Elizabeth Gunn

  Too Many Santas

  A Jake Hines Novella

  ◈Desert Mist Press◈

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual situations or real persons living or deceased is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1997-2013 Elizabeth Gunn

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

  Second ebook edition 2013

  Originally published in the anthology How Still We See Thee Lie by Worldwide Mystery, 2002. ISBN 0-373-26437-2

  One

  “Where does the time go?” Trudy asked me Friday morning.

  “No idea.” I try to stay cocooned in the sports section over breakfast. Simple interactions like, “Pass the sugar” are okay, but I shy away from tough questions like where time goes until later in the day.

  “Well, Christmas is next Wednesday. Are you listening? This weekend is crunch time.”

  “You bet.” I had two dollars in the department football pool for next Monday’s game. The Vikings’ coach was estimating his team’s chances against the Giants as “better than fair,” and I wondered, is that about the same as “good”?

  “We gotta get our ducks in a row. Buy food, get the tree up, decorate the house—”

  “Decorate?” I lowered the Rutherford Times-Courier. “What does that mean?

  “Earth to Jake Hines.” She handed me pencil and paper. “We are speaking here of an ancient Judeo-Christian holiday—”

  “Trudy, c’mon, now—”

  “—for which we have invited nine people to dinner. In this context, decorate means spread jolly, bright-colored stuff around. Hang up some ho-ho-ho material.”

  “We’re not gonna do that whole number with the angels and the tinsel, are we?”

  “In a ninety-five-year old farmhouse? Hardly. A wreath and a traditional tree. With maybe popcorn strings? Mama says she’s still got some of the old ornaments—”

  “But nothing with blinking lights, right?”

  “Trust me. Quit looking stricken, Jake, okay? No blinking, no flocking. Come on now, time to make lists.”

  My list turned out to be mostly hardware store basics: tree stand, wreath hanger, a couple of extension cords. Outlet adapter.

  “And a bottle of Elmer’s Glue,” she suggested.

  “Which we will use for—?”

  “Putting extra limbs in the tree. To fill in bare spots.”

  I groaned.

  Trudy agreed to buy the things that took taste — tablecloth, wreath, wine glasses — and bring a pizza to eat while we put up the tree.

  “I’ll bring the beer,” I said.

  “Try to get home on time.”

  “No problem,” I assured her, “long as it keeps snowing.” She works at the state crime lab, so she knows as well as I do that bad weather holds down the crime rate.

  I put my list in my inside jacket pocket, got into my pickup and eased carefully into traffic on US-52. Light snow had been falling all night, but the plows had just been through, so I arrived at the Rutherford Police Department on time, with no fresh dents.

  I’m chief of the detective division in a rapidly growing town of just under a hundred thousand, eighty miles southeast of St. Paul. My job requires some tolerance for rude behavior and bursts of violence, but it’s lively and unpredictable and it suits me. Not incidentally, it pays my share of the mortgage and upkeep on the farmhouse, with enough left over, usually, for a few extras. This Christmas was beginning to include more than a few extras, though, another good reason to wish it would go away.

  I’ve explained to Trudy that my bearish feelings about Christmas are completely irrational and have nothing to do with her. I was born a foundling and raised in foster homes, so my childhood Christmases were meager affairs, cobbled together out of grudging private charity and skimpy municipal handouts. I’ve never quite buried the left-out feelings those memories generate, so the Yuletide commotion that makes my peers merry puts me in a funk.

  I try to stay harmlessly entrenched in the bah-humbug camp, debunking fake sentimentality and waiting for the hymn-singing to stop. My failure to embrace my ex-wife’s vision of Martha Stewart holidays contributed as much as anything to the breakup of our five-year marriage; our most epic battles were waged in a living room adrift in taffeta bows and tinsel.

