Christmas Crime

by Alex A King

  “I’m more of a fence sitter.”

  If he knew the truth he didn’t say. “Balance is a good thing to strive for. Don’t tell Mrs. Claus, but I ate twelve of her cookies last week and told her I only ate six,” he said, like eating cookies was on par with shooting a criminal cousin. “What do you want for Christmas?”

  I thought about when my life had jumped the rails and veered so fast of course that crashing into the mountain was unavoidable.

  My eighteenth year.

  When Mom died, I climbed into the hand basket and waved my ticket to hell at the conductor. If Mom had survived, I liked to think I would be a normal person with zero murders and a couple of kids.

  “Can you manage a time machine?”

  “How about a candy cane and an activity book?”

  “Sure. I like candy canes.”

  He swept his hand at two big sacks on the floor. One was filled with striped candy canes and the other with flimsy activity books. “Take one of each on your way out. Merry Christmas!”

  A round woman in an elf suit handed me a book and a candy cane on the way past. I passed both to a cute munchkin shyly watching Santa from a distance, her face wracked with the longing and fear I recalled feeling toward Santa around the same age. She wanted to sit beside him, but he was a weirdo stranger dressed up in a red suit, and therefore capable of any number of shenanigans. “Merry Christmas,” I told the little girl. The mother smiled at me. I smiled back. Candy canes and activity books wouldn’t make up for murder but they made a little kid happy.

  With that cheerful thought in mind, I turned in circles, hunting for Grandma and Aunt Rita. From outside Santa’s Grotto I could see them meandering back with their coffee. Grandma was staring into hers like the barista had used the cup as a port-a-potty. Un-oh, someone wasn’t a fan of American coffee. Decades of swilling the sludge that is Greek coffee had massacred her taste buds.

  “What kind of sicko are you?”

  The accusation came at me from behind. I pivoted to see the tot’s mother with a face like thunder.

  “Huh?”

  The mama bear raised her phone and snapped a picture of my gawking and confused face.

  “What are you doing?” I yelped.

  Her face was red and furious. “Putting you on the internet so everybody knows you’re a creep who threatens small children!”

  My mouth fell open. Xander stepped in and took the woman’s phone. “Hey!” she said. “You can’t do that!”

  In a flash he deleted the picture and handed the phone back to her.

  “Too late,” she said smugly. “I already sent it out.

  I waved my hands at the two of them. “What the heck is going on? Threats? I gave your daughter candy and a book from Santa. Where I come from—which is here—that’s considered a good deed. It’s not like I asked for pictures of your kid in a swimsuit in return!”

  Her face evolved from red to purple. “You threatened her!”

  Was she having a bad PCP trip? She looked like a regular mom but who knew what secrets she was hiding under her Oregon Ducks sweatshirt and Hunter rain boots. “What are you talking about?”

  “That thing you wrote in the book!”

  I stuck out my hand. “Can I look?”

  “So you can get rid of the evidence? I don’t think so, sicko.”

  “Can you just show me then?”

  “I suppose so,” she said grudgingly. She flipped the book open to the first page. Someone had scrawled I’M GONNA KARATE CHOP YOU IN THE PIE HOLE, BITCH in big red letters across Rudolph’s face.

  A cold finger trailed down my spine and poked my kidneys.

  “Can I take a picture of that since you won’t give it back?”

  “Fine. But no sudden moves.”

  I snapped a picture.

  “Elias,” I said to my bodyguard, “can you get this little girl a new book from Santa? One without threats?”

  “You’re not taking this one!” the mom snapped.

  “Keep it,” I said. “The new one is for your daughter.”

  “Sure, Boss.” Elias darted over to Santa and plucked one from the bag. He jogged over and offered it to the mother after leafing through the pages to make sure it was abuse-free. She slapped him with it and gave it to her daughter.

  Elias took the slapping in silence.

  “I have to find that elf,” I said to him.

  “What elf?” he wanted to know.

  “The one who gave me the book.”

  We jogged over to Santa’s home away from home, his temporary North Pole. I watched as a passel of almost identical kids went diving into the sacks for their Santa treats.

