Not Even a Mouse: A Rona Shively Short (Chapters Ten & Eleven)

Chapter Ten

Close-up, I could see that this man really looked like Santa Claus. He wasn’t just wearing the suit; he had the curly, white hair, rosy cheeks, bright eyes and all. I sniffed and I could smell gingerbread. Did this man smell like gingerbread cookies? That wasn’t possible. He’d been lugging bags back and forth for at least twenty minutes. There was no way he could still smell like this even if he had bathed in cookie batter. Well, I wasn’t sure about that part, but it seemed unlikely.

He turned to go back inside and I hurried around the back to see if I could get a look while he was gone. I opened up one of the red, velvet bags and found exactly what I was hoping to find. There were five Move ‘N Shaker consoles inside along with some other toys and knick-knacks. I checked another bag. The same thing. All of the bags held at least five Move ‘N Shaker consoles. I looked at the license plate of the Suburban to see if I might be able to run it for information on the driver. It said, SANTAC 1. “Oh, shit!” I said. This was a company vehicle. That could only mean one thing.

“What are you doing out here?” I heard a voice say from behind me.

I turned to find the man in the Santa suit standing there with his hands on his hips. He had kind of a grumpy look on his face and he was waiting for me to answer.

“I-uh-I was just-uh, well, hello,” I said, holding my hand out, “I’m Jenny Herman. I’ve been working for Mrs. Clos on a market research project. Is she here, by any chance?” I crossed my fingers behind my back and waited to see if he was going to shake my hand.

He made no move to do so, so I put my hand back down to avoid looking any more like an idiot.

“What kind of project?” he asked, “I don’t know anything about any market research.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” I said, hoping he would play along.

“I’m Sam, I own the place,” he said, “As you can see, we’re closed. Donella’s at home now. You’ll have to catch her tomorrow.”

“I see, I thought she might still be here, so I…” I started to say, but Sam interrupted me.

“Now, Miss, I don’t believe that’s the truth,” he said, “Whatever you’re doing here, you need to leave now. If you need to speak with my wife, come back tomorrow.”

“O-okay,” I said, surprised by his tone. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

I backed away from him and he finally said, “Look, I’m sorry for being so abrupt, but I’ve got a lot to do this evening and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention seeing me here tonight.”

“Oh, I, why would I mention it?” I asked, “I never saw you. Sure.”

Why would he care if I mentioned seeing him at his own shop? Something was really wrong with this picture.

I made my way back to the Jeep, trying to keep my eye on him as I backed across the lawn. He watched me until I reached the far side of the house and then he turned and went back inside the warehouse. I was almost to the Jeep when I caught a glimpse of something going on in the house. I had to get a closer look. I walked over and stood beside the window and peered inside. To my surprise, there were a bunch of cookies on the counter and a small conveyor belt set up near the oven in the wall. Cookies were coming out in droves and there, in the kitchen stood Mrs. Clos, sprinkling sugar on top of the cookies as they came out of the oven. I pinched myself to make sure that I wasn’t dreaming again.

Now wait a minute, I thought. If she’s in here and he’s out there, how can she not realize that he’s moving the Move ‘N Shakers out of the warehouse. I went around and tried the front door of the house. It opened. I walked inside and headed into the kitchen area where I had just seen Mrs. Clos and the cookies. No one was there and there were no cookies in the kitchen. This is where I freaked out. I turned and practically ran out the door. I didn’t stop to snoop; I just went outside and got in my Jeep. I was going to leave, but something kept telling me to go back inside and look around. After a few moments, I mustered up the courage to go back in the house. No one was inside, so I needed to just do what I had come to do and get out.

I headed for Mrs. Clos’s office. No one appeared to be hiding in there, so I went around the desk and flipped through some of the papers. I came across a ledger, so I opened it. Here, all of the items manufactured by Santac were listed. I flipped through the pages until I got to the Move ‘N Shakers. From what I could see, Sam was taking ten of the consoles with each shipment that he delivered to the toy stores. Mrs. Clos had written in the margin that Sam’s deal with the local toy stores were that five of them would keep two consoles in their stores at all times. Well, then, why did he have at least twenty of them in the Suburban tonight?

