Dashing Through the Snow (2 page)

“Focus, Lily Elise, f-o-c-u-s,” Candace
enunciated the letters while also signing them right in Lily’s
face. “Focus!”

Lips twitching at her grandmother’s brand of
sarcasm, Lily kissed her cheek. “Must I? I mean, really, just look
at them, Gran!” she demanded and stuck her feet out to turn them
side to side for a view of the shoes. “They’re so very
purrty
. And even with all their adorableness, they served my
purpose so well tonight that -- okay, okay,” she hastened with a
laugh and held her hands up in defense when Candace made a
pincer-like motion with her fingers.

Candace shook her head. “Will you quit acting
so empty-headed? I swear I don’t know why I put up with you.”

“Beats me,” Lily said with a shrug. “Must be
something in the water,” she posited and went back to the
conversation they’d been having before she’d been so gloriously
distracted. “Where were we? So you made me for a fraud when I told
you I was going to walk to the movies?”

“The fact that you were barely out the door
before you pulled on that watch cap was another clue. And by the
way, where did you get that cap with the lights?”

“I bought it online. I was surprised it
worked as well as it did because I got it pretty cheaply. I had my
pen light just in case, though. As for the watch cap, I had to be
as incognito as possible.”

“I realize that, but since you were a little
girl you’ve refused to wear winter caps for fear of messing up that
precious hair of yours. Those little fits you used to throw --”

“I don’t know what you’re talking --” Lily
began with all the dignity she could muster.

“I’m afraid the fights you had with your
mother are almost legendary, dear,” said Amelia, who was from
Sheffield-Chatham and still kept a house there even fifty-five
years after moving to the big city. “No point in denying them.”

“Anywaaay,” Lily sing-songed under her
breath. “So, I was found out because of my own fabulous sense of
fashion, hmm? It won’t happen again, trust me.”

With a worried frown, Candace said, “Let’s
hope you’ll never have to do any breaking and entering to get a job
done.”

“Yeah, let’s hope,” Lily echoed, wondering
how long it would be before she got her first job. “I can’t wait,”
she murmured as she thought about her newly minted private
detective’s license.

Chapter Two

Christmas
1984

“
Lily, Lily, Lily!” Smith said in
excitement as he jumped up and down.

“
Yes, darling. Lily’s here,” his mother
said and Smith felt her fingers gently brush through his hair. “And
so are your Auntie Glenda and Uncle Peter. But it’s a long way from
Sheffield-Chatham to Dallas, and Lily’s probably tired and napping.
Don’t get upset if she doesn’t come down right away.”

“
No, Lily won’t nap. She wants to see
me.”

“
Where’s my Smif? I want my Smif!”

Smith smiled smugly at his mother before
turning towards the demanding toddler voice. “Here I am, Lily,” he
called. When Lily turned around to see him and her face lit up with
happiness, Smith grinned.

“
Look at my pretty hair, Smif! And my
dress, too! Lookie, lookie, lookie!” she said as she ran towards
him as swiftly as her three-year old legs would carry her.

Smith’s grin widened in awed delight when he
took in her hair and what she was wearing. It was a velvety green
dress embroidered with bows. The bows covered the dress and seemed
to be in every color imaginable. A matching green velvet bow caught
her hair up in a high ponytail from which curls spilled all around
her head, but it was all the bows that impressed him the most.

“
Wow, Lily-bud!” he exclaimed as they
wrapped arms around each other. “You look just like one of my
presents!”

December 10
^th
, 2011

Like everyone else in Palmer’s Apothecary,
Lily paused in what she was doing when she heard the sound of glass
shattering outside the shop. And then there was the sound of a car
alarm going off -- the same alarm that every car owner in the world
seemed to have. In less than ten seconds, the sound became
annoying.

“Dude,” Quincy said dispassionately, “that
can’t be good.”

She turned to her nineteen-year old cousin
who was a sweet kid, but in the best of times tried her patience
with his teenage façade of studied indifference and his ubiquitous
use of the word ‘dude’ in all its various forms (dude, dudette and
the always-popular: duuuude!). But today was really trying because
he’d shown up on her doorstep early that morning, claiming that
he’d be her assistant. She was opening her office for the first
time today and Lily had been too excited to call her parents or his
to yell at them for interfering. She knew that they had some silly
idea that Quincy would protect her during what they viewed as just
another one of her larks in her never ending quest to find
herself.

