Grave Apparel (84 page)

“I can see you
did.”
Vic
laughed out loud and hugged the girls as
they
wrapped their smaller arms around
Vic
and
Lacey.
“He’s
the Santa Dude!” Jasmine told
Vic.
“Are
you
Lacey’s
boyfriend?”

Lacey
laughed too, and the stress seemed to break suddenly and they were all laughing. Except for
Wilcox,
who
seemed
very
unhappy
in the
snow,
breathing hard, his
eyes
closed in
agony.

“My brother is a United States
Senator,”
Wilcox
mumbled through the pain of his injured arm, spitting out
snow
and dirt and
straw.
“I’m going to sue the lot of you!”

“Bad
luck
for
you,”
Vic
drawled,
“Senators
hate
having
scummy
little
brothers
in
prison
for
murder.
He
may
never
speak
to
you
again.
I
guess
that’s
at
least
two
murders,
assault,
and three or four attempted murders?
You’ve
been pretty
busy,
for a K Street
lawyer.”

“I’ll
press
charges!
False
arrest, assault, all of you, assault and
false
imprisonment.
You
all assaulted me.
You
broke
my
damn
arm,
and
I’m
a
Wilcox!”
Vic
adjusted
his
boot
and
Wilcox
shut up, his
face
in the mud.

“Smithsonian! What the hell is going on?” She heard a
fa
miliar
gruff
voice, and behind it the sound of sirens
coming
closer.
She could see other cars pulling up, some with flashing lights.

“Glad you could join us, Mac. Just where on earth
have
you been?
Didn’t
we say nine o’clock?”

Mac Jones trudged
toward
the little church and the
Nativity,
bundled
up in a trench coat, red
earmuffs,
and a red and green
scarf.
His
wife,
Kim,
was
holding
Mac’s
hand
and
smiling.
She’d
seen Jasmine and Lily Rose hugging
Lacey’s
legs
where
they
stood
over
the
downed
Wilcox.
Mac
threw
a sour look at the
broken
man
handcuffed
on the ground.

“What kind of mess
have
you gotten us all into
now,
Smith sonian?”

“Nice to see you too, Mac. Hi,
Kim.”
Lacey
took the little girls by their hands and presented them.
“I’d
like
you to meet Jasmine Lee and Lily Rose
Lee.”

The Metropolitan Police and
Detective
Broadway
Lamont ar
rived
on the scene. Lamont announced he had another damn dead
woman
to deal with in an apartment
down
the block, and if this little circus in the
snow
wasn’t
connected to it
somehow
and nobody here in the
Nativity
stable
was
dead, he had “big ger and deader
fish
to
fry.”
Lacey led Lamont to the
stable,
where
they
found
Wilcox’s
lethal Maglite under the
straw,
still slick with shampoo and fresh blood. Lamont decided he could spare them a little of his precious time. Soon he had Henderson
Wilcox
taken
to
the
Violent
Crimes
Branch
to
be
interrogated
and
charged
with multiple murders and miscellaneous lesser of fenses. Mac and the big
detective
had a chat out of earshot of
Lacey
and
Vic.
Lamont came back and said he
would
talk to all of them
later,
and
they
should “stay
local.”
He
would
see the girls the
next
day,
and he
favored
Lacey
with a wink. Mac said
he
and
Kim
would
be
there
with
them,
along
with
the
legal
staff
of
The
Eye
.

Jeffrey
Bentley
Holmes
showed
up in a limousine with ther moses of hot chocolate and
boxes
of cookies from the
Willard
Hotel. He
hadn’t
been able to reach
Lacey,
he said;
he’d
been
worried,
and he
finally
reached
Vic
just as
Vic
was
en route to
Shaw.
Jeffrey
said he just
wanted
to
offer
his support, and his hot chocolate and cookies were appreciated by all. Especially Jasmine and Lily Rose.

After all the police procedure
was
over
for the night,
Lacey
caught Jasmine looking up at Mac, clouds of doubt in her
eyes.
Lacey
sat
down
next
to her in the back of
Jeffrey’s
warm
limo. “I
know
he looks mean,
but
really
he’s
not. He
doesn’t
even
hit

reporters. Some reporters might
deserve
it sometimes. Not me, of
course.”

