Albert Baantjer: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 6. Whole No. 778, June 2006

I drove back downtown, intending to join the Star Republic’s Christmas parties, now well under way. But when I got off the interstate, I drove to St. Mary’s. I still wanted to find the person who had donated the car. More than that, I wanted to hear the person say that a vision of the Virgin or a surplus of Dickensian Christmas spirit had motivated the gift. I no longer cared what the motive was, as long as it was positive. I needed something to counteract the darkness I’d found in Greenfield. But to locate the mystery donor, I had to do something dark myself.

On my earlier visit, I’d left St. Mary’s by a back door very near the rectory. I tried that door now and found it unlocked. On my way to the Altar Rosary room I worked out strategies for separating Marguerite and Mrs. Donica, but I didn’t need one. The “mother-in-law” was seated alone in the little room, knitting.

It was a picture worthy of the front of a greeting card, but when the woman looked up and saw me, her expression instantly soured and the needles she held suddenly looked as dangerous as her son’s dog.

“What are you doing back here?” she demanded.

I told her I’d just been to Greenfield, and that was enough. She was out of her seat so fast she might have stabbed me before I’d raised a hand, if she’d headed for me and not the door.

“You can’t tell Marguerite,” she said when she had it safely closed. “You can’t. She’d run to him, and that would be the end of her and her better life. I know. I lived with Tony’s father for twenty years. And Tony’s worse.” She blessed herself again. “It isn’t just his legs. It’s him. I won’t let Marguerite sacrifice herself. I won’t let little Tina live like that, maybe grow up like that herself.”

I told Mrs. Donica that it might not be necessary for me to speak to Marguerite. I only wanted the name of the previous owner of the Saturn. Mrs. Donica could tell me that herself.

She understood the bargain at once: Give me the donor’s name and let the Star Republic take some of the glitter away from the original miracle, or I would tell Marguerite everything. It was a bluff, but she didn’t call it.

“It wasn’t a person,” she said, her voice flat and tired. “It was a company. Friendly Motors. In Terre Haute.”

Halfway to the door, I turned and asked her why she’d let Tina risk a second vigil. There was always the chance some friend of Donica’s might pass him the word.

“I didn’t want it to happen again,” she said. “But I could never say no to her.”

I thought she meant Tina. Then she glanced toward an old painting of a smiling woman in blue, and I was no longer sure.

Terre Haute was farther west of Indianapolis than Greenfield was east. I tried phoning Friendly Motors from my car, got a busy signal, and decided to make the drive. If my call had gone through, I never would have learned the truth, because the man who knew the answer, Marshall Henson, owner and manager of Friendly Motors, intended to take the secret to his grave.

Henson made that clear to me before he’d finished shaking my hand. “Swore I’d never tell a soul and I never will,” he said as he ushered me into his tiny office. He was an older gentleman whose white hair and dentures shared an identical yellow tinge.

“That’s the only Christmas miracle I’ve been involved with since I helped General Patton lift the siege of Bastogne in ’forty-four, and I’d hate to do anything to foul it up. Not that I don’t tell the story of that Saturn to folks,” he added, gesturing toward the wall to my right. “But I never tell the name of the man who bought the car.”

The wall Henson had indicated was so cluttered with sales awards and group photos of dealership-sponsored softball teams that it took me a moment to spot something connected to Tina Vasquez. That something was a framed newspaper article describing how Tina and her mother had found the Saturn. The story was dated December 26 and carried the Star Republic’s name at the top. It was the work of a reporter I knew very well, a frustrated novelist named Joan Johnson.

“I insisted that the buyer send me a copy of whatever the Indy paper ran about the car so I’d have a memento,” Henson said. “Tell you the truth, I asked for the clipping so I’d be sure the guy hadn’t been pulling my leg. I gave him a great deal on that car because of the story about the little girl — five thousand even for a really nice car — and I wanted to be sure he wasn’t ripping me off.

“Anyway, he kept his side of the bargain, so I have to keep mine. Sorry you drove all the way over here for nothing.”

I accepted his apology, even though my drive hadn’t been for nothing. I’d seen a very rare thing, a Xerox copy of a newspaper article that had never run. Boxleiter himself had told me earlier that day that he’d personally killed the Vasquez follow-up story.

I drove back a little faster than I’d driven out. On the way, I placed a call to Joan Johnson. It took awhile for the person who answered her phone to locate Joan. While I waited out the search, I listened to loud voices and laughter and even singing. I decided the office parties were reaching their zenith, which Joan confirmed when she finally came on the line.

“Where are you? You’re going to miss all the fun. In fact, you’ve missed most of it already.”

I told her I was on my way in and asked if she remembered writing the second Tina Vasquez story.

“One of my better efforts,” Joan said, “so of course it ended up in the trash. Boxleiter gave me the assignment himself, asked me to run him off a page proof. Then he told me he’d decided not to use it.”

I asked her if she’d ever gotten her proof back.

“Why would I have wanted that? Anytime I need scrap paper, I just tear off a page of my novel. Hurry up back here. People are starting to sneak out.”

I did hurry, but Joan had been right. By the time I reached the paper’s employee parking lot, half the spaces were empty.

I nearly ran on my way inside. Then I did run up the stairs to the third floor, where the offices of the credit union were located. The lights were still on and two of the clerks, Dee and Lois, were still on duty, though both looked as though they’d been at the Christmas cheer.

I walked in as casually as my shortness of breath would allow, wished them a happy holiday, and mentioned that someone in Accounting had brought in a male stripper. They asked me to watch the phones and left abruptly.

So abruptly that Dee forgot to sign off her computer terminal, a serious breach of security. I sat down at it, located the records of Emanuel Noel Boxleiter, and learned that he’d made a sizable withdrawal exactly one year before. A five-thousand-dollar withdrawal.

Boxleiter was still in his darkened office, looking out at the lights of the park beneath his windows.

When he noticed me standing there, he asked, “So?”

I knew the question referred to his real concern, his reason for risking his secret by sending me out on the story. He was afraid, as the Friendly Motors man had been, that his leg had been pulled.

I told him the Vasquez family was as honest and deserving as they came. And that this was their last year in the miracle business.

He swung his chair around to face me. “What about the car? Did it come from the Virgin Mary after all?”

I shook my head. I told him it had come from St. Joseph, the guy who stood in the background and never got much credit.

Boxleiter grunted and said, “Maybe he never wanted any credit. Maybe just being a small part of some special kid’s life was enough. Punch out and have a drink.”