David Handler - The Snow White Christmas Cookie

“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.”

Add 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.

He set the snow thrower to idle, rushing to her. “Josie, what happened to your eye?”

“You didn’t hear?” Her voice was low and morose. He’d never known her to sound that way before. “I figured Des would phone you.”

He shook his head. “Not when she gets busy.”

“Kylie Champlain lost control of her car and slammed into my building. It was … unreal. I was sitting there with a client and suddenly the front end of her car was inside my office.”

“And what happened to your eye?”

“A ceiling tile fell and hit me. It looks a lot worse than it is.”

“How about your client?”

“Just a scratch on the head. We were both lucky. The building inspector thinks the whole building may collapse. I had to beg him to let me back in for my files. He went in with me. Then he declared it off-limits-so I no longer have an office.” She let out a hollow laugh. “When I decide to have a shitty day I don’t mess around, do I?”

Now another vehicle was making its way through the Nature Preserve to the foot of the causeway. Again, not the hearse. It was a blue Toyota Tacoma pickup.

Josie let out a low groan. “Oh, God, I don’t believe this.”

The Tacoma pulled up next to her Subaru and Paulette Zander’s son, Casey, climbed out and approached them, hands buried deep in the pockets of his jacket, a Red Sox cap pulled low over his close-set eyes. Casey wore a pouty expression on his chubby face. Not a brooding, sensitive sort of pouty. He looked more like he was pissed off because Dada was too busy to play catch with him. “I need to talk to you, Josie!” he called out.