Murder Most Merry

SANTA’S WAY – James Powell

Lieutenant Field parked behind the Animal Protective League van. The night was cold, the stars so bright he could almost taste them. Warmer constellations of tree lights decorated the dark living rooms on both sides of the street. Field turned up his coat collar. Then he followed the footprints in the snow across the lawn and up to the front door of the house where a uniformed officer stood shuffling his feet against the weather.

Captain Fountain was on the telephone in the front hallway and listening so hard he didn’t notice Field come in. “Yes, Commissioner,” he said. “Yes, sir, Commissioner.” Then he laid a hand over the mouthpiece, looked up at a light fixture on the ceiling, and demanded, “Why me, Lord? Why me?” (The department took a dim view of men talking to themselves on duty. So Fountain always addressed furniture or fixtures. He confided much to urinals. They all knew how hard-done-by Fountain was.) Turning to repeat his question to the hatrack he saw Field. “Sorry to bring you out on this of all nights, Roy,” he said. He pointed into the living room and added cryptically, “Check out the fireplace, why don’t you?” Then he went back to listening.

Field crossed to the cold hearth. There were runs of blood down the sides of the flue. Large, red, star-shaped spatters decorated the ashes.

A woman’s muffled voice said, “I heard somebody coming down the chimney.” A blonde in her late thirties sitting in a wing chair in the corner, her face buried in a handkerchief. She looked up at Field with red-rimmed eyes. “After I called you people I even shouted up and told him you were on your way. But he kept on coming.”

Captain Fountain was off the telephone. From the doorway he said, “So Miss Doreen Moore here stuck her pistol up the flue and fired away.”

“Ka-pow, ka-pow, ka-pow,” said the woman, making her hand into a pistol and, in Field’s opinion, mimicking the recoil quite well. But he didn’t quite grasp the situation until men emerged from the darkness on the other side of the picture window and reached up to steady eight tiny reindeer being lowered down from the roof in a large sling.

“Oh, no!” said Field.

“Oh, yes,” said Fountain. “Come see for yourself.”

Field followed him upstairs to the third-floor attic where the grim-faced Animal Protective League people, their job done, were backing down the ladder from the trap door in the roof.

Field and Fountain stood out on the sloping shingles under the stars. Christmas music came from the radio in the dashboard of the pickle-dish sleigh straddling the ridge of the roof. Close at hand was Santa, both elbows on the lip of the chimney, his body below the armpits and most of his beard out of sight down the hole. He was quite dead. The apples in his cheeks were Granny Smiths, green and hard.

Only the week before Field had watched the PBS documentary “Santa’s Way.” Its final minutes were still fresh in his mind. Santa in an old tweed jacket sat at his desk at the Toy Works backed by a window that looked right down onto the factory floor busy with elves. Mrs. Claus, her eyes on her knitting, smiled and nodded at his words and rocked nearby. “Starting out all we could afford to leave was a candy cane and an orange,” Santa had said. “The elves made the candy canes and it was up to me to beg or borrow the oranges. Well, one day the United Fruit people said. ‘Old timer, you make it a Chiquita banana and we’ll supply them free and make a sizable donation to the elf scholarship fund.’ But commercializing Christmas wasn’t Santa’s way. So we made do with the orange. And look at us now.” He lowered his hairy white head modestly. “The Toy Works is running three shifts making sleds and dolls and your paint boxes with your yellows, blues, and reds. The new cargo dirigible lets us restock the sleigh in flight.” Santa gave the camera a sadder look. “Mind you, there’s a down side,” he acknowledged. “We’ve strip-mined and deforested the hell out of the North Pole for the sticks and lumps of coal we give our naughty little clients. And our bond rating isn’t as good as it used to be. Still, when the bankers say. ‘Why not charge a little something, a token payment for each toy?’ I always answer, ‘That isn’t Santa’s way.’ ”

An urgent voice from the sleigh radio intruded on Field’s remembering. “We interrupt this program for a news bulletin,” it said. “Santa is dead. We repeat. Santa is dead. The jolly old gentleman was shot several times in the chimney earlier this evening. More details when they are available.” At that late hour all good little boys and girls were in bed. Otherwise, Field knew, the announcer would’ve said. “Antasay is eadday,” and continued in pig Latin.

