Five a.m. came way too early. At least that’s how it felt after spending half the night calming the frayed nerves of a frightened boy. I dragged myself out of bed knowing we likely wouldn’t be stalking the deer, but wanting to be ready just in case. Five-thirty rolled around, no sign of Pat. Six o’clock came and went and he slept on.
There were no deer in the yard. They knew the mountain lion had my yard scoped out and wouldn’t show this morning. I was halfway glad as it was icy cold and the wind cut through my coat, freezing me to the bone.
Rusty got up at six-thirty and showered. I had breakfast ready for him when he came out. The house was quiet. I checked to make sure Patrick was really still in bed, and he was.
“What are you doing with Patrick today?” Rusty’s asked.
“Maybe we’ll go into town and do some last minute Christmas shopping.”
“Are you going to stop by the station?”
“I think we should save a trip to the station for emergencies.” I thought about my words and quickly backtracked. “Not that kind of emergency. Boredom emergencies. After Christmas shopping I don’t know what to do with him. What do you want Santa Claus to bring you?”
“How about a cute little number from Victoria’s Secret?”
“What size?”
“Five.”
“You’ll never get it on.”
“Oh, yeah, I will,” he said with a wink.
“I don’t know if Patrick does Victoria’s Secret.”
“If he goes shopping with Jesse, I bet he does Victoria’s Secret.”
First we had planned to go tracking with Mark who rang the doorbell promptly at nine a.m. I’d awakened Patrick at eight and made sure he ate a good breakfast.
“I want to show you these tracks. It always pays to be able to recognize different tracks when you go camping and hiking.”
I took him to the sandy area near the corral.
“Look, the back paw prints are here. Where do you think the front paw prints are?”
He looked at the huge tracks, the splayed toes of a running cougar. The wind had weathered the tracks over night but they were still there. We all shivered under layers of coats. Patrick noted the direction of the tracks and stepped forward looking for the front paws. He stepped forward again, and again.
“Wow,” he said, “the mountain lion’s steps are longer than me!” He crouched examining the front paw prints, then relatively close the next set of back paw prints.
“He was running, that’s why they are so far apart. A walking trail is a lot different. We will see that, too. Follow the tracks.”
Pat came to a sudden lunge in a different direction and got stuck.
“See how the tracks twist this way? I bet there is a matching sideways leap that the deer also made.”
“Are you sure he didn’t get it?” Patrick asked with concern.
“I didn’t see any dead deer, only that the deer bounded away and the mountain lion eventually gave up.”
He followed the mountain lion tracks and I followed him, rifle slung across my back. Mark watched from a distance, camera at the ready. Every once in a while I heard the familiar click, buzz as he took pictures.
Track led to track and after the running leaps slowed to a walk, I showed Patrick the trail of a mountain lion on the move.
“Where did he go?” Pat asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to track all the way to the mountain lion. It isn’t safe, even with the rifle. I wouldn’t want to have to shoot him, but we could follow him for a while.”
“Can I do it?” he asked.
“Sure, that’s why I brought you out here, to give you practice tracking. Did you notice that you can’t see the claws on cat tracks? That’s because their claws are retractable.”
“What does retractable mean?”
“It means they can pull them in.”
“Where do the claws go if they pull them in?”
“Inside their toes.”
“Ouch.”
“It doesn’t hurt them. They don’t poke the cat.”
“How can it not poke to have pokey things in your toes?”
“They probably stay in a sheath of some kind. And the points face out.”
Mark smiled at the stream of questions and my attempted answers. Patrick continued to follow the mountain lion’s tracks. One thing about mountain lions, they leave a pretty distinct trail with their big paws, plenty of weight, and the nice desert sand. This was a perfect track for Patrick. I followed patiently as he puzzled it through, keeping an eye on the brush and trees. I still didn’t trust the cat to stay away. In fact, as we followed it disturbed me to see the cat had turned back toward the house. I didn’t want Patrick to notice that so I changed the topic.
“Patrick, do you know how mule deer run away from mountain lions?”
“No, I guess they run. I would run if I were them.”
“Did you notice what the deer did when they ran out of our yard? At first they ran but when they really wanted to go fast they bounded.”
“Bounded?”
“They jump like Tigger.”
“You mean they bounce? Tigger bounces. He wouldn’t like to say that he bounds. That sounds too classy for a Tigger. Tiggers bounce.”
