Christmas Crime

by Alex A King

  The Man in Black went to open his mouth, until good ol’ Reggie Tubbs stepped in and slapped it shut with a few words.

  “You heard the girl. Come back if you’ve got a real reason to be here and questions that are going someplace other than nowhere, otherwise this is harassment.”

  The Woman and Man in Black looked at him. They looked at me. They looked at each other. After a whole lot of looking they trotted back down the driveway, hopped into a black sedan, and sped away.

  “I can explain.” I slumped against one of the porch’s support beams. “Actually, I can’t. It’s complicated.”

  “No need,” Reggie said. “I’ve always known what Mike is, the good and the bad if you’re picking up what I’m putting down. Isn’t that what you kids say today?”

  Was he saying he knew Dad was a government agent as well as crown prince to a crime empire run by a woman who was also a government agent? I so needed a chart to keep track of who was who and who knew what.

  “It think that was last year,” I said.

  “Give it a few years,” he said. “It’ll come round again. It always does.”

  By the time I got back to my laptop BangBang had logged off without so much as a see you later. I wasn’t upset. That’s how we were. No hellos. No goodbyes.

  My sandwich was still good so I finished it off. I made coffee. I turned on the TV. Channel flicking tugged my guilt strings so I flicked it off and opened my laptop again to hunt for profitable and legal employment opportunities. I tried not to think about Whyatt, his missing head, and how it was maybe—probably—my fault. If the package was addressed to me, someone wanted my head on a restaurant floor, not Whyatt’s. His only crimes were curiosity and mail tampering.

  A normal person would ask all the normal questions: Why would anyone want to blow me up? Who would want me dead? That sort of thing. But my DNA came with its own Wanted: Dead or Alive poster printed on every gene. Lucky me. The reality was that to Grandma’s enemies, killing a granddaughter was a good starting place.

  Was I scared? Heck yes. But I couldn’t and wouldn’t go running to Grandma for protection. I needed to double down on my personal safety. Look over my shoulder more often instead of my phone. Check the backseat and the undercarriage before starting the Jeep’s engine. Floss twice a day.

  For now I was alive, and as a living person I needed to work.

  One new job leaped out from the screen. Phone salesperson for Meow Meow Ruff Pet Food. This I could do. My old job was basically calling people and asking politely for money. Before his company burned down and his legs broke, my old boss had enthusiastically encouraged me to use threats and demands, but those weren’t in my wheelhouse. Manners were more my thing. I got results when others got hang-ups and suggestions about where they could shove their phones.

  A single phone call later an interview was all mine.

  “One of our employees didn’t show up to work this week.” The receptionist sounded Pepto-Bismol pink. “We sent someone over to check on him and they found him busy being dead. Can you believe it?”

  Yes and no. These days I managed to believe at least seven weird or impossible things before breakfast. In my old life I managed one a day, and only when I was scrolling through my Facebook feed.

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s terrible.”

  “His loss is your gain, am I right?”

  So bright. So perky. My teeth ached from all the sweetness and cheer.

  “I guess so.” What else could I say?

  “Can you be here this afternoon? I know the boss is dying to get someone with experience in customer service. Do you have any acting skills?”

  “Is it a requirement?”

  “No,” she said, her voice all puppies, rainbows, and fluffy white bunnies. “But I find my shift goes faster if I can pretend my soul isn’t screaming.”

  Holy cannoli. So much for her pink personality.

  Did I really want to work at this place?

  All signs pointed to yes. I needed the money. For screaming souls there were chips, wine, and Netflix.

  Chapter 5

  Grandma called on the way to my interview. I was stuck in traffic when her face—a face that was a geologist’s dream come true—came at me all the way from Greece to the mount on the dash. She didn’t waste time.

  “Tell me about this explosion at your job.”

  “How did you find out? Wait—Marika?”

  “Marika, the news, and all the eyes and ears that watch and listen to the world when I cannot.”

  “You didn’t do it, did you?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “To manipulate me into flying back to Greece?”

