Murder Most Merry (27 page)

So who stole the moon bear?

That night I made a special supper for Carrie, and Deborah served. There’s nothing a waitress enjoys so much on her time off as being served. I know; there was a time I waitressed myself. After supper, Carrie put Deborah to bed and read to her, watched TV for a while, then got ready to turn in herself. There’s really nothing for a young woman to do in Pitman unless she’s the kind that runs around with the truckers that stop by, and Carrie wasn’t that type. She had made one mistake, trusted one boy, but that could have happened to anybody. And she did what was right and was raising Deborah to be a pride to us all.

I stayed up and sat in my rocker, trying to think of who would steal that bear, but there was no way to find that out. At least it wasn’t a kid, a little kid, who had done it; those firemen’s poles are heavy. Of course it could have been a teenager, but what would a teenager want with a funny-looking little bear like that? There were plenty of better toys in the lower rows to tempt a teenager, toys that anyone could take in a second with no trouble at all. But none of them had been stolen. No, it wasn’t a teenager; I was pretty sure of that.

Finally, I went to sleep. Or to bed, at least. I must have been awake for half the night and didn’t come up with anything. But I did know one thing I had to do.

That night being the last night before Christmas Eve, they were going to hold the auction for Petrina in the firehouse. I didn’t want to get there too early; no point in making Deborah feel bad seeing all the other presents bought up and knowing she wasn’t going to get her moon bear. But I did want her to know it wasn’t just idle talk when I promised I’d get her bear back.

Debbie and I waited until the last toy was auctioned off and Porter announced the total. Four thousand, three hundred seventy-two dollars and fifty cents. More than we had expected and more than enough to send the Rozovskis to New York. Then I stood up and said, “I bid eighteen dollars, cash, for the little black bear. Number 273.”

Homer looked embarrassed. “Please, Mrs. Slowinski, you know we don’t have that bear anymore.

“I just want to make sure,
Mr.
Curtis, that when I find that bear, it’s mine. Mine and Deborah’s. So you can just add eighteen dollars to your total,
Mr.
Porter, and when that bear turns up. it’s mine.” Now if anyone was seen with the bear, everybody’d know whose it was. And what’s more, if the thief had a guilty conscience. he’d know where to return the bear.

That night I stayed in my rocking chair again, rocking and thinking, thinking and rocking. I was sure I was on the right track. Why would anyone want to take the moon bear? That had to be the way to find the thief; to figure out why anyone would take the bear. But as much as I rocked, much as I thought, I was stuck right there. Finally, after midnight, I gave up. There was no way to figure it out. Maybe if I slept on it... Only trouble was. tomorrow was Christmas Eve, and even if I figured out who took the bear, there was no way I could get it back in time to put it under the tree so Debbie would find it when she woke up Christmas morning. For all I knew, the bear was in Pittsburgh by now, or even back in China. Maybe I shouldn’t have warned the thief by making such a fuss when I bought the missing bear.

Going to bed didn’t help. I lay awake, thinking of everything that had happened, from the time we first stood behind the firetrucks and saw the bear, to the time in Mr. Wong’s store when I figured out how the bear had been stolen. Then all of a sudden it was clear. I knew who had stolen the bear. That is I knew
how
it had been stolen and that told me
who
had stolen it which told me how. which ... What really happened was I knew it all, all at once. Of course. I didn’t know
where
the bear was, not exactly, but I’d get to that eventually. One thing I had to remember was not to tell Deborah what I had figured out. Not that I was wrong— I
wasn’t
wrong: everything fit too perfectly—but I might not be able to get the bear back. After all, how hard would it be to destroy the bear, to burn it or throw it in the dump, rather than go to jail?

The next morning Deborah woke me. “It’s all right, Grandma.” she said. “I didn’t really want that old moon bear. I really wanted a wetting doll. Or a plain doll. So don’t cry.” I wasn’t aware I was crying, but I guess I was. Whatever else I had done in my life, whatever else Carrie had done, to bring to life, to bring up such a sweet wonderful human being, a girl like this, one to be so proud of, that made up for everything. I only wished Jake could have been here with me to see her. And Wesley Sladen, the fool, to see what he’d missed.

I didn’t say anything during breakfast—we always let Carrie sleep late because of her hours but right after we washed up, I dressed Deborah warmly. “We’re going for a long walk.” I told her. She took my hand and we started out.

I went to the garage where he worked and motioned Levi Porter to come out. He came, wiping his hands on a rag. Without hesitating, I told him what I had to tell him. “You stole the teddy bear. You swiveled the ladder on the ladder truck around, pointing in the right direction, and turned the winch until the ladder extended over the bear. Then you crawled out on the flat ladder and stole the bear. After you put everything back where it was before, you went to sleep.”

Well, he didn’t bat an eye, just nodded his head. “Yep, that’s the way it was,” he said, not even saying he was sorry. “I figured you knew something when you bought the missing bear. Nobody throws away eighteen dollars for nothing.” Deborah just stared up at him, not understanding how a human being could do such a thing to her. She took my hand for comfort, keeping me between her and Shorty Porter.

“Well, that’s
my
bear,” I said. “I bought it for Deborah; she had her heart set on it.” He wasn’t a bit moved. “She loved that bear. Porter. You broke her heart.”

“I’m sorry about that, Miz Sophie,” he said, “I really didn’t want to hurt anybody. I didn’t know about Debbie when I stole the bear.”

“Well, the least you could do is give it back. If you do, I might consider, just
consider,
not setting the law on you.” I didn’t really want to put a man with eight children in jail and, up till now, he’d been a pretty good citizen, but I wasn’t about to show him that. “So you just go get it,
Mr.
Porter. Right now, and hop to it.”