I put the ledger back on the desk. I’d just have to come back tomorrow and talk to her. If she couldn’t answer this, then I was done with the case. I made sure that everything looked just as it had when I’d come in and then I left. When I was behind the wheel of the Jeep, I heard the Suburban start up on the other side of the yard. I prayed that Santa…er, Sam would take the other driveway away from the warehouse instead of driving around back to get out. Thankfully, he did. I pulled away and drove in the direction he was going. Maybe I could follow him for a while to see where he went with the consoles.

I drove, keeping a safe distance between the Suburban and myself, until Sam pulled into a parking lot near the downtown area. I parked about a block away so that I could watch him. He got out and went around to the back where he reached inside. He took out one of the red bags and slung it over his shoulder. He headed for the entrance to the building next to the parking lot. It was St. Mary’s Children’s Hospital.

I got out and headed up to the door, myself. I probably didn’t need to, but I wanted to be sure that my suspicions were correct. I could see the red bag bobbing up and down as he walked down the hallway. I followed as far behind him as I could. He entered the wing marked “Cancer Unit” and set the bag down at the nurse’s station. I saw him talk to the nurse on duty and then he picked up the bag again and started going to the different rooms. He was delivering toys to these kids. There was nothing sinister going on here. I turned and went back out to my Jeep to wait until he came back out. When he did, he still carried the bag, but it was considerably less full. He stopped for a moment as he got to his vehicle and I saw him run a hand over his face. He appeared to be crying, but in the distance it was hard to see.

I followed him for a couple of hours and he stopped at three more hospitals and finally at an orphanage. At the orphanage, he collected the remains of the bags he had been delivering to the hospitals and took it all inside. He came out empty handed and drove away. I needed to know what had happened in there, so I got out and went inside. In the entryway, there was a glass window with a little hole cut into it so that the person sitting behind it could speak to visitors.

“Can I help you, Miss?” the lady asked.

“Yes, actually, the man who was just here,” I started, “did he just deliver some toys?”

“Why, yes, he did,” she said, smiling, “he does it every year.”

“He does?” I asked, “Is he from Santac, Ltd.”

She looked puzzled, “Santac, Ltd.? What’s that?”

“It’s a…oh, well, never mind,” I said, “I guess it doesn’t matter.”

“No, he delivers toys to us after he’s been to the area hospitals. You know, he and his wife lost a child to cancer many years ago and he always makes it a point to take toys over to the cancer units at the children’s hospitals,” she explained.

Puzzled, I looked at her and said, “Really?”

“Oh, yes, I didn’t know this until the last couple of years, but I was curious so I asked him one year where he got all of the toys,” she started to explain. “How rude of me, would you like to come inside?”

“Sure, sure,” I said, still trying to process what she was saying.

She buzzed me through and said, “You don’t look like a criminal, so I guessed it was safe to let you in.”

“Thanks, that’s nice to know,” I said.

“Would you like some coffee?” she asked.

I nodded and she turned and grabbed a mug from the rack behind her and then poured a cup of coffee for me. She handed me the steaming cup and then indicated that we should walk. As we walked, she told me that Sam had come in every year for the last fifteen years to deliver toys. I looked around the place. It was decorated very nicely for an orphanage. Someone had tried very hard to make this place seem like a home. Marjorie, as she introduced herself to me, explained that one night a couple of years ago, Sam had come in and he was crying. He was a mess, so she had sat him down with a cup of coffee and they had talked. This is when she found out that his little boy had died a very tragic death some years ago. He’d had a rare form of cancer and they had tried treatment after treatment, but nothing had worked. Sam had been so distraught that he had been unable to find any joy in the holidays at all until he had started taking toys to the hospital.

“Have you met his wife?” I asked her.

“His wife?” she asked, the look on her face had shown that she was just as puzzled as I felt. “I didn’t think she was still alive, either.”

“Really, you’re sure about this?” I was not prepared for that answer. Had he been going around doing nice things and then lying to people about his wife being dead? That seemed a strange way to do good deeds.

We talked for a little while longer and by the time I left, I was a mess. The story about Sam’s son had made me terribly sad and I was confused about the whole thing with Mrs. Clos. I needed to talk to her as soon as possible.

