Mistletoe Mysteries Page 9

  “Uncle Willy meant he had to go back home,” Clayton said quickly. “Soon as Christmas is over.”

  Willy sat back in the softness of the sofa and looked around. “Great place, Clayt. Great family. Great cup of chocolate. You know how lucky you are?”

  Clayton said he knew.

  They went out for supper at a family-style restaurant that served fried chicken and was decorated with holly and pine rope and red bows. Willy was his usual mesmerizing self and Andy behaved beautifully. Clayton was surprised to be enjoying himself. Actually glad to see Willy, the older brother of whom he’d always been so jealous. In high school Willy had stolen from Clayton the affections of Janet Gerinski, a cheerleader whose good looks transcended even the glinting metal orthodontic braces of the era. Janet had interested Willy for about two passionate weeks, and was now married to an insurance man and living in an even more expensive part of town than the Blakes.

  Clayton knew he’d never really forgiven Willy, who, after dropping Janet, left school and hitchhiked to California. There Willy’s intended career in rock music had quickly fallen through. That was when Willy began plying his charm in pursuit of illegal profits. From the record industry to telephone boiler rooms to plush hotel suites in Reno, Willy had bilked thousands of dollars from unsuspecting admirers and business associates.

  Odd, Clayton thought, how nobody liked what Willy had done, but everybody seemed to like Willy. It was something Clayton had never understood.

  The next morning was Saturday, and the three adults, with Andy’s help, stood the live pine tree more or less straight in a washtub and decorated it. Clayton felt good watching Andy. Thought for the first time that maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to deprive the boy of a real Christmas tree at only four years old.

  “Hey, Clayt!” Willy said that evening after Blair’s home-cooked dinner. “Let’s all drive downtown and show Andy the display windows. They got a train about a mile long in one of the department stores.” He grinned over at Andy. “You sat on Santa’s lap yet, buddy?”

  “Not since he was a year old,” Blair said, shooting a glance at Clayton Scrooge.

  Willy shoved his chair back and stood up. “Well, we can fix that tonight. Stores are open late. C’mon, folks. I got some shopping to do anyway.”

  Clayton was surprised. “Where would you get money in—”

  Blair raised a hand palm out to silence Clayton.

  “Aw, you know me, Clayt,” Willy said. “How I always been able to play cards.”

  Cheat at cards, Clayton thought. But again he kept his silence.

  After Willy helped Blair load the dishwasher, they set off in the station wagon for the highway leading downtown. Willy suggested they sing. Clayton objected only briefly before being overruled. By the time they got downtown he was actually enjoying belting out Christmas carols, listening to Andy sing with lisping soprano gusto. Blair was smiling and looking—well, angelic.

  Willy winked at Clayton in the rearview mirror. “Holiday spirit, Clayt.”

  Clayt. Clayton had always hated that nickname. And now only Willy called him that.

  Andy was enthralled by the colorful display windows. Sat beaming on Santa’s lap and asked for a model plane. Which amazed Clayton; he and Blair were giving Andy a simple plastic model plane for Christmas.

  An hour before the stores were due to close, Willy told the rest of the family to drive home without him. He wanted to do some shopping and then he’d take a cab back to the house.

  Clayton agreed, and they said good-bye and went outside to walk the short, cold two blocks to the parking lot.

  No one said anything. Even Clayton thought the drive home was comparatively dull.

  And during the drive he began to think. Why was Willy laying on the charm? Was he trying to work some kind of con? Clayton couldn’t be sure, but he was determined to be careful.

  Christmas morning was a delight. Clayton felt a warmth he hadn’t thought possible watching Andy open the many presents placed under the tree by his uncle Willy. With the warmth was an unexpected melancholy yearning for Christmas mornings years ago when he and Willy had been held in check at the top of the stairs and then allowed to race downstairs and examine their own presents. He remembered the pungent scent of the real Christmas tree, the same scent that was now Andy’s to remember. The years at home with Willy might not have been as bad as Clayton usually recalled them. Besides, shouldn’t there be a time limit, a statute of limitations on ancient injuries?

