by Nic Saint
“Do you have any idea who could have killed her?” I asked, settling back with my two outsized cookies.
“Well…” She sat down again, a pensive look on her round face. “You should probably talk to Huppert Bach. He also had a big fight with Mariana. No idea what it was about, but it sounded pretty serious from what I could tell.”
“Who’s Huppert Bach?” Calvin asked.
Marelda smiled. “Mr. Christmas.” When we both stared at her, waiting for her to tell us more, she just said, “Go talk to him. You’ll see.”
Five minutes later, we took our leave, but not before Marelda had stuffed a few more cookies into a paper baggie and pressed it into my hands. “And don’t let him touch them, you hear?” she told me with a warning glance at Calvin. “You eat them all.” She pinched my waist. “You need fattening up.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I guess.”
“And don’t take any crap from your brother.”
“Trust me, I won’t,” I promised her.
In a surprise move, she grabbed me and pulled me into her bosom for a hug. “Promise me you’ll find Mariana’s killer,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry I never got to talk to her before she died. The last words I said were pretty harsh.”
“I promise,” I heard myself say. “I promise I’ll find your friend’s killer.”
She released me, and I saw that her eyes were wet again. “I should have dropped by. Made up. Not let her go with so much anger between us.”
“I’m sure Mariana knew that you loved her,” I said.
She gave me a teary look. “You think so?”
“Sometimes we fight with the people we love,” I said. “That doesn’t make us love them any less, or them us. It just reminds us that we’re all human, and that humans make mistakes.”
She produced a watery smile, then blew her nose into a Kleenex. “Thank you,” she said. “I like you.”
I heard a strange sound next to me, and saw Calvin wipe away a tear. Apparently my little speech had struck a chord with my obstinate brother.
Shaking her head, Marelda shoved a Kleenex into his hands. He took it gratefully, and blew his nose.
“I guess you’re all right, too,” Marelda said grudgingly.
“Thanks,” he said croakily, then held up the magazine. “Can I keep this?”
“Calvin!” I hissed. “Rude!”
“No, that’s all right,” said Marelda. “He looks like he needs a little Oprah. Maybe Oprah can save him from himself. If anyone can, she can.”
And on that high note, I thought it was best to take our leave, before Calvin put his foot in his mouth again and invoked the wrath of Oprah. Or Marelda. I liked her cookies. I didn’t want to have to give them back.
Chapter 11
“That went well,” said Calvin when we were back in the car. He was still clutching his Oprah Magazine.
“Do you always conduct your interviews like this?” I asked.
“Been doing it this way for six years,” he said proudly.
“It’s a miracle you get anything done. The way you treat people?”
“I treat people just fine. This is a murder investigation, not a social call.”
“Being nice to people gets you a lot further than being mean.”
“I’m not mean!”
“You were a little mean to Marelda.”
“No, I wasn’t!”
“You were making fun of her.”
“I totally wasn’t! You were cramping my style. Making me look bad. Wait.” He stared at me. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You made me look bad so you would look good. Oh, my God! You were playing good cop, bad cop, and you cast me in the role of bad cop!”
“You’re crazy. I was trying to be nice to Marelda so she would talk to us, and you weren’t helping.”
Calvin tossed the Oprah Magazine in the backseat. So much for wanting to expand his reading experience. “We have to establish some ground rules if we’re going to continue this collaboration. First of all, there will be no more emasculating your partner.”
“I wasn’t emasculating you!”
“Yes, you were. You said I should have been drowned at birth!”
“I didn’t say that. Marelda said that.”
“You didn’t disagree.”
“I wanted to build rapport. You don’t build rapport by disagreeing.”
He held up his hands. “Moving on. Who’s next?”
“Mr. Christmas.”
He rolled his eyes. “This should be interesting.” He then fixed me with a warning look. “Stop undermining me, all right. We’re a team. I don’t like this good cop, bad cop routine you’ve got going for yourself.”