  Last Christmas, Trudy and I had just moved in together, and easily agreed we had all we could do to keep warm and dry in our drafty farmhouse. We accepted her sister’s invitation to Christmas dinner, left as soon as Bonnie’s children started fighting over their toys, came home to a bottle of ice-cold Champagne by the wood stove, and made giddy love under many quilts. “The best Christmas I ever had,” I told her next morning, “let’s make it a tradition.”

  But this year, with the house insulated and the furnace working fine, Trudy said, “It’s really our turn, you know,” and on the day after Thanksgiving, it seemed almost painless to agree. In fact for a while, planning the feast, inviting her family and a few of our friends, I persuaded myself that with this smart, sexy Swede sharing my life, even Christmas could be fun. Now that it was time to deck the halls, though, I was getting that familiar panicky urge to climb on a camel and journey afar.

  Mounting the stairs to the Rutherford PD at three minutes to eight, I felt almost grateful for the harsh clatter of malfeasance I knew would be waiting inside. All through this raw gray morning, phones would ring and computers would clatter, transmitting a string of sordid complaints: he hit, they took, it wasn’t me. The gritty misbehavior of dysfunctional citizens would be alleged and sworn to and signed, and with luck we might move one case, a needle out of this haystack, a little closer to the punishment it so richly deserved. It might not be pretty, I thought with grim satisfaction, but at least, by God, around here nobody’s doing fool things with sleigh bells and tinfoil.

  Well, hardly anybody. Schultzy, my pal in Dispatch, looked up as I went by her glass-walled space, and beckoned me in so she could solicit money for the department Christmas party next Monday. “The Eve of Christmas Eve,” she grinned gleefully, snapping her gum. She had mistletoe pinned to her lapel, and her cubicle boasted a string of blinking lights and a poinsettia plant with ceramic elves. When she started to hustle her list of raffle ticket opportunities, I told her I could hear my phone ringing, and fled. My lie must have landed pretty close to the truth; by the time I got the door open, my message light was blinking and the tape was loaded with calls.

  I answered the most urgent messages, waded through a thicket of e-mail and was duking it out with next quarter’s budget when Bo Dooley appeared in my open doorway, saying, “Got a minute?”

  “Come in.” He’s the vice cop for the section, an experienced investigator with great street smarts and no penchant for small talk.

  “Ray said I better tell you,” he said, standing just inside the door, cradling his elbows in his thin hands, “I got a little deal cooking with the DEA.”

  “Oh?”On paper, Bo’s immediate superior is Ray Bailey, my head of People Crimes.In practice, Bo mostly rows his own boat and tells Ray when he needs any help. So this wasn’t a request for approval, exactly; more like a heads-up. “Better you than me,” I said, “what do they want?” Little deals with the DEA. are my least favorite thing, except for big deals with the DEA., which I like even less.

  “They’re chasing a rumor about a shipment of pot” He shrugged. “Probably just fishing. It sounds like too big a score for here. But they’re hot for local intelligence these days so I said I’d help.”

  “You know if you find anything for those puppies they’ll grab it and run for the cameras.”

  “Sure,” he said, and allowed himself a two-second smile. “Good for us.”

  He’s right, of course. Bruised egos to one side, in a town as small as Rutherford, it wouldn’t take a whole lot of publicity to make Bo useless on the street. And where would we find another trustworthy loner like Bo?

  “Okay,” I said. “You need anything?”

  “Nope. Just wanted you and Ray to know in case you don’t see me for a while.”

  I worked another ten minutes on the budget before a call came in on my outside line. “Hines,” I said, and Officer Vince Greeley yelled, against a background of many shrill voices, “Jake?” as if he suspected some stranger might have usurped my last name.

  “Where are you?” I asked him. “What’s all that screaming?”

  “I’m outside the main entrance to Iroquois Mall,” he said. “There’s a crowd of little kids here with their Mamas, waiting to get into Davidson’s so they can sit on Santa’s lap and tell him which pieces of overpriced crap they want for Christmas.”

  “Why’d you call me?” I said, to head off Vince’s annual parenting lament, which is another part of Christmas I can live without.

