The Snow White Christmas Cookie (10 page)

Des didn’t have to holler. The postmaster’s office had a window that overlooked the parking lot. Paulette came right out of her office to escort Des in. The village’s mail carriers hadn’t left on their routes yet. Des could hear them out in back, joking with each other while they finished their sorting.

“Casey just phoned me,” Paulette stated stiffly as she led Des into her small, spare office. There was a desk. There was a safe that was almost as big as the desk. There were no personal flourishes of any kind. No photos or Christmas cards. No invitation to sit down, either. “He was extremely upset. It seems he’s had quite an ordeal.”

“He has indeed. He got a cut on his head but he’s okay.”

“Did I hear him right? Kylie slammed her car
into
Josie’s office?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Tina and Lem have had nothing but trouble with that little airhead. She’s so irresponsible.” Paulette raised her chin at Des. “Casey told me you were extremely abrupt with him.”

“I’m sorry if he felt that way, but it was an emergency situation. Kylie suffered a serious injury. The building was in danger of collapsing. I had no time for kid gloves.”

Paulette studied Des, her eyes crinkling. “And you had a job to do. I understand. Casey can be a bit thin-skinned sometimes. Hank thinks I babied him too much. He has trouble sticking to things. Gives up too easily when someone says no to him. And then gets all down on himself. I’m hoping Josie can help him find some direction. She sure worked wonders with Hank. Hank was a heavy smoker for thirty years. He quit when his doctor warned him that he was in the early stages of emphysema. But then he had some personal setbacks and before we knew it he was reaching for the nearest Marlboro. Josie helped him kick the habit again. Hank thinks she’s a miracle worker. Mind you, we knew Casey would flat-out reject the idea. So we had to be a bit devious. Josie arranged to ‘accidentally’ bump into him at the flu clinic back in October. He’s been seeing her ever since.”

“And do you think she’s helping him?”

“Damned if I know. He seems a bit more confident, but it hasn’t translated into any concrete changes. He hasn’t moved out of the basement. He hasn’t taken charge of his life. We’ll see. These things don’t happen overnight.” Paulette bit down hard on her lower lip, studying Des once more. “Did you come here to tell me about Casey?”

“Actually, I’d like to speak with Hank.”

“Absolutely. I believe he’s still here. Shall I?…”

“That’s okay, I’ll find him.”

Hank and the others were at their workstations loading bundles of mail and parcels into big rolling carts. A ton of parcels. Big boxes, the kind that Christmas toys come in. Small boxes, the kind that books and DVDs come in. And a whole lot of those bubble-wrapped pouches that prescription meds come in. The carriers were a casually dressed group of four women and six men. The standard outfit appeared to be fleece tops, jeans and snow boots. Most of them appeared to be in their thirties and forties. Hank was the oldest of the group. They were an upbeat bunch. Chatting and laughing with each other. If there was tension in the room Des wasn’t sensing it—until they caught sight of her approaching them. The uniform had that effect on people. Especially when something nasty was going down. Clearly, they all knew about the grinch because they got real quiet.

“Morning, Hank. Have you got a minute to talk?”

“Sure thing, Des,” he said easily.

The others decided that now would be a really good time to start rolling their carts toward the loading dock.

“You seem to have a lot of parcels today,” Des observed.

“That’s pretty much all that we have. The seven
A.M.
truck made it here from Norwich with our parcels and our flats but then they had to—”

“I’m sorry, ‘flats’ are?…”

“That’s what we call our catalogues and junk mail,” he explained. “Usually, a second truck shows up at 8:30 with our machine-sorted letters, but the governor had closed the highway by then.” Hank fished a package of Nicorette gum from the pocket of his fleece top and popped a piece in his mouth, going to work on it with his crooked yellow teeth. “That was sad news about Bryce Peck. How’s Josie holding up?”

“It hasn’t been one of her better mornings. I understand it was your idea to put her together with Casey.”

He shot a wary glance in the direction of Paulette’s office, lowering his voice. “Believe me, that kid needs help. He’s in a deep hole.”

“What kind of a hole?”

“Let’s just say he is one messed-up puppy, okay? Does nothing all day but sit in the basement watching TV. I thought maybe Josie could light a fire under him. She’s such a supportive person. Believed in me so much that I didn’t want to let her down.” He cleared his throat uneasily. “I take it that Paulette’s spoken to you about what’s been going on. I’m glad. It’s about time.”

