Purrfect Santa Page 4

  “We’re not even a couple!” I cried.

  “We’re not?” asked Chase, confused. “I thought we were.”

  I glanced up at him. “We are?”

  “Of course we are. You’re my girlfriend. I’m your boyfriend. We’re a couple.”

  “Well, if you put it that way…”

  “Can you just go away?” asked Sally. “You make me sick, the both of you.”

  “It’s just that, we go on dates, and we kiss and stuff, but you never said anything about us being a couple,” I told Chase, ignoring Sally.

  “I thought that was a given,” said Chase. “Since we do go out on dates, and we do kiss a lot. And that’s exactly what couples do, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Get out of here!” Sally cried. “Go back to Hampton Cove to date and kiss!”

  “I think we’ll do just that,” I said, lifting my chin.

  “But first we have to find my grandfather,” said Chase.

  “And my Santa,” I added.

  “Right.”

  “Out of my sight!” Sally yelled. “Get out.”

  So that’s what we did. Stared after by the entire precinct. Then, as we walked out the door, they all cheered. Looks like they didn’t agree with Sally, and did not consider me spume. Besides, spume wasn’t always dirty. Spume could be nice and fluffy and pink, just like me. Maybe I was going to adopt this name and wear it proudly from now on. Odelia ‘Spume’ Poole. It had a nice ring to it. Or Odelia ‘Spume’ Kingsley. An even nicer ring.

  Chapter 9

  After some calling around, I finally managed to find out the name of a former manager at Thornton Fifth Avenue. If anyone knew the identity of Hampton Cove’s new Santa, it would be him. We caught up with the guy at Fun ’n Frolic, a modest toy store located on Amsterdam Avenue. Just like at Thornton’s, a Santa sat entertaining a bunch of kids. But the setup was a lot less exuberant than at Thornton’s, and Santa looked like an out-of-work actor making a dime, which he probably was.

  Orrick McCastle was a man in his late sixties, with short, curly white hair, a small white mustache, and reverent bearing. In a previous life, he must have been a priest, for he carried himself like one and spoke in the same hushed tones. “Greetings,” he said when we approached him. “How may I be of assistance?” He was keeping an eye on a gaggle of kids messing around the ball pit.

  “We’re actually looking for the new Hampton Cove Santa,” I announced, deciding to skip the usual preliminaries and get to the heart of the matter straightaway.

  “Ah,” he said, studying me closely. “I’m afraid there I cannot help you. You see, I’m not familiar with that particular brand. If you seek the new Fisher-Price Santa, or the new Lego Santa, I’m more than happy to help, but the new Hampton Cove Santa? He will always remain a mystery to me.”

  “Hampton Cove is not a brand,” I said.

  “Which might explain why it is unfamiliar to me.”

  “It’s a town located between Hampton Bays and Happy Bays, on Long Island’s South Fork.”

  His eyebrows rose precipitously. “A town. And you’re looking for its Santa?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Once again, I must bow out respectfully. You see, I am not in the business of providing Santas, at least not the human kind. If it is a toy Santa you seek, let me guide you to our toy Santa section. As you can imagine, we have a large offering, especially at this time of year.”

  “No, you don’t understand.”

  “I don’t?”

  “You see, the Santa I’m looking for used to work at Thornton Fifth Avenue. He was fired from that store and hired by the Hampton Cove council. I work for the Hampton Cove Gazette and my editor wants me to do a piece on this new Santa, but the council is adamant to keep him under wraps until the official Christmas Eve Celebration.”

  “And you, being the intrepid reporter, cannot wait that long. I now see all.” He placed a thoughtful finger to his lips, a frown marring his noble brow. “It is true that I used to be employed by Thornton Fifth Avenue until very recently, when I was summarily dismissed, my services no longer required. And it is also true that for many years, we employed the same man as our store Santa.”

  “But…”

  “Thornton Fifth Avenue is a rather large establishment, with a vast staff of people.”

  My shoulders slumped a little. “You don’t remember the name of your Santa?”

  “Well, I remember his first name. You see, I pride myself on being on a first-name basis with all of my people, even the seasonal ones like Santa. His name was Kris—or at least that’s the name he provided—it’s not inconceivable he used an alias, as he was a humble and very private individual.”

