A Fantastic Holiday Season: The Gift of Stories (3 page)

The Tannenbaums looked at each other, as if uncomfortable, hesitant, then both shook their heads.

Sheyenne whisked in and made several color photocopies of Buddy’s photo before returning the snapshot to Mr. Tannenbaum, who lovingly tucked it back into his wallet. “I’ll also submit this to the Talbot & Knowles blood bars,” Sheyenne suggested. “They can include it with the other photos of missing children.”

Mr. Tannenbaum looked uncomfortable. “I’d prefer to keep this out of the public eye.”

“We already talked to the blood bars,” snuffled Mrs. Tannenbaum. “They said they were overbooked for the next two months until … until …” She began sobbing.

Mr. Tannenbaum completed the sentence. “Until Christmas.” He patted his wife on the shoulder. “Please find him soon, Mr. Chambeaux. We have very important Hanukkah traditions, and Winter Solstice, too.”

She sniffled again. “The holidays just won’t be the same without our dear Buddy. Please find him, Mr. Chambeaux. Such a dear, dear sweet boy.”

6

“That kid is an unholy terror!” said Adric the comic-shop owner. He barely glanced at the picture of Buddy Tannenbaum. “He and his friends are monsters—and I don’t mean that in a good way.”

The wall behind the counter was plastered with autographed 8 × 10s of Adric posing with D-list celebrities. He was a gray-skinned, pot-bellied zombie, not nearly as well-preserved as the special variant-cover issues he kept bagged-and-boarded on high shelves. His complexion showed some signs of putrescence as well as fresh acne, which made him doubly unfortunate; although the undead suffer from numerous physical maladies, few are afflicted by zits.

Adric wore a powder-blue
Star Wars
T-shirt with R2-D2 and C-3PO on the front, and it was much too small for him. I deduced that he’d bought the shirt when he saw
Star Wars
first run in theaters; in the years since, his body had enlarged considerably, though he probably told himself that the shirt had shrunk.

Adric handed me back the photo. “That kid and his friends are always in here stealing things, vandalizing, harassing customers, and of course never buying anything. A bunch of deadbeats and undeadbeats.”

I frowned. It seemed Buddy Tannenbaum was not the upstanding young werewolf his parents imagined him to be. “He’s gone missing. When was the last time you saw him?”

He snorted. “I kicked out the whole wild bunch two weeks ago—caught them shoplifting one time too many.”

I had another thought. “So, does that mean you keep a list of, say, who’s naughty and who’s nice?”

“Nah, this is a comic store. We get all kinds in here. That Buddy Tannenbaum and his friends, though—they’d definitely go in the Naughty column.”

As he talked, Adric used a box-cutter to slice open a cardboard case of new arrivals like an eager coroner working on his favorite autopsy. He opened the flaps and began pulling out shrink-wrapped Christmas ornaments, clumsy-looking figurines of werewolves, vampires, scaly demons.

Frowning in disgust, he held up a crudely painted vampire with red marks smeared across his face. “Look at these! My customers want quality. The catalog said they’re hand-painted, but this looks like it was finger-painted, or
claw
-painted.” He shook his head. “Maybe even
flipper
-painted.”

Adric dug into the box, pulled out a larger figure, a well-muscled werewolf in a cop uniform, holding an enormous Magnum pistol. “Does this look like Hairy Harry to you?” The rogue lycanthropic cop from the UQPD was something of a folk hero, even though he’d retired from the force.

“I wouldn’t pay a premium for it,” I said. I noticed the figures were labeled
Elfis Originals! Collect Them All!

Adric kept pulling figurines out of the packaging, then rolled his eyes as he lifted out six genuine Elfis figurines, each wearing a white sequin jacket, brushed-back black hair and sideburns, and big sunglasses. “What? I only ordered one of these.”

Next, he removed a larger box showing a scaled aquatic gill-man labeled “Special Limited Edition Creature! (Comes with free lagoon!).” With his stiff zombie fingers, Adric pried open the package, removed the scaly figurine along with a tiny black plastic basin. Apparently, the user was supposed to fill it with water.

“Special Edition? Ridiculous! Look at this: ‘Limited to 1,000,000 Units.’ How the hell does that make it
collectible?
I’ll be lucky to sell six … well, five, because I’ll keep one for myself.”