Chapter Eleven

I tried to sleep, but my dreams were once again filled with visions of Santa and of Mrs. Clos. This time, there was a little boy in the dream, too. I attributed his presence to the discussion I’d had with Marjorie at the orphanage. I resolved to get to the bottom of this matter when I woke up the next morning. The first thing I would do would be to find Mrs. Clos and ask her what was going on between she and Mr. Clos. She might tell me it’s none of my business, but I still wanted to ask the question.

I got up and got dressed, thinking for a fleeting moment that it was strange not to have heard from Trey last night. I’d find him later. Right now, I needed to get some answers. I drove out to Santac and marched inside. Mrs. Clos was standing in the kitchen, sprinkling sugar over a plate of cookies. Sure, now she’s doing this. Where was she last night when I thought I saw this happening?

“I need to talk to you,” I said to her, in a no bullshit tone.

“Well, good morning to you, dear,” she said, “What’s the problem?”

“Do you want to tell me anything about Mr. Clos’s nighttime activities?” I asked.

“His nighttime activities?” she asked. “I don’t know what he does at night, we hardly see each other.”

“Is that why he’s telling people you died?” I asked her, immediately regretting that I’d said it that way.

She stopped sprinkling sugar for a moment and then looked over at me sharply. “He’s doing no such thing!”

“Yes, he is doing such a thing,” I said, “he’s delivering toys to hospitals and orphanages and all the while he’s telling them you passed away. Why would he do that?”

“He’s delivering toys to hospitals and orphanages?” she asked. She looked surprised.

“Yes, bags of them, including several of your Move ‘N Shakers,” I said. “Did you not know about this?”

“Well, no, I didn’t realize he was doing that,” she said, “I thought he just delivered to the toy stores.”

“Don’t the two of you talk?” I asked. “Ever?”

She came around the counter and took a seat at the small kitchen table. When she was seated, she put her hands on her face and let out a sigh. “I didn’t think he was still doing that.”

“Doing what?” I asked.

“Taking toys to the hospitals, it’s the cancer units isn’t it?” she asked.
I nodded.

“Years ago, he told me he was going to stop doing that because it hurt him so to go in there year after year and see those kids,” she said. “I told him it was good for him to give to others and that he should keep going. He assured me that it was too hard on him and that he was not going to do it anymore. I can’t believe he’s been doing it all these years.”

“You didn’t know?” I asked.

She was crying now. “No, I didn’t know. I stopped talking to him years ago after I thought he gave up on it. I had no idea he’d kept going with it. I held a grudge all those years and he’s been doing the right thing.”

“So he didn’t tell you about the extra consoles he’s been taking?” I asked.
She shook her head.

“And that’s why you thought someone had been stealing?” I asked.

She nodded.

This was the biggest case of marital miscommunication I’d ever seen. I knew some married couples didn’t talk, but this was ridiculous.

“Why would he say you’re dead?” I asked.

She looked down at her hands and said, “I told him that if he stopped taking the toys to the kids, he might as well consider himself a widower. He must have really taken that to heart.”

“Well, now, that’s just silly,” I said. “Isn’t that taking things a bit far? You two need to talk and you need to do it soon.”

I couldn’t believe I was giving relationship advice to anyone. I was the last person who knew anything about how to get along with men.

I told her that I was going to consider the case closed. She asked if she owed me anything else for my time. I told her to talk to her husband and that would be enough for me. Before I left, I asked her why I had seen her here last night baking cookies.

“I wasn’t here, dear, you must have seen the holograms,” she said.

“Holograms?” I asked.

“Yes, the windows are rigged to show holograms throughout the house of people doing Christmasy things like baking cookies and such,” she said, “It’s the latest thing in Christmas decorating.”

“Sure,” I said, “That explains it.” I left, feeling so much dumber than I had before.

No one had been stealing from anyone. Sam hadn’t actually been lying to people about Mrs. Clos; he was just relaying her words because the two of them needed some serious relationship counseling. There hadn’t been any wrongdoing at Santac, unless you count what husbands and wives put each other through when they stop talking to one another. It was sad, really. The two of them had gone through so much with the loss of their child so long ago and because they hadn’t talked to each other, their marriage had suffered even more. I hoped that they could fix whatever was wrong between them.

