David Handler - The Snow White Christmas Cookie

“Nice girl,” Mitch observed.

“Trust me, she’s more popular around here than Casey is,” Steve said.

“I can believe that.” Rut drank down the last of his Guinness. “That boy is awful hard to warm up to.”

“Does he place a lot of bets with Slick Rick?” Mitch asked Steve.

“Why are you asking?”

“When I was over at his place this morning I saw a ton of NFL stats lying around. Couldn’t help wondering if he was a bit of a gambler.”

“I wouldn’t call what Casey does gambling,” Steve said in a low voice.

“What would you call it?”

“A disease.”

“He has a problem?”

“A big problem.”

“Well, now,” Rut murmured. “Ain’t that a fine how do ya do?”

“I need to get something out of my truck,” Mitch informed the old postmaster. “I’ll be back in a sec, okay?”

“Okay by me.” Rut tapped his empty Guinness bottle. “But it’ll cost you.”

“Another round, Steve. And it’s my tab, okay?”

“In that case,” Rut said, “I’ll have another chili dog, too.”

Mitch went out of the Rustic’s front door, his eyes adjusting to the sunlight in the parking lot. Casey and Tommy the Pinhead were having words over by Casey’s blue Tacoma pickup. Mitch inched his way over behind the fenced enclosure where Steve kept his firewood, snow shovel and sacks of rock salt. From there he could watch the two of them without being seen. Could even hear Casey’s whiny voice, although he couldn’t make out what he was saying.

Casey opened the door to his Tacoma and removed a pair of large, heavy shopping bags with handles. Tommy took them from him and headed over toward a beat-up old black Pontiac Trans Am. He popped the trunk and deposited the bags in there. Casey followed him, yapping all of the way. Now he was holding a fat, letter-sized envelope out to Tommy. Tommy took it and said something to Casey, smiling broadly at him. Then he punched Casey in the stomach really hard. Casey doubled over in pain, his eyes bulging, before he proceeded to gaack up his entire breakfast of Cocoa Puffs. Not a pretty sight.

Okay, that settles it. I have officially eaten my last bowl of Cocoa Puffs.

Casey fell to his knees, gasping and heaving, then toppled slowly over onto the slushy gravel, a low, animal moan coming from him.

Tommy was not without mercy. He helped Casey back up onto his feet, patting him gently on the shoulder. Then he steered him back toward the front door of the Rustic, Casey looking none too steady on his feet.

Mitch stayed where he was, safely hidden behind the woodpile as they made their way inside. He continued to stay there, waiting. Sure enough, Casey came back outside a moment later-this time with Gigi clutching him by the arm. He still wasn’t moving real well. The two of them got into his Tacoma, Gigi behind the wheel, and started out of the parking lot. Mitch wanted to see which way they turned when they pulled out of the driveway. As he stood there, waiting, a shadow fell across his face. Then he heard a flurry of movement. He started to turn around but wasn’t nearly fast enough-something had already smashed him on the back of his head.

And then everything went black.

Grisky was pacing the conference room and flexing his biceps. Pacing and flexing. The G-Man was impatient. The G-Man was amped. Partly, this had to do with his sacred Christmas travel plans. “Every damned flight out of JFK tomorrow night has been scrambled because of the damned blizzard,” he blustered. Mostly it had to do with the fact that Postal Inspector Sam Questa had failed to show up on time for Grisky’s two o’clock quarterbacks meeting.

Yolie and Toni were there. Des was there. Capt. Joey Amalfitano of the Narcotics Task Force, aka The Aardvark, was there. The sandwiches and coffee from McGee’s Diner were there. But Questa was a no-show. And would be one, Des felt certain, until precisely 2:17. Grisky would be kept waiting the same exact number of minutes that he’d kept Questa waiting earlier that morning. Boys. They could be so pissy.

“Do you realize I may actually have to spend Christmas here instead of in Cancun?” Grisky raged on, pacing and flexing.

“Boo-freaking-hoo,” Yolie growled.

Des glanced at her watch. It was 2:16.

Sam Questa came bustling through the door ten seconds later-smack-dab on pissy man-time. Questa removed his coat and sat down at the table, reaching for a sandwich and a container of coffee. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, biting into his sandwich. “Got held up in an interview.”

Grisky narrowed his gaze before he sat down, too. “Okay, let’s see where we’re at,” he said, rubbing his hands together briskly. He really liked to do that, and it was really starting to get on Des’s nerves. “Resident Trooper Mitry? The ball’s yours.”

“Pat Faulstich’s story didn’t exactly check out,” she reported. “Lem Champlain didn’t send him to plow those driveways on Kinney Road last night.”

Grisky shook his head at her. “And this is important because?…”

“Everywhere I go I keep tripping over him. He’s clean, but he has an older brother, Mickey, who’s doing a nickel at the Baskerville Correctional Center in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, for transporting three hundred pounds of marijuana. And he’s a Rustic Inn regular, same as Casey Zander.”

The Aarvark shifted uncomfortably in his chair at her mention of the Rustic, though he said nothing.

“What does all of this add up to?” Grisky demanded.

“Maybe something, maybe nothing. But I’m keeping my eye on him.”

“Fair enough. Snooki, you’re next.”

Toni the Tiger stared across the table at him in silence.

He tilted his jarhead at her curiously. “Snooki?…”

“My name is Toni,” she said to him between gritted teeth. “I also answer to Sargeant Tedone. But if you call me Snooki one more time I am going to make a bow tie out of your balls. Got it?”

Grisky held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Got it.”

“Good,” she said, slamming the door on what had to be the shortest crush on record. There truly was hope for this girl-even if she was a Tedone. “I’ve just spent several hours at the Headmaster’s House with the geek squad looking into Josie Cantro.” Toni leafed through her notepad. “Our local life coach has what I’d classify as a lively bio. For starters, her birth name isn’t Cantro. It’s Hoyt. Josie Ann Hoyt was born on August 1, 1981 in Augusta, Maine. Cantro is her mother’s maiden name. We found this out when we deepened our search into the details surrounding her father’s shooting death.”

Des blinked at her in surprise. “Josie’s father was shot to death?”

Toni nodded. “When Josie was twelve. Officially, it was closed out as a hunting accident, shooter unknown. Unofficially, the Maine State Police didn’t view it as an accident. The shooting took place in a wooded area less than a quarter mile from Hoyt’s home. No hunters admitted to being in the area at the time. And Hoyt was shot from close range.”

“How close?” Grisky asked.

“Less than ten feet.”

“Yeah, down here in the Nutmeg State we don’t generally call that a hunting accident,” Yolie said. “We call it murder.”

“They looked very hard at Josie’s mother for it,” Toni said. “It was commonly known that he’d been beating the crap out of her for years. But they had no weapon, no witness, no case. So they wrote it off and moved on. The next time Josie pops up on our radar screen is six years later in Lewiston when she applies for a Maine driver’s license as Josie Ann Cantro, age eighteen. Her life on paper officially starts here-Social Security records, credit cards and so on. She rented an apartment in Lewiston. To support herself Josie Cantro was employed at the Down East Bar and Grill and at a Snap Fitness Center. Meanwhile, under the name Adele Slade, she was also employed as a pole dancer at a club called the Matrix, where she was arrested on numerous occasions for soliciting prostitution and lewd public behavior.”