“I’ve got nothing going for myself. You created this bad cop routine all by yourself.”
He shook his head and started up the car. “Why did they ever pick me to be your first partner? Why couldn’t they have picked Lucien, or Brice, or Dalton?”
“Because you’re the smart one,” I said, retrieving Oprah Magazine and leafing through it.
He frowned at me. “Did you just pay me a compliment?”
“No, I did not. Just stating a fact. You’re smart. Don’t let it go to your head.”
He gritted his teeth. “Oh, trust me, I won’t. Now give me a bite of my cookie.”
“It’s not your cookie, it’s mine. They’re all mine. Marelda told me not to let you touch my cookies, so I’m not going to let you touch my cookies.”
“Come on! You’ve got all those cookies. You can let me take a bite.”
“I made a promise to a client,” I said. “And I plan to keep my promise.”
“She’s not a client. She’s a suspect.” He made a sudden grab for the cookie bag but I kept it out of his reach.
“So who is our client? Mariana Piney? Or the person who killed her?”
“Both. Mariana and her killer are connected by an unbreakable karmic chain. To break the chain, we need to find the killer and administer the applicable punishment. It will free Mariana’s soul and roll the created karma back onto the killer.”
“What—what is the applicable punishment?” I asked.
He looked up. “Death, of course. Or, in New York State, life imprisonment.”
“Isn’t that a little harsh?”
“Remember that old saying ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?’”
“I always thought that was something from a Sergio Leone movie.”
“Well, it still applies. Take a life, and expect your own life to be taken. Or at the very least spend it locked up in jail where you can’t hurt others.” He put the car in gear and we drove off, in search of Mr. Christmas. When I didn’t speak for a few minutes, he glanced over. “Hey, are you all right? You’re uncharacteristically quiet.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I just pictured this whole Karma Corps business differently. I mean, it all seems pretty… medieval, if you know what I mean.”
“It’s just business. We can’t have people murdering other people and get away with it. That wouldn’t be right.”
“I know, but what if the killer had a good reason?”
“Like what?”
“Like…” I cast about for an example. “What if you’re married to a monster, one of those horrible men that likes to kick his kids and slap his wife around? And what if she finally fights back and her husband takes a bad tumble and dies? What then?”
He gave me an amused look. “You’d probably give her a medal, huh?”
“You have to admit it’s never black and white. There’s gray areas.”
“True,” he admitted. “And the punishment will always be commensurate with the crime. In this particular case I wouldn’t be surprised if the woman wasn’t sent to purgatory but was allowed to live out the rest of her days raising her family and making up for her crime some other way.”
“So she would still have to pay, huh?”
“Yes, but she might be able to pay by being a great mother, a loving force in the community, and a pillar of society. Like you said, it’s never black and white. There’s degrees of punishment.”
“But how do you decide what the punishment should be?”
His eyebrows rose. “Honey, we never decide. Karma Corps decides. We’re just the agents carrying out the punishment.”
“So we never get to decide the proper penalty?”
“Nope. Powers much greater than us take care of that part.” He cut a quick glance at my magazine.
I stared down at the face of Oprah. “Oh,” I said, my lips forming a perfect O. “I see.”
“Not Oprah,” he said with a grin. “Though she does write some pretty riveting copy.”
I directed a frown at my brother. “Don’t make fun of Oprah. You heard Marelda. She’s God.”
“Right,” he said. “Of course she is.”
We’d arrived at the home of Huppert Bach. Mr. Christmas lived in a pretty snazzy condo in a recently developed area of town. The properties all looked the same, with a communal pool out back, a property manager who knew his business, judging from the neat way the condos were maintained, and a really cozy feel to the entire neighborhood.
“I wouldn’t mind living here,” I told my brother as we exited the car.
“Yeah, me neither,” he said, admiring the homey feel of the street, with its immaculately manicured front yards, and its antique-looking streetlights.