  It had snowed that morning, as if the weather knew one of Willy’s gifts to Andy would be a sled. That afternoon, after a meal of ham and sweet potatoes, with apple pie for dessert, Willy suggested they all go to a hill in a nearby park and test the sled. Clayton was reluctant at first, but he went along and had a marvelous time even though he suspected three or four fingers might be frostbitten. He even soloed downhill with the sled, something he hadn’t done since he was twelve. “Got carried away,” he explained to a grinning Blair when he’d clomped uphill, snow-speckled and trailing the sled on its rope.

  As they were trudging through the snow back to the car, Clayton and Andy fell behind Willy and Blair. Andy looked up at Clayton, his reddened face curious beneath his ski cap. “How come Uncle Wi-wee don’t get cold?”

  “He does get cold, I’m sure.”

  “Don’t act cold.”

  Which was true, Clayton realized. Maybe Willy was fortified with alcohol, he thought, and then immediately felt guilty. As far as he knew, Willy hadn’t touched anything alcoholic since he’d arrived for his Christmas visit.

  That night, after an exhausted Andy had fallen asleep on the sofa next to Willy and then been carried upstairs to bed, Blair made some eggnog and the three adults sat around talking.

  “I always envied you, Clayt,” Willy said, wiping eggnog from his upper lip.

  Clayton was surprised.

  “Still do. The roots you put down early. You oughta take stock of what’s yours in this world and appreciate it. I mean, nothing lasts forever, and you got this time with Blair and Andy …”

  Now Clayton was astonished. For a moment it appeared that Willy might actually break down and weep. Willy a family man?

  Then Willy sat up straighter and asked for a refill on the eggnog. The familiar Willy; there was alcohol in eggnog. He was again the charming con man who’d bilked thousands from people who strangely wouldn’t count him among their enemies.

  After Willy had gone to bed, Blair said, “He knows he’s getting older, and he has to go back to prison tomorrow. I feel terrible about that, don’t you? Clay?”

  For the first time in years, Clayton said without reservation, “I pity him.”

  The morning after Christmas, Willy was gone.

  They hadn’t heard him depart.

  He’d left no note.

  His bed was made and there was no sign that he’d even visited them. When Andy woke up and asked about him, Clayton told him his uncle Willy had gone back to where he worked in another country. Peru, Clayton had finally said, when pressed. Andy didn’t like it. Cried for a while. Then accepted this explanation and got interested in the array of toys he’d received yesterday.

  Two days later Clayton was reading the morning paper when Blair said, “Clay!” Something in her voice alarmed him. He put down the paper and saw her standing by the table in the foyer, where she’d been sorting through the mail. Her face was pale and puzzled. “I found this still unopened,” she said, and held out a white envelope and the letter that had been inside.

  Clayton stood up and walked over to her. Saw she was holding the envelope that had come from the state prison. “Willy’s Christmas card,” he said.

  He’d never before seen such a look in her blue, blue eyes. “But it’s not a card. It’s …” As he gently took the letter from her hand she said, “… a death notice.”

  Clayton stood paralyzed and read. Blair was right. The state penitentiary had written to inform Clayton as Willy’s next of kin that one
Willard Blake had died of pneumonia. They were awaiting word concerning the disposition of the body.

  Clayton stood with his arms limp, the hand holding the letter and envelope dangling at his side.

  “Look at the postmark,” Blair said in a hoarse whisper, crossing her arms and cupping her elbows in her palms, as if she were cold. “Look at the date on the letter. It’s three days before Willy’s visit.”

  Something with a thousand tiny legs seemed to crawl up the back of Clayton’s neck. He drew a deep breath. Exhaled. “A mistake, that’s all. Some kind of mistake at the prison.”

  He looked again at the letterhead. Found a phone number. Strode into the kitchen and called the prison.

  It hadn’t been a mistake, the woman he talked to said. She told him she was sorry about his brother. Said, “About the remains …”

  Clayton slowly replaced the receiver and sat staring at the phone. Blair walked into the kitchen and saw the expression on his face. Slumped down opposite him.