Field stood there glumly watching the street below where the A. P. L. people were chasing after a tiny reindeer which had escaped while being loaded into the van. Lights had come on all over the neighborhood and faces were appearing in windows. After a moment, he turned his attention to the corpse.

But Fountain was feeling the cold. “Roy,” he said impatiently, “Santa came down the wrong chimney. The woman panicked. Ka-pow, ka-pow, ka-pow! Cut and dried.”

Field shook his head. “Rooftops are like fingerprints,” he reminded the Captain. “No two are alike. Santa wouldn’t make a mistake like—” He frowned, leaned forward, and put his face close to the corpse’s.

“It wasn’t just the smell of whiskey on his lips, Miss Moore,” said Field. “You see, if Santa’d been going down the chimney his beard would’ve been pushed up over his face. But it was stuck down inside. Miss Moore, when you shot Santa he was on his way up that chimney.”

The woman twisted the handkerchief between her fingers. “All right,” she snapped. Then in a quieter voice she said, “All right, Nicky and I go back a long way. Right around here is end of the line for his Christmas deliveries. I’ll bet you didn’t know that.”

Field had guessed as much. Last year when his kids wondered why the treat they left on a tray under the tree was never touched he had suggested maybe Santa was milk-and-cookied out by the time he got to their house.

“Anyway,” continued Miss Moore, “Nicky’d always drop by afterwards for a drink and some laughs and one thing would lead to another. But I’m not talking one-night stands,” she insisted. “We took trips. We spent time together whenever he could get away. He said he loved Mrs. Claus but she was a saint. And I wasn’t a saint, he said, and he loved me for that. And I was crazy about him. But tonight he tried to walk out on me. So I shot him.”

In the distance Field heard the police helicopter come to take the sleigh on the roof to Impound.

Fountain said, “Better get Miss Moore down to the station before this place is crawling with reporters. I’ll wait for the boys with the flue-extractor rig.”

Field turned on his car radio to catch any late-breaking developments. “O Tannenbaum. O Tannenbaum, how beautiful your branches!” sang a small choir. They drove without speaking for a while. Then out of nowhere the woman said, “You know that business about Nicky having a belly that shook like a bowl full of jelly? Well, that was just the poet going for a cheap rhyme. Nicky took care of himself. He exercised. He jogged. And he had this twinkle in his eye that’d just knock my socks off.”

“I heard about the twinkle,” Field admitted.

“But underneath it all there was this deep sadness,” she said. “It wasn’t just the fund-raising, the making the rounds every year, hat in hand, for money to keep the North Pole going. And it wasn’t the elves, although they weren’t always that easy to deal with. ‘They can be real short, Doreen,’ he told me once. Hey, I know elves are short, Nicky. Give me credit for some brains,’ I said. He said, ‘No, Doreen, I mean abrupt.’

“One time I asked him why he got so low and he said, ‘Doreen, when I look all those politicians, bankers, lawyers, and captains of industry in the eye do you know who I see staring back at me? Those same naughty little boys and girls I gave the sticks and lumps of coal to. Where did I go wrong, Doreen? How did they end up running the show?’

“Well, a while back Nicky got this great idea how he could walk away from the whole business. Mr. Santa franchises. He’d auction the whole operation off country by country. Mr. Santa U. S. A. gets exclusive rights to give free toys to American kids and so on, country by country. And the elves’d take care of Mrs. Claus,’ he said. ‘They love her. She’s a saint. And with the money I’ll raise you and me’ll buy a boat and sail away. We’ll live off my patented Mr. Santa accessories. You know, my wide belt and the metered tape recorder of my laugh at a buck a ‘ho!’ ”

Suddenly a voice on the radio said, “We now take you to New York where Leviathan Cribbage, elf observer to the United Nations, is about to hold a press conference.” After the squeal of a microphone being adjusted downward a considerable distance, a high-pitched little voice said, “The High Council of Elves has asked me to issue the following statement: ‘Cast down as we are by the murder of our great leader, Santa Claus, we are prepared, as a memorial to the man and his work, to continue to manufacture and distribute toys on the night before Christmas. In return we ask that our leader’s murderer, whom we know to be in police custody, be turned over to elf justice. If the murderer is not in our hands within twenty-four hours the Toy Works at the North Pole will be shut down permanently.’ ” The room erupted into a hubbub of voices.

