Naughty Nine Tales of Christmas Crime (20 page)

"Hey," Ronnie said. "What's that?"

He pointed at a dingy Purdue University sweatshirt at the back of the closet. Unlike the rest of the clothes spread around on the floor, it didn't look like it had been dropped and forgotten the second it was stripped off. It was actually spread out with something resembling care.

Just below the Purdue logo—a barrel-chested, mean-eyed man gripping a sledgehammer—the sweatshirt bulged as if straining to cover a big pot belly.

There was something under there. Something hidden in a half-assed way that seemed oh-so-very Rick.

"Go on," Ronnie said. "
Look
."

The little man on the sweatshirt glared at Karen hatefully. He had more muscles than Rick, that was for sure, but the look of surly contempt on his cartoon face—that was the same.

It should've served as a warning, a reminder that they hadn't actually "messed with" any of Rick's stuff yet. That it wasn't too late. Karen knew that.

And still she flipped the little man off and whipped the sweatshirt aside.

Underneath was a box with the word "Florsheim" printed on the lid.

"What is it?"

"I think it's just shoes," Karen said.

The disappointment in her own voice surprised her. What had she been hoping to find? A Malibu Barbie? A pony?

It was Christmas, and Rick had bought new shoes . . . for himself. Of course.

Karen lifted off the lid.

"Hey!" Ronnie said, leaning in to peek around her. "He
did
get us something for Christmas!"

There were no shoes in the box. Instead, it held a loafy-looking package the size and shape of a large fruitcake.

Ronnie poked it with a single finger.

"Kinda squishy," he said. "Cruddy wrapping."

Rather than the usual festive red, green, silver or gold, the package was swaddled in course brown paper that looked suspiciously like a cut-up grocery bag. The jagged edges and clumsily folded flaps were fastened down with long strips of masking tape.

Karen didn't know what was in the package. But she knew enough to be scared.

This was what Rick didn't want them messing with. A squishy secret wrapped in plain brown paper. A grown-up thing, forbidden and frightening.

It was time to go.

Ronnie started picking at the tape on the package.

"Stop it!" Karen snapped. "It's not for us!"

Her brother kept working at one corner with a fingernail. A sliver of tape began to peel off.

"Hey! I said stop it!"

"I'm just gonna peek. Rick'll never notice."

"Yes, he will!"

"No, he won't."

Karen grabbed the package and jerked it out of the box. She meant to shove Ronnie away, fix the tape. Put things back together again.

But her brother had already worked enough tape loose to pinch it firmly, and when Karen snatched up the package, he held tight.

A long strip ripped off. The package opened.

And then it was snowing.

Fine, white powder filled the air. It seemed to hang there a moment, so thick Karen and Ronnie couldn't even see each other. It drifted down slowly, covering the carpet, the dirty clothes, Karen, Ronnie, everything.

By the time the blizzard was over, Ronnie was crying.

"We're in trouble, aren't we?" he said, tears gumming up in the white dust covering his cheeks. "We're in
so much
trouble."

Karen knew the truth of it. She wasn't sure what the white stuff was—Coke Cane? Heroine? Mary Wanda?—but she'd seen enough
Rockford Files
and
Starsky and Hutch
to know it was something bad people fought over. Killed over.

She and her brother weren't just in trouble. They were in
danger
.

Karen felt her lower lip start to tremble. Moisture pooled in her eyes.

And then someone said, "Don't worry. Everything'll be alright." And Karen was shocked and relieved to realize it had been
her
.

Her knees trembled as she pushed herself to her feet, but she willed them to stop.

She and Ronnie had been looking after themselves for a while now. Washing their own clothes, getting themselves up for school, packing their own lunches. How was this any different? It just made their To Do list a little longer.

Clean up drugs

Fix package

Stay alive

"Don't move," she said, heading for the door. "And don't get any of that white junk in your nose or mouth."

"Where are you going?" Ronnie wailed. "Don't leave me!"

"Geez, don't freak out," Karen said with all the cool, big-sister condescension she could muster. "I know what to do."

Less than a minute later, she was back. With the vacuum cleaner.

After hooking up the long, tube-like sucky thingy, Karen used it on her brother. He whimpered and wriggled as the vacuum snorked the powder from his clothes and hair, but soon he was clean enough to go out to the front window and act as a lookout. The second he saw Cousin Rick's dented-up Dodge Dart pull into the parking lot, he was to run and tell her. At which point, she would . . . .