“Yeah,” I said, “they bounce, in a classy way. Look at the tracks. See how far they can bounce?”
We found a set of mule deer tracks. “See? When they bounce, all four feet hit the ground at the same time and they go sproing all the way to…where?”
He walked, looking around, then walked some more.
“Where is it?”
“Keep going.”
About fifteen feet away from the first set he found the second set, all four hoof prints again.
“Wow! It bounced that far?”
“Yeah, when they are in a hurry they can leap anywhere from six to fifteen feet, and they are really fast bouncers.”
“I wish I could watch them do it. I bet they go really high, too. I bet they could jump right over me!”
“I bet they could too.”
He tracked the deer until it became monotonous.
Mark came up beside me. “He doesn’t morph into Dangerous Tracker Boy but it’s spooky how much he resembles you when he’s concentrating on a track.”
“Maybe tracking just has a certain look to it. You ought to go see if Chase Downing will take you tracking. He’s an interesting character.”
I looked around.
“Patrick?” I called.
He answered from several feet away. Whew! The wind was picking up, so I suggested we go back to the house and warm up. We all blew in through the back door at the same time and I headed for the hot chocolate.
“Aunt Cassidy? I hear Santa Claus but it’s not Christmas yet,” Patrick said.
“What do you mean you hear Santa Claus?”
“I heard footsteps on the front porch and then they went away and now I hear jingle bells.”
I listened carefully. Okay, there was a slight jingling noise coming from somewhere. It sounded like small jingle bells swaying in the wind. I followed the sound to the front porch, opened the door and there stood a brightly wrapped box with jingle bells tied to it. No tag. Just a box wrapped in Santa Claus wrapping paper with a big red Christmas bow, and the jingle bell decorations were swaying in the breeze making a light, cheerful tinkling noise. Now where did that come from?
“Mark? Is this box from you?” I asked.
“Me? No. Why? Should it be?” he answered.
“No, it’s just that I’m not expecting anything.”
“Open it!” Patrick exclaimed.
“I don’t know who it’s for or who it’s from, and I’d rather not open something if it’s not for me.”
“You don’t have any bad guys after you right now, do you?” Patrick asked. “It might be a trick.”
“All the bad guys I can think of are either in jail or dead.”
“How many can you think of?” Mark asked hesitantly.
“Too many. You’ve heard some of the stories, haven’t you?”
“A few, I didn’t know whether to believe them or not.”
“You can probably believe them. I know they may sound farfetched, but that’s the kind of life I lead. Just don’t ask Rusty to tell them to you, but Patrick wouldn’t mind. He’s heard most of them, but you’ll get a tamer version from him.”
“What do you mean a tamer version?” Patrick asked accusingly.
“There’s some things little boys shouldn’t hear and you really wouldn’t want to know.”
“Are you holding out on me?” he asked, sounding very much like Steve or Rusty.
“Yeah, there are some things you don’t need to know.”
Pat appeared a little put out, but he didn’t push for more.
“So,” Mark said to Patrick, “you want to tell me some stories? I’ll tell you one as well, for example how about the day I met your aunt. That’s a pretty interesting story.”
They walked into the kitchen where Mark turned off the stove and began pouring hot chocolate into mugs. I stood in the doorway debating what to do with the box. Should a Christmas gift be considered a suspicious package? Only to a few select people. Was I one of them? Sometimes, yes. Right now? I wasn’t sure and decided it was best to leave the wrapped box where it was until Rusty arrived home.
The stories were flying back and forth over the dining room table when I returned to the kitchen. I listened to their conversation while I planned our activities for the next few days. Shopping today, stalking at four. Then what about tomorrow? A trip to the police station? Schroeder wouldn’t involve Rusty in any more new cases if he was going out of town on Friday. The police station would only kill half a day, though. Maybe we could find some snow. One of the rangers should know the location of a good snowy spot.
“Aunt Cassidy? Who was the carjacker guy trying to shoot when Uncle Rusty had to shoot him?”
“I’m not sure, Rusty or me, but he missed us both. I wasn’t armed, so I was diving for cover.”
“So, you met Rusty because of a carjacking?” Mark asked.
“Yeah, Pat, how did you remember that? You heard that story a year ago.”
“I know. It’s one of my favoritest ones, too. It’s interesting. And I like the story about when your parachute didn’t open and you had to spend five days in the woods without food and water. And you saw a bear! And a moose!”