  She made a face. The ravines in her tan, leathery skin shifted. “Not this time.”

  “Must have been a dissatisfied Hipster Burger customer then.” I didn’t mention the package. Dad would blab eventually anyway.

  “Your father said somebody sent you a package at your job before it exploded.”

  Well, well, well, Dad had blabbed sooner rather than later. Probably because he was scared of Grandma.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. It’s hard to say with the whole explosion thing destroying all the evidence.”

  “I will send somebody—”

  “No! Don’t do that. I want a nice quiet life without henchmen and other assorted people who can clean guns and cook sisa in their sleep.”

  Sisa is Greek meth. It’s the cheapest illicit drug money can buy in Greece, which is why so much of it sells.

  “Nobody should cook sisa while they are sleeping,” Grandma said. “Is very dangerous.”

  The car ahead of me shot forward. I hit the gas. Things were moving again.

  “Can’t talk,” I said. “I’m on my way to another job interview. Don’t send anybody, okay? If you do I’ll feed them to my bear. Especially don’t send Takis. He’ll give her the runs.”

  Fifteen minutes later I turned right into a parking lot outside a warehouse near the airport. From the outside it looked like a great place to hide an extensive collection of frozen heads. Weeds slithered up and out between the ground’s cracks. A cold wind whipped across the blacktop, reminding me that this was winter and I should be at home with hot chocolate in one hand and a remote in the other. The sign above the door told me I had the right place. No mistake—this warehouse was home to Meow Meow Ruff Pet Food’s call center.

  I went in.

  Meow Meow Ruff Pet Food’s customer assistance consisted of two dozen cubicles, a table with a coffee maker, sugar, powdered creamer, and a couple of boxes of the sad powdered doughnuts gas stations sell. The Pepto pink receptionist with existential dread was a woman in mom jeans and a puffy vest. A devout cookie baker, whose addiction of choice was hand sanitizer, judging from the cookie crumbs dotting her lower lip and the half-empty gallon-sized bottle of sanitizer on her desk.

  “Please tell me you’re Katerina,” she said brightly. Her voice said sunshine. Her eyes said kill me now.

  I raised my hand. “Guilty.”

  “Did you bring a gun?”

  “Was I supposed to?”

  “Arsenic?”

  “Safeway was all out.”

  “Any idea what else can kill you?”

  “That hand sanitizer if you drink enough of it, I think.”

  “I already tried that. All it did was give me the hiccups and make me think I was a poodle.” The phone rang. She answered it with a neon pink “Meow Meow Ruff, how can I help you?” Maintaining eye contact with me she drew an invisible line across her throat. Kill me, she mouthed. When she was done, she offered me the sanitizer bottle.

  “Thanks, but I’m trying to quit.”

  “Trust me, you’ll want it.”

  On that ominous note I decided to lather up. “Who do I see about the interview?”

  “You’ll find the boss at the last cubicle. Whenever you’re ready.”

  I was as ready as I was going to get. Hands cooling fast with a dollop of gel on them, I
set off for the end cubicle. My brain worked on my introduction. So far all I had was “Hello, I’m Katerina.”

  “Kat!”

  My head jerked up. My inner monologue quit. I recognized that voice. I knew the face that went with it. The walker? That was new.

  “Bryan!” I said, happy and shocked to see my old boss. “You work here?”

  Bryan is in his fifties but in his mind he’s still a frat boy. He pops his polo shirt collars and wears his hair spiked in a faux-hawk. Before the “accident” he’d played golf like it was his religion.

  He stood up. Well, he tried. There was a lot of fumbling involved, and him waving my hands away when I tried to help. But finally he was up on his feet. He held both arms up in the air. Then he wobbled and had to grip the walker. “I’m king of the world! Meow Meow Ruff Pet Food is my business—well, the customer service part. The food part happens in China, and to be honest I don’t ask too many questions about that. Although there was that one investigative reporter who claimed Meow Meow Ruff was made of ground corpses and the Chinese mob were using it as a front to ditch their enemies and solve their overpopulation issues, one bag of kibble at a time. Not long after he went missing a pair of glasses showed up in a roll of wet dog food. The lady called here, wondering if anyone was missing a pair and could she keep them. I said ‘yes’ because I didn’t know what else to say.”