  They stared at each other.

  Andy helped Clayton plant the live tree in the backyard. Every Christmas they lovingly decorated it with strings of outdoor colored lights.

  There was something—something he knew was absurd—that Clayton couldn’t shake from his mind. In a place beyond lies, Willy had come face to face either with St. Peter or with the devil. Could Willy—even the magnificent faker Willy—con either of those two? Maybe.

  Only maybe.

  Which was what nagged unreasonably at Clayton. If Willy hadn’t worked a con to buy his extra time on earth, had he worked a trade?

  Even after Andy had grown up and left home for college, Clayton continued to decorate the stately pine tree every Christmas. And in the summer he’d unreel the garden hose and stand patiently in the glaring sun, watering the ground around its thick trunk. He’d thoroughly soak the earth beneath the carpet of brown dried needles.

  It was impossible to know how deep the roots of such a tree might reach.

  HOWARD ENGEL

  THE THREE WISE GUYS

  Jews don’t celebrate Christmas, they only started it. So what’s Jewish detective Benny Cooperman doing in a Christmas anthology? Howard Engel reminds us that Christmas is a time for getting together with good friends, and an author’s favorite characters are not merely his creations, they’re his pals. The only problem with characters like Benny is that they tend to wander off and make friends of their own who give nothing but trouble, which is how Benny wound up attending service in St. Mary’s Church.

  In addition to being a mystery writer, Howard Engel is a former radio executive producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and is now writer in residence at the library in Hamilton, Ontario. That’s an extremely rare position, but then mystery writers, like their characters, often find themselves in unusual situations.

  The visions of sugarplums dancing in my head stopped dancing and disappeared into the graveyard of interrupted dreams when the telephone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Benny? I hope I didn’t get you up?”

  “Martha? What time is it?”

  “How am I supposed to know? I haven’t worn a timepiece since I lost the one my wicked old stepmother left me. I just phoned to wish you a merry Christmas, Cooperman.” Martha sounded like she was on a tear and I was one of the people she shared the knowledge with by telephone. She knew I was no boozer, so I usually heard about her exploits after the fact.

  “Merry Christmas yourself, Martha. Have you been up all night? I’m assuming that that gray stuff outside my dirty window is day.”

  “Oh, Benny, you can’t be cross with me, not on Christmas. You’re the only person in town I know who won’t be up to his knees in wrapping paper and squalling brats this morning. Jews don’t celebrate Christmas, they just started it.”

  “Martha, it sounds like you’ve been doing enough celebrating for Christian and Jew alike. Answer my question: have you been up all night?”

  “Of course I have. I decided not to go down to my sister’s in Bermuda. My brothers have all kicked the bucket except for Francis, and she, that wife of his, phoned to say that they were having an intimate inner-family celebration this year. Just sixty or seventy of her dearest and closest friends, but not her own husband’s sister. There are getting to be fewer and fewer Tracys in the phone book, I said to her. He, Francis, wouldn’t even talk to me. But I don’t care, Benny. May the good Lord keep them childless, that’s all. I’m not interrupting anything am I, Benny?” Martha paused here and I looked at the unslept-in half of my bed. It was as flat, clean, and un-mussed as it usually is.

  “Nothing particular,” I said.

  “Good! I was just thinkin’ about you, you little devil, and so I thought I’d give you a call.”

  “And so you just picked up the phone and called me at the break of day.”

  “Benny, it’s broken, long ago. And I didn’t see any russet mantle on yon high eastward hill either. Too many condos going up in Grantham, Benny. It’s a bloody crime.”

  “Martha, who have you been celebrating with?” That stopped her for long enough for me to find my jacket with my cigarettes and get a Player’s alight without actually touching a foot to bare linoleum. The fact that I upset a pile of paperbacks while doing it was only a minor catastrophe. Any day that began with a call from Martha was already separated from its fellows.