  “Kris?” I asked dubiously. “As in Kris Kringle?”

  “Which is exactly why I have my doubts as to the veracity of the name of this individual.”

  “Why was this Kris fired, exactly?”

  “The same reason I was fired, my dear young lady. Age. The Thornton family, in all its wisdom, decided I was too old to function in a managerial role, a position I held for forty years, and deemed it necessary to replace me with a younger specimen, straight out of business school, and loaded up with all the exciting new wisdom his expensive education no doubt has instilled in him. To give you but one example of this wisdom he immediately replaced the old Santa with a new Santa, because that is what you do when you’re young and dynamic: out with the old and in with the new.”

  “You sound a little…”

  “Bitter? Oh, not at all. In fact I’m very grateful that Jurgen—that’s the new manager’s name—Jurgen Winklevoss—was chosen to replace me. I’m sure that for the next forty years he’ll succeed in running into the ground the very establishment it took me forty years to put on the map.” He gave me a radiant smile. “Now if I might make a suggestion as to your Hampton Cove Santa—be happy.”

  “Be happy?”

  “Yes, be very happy, for your village—”

  “Town. We’re actually an actual town.”

  “Even better! Your town has just acquired the very best Santa New York has to offer, even if he is a little long in the tooth, at least according to Jurgen Winklevoss. Our loss is your gain, Miss…”

  “Poole. Odelia Poole. And this is Detective Chase Kingsley.”

  “Oh, you have employed an actual detective to track down Santa, eh? Leave no stone unturned and all that. Well done, Miss Poole. Bully for you. I’m sure you’ll find your Santa, and when you do, give him my warmest regards.” The Santa that was gracing his own store had just allowed his beard to be ripped off by a little girl and Mr. McCastle regarded him disdainfully. “At any rate Kris was a much better Santa than this pimpled teenager whose face has never even seen a razor blade. Mike, put that beard back on this instant! Put. The. Beard. Back. On. Right now!”

  We decided to leave Mr. McCastle to his work. He looked like he was a pretty busy man. And as we left, he was just trying to restore Santa’s beard with sticky tape, drawing shocked stares from a dozen boys and girls and their parents. They were going to have a lot of explaining to do.

  Chapter 10

  Chase decided to pay a quick visit to his mother, in case his grandfather might have dropped by. Not that he was likely to, as Martha was not his daughter. Still, they’d always shared a great connection, even after Chase’s dad died, so maybe he’d turned to her for help in his hour of need.

  “So you really think your grandfather is in trouble, huh?” I asked as we walked from the car to the brownstone where his mom lived with her sister.

  “There’s no other explanation for all this secrecy. The only reason he wouldn’t confide in me would be that he’s in some kind of deep hole he feels ashamed to tell me about.”

  “But what could it be? Drugs? Alcohol? Gambling debts? What?”

  “I have no idea. As far as I know Grandpa was always one for clean living, and tried to steer clear of any kind of vice. Though apparently he was no
t above selling cigars to his neighbors.”

  “Not exactly a great crime.”

  “No, but what if that’s only part of the story? What if he got involved with some shady characters? Maybe as a way to supplement his pension? I just wish he’d told me. I could have helped.”

  I placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not your fault. Your grandfather is a grown man. He knows how to take care of himself.”

  “Or not.”

  He rang the bell and moments later we were ensconced in the cozy kitchen of a small apartment that housed Chase’s mom and her sister. Aunt Ariadne was a forceful and voluble woman, apparently quite the opposite of Martha Kingsley. Chase had warned me his mom wasn’t exactly the life and soul of the party. After Chase’s dad died, she’d had a mental breakdown, and now lived with Ariadne, who was also a widow, though her husband hadn’t been a cop but an MTA security guard. And instead of dying from a gunshot wound, like Chase’s dad, he’d died of a coronary after a lifelong habit of enjoying all the best Kentucky Fried Chicken had to offer.

  “So you finally come to see us, huh?” asked Ariadne, chopping an innocent onion on the chopping block with so much violence I was sure she was going to cut straight through the block.