  “There’s no elf,” I said, glancing around. “There was an elf when I was there.” I went to the counter. “What happened to the elf who was with Santa before?”

  Someone grabbed my arm. A woman—no, a mom. She was wild-eyed and desperate. “Get to the back of the line.”

  The line was Star Wars length—original release.

  “But—”

  “To the back now or I’ll cut you.” She flashed a weapon at me. A sheet of paper. Ouch. Hardcore.

  “I might be wrong, but I think you’re overreacting,” I said.

  “Do you have kids?”

  I had several animals, including a bear. “Not children … exactly …”

  “Then you have no idea. The back now, or I’ll cut you.”

  I shuffled to the end of the line. Xander and Elias followed. Both men were tense, alert, watching the crowd for trouble. Women boned Xander with their eyes, but if he noticed their drooling he was oblivious.

  Grandma hobbled over. “What are you doing?” Her tone could scrub old engine oil out of concrete.

  I gave her the Cliff’s Notes about what happened with the book. “Now I’m waiting my turn. It’s Normandy on D-Day up at the front of the line.”

  “Did they have guns, tanks, big ships going pew pew? Were there Nazis doing Nazi things?”

  “A woman threatened to give me paper cuts.”

  Grandma didn’t wait at the end of the line. Oh no, not Grandma. Fearlessly, she marched up to the counter and installed herself directly in front of the cashier. Dying of a thousand paper cuts wasn’t on my agenda for today, so I hung back and watched Grandma interrogate Santa’s helpers about the mysterious disappearing elf.

  The woman with the deadly paper huffed pointedly several times. When her passive aggressive complaints went ignored she lurched forward and tapped Grandma’s shoulder.

  I made eye contact with Elias. He was thinking what I was thinking: where was popcorn when we needed a bag with extra butter?

  Grandma turned around slowly as though she were the Titanic trying to avoid an iceberg. She wore her best stink-eye, which meant things weren’t going to end well for Paper Woman. “What?” she said in her thickly accented English.

  “You’re cutting in. Go to the back of the line.”

  “I could die of old age in that line. Do you want me to die? What kind of person wants an old woman to die? Christ will judge you for your sin! Shame!”

  Paper Woman shriveled away like celluloid, clutching her weapon.

  Most of the time Grandma was just Grandma. But sometimes she scared the bejeezus out of me, and it was easy to see why grown men regularly peed a little in her presence.

  Grandma waved me over. Head down, I scurried to the front of the line.

  “Ask this grown woman in a Santa Claus hat what you want to know,” she barked.

  Thirty seconds later I knew what I’d already suspected: the woman in the elf costume didn’t work for Santa or the mall. Santa’s real helpers had assumed she was an overzealous parent with issues discerning reality from fantasy. Because she’d kept her genitals under wraps, they hadn’t called mall security.

  “So I know it’s a woman,” I mused.

  Grandma zeroed in on my mumbling with the focus of a terrier. “Who?”

  “Some nut has been leaving me messages.”
r />   “What messages?”

  “The messages I’ve been getting,” I said absentmindedly. My brain was gnawing on the possibilities. Women I’d wronged, that sort of thing. I had rules about touching other women’s men: no touchee the man. In public restrooms if another woman needed a tampon I was there, arm outstretched, offering salvation. Wronging women wasn’t my thing.

  “Messages from who, about what?”

  I sighed and showed her my phone, with its photographic evidence of the Jeep’s jagged graffiti and the front door mat defiling. The other notes were at home but I showed her the picture I’d snapped of the vandalized activity book. Grandma swiped from picture to picture. Her face was a slab of cold, rigid marble. After an eternity had swept by, she thrust the phone back at me.

  “You want baklava? I make baklava.”

  We all rolled back to my place. I drove my Jeep with Xander riding in the backseat. Aunt Rita chauffeured Grandma in a black Mercedes. Elias pulled into the driveway behind me. Takis, Marika, and Stavros showed up last in the van. Everybody piled into the house.