“He
doesn’t
look
that
mean,”
Jasmine
said.
“I
just
don’t
know
about all this.
You
know.”

“They want both of you.
You
and Lily Rose. They
won’t
split you
up.”

“But
Lacey,”
Jasmine
began,
chewing
on
her
lower
lip.
“But
what if I just
can’t
stand it?”

Lacey
put
her
arm
around
the
girl’s
shoulders,
thin
even under her
puffy
new
parka. “Then I will come and kidnap you
myself.”

“Do you promise?” Her almond
eyes
were
large
and serious. Lacey glanced
over
at Mac and Kim. They were
holding
hands and talking quietly with Lily Rose, and Lily Rose
was
smiling and giggling and eating a cookie. Mac
was
laughing
too.
She
had
a
feeling
this
foster
family
would
work. And
if
it
didn’t,
well,
they
were small, and
Lacey
did
have
a second bedroom.

“I promise. Cross my
heart.”

Mac
turned
to
them
and
addressed
Jasmine.
“Why
don’t
you
and I
have
a little talk?” He took
Jasmine’s
hand and
they
went into the stable to talk. Mac sat
down
on a bale of hay and she stood next to him. This made them approximately the
same
height, and Mac and Jasmine
conversed
face
to
face
and
scowl
to
scowl.

Kim and Lily Rose and
Vic
and
Lacey
waited
for the
verdict.
They
edged a little
closer.
They
couldn’t
hear what
was
being said,
but
Jasmine seemed to raise a lot of objections.
There
were gestures and shrugs and sighs.
Finally,
Mac put out his big hand for Jasmine to
shake.

“Deal,”
he said
solemnly.
“Are
we ready to go home
now?”
Jasmine nodded, with one last piercing look at
Lacey.
“Re
member,
you
promised.”
Then she turned to Mac and put her
tiny
hand in his
large
one.

In that moment,
Lacey
imagined she
saw
the weight of the
world
fall
from
Jasmine’s
shoulders. Jasmine had decided to let Mac carry that weight for a while. She let him zip up her
new
coat for
her.

Lily Rose ran to her
sister.
“They
have
a Christmas tree, Jas mine, and a bedroom just for
two
little
girls.”

Jasmine smiled at her
sister.
“No
one’s
going to keep
us
apart.”

Vic
gave
Lacey
a
hug
and
she
wiped
a
couple
of
tears
away.
“It’s
really
late,
Mac.”
Kim
gave
each
girl
a
hug.
“We’ve
got
to get them
home.”
Mac put his arms around his wife and com pleted the
family
picture. It
was
weird,
Lacey
thought,
how
well
they
all seemed to
fit
together.

“What are you looking at, Smithsonian?” Mac said. “I think I’m looking at Santa
Claus.”

Nothing ruined
Lacey’s
mood the
next
day,
not her
overdue
column, not her long chat with
Broadway
Lamont, not
even
the preposterous story on DeadFed dot com, which Damon
New
house peppered with
adjectives,
alliteration, and angelic inter cession. There
wasn’t
a space alien or small assassin in sight.

CHRISTMAS
MIRACLE
IN
SHAW
!
CANDY
CANE
KILLER
CAUGHT
.
SMITHSONIAN
AND
LITTLE
SHEPHERDS FEND
OFF
FURIOUS
FIEND
.

SENATOR
’
S
SIBLING
A
SLAYER
!

Newhouse must be in conspiracy geek
heaven
today,
she
thought.
Brooke
too. Maybe she
would
forward
Damon’s
re sume to Mac after all. Just for laughs, and a little holiday good will. And if he actually hired him, Mac
would
either turn him into a real journalist—or
have
him bronzed and put on display in
The
Eye
’s
lobby.

On Christmas
Eve,
Lacey
dropped by the
office
for half a
day.
There
wasn’t
much to do. Half the
newsroom
was
off.
Cas sandra
was
on an
extended
leave
to cope with the troubling
fact
that her
exboyfriend
had tried to kill
her.
On the bright side, a judge had denied Henderson
Wilcox
bail and bound him
over
for trial on
charges
of
murder,
despite the anguished pleas of Senator Snidely Whiplash himself.
Lacey
noticed Peter John son had
taken
time
off
as well. Perhaps, she thought, he
would
persuade Cassandra to
leave
“the commune” and the Gangsters of Gaia.