“Mark heard that one. That happened right before we met.”
Mark told Patrick about how we had met while I finished my hot chocolate and changed clothes to go to the mall.
The mall was a mad house. It was the week before Christmas with thousands of desperate shoppers looking for last minute presents. There were gifts ranging from the remnants of mismatched gloves and scarves to silly stuffed animals that vibrated while playing irritating versions of Jingle Bells. Patrick and I were stuck in the middle of a slow shuffle down the mall which, in about ten minutes, was going to drive me batty. Crowds had never been my favorite place. Whenever Rusty and I were in a crowd like this I just held onto his arm and followed. People always made way for Rusty. Women stopped and stared and men hurried out of his way but not so for me, I didn’t command the same presence. Patrick looked like he felt the same. He stared at the person in front of him. I so seldom shopped at the mall that I didn’t know where any of the stores were located. I just started at one end and walked the whole mall searching for the store I had in mind.
“Aunt Cassidy?”
I bet he needs to go to the bathroom, I thought. It was three hours of slow shuffle behind us.
“Aunt Cassidy?” he repeated.
“What is it Patrick?”
“Bad guy at eleven o’clock.”
My zombied brain kicked into gear. I watched the guy at eleven o’clock. Pat was right. After a while I became aware of his odd behavior too. He was watching purses and bags, looking for an easy take and a quick getaway. There was no way to make a quick getaway in this crowd though, not without bulldozing his way through.
“Thanks Pat,” I said. “That was a good catch.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Watch for mall security and keep my eye on him.”
“Can I have some gum?” Patrick asked.
“I don’t know if I have any, but you can look,” I said, handing down my pack for him to look through. There was no telling what he’d find in there.
The crowd broke up into smaller groups as we made our way through a large intersection and found a way around the booth where kids had their picture taken with Santa Claus.
The guy saw an opportunity and lunged forward, but I grabbed the hood of his black sweatshirt.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I said in my academy voice of authority that always backfired on me. It backfired again as he spun around and looked me in the eye.
“Oh yeah? Well, what about this?”
He looked around for my purse and saw that Patrick had it. Even better, he thought, an easy take. He grabbed the loop on top and dashed away. Pat held on for dear life and I watched in horror as he was dragged down the mall.
“Patrick! Let go!” I yelled as I dashed after the fleeing purse snatcher.
People scattered and I heard a lady yell, “Stop that man!”
Patrick was, at least, slowing the thief down. I caught up to him and took a flying leap for his ankles. As I made a grab for any available body part the man staggered face first into Santa’s mailbox. With a roar he got to his feet and gave me a hard shove which left me staggering backwards, landing right in Santa’s very padded lap. The camera went flash and Santa looked me right in the eye and asked, “And my dear, what would you like for Christmas?”
“A normal life,” I replied before taking off again after the purse-snatcher. I grabbed Patrick, who was still searching through my pack, then gazed up and down the mall looking for the thief. Think, Cass, where’s the path of least resistance?
“Excuse me, Ma’am.” Mall security.
The office of the mall was stark, business gray. A tinfoil tree with shiny red ornaments and a blue star were the only visible Christmas decoration.
“Are we in trouble?” Patrick asked as he fished out M&Ms from the bag of trail mix.
“Yes and no. We didn’t do anything wrong so I don’t know what kind of trouble we could be in.”
“Are you going to buy the picture of you on Santa Claus’s lap?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I think we should go look at it. It might be funny.”
“Thanks Pat.”
“If you don’t want it, can I buy it?”
“Why would you want a picture of me on Santa’s lap?”
“So I can tell Mom about it.”
“No.”
“Aw, come on, it’ll be funny.”
“Do you really want your mom to know you were almost kidnapped at the mall by a purse snatcher?”
“She would think you were a hero. You rescued me.”
“Real heroes keep things like that from happening in the first place. Your mom is a hero. Bad things never happen around your mom.”
A man wearing a gray business suit entered the waiting area.
“Is this the same mall where you tackled the bank robber?” Patrick asked.
“Yeah, strange things always happen to me when I go to the mall.”
The man fiddled with a coat button, cocked his head with a puzzled look, and disappeared. Another wait and then he returned accompanied by a second man and a woman.
