Hard Boiled Christmas (Day Eleven)

Hard Boiled Christmas

A Jack Collier Mystery

By Brett N. Lashuay

 

Day 11: Mr. Frost

 

            I don’t regularly go to crime scenes unless they’re fresh, because the police are pretty good at picking over the area where a crime was committed. Of course the crime wasn’t committed here, just discovered here, but that only made my trip all the more pointless. It had taken more than half an hour to drive to the place on Romeo Plank, between 21 Mile and 22 Mile. It might help if I told you that we have mile roads that start somewhere in Detroit, you might as well learn something since when I got there I didn’t learn much.

 

            In a complete contrast to the day before, that day was over cast with a thick blanket of gray clouds that stretched from one end of the sky to the other in all directions. There wasn’t a single opening in that cloak that allowed the sun from assaulting the land, not a single chink in the armor of gray. The light was diffuse and had about it the feeling that if one could see the sun we’d notice that it wasn’t really trying anyways. After all, this wasn’t called the dark time of the year because of the bills that would soon be coming.

 

            There was enough light that morning to see the spot where Christmas had been found though. Enough light to make out the patch that had been blood and was now just a dull stain on the black top. Someone had already made a half-hearted effort to clean it, but no one wanted to risk spraying down the parking lot and risking a large patch of ice. There hadn’t been that much blood anyway. There was just what had leaked out in the little time she had been laying here.

 

            While the spot where she had been left was fairly visible from the road, it wasn’t overly visible from the place where the main building of the nursery was. Why leave her in the parking lot of a nursery in Macomb County anyway? I looked at one of the strings of lights on the tree and while they weren’t lit I could tell there was something wrong. The lights on this tree were indeed ordinary white string lights as Noonan had said, but he didn’t point out how they’d been put on the tree.

 

            In the last few years, the style has been to mummify a tree in lights, Wrapping the trunk with several strands and then wrapping a few of the large branches so that the looked like some sort of bio-luminescent coral that has come ashore and grown to enormous size. That is what had been done here and someone had gone to the effort of adding zip ties every foot or so to make sure no one was able to make off with the lights in the middle of the night, as can happen sometimes.

 

            They couldn’t have had the lights at hand. They couldn’t have just yanked them off the tree and decided to use them. Even without the zip ties, they were wrapped around too tightly to make them any kind of convenient tool. No, the lights wrapped around her neck had been brought, which meant they must have been some kind of sign to someone. I wondered for a moment why that hadn’t been in the report, why they’d missed that little detail.

 

            I looked around, having a sudden sense of paranoia, and saw the brown Buick. I then spotted the man in the brown corduroy suit going into the building. I wondered for a moment why he wore the same suit two days in a row. I looked down at the concrete, where a patch of her blood still stained the ground. I thought about following him into the building, but then what? I might have to bust him in the head or something to make him talk and it seemed a bit public for that. I leaned against my blue car, looking at the Buick, and then at the doors where he was no doubt pretending to shop while keeping me in sight.

 

            I thought about jumping in my car and driving north as fast as I could, just to see how long it would take him to catch up to me. That might attract unwanted attention though, and I guessed that it wouldn’t be for our mutual benefit. I looked at the car and after that, looked into the building. While I looked, I pursed my lips. It would be accurate to say I was thinking about the whole thing. I was just about to go into the nursery and ask him why he was interested in my movements when my phone rang. I pulled it from my pocket and saw that it was Debbie at the office. I hit the answer button and held it up to my ear.

 

            “Yeah?” I asked.

 

            “Mr. Frost called for an appointment.” She said. “He says he has something very important to talk to you about right now.”

 

            “What did you tell him?” I asked looking up at the over cast sky.

 

            “It doesn’t matter, he said he would come and wait.”

 

            “Ah.” I looked at the brown Buick again, “Okay, I’ll be back as soon as I can. It’ll be a little while.”