  Takis wrinkled his nose. “It smells like skata in here.”

  “There’s a bear around,” I said.

  Grandma didn’t waste time getting to the point. “Show me the other notes, then I will make baklava.”

  The graffiti on my car had been lost during its detailing, and I’d washed the front doormat by hand. The other notes I dumped on the coffee table. In silence Grandma inspected the notes. They vanished into her low-lying cleavage. Now that they were down there I wasn’t sure she would ever find them again, at least not without a dumbwaiter.

  “Should I make a list of people who hate me?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “If it makes you feel better, make your list.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  She took a quick trip around the living room, glancing at family photos. Then she seemed to come to a decision. “Where is the kitchen?”

  I pointed. Grandma went.

  “Good thing someone is going to cook because I could use a snack,” Marika said. I wasn’t sure I would recognize Marika without food in her mouth or on its way there.

  Grandma reappeared, tying an apron around her waist.

  “There is a bear in your kitchen.”

  “She loves the kitchen,” I said.

  “Takis, take it away.”

  “Why me?” he said.

  “Because everyone else looks like food and you look like something she hezos on in the woods,” she said.

  By dinnertime the house smelled like Greece. Grandma singlehandedly whipped up pastitsio, moussaka, a mountain of fried potatoes, and bowls of Greek salad. There was bread, too. Homemade. Where it had come from I wasn’t sure.

  “From the neighbor,” Grandma said.

  “Reggie Tubbs?”

  “No—me.” She cracked up at her own joke. I had temporarily forgotten Grandma was the newest member of Mr. Rogers newer, twistier neighborhood.

  The house was alive with people. We had music. Someone had gone out to get drinks—ouzo and retsina and wine from Samos. The doorbell rang. Reggie Tubbs was on the other side wearing a fuzzy black bathrobe I hadn’t seen before.

  “It’s my formal bathrobe,” he said when I asked. “The robe I wear when I’m visiting folks.”

  “You wear a robe everywhere?”

  “I don’t feel comfortable without one.”

  “Wow, being a judge for so long really did a number on you, huh?”

  He pointed two fingers at me. “You’re out of order!” Then he cracked up. “Just messing with you.” He peered over my shoulder. “Smells like you’re having a party over here. How does a kindly and devilishly handsome old man swing an invite to this shindig?”

  “It’s Greek food. You’d hate it.”

  He rubbed his hands together. “Hey, I’ve never been afraid to go Greek.”

  Aunt Rita appeared in all her glory. She’d swapped her revealing black dress for a cocktail dress cut down to there and black feathers in her hair.

  “Who is this?” she asked me in Greek. “He reminds me of Papou—if Papou could walk.”

  “Reggie Tubbs,” I said. “He lives next door.”

  “Who’s this then?” Reggie wanted to know. He checked Aunt Rita out appraisingly and left out a low wolf whistle. “Is that one of those dudes in a dress? I’ve dated a few of those. What’s your name, sugar?”

  “This is Aunt Rita,” I said. “She’s Dad’s sister.”

  Aunt Rita offered him her hand. The old judge lifted it to his lips. “On-shon-tay.”

  My aunt looked borderline impressed. “His manners are better than Papou’s, and he does not smell like ouro.”

  “That’s because Papou pees in a bag,” I said, “and I’m not sure he always hits the bag.”

  “What does this man want?”

  “Food.”

  Aunt Rita hauled him in by his robe’s lapels. “This is a Greek home, and nobody goes hungry in a Greek home.”

  Reggie looked downright impressed. “Do you think she wants to see Reggie Junior?” the old judge wanted to know.

  “I think she has one of her own,” I said. “And it’s probably bigger.”

  “I figured,” he said.

  Melas called while I was standing in a corner, forking moussaka into my face. He looked good. Tired but delicious. Although not as tasty as this moussaka which was officially the Best Thing Ever.

  He eyed the food I was shoveling into my mouth. “Is that moussaka?”

  I took my sweet time savoring before answering. “It is.”

  “Where did you get moussaka?”

