CRIMINAL CHRISTMAS: A Set of 8 Holiday Suspense Stories, page 21
“Yup, uneventful.” He and Carrie had a good relationship now that they weren’t married. “So much snow this year.”
She nodded. “The kids love it.” She set her coffee on the stairs and picked up Harley who’d begun to fuss. “Pops looks good, don’t you think?”
“He does, although he went to bed with a belly ache from eating too many cookies last night.” He smiled at Jade and called for his other daughter. “Come on Jaz. The Daddy bus is pulling out.” He smiled at Harley, a cute little baby with red curls like his mother, then opened the door to leave. “See you later, Carrie and Company.” That’s what he called his ex and her five children.
After dropping off the twins and Wyatt at their respective schools, he returned to Pops’ house to find the letter open on the kitchen table. No sign of Pops or Harry, the dog. Seeing the paper was lying face up, he leaned over and looked at it. The page did not look like an invitation. He read the letter.
Pops:
Max and I feel like we’ve done everything we can to try to get you to turn off your house lights at night so they don’t shine in our windows. And now you’ve gone and put up a tree with a thousand lights, you say, and that is bothersome too. What we don’t understand is that you seem to be a nice neighbor but when we ask you to turn off the high wattage lights at night so we can get some sleep next door, you ignore our request.
If this continues, I’m afraid we are going to take legal action.
Max and Amy Overton
What the hell? This letter didn’t sound like the nice people who’d played Scrabble with them last night. Had they written it after they left here? Jamey went looking for Pops and found him in bed. It wasn’t like his father to go back to bed. “What’s going on Pops, you still not feeling well?”
“Just a little under the weather today, Kid. I might stay in bed for a bit.” His face looked grey and Jamey’s first instinct was to take his father to the emergency clinic.
“Should we pay a visit to Doc Sheridan?” He moved into the room to stand over his father’s bed.
“Nothing that bad. I’m just going to have a lazy day.” Pops patted his faithful dog. Me and Harry are going back to sleep and see if that helps.”
Jamey looked out the window at the yard. The snow had stopped falling for now, and the sky had broken up to include some blue on the horizon. What would Tina recommend he do for Pops? She was the voice of reason in a situation like this. Then, he remembered the letter. “This doesn’t have anything to do with that letter on the kitchen table does it?”
“No. I don’t think Max and Amy wrote that letter,” Pops said. “I don’t leave lights on overnight. I got another one of those about bringing in my garbage cans. I asked them if the cans bothered them, why didn’t they just tell me? They said they didn’t write the letter. I’ve been getting prank phone calls too.” He tried to smile at Jamey, but failed. “Don’t worry. It’s just kids. When I asked Max, he said he hasn’t got a clue who’s behind it, but it’s not them.”
“Phone calls too?”
“Just hang ups and then there was one where the caller said he was watching me. It’s just teenagers.”
Jamey hated to hear of anyone trying to frighten his father. Pops looked so tired lying in bed, Jamey said they could talk later. “Go back to sleep you lazy guys.” He exited the room, leaving the door open, and vowed if his dad didn’t feel better by this afternoon, they were heading to the doctor.
His coat hung on the banister. He put it on and was out the door before he realized what he was doing. Trudging through the snow down the road, Jamey found himself at Max and Amy’s house, standing right under where they must’ve found Mrs. Clancy’s body so long ago. He pushed on the door bell, rehearsing what he’d say to them. Why would you send a snarky note to my father about his lights? What’s the matter with you people?
But no one answered the door. He rang the bell three more times. A truck was in the driveway. The garage door was open and looked empty.
By now the sun had come out and was beginning to melt the snow on the road. When Jamey arrived back at the house, he read the letter again, wondering whose handwriting that was. It was risky or stupid to pen a threatening note. Sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop, he made a plan on how to prepare Pops house for fighting an enormous fire, a plan that started with a smoke detector in his father’s bedroom.
Next, he tried to find an electrician to come out and inspect the place but no one was available until after Christmas. “Can’t you find an hour or two before then?’ he kept asking. But no one had the time.
