Wrapped Up in Crosswords (3 page)

The flooring was also oak, wide-planked and redolent with decades of floor oil and shoe leather. Gabby loved the smell; she also enjoyed pestering Ace, Stanley's aging collie who was such a fixture in the shop that clerks and customers alike instinctively stepped around his snoozing form. When the three Santas entered Hatch's, Gabby trotted off in search of the collie while Abe Jones turned to regard Lever and the cigarette that dangled between his frizzy, synthetic beard and mustache. “Are you sure you can smoke in here, Al?”

“The day you can't smoke in a hardware store will be the day—”

“You quit?”

“Ho, ho.”

“Just be careful you don't set yourself on fire, okay?”

Rosco pointed to a bright red fire extinguisher. “If he's going to torch himself, this is the place to do it.” He picked up the device and mimed hooking it onto Al's wide black belt. “There you go. It even matches your trousseau; Albert, you look de-vine.”

“Let me guess who we have here,” Stanley Hatch said as he approached the visitors. He was tall and angular with an engaging smile and kind eyes set in a long and thoughtful face. Although there was nothing broad-shouldered or he-man-outdoorsy about him, he was the kind a guy who could repair just about anything and do it well. He also had a self-effacing air and a quiet humor that sat well with both new customers and longtime friends. “Oddly enough, you resemble a certain trio of blind rodents that appeared last year around this time.” Stan's tone was jocular, and it nearly disguised the touch of sadness that colored his words; his wife had died eighteen months before, and his grief at losing her hadn't wholly diminished. “I think I prefer the smoking Santa to the smoking rat,” he added in an attempt to brighten the mood.

“It was a mouse, Stan,” rejoined Lever with an unusually gentle smile.

“Al, I supply all sorts of traps around here: large, small, have-a-hearts, raccoon cages … and I'm telling you, if you were supposed to be dressed up as a mouse, I wouldn't have wanted to see the rat.” Then he pointed to a large wooden barrel near one the store's twin display windows. It was overfilled with toys: footballs, dolls, and stuffed animals of all shapes and sizes. “Pretty good haul this year,” he said with pride. “Folks have been really generous …” He walked over to the center aisle, removed three boxed coffee makers from a shelf and handed them to Rosco. “Something for the parents.”

“Thanks, Stan. Well, we'd better load up and be on our way. Remember, our annual wrapping and supper party is on the twenty-third. Try to make it if you can. Sara Briephs is hosting this year, and you know the kind of spread she puts out.”

“I'll see.” The smile was pensive.

“It'll do you good.”

Stan nodded and brightened his smile. “I'm sure it would.”

“Besides, we need all the help we can get,” Rosco continued. “Last year's haul hit five hundred items.”

Stan nodded again. He seemed about to speak, then opted for silence.

“Sara would love to have you.”

“She's a grand old lady,” Stanley said in answer. “The city wouldn't be the same without her.” He paused, then concluded with a simple “Thanks.” And that single word conveyed every emotion the group needed.

“Hey, what's a Santa for?” was Al response.

It took the threesome several trips to get the gifts packed into their unmarked police van. When they'd finished, Rosco whistled for Gabby, and the quartet marched down the street toward their next stop, Robertson's Stationery Supply. But as they passed the pet shop window, Al stopped and pointed. “There you go, Rosco. There's your gift for Belle—a live partridge for that pear tree I suggested.”

Rosco, Abe, and Gabby had already reached the jewelry store on the corner. They turned and rejoined Lever.

“Those are lovebirds, Al. Not partridges,” Jones pointed out.

“Birds schmirds. It's the thought that counts. You guys have no Christmas spirit. And women love birds. Lovebirds; get it? Come on, Rosco, look at how cute that one on the left is—”

“You don't just buy one of them, Al. They're a pair. They come in a pair.”

“A pair in a pear tree,” was the laconic reply. “I like it.”

“Actually …” Rosco said. They could see the wheels beginning to turn in his head as he fiddled with the tips of his snow-white mustache. “Actually, you've given me an idea. There's a slight logistical problem, though …”

“So? What's your plan?” Jones asked.

“Are you nuts? Like I'm going to tell you guys! I might as well put it on the eleven o'clock news.”