“Miss, I am Nyle Galen and these are my associates Cheryl Chaney and Richard Beaumont. Could you step this way, please?”
We followed them into a bare room with a long table and several chairs. It looked like a suitable place to detain purse-snatchers until they got their free ride to the police station, a fact that apparently was not lost on Pat.
“Do you think we should call Uncle Rusty?” he asked.
“It’s okay.”
“I apologize for the accommodations,” Nyle Galen said, “this is the only room with enough chairs to seat everybody. Please sit down.”
I took a seat. Patrick climbed into the chair next to mine and knelt so he’d be taller.
Mr. Galen pulled out a file.
There’s a file on me at the mall? I wondered. He took out several sheets of paper and spread them out on the table.
“Is this you?” he asked, then stood back with his hands in his pockets. He exchanged glances with Richard Beaumont who nodded his agreement.
Oh shit, these were old pictures of the bank robbery, taken from the security tapes.
“That case has been closed for a long time,” I said. “Why would you bring it up now?”
“I think you are the person in these pictures. Richard and I have a bet going whether or not we’d ever find the person who stopped that bank robber. I told him there was no way. He insisted the reward would bring you out. It didn’t work.”
“There was a reward?” Patrick said in awe. “Why didn’t you collect your reward, Aunt Cassidy?”
“Because I hate TV cameras and it was all over the news.”
Richard smiled smugly.
“And I wasn’t interested in the money. I just saw the bank robber at work and I was in the right place to catch him, so I did. It was that simple. So, why are you keeping me here? Your bet is settled. I hope this doesn’t get to the news again. The accident out there was not my fault. A man tried to steal my daypack. My nephew was holding it at the time and when I tried to chase the guy down he threw me into Santa’s lap. It’s that simple. I hope Santa wasn’t hurt.”
Galen tossed another photo onto the table. It was me landing on Santa’s lap, my eyes wide in surprise, feet still up in the air. Patrick started laughing out loud.
“That’s even better than the one of me… and I pulled off Santa’s beard right before the flash went off,” he giggled.
“Pat! You didn’t!” I scolded.
“Can I have it, please?” Patrick asked, looking up at me with big hound doggy eyes.
“This picture belongs to Mr. Galen,” I said.
He tossed another one on the table. “You can keep that one,” he said.
Patrick’s eyes lit up with excitement.
Beaumont walked over to a telephone by the door and spoke quickly into the receiver. In a minute two officers wrestled the purse-snatcher through the door.
“Is this the man who tried to steal your purse?” Beaumont asked.
“No question about it,” I stated.
The officer holding onto the purse-snatcher laughed. He turned to the other officer and smirked, “Wait until Michaels hears his grand theft auto was detained at the mall by a little blonde woman with a kid.”
“No! Please!” I cried, almost jumping from my chair. “You can’t do that. Turn him loose first.”
They both gawked at me. I didn’t know the mall cops. I hardly ever came to the mall. They worked somewhat separated from the other officers and didn’t know me yet.
“Why?” the officer asked suspiciously.
“Because, Rusty Michaels is my husband and… and I accidentally do this to him a lot. Don’t embarrass him. I can’t help it if all the guys on his most wanted list show up where I am. It just happens that way.”
The two men grinned broadly; to them this was getting better all the time.
“Just tell him you have the woman’s name and she’s willing to testify. He’ll figure the rest out.”
“At least we didn’t get in trouble,” Patrick observed as we left the mall office. “And we’re five hundred dollars richer!” he said in glee.
“And we have a $50 mall gift card so now I have to spend it. I guess I ought do something to make it up to Rusty when they bring in his grand theft auto.”
“Where are we going? When Mom wants to make up with Dad she either goes to Victoria’s Secret or Sears.”
“What does she buy at Sears?”
“Some tool Dad’s been wanting. How come you don’t ask what she buys at Victoria’s Secret?”
“That’s kind of obvious,” I told him.
“Oh, yeah.”
After all that, I figured it was safe to go to Victoria’s Secret. I was wrong. Patrick walked around the store with his eyes closed bumping into racks. After righting and sorting three racks of teddies, I stopped him.
“Patrick, watch where you’re going!” I scolded. “I’ll only be a minute if you will open your eyes and let me shop.”
He opened his eyes a little, saw the mannequin wearing nothing but see-through underwear, and his eyes got big before he shut them again.