I tried to get back to the reason I’d come there. “Have you seen any of Buddy’s buddies? Anyone I could talk to? His parents are distraught.”

“No, and good riddance. Maybe they all ran off to join the vampire circus.” Adric continued setting out the Elfis Originals holiday ornaments. “Mark my words, his parents will have a lot more silent nights this way. Just imagine what a handful that werewolf kid is gonna be when he hits his teenage years and hormones kick in.”

He looked up at where two young zombies were pawing over back issues of
The Crypt-Keeper’s Funniest Capers
. The zombie teens had their mouths open and they moaned in laughter at the panels.

Adric yelled, “Hey, you! Be careful with those—you get decaying flesh on any of the pages, you bought it.”

The zombies looked up at him, moaned, then went back to the comics, noticeably exercising greater care.

I picked up a fine-print catalog listing of the Elfis Originals ornaments and collectibles and pocketed it for future reference. I thanked Adric and left.

7

When Santa Claus returned to our offices, he looked even more anxious than before. His face was sallow, almost jaundiced; his flowing white beard looked scraggly, with a thin brownish stain from where he’d been hitting the pipe a little too often. He had lost enough weight that his red jacket was gathered in folds around his waist with his wide black belt cinched tighter. I saw that he’d even punched a new hole.

“Usually when I visit, people set out milk and cookies for me.” He sounded disappointed, beaten down. “I’ll be glad to get back to running the bed-and-breakfast, but I have my duties first. I can’t do my rounds without that list of Naughty and Nice.” He slumped into a chair beside Sheyenne’s desk and let out a sigh. “I tried to write a new one from memory, but my mind isn’t what it used to be—too many bitter cold nights out in a reindeer-powered sleigh. I won’t kid you, Christmas Eve is a hard night—a real nut-cracker. After it’s over, I crawl into bed and sleep for a week.”

“My accountant says the same thing about Tax Day,” I told him.

Santa adjusted his floppy red cap. “I haven’t heard you jingle my bell, and time is running out. It’s beginning to look a lot like a screwed-up Christmas.”

“I’ve been investigating,” I reassured him. “Particularly your rival Elfis. He makes no secret of the fact that he wants to take you out, but he insists he doesn’t need your list to do it. What can you tell me about him?”

Santa’s face fell, as if his heart had shrunk three sizes that day. “That elf deserves a lump of coal in his stocking on Christmas morning. Unfair business practices, inferior materials—do you know that his silver bells are made of cheap aluminum?” He frowned again, let out another sigh. “I try not to think ill of people, but I’d like to take a thick candy cane and go thumpety-thump-thump on his head. He’s ruining traditions by taking away the incentive for children to be Nice. Just look at the rude manners in chat rooms on the internet.”

My heart went out to him. “I’m looking into his North Pole South operations, and Robin is studying his business practices. I haven’t found any evidence that he arranged to steal your Naughty and Nice list, but I’ll keep digging.”

After rummaging around in the kitchen, Sheyenne flitted into the main room, carrying a plate with three stale chocolate-chip cookies and a glass of milk. “Look what I found for you, Santa!”

He brightened. “’Tis the season to be jolly—so I’ll try my best.” He pulled a paper ticket from the pocket of his red jacket. “Could you validate this for me? I’ve got my reindeer and sleigh parked on the roof.”

“Of course,” Sheyenne said, and stamped his parking ticket.

Santa took the rest of the cookies “for the reindeer” and slipped through the door just as Mr. and Mrs. Tannenbaum hurried in. They looked anxious, and my heart sank, wondering how I was going to tell them that their darling Buddy wasn’t the sugarplum they believed him to be. If the young werewolf was getting into so much trouble, how could the parents not know? Were they willfully oblivious to the fact that their angel came straight from the dark side?

“We weren’t entirely honest with you,” Mrs. Tannenbaum said, then looked away shyly. “We have something else that might help.”

Her husband said, “I convinced my wife that we needed to give you every detail if we want our Buddy back. Our son is more important than our shame and embarrassment.”

“We thought you might be able to solve the case without it, and then we wouldn’t have to admit … admit—” Mrs. Tannenbaum’s lower lip quivered. Her eyes flashed golden, and I could see a hint of werewolf coming to the fore.

