Diva 04 _ Diva Cooks a Goose, The (2 page)

ONE

If it hadn’t been for my brother, George, standing in the middle of the street waving his arms like a maniac, his block would have looked like a Christmas Eve picture from a movie. Strands of Christmas lights sparkled in trees, wound around porches, and traced roof lines. Light snow had begun to dance in the air, teasing that children might rise to a blanket of white on Christmas morning. But the harsh blue of a police car strobe light zapped an eerie glow over the crowd of people milling on lawns and in the street.

“Pull over there.” Detective Wolf Fleishman, who sat next to me in my car, pointed to the right. “Next to the Grinch snow globe.”

The Grinch would have been hard to miss. Bigger than the people on the lawn, he bobbled inside a clear plastic orb, grinning evilly and lit from below to show off fake swirling snow. The home owners hadn’t stopped there, though. Eight huge reindeer pulled Santa across the roof of the house, and a train set, big enough for a toddler to ride on, chugged on tracks through the front yard.

My sister, Hannah, leaned forward in the backseat. “Thank goodness Mom and Dad are all right. I see them on George’s front porch. When he called, I was afraid one of them had an attack or something.”

Hannah jumped from my car while it was still moving. Normally I would have yelled at her, but I understood her anxiety. Our parents and brother, George, and his family, including his mother-in-law, had spent the evening at my house in Old Town, Alexandria, enjoying our Christmas Eve tradition of feasting on goose. After they left, Wolf, Hannah, and I were cleaning up the kitchen around ten thirty, when George’s cryptic call came. He insisted we bring Wolf to his house immediately, then hung up. Hannah had tried to call George back during the forty-five-minute drive from Alexandria to Chantilly, but he wasn’t answering his phone.

Once we arrived, Wolf had barely stepped out of my car when George began to gesture like a crazed person and sprang into a frenzied explanation. George’s daughter, Jen, launched herself at my car door declaring, “Christmas is over!”

I opened the door, stepped out, and smoothed her hair. “Don’t say that, sweetie.” But I had a terrible suspicion that she might be right, given the unhappy faces I saw on her neighbors. Not to mention that it didn’t take much to spoil Christmas for a twelve-year-old. Even one like Jen, who never failed to remind us that she would be a very sophisticated and grown-up thirteen on her next birthday, still ten months away.

Moving fast so I wouldn’t miss anything, I scooted around the front of the car in time to hear George say, “I think everyone in the neighborhood should open their houses to the cops. The thief won’t agree and then we’ll know who it is.”

“Thief? What happened?” I asked.

“Some crumb stole our Christmas gifts. Right out from under our trees. The thief hit the whole neighborhood. We’ve been wiped out.” He’d barely finished speaking when a raven-haired woman, a neighbor, I presumed, clutched his arm and actually batted her eyelashes at him.

George’s big frustration in life was that he’d only grown to be medium height. That, coupled with a sweet baby face, made him feel he didn’t have what it took to be a tough guy and intimidate people, but women flocked to him like hummingbirds to a red flower.

“How could that happen?” I asked.

George used his free hand to give the woman a reassuring pat on her shoulder but cast an impatient look at me. “Apparently he did it during the community party earlier today. People were either away visiting relatives, or at the party. That’s why I think it was an inside job. The thief had to know that everyone would be over at the community center. Someone in our neighborhood is a rat. He even raided closets and found most of the”—George stopped his tirade and looked around at the kids—“S-A-N-T-A gifts and stole them!”

Wolf nodded in the direction of a couple of Fairfax County cops. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

“I told you Christmas was over,” said Jen sadly.

Mustering a hopeful voice and trying not to sound like my mother, I said, “There’s more to Christmas than just presents.” In spite of my efforts, my voice faded with lack of conviction. Presents are a huge deal when you’re twelve.

“That’s what Grandma said. I made her a Christmas ornament that’s all sparkly and now some creep has it.”

Her little mouth turned down at the corners and I couldn’t help hugging her. “We’ll have a fun Christmas anyway.”