Everyone he called reminded him it was the holidays. One guy said he could come after Christmas, “when things die down.”
The word “die” wasn’t lost on Jamey, but he couldn’t very well tell the inspector that the house would be burned to the ground by then.
Chapter 3
Jade jumped in the car first. “Hi Dad. I’m riding shotgun!” She leaned over to kiss his offered cheek.
“Hi Squirt. Where’s your sister?”
“Coming. She’s asking her teacher for a makeup test.”
Jamey faked a frown. “Hey, I don’t want you girls wearing makeup yet.”
Jade grimaced. “Ha ha. Not funny. Are we getting Pops’ tree today?”
After spending the day trying to fireproof the house, Jamey had considered foregoing the tree this year. “I was thinking we might get a fake one.”
“Double ha ha. Here comes Jaz. Let’s get one with lots of branches.”
So much for that idea. “We’ll get a fresh-cut over at Remlinger Farm. How’s that sound?” A fresh tree wouldn’t be a fire hazard as long as they kept watering it.
Carrying the eight foot tree up the front steps of Pops house involved a lot of giggles from his daughters who prided themselves on their strength and had insisted their father stand back to watch. Once the monster was leaning against the house near the front door, the three went inside to set up the tree stand in Pops high-ceilinged front room.
Every year, his father put a tree in the bay window, and this year would be no different. Last year, Jamey and Tina had missed out on the festivities with Kai’s birth so close and Jamey was determined his possible proph dream wouldn’t ruin the holidays for everyone. He had to stay sharp and tune in to gut feelings even though he wasn’t getting much in the intuition department since arriving in Carnation. The first letter, supposedly from the neighbors, had gone in the trash. Pops said it asked him to bring his garbage cans in after garbage pickup, not leave them out by the road for an extra day. It was troubling that someone was pretending to be Max and Amy with complaints about Pops. His father insisted it couldn’t be his favorite new neighbors but Jamey hadn’t completely ruled them out yet.
After setting up the tree stand, and finding the other tubs of decorations, Jamey and the girls went out to the front porch to get the tree, but it wasn’t there. They looked at each other and laughed.
“Didn’t we just put a huge tree right there?” Jade said.
“Maybe the wind blew it somewhere,” Jaz said looking over the side of the porch.
There was no wind today and the tree wasn’t anywhere in sight. Jamey noticed drag marks and needles heading down the stairs, and along the sidewalk to the driveway. They stopped where someone might park their car. They went back in the house to think about what to do. Who would take a Christmas tree? And how could he explain that someone drove up and stole their tree? Pops was on the back deck throwing snowballs for Harry to fetch. Jamey decided he’d drive over to the farm across the Tolt River bridge and just get another tree.
Jamey stuck his head outside. “Someone took our Christmas tree. We set it by the front door. See or hear anyone out here?”
Pops turned around. “Well that’s a head scratcher.”
Jasmine stood behind her father. “Dad. Maybe we should call the police.”
Pops threw another snowball and Harry took off after it. “I can’t believe you lost our tree already, Jaz.”
Just then, Jamey felt relieved. The look on Pops’ face said his prankster father had been up to his old tricks.
Jaz shouted from behind her father. “Pops. You stole our tree? Where is it?”
“Gotta go on a tree hunt to find it,” Pops said with a twinkle in his eye.
This was pure Pops, always joking with the kids. Jamey might not have had a mother’s touch growing up, but he had a father that organized scavenger hunts, put wrapped coins in birthday cakes, and let his kids take a day off school when fishing called.
The girls found the tree in five minutes, lying behind the front lawn Christmas tree with a note saying,
Are you my Mommy? Signed, the little tree
The twins laughed and carried the fir up the stairs and in the house to decorate it before they lost it again. They spent the first ten minutes of decorating talking about payback for their grandfather and Jamey knew they’d get Pops back for his prank.
Just as they’d carefully strung all the lights and plugged them in, the doorbell sounded.