She had no idea. She just had to hope she wouldn't need one.

It took her ten minutes to suck up all the powder. She meant to scoop it out and stuff it back in the package, but one look inside the vacuum bag told her that wouldn't work. The whatever-it-was, once pure white, was now mixed together with gray dust bunnies and strands of long black hair.

So Karen went to the kitchen and got out the Bisquick.

As she was pressing down the last strip of tape, Ronnie called out, "He's home! He's home!"

Cousin Rick came through the front door two minutes later. He found Karen and Ronnie on the couch watching
The Brady Bunch
. On the screen, Mrs. Brady was singing "O Come, All Ye Faithful."

Her laryngitis was gone. It was a Christmas miracle.

Rick shrugged off his parka and let it drop to the floor. Then he walked to the TV and changed the channel to
Bowling for Dollars
.

"Go outside and play," he said, plopping down between the kids. "The Big Call might come tonight, and I don't want you two hangin' around gettin' me all jittery."

"But it's cold out," said Karen.

"And dark," said Ronnie.

"So?" Rick threw a glance toward Karen's end of the couch. "Build a bonfire or something, I don't c- . . .hey. What's that?"

"What's what?"

"
That
. Under your eye."

Karen brought her fingers up to her face. There was something dry and chalky caked high on her left cheek.

"Oh. That must be flour. We made Christmas cookies at school today."

"Yeah?"

And then Cousin Rick did something he almost never did. He actually looked her in the eye.

"You bring any home?"

Karen shook her head.

"Sorry. We ate 'em all."

Rick turned back to the TV. One of the contestants had just thrown a gutter ball.

"Well, go on, then," he grumbled, pulling out his BIC and a pack of cigarettes. "Get outta here. I got business to take care of."

Karen and Ronnie hopped down from the couch and went to get their coats. They didn't complain this time.

"Karen?" Ronnie said as they roamed aimlessly around the parking lot. "What's gonna happen?"

Karen shrugged. "I don't know."

"You think he'll ever find out what we did?"

Probably. Yes. Sooner or later. That's what Karen assumed.

She looked up. It was a perfectly clear night, and the stars were bright and still. None of them shimmered or twinkled. They just hung there like holes in the big, black blanket smothering the sky.

Once upon a time, when she was a little kid like Ronnie, she used to wish on stars. She believed in Santa Claus, too. Same thing, really. Useless.

But it couldn't hurt, could it?

She picked a star.

"He won't notice," she said. "Everything's going to be O.K."

A door creaked open and slammed shut, and the kids turned to see Rick coming toward them with quick, purposeful strides.

He stopped beside his car.

"Finally got the call. The big one," he said, sounding nervous but excited, eager. "I'll be gone for a while. Tell your mom to wait up for me. She and I are gonna go out and celebrate when I get back."

As he ducked into the Dart, Karen noticed something tucked under his left arm.

The shoebox.

"Bye, Cousin Rick!" Karen called out. "Bye bye!"

She and Ronnie walked out to the sidewalk to watch him drive away, waving until the taillights shrank to pinpricks in the distance then faded to nothingness altogether.

Poor Mom had a terrible Christmas. Fretting. Pacing. Going downtown to fill out the missing person report. But Karen knew that she'd feel better soon.
Be
better soon. They all would be—Mom and Ronnie and her.

For the first time in a long time, Karen wasn't just hoping for that.

She believed.

RED CHRISTMAS

ONCE UPON A TIME IN AN ENCHANTED LAND FAR AWAY....

(OR, TO BE A BIT MORE PRECISE, ON DECEMBER 24, 1980, AT ELEVEN TWENTY SEVEN P.M., AT THE NORTH POLE....)

Jingle the elf noticed a peculiar package under the workshop's massive Christmas tree. There were dozens of boxes nestled around it: gifts to and from Santa, Mrs. Claus, the elves, the reindeer and Rumpity-Tump the Icicle Man, who worked for the Clauses chasing away
National Geographic
photographers and cleaning out the deer stables.

But this particular present stood out from the rest for a very special reason.

"Jeez," Jingle said. "That's gotta be the crappiest-looking thing I've ever seen under Santa's tree."