As the lone female born in her generation,
Lily had grown used to this kind of over-protective behavior from
her parents, aunts and uncles, but she was not going to let them
ruin things for her. If she’d shown Quincy the door, one of her
older, more difficult male cousins -- there were nineteen of them
-- would have just appeared to take his place, and she didn’t want
that. So, she’d determined that she’d put up with Quincy for a few
hours. She knew she could get rid of him easily; it only took a
little planning.

Lily smiled at the pharmacist. “Thanks so
much, Ms. Palmer. I’ll see you.” Catching up her package, she made
her way through the store, leaving Quincy to follow. She hummed as
she thought about all of her plans for the day. Absently smiling
her thanks at Quincy, she walked through the door he held open for
her. She noticed that the snow fall had picked up while she’d been
in the store and grinning, she threw her head back to catch a few
of the fat flakes on her tongue.

“Ugh. Dude that is so nasty,” Quincy began,
“Don’t you know how dirty --”

Laughing, Lily rolled her eyes at him. “Shut
up, Quince. I’m feeling too good today for one of your dismal
scientific facts.”

“But --”

“One more word and you’ll find yourself with
a mouth full of snow.”

“I’d murderize ya, doll,” he teased in his
best gangster voice.

“Oh, that’s doubtful, Bugsy,” she returned,
“highly doubtful.” Laughing again, she turned towards the curb
where she’d parked, and stopped dead in her tracks, all the blood
draining from her face as she got a good look at her car. Stunned,
she stared at the wreckage.

Her baby
. Her precious, brand-spanking
new, right off the assembly line, still has that new car smell
baby
.

From behind her, she heard her cousin catch
his breath to speak. “Du --”

Her hand whipped back and to the side to
cover his mouth. “Do not, for Lord’s sake,” she said through
clenched teeth, “demonstrate your remarkable grasp of the obvious
right now!”

Peripherally, she noticed that there were
several people around who all seemed to be unnaturally still, but
that was all ignored as she focused on her car. Taking a deep
breath, she stalked over to it. She’d parked it at the curb and she
remembered her earlier glee at finding a space right in front of
the store and swore silently.
Yeah, some luck
. The
windshield of her Ford Fusion was smashed, the obvious destructive
force being a huge painted red stone, which was firmly entrenched
in the center of the shattered glass. With numerous long lines of
cracks spreading out from the stone, it looked like a grotesque
version of a child’s drawing of the sun.

“Oh, my God, PYT,” she said in horror to the
red car. “Who did this to you?”

Her words seemed to be the catalyst for the
silent bystanders to start talking and the area suddenly erupted
with voices, all trying to be heard at once.

“He did it!”

“It was that man there; the one down the
street.”

“It was him.”

“Wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with
my own eyes, but he threw that rock like a major league
pitcher.”

“Did she just call her car
PYT
? As in
Michael Jackson-PYT? Seriously?”

Lily ignored the bystander who sounded like
he was questioning her sanity and raised her head to follow the
direction of the pointing fingers, her gaze traveling down the
street. She skipped over the man dressed in a Santa suit, her mind
automatically tagging him as harmless. Just as her eyes began to
wander past him, however, something clicked in her brain. She
frowned, blinked and took her gaze back to him. Blinked twice more.
Frowned more intently.

What the...?

Her mind was playing tricks on her. It simply
had to be; otherwise she was actually staring at Santa as he
gyrated his hips and gave her the finger -- one from each hand.
Mouth agape, Lily looked at him some more and then glanced around
to make sure she wasn’t the only one seeing him.

“No sense in looking at me like that, hon,”
an old man said with a nod of sympathy when her confused gaze
latched onto his. “It won’t change the fact that Santa is doing a
truly fantastic job of fucking with you. What’d you do to him?”