“I’ll get it,” Jamey said. “You two keep going.” He opened the door to Amy who stood on the Welcome mat smiling. No cookies.
“Hi Jamey. Is your Dad home?” She stepped in before asked.
“He is.” He shut the door behind her.
Pops came around the corner with Harry following. “Well now, there is a sight for sore eyes,” he joked. “And did you notice she came to see me without her husband?” Pops nudged Jamey.
She hugged Pops and gave him a kiss on his cheek. “Hello. I brought you a special cookie I made just for you.” From her pocket, she pulled out a small bag and looked apologetically at the girls in the other room. “Hello, Girls. Sorry-- just a cookie for your Grandpa.”
Pops took the box and joked that the twins were already too sweet and Jamey needed to lose a few pounds since his wife had learned to cook.
“Oh, you’re married?” Amy said, her head tilting. “For some reason I thought you were divorced.”
In the span of a half second, Jamey got a strange feeling. “Remarried.” He didn’t want to tell her anything more. Funny thing was, Max said he’d never heard of Jamey, but Amy knew he’d been divorced. It was probably nothing.
Come in, Kiddo,” Pops said, to Amy, motioning to the kitchen. “We can have a cup of tea while these three do all my work.” Pops seemed to want Amy all to himself and if Jamey wasn’t mistaken, he’d have said his father was a bit smitten with the young woman next door.
The twins and Jamey finished the tree and admired their artistry from the couch as the fireplace crackled with a cedar log. Jamey had put the grate across to field any sparks flying out and burning the house to the ground. Every thought right now had that dream looming. The girls told Jamey what they hoped to do on their Christmas break, when Amy and Pops approached the front door.
Amy whispered something to Pops and they both laughed, like co-conspirators. He heard the words “wearing a path between houses,” and then she was gone. He had a strange feeling about that woman. She was almost flirting with his father, wasn’t she? Did he not trust Amy because he was worried about his father after the dream’s vision, or was it something else? Either way, he wondered if Amy had something up her sleeves besides flour and sugar. After the girls went to bed, he intended to ask his father more about the friendly neighbor. It was possible they wrote the notes, but claimed they didn’t to retain their friendship with Pops. That way Pops would still bring in his trash cans on time and turn out the Christmas lights.
But soon after Amy left, Pops claimed he was tired and mumbled something about going to bed, then halfway up the stairs, turned and said he’d been asked to dinner at Max and Amy’s house.
After settling the girls in their bedroom to watch a movie on their shared iPad, Jamey checked that all lights were extinguished, including the front yard tree and any outside lights, and made a mental note to inspect the smoke detectors tomorrow as well as buy motion detector lights for the front and back doors.
He hated to be so paranoid in this lovely little hometown of Carnation, but someone wrote Pops at least two strange letters claiming to be the neighbors, and someone had left messages on Pops’ phone. He wasn’t going to take any chances.
****
When Jamey woke, he remembered dreaming with Tina about a white sand beach, a curtained cabana, and having slow, sultry sex inside that enclosure as the wind threatened to blow open the curtain panels. With certainty, he knew that his real wife had shared the dream. She’d made a crack that if they couldn’t be in the same state, at least they could be in the same dream. “Chocolate chip cookies go better…”
“With milk,” she’d said, their way of checking each other’s real presence in a dream.
They’d been lying in the cabana bed afterwards, when the wind woke Jamey. He opened his eyes. Downstairs, a shutter banged against the house. Another addition to his chore list for the day. He was still hoping to take the girls to the toboggan hill if he got the motion detector lights installed without too much trouble. Safety was first.
Hours later, he rolled out of bed and looked outside his front window. In just enough predawn light to see shadows, he noticed the yard tree was leaning at a fort-five degree angle, ready to fall over. Had it been that windy last night? Close to the house he saw a few small twigs and thin branches on top of the snow but nothing like a full wind storm to bring a huge tree down. Pulling on his jeans and a thick black sweater, he rushed downstairs and stepped into his boots at the front door.