  My eye twitched. “I thought the insurance company wouldn’t pay up after the other place burned down.”

  “Funny story. Well, not funny exactly, but it definitely was convenient. They decided to pony up the cash about a month ago, and that’s the story of how I went into business with Meow Meow Ruff. So are you coming back to work for me?”

  Was I? Meow Meow Ruff Pet Food was a step backward into my past. But it paid better than Hipster Burger, which was currently paying zero dollars.

  “Yes? I mean, I think so.”

  “Great! The good news is that you don’t have to threaten people here at Meow Meow Ruff. Not unless they mention things like lawyers and exposés. Then I don’t mind if you put your steel cap boots on. But day-to-day, being nice is the way to go. Most of the people who call are old and just want somebody to talk to about Muffy or Rex.”

  “Be nice to lonely people. Got it.”

  Bryan inched out of the cubicle with his walker. I stepped aside so I wouldn’t trip the man. “My physical therapist assures me I probably won’t need this for the rest of my life. The way my bones broke I wound up with a lot of nerve damage. Did you know I can smack my big toe with a hammer and feel nothing? Other times pulling on a sock is like shoving it in the devil’s butthole.”

  “Maybe you should stick to sandals?”

  He clicked his fingers, wobbling as his legs tried to compensate for the balance problem. “Great idea! Come on. We’ve got a cubicle ready and waiting for you. Well, it was waiting for Ted, but Ted’s dead.”

  The promised cubicle was three down on the other side. There was no window but I had a fantastic view of the last guy’s kinks. Wall to wall pictures of barely legal women licking lollipops. Red ones, mostly.

  “Can I redecorate?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Of course. Do whatever you like with the place. There’s just one thing.”

  “What?”

  He stuck a finger in the air. “Listen.”

  Okay, sure, why not. I listened. Then I heard it. Until now I hadn’t realized I was standing in a sea of Indian accents.

  “I get it,” I said. “I’m the minority hire.”

  He pointed at me. He wobbled. He quit pointing and used both hands to grip the walker. “Wrong. Nobody here is Indian.”

  “Isn’t that racist or weird or both?”

  He shrugged it off. “It’s what people expect these days when they dial the number on the back of a packet. Give them what they want. It’s just acting. Can you do it?”

  So that’s what the receptionist meant about acting skills.

  I winced. “I can try.”

  “I have faith in you.”

  That made one of us.

  By the end of the shift I’d answered fifty calls and assured half the callers that their favorite character on their favorite soap opera was only temporarily dead. Death was never The End on a soap opera. Somehow they always came back—often after a prolonged period disguised as another character. I’d read the ingredients list from the bag of Meow Meow Ruff’s Krazy Kitten Mix to two old ladies who couldn’t find their glasses, but then found them dangling around their necks. I’d answered several questions about my citizenship and right to be in the country. And I’d assured one caller that Meow Meow Ruff wouldn’t make her dog sprout an extra leg, even though she’d discovered several glowing particles in the Mostly Meat mix. Afterward I felt guilty, so I called her back and urged her to swap it for another brand, just in case her dog wouldn’t do well as a five-legged animal.

  “Great accent,” Bryan said, shuffling over with his walker.

  “Thanks. I picked it up when a real Indian call center accused me of stealing my own identity.”

  “See you tomorrow?”

  “Aye-aye,” I said.

  The receptionist was packing up to head home. “Do you want to die yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You will. We all want to die in here. Bryan should do us all a favor and park in here with the engine going.” She smiled her World’s Happiest Mom smile at me. “Have a great evening! See you in the morning! If I don’t hang myself.”

