Carats and Coconuts (7 page)

“
Well, c’mon in then,”
Father T said, stepping out of the doorway and motioning for The
Squad to enter his home. “How nice of you to bring me cookies and
beverages.”

“
You ain’t gonna think that
for long,” Grams said.

“
What was that?” Father T
asked.

“
She said we can’t stay for
long,” Kat broke-in, setting the plate of cookies on Father T’s
coffee table. “Oh, my goodness, your place is beautiful. You were
so right, Suzie.”

“
Oh, I’d love to give you
all a tour,” Father Time said, his cheeks glowing a bright
red.

Sometimes, I really could see where my
mom was coming from regarding Father Time. He had no one. Thanks to
his crotchety attitude and shy personality, he didn’t have any
friends other than my on-again-off-again dad.

But he was still an asshole. So I
totally got my dad’s side of the situation too.

“
So, you must be Zoey’s
friends that I’ve heard so much about,” he said, then coughed, his
cheeks getting redder by the second.

“
Busted!”

I shouted, scaring everyone in my
family room.

“
I’d say so,” my dad said,
toasting his cocoa mug to all of ours. “I told ya the bastard was
phone-hacking me. He never would have known about any of you
otherwise.”

“
I want to get this over
with and fast. I don’t like those women being in that house,” R
said, punching buttons on his cell phone.

You mean you don’t like Kat being
there, I thought, but didn’t want to call him out.

Just then, we could hear Father Time’s
cell phone ringing through my dad’s surround sound system.
Consequently, we instantly glued our attention back to the
flat-screen.

“
Excuse me a minute,” Father
Time said, seeming somewhat relieved for the diversion. “I’m
expecting this call.”

“
Liar,” Roman said, his eyes
getting that Dark Knight quality that I knew meant he was goin’ in
for the kill.

We watched, as did our Mom Squad Hit
Team, as Father Time walked over to a large desk by the solid glass
back-side of his home and grabbed his phone.

Now that we all knew where the phone
was, we could begin the next stage of the plan.

“
Hmmm. Must have been a
wrong number. Anyway, where were we?”

“
We were about to take a
tour of your lovely home. But why don’t we enjoy these cookies
first? They’re fresh out of the oven,” my mother said, motioning
for everyone to have a seat in Father Time’s sunken living
room.

As soon as she’d handed out the
cookies, Grams sprang into action.

“
I’ve made us some herbal
tea as well,” she said, placing the thermos on the coffee table and
taking out the holly-printed Styrofoam cups she’d brought
along.

“
Leave it to her,” I
laughed.

“
What? I don’t get it,” Roxy
said.

“
Just watch, and you will,”
Jules said.

“
Did you help Grams with the
tea?” I asked Jules.

“
Let’s just say I showed her
a little culinary school trick to get the most out of her chosen
ingredients.”

Oh boy. Father Time was
doomed.

He’d soon be bouncing off the walls.
Well not the walls exactly…

“
Is someone gonna fill me
in?” Roxy begged.

Father Time downed his first cup of
tea.

“
This is wonderful. Hit me
again, please. Why, it’s just…I don’t know how to describe
it…invigorating.”

“
It should be, dumb-ass,” I
said, unable to keep from laughing.

“
C’mon, Guys. Spill it,”
Roxy begged once more.

I couldn’t. And neither could Jules.
We were both doubled over laughing our asses off.

“
Roxy,” Roman took pity on
her while rolling his eyes at me and Jules’ rowdy revelry, “holly
is often used in South America as a stimulant. Some species, like
the ones our Santa Claus here grows, have the highest caffeine
content of any plant. In fact, here in the States, Native Americans
used these holly-based teas as ceremonial stimulants that they
called “the black drink”.”

“
Why was it called the black
drink?”

“
Let’s just say it has a
rather strong purgative property,” Roman said.

“
What the hell does that
mean?”

“
He’s gonna be on the john
for hours,” I said, still laughing so hard I could hardly answer
her.

“
Oh my God!”

We all said in what seemed an eerily
choreographed way.

We watched the screen, hardly able to
focus on what was happening.

All at once, Father Time’s face had
contorted, and he began to gingerly poke at his stomach.

“
Oh my. If you girls will
excuse me for a moment, there’s something I need to take care of,”
he said, practically launching off the couch. “Make yourselves at
home.”

We could hardly make out the last of
his words as he ran out of the living room.

My mother leaned over to
Grams.

“
What did you do to that
tea?”

“
I told ya. Laxatives in
brownies are sooo yesterday.”

My mother made the sign of the cross
and sat there shaking her head while Kat sprung into action with
the Cellebite device and began to capture everything we needed from
Father Time’s phone.

“
Hurry up over there,” my
mom said, looking more and more nervous by the minute.

“
Really, Suzie Snowflake.
I’m tellin’ ya. We got all the time in the world. That asshole
ain’t gonna be comin’ outta the loo for a long, long time,” Grams
said, taking another cookie off the tray and putting her feet up on
the edge of Father Time’s coffee table.

Kat gave us a thumbs-up as she
disconnected the Cellebite from Father Time’s phone.

We all cheered and high-fived as we
watched The Squad climb back into my mom’s car and head for
home.

S
ometimes the only way to stop a vicious enterprise is to use
the perps’ own tactics against ‘em. And that’s exactly what we were
about to do.

Standing with my entire extended
family, right next to the gorgeous golden-star-topped potted
evergreen trees my mother had decorated this year in ruby reds and
over-the-top gilded splendor, we waited for the showdown to
begin.