The yard tree was a twenty footer with full branches. Half-way fallen over, its roots were now exposed through the snow on the one side. Jamey stood with hands on his hips. All around the yard were upright trees of all sizes and shapes. Nothing else looked like it suffered the wind storm last night. How the hell would a tree like this come down? Bad root system? Didn’t look like it.
Touching the branches didn’t uncover any clues. The lack of feeling was almost like Jamey was plugged up in the psychic department. He walked around the tree and saw green needles in the snow, like something had upset the tree, something besides wind. Jamey investigated the center of the trunk and noticed a scraped area, like a rope had been pulling it. At the driveway, Jamey shone a flashlight on the pavement and noticed truck prints that might have been fresh. It was hard to tell with the new snow. Had someone pulled their tree over last night with a rope and truck? The angle of the tree suggested that. Maybe it was the same kids who left the letters and phone calls. He’d ask Pops if he’d pissed off someone lately, owed anyone money.
Jamey rushed inside, stepped from his boots and went to the kitchen phone thinking he would call the police, get this on record as vandalism. But, there was a message blinking on the old recorder. He pressed play.
“Watching you.” The voice sounded robotic, clipped. “Sorry about the tree. Watching you,” it said repeatedly. Someone was using a voice changer to disguise their identity. Chicken shit. Now he was mad. Who would do this? Although the road out front wasn’t a regular route in Carnation, anyone who lived along the road drove it on a regular basis all day long. He’d hold off on the cops for now, see how the day shaped up. He wanted to get the tree upright, before the girls saw it or they’d be worried. He didn’t want anything to spoil his Christmas with his daughters this year. Last year, he hadn’t even seen them during the holidays.
Today, he’d go to the hardware store and add video cameras to his list. It might be prudent to set a camera in the branches of the tree as well as the front and back doors. On his way home from the store, he’d pay a visit to the local police to get this vandalism on record. This shit had gone far enough.
When Pops came downstairs, Jamey had already used the truck to push the tree back to a standing position. He’d set two stakes to keep it upright and was back in the house pouring coffee, hoping the stakes would hold. “You sleep in again?” he teased his dad.
“Needed a bit more beauty sleep,” Pops chuckled and reached for the coffee pot.
Was his father still trying to shake that virus? He looked better this morning, but not back to his usual self. Last night, Jamey had felt a little off too but figured part of that was worry. “What’s on your agenda today?” Jamey asked as he put two slices of bread into the toaster.
Pops put two sugars in his tea and crossed to open the back door for his dog. Harry bolted after a squirrel in the backyard, chasing the chattering animal up a tree.
“I’m going to make some chili to have on hand for when Tina gets here in a few days. That gal adores my cooking, remember?”
Jamey did remember. She loved everything about his father. “Sure do.”
“And, I think I’ll take some over to Amy.”
That explained why Pops was making chili almost five days before Tina arrived. It was for Amy. “That’s a nice, neighborly thing to do.”
Pops shot him a look to tell him to be quiet.
Teasing Pops about Amy didn’t sit right for some reason, even though Jamey had always teased his father about the attention he got from the women in the community. Ever since Jamey could remember, his dad got along well with the ladies. Tina had said Pops was “politely charming and just needy enough for women to be attracted to him like bears to honey. Women flock to Pops knowing he needs feminine attention,” she’d explained. In his adult life, Jamey often wondered why his father never took on a lady friend. Then recently, over thirty-six years since his wife walked out on four small children and a husband without warning, Pops started playing cards with Tina’s mother, Elizabeth. It was something, at least.
Jamey sipped his coffee at the table, thinking about how to protect his father from the fire without giving himself away. “I’ve got some errands to run this morning, so I’ll either take the girls with me or leave them here.”
“Oh, leave them here. They can find something to do that involves cooking, or crafting. Or I might let them beat me at cards if we can’t think of a craft,” he smirked. “Lately I’ve learned to make a mirror frame from tiles, decoupage a bird house, and string beads for friendship bracelets.”