  I arrived home to discover someone had vandalized Mom and Dad’s house while I was faking an Indian accent. Although, could I really call it vandalism? The house and front yard were decked out with Christmas lights. A herd of lighted reindeer blinked on and off. Santa’s sleigh was piled high with LED packages. Someone had decorated. Someone who wasn’t me. Unless this was the result of an Ambien trip. No—I’d never taken Ambien, I was sure of it.

  What if I’d forgotten the Ambien?

  I sat in the driveway silently debating with long-dead philosophers, engine running so I didn’t freeze, until Reggie thunked a knuckle on the window. I rolled it down. “What happened here?” I asked him.

  He swung around to check out the decorations. “You didn’t do this? And here I thought you hired those guys to decorate the place nice and fancy.”

  “Nope. Wasn’t me. I don’t suppose you saw who did it?”

  “Sure, I saw them, but there’s no way of knowing who they were. The black van didn’t have a business name on it. It was just four guys with a whole lot of Christmas decorations in the back of the van. I figured you decided to go ahead and do the decorating anyway, after we talked about it. Say, you want to come in for a hot cocoa and look at pictures of my knob? I’m trying to figure out the best one to upload to my dating profile.” He pulled his robe together tighter. “Aww heck, maybe I’ll post them all. Broads like to see what they’re getting.”

  I shook my head and thanked him. Faking an accent on the phone all day had fried my throat. All I wanted was Netflix time and a stack of Grandma’s baking. Netflix I could do. The baked goods, not so much. Instead I had a pocketful of sad powdered doughnuts that tasted like depression.

  Maybe Dad had organized for the lights and decorations to go up in his absence. It was the middle of the night in Greece so I sent him a text message and approached the front door with my keys fanned between my fingers and a stun gun disguised as a lipstick in the other. I’d pilfered the stun gun from an NIS agent’s handbag. The NIS is Greece’s CIA. Still nestled at the bottom of the bag was the glitter bomb that same agent had given me freely. Probably it didn’t work and that’s why she gave it to me.

  Slowly, carefully, I unlocked the door and eased it open.

  I closed it again.

  Then opened it.

  And went in.

  Someone had put the tree up—the same tree that lived in the garage eleven months out of the year. The ornaments were in place. The star was at the tippy top. Colored lights d
anced on the living room walls. The mystery decorator hadn’t stopped there. The stairs were adorned with garlands and Christmassy bows. A beautiful nativity set that I’d never seen before occupied the mantle over the fireplace.

  Christmas had come here to vomit.

  It was perfect.

  Except, like the display outside, none of it was my doing.

  A shiver started at the base of my spine, rippling upward until I was one big shudder. Someone else had been in my home. Altruism or not, I wasn’t cool with this. Not when I went out of my way to lock the doors and windows and keep a bear in my house. Did I need to upgrade to tigers?

  I called the non-emergency police number. Because I wasn’t being murdered, a lone policeman showed up an hour later, bored out of his skull and ready dismiss whatever was about to come out of my mouth.

  “You called about …”

  “Christmas decorations.” I swept my hand at the tree, at the deer outside, at everything that wasn’t the way I’d left it this morning. “Someone did this.”

  “Put up your tree?”

  “Yes.”

  “And decorated?”

  “Yes.”

  “Looks nice. Real Christmassy.”

  “Yes, but also no. Someone who wasn’t me came in here and did all this.”

  He stared into the brightly lit abyss again. “Looks like someone did you a favor. Unless you’re an atheist. Are you an atheist?”

  I have issues with God. He was busy planning natural disasters back when I was praying He’d let Mom live. Now I do my best to ignore Him when we pass each other on the street.

  “I’m afraid of commitment,” I said, “so I respect all the sides and hope I’m covered.”

  He didn’t hear me. Too busy gawking. Despite the gun in his holster and the badge that said he was the law around these here parts, he looked haunted. “Say, is that a bear?”

  I glanced over my shoulder to see my bear staggering down the stairs. Someone was on a berry hunt. Her eyes lit up. She sniffed the air. In the absence of berries and salmon this nice—but ultimately useless—policeman would do.