“Turn me over to elf justice?” said Miss Moore with a shudder. “That doesn’t sound so hot.”

“It won’t happen.” Field assured her as he parked the car. “Even a politician couldn’t get away with a stunt like that.”

Four detectives were crowded around the squad room television set. Field took Miss Moore into his office. Gesturing her into a chair, he sat down at his desk and said, “Now where were we?”

“With a buck a ho! and me waiting there tonight with my bags packed,” she said. “And here comes Nicky down the chimney. ‘Doreen,’ he says. ‘I’ve only got a minute. I’ve still deliveries to make. Honey, I told Mrs. Claus about us. She’s forgiven me. as I knew she would. But I can’t see you again.’

‘What about the Mr. Santa auction?’ said I.

‘Some auction,’ he said. ‘Everybody wanted America or Germany. Nobody wanted to be the Bangladeshi or the Ethiopian Mr. Santa. Crazy, isn’t it? Everybody wants to load up the kids who’ve already got everything when giving to kids with nothing is the real fun.’ Then he looked at me and said. ‘It got me thinking about where I went wrong, Doreen. Maybe I should have given my naughty little clients toys. too. Maybe then they wouldn’t have grown up into the kinds of people they did. Anyway. I’m going to give it a try. From now on. I’ll be Santa of all the children, naughty or nice. Good-bye, Doreen,’ he said and turned to go.

“That’s when I pulled out the revolver I keep around because I’m alone so much. I was tired of men who put their careers ahead of their women. I swore I’d kill him if he tried to leave. He went ‘ho-ho-ho!’ and took the gun out of my hand. He knew I couldn’t shoot. I burst into tears. He gathered me in his arms and gave me a good-bye kiss. Emptying the bullets onto the rug, he tossed the pistol aside and walked over to the fireplace. ‘You’re a nice girl, Doreen,’ he said with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Don’t let anybody ever tell you different.’ But just before he ducked his head under the mantel I saw the twinkle flicker.”

“Flicker?” asked Field.

“Like he was thinking maybe he’d figured me wrong,” she explained. “Like maybe I’d reload the gun. Well, up the chimney he went, hauling ass real fast. And suddenly, I was down on my knees pushing those bullets back into that pistol, furious that I’d wasted my whole life just to be there any time that old geezer in his red wool suit with that unfashionably wide belt could slip his collar and be with me, furious that he was dumping me just so he could give toys to naughty little boys and girls. I was trembling with rage. But every bullet I dropped I picked up again. When I’d gotten them all I went over and emptied the pistol up the chimney. Then I called you people.”

Field’s telephone rang. “Roy,” said his wife, “I just heard the news about Santa. Roy, there aren’t any presents under our tree. What are we going to do?”

“Lois, I can’t talk now,” said Field. “Don’t worry. I’ll think of something.” He hung up the phone. Maybe if he worked all night he could cobble together some toys out of that scrap lumber in the basement.

Fountain was signaling from the doorway. He had an efficient-looking young woman with him. Field stepped outside. “Roy, this is Agent Mountain, Federal Witness Protection Program.” he said. “I just got off the phone with the Commissioner. We’re not bringing charges.”

“Captain, we could be talking premeditated murder here,” insisted Field, telling the part about her putting the bullets back into the pistol.

Fountain shrugged. “You want a trial? You want all the nice little boys and girls finding out that Santa was murdered and why? No way, Roy. She walks. But we can’t let those damn knee-highs get her.”

“You mean elves?” asked Field, who had never heard elves referred to in that derogatory way before.

“You got it,” said Fountain. “So Agent Mountain’s here to relocate her, give her a whole new identity.

Agent Mountain waved through the door at Doreen Moore. “Hi. honey,” she

said cheerily. “It looks like it’s back to being a brunette.”

* * *

Field put on his overcoat and closed his office door behind him. He stopped for a moment in front of the squad room television set. Somebody from the State Department was saying, “Peter, let’s clear up one misconception right now. Elves are not short genetically. Their growth has been stunted by smoking and other acts of depravity associated with a perverse lifestyle. Can we let such twisted creatures hold our children’s happiness hostage? I think not. I refer the second part of your question to General Frost.”