“Okay, Miz Sophie, but it ain’t here. We’ll have to drive over.” He stuck his head in the shop and told Ed Mahaffey that he had to go someplace, be back soon, and we got in his pickup truck.

I wasn’t paying attention to where we were going and when he stopped, my heart stopped too. Petrina was lying on the couch in the living room, clutching the moon bear to her skinny little chest. Irma was just standing there wondering what had brought us. “It’s about the teddy bear.” Levi Porter apologized. “It belongs to Debbie. I have to take it back.”

We went over to the couch. “You see.” he explained to me, “on opening night, Petrina fell in love with the bear. I wanted to get it for her, but I didn’t have any money left. So I took it. figuring it wasn’t really stealing; everything there was for Petrina anyway. If I’d knowed about Debbie. I would’ve worked out something else, maybe.”

He leaned over the couch and gently, very gently, took the moon bear out of Petrina’s hands. “I’m sorry, honey,” he told the thin little girl, “it’s really Debbie’s. I’ll get you a different bear soon.” The sad little girl let the bear slip slowly out of her hands, not resisting, but not really letting go either. She said nothing, so used to hurt, so used to disappointment, so used to having everything slip away from her, but her soft dark eyes filled with tears as Shorty took the bear. I could have sworn that the moon bear’s purple glass eyes looked full of pain, too.

Shorty put the bear gently into Debbie’s arms and she cradled the bear closely to her. She put her face next to the bear’s and kissed him and whispered something to him that I didn’t catch, my hearing not being what it used to be. Then she went over to the couch and put the bear back into Petrina’s hands. “He likes you better,” she said. “He wants to stay with you. He loves you.”

We stood there for a moment, all of us, silent. Petrina clutched the bear to her, tightly, lovingly, and almost smiled. Irma started crying and I might’ve too, a little. Shorty picked Deborah up and kissed her like she was his own. “You’re blessed.” he said to me. “From heaven.”

He drove us home, and on the way back I asked Debbie what she said to the bear. “I was just telling him his name.” she said innocently, “and he said it was exactly right.”

“What is his name?” I asked.

“Oh, that was
my
name for him, Grandma. Petrina told him
her
name: he has a different name now,” and that’s all she would say about it.

I invited Shorty in but he couldn’t stay: had to get back to the garage. If he took too long—well, there were plenty of good mechanics out of work. He promised he’d get Deborah another gift for Christmas, but he couldn’t do it in time for tonight. I told him not to worry; I’d work out something.

When we got home. I got started making cookies with chocolate sprinkles, the kind Deborah likes. She helped me. After a while, when the first batch of cookies was baking, her cheeks powdered with flour and her pretty face turned away, she said, quietly, “It’s all right not to get a present for Christmas. As long as you know somebody
wanted
to give it to you and spent all her money to get it.”

My heart was so full I couldn’t say anything for a while. Then I lifted her onto my lap and hugged her to my heart. “Oh, Debbie my love, you’ll understand when you’re older, but you’ve just gotten the best Christmas present of all: the chance to make a little child happy.”

I held her away and looked into her wise, innocent eyes and wondered if, maybe, she already understood that.

THE SHAPE OF THE NIGHTMARE – Francis M. Nevins, Jr.

On the afternoon of the second day before Christmas, just before the terror swept the airport, Loren Mensing was studying the dispirited and weaving line in front of the ticket counter and wishing fervently that he were somewhere else.

He had turned in his exam grades at the law school, said goodbye to the handful of December graduates among his students, and wasted three days moping, with the dread of spending the holidays alone again festering inside him like an untreated wound. The high-rise apartment building he’d lived in for years was being converted to condominiums, dozens of tenants had moved out and dozens more had flown south for the holidays, and the isolation in the building reinforced his sense of being alone in the world.

He had called a travel agent and booked passage on a week-long Caribbean cruise where, if he was lucky, he might find someone as seasonally lonely as he was himself. A
Love Boat
fantasy that he tried desperately to make himself believe. He drove to the airport through swirling snow that froze to ice on the Volkswagen’s windshield. He checked his bags, went through security at the lower level, and was lounging near the departure gate for Flight 317, nonstop to Miami, when he heard his name over a microphone.

And learned that he’d been bumped.

“I’m very sorry. Mr. Mensing.” The passenger service rep seemed to look bored, solicitous, and in charge all at once. “We have to overbook flights because so many reserved-seat holders don’t cancel but don’t show up either. Today everyone showed up! You have a right to compensatory cash payment plus a half-fare coupon for the next Miami flight.” His racing fingers leafed through the schedule book. “Which departs in just five hours. If you’ll take this form to the counter on the upper level they’ll write you a fresh ticket.”

If he took the next flight he’d miss connections with the excursion ship. He kept his rage under control, detached himself from the horde of travelers at the departure gate, and stalked back upstairs to find a supervisor and demand a seat on the flight he was scheduled to take. When he saw the length of the line at the upper level he almost decided to go home and forget the cruise altogether.

A large metropolitan airport two days before Christmas. Men, women, children, bundled in overcoats and mufflers and down jackets and snowcaps, pushing and jostling and shuffling in the interminable lines that wove and shifted in front of the ticket counters like multicolored snakes. Thousands of voices merging into an earsplitting hum. View through panoramic windows of snow sifting through the gray afternoon, of autos and trucks and taxis crawling to a halt. Honeyed robot voices breaking into the recorded Christmas carols to make flight announcements no one could hear clearly.