“Pat, it’s just a mannequin. It’s not a person. Open your eyes. What does your mom do with you when she shops?”
“She lets me ride around in a race car so I can close my eyes.”
“Smart mom,” I said quietly.
“Sometimes Grandma takes me to the toy store while Mom shops, but I never see anything interesting in there. It’s all kiddy toys.”
“Pat, you’re a kid, you’re supposed to like kiddy toys.”
“I can’t help it if I’ve got refined taste,” he said with a dignified air.
I laughed. “You have what?” I asked.
“Refined taste. That’s what Grandma says I have because I like real toys, not play toys.”
“Leave it to a Grandma to justify every little quirk of her grandkids.”
I chose a short nightgown made with romantic, light blue, clingy lace. Patrick started flipping through a display of panties.
“Look,” he said, holding up two pairs. One was skin colored and the other was camouflage. “Which one is really camouflage?” he asked. “You couldn’t see the skin colored ones but the camouflage ones, I guess, are for if you want your private parts to not be seen outside. And the skin colored ones are for if you don’t want them to be seen inside.”
I shook my head. Let’s get out of here, I thought.
Easier said than done. I stood in a long line of men and women, all of whom continued shopping while they were waiting. The men were unsure of sizes and the women kept seeing new and more interesting things than the ones they had already selected. One woman started out with light pink panties but traded them for a bright red teddy and then traded that for a black leather gartered contraption. Finally she returned to her original choice of pink panties but, embarrassed by her indecision, looked around sheepishly to see if anyone had noticed.
“These are for my daughter,” she explained, holding up the pink panties and leaving everyone curious as to whom the black gartered contraption might have been for.
“Going to the mall is a lot more interesting with you,” Patrick observed as we left the store. “Shopping with Mom is boring. She never has interesting things happen to her.”
I went to the leather store and passed by all the expensive leather coats, purses, gloves, wallets, vests, lampshades, remote control holders… how many things could they make out of leather? We headed to a counter all the way in the back of the store and patiently waited for a clerk to appear.
“I’d like to buy some leather,” I stated, obviously. Fortunately this place knew me. I didn’t come here often, but there were only a few customers who came in specifically to buy leather, not leather products, so we kind of stood out. The clerk laid out several pieces of leather.
“What color moccasins do you want?” I asked Patrick.
“I get to pick?”
“Well, up to a point. Some leather doesn’t make good moccasins, but you can choose.”
He felt the leather, turned it over and felt the other side. Patrick picked up a corner and bent it. He seemed to discard one piece as too stiff and another as too flimsy. When he’d narrowed his choices down to three, he started going by color.
“I like this one. My feet will blend in with the sand that way,” he stated.
“Good choice,” I told him. “Do you have other pieces?” I asked the clerk, and two more pieces were laid out.
“I like your sand colored choice,” I told Pat. “Is it okay if I get the same color as you?”
“I don’t care.”
So I bought leather for two pairs of moccasins and planned on making them tomorrow.
We were both starving, so we ate in the food court. Patrick took advantage of the situation by ordering a corn dog and then grabbing a handful of ketchup packets. I realized it was time to stop buying him fast food. Rusty and I would be eating nothing but grilled cheese sandwiches for a week straight if I didn’t start cooking for Patrick. He downed his corn dog in record time and then asked if he could play in the play area.
“Sure,” I answered, “but when I call you, you have to come. We should be home by three-thirty or we’ll be too late for the stalking.”
A woman seated next to me gasped in horror.
“Not that kind of stalking,” I explained. “We’re not, like, dangerous or anything. He likes to see how close he can get to the deer in my yard. It’s called stalking, to sneak up on something.”
She glared at me then backed away. I wondered if we’d be dealing with mall security again.
“Look, since when are women and six-year-old boys dangerous stalkers? Believe me, I know all about dangerous stalkers. I’ve been stalked myself in this very mall!”
The woman looked around apprehensively. This lady was just a suspicious character, I concluded. There was simply no helping some people.
I finished my teriyaki bowl and then thought about what to do next. I considered the gifts I’d bought for Rusty’s family and wondered if they were enough. I had never been to a Michaels Christmas before and Rusty never mentioned if they had small, tidy Christmases or big flamboyant ones like we enjoyed at the ranch. If they were anything like Rusty I imagined his family had medium-sized semi-neat Christmases. There would be smaller gifts with wrapping paper appearing around the house for days afterwards. His family would have cheerful hearts and a warm house, then I thought over our intended gifts again and wondered if I’d gotten enough for Rusty.