Insulted, Lily scowled at him. “What’d I do
to
him
?! I didn’t --” she stopped trying to explain and
looked back at Santa, who now had an index finger in each ear and
was sticking his tongue
and
ass out and wiggling them both.
Flabbergasted, she waited for him to sing the standard “Na-nah,
na-nah, na-nah.” He didn’t, but Lily didn’t think she could be any
more shocked than she already was.

She was wrong.

“That’s right, little lady; Santa’s aim was
dead-on and my pretty stone broke your fancy-schmancy hybrid’s
window. You gonna stand there all day lookin’ dazed and confused,
or are you gonna do something about it?” After delivering his
challenge in a gravelly voice, Santa doffed his hat, took a bow,
turned tail and ran. “Let’s see if those long legs of yours are
good for anything besides turning men’s heads,” he called over his
shoulder.

Lily could do nothing but stare after his
fleeing figure, which somehow managed to look graceful.

“Duuude, Santa can haul ass!”

Quincy’s awed comment brought Lily out of her
shock enough for her to turn to him to say...what? Her brain would
not function.

Quincy forestalled whatever she was going to
say with an up-lifted hand, palm out. “Don’t lecture me now, Cuz.
Dude is
sooo
getting away. I’ll call the police, you go get
him --”

“Me!” Lily interrupted.

Sheepishly, Quincy said, “I might be ten
years younger than you, but you’re faster. I’d never catch him and
besides, it’s your car and you’re the one who ran track in high
school. You’d better hurry,” he warned her. “That little fucker
dude has got some serious speed!”

Lily turned back to see nothing of the
renegade Santa but furry white ankle cuffs and shiny black boots as
he sped around the corner, one foot and leg lifted to catch his
balance as the other foot skidded because he was moving so damned
fast. She shook her head in disbelief. “It’s like watching a
cartoon,” she muttered bemusedly, almost expecting to hear the
screeching sound of burning rubber and see little plumes of smoke
fly out from under his foot.

Shoving her package, purse and car keys into
her cousin’s chest so that he was forced to bring his arms up to
hold them, she said, “Here. Turn off the alarm and call the police,
body guard slash assistant
. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She had the grim pleasure of watching him lower his eyes in
embarrassment before she turned away.

And feeling that there was nothing else she
could do, Lily Elise Carstairs, newly-minted, bad-ass private
detective clenched her jaw, stretched her legs and took off to run
a renegade Santa to ground.

Huffing and puffing, Lily flashed through a
group of startled pedestrians, turning to murmur a hurried, but
heartfelt, “Oh, sorry...so, so sorry” when she felt one of her
furiously pumping elbows connect with the soft squishy flesh of a
stomach. She quickly turned back so that she wouldn’t lose sight of
her prey. She’d been chasing Santa Claus -- full out and non-stop
-- for four blocks. Four blocks! And she was no closer to catching
him now than she had been when he’d first run off.

“Shoot!” she muttered in dismay when she saw
that he’d gained quite a bit of distance in just the few seconds it
had taken her to turn her head. Her long, unbuttoned black leather
coat flapped in the brutal wind in perfect sync with her long,
black twisted hair as she forced her body to increase its speed.
She could only imagine what she looked like, and was sure she’d
have several phone calls from her family on her voicemail. As it
was, her cell phone, tucked deep in her pocket and ignored, had
already vibrated three separate times. She knew people were calling
her family and they, in turn, were calling her.

This was not surprising in a town the size of
Sheffield-Chatham, Illinois where her family had lived for several
generations and was known throughout because of the sheer number of
them. The only thing that was surprising was that no one had said
anything to her, or tried to stop her. The historic downtown of the
city was filled with holiday shoppers and business types and she
was right in the middle of it, fiercely, and not to mention,
determinedly,
pursuing a Santa Claus.

“Why, Lily Carstairs! What on earth...?”

Thought too soon
, Lily reflected as
she turned to see one of her mother’s closest friends frowning at
her. “Can’t explain now, Mrs. Johnson! I’m busy!” Right before she
turned back to task, she saw Mrs. Johnson whip her cell phone out
of her pocket. And less than sixty seconds later, as if on cue, her
cell phone vibrated again.