Kasey Michaels - High Heels and Holidays

While Socks was giving his informational talk on grabbers and ... well, grabbers, Saint Just had been undoing the twist tie on the bag. Once opened, the smell, which had been unpleasant, became nearly unbearable. Still, Saint Just persevered, using a small flashlight to peer inside at the contents.

If there had been a return address on the box, the decomposing rat had made reading it impossible, and any address would most probably be bogus at any rate. Saint Just was luckier, however, with the note, as it had landed on top of the box and was relatively undamaged. Calling upon what he believed had to be awesome untouched powers he hadn't known he possessed, Saint Just reached into the bag and snared the note, then quickly replaced the twist tie and retreated with more haste than decorum from the storage cage.

"You're not going to throw that away?" Socks asked, or perhaps pleaded. "What am I supposed to do with it?"

"As having the rat bronzed or stuffed and mounted is probably out of the question, I suggest the Dumpster in the alley," Saint Just said, holding onto the note by the edges as he stood beneath one of the bare lightbulbs that hung from the ceiling. "Computer generated, I would say, which narrows down the suspects to all but about three people in the entire country. I imagine that, even in its present sorry state, there exists some way to extract fingerprints if there are any, but we'll leave that for now, shall we? More important, and more ominous, is the note itself."

Socks had commandeered Mr. O'Hara's grabber yet again and was busy inserting the foul-smelling green garbage bag inside a second, larger green garbage bag. "So you can still read it?"

"Yes, indeed. Roses are red, violets are blue. This rat is dead, and you could be yourself. How very charming. I believe we can rule out Will Shakespeare, Socks."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are we done here? We can turn over all this stuff to Lieutenant Wendell now that you've seen it, right?"

"I think not, Socks," Saint Just said, slipping the note into a clear food storage bag he'd brought down to the cellar for just that purpose. Detecting had become more sophisticated since the Regency, but Saint Just considered himself nothing if not adaptable. "I'd rather Maggie not know about this, at least for the moment."

"She'll murder you," Socks said, shaking his head as the two of them headed back through the maze that was the basement of any building of any age in Manhattan, heading for the stairs.

"Yes. I'm shaking in my shoes at the prospect of her righteous anger, Socks. But let's think about this, shall we? A dead rat and some execrable poetry. All the makings of a one-off prank, don't you think? A disgruntled reader, most likely. As Maggie is wont to say, everyone's a critic. This particular critic simply had access to a dead rat. Now that he's vented his spleen, said what he had to say, that should be the end of it."

"And if it isn't?"

Saint Just stripped off the thin gloves and tossed them in a nearby empty bucket that didn't seem to have a purpose, so he gave it one: waste can. "If it isn't, we'll know soon enough. In any event, we will all—you, Sterling, and myself—stay very close to Maggie for the next three weeks, until she and Sterling and myself adjourn to New Jersey to celebrate Christmas with her family. If there are no more rats, and nothing untoward occurs, we can then probably safely conclude that this particular rat had no siblings."

"She's still going to murder you," Socks said, grinning. "Maggie doesn't like secrets. Hey, you didn't say—did you see how the guy signed the note?"

"No, I didn't." Saint Just stopped beneath yet another bare bulb and held up the note inside its plastic covering. "I don't see ... oh, there it is. N ... e ... Nevus? What in bloody blazes is that supposed to mean? Nevus? A nevus is a—"

"A mole," Socks said brightly. "I looked it up. A bit of skin pigmentation or birthmark."

Saint Just tucked the plastic bag back into his pants pocket. "And you still think we should take any of this seriously, Socks?"

"No, I suppose not. Anyone who'd call himself a nevus has got to be a little crazy."

Saint Just stopped, turned around, looked at Socks. "Well, thank you, my friend. Now, for the first time, I do believe I'm a trifle worried. Yes, we'll all stay very close to Maggie, won't we?"

"And you'll talk to the lieutenant? You know, like without telling Maggie?"

"Possibly. Although I doubt there would be much of anything he could do unless the threat becomes more specific. I'll think on it, Socks."

"I saw him the other night," Socks offered carefully as they continued their way through the rabbit warren, Saint Just pausing only to pick up his sword cane, which he'd retrieved from his condo and brought downstairs with him. He felt naked without his sword cane, which was Maggie's fault, because that's how she'd made him.

"You saw the left –tenant? And why does that sound so ominous, Socks?"

"Well, he wasn't alone."

One corner of Saint Just's mouth curved upward. "Really, Mr. Jackson. Feel free to expand on that most intriguing statement, if you please?"

Socks looked to his left and right, as if expecting Maggie to be hiding behind one of the stacks of boxes. "I'm not one to gossip ..."

"No. Definitely not, Socks. You are the soul of discretion and I commend you for that. Indeed, I am in awe of your powers of circumspection. And now that we have that out of the way—please go on."

The doorman grinned. "A blonde, and hanging on his arm like she couldn't navigate without him, you know? They were coming up out of the subway just as my friend and I were going down. We looked at each other, and then pretended we didn't see each other—you know how it is. But, man, did he look guilty. Do you think Maggie will be upset?"

"Only if she believes it wasn't her idea that she and the left –tenant stop seeing each other as anything but friends."

"You want to run that one by me one more time, Dr. Phil?"

Saint Just smiled. "Please, don't attempt to compare me with a rank amateur. It's simple enough, Socks. If Maggie stopped seeing Wendell as a beau, which I do believe she has already decided to do, that would be fine with her, as she's already realized that she thinks of him as a good friend, but no more. But for him to stop seeking her attention in favor of some other female before she can make that clear to him, let him down gently, as I believe it's called? No, then she'll decide she's just managed to allow what could have been the man of her maidenly dreams slip through her fingers. It's all in the timing, my friend, so we will not mention that you saw Wendell with another woman."

Socks shook his head. "Women. It's times like these that make me so glad I'm gay."

Saint Just chuckled, then frowned as he lifted a finger to his mouth, warning Socks to silence. "Someone's approaching."

A few moments later Maggie popped her head around the corner of a pillar, holding a shovel in what some might consider a threatening manner. She sighed, and put down the shovel, the look in her green eyes daring him to mention the makeshift weapon against Things That Go Bump in the Cellars. "Alex? I thought I heard someone talking. What are you doing down here?"

"Maggie, my dear," Saint Just said smoothly, inclining his head in acknowledgement of her presence. "One could reasonably ask the same of you. I was assisting Socks here with something he had to carry downstairs for Mr. O'Hara. You?"

"You carried something down here? Performed manual labor? Why can't I get a mental picture of that?" Maggie said, turning back the way she'd come, Saint Just and Socks exchanging "whew!" glances before they followed her. "But I'm glad you're here. I was upstairs, just sort of looking for something to do."