“Buddy’s given us difficulties before,” Mr. Tannenbaum admitted. “He’s an unruly kid. I think it comes from his full-fur blood. Trouble in school, trouble with vandalism. He’s even run away from home a few times.”

“But he always comes back,” Mrs. Tannenbaum interjected. “He’s a good boy at heart.”

I asked, “Do you think there’s any possibility that he’s just run off again?”

Both Tannenbaums shook their heads. “Not so close to Christmas. He would have waited to get his toys first. He’s a troublemaker, but he’s a greedy troublemaker.”

I didn’t know if that was the best kind or the worst kind. “The information doesn’t help a great deal at the moment, but I’ll keep asking around.”

The Tannenbaums looked at each other. “Oh, that’s not what we meant to tell you, Mr. Chambeaux. We were reluctant to say anything about what we did because … because, well, it’s not exactly legal.”

That’s never a good phrase to include in a sentence. I braced myself.

“We had to do something because Buddy ran away so often. So, the last time we took him in to the vet …” Mrs. Tannenbaum swallowed hard, then lowered her voice. “We had a tracking chip implanted in the base of his skull. Nothing anyone would notice, mind you, but … just in case.”

I perked up. “A tracking device? Then we can pinpoint his location right away!”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Tannenbaum. “Do you think that might help you find him?”

I slapped my forehead, and it made a hollow popping sound from the bullet hole there. “The cases don’t solve themselves,” I said, “but I do need all the information.”

“The tracking signal has a very limited range,” Mr. Tannenbaum said. “Quite discreet, but not terribly useful. Still, if you get close enough …”

The Tannenbaums looked sheepish after they gave me the secret frequency and serial number of the tracker. “Just bring our little boy home, please? That would be the best present we ever had.”

8

When we began our search, I decided to take police backup—McGoo—just so I could say I was being sensible. I didn’t want to go overboard, though, because there was a better-than-even chance Buddy had just run away with his juvenile delinquent unnatural pals. Still, if Buddy’s disappearance was connected with the other missing kids, McGoo would want to be along.

Then Robin insisted on joining us. With such a three-pronged approach, how could we not be prepared to solve any problem?

She had frowned in disapproval when she heard about the implanted tracker chip, claiming that it violated the civil rights of an underage werewolf. But McGoo had seen enough troublemakers in his work, and he was more inclined to try the “terrified straight” approach. Robin finally conceded that if the tracker meant we could reunite the full-time fuzzy kid with his once-a-month fuzzy parents, then all was for the best.

With the tracker’s frequency and serial number, Robin downloaded a free but highly rated Track Werewolf app for her smartphone. She bundled up in a wool coat, and we all set off into the snowy night to find Buddy, leaving Sheyenne in charge of the office.

We wandered around the Quarter for a frustrating hour, following false signals (a garage-door opener and a universal TV remote control). I was beginning to think that we might not pick up the tracker’s limited-range signal until after we had already found the subject in question. We were lost and frustrated; what had seemed to be an easy solution was turning out to be a headache and a waste of time.

Then Sheyenne called us and saved the day. She had found an update for the Track Werewolf app, which dealt with certain bugs and user issues and increased sensitivity. Once Robin installed the update, we found a strong signal. We were closer than we thought.

The signal led us straight to the tall smokestacks and gigantic toy warehouses behind Elfis’s North Pole South complex.

Holding her phone, Robin took the lead, guiding us along the chain-link fence to the back service entrance of the gigantic manufacturing warehouses. The temperature was dropping, and fluffy snowflakes drifted down. Not a creature was stirring, not even the ones that usually stirred at that time of night.

Approaching the back guard gate, we found two burly golems wearing security guard uniforms. Their clay bodies were stiff and hardening in the cold, but one perked up. “Do you hear what I hear?”

The other said, “Do you see what I see?”

Now alert, the golems prepared to block our way, both of them focusing on McGoo’s uniform, the dark blue police shirt, trousers, and cap. “That looks good on you,” said one of the golems.

“We both wanted to be cops, but couldn’t pass the tests,” the other explained.

I knew why, but I didn’t embarrass them by pointing out the reason.

McGoo said, “We’re searching for a missing child, and we have reason to believe he’s inside one of the warehouses.” He held out a copy of Buddy’s picture.

“Kids just can’t stay away from toys,” said the first golem.

Robin held up her smartphone, showing the app. “And we have electronic evidence he’s in there.”