 

            I looked at the Buick, and then at the store and decided that there would have to be another time. It wouldn’t be too hard to arrange another time anyway, all I’d have to do is leave my office and not travel more than forty miles away from it. If I stopped and walked around roughly the same area I would no doubt see him. If I saw him I could ask him what exactly it was he wanted. Until that point I had to get back to my office and talk to a person who I really didn’t want to talk to.

 

            I got back to my office in a little under half an hour, and it was only my skills of observation combined with great luck that allowed me to see the police cruisers before they saw me in my rush. When I came in I barely gave Debbie a look before getting into my office and starting to try to decide if I was going to strip off my coat or not. I heard the door open and rushed to my desk, my coat still on. I saw the cashier’s check that the Fat Man had sent me for fifty thousand still sitting on my desk where any idiot might see it. I snatched it up and stuck it in a drawer before the door came fully open.

 

            The temperature of the office seemed to drop about twenty degrees in about three seconds when Mr. Frost entered. He looked thin, pale, and remarkably well preserved for a man as old as he was supposed to be. As he approached, I could swear that I could begin to see my breath and I noticed Debbie grabbing her coat as the door closed behind him. Small tendrils of ice certainly must have formed as Frost touched the client chair and it seemed to solidify completely as he sat in it.

 

            “Hello Mister Frost.” I said, trying not to shiver.

 

            There aren’t many people that I worry about having in the office. Even the Fat Man and Church don’t worry me that much, they can only do so much after all. Frost though, Frost worries me. It isn’t so much that Frost makes Church and The Fat Man look small by comparison, it’s that he makes the Federal Government look small. He also makes the Federal Government look rather even-handed and honest in its dealings.

 

            My breath wanted to come out in plumes, and I felt as embarrassed about it as ever. I know the temperature didn’t really go down, but it felt like it did. He didn’t try to smile or have any kind of expression. He simply raised his hands up and tented them in front of his face while fixing his icy eyes on me. When he spoke, his voice was the sharp crack of a January wind when you’re naked and covered with cherry soda in a field. If you have no idea what that feels like, count yourself lucky. I can tell you from personal experience that it’s no picnic.

 

            “I rarely have any interests in your kind of business.” He said in a voice that sounded like it was trying not to be a rebuke, which was as close as he ever got to warmth. “However there has been a development in the job that you have undertaken which affects me in some ways.”

 

            I didn’t ask him how he knew what job I was on, he just knew. If he announced that he knew the location of the Lost Ark or the Holy Grail, I wouldn’t even bother asking where he got his information, I would simply go and get them because that would be why he had told me. He knew most things, and he only told you things when he expected you to do something about them.

 

            “There has been a shooting this morning, at the Starbucks in Bloomfield Hills. Chanukah and Kwanzaa were having breakfast together, discussing the current situation with Christmas. Chanukah had a cappuccino while Kwanzaa had one of those lattes with more prefixes and suffixes than I care to remember or try to define. When they emerged from the establishment they were both killed by someone firing a small twenty-five caliber hand gun into the back of each of their heads. It was an automatic, unless the shooter likes leaving brass on the ground for fun.”

 

            “What did the shooter have to drink?” I asked, trying to see if it would stump him.

 

            “That information is hardly cogent, but it was a cup of hazel nut roast, with two sugars.” He smiled slightly, and I was surprised to see that his face didn’t crack from the effort. “And yet the identity of this person eludes me.”

 

            “When did this happen?”

 

            “One minute before I called you.” He said not moving his half dead eyes one tiny flicker. “It wouldn’t pay to make the call before it happened.”

 

            “No.” I decided that if he could have a joke then so could I. “You might prevent something that way.”

 

            “We have discussed that sort of comment before Mr. Collier.” He said coldly, which is the only way he ever said anything.

 

            “Yes, we have.” I replied.

 

            “So under these current circumstances, I cannot dismiss what happened to Patrick or Easter as accidents. Likewise I suspect the sudden disappearance of Thanksgiving was not based on a sudden wish to go to Israel.”