  “Well—boy, these little devils are makin’ a racket, hang on, I’ll move over here—” I heard the squinch of his padded clothing, the crunch of boots on icy snowcap, and then he said, from some quieter space, “Dispatch sent me out here because the outdoor Santa, the Salvation Army one that rings the bell out front? Well he’s disappeared.”

  “Disappeared? Who says?”

  “Captain Lyman, the local Commander. He called 911. Said, ‘My Santa’s gone.’ “

  “Well, he probably just stepped inside to get warm.”

  “Captain Lyman looked all over the mall before he called the station. And I went through it with him again.”

  “Did you check the men’s rooms?”

  “Of course.”

  “How about his car?”

  “It’s here, but he’s not in it.”

  “Call his wife?”

  “She says Santa put his gear in the van this morning like always, took his lunch and said he’d see her at five. She’s very concerned.”

  “Santa have a girl friend?”

  Vince laughed nervously.”Some Santas, maybe. But this one’s Willard Chase.”

  “Wil…our Willard Chase?”

  “Yup. Mr. Flashlight himself.”

  Vince and I have called him that since we were young recruits and he was one of the paradigms we were told to imitate, a middle-aged cop well past amateurish mistakes. He was the designated backup one bright June day when we answered a call to a gritty four-plex, where an elderly woman stood on the porch, shaking with fear, telling us devils had invaded her cellar.Trying to quiet her fears, Vince went inside while I walked around the outside of the house. I was looking at a broken cellar window near the rear of the building when Willard walked up behind me and said, “Where’s your flashlight?”

  “Oh…in the car,” I said.

  “Not doing you a whole lot of good there, is it?” he said. He pulled his big Streamlight out of its belt sling, stuck it through the broken window and switched it on. The darkness below was suddenly filled with glowing eyes. Just then Vince, having groped his way through the dim parlor and kitchen of the creaking house, opened the rickety cellar door and reached for a light switch, as two feral cats, howling bloody murder, streaked up the unlit stairs and scared him silly.

  We crammed a board in the broken window, put the landlord on report for several counts of substandard housing, and found a neighbor to sit with the unnerved widow till she calmed down. Then Willard Chase invited us to a coffee break and gave us his Famous Flashlight Lecture.

  “Always, always,” he said, “keep your flashlight with you, even on bright, sunny days, because you never know when you’ll end up in some dingy, unlit basement, looking for a suspect or a victim. Or a cat,” he added, “which you would look very dumb if you shot by mistake and terrified the whole neighborhood.” We twisted in our seats and smiled sheepishly. “Always carry your flashlight in your non-shooting hand, even in the most benign-appearing situations, because if something suddenly goes to hell, you won’t get to call time-out to switch hands.”

  We thanked him and drove away in our own squad, sharing a defensive laugh at this geezer cop who thought the whole secret of good police work was hanging onto your flashlight, for God’s sake. But I never got out of my squad without my Streamlight again, and his advice about which hand to carry it in saved my life once, when I followed a whimpering noise up a darkened stairwell and an abusing husband came out of the dark swinging a pipe wrench.

  “Ol’ Willard’s in the Salvation Army now?” I asked Vince.

  “He just does this one volunteer job at Christmas since he retired, his wife said.”

  “How’d this Captain Lyman find out he was gone?”

  “Says he was out checking on his volunteers like always. Found the bucket and bell here, but no Santa. Looked all around the Mall for him and then called us. Ordinarily I’d say wait a while, Jake, but you know yourself, Willard wouldn’t wander off. Says he’ll do a job, he’s gonna do it.”

  “I know. I’ll get Ray to send out a couple of guys.”

  Ray Bailey, normally unflappable, abandoned the report he was typing in mid-sentence. “Vince is right, Willard doesn’t mess around. We gotta find him.” He called Darrell and Rosie, his two youngest and liveliest detectives.

  “Great Scott, Holmes,” Darrell said, “a Santa caper.”

  “We haven’t had one of those in some time, have we, Watson?”