I decided I never had enough for Rusty, but it was hopeless, though, because he didn’t need anything or have any real interests. His favorite thing in the whole world seemed to be… well… okay I’d gotten that at Victoria’s Secret. Maybe I could sneak back, I thought. What if I got him something I thought was sexy? No, that wouldn’t work; he was sexy in a suit . He was sexy in jeans. I couldn’t think of anytime I’d seen Rusty and not thought he was sexy. Shoot. When was he at his sexiest? It had nothing to do with what he was wearing, I decided, it was simply that look. A few seconds of that look and I was doomed. You can’t buy that. You can’t bottle it. It’s either there or it’s not. Fortunately, it was there a lot. Quit it, I thought, you’re getting nowhere with this and if anything, your expression’s getting all mushy. Now you’re the one giving off that look and then that strange lady is going to run to mall security.
“Patrick? We need to go,” I called out. No answer. I went to the bottom of the play area and shouted up a bright orange tube, “Patrick?” Then I went over to the bright blue tube, “Patrick, it’s time to go.” No answer. Next the bright red tube, “Pat, come down, I mean it.” The bright yellow tube produced a little girl with bright red hair in pigtails. “Excuse me, is there a little boy in there in a colorful western shirt with shiny white snaps on it?”
“There was,” she answered. “He’s cute. He isn’t ready for a commitment.”
I gawked at her. Okay, this is California, girls are like that here.
“He’s from out of town anyway,” I said. “There’d be no point in starting a long distance relationship at your age.”
She seemed put off.
I looked around and around. Okay, Cass, time to take the plunge. I knelt down and began climbing up the yellow tube. I quickly realized it was a slide when a three-year-old came speeding down towards me. She shrieked as we collided and slid down together landing in a tangled mess.
“How dare you!” an angry mother screamed at me. “Can’t you read! The sign says you have to be shorter than this sign to play in the playground. Stay away from my child!”
Yikes! I looked around for Patrick again. Where could he be? I searched through all the rides, on the train, in the arcade and finally found him in a racecar game. He had been crashing a lot and obviously hadn’t heard a thing.
“Pat!” I yelled above the din of the sound effects. “I’ve been looking all over for you!”
One final crash and he turned to me. “Is she gone?” he asked.
“No, she’s probably still out there, but maybe if we sneak out quietly we can get out of here in one piece.”
Patrick stalked to the door of the arcade and looked out. “Just act normal. There’s already one woman who considers me dangerous, another who thinks I’m after her kid, and several women who think I’m a sexual pervert. I think we better just leave quietly.”
He couldn’t help it. I tried not to attract attention next to my stealth mode nephew, but I really couldn’t blame him for being leery of the little girl with red pigtails. She had really scared him. We were almost clear of the food court area when we were met by another officer. Why couldn’t he have been one of the other two security officers we’d met earlier? The ones who thought I was a hero for running down a bank robber. Before we knew what happened, Pat and I were in a car on the way to the station for questioning.
“Are we in trouble this time?” Patrick asked.
“I don’t think so. We’ll get to see Uncle Rusty and he’ll think this is all very funny. But it’s not, it’s embarrassing.”
“Why? I think it’s cool! Mr. officer? Can you turn on the siren?”
“No.”
“Aw, shucks.”
Rusty walked into the interrogation room with a smirk on his face.
“Cassidy, what did you get yourself into this time?”
“It’s half your fault,” I burst out.
“How is this my fault?”
The words tumbled out and bounced around on the table and I totally forgot that another officer was standing in the corner guarding the door.
“I went to the mall and we ate at the food court. Patrick wanted to play while I finished eating my lunch so he climbed up into the play area and when I got through eating I called to him to come down. But he didn’t answer. I told him to come down because we needed to go stalking and this paranoid lady standing next to me must have assumed I meant people stalking, not stalking deer. She got all worried and then I tried to climb up and find Patrick and I got all tangled up with some kid sliding down and her mom assumed I was doing something wrong and screamed at me to leave her child alone. In the meantime Patrick had met this little girl who developed a quick crush on him and he escaped to the arcade to get away from her, so I was looking all over the place for Patrick. Then Patrick didn’t want to get caught by the little girl so he was hiding from her as we walked down the mall and all these moms banded together and called security and they packed me up and here I am. Not to mention I was trying to think of what to get you for Christmas and I was trying to think of something sexy that I could buy you and I got all hot under the collar and that didn’t help matters much. So now they all think I’m a sexual pervert who stalks kids in mall playgrounds.”