 

            “Why would he go to Israel?” I asked. “As opposed to anywhere else, I mean.”

            “The Israeli’s eat more turkey per capita than any other nation.” He said, opening his tented hands as if he wanted to look at his palms.

 

            “Oh?” I asked.

 

            “Yes.” He said. Having examined his palms he then re-tented his fingers, although he might not have been looking at his palms as his eyes never left me.

 

            “Someone is trying to take out your group of entertainers?” I asked.

 

            “It might seem that way.” He suggested and then his tone actually changed to something with feeling in it. “I do not require this show or that show, but I do require shows. Do you understand this?”

 

            “Yes.” I said nodding and wondering if my nervous sweat was going to form icicles on my forehead.

 

            “I’ve dispatched mercenaries to protect Miss Yule, as well as other notable figures in the business. I suspect that even the government agents cannot be trusted, as they were supposed to be guarding the two who were shot down today as well. You are at the center of this situation, and you have proved to be resourceful in past instances where my direct intervention would have been considered unfortunate. I trust you to understand the gravity of the situation and to find the person causing all this row.” He set his hands down on the chair arms and pushed himself up to his full height. He then reached his hand into his coat and produced a slim envelope. “I cannot have my shows interrupted. I want this situation ended as quickly as possible. I hope you understand this.”

 

            “I do.” I said nodding.

 

             “Good.” He set the envelope down on my desk and then he turned and left without another word.

 

            I sat back in my chair, rubbing my hands together to get the feeling to come back. Even if the cold was only in my mind, my mind had extended it to my hands. I reached for the envelope, opened it up and found another cashier’s check for another fifty thousand dollars. I tapped the check against the desk for a few moments before letting it fall and turning my chair around to look out the window. I never really understood why Mr. Frost decided that he needed to involve himself in the situation, just to tell me to do what I was already doing. The Fat Man had paid me, Solstice had paid me, the investigation was only a day and a half old, why jump the gun on this? Of course, it might be that he was in as close to a panic as someone who had ice water in their veins can manage. Maybe he had an account ready to have a check drawn because he knew this was coming. Being the kind of person he was, he probably knew this was going to happen some day and he wanted someone he could say was in his pay neck deep in it.

 

            I sat forward and decided that I needed to get out of the office, if for no other reason then to let the furnace run for a while and melt the frost from the windows. I got out of the chair and started across my office before stopping. I stood in my apparently freezing cold office and then walked back to my desk and gathered up the checks. I then looked at the corner, where the safe sat, and thought for a moment before moving again.

 

            I opened the big old-fashioned safe and pulled the modern fire safe out of it. I got my keys from my ring and opened the fire safe. Inside were my Marley thirty-eight and the Webley automatic revolver. I took the Marley and its shoulder holster from the fire safe and put it on. I took the gun from the holster and checked to make sure it was loaded. I know I shouldn’t store it like that, but I’d forgotten to take the bullets out and I was tired the last time I took the shoulder rig off.

 

            I slipped the gun back into its holster and looked at the Webley, trying to decide what to do with it. I took that from the safe and slid it into the second drawer on the right hand side of my desk. I wasn’t positive that I wasn’t leaving the wrong gun behind, but I didn’t have anything besides the two revolvers and I had no holster for the Webley. I put the fire safe back and closed the big safe door before twirling the knob. I got up and went into the waiting room where Debbie was still huddled in her parka, trying to type as best she could. I’m always glad to see that the feeling of cold isn’t just a product of my imagination, and other people feel it as well.

 

            “Come on.” I said. “I’ll buy you lunch.”

 

            “Where?” She asked.

 

            “Someplace warmer than this.” I said turning up the thermostat a bit.

 

            “Good enough.” She said, and we went.

 

This is part eleven of twenty-five, come back tomorrow for part twelve and every day this month until we're done to see what happens next. If you get lost, one of the tags here should help you. The HBC tag will take you to the story while the Jack Tag will take you to Part One of every story we post here.