“What can you tell me, Hank?

“Not much, to be perfectly honest.”

“You have no idea what’s happening?”

“None. And it’s putting me in a really uncomfortable position. Like last night at Rut’s party—Mrs. Tillis went to the trouble of baking me a marble cake and she thinks I’m rude because I didn’t thank her. I never
got
the darned cake.”

“It’s not just marble cake that’s going missing from your route. Paulette told me about the batch of mail that was found on Johnny Cake Hill Road.”

He nodded grimly. “That’s serious business. Stealing Christmas tips is one thing, but Paulette can’t tolerate—
we
can’t tolerate—someone stealing the U.S. Mail. If you can figure out who’s doing it I’ll take my hat off to you.”

“Would you mind schooling me a little?”

“Not at all. Ask me anything you’d like.”

“How long does it usually take you to complete your route?”

“Three, four hours. Depends on the volume of mail and the weather.”

“Do you keep to the same schedule every day?”

“Paulette’s real good about letting us make our own schedules—just as long as the folks get their mail. I’m usually here sorting by eight o’clock so I can get onto the basketball court with my high school girls by 3:30. Some of the others start later and stay later. And whether we want to take a lunch break or not is up to us. I just pull over somewhere quiet and have a quick sandwich in my truck. A lot of the others take a full hour off. Three of the girls drive their trucks back here and power walk to the health club at The Works. They’ve got a weight-loss contest going on. Whoever takes off the most pounds by New Year’s Day wins a weekend in New York City.”

“Hank, do you ever leave your truck unattended?”

“Well, yeah. Every time I have an accountable to deliver—that’s your certified mail and express mail. If it has to be signed for and scanned then I have to get out and knock on the front door. Same thing’s true when I have a parcel that’s too big for the box. Like a lot of folks get those forty-pound cartons of Florida oranges every month. I swear, those oranges all show up here on the same day. Hernia Monday, I call it.” He flashed a toothy grin at her. “If nobody’s home I try to stash the parcel out of the elements. Or bag it in plastic.”

“Do you leave the truck unlocked while you’re busy doing that?”

“Never. Not a chance. You never, ever leave your truck unlocked.”

“Do you drive the same truck every day?”

“Yeah, we all do.”

“So your truck is
your
truck?”

“Well, it is but it isn’t. It’s not like they let us drive the danged LLVs home. We’re not even allowed to keep a set of keys on our key rings. The truck keys and scanners spend the night in the safe in Paulette’s office, along with any accountables that we weren’t able to deliver. That’s standard operating procedure. This is the U.S. Mail, Des. There’s nothing slipshod or haphazard about anything. It’s a secure operation. And this is a secure building. It’s locked-down plenty tight at night.” Hank glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Listen, I really should load up and run. How about we talk some more later?” He hesitated, his jaw working on the nicotine gum. “And also maybe?…”

“Maybe what, Hank?”

“Can we keep it just between the two of us?”

Des narrowed her gaze at him. He had something on his mind. Something that he wished to tell her in private. “Sure thing,” she said, handing him one of her business cards. “Call me any time, day or night.”

“I’ll do that.” He pocketed her card just as Paulette came striding toward them, a clipboard clutched to her chest. She raised her eyebrows at them curiously.

“Hank’s going to contact me directly if he sees anything out of the ordinary,” Des explained, showing her a smile.

Paulette showed her a smile right back. Or tried to. It came off more like a pained grimace. “Excellent. And I’m glad I caught you, Hank. I need to know how the transmission is doing on that old ’94 of yours.”

“The tranny on my LLV is okay.”

“I thought you told me it was getting balky in the cold.”

“It’s okay,” he repeated.

“Are you sure? Because I’ve been ordered to report on the mechanical status of all ten of our vehicles by the end of the year.” She tapped at a form on her clipboard. “Money’s tight. If yours needs retrofitting now’s the time to speak up.”

“It’s okay,” Hank barked at her. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

“Well, you don’t have to bite my head off. I’m just doing my job.”

“And now I’m doing mine.” He rolled his cart off toward the loading dock.