A couple of days later on Christmas Eve, I was sitting in my office when I received a phone call from Sam Clos. He told me that he appreciated whatever I had done to get his wife to finally talk to him. We had a nice conversation and by the time I hung up, I was feeling very happy. I picked up the phone again and called Trey. I invited him over to open his present.

“Present?” he had said, “but I didn’t get you anything.”

“Just bring yourself,” I said, “that’s present enough.”

When I got home, I walked Mrs. Shuble’s present down to her apartment. She was so happy to see me that she gave me a big hug when I walked in the door. She gave me a plate full of cookies and sat down to open her gift. Her face lit up as she pulled the plate from the paper. “I love it, Rona,” she had said. That made me feel pretty good, I guess.

I got back to my apartment at about the same time that Trey was getting there. He had a big box with a bright red bow on top.

“I thought you said you didn’t get me anything,” I said.

“I lied,” he said, grinning.

We went inside and spent the evening eating cookies and opening our gifts. He loved his T-Shirt and I, well, I very much enjoyed his gift to me; a shiny, brass cowbell engraved with, “To My Favorite Girl, Love, Trey.” Some girls might take offense to such a gift, but I thought it was hilarious. I placed the cowbell on my kitchen counter and we sat there and admired it until the wee hours of the night. After that, the rest is for me to know and for no one else to find out.

Merry Christmas, all!

THE END


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Not Even a Mouse: A Rona Shively Short (Chapter Nine)

I dropped Trey off at the place he was calling home and then I headed over to my office. I needed to check on a couple of things and then I was going back to that house tonight to snoop around. The first place I was going to check was in Mrs. Clos’s office. I had a feeling something there might lead me closer to the truth about this case. It was only around eleven-thirty so I had plenty of time to do my research. I had left a copy of the contract at the office, so I grabbed it and headed back towards my apartment.

When I got there, I turned on the laptop and waited for my background check site to come up. When it came up, I typed in Donella Clos and hit the search button. Within a few moments, some names came up on the screen. I looked for one that seemed to be close to her age. There was one that was seventy-three years old, another that was fifty-two and another that was ninety years old. I figured that my Mrs. Clos would be younger than ninety, but it was a toss-up between the other two. I checked the seventy-three year old first. She was listed as living at the same address as Santac, Ltd. That was too easy. Just for fun, I checked the fifty-two year old’s record. She was also listed as living at the same address as Santac, Ltd. That was odd. Maybe they had the wrong information in there.

I switched back and forth between the two records and compared the information. Everything was exactly the same except for the year of birth. This made me wonder so I checked the ninety year old Donella Clos. I could not believe that I was seeing this. Her record was exactly the same as the other two except for the age. This made no sense. I scrolled through each record until I found the name of the spouse. It was listed as Sam T. Clos. Sam T. Clos? This was ridiculous.

None of the Donella Clos’s listed had ever filed for bankruptcy and none of them were listed as employed. Santac, Ltd. was not listed anywhere except as their home address. None of them had ever worked anywhere and there were no children listed on any of the records. So much for thinking that these three could be mother, daughter, and grandmother. I had thought maybe there could be some logical explanation for the three Donella Clos’s and that the spouse listing had been a typo, but I was wrong.

Sam T. Clos wasn’t listed in any database that I could get into so I pushed my chair away from the desk and closed the laptop. I checked my watch. It was about twelve-fifteen. It was still way too early to go snooping around. I was getting impatient and I didn’t think I could wait the whole day to go back to Santac. This was frustrating. The only thing I could do was to wait and possibly get some lunch.

As I sat there looking around my apartment, I glanced across the room at my pitiful, little Christmas tree. I made the effort each year, but there was never anything under it for me or anyone else. I guessed I could go shopping and maybe find a nice gift for Trey. After all, we had been kind of close over the last couple of weeks. Okay, we’d been really close. That had to at least merit a shirt or something.