Don’t get me wrong, Diffley Manor is a great place to live, but sometimes I yearn for some peace and quiet, and some alone time away from my family. Not that I don’t love my brothers and Grandma Diffley, but they can be a bit much from time to time.
We stepped into the vestibule and Calvin rang the bell of Mr. Bach’s condo. A squeaky voice asked, “Who is it?” and Calvin leaned into the camera, plastered his most unctuous smile onto his face, and said, “Diffley Insurance, sir. We’re here to investigate the death of Mariana Piney, our most esteemed client.”
There was a momentary silence, then the same squeaky voice said, “Well, I suppose you better come in.”
The buzzer sang out its annoying tune, and the door clicked open.
“That didn’t sound very enthusiastic,” Calvin said as he pressed on inside. He frowned when he caught my beaming smile. “What?”
“You said Diffley Insurance, not Diffley & Sons.”
“So?”
“So is that going to be the new name? Cause I like it.”
“Not up to me,” he said curtly. Calvin was the kind of person who strictly adhered to tradition. Diffley & Sons had been in business for more than two hundred years, and ditching that time-honored noble moniker now obviously pained him.
“I like it,” I repeated, a skip in my step. My first day on the job, and already I was making changes. “Though I like Diffley & Daughter & Sons even more.”
He made a strangled sound at the back of his throat. “Daughter & Sons! I thought you said Sons & Daughter!”
“I changed my mind. After that interview with Marelda I’m starting to see that women make the world go round and men are just along for the ride.”
“That’s just… ridiculous,” he scoffed. “Diffley men have been balancing karma for—”
“Two hundred years. Yes, you told me already. Which is probably the reason the world is such a mess right now. If women had been in charge all along, I’m sure the world would be a paradise.”
“The world is in perfect balance!”
I gave him my best raised eyebrow look. “Have you seen the world lately?”
“Yes, I have.”
“And do you like what you see? All the war and hunger and misery?”
He flapped his arms. “It all depends how you look at it!”
“Ugh. Only a man could say a silly thing like that.”
“Oh, my God!” he cried, suddenly getting all emotional on me. I had to giggle. I’d finally driven my most rational brother over the edge. Which was probably just what he needed.
We’d arrived on the second floor, and I gave the door to Mr. Bach’s apartment a vigorous rap. I briefly had the crawling sensation of being watched through the peephole, then the door opened, and I said cheerfully, “Saffron and Calvin Diffley of Diffley & Daughter & Sons. Mr. Huppert Bach, I presume?”
My smile froze when I caught sight of the little man in front of me. His hair was bright green, a knitted cap of pine needles and cones sticking out at odd angles, his cheeks were tattooed with a pine needle pattern, and he was bedecked from his neck down to his feet with an intricate pattern of little white lights, all flashing intermittently at some particular cadence. The effect was… Christmassy.
Chapter 12
“I know what you’re thinking,” the little man said, directing a sad look at me. “So better to get this out of the way. I identify as a Christmas tree.”
I heard a snort behind me, and kicked my brother in the shin. He shut up.
My cheeks were starting to hurt from smiling, but still I persisted. “You identify as…”
“I’m a Christmas tree trapped inside the body of a man,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Is that even a thing?” Calvin muttered.
I turned on him sharply. “You’re a moron trapped inside the body of a jerk.”
“Now what did you have to go and say that for?” he lamented.
“Come on in,” said Huppert. “Mind the cord.”
“The cord?” Something crackled beneath my feet and I saw I was trampling all over the man’s extension cord. “Oh, the cord. Calvin, mind the cord.”
“I’ll mind your sarcasm,” he mumbled.
We entered the apartment and Calvin closed the door behind us. I swallowed when I got a good gander at our new surroundings. The wallpaper was Christmas-themed, and the carpets were high-pile and snowy white. And wherever I looked, I saw Christmas trees, lights ablaze, life-sized stuffed reindeer, and even one very large Santa Claus perched ominously in a corner.