Paulette watched him go, stung. “I’m afraid things are getting a little tense around here. Sorry.”

“No need to apologize, Paulette. I’ve given some thought to your situation. Officially, my feeling is that we ought to notify the postal inspectors right away.”

She looked at Des hopefully. “And unofficially?…”

“If you want to wait a day before you notify them I’ll do some nosing around. Does that sound okay?”

Paulette let out a sigh of relief. “I don’t know how to thank you, Des.”

“No need to. I haven’t done jack yet.”

C
HAPTER
6

A
DD THIS TO THE
list of 297 things that Mitch Berger, proud child of the streets of New York City, never thought he’d find himself doing: standing out on a rickety wooden causeway over the freezing waters of Long Island Sound in the middle of a blizzard pushing around a John Deere professional-grade snow thrower. The damned thing was a monster that had a fourteen-inch steel augur and a whopping thirty-eight-inch clearing width. Six forward speeds, two rear speeds, dual halogen headlights and a dash-mounted electric chute-rotation control. It even had heated handgrips. He could feel the warmth through his work gloves as he cut a swath across the causeway with grim determination. Mitch was dressed for outdoor labor. He wore his arctic-weight Eddie Bauer goose down parka over a wool fisherman’s sweater, twenty-four-ounce wool field pants, merino wool long johns, insulated snow boots and his festive C.C. Filson red-and-black checked mackinaw wool hat with sheepskin earflaps, the one that made him look like a Jewish version of Percy Kilbride in a Ma and Pa Kettle movie. But, hey, he needed every layer. Not only was it snowing like crazy but it was starting to get really, really windy out there on that narrow causeway.

Mitch was a screening-room rat. A man who got paid to sit on his butt in the dark. Working a snow thrower? Not part of his normal job description. But this wasn’t a normal day. His neighbor, Bryce Peck, was dead. A foot of snow had fallen. And someone had to get the causeway cleared so that the damned hearse from Dousson Mortuary in New London could pick up Bryce and deliver him to the Medical Examiner in Farmington. The hearse was hours late because of the storm and the poor guy was
still
lying there in his bed. It would have been comical if it weren’t so ghastly.

Just an awkward stage.

Mitch had stayed there with a shaken Josie while a detective from the Troop F barracks conducted a follow-up interview with her about Bryce’s state of mind and history of drug and alcohol abuse. Then a death investigator from the M.E.’s office had shown up to ask her pretty much the same questions all over again. It had been painful and tedious for Josie, but she’d remained calm and composed—despite the fact that the bald, middle-aged death investigator could not stop undressing her with his eyes. No wonder Des didn’t get along with most of the men on her job.

Supposedly the hearse would be along shortly to pick up Bryce. Mitch told Josie he’d be happy to wait there if she wanted to attend to her clients. He thought it would be good for her to get out of that house.

“Mitch, I can’t ask you to stay here with him.”

“You’re not asking me. Besides, I’m your naybs. This is what naybs do.”

She’d gone into the bedroom to say good-bye to Bryce. Mitch heard her murmur some words to him before she came out of there, wiping tears from her eyes, and headed on out to meet her clients.

As soon as she left Mitch got right the hell out of there. No freaking way he was staying in that house by himself with a dead body. When the hearse arrived at the foot of the causeway he’d see it through his window and raise the barricade. Besides, he was on deadline and still hadn’t posted his column on unheralded movie scores. By the time he’d sent it off the hearse still hadn’t shown up—and Mitch was quite certain that the causeway was no longer passable. So he fired up the snow thrower and went to work out there. For company he had Leonard Cohen’s haunting voice singing “The Stranger Song” from the opening credits of Robert Altman’s
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
, which happened to be one of Mitch’s favorite movies. Every single time he saw it he rooted for Warren Beatty to get up out of that deep snow and keep walking, gut shot or not. Every single time he was devastated when Beatty succumbed to the inevitable and settled down into the snow to die.

Just an awkward stage.

Mitch had nearly completed his third full swath when he saw a vehicle pull slowly up to the barricade. But it wasn’t the hearse. It was Josie’s Subaru. She didn’t try to drive out. Just parked there and started toward him on foot in her ski parka and stocking cap. She looked pale. She looked terrible. Her left eye was swollen almost completely shut.