Wreck The Halls

by Jeff Shelby

  “I think everyone would like to know what happened. You aren't alone.”

  “Sure. But I'm not sure we will. If no one's figured anything about by now, I'm not sure we'll find out.”

  “Maybe not,” he said.

  “And what will that mean for next year?” I asked. “If they don't have the money to replace everything this year, where will they get it for next year? So then will it all just be over?”

  “I think you're getting a little ahead of yourself,” he said. “Assuming they don't find anything, there's a whole year for them to figure out what to do next. They can do fundraisers. They can see if there is money in other parts of the town's budget. If they cancel this year, it doesn't mean it's gone forever.”

  “Stop being rational,” I told him. “I'm looking to be a little irrational for the moment.”

  “You should tell me that ahead of time then,” he said. “Yes, this is probably it. We'll probably never celebrate Christmas in Moose River ever again.”

  I kneed him again. “You aren't helping.”

  He chuckled and wrapped his arm tighter around me. “I'm just teasing you. But I don't want you to let this ruin your Christmas. That would make me sad.”

  “Wow. You finally admit to having feelings.”

  “I'm not a total robot. Just, like, eight percent.”

  I wiggled against his warm body.

  I knew it wouldn't ruin my Christmas. I knew I'd have fun opening gifts and seeing the kids open theirs. I'd forget about the parade and the festival in the moment.

  But, lying in bed, I couldn't help but feel like Christmas was going to be a bit of a downer.

  TWENTY TWO

  “I don't know, Ted,” I said. “I'm out of ideas.”

  It was the next morning and I was back at the station. Priscilla was out at another meeting at City Hall, so Ted and I were the only ones in. I'd told him about my run-ins with Ava, Nora, and Bert, and that I thought they were all telling the truth. He told me that he'd done some poking around and he agreed. He'd found nothing that pointed the finger at any one of them.

  Or anyone else, for that matter.

  He leaned back in the chair, his hands folded across his stomach. “Me, too. I just have to wonder now if it truly was something more random. We've looked at this all along like it was someone who had some sort of motivation to either harm the town or get back at Oliver and we've come up with zilch. So it makes me wonder if maybe this was just some kids goofing off and who were just looking to cause a little trouble.” He shrugged. “I'm not sure what other explanation we might have.”

  “I guess,” I said, my elbow on my desk and my chin in my hand. “I was just hoping we'd be able to figure it out.”

  He nodded slowly. “Me, too. But I'm at a loss.”

  “What about Priscilla?”

  “What about her?”

  “Maybe she did it.”

  His eyes widened. “What?”

  “She told me herself,” I said. “She hates Christmas. She hates the festival and the parade, and she said she'd be happy to see it gone. Maybe this was all part of her plan to rid the town of it all.”

  He laughed. “Daisy, now come on. I know you and Priscilla don't get along. And I know what a curmudgeon she can be. But you don't for one second really believe she'd do this, do you?”

  I didn't. I was just grasping at straws.

  “No,” I admitted. “I don't.”

  “Thank goodness,” he said. “Was afraid you'd bring that up and she'd fire you and then we'd all really be in trouble.”

  “You're very kind,” I told him.

  He blushed. “Aw, I'm just saying the truth. I'd missing having you around here and so would others.”

  “Not Priscilla.”

  “Oh, I think she would,” he said. “She might never say it, but she would. You make her job much easier than it used to be.” He winked at me. “So don't go talking crazy in front of her.”

  I laughed. “I won't.”

  Ted pushed himself out of the chair and stood up, hitching up his pants. “Well, I guess I better go find out where we stand on all this. Oliver was going to officially announce the cancellation of the festival and parade this evening. Which means I can pull back all of the permits we had to close Main Street.”

  “He still hasn't canceled?”

  He shook his head. “I think he was trying to wait until the last minute. And I think he was trying to figure out a way to pull it off. But nearly everything is gone. The streets wouldn't be decorated, there's no sleigh for Santa, and we don't have lights to light the tree. Shoot, half of the parade floats wouldn't even have their decorations.” He shook his head again. “I think he waited as long as he could. I'm going to meet him over at City Hall and just get the official word because we'll need to get the word out to the town.”

  I nodded. That made sense. I knew that people were anticipating the cancellation, but the town would need to make it official and get it out on social media. They'd also have to get some signs up for people who wouldn't get the notice and show up anyway.

  It made me sad.

  “You did all you could, Daisy,” Ted said. “Don't feel bad. Sometimes, we don't get the bad guy.”

  “I sort of thought we always did.”

  He pulled on his coat and zipped it up. “Usually, we do.” He stared out the window, at the white sky that mirrored the snow covering the ground. “But, seems like this time? The bad guys win.”

  TWENTY THREE

  Ted left and I tried to focus on paperwork that Priscilla left for me, but had a hard time. I fumbled around with it for a while, then decided I needed to try and eat some lunch. Maybe that would clear my head. I trudged out in the fresh snow toward Big Mama's.

  The diner was half-full when I stomped the snow from my boots. Bjorn Born, the longtime owner and manager of the diner, was looking a little frazzled behind the front counter, with several checks spread out in front of him.

