny," Edie said. "It doesn't matter that he's a criminal. Everyone, even the Gingerbread Man, is innocent until proven guilty."

  "We're talking about cookies here," Helen snapped, irritated by the woman's insistence that even imaginary scenarios had to be politically correct. "No real people were harmed in the making of the gingerbread scenes. It's just a coping tool for the nursing home residents to deal with their own mortality. They're laughing in its face."

  "I could never do that," Edie said cheerfully. "I try to focus on all the good things in life."

  The only thing worse than hearing yet another rendition of "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree"—which was, in fact, drifting through the thick stone walls of the building, at the far reaches of Helen's hearing, this time performed by LeAnn Rimes—was the prospect of Edie going all Julie Andrews and breaking out into a rendition of "A Few of My Favorite Things."

  Before that could happen, Helen said, "You must really enjoy the holidays then. Do you have a lot of family traditions?"

  "Oh, yes." For once, Edie's smile looked genuine. "I like to travel."