I grabbed my bag and headed out to my parking lot. I figured I’d go out to the mall and get one of those Philly Steak sandwiches and then look around for something suitable for Trey. The sandwich shop was literally right inside the door of the mall, so I stepped up to the counter and asked for a deluxe combo meal. I gave the lady behind the counter ten bucks and she gave me back a quarter. This sandwich had better be damned good for nine dollars. I sat down at one of the small tables in the restaurant and unwrapped my sandwich. It was smothered with onions and green peppers and smelled just about as good as it looked. What a good idea this had been, I thought.

For a few moments, I sat there enjoying my lunch and when I was finished, I carried my tray to the trash can, emptied it and then set the tray back on the counter. There appeared to be no other appropriate place to put it, so I left. I looked around the mall and tried to think of what to get for Trey without appearing too involved with the idea of us together. I didn’t want him to think I was entertaining thoughts of a relationship. What we had was stressful enough.

I walked through the mall until I finally came to a specialty shop that seemed to fit Trey’s personality. There were all kinds of funny T-Shirts and hats to look at, so I spent some time reading them. I had at least four more hours to kill, so I took my time. After I had read every shirt and hat in the place, I settled on the shirt with the Callahan logo from the movie, Tommy Boy on it. We had watched the movie about a million times together and I knew he would appreciate the reference.
I picked up another shirt for myself. I just liked the whole “More Cowbell” thing and thought it appropriate for the week I was having.

Once I had purchased the shirts, I remembered that Mrs. Shuble was still down the hall from me in the apartment building and that I should probably try to find something for her while I was shopping. I stopped at a shop that looked like it was made for old ladies. There were a bunch of frilly things and porcelain teapots sitting around. Everything looked like something you would see at your grandmother’s house. I found a nice porcelain clock that I thought would be great for her and then I hesitated. If I were really old, would a clock be a constant reminder that my time was limited? I put the clock back and opted for a collectible plate decorated with pretty roses. She liked roses, but she had often complained that she couldn’t keep the real ones alive long enough. This would do.

By the time I finished shopping, I was about a hundred dollars lighter and two hours closer to being able to spy on Santac. I took my stuff back to my apartment and went ahead and wrapped everything with the wrapping paper I’d purchased. This killed another hour. Finally, I decided that now had to be good enough. I put the wrapped items under the tree, including the shirt I had wrapped up for myself. I figured I might as well have something under there. I grabbed a Coke from the refrigerator and headed back out the door.

While driving over to Santac, I got a call from Trey on my cell phone. He asked what I was doing and I told him I was just following up on some things. I didn’t want to tell him where I was. He didn’t need to come back to Santac with me. The reindeer had freaked him out earlier, so I didn’t see the point in subjecting him to further weirdness. I approached the front lot of Santac with caution. No one was there, or at least, it looked deserted. I pulled around to the back of the house and stopped short when I saw a big, red Suburban parked at the door of the warehouse. I put my Jeep in reverse and backed up so that I couldn’t be seen. I quietly got out of the Jeep and crept over to the side of the house to get a closer look.

There, across the lot, was a man in a Santa suit loading items into the Suburban. He brought bag after bag out to the vehicle just as he had done in my dreams the last couple of nights. After a few moments, he disappeared inside the warehouse and I thought it would be a good time to sneak over there and see what he was loading into the vehicle. I hurried across the yard, wishing all the while that it was just two hours later so that I’d at least be hidden by darkness. Not that the light from the Christmas display wouldn’t give me away. Just as I was getting ready to look inside the bags, I heard the door of the warehouse open. I ducked back behind the side of the Suburban. I hoped I was hidden from view as I watched the Santa approach with another bag in his hands.


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Not Even a Mouse: A Rona Shively Short (Chapter Eight)

Trey and I talked about the possibilities for a while and I decided that I needed to give Mrs. Clos a call first thing in the morning. We went through our usual tug-of-war over my unwillingness to sleep with him and finally, Trey settled for a kiss and a blanket for the couch. I had to give him an “A” for effort.