  “Celebrating with?” she said, beginning to catch up with the drop in tempo. That was the only kind of drop that she would allow to escape her when she was flying high, as she obviously was this morning. I’d met Martha Tracy in 1980. She was working for a real estate tycoon, local variety, who had apparently just shot himself with a target pistol. That was when I still thought of myself as a specialist in divorce work. I guess that back then the penny still hadn’t dropped that there was no more money to be made transom-gazing or standing under leaky eave troughs getting evidence of marital infractions for divorce lawyers. Don’t get me wrong. When there was a buck to be made in divorce work, I was all for it. Nowadays I take what comes along and wait until it comes along, searching titles in the registry office for my cousin, Melvyn. Since our first meeting, Martha had helped me out in a few investigations. A couple of times she had put up a witness for me in her house over on Western Hill. Once she put me up when some heavies were looking for me.

  Martha was almost as good on the phone as she was in person. Face to face, you saw the firm, Churchillian jaw and the solid, no-nonsense figure. At this hour in the morning, she was almost realer than real. This wasn’t the first time she’d got me out of bed, it is true, but I had to remember the times when the shoe was on the other foot.

  “I was celebrating with the celebrated Martha B. Tracy, that’s who. I closed up the stores along St. Andrew Street and I had a little celebration that started at the Golf Club and I ended up where I always do, at midnight mass at St. Mary’s, because it’s just around the corner from my place.”

  “You caused quite a stir, I’ll bet.”

  “It’s not what your twisted little mind’s thinking, Benny. I got caught in a fight with some young punks.”

  “During the service?”

  “Sure. I hadn’t gone to confession so I couldn’t join in the line for Holy Communion. I was just sitting there next to the column with the poor box attached, over the left-hand side as you face the altar. Hell, you wouldn’t know anyway. Have you ever been in St. Mary’s?”

  “Martha, I’ve even rung the bells.” She didn’t believe me, but I didn’t want to slow down her story, if that’s what it was planning to be. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I was sitting there, minding my own business, when three young punks came along and tried to grope me.”

  “They were after your maiden treasure, were they?”

  “Don’t be condescending. They were rude and violent, although in the end they ran away out the door in the transept.”

  “Seriously, were you hurt, Martha?”

  “I
’ll last. I’ll lay you out, Cooperman. You’ll see. To be honest, they weren’t after me, they were after a package wrapped in newspaper that was wedged into the corner of the pew I was in. Their interest in me was in removing an obstruction. But, Benny, how was I to know? They didn’t say ‘Move over,’ they just started beating me up. That’s what I thought they were doing. I thought they’d mistaken me for a drunk and were trying to roll me, get my purse.”

  “What happened to the package?”

  “That’s what I’m calling you about. What’s the matter with your hearing? The package was full of plastic bags of a white powder, Benny. I think I scored a kilo and a half.”

  “You didn’t score anything. They don’t even say that on TV any more, Martha. Let me think. Ahnnn.”

  “Well?”

  “I’m thinking. I’m thinking.”

  “You and Jack Benny. You’re going to tell me to take it in to the cop shop, right?”

  “It might make it easier to go to confession.”

  “I thought of that, when I thought about it, that’s what I thought. But, cops and those young punks, Benny. They’re just high school kids. Why send for the howitzers when we haven’t even tried small-arms fire yet?”

  “What am I in this, a BB gun? Martha, you have to tell the cops. See if you can talk to Sergeants Savas or Staziak. They won’t thump those punks any more than is coming to them. Okay?”

  “Now I’m thinking. It’s hard, Benny, when you’ve been through what I’ve been through.”

  “Did anybody follow you when you left St. Mary’s?”

  “Yes … no. No, everybody’d left by the time I got up. I may have passed out from the shock of it all.” There was another of her reflective pauses. “I think the service was over a good little while before I left the church. The altar candles had all been put out and there wasn’t anybody hanging around the doors.”

  “Did anybody try to mess with you on your way home?”

  “A couple of kids asked if I had any spare change. You know the way they do nowadays. They’re all at it. But nobody tried to get the package from me.”