And indeed it was. The wrapping paper was crinkled and smudged, and the bow-work was shockingly shoddy, the beautiful red ribbon mangled and smeared with inky black fingerprints.

Jingle shook his head in disgust. "Looks like the guys down in Wrapping started pounding the glogg before the Old Man even took off."

"Dishgushting," said Jingle's brother Jangle, who'd had a few snorts of glogg himself. "We oughta shay shomething to the foreman. Ish there a name on the tag?"

Jingle moved closer to the package. It was big—almost as big as Jingle himself. He found the tag buried under a long loop of loosely tied ribbon.

"'To Santa,'" he read aloud. "'From R. with love.'"

"'R.,' huh? Maybe it'sh from Rudolph."

"Doesn't look like it's been in a deer stall," Jingle said, peering at the wrapping paper. "I mean, it's got stains on it, but not . . . you know . . . ."

"Yeah, I shee what you mean," Jangle said.

(Despite Rumpity-Tump's best efforts, the deer stables were far from pristine.)

"Well, whoever 'R.' is, he's not one of the guys in Cards, Tags & Notes," Jingle said. "The handwriting's terrible."

He tried to pick up the box and give it a test shake, but it was so heavy he could only lift one corner. Something inside the box shifted with a muffled tinkle, and the edge along the floor turned dark and glistening.

"It's leaking."

"Oopsh," Jangle said. "You broke it. Shanta'sh gonna be pished."

"
I
didn't break it. Whatever it is, it was already . . . ."

Jingle's words choked to a stop as a sour-sweet smell reached his nose. It was the scent of gingerbread and peppermint and magic, with an undertone of paint and glue and sweat.

Elf blood.

Since Jingle's reflexes hadn't been dulled by glogg, he was the one to start screaming first. Jangle quickly joined in, though. The two elves scrambled out from under the tree and dashed shrieking through the hallways of Santa's castle. Santa himself had been airborne nearly an hour, so there was only one person they could turn to.

"Mrs. Claus! Mrs. Claus!" they yelled in unison (though Jangle's cries sounded more like "Mishush Claush! Mishush Claush!").

They found Santa's wife in the kitchen stirring an enormous cauldron of borscht. It was the only thing her husband would eat for the next six or seven months, so gorged would he be on cookies and milk by night's end.

"Blood!" Jingle howled.

"
Blllllloooooood
!" Jangle added.

"Oh my, no," Mrs. Claus replied sweetly. "It's just borscht. Goodness, when you elves start nipping at the glogg there's no telling what you'll—"

Jingle grabbed one wrist, Jangle grabbed the other, and they pulled her away from the stove, out the door and through the halls until she was standing before the giant Christmas tree, a dripping ladle still clutched in her hand.

Jingle pointed at the mysterious package. "Blood!" he howled again.

"Blllloooood," Jangle added dutifully, though he was a too winded now to give it much oomph.

"Oh. I see," Mrs. Claus said. "Dear oh dear. Well, I suppose someone had best open it up."

A crowd had begun to gather, but no one made a move toward the box. Mrs. Claus sighed, whispered another "Dear oh dear," handed her ladle to Jingle and stooped down under the tree's lowest branches. The ribbon and paper slid off the package easily. When she lifted off the lid, a chorus of gasps shook the silver bells on the tree.

Inside the box was the crumpled form of an orange-haired, cherub-faced elf.

"Deary deary dear," muttered Mrs. Claus, employing the fiercest vulgarities in her vocabulary. "It's Gumdrop, Sugarplum's brother."

Another gasp echoed up into the rafters.

"Could he . . . could he have been . . . wrapped by mistake?" Jingle stammered.

Such things had been known to happen. Two years before, a pair of elves named Glitter and Sparkle had crawled into a box for a quick nap between shifts in Wrapping. Come Christmas morning, a horrified eight year old found their lifeless bodies crushed beneath her
Charlie's Angels
Beach House playset.

Mrs. Claus reached into the package and gingerly shifted little Gumdrop.

"Oh deary deary deary
deary
dear," she said, which told the elves that whatever she saw, it was bad indeed.

"Wh-what?" Jingle asked.

Mrs. Claus moved away from Gumdrop, giving the crowd a clear view of his blood-soaked back. Protruding from it was the red-and-white curl of a large candy cane. The deadly confection was smudged with sticky black fingerprints, just like the wrapping paper and ribbon on the box.