“Sophie! Sophie!” The woman’s voice was all too familiar. Wearing an elegant faux shearling vest and matching hat, she strode toward us.
Natasha
.

Natasha and I had grown up together in Berrysville, Virginia, where we had competed at everything, except the beauty pageants she adored. Raven-haired, and svelte in a way I could never be, Natasha had cultivated a loyal and enthusiastic following through her local TV show about all things domestic. And since she had hooked up with my ex-husband, Mars, and bought a house at the end of my block in Old Town, Alexandria, Natasha had become a fixture in my life.

“What are
you
doing here?” It wasn’t the nicest reaction, but I did wonder what brought her to my brother’s neighborhood.

“One of the residents, Tom Thorpe, asked me to decorate the community center. He’s one of Mars’s political clients.”

We hadn’t been married for some time, but since Mars was a political consultant, most of his clients were well known. Tom Thorpe didn’t ring any bells for me. “I don’t think I’ve heard of Thorpe.”

She lowered her voice. “It’s not public knowledge yet but Tom’s going to be running for office. He’s also one of my biggest fans, so when he asked me to decorate, I couldn’t say no. Did you see the square? It’s absolutely fabulous.”

As it happened, I had seen it when the children rehearsed their holiday pageant the day before. In fact, Hannah and I had pondered why someone, apparently Natasha, had chosen life-size pink peacocks with white wreaths on their necks and giant turquoise magnolia flowers as a theme. I imagined the net lighting on the trees and the candlelight parade of the children into the clubhouse to see Santa had been charming, but I had missed the actual production since I had a goose to roast. While the rest of my family watched Jen in the pageant, I cooked our Christmas Eve feast and had it waiting for them.

“Can you believe this?” Natasha asked, indicating the crowd. “We went out to dinner, and when we got back, the cops were here.”

A shrill voice cut through the gentle murmuring. Jen perked up at the sound. “That’s our neighbor, Mrs. Chadwick. If anyone can find the missing presents, she can. Everybody is afraid of her.”

“Your neighbor?”

Jen nodded, grabbed my hand, and pulled me over for a clearer view of Ginger confronting the Fairfax County cops.

I’d met Ginger Chadwick a few times but didn’t know her well. She’d struck me as a nervous type, and seemed particularly skilled at complaining. “There was a brand-new, and very fancy, computer under our tree. Do you know what those things cost?”

“You got me the new Mac I wanted?” Ginger’s son, Edward, asked with glee. Almost as tall as his father, seventeen-year-old Edward still had that gangly look—thin as his mother, but with long legs and arms. The glow of the Grinch globe cast light on his strawberry blond hair, which fell into a mussed shock on his forehead, as though he hadn’t bothered to comb it all day.

The police officer, whose name tag said Sergeant McGregor, looked tired. Wolf, who loved good food and sported a slightly rounded girth, seemed far more imposing. Fair-haired McGregor might have been the one in a uniform, but next to Wolf, he seemed slender and boyish, even though I guessed him to be about forty. He opened his mouth, but he only managed a weak, “Ma’am ...” before Ginger started in on him again.

“I’m just telling you that we’re not talking about crummy toys and cheap as-advertised-on-TV items. Significant high-ticket items were stolen, which I’m positive places this in a felony category, not something you can simply dismiss.” She placed her fists on her hips and glared at him. “So what are you going to do about it?”

Wolf, who had been talking to McGregor, winced. It was almost imperceptible, but I caught it and realized how well I had come to know him. I doubted that anyone else noticed that tiny flash of pain. After a rocky start to our relationship, my work as an event planner, and Wolf’s job as a homicide detective, had made it next to impossible to get together. But an unfortunate run-in with another detective forced us to meet secretly at my house, late at night, which turned out to be prime dating time for Wolf and me. We didn’t get out to restaurants or museums or shows, but we both liked to putter in the kitchen, and snuggling on the sofa with a late-night movie helped both of us unwind from the stress of our jobs. Some of my friends would have been very unhappy to be in a relationship like ours, but it suited Wolf and me perfectly. The best part was that most people butted out of our relationship because they didn’t know about it.