I AM PREPARED TO BEAR YOUR COMPANY AND DO IT WITH A THANKFUL HEART

A Story of Christmas Eve in Frankfort

By K. Patrick Glover

A NICK KELLERMAN STORY

 

It was Christmas Eve in Frankfort , Michigan and The Mariner was empty but for me and an off duty cop named Dan Avery. Dan represented one third of the city's police department and I, Nick Kellerman, its sole private detective. We were drinking Jim Beam and discussing the presents we had purchased for our respective girl friends.

My girl, Sasha, was only 19, and since I'm pushing 45, Dan's end of the conversation included a lot of jokes about cradles and playpens. I took it in good humor, only occasionally threatening to spank him with my cane. In truth, the situation made me feel awkward, but Sasha felt it was perfectly acceptable , so what did I know?

We were starting to come to the conclusion that neither one of us was very good at gift buying when Susie Vandrick, who worked in the flower shop below my office, burst in and started babbling about a body down on the beach. Dan calmed her down and the bartender brought her a cup of hot coffee. It took awhile, but we got what details we could from her. She said the body was on the beach, just off the turnaround at the end of the road. Dan and I threw on our coats and went for a walk.

The Mariner sat almost at the end of the main road and the only thing between it and the beach at Lake Michigan was a few condos and the turnaround. It had been snowing off and on for two weeks by then and the beach was covered in several inches of bright clean snow. A field of white broken only by the body lying in the middle of it. A single set of footprints, presumably his own, led from the turnaround to the body.

It was a male, probably in his mid-thirties, with broad shoulders and sandy hair.

“Any idea who it is?” Dan asked.

“No,” I lied.

The next hour was a flurry of activity. I walked out to the body and verified that he was really dead while Dan went back to his car and called it in. There was no blood, no visible injuries. I checked his fingernails and lips, smelled his breath. No obvious signs of foul play, could have been a heart attack or stroke. The ambulance showed up first, then the rest of Frankfort 's police department and at least they were actually sober and on duty unlike Dan.

We backed off and let them take over. Dan went back to The Mariner to finish his drink. I went home to think things over.

Sasha was there when I got home, curled up on the couch watching an old movie on TV. I had given her a key a few months ago and she was there more often than not now, which always made me smile. Even her parents approved, which is an odd thing to be thinking about at my age, but , truthfully, it was starting to make me feel younger.

After a quick kiss and a few minutes of small talk I told her about the incident at the beach. She raised an eyebrow when I told her that I had lied to Dan and she outright scowled when I pulled the dead man's wallet from my pocket.

“You stole his wallet?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Why?”

“So Dan wouldn't find it. I needed to slow down the identification process.”

She stared at me like she always does when she wants me to know that I'm not making any sense. She thinks it looks irritating, I think it looks adorable. Don't tell her.

“So,” She said, “You don't want the body identified?”

“Not yet.”

“Why? No, don't tell me, you have to be the one to solve the case, even if there isn't a case. You know you're a very weird man, don't you?”

I grinned at her. “I've always suspected.”

She turned off the TV and sat down at the kitchen table with me while I examined his wallet. “Who is he?” She asked.

“When he came to see me at the office he claimed his name was John Leech, but his license says James Reed. Traverse City address.” I flipped through the billfold. “Credit cards, lot of cash, just over two grand.”

“Why the fake name?”

“Lots of people use fake names with P.I.'s. Doesn't necessarily mean anything.”

She thought about it for a minute, and then stood up. “I'm going to fix us a couple of drinks.”

“You're too young to drink.”

“Bite me, old man.” She poured us each a shot of Canadian Whiskey over ice and sat back down. “What did he want, anyway?”

“Well, he wanted me to get the ghosts to leave him alone.”

“Ghosts?”

“Yeah, the ghosts of Christmas, past, present and future.”

“You're kidding?”

“Nope. That's what he wanted.” The whiskey went down smooth. Sasha noticed my glass was empty and refilled it. She had barely touched hers. I could never figure out how she could do that.

“So, what did you tell him?”

“I gave him the number of a good shrink up in Interlochen.”

“And now you're feeling guilty?”

“I'm always feeling guilty about something, that's beside the point. Think about the story. A Christmas Carol is all about guilt and last minute redemption, trying to salvage your life before it's too late.”

“So you think the ghost delusion came from feelings of guilt?”