  He looked up when the door closed. “Daisy. Hello, there. Give me just a minute, if you would.”

  “Sure.”

  I watched as he hustled checks to four different tables, grabbed a couple of water glasses to refill, returned them, then hustled back upfront.

  “You're hopping today,” I said.

  He frowned. “Yeah. And I should have some help here, but he ran off.” Something flashed across his eyes. “Emily isn't home by chance, is she? I thought about giving her a call but haven’t had a chance to do it.”

  “I think she might be,” I told him. “I’d call her and see if she's free.”

  He pulled a pen from behind his ear. “I just might do that. What can I get for you?”

  I gave him my order and he told me to have a seat and he'd get to it as soon as he could.

  Twenty minutes later, after I'd watched him bounce around the dining room and kitchen like a pinball, he was back at the counter with a paper bag that smelled like it was full of deliciousness.

  “Sorry, it took so long,” he said, glancing at the clock. “I don't know where that darn kid is.”

  “Kid?”

  “Howie,” he said, annoyed. “He asked if he could go run a quick errand, but said he'd be right back. That was over an hour ago.” He gave me the total and I handed him my card. He slid it through the reader. “He had to go pay his rent or something.”

  “His rent? Doesn't he live with his mother?”

  “Hang on just a sec,” he said, then jogged back toward the back of the restaurant.

  Maybe I had my ages wrong, but I didn't think Howie was much older than Emily. That didn't mean he couldn't be living on his own, but I swore he lived with Ava.

  Bjorn came jogging back. “Sorry. Forgot I told that table I'd get them another bottle of salsa and then didn't do it.”

  “That's okay. You're busy.”

  He pulled the strip of paper from the machine and handed it to me with my card and a pen. “What did you ask me?”

  “I asked if he lived at
home? I thought he lived with Ava.”

  “No,” Bjorn said. “I mean, yeah. He does. His rent was for something else. A storage unit over there at the place off Jackson. The one with all of those yellow doors?”

  I knew it. It was the only storage facility in town, and we'd used it briefly one year when our garage sale was canceled due to weather and Jake refused to put everything back in the garage. They had multiple sized units and you could rent for any period you needed. We'd used it for two months.

  But that didn't explain why a kid like Howie would need one.

  “Is it Ava's?” I asked, signing the receipt. “Was he paying it for Ava?”

  “No idea,” Bjorn said, pushing the bag toward me. “I know he just got it a couple of weeks ago because they called here to tell him the unit was ready. No idea why he put the number to here down.” He shrugged. “But he better come back soon or he's gonna have to look elsewhere to find money to pay for it.”

  “Right,” I said, thinking.

  “Thanks, Daisy,” he said. “For your patience and your business.”

  I picked up the bag. “Of course. And give Em a call. I know she'll come over if she's not busy.”

  “Will do.”

  I stepped outside and while the snow had stopped, the wind had picked up. I tucked my chin into my chest and stepped through the snow back to the station. The scraping of the plows echoed in the distance.

  And I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.

  I got to the door of the station, then turned, and kept going home, my feet leaving deep prints in the fresh snow. I needed the car.

  And I really hoped I wasn't right about what was running through my head.

  TWENTY FOUR

  The roads were slippery from the house over to the storage facility. The pavement was mostly clear, but the temperatures were dropping fast and everyone was being careful. I called Ted before I left to let him know what I was doing and where I was headed, but he didn't pick up and I had to leave him a voicemail. I drove slowly and kept my eyes on the road, worried more about cars sliding into me than me sliding into them.

  It took me twenty minutes to get there in what would've normally been a ten-minute drive. The lot at Moose River Store-It was plowed, though, and I gratefully pulled into the mostly clear parking lot at the front of the facility. There were two other cars in the lot and inside the small office, I could see a guy paging lazily through a magazine.

  I knew that the storage areas were limited to customers who were actually renting units. There was a keypad near the gate that required a four-digit code in order to open it. Jake had used our anniversary when we'd rented a unit there. If I went into the office, I was going to have to concoct some story about wanting to rent a unit just to get onto the premises. I really didn't want to do that.

  As I was pondering that, a pickup truck pulled up to the keypad. The driver's side window rolled down and an arm reached out to use the pad.

  Now or never.

  I got out of the car and reached the truck just as it was going through the open gates. They shut quickly behind me and I moved closer to the building. The truck drove forward, past the first unit, then hung a right, and disappeared.

  There were no open units on the main row, so I walked up to where the truck had turned and looked to my right. I could see the truck down at the far end of the aisle, idling in front of a unit.

  I turned to my left.

  Halfway down the aisle, a Ford Focus was parked in front of a unit. I could see that the door to the unit was up.

  I tucked my chin to my chest, squinting into the wind, and walked in that direction.

  I could hear noise in the unit as I got closer. I stopped to try and get a better listen, but couldn't figure out what I was hearing.

  I crossed to the other side of the aisle. I didn't want to walk right up to the opening for a number of reasons.