  “I told you, Aunt Ariadne. I’ve been busy.”

  “So you say,” she snapped. “So busy you can’t even visit your own mother. Huh!”

  I decided that maybe I should intervene on Chase’s behalf. “It’s true, Aunt Ariadne. Chase has been very busy. Lots of criminals to catch and all that.”

  “Huh! Criminals in The Hamptons! Everybody knows they don’t have real criminals in The Hamptons! Only a bunch of teenagers crashing cars on Friday night.”

  “Well, we do have our fair amount of murders.”

  “Murders! A bunch of rich people killing other rich people is not what I call murder.”

  “What would you call it then?” asked Chase, giving me a cheery wink.

  “Good riddance! I hope they all murder each other! Every last one of them! The world would be a much better place without all those horrible excuses for human beings! Leeches, the lot of ‘em!”

  It was pretty clear to me that, like Sally Borrell, Aunt Ariadne wasn’t big on celebrities. I couldn’t blame her. After living in Hampton Cove all my life, and meeting my fair share of them, I could honestly say a lot of them were indeed horrible human beings. But to say that they deserved to be murdered was a little extreme. Nobody deserved to be murdered, though when Ariadne attacked a sweet little carrot with the same fervor she’d destroyed that onion, I decided wisely to keep my mouth shut this time. I did not want to provoke a woman who could handle a knife like that.

  “So how’s Mom?” asked Chase.

  “Ask her yourself! She’s in her room!”

  Drawn by all the shouting, a woman appeared in the doorframe. She shuffled in, all one hundred pounds of her. Chase warmly enveloped her in an embrace. “Hey, Mom,” he said softly.

  “Chase,” she said croakily. “It’s so good to see you.”

  She was smaller than me, which was saying something as I’m pretty pint-sized myself, and she looked even thinner than me, too. About the size of the average New York catwalk model, I would say. She had a lovely face, short gray hair, and large eyes. All in all, she looked healthy. Not the human wreck Chase had made her out to be. And she seemed to recognize her son just fine, even calling him by his actual name. None of that ‘Johnny the Milkman’ stuff this time.

  The woman turned to me. “And who is this? A colleague of yours?”

  “Yes, she is, and also my girlfriend.”

  The woman’s large eyes went even larger. “Your girlfriend!”

  “You didn’t tell us you had a girlfriend!” Aunt Ariadne harrumphed.

  “Well, I do, and this is her. Odelia Poole. She’s a reporter.”

  “A reporter!” Aunt Ariadne bellowed, as if I was Satan’s spawn itself.

  “And a civilian consultant to the police department,” I hastened to add, hoping this would guarantee me safe passage from this apartment, in the event Aunt Ariadne didn’t kill me on the spot.

  Both women studied me carefully. “She’s skinny,” Aunt Ariadne finally decided.

  “She’s lovely,” said Chase’s mother.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Kingsley,” I said.

  “So where did you find her? asked Ariadne.

  “Hampton Cove,” I said. “It’s where I live. And work.”

  Aunt Ariadne snorted loudly. “The Hamptons again, eh? Are you a celebrity?”

  “No, I’m not,” I admitted. “And I haven’t murdered one either.”

  “Too bad. Everyone should murder a celebrity from time to time. Make a habit of it.”

  “Odelia has actually solved a lot of celebrity murders,” said Chase. “She’s an ace sleuth.”

  “Is she now?” asked Aunt Ariadne, giving me a dirty scowl. “Now why would you go and do a silly thing like that?”

  “Because celebrities are just like people,” I said defensively, repeating something I’d told Detective Borrell. “I mean, celebrities are people, obviously, and when they’re murdered they deserve to receive the same justice as the rest of us.”

  “Silly notion, if you ask me. Damn silly.”

  “Oh, come off it, Ariadne,” said Martha. “I think it’s wonderful. Chase has found himself a fellow sleuth to go sleuthing with. I think it’s wonderfully romantic.”

  “Sleuthing together? Romantic? You’re nuts, Martha.”

  “No, I’m not. You’re nuts if you think all celebrities are scum.”