  “Is that Nikos?” Grandma called out from the kitchen. “Bring him here. I want to talk to him”

  Greece had ruins younger than Grandma but her hearing remained canine-level sharp.

  “You’re in Greece?” Melas said. The poor man looked hopeful. Aww.

  “Greece came to me.”

  There was a shrill yelp from the kitchen. I raced in to find Reggie Tubbs doubled over, clutching his dangly bits. Grandma was holding a spatula.

  “Dangle that thing in my kitchen …”

  “My kitchen,” I said.

  “…and I will smack it again.”

  “Papou would do that if he hadn’t lost his balls in the war,” Aunt Rita said.

  “Papou lost his balls?” I asked. I was sure he’d commented on his balls before but I’d blocked it out for my own sanity. There are some things no human needs to know.

  “He never had them,” Grandma said. There was a wicked glint in her eye. She sensed Reggie lifting his head and she waggled the spatula—my spatula. “One more time and you will learn about eating wood,” she said in thickly accented English.

  “I like the sound of that,” he said.

  “It’s not a sex thing,” I told him. “Eating wood is a spanking.”

  “Takes all kinds,” he said. “I love this woman. Could have used her in the courtroom.”

  “Grandma’s got a boyfriend,” I said in a sing-song voice.

  “Katerina has got poison in her koulourakia,” Grandma sang back.

  “Again?” I appealed to the cop on the phone. “See what I have to live with?”

  Melas grinned. “I should have known Greece would follow you.”

  “Nikos,” Grandma said. “Talk to me. What is going on in Greece?”

  I swiveled the screen so he could see her. “Turkey invaded and now we are under Ottoman rule again,” he said.

  Grandma wagged her finger at him. She liked Melas, so he didn’t get the threatening spatula. “Tell me everything.”

  “You mean you don’t know?” I said. She shot me a dark look.

  “Katerina, eat your food, eh? She is too skinny, Nikos. This is what happens when she comes back here and eats chips for dinner.”

  “She looks perfect to me,” he said. “She always does.”

  My gaze flicked over to Xander, who was standing by the living ro
om windows, focused on the street. He’d been in that position since we’d arrived home from the mall. No plate in his hand. No wine, beer, or water. While Grandma was grilling Melas about Greece, I fixed Xander a plate, poured him a glass of water, and carried both to the window, where I set everything down on a nearby occasional table. Mom wouldn’t mind. She was dead anyway.

  Xander’s gaze connected with mine. He smiled. Not big but definitely personal. I glanced away to avoid my feelings, which were mostly about his penis.

  “Did you move your stuff to the spare room?”

  He waggled his head for yes as he picked up the plate.

  “Anything exciting going on outside?”

  His chin tilted up then down for no.

  Cable news blared in the background. Unbeknownst to the anchors, Takis and Starvros were arguing with them. Elias was at the sliding door with the same watchful eye as Xander. Unlike Xander, he’d grabbed some food. Marika was in the kitchen, reloading her plate.

  Reggie didn’t seem to care that half the conversation was Greek and other half was pigeon English. He argued right alongside Takis and Stavros. Despite the loudness of my family and the absence of boundaries, Mom and Dad’s house felt like a home. The only thing missing was them.

  “I gotta take a leak,” Reggie said. “Anyone want to hold it for me?” He waited. “No takers? Guess I’ll have to do it myself.”

  He shuffled upstairs with his robe clutched tight.

  Takis’ head swiveled around until he was looking right at me. “Do you want to tell him?”

  “He’ll find out,” I said.

  Takis counted to twenty.

  Sure enough, Reggie yelped. He poked his head down the stairs. “You got a number for the dog catcher? Because you’ve got yourself one helluva big dog up here!”

  I jogged upstairs. My bear was stretched out on my bed with her head under my pillow. “Poor thing, all she wants to do is hibernate and people keep screaming at her.”

  “Take her to the zoo. They know what to do with a bear.”

  “But she’s my guard bear,” I said.

  “That guard bear of yours let all kinds of people into your house. You want security, you should think about a flock of geese.”

  “Geese hate me.”