Rusty smirked and took a sudden interest in his shoes, then glanced over his shoulder at the officer who was standing by the door, red faced. The flush from his face clashed with his uniform, very unbecoming to an officer.
“And to think half an hour before I was given a reward for capturing a bank robber and a $50 gift card. It was part of a bet that the reward would never be claimed. I’m sorry about detaining your grand theft auto. It wasn’t my fault that he tried to steal my pack. If it was just the pack then he could have kept it, but Patrick was looking for something in it and when it was grabbed the guy hauled Patrick along too. So I couldn’t just let him take off with it. I had to chase him down.”
“Can I show him the picture?” Patrick interrupted enthusiastically.
“Yeah, Pat, I think now would be a fitting time to show Uncle Rusty the picture.”
“Yay!” He whipped the zipper around my pack and pulled out the picture with lightning speed and proudly displayed it for Rusty’s inspection.
Rusty tried not to laugh, and I had to give him credit for that, but he couldn’t help it. His smirk started spreading and then he started quietly laughing as he handed the picture to the other officer. “What did you ask Santa Claus for while you were sitting on his lap?” Both men roared with laughter.
“A normal life! Rusty, I promise I don’t try to do these things. It’s just what comes when I try to go to the mall. I should just stay out of malls. I should be banned from them. Don’t they make little tracking devices that keep people within bounds? Maybe I need one of those.”
“So,” he said in a serious tone, “what were you going to book her for?”
“Let’s just forget it Michaels,” the officer said. “Don’t forget to watch the news.”
Whew!
“Do we have to watch the news tonight?” Patrick whined. “The news is boring.”
“Why should we watch the news? The only time we watch the news is when Cassidy gets in trouble,” Rusty stated.
“Or when big mall mysteries are finally solved?” the officer said. “Beaumont called the news people right after Cassidy left to see if they were interested in a follow up.”
“A year late?” I asked.
“The more time passes, the more mysterious it gets.”
“Oh, man, I hope they didn’t latch onto that one.”
Unfortunately that’s exactly what happened. They showed footage from the original takedown and rehashed the entire story. Nyle Galen and Richard Beaumont enjoyed their short interview time. They also explained how I had detained a man wanted for multiple crimes in the area during an attempted purse snatching. Then Patrick had his time in the limelight as they revealed how they discovered who had nabbed the bank robber because of a little kid who let slip in front of the wrong person. They showed the picture of me sprawled out on Santa’s lap and zoomed in on my shocked expression. I hid in shame until the phone started ringing. Landon Wilson called first, followed by Kelly Green. I turned Kelly over to Rusty and endured a lengthy teasing by Landon. Then I stopped answering the phone which rang every half hour until ten o’clock that night. Why did we need cell phones and a house phone, too? It sounded as if we were living in a clock shop where all the clocks chime on the hour. Each time the phone rang I glanced at the caller ID and ignored the interruption... until Jesse called. Gulp, had this made the news all the way up there? Please, no.
“Hello?” I answered tentatively.
“Hi, Cassidy! How’s it going?”
“Umm, fine! We didn’t get to stalk deer today. They didn’t show up this morning and then we got tied up at the mall.”
“There’s always tomorrow. Can I talk to Patrick?”
“Umm, sure, he’s right here.”
I handed the phone over to Patrick who looked at me with a million questions that I couldn’t answer out loud. Just wing it, I thought. Carefully. Wing it carefully.
“Hi, Mom!” I heard as I walked down the hall. I had no control over what Patrick would say to his mother. I would just deal with the consequences later.
After work Rusty brought the mysterious Christmas package into the house and it stood in the den haunting me. What was it? How did it get here? Who sent it? Who was it for?
“Open it,” Rusty said.
“I don’t know anything about it. I don’t even know whose it is. What if it’s not even mine? What if it got delivered to the wrong house?”
“It didn’t get delivered to the wrong house and I have a feeling it’s yours.”
“If it’s mine and it’s not from you, then I don’t trust it.”