“Come on, Rosco, how are you going to sneak a pair of—” Lever was interrupted by the ringing of his cell phone. He removed his bulky Santa gloves, lifted the phone from his belt, and glanced at the caller I.D. readout. “Duty calls.” He brought it to his ear and said, “Lieutenant Lever.”

After about thirty seconds Al tapped a button on the phone and clipped it back on his belt. “We're going to have to pack it in, boys. The captain's called an emergency briefing, and I need to head back with the van. All personnel—so I guess that means you, too, Abe. Rosco, you'd better beam in with the rest of the merchants and tell them we'll be around tomorrow. Unless you want to continue solo.”

“What's up?”

“Three inmates just broke out of the Suffolk County Jail in Boston. State police believe they may be heading south.”

Three

G
ABBY
barreled up the narrow staircase of the quaint late-eighteenth-century house in Newcastle's historic Captain's Walk. As was the puppy s wont, she flew up over the steps two at a time, then roared around the landing's uncarpeted corner, bolted down the hall, slid through Belle and Rosco's bedroom door, and made a spectacular leap to land squarely in the center of the quilt upon which Kit, the senior canine resident of the Graham-Polycrates household, had been peacefully snoozing. Gabby's short barks, yips, and yowls could only be translated as “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”

The noise was anxious and overwrought, but then Gabby enjoyed creating caverns out of tooth-sized cavities. When the mailman came to the door—which as everyone knew was a daily occurrence—she behaved as though the house were being stormed by brigands. Kit, on the other hand, was beyond such shenanigans; running around inside was the type of childish activity she'd outgrown the moment this little gray monster moved in. She was now far too refined to leave rumpled carpets in her wake or fly off the handle at every noise. After all, her mother was a pure-bred German shepherd with papers to prove it, and her father was … was … Okay, so nobody's perfect. He might have been part beagle.

“Wake up!” Gabby yipped again. She bounced up and down, another habit Kit found profoundly annoying.

Kit sighed, opened one eye, and twitched a sleepy white paw. Gabby's exuberance was putting a damper on a perfectly good and well-deserved nap.

“Wake up, you lazy … dog!” The dog was added as a slur that almost sounded like a yelp of pain.

Kit merely stretched her brown, white, and black sixty-pound body across the toasty quilt, exposing the pale speckled fur of her belly. She didn't bother to point out the obvious: that Gabby was also a dog, and could well be accused of laxity when it came to issues involving toil—such as the all-important task of taking the two human members of the clan for their daily perambulation. Kit was too much of a lady to stoop to such discourtesy.

“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”

This is getting old.
Kit sighed again.
Terriers,
she thought,
even part terriers, were bossy creatures.
Kit half-raised her head, staring at her nervous companion with dark and placid eyes. “Mmmm?” escaped from her throat. The sound was open to interpretation, but Kit was attempting patience.

“Okay, okay, okay. Here's the deal. Rosco's making a crossword puzzle!” Gabby spouted in a succession of staccato yaps. “And he's doing it on the Q.T.! I caught him sneaking a peek at Belle's reference books while she was down in the cellar pulling stuff out of the clothes drier. He's mumbling to himself, like he does when he's working on something real confusing; like that case out on Cape Cod when we all went to the beach and he muttered stupid stuff all the time—”

Kit thought it better not to correct Gabby's egregious grammar at this moment; instead, she interrupted with another low-keyed “Mmmm?”

“So, that's real bad, right? I mean, like, really,
really
bad, and suspicious, too. 'Cause everyone knows Rosco doesn't make crosswords. Belle does.”

Kit produced a third “Mmmm …”

“Do you want to hear this story or not?” Gabby didn't wait for a reply; instead, she raced ahead with her tale, rapidly kneading her two front paws on the downy coverlet as she chattered away. In Kit's estimation, the long curly hair spreading out around the claws made Gabby's feet resemble dirty dust mops. Kit's own, of course, were a snowy white, and she kept them meticulously clean.

“And what do you think I heard him writing?”