I didn’t sleep well at all. I kept dreaming about the house and the animals outside. Again, I saw the red Suburban and the man in the Santa suit. When my alarm clock finally woke me at seven-thirty, I sat up and shook my head to make sure that I was really awake. Before I even got out of bed, I picked up the phone and dialed Mrs. Clos’s number. I listened as the phone just rang and rang. No answering machine picked up. I hung up the phone and sat down at my kitchen table. I was stuck, I was cranky, and on top of everything else, I was hungry.

I trotted down the hall to the bathroom and noticed that Trey was still asleep on the couch. Quietly, I shut the door and went about my business. I was trying to decide how I was going to approach Mrs. Clos with my findings. After talking with Trey last night, I was fairly convinced that none of Santac’s employees were stealing from the company. I was even more convinced that Mrs. Clos might, in fact, be up to something. Thinking back to her visit to my office and the bruises she’d had on her face, I wondered if they might have been related to what was happening with the missing consoles. It didn’t make sense, but stranger things had happened.

I got into the shower, ever watchful of the bathroom door. It didn’t lock and I really didn’t want to be ambushed by Trey in the midst of my lather-rinse-repeat cycle. I didn’t think he would come in if he heard the shower running, but you never know about him. Sometimes, he catches me off guard. When I finished showering, I grabbed my towel and dried off and then wrapped the towel around me to go back to my bedroom. When I opened the door, Trey was sitting up on the couch. He turned and smiled at me, no doubt getting ready to say something stupid about the towel.

“Good morning,” I said.

“It’d be a better morning if you’d drop your towel,” he said, chuckling. See, I told you he couldn’t resist saying something stupid.

I smirked at him and then headed back down the hall to my room to get dressed. “I’m going out to get something to eat,” I yelled back to him, “wanna go?”

“Sure,” he said. I heard him walk across the living room and go into the bathroom. A few moments later, I heard the door open as the toilet was finishing a flush. The next thing I knew, Trey was standing in my doorway. I was still in my towel trying to find something comfortable to wear.

“Hey,” I said, “I’m trying to get dressed, here.”

“I know,” he said, “I almost missed it.” He moved closer to me and put his arms around me. Looking down at me, he brushed his lips over mine. He tasted like my toothpaste.

“Trey, I can’t,” I said.

He kissed me again. Obviously he hadn’t comprehended my previous statement. This time, his kiss was a little longer and just a little bit more involved.

“I can’t do this,” I said.

“Why not?” he asked.

This is where I made my mistake. I thought to myself as he was kissing me, “Why not, indeed?” The next thing I knew, the towel had hit the floor and I wasn’t thinking so much about breakfast anymore.

A half an hour later, I was headed back to the shower. This time, Trey promised that he would leave me alone so that we could get dressed and go get some breakfast. Times like these made me wonder why the two of us hadn’t stayed together. Though I knew the answer, I always came back to the fact that we had such good chemistry and the sex was just so good between us that it didn’t make sense to be with anyone else. I really didn’t need this confusion right now, but here it was again.

I got out of the shower and finished getting myself ready to go. When we were both ready to face the public, we went out to the Jeep and I drove us toward the IHOP.

We went in, sat down and ordered our coffee.

“So, are you going out to that place, today?” he asked when the coffee had arrived.

I emptied a couple of packets of sugar into my cup and stirred it, “You mean, Santac?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said, “Wherever you’ve been working?”

“I think so,” I said, “I can’t get her on the phone and to tell you the truth, I want to wrap this up.”

“I could go with you,” he said, “I don’t have anything planned today.”

Trey never had anything planned. He just kind of showed up here and there, waiting to make something happen. “I guess you could go,” I said.

We talked as we ate our breakfast and when we were finished, we paid the check and headed out to Santac. When we arrived, I saw that there were no lights on in the building and there were no cars in the parking lot. I told Trey to stay in the Jeep and I went inside to see what was going on.

No one was in the main lobby, so I headed towards Mrs. Clos’s office. She was sitting behind her desk with her hands behind her tiny head. She looked so tired that I almost hated to disturb her. I knocked softly on the door.

“Hello,” she said when she saw me there. “How are you today?”

Her voice was shaky and she seemed distraught.

“Hi, is something the matter?” I asked.

“Oh, well, yes,” she said, “one of our stockers has passed away. He was sick in the hospital and he died in the middle of the night last night.”