  Talking to Bjorn, it occurred to me that another person who might've been motivated to see Oliver fail was Howie Bradshaw. He'd talked about just wanting his mother to be happy. He hadn't seemed terribly upset about the possible cancellation of the festivities. He was renting a storage unit. And he was a kid who might not have had the best judgment.

  As I walked past the open door on the other side of the aisle, I took a quick look across.

  And I saw Santa's face looking back at me.

  TWENTY FIVE

  I didn't see Howie in the unit at first. All I saw was Santa and his sleigh, and about a hundred plastic candy canes, and strings of lights, and large spools of ribbon, and a bunch of life-sized reindeer.

  Then Santa moved and Howie came out from behind the red and white statue. He lifted it up and set it up next to the far wall. He turned back around and dragged one of the reindeer over to Santa and propped it up against the jolly old fellow. It looked like he was organizing all of the decorations.

  The decorations that belonged to the town.

  I walked across the aisle, around his car, and stood in the entryway. “Howie.”

  He jumped at the sound of my voice, his eyes wide, another reindeer in his hands. “Ms. Savage?”

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  He looked around the storage unit. “I...uh...well...”

  “It was you,” I said. “You took everything. And then brought it here.”

  His eyes swept around the unit again. “It's not what you think.”

  “What is it then?”

  He frowned. “Well, maybe, it's exactly what you think.”

  “You stole everything.”

  He hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, ma'am.”

  “But why?”

  He set down the reindeer in his hands. “I don't know. I was just…angry.”

  “About your mom?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. You don't know how much this Christmas thing means to her. No one does. It's her whole life. When they took her off the committee, she cried for like two days. Everyone just thought she got all mad and stuff, but she was really upset.” He paused. “It was really hard to see that. And I just wanted to do something about it. I thought they might even put her in charge again.”

  “So you stole everything,” I said.

  “Yeah, but I was never going to keep it,” he said quickly, looking around. “That's why I rented the storage unit. To keep it all here until after Christmas.”

  “And then what were you going to do with it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I hadn't gotten that far. But I wasn't going to keep it or anything like that. Honest. Renting this thing was expensive.”

  I wanted to believe him, but I wasn't sure.

  “You did all of this on your own?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Yeah. Took me all night and I don't know how many trips. My car isn't that big and I was trying to be careful to not get caught.”

  “Well, you were successful in that.”

  “But I came here tonight to put it all back,” he said. “You have to believe me.”

  I didn't say anything.

  “I really did,” he said. “My mom said something this morning about how it wasn’t going to feel like Christmas if everything was canceled. I told her I thought she'd be happy that it was all canceled, but she said she was going to miss it.” He looked at Santa. “So I felt super guilty. I went to work, but then decided I had to do something. So I left and came here. I swear that's what I'm doing.”

  I sighed. I did believe him. He'd done a dumb thing. His heart had been in the right place, but his head had gone in another direction.

  “I believe you,” I told him. “But we need to let people know you have all of this.”

  His eyes went wide again. “No, no. See, that's the thing. I'm going to put it all back.”

  “They're going to cancel everything tonight,” I said. “They need to know it's all here.” I paused. “And that you took it.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I'll get in too much trouble. My mom will be so mad
at me. I'll go to jail or something. Please don't tell anyone.”

  “Howie, we have to,” I said. “Just tell people what you told me. It'll be okay.”

  He shook his head. “No. My mom will kill me.”

  “I'll tell her what you told me,” I said. “I'll back you up. It'll be okay.”

  “No,” he said. “She can't know.”

  “Howie. I called Officer Ted on my way over here,” I informed him. “He'll be here any moment, I'm sure.”

  “You already called the cops?” he said, panic filtering into his voice. “Oh my gosh. I'm in so much trouble.”

  “Howie, just calm down,” I said. “It'll be okay.”

  “I gotta get outta here,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “You can't leave. I can't let you do that.”

  “You can't stop me!” he cried.

  He pushed over the reindeer in front of him and sprinted toward the opening on the opposite side of the unit from me. I didn't think I'd be able to catch him before he past me.

  So I looked for anything that might slow him down and grabbed the first thing I could get my hands on.

  A giant candy cane.

  I picked it up and turned toward him, swinging it in his direction. The crook of the candy cane wrapped around his waist and caught him. His feet slipped on the snow-covered ground and he went down in a heap.

  Headlights flared in our direction as a car came down the aisle. I saw Ted behind the wheel of his cruiser before it came to a halt.

  Howie stayed on the ground, the candy cane still wrapped around his waist.

  Ted got out of his cruiser and came over to us. He eyed Howie on the ground, then the storage unit, then me. He set his hands on his hips. “Daisy, I think you just saved Christmas.”

  TWENTY SIX

  “There he is!” Grace yelled. “I see him! There's Santa!”

  It was Christmas Eve and the parade was coming to a close. We'd spent the better part of the day at the festival, shopping from the vendors, drinking coffee and hot chocolate, and eating far more than we should have. The crowd seemed much larger than in years past and I wondered if that was because people had taken the festival for years and they'd been reminded that it could go away in a hurry.