“Cassidy, I wouldn’t tell you to open something if I thought it was dangerous. I hefted it, heard some noises, and felt it shift around in the box. I think I know what it is. If I’m right then I also think I know who sent it. Just open it.”
Patrick walked in and handed over the phone. “Mom says I hafta eat vegetables tonight if it kills me. Just don’t make it Brussels sprouts. Did you figure out where the box came from?”
“Rusty wants me to open it,” I answered.
“What if a bad guy sent it? What if it’s a bomb?” Patrick asked.
“It’s not a bomb,” Rusty told him.
I picked it up and shook the box. It was about the size of a small, flat suitcase. The jingle bells jangled cheerily again.
“Okay, here goes,” I said with an air of desolation. I grabbed a loose piece of paper and tore, revealing a white corrugated box. After pulling the paper back I peeled off the little bits that were taped down. I pulled out my pocketknife and slit the packaging tape. Then I lifted the flaps revealing… tissue paper. There was a note: “I heard you could use one of these,” followed by the signature of Philip Cranston. I handed the note to Rusty and his expression told me he’d guessed correctly. After pulling the tissue paper away, there sat a bulletproof vest. Not just any bulletproof vest. It was a fancy Kevlar vest, easy to move in yet powerful enough to stop almost anything.
“What is it?” Patrick asked.
“Body armor,” I answered. “It’s a bulletproof vest.”
“Does somebody think you might get shot at?” Patrick surmised.
“No, somebody just knows it’s a possibility.”
“Who is it from?” Pat asked.
“It’s from the father of a man I tracked down. He wanted to do something for me because I found his son. Problem is I couldn’t accept his gift because, well Pat, because I found his son too late and I was just too sad. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought this gift was from Mark. I told him if I ended up making anything off his current photography project that I was planning to save up for one of these. But it’s not from Mark and now I know it’s from Philip Cranston. How can I thank him for it without stirring things back up again?”
“Let me see that box.” Rusty took the box and emptied it while I tried on the vest. He then showed me the inside of the box where a small black device had been stuck to the bottom.
“A bug? The box was bugged? If the box was bugged what else was, too?” I thought back. The little black dress? Nah. My sweater? My purse? The Jeep? It had to be the purse. That was all I had with me when I’d been talking to Mark. I went and found the purse I’d carried to the memorial service and discovered my panties were still inside from the Christmas party. I snuck them out, sticking them in between the cushions of the couch before emptying the rest of the contents. Nothing. I turned the bag inside out and felt my finger catch on something stuck to the underside and there it was. Philip Cranston had listened to everything that had happened to me that day. The trip to the station, the meeting at the bar, the flirting at the party, the trip to the bathroom. I wondered if he’d understood the conversation at the antique store better than I had myself. My ears burned as the list grew. I flopped down next to Rusty.
“My purse was bugged. The box is bugged. What else is bugged? It’s not like bugs grow on trees. A person has to go to some trouble to plant a bug and they need sophisticated equipment to listen in. Why would Philip Cranston want to know what I was up to?”
“He just wanted to find out what he could do that would be of value to you and decided that the Kevlar vest was right. I don’t think you need to worry about it.”
I picked up the box and put my face into it and said, “Philip Cranston? You are a dirty, rotten, no good sneak. I hope you had fun listening in at the Christmas party, umm and afterwards.” Gosh, I forgot about that! “But I’ve had experience being shot at and I’m a terrible trouble magnet. Maybe with this vest I can keep from being shot again. Sooo… thanks…I’m going to squash this bug now.”
Rusty added, “Yeah, Philip, thanks.”
Patrick asked, “Why are you talking to a box?”
I went to the garage and found a hammer, then placed the box on the floor and gave the bug a good whack.
“Hey,” Rusty said when I tried on the vest, “it fits you like a glove. Philip Cranston really knew what he was doing when he chose that for you.”
“I wonder if he knew how much I’d think about his son when he bought this for me.”
“Was his son little, like me?” Patrick asked.
“No, Pat, he was a grown up, but he was a daddy and his kids were your age,” I sniffed. “And he was a good daddy too. I could tell by the pictures they showed at his funeral.”
“Aunt Cassidy, please, don’t be sad,” Patrick said forlornly. “I can’t stand it when you’re sad.”
“It’s okay, Pat, there’s times when it’s good to be sad.”