“You’re not talking about Tony Albertson, are you?” I asked.

She nodded, “That’s the one.” She sighed deeply and then said, “I’m sorry I forgot to tell you that he couldn’t have been involved with the thefts, either. I’ve been so flustered by all of this that it completely slipped my mind that he’d been sick.”

“That’s alright,” I said, “No problem. I just came by to see if you had a moment to talk.”

“Well, yes, I guess I do,” she said, “We shut down today out of respect for Tony. What is it that you need?”

“I wanted to let you know that I have talked with all of the employees and none of them seem to be the type that would steal from you,” I told her. I swallowed hard before launching into my next statement, “I was wondering if you might have been somehow…mistaken about what was going on?”

She looked down at her desk and tapped a white, gloved finger on her blotter. “Mistaken?” she asked, “How so?”

“Well, what I mean to say is, that…well, are you sure someone is stealing from you?” I said. That came out about as smooth as a gravel road.

“Of course, I’m sure,” she said, “Why else would I pay someone to come in here and look around?” Her tone was even and she didn’t seem angry. She seemed genuinely confused.

“Maybe I’m not being very clear,” I said, “Okay; could there be some other reason why the consoles are coming up missing?”

She still didn’t seem to know what I was getting at. “Not that I’m aware of, dear.”

“Okay, well, I don’t know how much more I can do on this case,” I said, “I could come back later and see if I notice anything strange, but for now, I’ll take a break.”

“Makes sense to me,” she said, “We’ll be open again tomorrow.”

I offered my sympathy for Mr. Albertson and we said our goodbyes. When I got back into the Jeep, Trey was sitting there staring in the direction of the warehouse.

“What’s up?” I asked him.

“I saw something weird over there while you were inside,” he said, “We ought to take a look.”

“When you say weird, what do you mean?” I asked, realizing that weird was fairly normal in this place.

“Well, I don’t really want to say this, but I guess I have to,” he said, “I think I saw a reindeer running around over by that building.”

“A reindeer?” I asked, “Over there?” I pointed to the warehouse.

“Yep,” he said. “It was very strange.”

“I’m sure,” I said. We both got out of the Jeep and headed over to the building to see if we could find the animal. I looked down as we approached the warehouse and sure enough, there were some kind of hoof prints or something like that in the mud.
I wasn’t sure why there was mud in this part of the yard, but I assumed there was a good reason.

“See,” Trey said, pointing to the ground. “This is where I saw it.”

I didn’t know what to make of this. There wasn’t an animal in sight and I knew what the warehouse looked like inside. It wasn’t a place where a reindeer could roam about freely without doing a lot of damage to the décor.

“I don’t see where it could be,” I told Trey. “The warehouse is full of stuff and I know it could not possibly fit in there.”

We went back to the Jeep and that’s when I remembered the kennels that were on the other side of the house. I punched Trey in the shoulder and told him to follow me.
I headed across the parking lot and towards a row of short buildings that lined the opposite side of the yard. We walked up to them and I could hear something rustling around inside. I peeked through a crack in the building and saw a huge, hairy beast that I couldn’t readily identify. I asked Trey to take a look. He did so and then looked at me, “That’s what I saw!”

“That’s a reindeer?” I asked.

“Yep, that’s a reindeer,” he said.

“What the hell does a company like this need with reindeer?” I said.

Trey shrugged. I needed to think about this. We decided to head back to the Jeep and get the hell out of this place. I wanted to do some background checking on Mrs. Clos and her husband. That was the one thing I hadn’t done and now, I was sure that it should have been the first thing on my list.


I'll post more later today!

Until next times...




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Not Even a Mouse: A Rona Shively Short (Chapter Seven)

I walked quietly back to the workshop area to see if I could find Bergman. I saw a squat, little man standing at the Move ‘N Shaker table. He was wearing a faded blue work shirt, red velvet suspenders and a ratty, old cab driver hat. He held an unlit cigarette between his lips and his expression was just plain grumpy. He appeared to be squinting at the parts as he put them together. I walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Hi, are you Monte Bergman?” I asked, smiling. It was so unnatural for me to do this. I rarely smile unless I’m flirting and I was sincerely hoping he didn’t think I was here to ask him out on a date.