  “Willard Chase missing is no joke,” Ray said, “you hear me?He was one of the best street cops we ever had in this department. So get your butts out there, look every possible place, call me as soon as you’ve made a sweep.” He followed them into the hall and called after their retreating backs, “Willard Chase would not be missing without a good reason! Find him!”

  They got plenty of help, they told Ray, half an hour later. “The manager of this mall knows him, everybody knows him, they all want to help,” Rosie said. “But we’ve looked in all the dressing rooms, Ray, and behind the counters, and I even did a stall-by-stall search of the ladies’ rooms. But we sure haven’t found him.”

  He told them to start looking in cars in the parking lot. Then he came to see me. “The rest of my crew’s calling hospitals, doctors’ offices…you think of anything else?”

  “I don’t like this.” I stood, because it felt wrong to be sitting. “We should have found him by now.”

  “I know,” Ray said. “His wife is at the mall now. I think I’ll run out there myself.”

  “I’ll come with you.”Ray and I are administrators, we don’t really belong on the street. But this was Willard.

  Ray rolled a department car up the ramp and edged into the icy, crowded street. Snow was falling faster, now; we could barely see the stoplight two blocks ahead.”There’s the salt spreader out again,” Ray said. “Every vehicle in this town is gonna need a new paint job by spring.”

  “We gotta live through the winter first,” I said, watching the fishtailing car in front of us. “They’re forecasting this snow to last all day and into tonight, you hear that?”

  “Where’s global warming when you need it?” Ray said.

  Two

  Willard’s wife Elvira stood just inside the center doors of the mall, talking to Commander Lyman, who wore a red-banded hat and dark blue coat with epaulets.

  “…So I’m not alarmed but I am concerned,” he was saying, “because it’s not like Willard—” Elvira nodded emphatically and began citing examples of the rock-solid reliability of her husband. We interrupted to say hello, and assure them the department was working the problem.

  “Oh, we know you are,” Elvira said. “We’ve been talking to your other detectives.”

  A round, ruddy man with a handlebar mustache walked up to her and said, “Any news?”

  “Not yet. Jake and Ray, do you know Mr. Lovejoy? Blair, is it?”

  “Blaine,” he said, shaking hands. He had a crinkly sort of fond-uncle smile, and his clothes suited the rest of him, baggy gray flannels and a tweed jacket.

  “He’s the manager of the mall,” Elvira said, “and he’s been so kind—”

  “We’re anxious to help,” he said. “Anything I can do—”

  “Good, we’ll be in touch.” I asked Mrs. Chase, “When our detectives come back in here, will you tell them we’re going to split the mall between us and cruise it again? We’ll start from the central display there.”

  An immense Christmas tree dominated the two-story atrium space, its branches covered in glittering ersatz snow. It was hung with hundreds of lights and ornaments, festooned with miles of ribbon and tinsel ropes, and topped with a lighted crystal star the size of a beach ball. Around its base, a shiny black engine pulled a toy train full of toys up a fake snowy slope and down the other side.Atop the slope was a workshop where an automated Santa figure stood in a doorway with a carpenter’s apron over his red suit. As each car passed him, he bent to inspect its load of toys. On the sides of the slope, his elves worked hard at little workbenches, using hammers and saws, paintbrushes and looms, ostensibly creating the toys that were piled in the boxcars and heaped under the tree. All the figures performed a series of animated moves, sequenced in a complex choreography, like some vast, berserk cuckoo clock. Christmas carols blared from several speakers; and colored spotlights played over the entire panorama.

  A few yards away, the double entrance doors of Davidson’s department store opened as we watched, to reveal another Santa, a live one, seated on a huge ornamental chair like a throne. The mothers and children surged forward, making a kind of herd noise. Just inside the door, they were captured in a posh corral formed by red velvet ropes, which opened at the far end into an aisle that formed them into a single line moving toward Santa. The rest of the crowd in the atrium space began to shape itself into a long, jostling line waiting to get in.

 

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