  “They are scum! A bunch of useless wastrels, the lot of them. Wasting our time, wasting our money, wasting our humanity.” She wagged a finger in my face. “Next time a celebrity is murdered, you should give the killer the Nobel Prize, that’s what you should do!”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s not in my power to dole out Nobel Prizes,” I said, feeling a little overwhelmed by this woman. I kept my eye on that huge knife, hoping I’d said the right thing.

  “’Stop scaring the girl,” said Martha. “Is this really the first impression you want to make on your future niece-in-law?”

  “Niece-in-law?” asked Ariadne with a frown. “Are you going to marry this stick figure?”

  “She’s not a stick figure,” Martha protested. “She’s simply slim, that’s all. Just like me.”

  “And haven’t I told you a thousand times you have to eat more?!”

  “You have, and I do, but I’m not like you. I don’t gain weight when I look at a glass of water.”

  “Oh, now you’re calling me fat, are you? Nice! I put a roof over your head, sister!”

  Chase had sidled up to me. “Are you all right? Aunt Ariadne can be a bit… forceful.”

  “Scary, you mean.”

  He grinned. “She used to scare the crap out of me when I was little. Still does, actually.”

  We both watched the woman wield that knife as if she was going to carve up Martha. Finally, she placed it down and continued the argument unarmed, and we both heaved a sigh of relief.

  “Um, can I ask you something?” asked Chase.

  “What?” grumbled Ariadne, who’d turned to her pots that were simmering on the stove.

  “Have you heard from Grandpa Kingsley lately?”

  “No, we haven’t,” said Martha. “Why? Is there something wrong?”

  Chase frowned. “No, I’m sure there isn’t,” he said, clearly not wanting to cause alarm. “He hasn’t returned my calls is all. And when I went to see him this morning he wasn’t home.”

  “I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation,” said Martha.

  “He’s probably drunk like a skunk and sleeping it off on some bench in Central Park,” said Aunt Ariadne, wiping her hands on her apron. “Typical.”

  “Grandpa doesn’t do public intoxication,” said Chase. “So that’s out of the question.”

  “I’m sure he’ll turn up soon,” said his mother. “He’s
just being secretive. You know your grandfather. He likes to surprise people.”

  “I would prefer if he’d just pick up his phone.”

  “Can’t pick up the phone when you’re strung out on booze,” said Aunt Ariadne gruffly.

  “He’s not a drunk,” Chase insisted. “In fact I’m pretty sure he’s a teetotaler these days.”

  “Have you found yourself a nice place to live yet, Chase?” asked his mother.

  “Not yet, Mom, but I keep looking and I’ll find something.”

  She nodded, darting an anxious glance at Aunt Ariadne. I remembered Chase telling me how he wanted to take care of his mother but wasn’t in a position to do so. For a brief moment I suddenly saw all of us living in my tiny house: me, Chase, his mom, Aunt Ariadne, and my cats. I shivered. It was not a prospect I enjoyed contemplating.

  I looked up when Aunt Ariadne plunked a plate of hash browns in front of my nose, stabbed a finger at it, and snapped, “Eat! Put some fat on those skinny bones of yours.”

  It was a testament to the force of her personality that I obediently said, “Yes, ma’am,” and dug in.

  Chase was shaking with laughter, until his aunt slammed a plate in front of him as well, and grunted, “Eat! I don’t like the sight of you, either. You’ve lost weight.”

  “No, I haven’t,” said Chase.

  “Yes, you have,” she said, and grabbed his face with one hand, digging her fingers into his cheeks and puffing up his lips. “Right here. These lines weren’t there last time you came to visit.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Chase mumbled.

  Aunt Ariadne let go of Chase’s face and turned a kindling eye on me. “You have to feed him. Fatten him up.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I repeated.

  She grunted with approval, and for the next half hour or so, watched us both eat, while Martha regaled us with an extensive report of everything that had happened to her in the last two weeks, which wasn’t all that interesting or entertaining. But at least we were going to escape this place with our lives. I mean, Aunt Ariadne wasn’t going to feed us only to kill us off later, was she? And we had one thing going for us: neither of us was a celebrity. Thank God.