Any minute now, Dad would have his
team of reindeer hooked to his favorite sleigh for his annual
flight-simulation run.

With Christmas Eve only two days away,
this was his final shot to make everything a “Go” for The Big
Night.

Watching Rudolph’s mesmerizing
back-lit nose cast out its GPS signals, I giggled inside. He looked
as if he had a Tavernier Stone-sized ruby attached to his real
nose.

Speaking of dazzling carats, I glanced
at my mother, still amazed she and I had managed to keep our secret
worries from my dad. He certainly had enough on his mind and didn’t
need the added stress of our concerns.

Thankfully, though, Mom and I had
already made up our minds that after the holidays, we’d tell Roman
and R about our problem.

I took a deep breath, letting the
crystal cold lake air rattle my lungs and shake me back into our
present quandary.

“
You think Father Time is
dumb enough to bite on Zoey’s message?”

I overheard Kat asking R.

“
Oh, he’ll bite all right,”
R answered her, standing way too close to Kat to any longer be able
to deny their growing relationship. “This technique worked like a
charm when I used it to bust the privately hired investigator who
was feeding stories to the London tabloids about Roman and
Ross.”

I had to admit, R’s plan was
brilliant.

He’d had me call my dad’s phone and
leave a message with a fake story about tonight’s test flight. It
would lead anyone who might be tapping into it to think Dad was
revealing his holly fodder secrets tonight to major investors and
government regulators.

I gazed out along our property lines,
knowing our security elves were in their places and ready to jump
into action, literally, when they were needed.

“
What have we got here?”
Grams asked, cackling like a wild hen. “Your dad looks more like a
drag queen than Santa Claus.”

“
Oh, for cryin’ out loud, he
does not,” Kat said, then playfully swiped at Gram’s silly
feather-thin head-scarf. “You’re the crazy-ass one who thinks that
damn chiffon scarf is protecting your bird-sized head from certain
frostbite.”

“
Your Dad’s coat is just
beautiful this year,” my mother said, coming up to wrap her arms
around me.

She looked rather wonderful too, I
must say, in the matching frock I’d made for her.

Ever since I was a teenager, I’d been
designing and sewing their Christmas gear. It was a project I
looked forward to each year.

I checked out my Dad in his gorgeous
red Italian wool coat. I’d found the fabric in Italy, where I buy
almost all my fabric now that I call Tuscany home.

After cutting it and finishing the
seams, I’d hand-sewn a gazillion sparkling gold threads and baubles
onto it in the shapes of stars and s-shaped swirls. I’d envisioned
a holiday season filled with stars on tree-tops and swirling
blizzards of lake effect snow. That’s what I tried to convey on
each piece I’d designed.

“
Personally, I think it’s my
cane that completes the overall look of your ensemble,” Roxy said,
making us all fall into fits of mischievous giggles.

“
I’ll second that,” my dad
said, holding his bedazzled candy cane staff high into the air to
all our hoots, hollers and whistles.

I think the poor guy had more glitter
in his beard than was left on his cane.

“
I like the hats best,” R
spoke-up, holding up the huge, puffy yellow balls I’d sewn onto the
ends of each of our guest’s Santa hats.

My mom raised her eyebrows at me and
winked. We knew those hats that we’d stayed up half the night
finishing together would be quite the hit.

We wanted to celebrate our new Italian
family too, and make them feel at home. So each of us was now the
proud owner of our very own under the Tuscan sun Santa
hats.

Not to leave out our elves and
reindeer, we’d made sure each of them had a hat too. The reindeer
also sported fancy yellow scarves. We always had to pamper their
whiney asses.

That said, it had to be awful chilly
up in that Christmas Eve sky. ‘Course they probably sweat their
antlers off in the southern hemisphere.

“
What are you thinking
about, My Princess?” Roman said, putting his arms around me and
pulling me close to his bundled up side.

Realizing I’d never seen my prince
wear so many clothes and layers as he was here along the whimsical
winter shores of Lake Michigan, I laughed all to myself.

“
I’m thinking how much I’ve
missed my parent’s crazy world. Sometimes, I just don’t think
they’re all that crazy.”

“
I think you’re right.
They’re not crazy at all. It’s never crazy to live your passions.
And it’s so right to live your truth with the ones you love most,”
he said, the corners of his eyes filling with moisture.

Must be from the bitter cold, I
thought.

“
Let’s get this show on the
road…or, in the sky. Shall we?”

My dad interrupted to the somewhat
awkward, somewhat fabulous moment Roman and I were
sharing.

Dad’s audience went wild. Whooping and
cheering for our very own Santa Claus to let the show
begin.

“
So how does he pull off
this part?” Roman whispered in my ear.

“
You’ll see,” I said,
squeezing his gloved hand in mine. “It’s all in how much you truly
believe.”

My Dad began his reindeer call-out,
just like Santa does in our favorite childhood
storybook.

“
On Comet. On
Cupid…”

As he called out to each reindeer,
they stammered and snorted, pawing at the ground with their
polished hooves.

And before anyone’s doubts could be
flamed any further, my dad and his team took to the skies behind
our Witherspoon Whoville.

Like the storybook of all storybooks,
however, there suddenly arose a major clatter, but not from our
lawn, rather it sounded like it was coming from my parent’s
rooftop.

When we all turned around to see what
was the matter, what to our wondering eyes did appear, but Father
Time and his what?!

Eight mechanical reindeer?!

Who the hell ever heard of robotic
reindeer?!

Too bad Father Time, the goofball,
forgot about metal not adhering well to ice.

Evidently, he’d tried to land on my
parent’s roof, and his technobot team had lost their
footing.