“I bet he sleeps in a sleigh,” said Calvin, then sidestepped my kick. “My shins are getting kinda raw,” he said. “Could you stop kicking me for just one damn minute?”
“This is nothing to laugh about,” I said. “The man obviously—”
“Has issues?”
“—has found his true self.”
He was about to make another scathing remark but stopped when he remembered his raw shins.
I caught a glimpse of our host’s bedroom, and saw that he did sleep in a Santa sleigh. What about that? Calvin was right.
Huppert had walked to a small dais erected in front of the television, which was tuned to the Hallmark Channel and displaying a Christmas movie, and hopped onto it, standing perfectly still… like a Christmas tree. At his feet, the nativity scene had been recreated with small figurines.
“Take a seat,” said Huppert. “Make yourselves at home.”
The black leather couch looked perfectly comfortable, and needle-free, so we both dropped down into it. Craning our necks to look up at Huppert was a little tough, but then I had the feeling this interview wouldn’t last very long.
“Can I get you something?” he asked suddenly, probably remembering his manners. “I’ve got some great eggnog in the fridge. Freshly made this morning. Or if you like something stronger, I’ve got Christmas punch, hot buttered rum, gluhwein, hot spiked cider…”
“You don’t happen to have hot chocolate, do you?” I asked, the festive mood suddenly gripping me.
He smiled. “Even better. I’ve got snow flake cocoa.”
“Oh, yummy,” I said. First chocolate chip cookies and now snow flake cocoa? This day was getting better and better.
He hopped off his perch and marched into the kitchen. “What can I get you, Mr. Sniffley?”
“Diffley,” Calvin corrected him. “Eggnog will do.”
“One eggnog coming up. So you’re here about Mariana, huh?” He tsk-tsked while I heard him opening the fr
idge. “Terrible tragedy. I got a call from our mutual friend Marelda just before you arrived. She told me all about it. Terrible.”
“Did you know her well?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over the microwave dinging.
“Yeah, sure. We moved in the same circles, if you know what I mean.”
“So… you’re transgender, too?” asked Calvin with an anxious look at me.
There was a pause as a cup fell to the floor and crashed into pieces. “Dang it,” Huppert muttered. “No, I’m transspecies. Can’t you tell?”
“Oh, sure,” said Calvin. “You’re a beautiful… Christmas tree.”
“Thanks,” said Huppert as he waltzed back in, carrying a tray with cups brimming with Christmassy goodies. “I’ve added some gingerbread cookies and some chocolate-espresso snowcaps,” he said, placing the tray on the coffee table and stepping up onto his perch once again. “Enjoy!”
“Thanks, Mr. Bach,” I said, snapping up my cup of cocoa delight. “This is so great.”
“Yeah, you can never have too much Christmas cheer,” he said. “Which is why I like to spread it around year-round.”
“So… about Mariana?” Calvin prompted, taking a sip from his eggnog.
His face turned sad, the pine needle tattoo drooping. “Yeah, bad business, that. Very bad business. I mean, Mariana and I never saw eye to eye, exactly, but that still doesn’t mean I won’t mourn her death. In fact I’ve switched to a darker shade of lights today, if you notice.”
I stared at the lights, all reds and blues and pinks blinking cheerfully. I didn’t see it, but then again, I’m not a Christmas lights specialist, per se.
“Yeah, I don’t see it,” said Calvin, earning himself a scowl from me.
“It’s hard to notice,” Huppert allowed. “But it’s there. I’m officially in mourning.”
“You said you and Mariana didn’t see eye to eye?” I asked.
“No, not exactly. She made fun of me, you see. Told me I wasn’t a true member of our community. Said I was a disgrace. A joke. That I turned the entire movement into a laughingstock.” His expression turned grim. “She said some really hurtful things about me. But did I let it dissuade me from my course? No way, Jose. This is my true identity. This is who I am.”