Again, Kit deemed it advisable not to correct this error. Writing was intended to be “seen” rather than “heard,” but Gabby had not had Kit's youthful advantages: a former university professor as a companion to her earliest puppyhood, then a transfer to this home which was inhabited by a master wordsmith, a female human who loved to read dictionary and encyclopedia entries aloud. Gabby would learn syntax and a more exacting vocabulary eventually—that is, if she ever remained quiet enough to listen to her elders and betters.

“‘I owe you one pair of love.' That's what I heard Rosco say. ‘I owe you one pair of love.' And you know what that means, don't you? Don't you?”

Kit didn't answer. Gabby was still a youngster. Why spoil her little game?

“It means Rosco's getting that disgusting pair of lovebirds I saw in the shop window this morning, that's what! Lovebirds as a surprise Christmas present for Belle! Birds in this house, Kit! Birds! Do you know how awful that will be?”

“Are you sure you're not barking up the wrong tree? Maybe Rosco's taking Al's advice about the pear—”

“No, he's not! No, he's not! No, he's not …! Look, we were walking down the street, all four of us—this is before Al got the call about the cons—when the humans came to a sudden stop … You know, like they do when something startles them? Anyway, Rosco started staring hard at the window.” Gabby in her anxiety hopped up and down on the bed while Kit's velvet-soft ears quivered under the loud assault of the terrier voice. “He was studying this stupid pair of birds. And now he's making a puzzle about them.”

“It could be a pair of anything, Gabby. Socks, for instance.” Kit had a great fondness for the athletic socks Rosco used for running. Stuffed with newspapers, they had been among her earliest toys. That is, until the humans had realized she preferred the clean ones stored in the bureau drawer. “Or shoes.”

“Don't be stupid. Socks aren't lovely—”

“Shoes are. Some especially so. Belle had a glorious pair of red pumps that I found delightful to chew … one anyway. Too much of the same leathers and dyes can be off-putting to the taste buds. That's why I only nibble a single shoe of a set. Or did, I should say, before—”

“You dumb dog! Nobody writes an I.O.U. for shoes—or socks—and puts it in a crossword puzzle! Who'd bother with all that work? You might as well say: I owe you a pair of mittens, for Pete's sake. Or pajamas. Or pants. Something mundane like that. Anyway, I lived in California, remember? You've never even been there, so you don't have a clue. But I do. I know a lot about pet birds … parrots … cockatiels … macaws … mynahs … They were real popular there, and boy, are they a noisy bunch! And talk about a mess! Seeds, poop … All they do is squawk. And you can bet Rosco won't keep them in their cage where they belong, and—” Gabby, in her frenzy, failed to see that Kit was growing dangerously impatient with her antics. Not to mention, the amount of terrier “noise.”

“‘Dumb' for your information, my dear young Gabby, means ‘devoid of the power of speech'—which I am not.” The ‘my dear' was not expressed as an affectionate purr, but Gabby also failed to notice this fact.

“You are so! You're a dumb dog, Kit!”

“I am most certainly not dumb!”

“Are, too!”

“I am not!'

“Are too! Are too! Are too!”

“No!!!!” This was expressed as a full-fledged growl, and it unfortunately coincided with Belle's entry into the room. In her hands was a wicker basket filled with clean laundry. The static electricity produced by all those freshly folded clothes made her blue pullover sweater appear to ripple and swell in size, and her fine, pale blonde hair to wave Medusa-like in the air. If the two residents of the bed hadn't known her better, Belle would have seemed a formidable sight indeed.

She plopped the basket on the bed and ran distracted fingers through her hair while her gray eyes leveled on Kit and Gabby with an expression of mock severity. “All this yipping and yapping … What are you girls doing? I could hear you all the way down in the cellar. And you, Kitty. Growling at poor, little Gab. Shame on you.”

“Kitty” gave Belle a lofty glance, then crossed her front paws with careful grace while Gabby burrowed into the concealing folds of down, hiding her head.

“Shameless,” Kit grumbled.

“I'm not getting off this bed! I'm not getting off this bed! I'm not! I'm not!” Gabby retorted, but the sound to Belle's ears was more whimper than defiance.

“Awww, Gab, sweetheart,” Belle said as she began stroking the puppy's curling coat. “Kit didn't mean to be unkind. Did you, Kitty? There's room for both of you. Isn't there? Move over now, and let Gab have a little more space.”