A large man in white camouflage placed a plan of the Toy Works at the North Pole on an easel. “In case of a military strike against them, the elves intend to destroy the Toy Works with explosive charges set here, here, and here,” he said, tapping with a pointer. “As I speak, our airborne forces, combined with crack RCMP dogsled units, have moved to neutralize—”

Field’s phone was ringing. He hurried back to his office. “Hey, Lieutenant,” said Impound, “we found presents in Santa’s sleigh, some with your kids’ names on them. Want to come by and pick them up?

Field came in with the presents trapped between his chin and his forearm, closing the door quietly behind him. His wife was rattling around in the kitchen. He didn’t call out to her, not wanting to wake the children. The light from the kitchen would be enough to put the presents under the tree. He was halfway across the living room when the lights came on. His children were staring down at him from the top of the stairs. Zack and Lesley, the eldest, exchanged wise glances. Charlotte was seven. She’d lost her first baby tooth that afternoon and her astonished mouth had a gap in it.

Field smiled up at them. “Santa got held up in traffic,” he lied. “So he deputized a bunch of us as Santa’s little helpers to deliver his presents.” Charlotte received this flimsy nonsense with large, perplexed eyes. It was the first time he had ever told her anything she didn’t believe instantly.

Ordering the children back to bed, Field went into the kitchen. Lois was watching a round-table discussion called “Life After Santa” on the little television set. When he told her about the presents from Impound she said, “Thank God.” He didn’t tell her what had just happened with the kids. Maybe one of these days he’d be able to sit down and give them the straight scoop, how there really had been this nice guy called Santa Claus who went around in a sleigh pulled by reindeer giving kids presents because he loved them, so. of course, we had to shoot him.

He turned on the kettle to make himself a cup of instant coffee and sat down beside his wife. On the screen a celebrated economist was saying, “Of course, we’ll have to find an alternate energy source. Our entire industrial base has always depended on Santa’s sticks and lumps of coal.”

“But what a golden opportunity to end our kids’ dependence on free toys,” observed a former National Security advisor. “That’s always smelled like socialism to me. Kids have to learn there’s no free lunch. We should hand the Toy Works over to private enterprise. I hear Von Clausewitz Industries are interested in getting into toys.”

“What about distribution?” asked someone else.

“Maybe we could talk the department stores into selling toys for a week or two before Christmas.”

“Selling toys?” asked someone in disbelief.

The National Security advisor smiled. “We can hardly expect the Von Clausewitz people to pick up the tab. No, the toys’ll have to be sold. But the play of the marketplace will hold prices—”

Field heard a sound. Someone had raised an upstairs window. Footsteps headed down the hall toward the children’s rooms. He took the stairs two at a time, reaching the top with his service revolver drawn. Someone was standing in the dark corner by Charlotte s door. Crouching, pistol at the ready, Field snapped on the hall light. “Freeze!” he shouted.

The woman turned and gave him a questioning look. She had immense rose-gossamer wings of a swallow-tail cut sprouting from her shoulder-blades and a gown like white enamel shimmering with jewels. He didn’t recognize who it was behind the surgical mask until she tugged at the wrists of her latex gloves, took a shiny quarter from the coin dispenser at her waist and stepped into Charlotte’s room.

Field came out of his crouch slowly. Returning his weapon to its holster he went back down to the kitchen. He turned off the kettle, found the whiskey bottle in the cupboard and poured himself a drink with a trembling hand. “Lois,” he said, “I almost shot the Tooth Fairy.”

“Oh. Roy,” she scolded in a tired voice.

On the television screen someone said. “Of course, we’ll need a fund to provide toys for the children of the deserving poor.”

“Don’t you mean ‘the deserving children of the poor’?” someone asked.

“Deserving children of the deserving poor,“ suggested another.

Lois shook her head. “Store-bought toys. Roy?” she asked. “We’ve got mortgage payments, car payments, Lesley’s orthodontist, and saving for the kids’ college. How can we afford store-bought toys?”

It’d been a hard day. He didn’t want to talk about next year’s toys. “Lois, please—” he started to say a bit snappishly. But here the program broke for a commercial and a voice said, “Hey, Mom, hey, kids, is Dad getting a little short? (And we don’t mean abrupt). Why not send him along to see the folks at Tannenbaum Savings and Loan. All our offices have been tastefully decorated for the season. And there’s one near you. So remember—” here a choir chimed in “—Owe Tannenbaum, Owe Tannenbaum, how beautiful their branches!”