“Eh, who’s asking?” he said.

“My name is Jenny Herman,” I said, “I’m doing some market research for Mrs. Clos.”

He put down the parts he was working on and bowed to me slightly as he took my hand. He placed a soft kiss on my hand and said, “Glad to meet you, Ms. Herman.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. He looked scary, but he was actually an old-fashioned gentleman. “Good to meet you, Mr. Bergman. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions about working on the Move ‘N Shaker line. Do you have a minute?”

“Sure I do, and you can call me Monte,” he said with a wink.

Well, this wasn’t what I had expected at all. I asked him a couple of questions and he responded much like the others had. He had days when he was stressed, but for the most part he enjoyed the work. It was a job and there weren’t many out there these days. There especially weren’t many out there for old ex-cons like him.

After I finished talking with him, I felt terrible. I had hoped that he would be a bad person so that I could wrap this investigation up and go home. Just before I went to leave, I asked him about Tony Albertson. I hadn’t seen anyone working the cart the entire time we had been talking. He told me that Tony was a good man who regularly attended St. Mark’s church but that he had been sick for the past two days and was now in the hospital with pneumonia. I wondered why Mrs. Clos hadn’t mentioned this.

I headed home feeling like I had wasted a few hours badgering people who had no clue that they were being singled out as potential criminals. Most of them seemed okay in spite of their quirks. What didn’t sit well with me was that the Move ‘N Shakers were coming up missing, yet no one on the line seemed to be doing anything wrong. It was puzzling.

When I reached my apartment, I let myself in and went straight to the refrigerator. The sandwich from earlier was waiting there to be reheated. I removed it from its wrapper and stuck it on a plate so that I could microwave it back to edible. Within a minute, I had a burger and a Coke sitting in front of me and I was preparing to eat my high cholesterol, high fat midnight snack. Before I could get the first bite, there was a knock at my door.

“Who the hell?” I said, not completing my own sentence, but completely understanding what I meant.

I walked over to the door and looked out the peephole. It was Trey. I had forgotten that he was coming back by tonight. I opened the door and let him in.

“Hey, Toots,” he said, smiling and winking.

“Toots?” I said, “Who wants to be called Toots?”

He grabbed me and kissed my cheek before chucking me under the chin. “I thought all women liked being called Toots.”

“No wonder you’re still single,” I said. I’m not a nice woman.

“Ouch,” he said, “What’s wrong with you tonight? Somebody piss in your Wheaties or something?”

“No, no, I’m just having a tough time figuring out this case I took yesterday,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, what’s it about?” he asked, “Maybe I can help.”

He looked so cute standing there with his arms crossed. I couldn’t even remember what the case was about when I looked at him. Damn, this was distracting.

“Uh, well, I think this lady thinks there’s someone stealing from her company,” I struggled to explain.

“Well, that’s part of the problem, are you even sure what you’re working on?” he laughed.

This snapped me out of my trance and I slapped him on the back of the head for that, “Yes, I’m sure.” I hated for someone to question my intelligence, even when it wasn’t obvious to them that I knew what I was doing.

“Okay, then, who does she think is stealing?” he asked, rubbing the back of his head.

“There were five people that she asked me to check into,” I said, “but they all come up fairly clean and after talking with four of the five, I’m pretty sure none of them are stealing.”

“So it has to be the fifth guy,” he said. “Case closed.”

“Nope, he’s in the hospital,” I said, “and, he’s an old guy who goes to church and all of that. I don’t think he would do it.”

“Okay,” he said, “maybe no one is stealing from her.”

I gave him a look that said, “Are you stupid?” He put his hands up and shrugged his shoulders, “Well?”

“Then why would she come and talk to me about it?” I asked.

“Maybe she’s pulling some kind of insurance fraud and wants it to look good, so she comes to you to investigate something that isn’t really happening?” he said, “It’s an old gag, but it works.”

I thought about this for a moment. Trey knew a lot about fraud; he’d done time in jail for it. And Mrs. Clos was a little screwy.


Come back tomorrow for more of the story!

Until next time...



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