“And possibly a desire to atone for that guilt. Maybe a desire that was being blocked somehow.”

She went into the living room and retrieved her laptop. She had set me up with a wireless internet service over the fall, but she was the only one who ever really used it. I still had trouble doing anything more than paying my bills or reading my email. In a few minutes she had it fired up and was surfing through various information sites.

“John Leech was an artist,” she muttered. “He did the original drawings for A Christmas Carol.”

I wandered over to my bookshelves and pulled my copy down. She was right, of course. I flipped through the illustrations. They reminded me a bit of Sidney Paget's Sherlock Holmes drawings.

I put the book away and returned to the table.

“Got him,” she announced. “James Reed, he's an accountant for a medical research firm in Traverse. He's been indicted for embezzlement, he's due to appear in court on the 26 th . Or he was, anyway. Could have been looking at twenty years.”

“And he probably knew he was going to be convicted, so he came down here to make amends.”

“To whom?”

“That's what we need to find out.” I pulled a key from my pocket.

“What's that?” Sasha asked.

“A car key. For a BMW.”

“You lifted that off his body, too?”

I grinned. “Yep.”

“You're going to get in a lot of trouble one of these days. Let me get my coat”

There were more BMW's in downtown Frankfort than I expected. It took almost two hours to find the right one, a late model silver Z4, parked down main street near the library. Sasha sat inside and flipped through the glove compartment while I checked the trunk.

I found a black leather attaché case, locked of course. I closed the trunk and climbed into the driver's seat, case in hand. “Find any little keys?” I asked.

“No, just an empty snickers wrapper and a sheet of note paper with a name and an address. Debbie Kingsley, on Leelanau.”

“Hmm.” I pulled out my pocketknife and went to work on the lock. Sasha watched me, amused. In a few minutes I had managed to cut two fingers and twist the knife up like a pretzel. For some reason, Sasha thought this was hysterical.

I gave up and we walked back to my house, case and notepaper with us. Armed with a power drill, I had the case open in just a few minutes. I'm not sure what I was expecting to find inside, but it wasn't money.

“How much do you think it is?” Sasha asked.

I shook my head. “Twenty grand, fifty grand. Hard to tell without counting.”

“Drug deal?”

“With jail time fast coming up? Not likely.”

“A payoff then. To make amends for past wrongs?”

I nodded. “Probably. We should go talk to Ms. Kingsley.”

“We?”

“Well, you're always curious about what I do. This one seems to be pretty harmless.”

“Except for the dead body on the beach.”

“Well, yes, except for that.”

“Let me change first.” I watched her walk up the stairs and waited. She came back a few minutes later, sweatshirt and jeans replaced with a sweater and dark slacks. It seemed natural to me that she kept her clothes in my home, that she could change here. It was a feeling I hadn't experienced since my divorce.

“Are you happy, Sasha? Here, with me?”

“Of course, I wouldn't be here otherwise.” She put her arms around my waist and gave me a kiss.

“You don't feel like you're missing something, that you went right from teenager to adult?”

“Oh yeah, I'm missing all those years of angst and uncertainty. No thanks, I like my life just fine.”

I smiled. “Well, then, let's go to work.”

The Kingsley house was a dilapidated old thing, with overgrown grass and peeling yellow paint. Sasha looked about nervously as we approached the door and I put an arm around her shoulder reassuringly. The lady who answered the door was no one to be frightened of. Blonde, exhausted and old before her years. I expected a cigarette to be dangling between her lips, but there was no sign of one.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Mrs. Kingsley?”

“Ms. Kingsley. But, yeah, that's me.”

“I'd like to ask you a few questions about James Reed?”

Her face darkened with anger. “Tell that bastard to stay away from me and Jessie. We don't want nothing to do with him, ever again.”

“We can't do that, ma'am,” Sasha said.

“Why not?”

“Because he's dead.”

That took the wind right out of her sails. She seemed to deflate as she stepped back and motioned us in. I had the money from the briefcase in an old gym bag and I kept it in my grip. She cleared a path to the living room for us. People always did that for me now, I think it's the cane.

A little girl was playing in the corner of the room, I assumed that she was Jessie.

“What happened to him?” She asked. “He was just here this morning.”

“They're not sure yet. They found his body on the beach this afternoon.” I thought about which way to go with the next question. “Ms. Kingsley, what did James want this morning?”

She shook her head. “I don't know, I wouldn't let him in.”

“Is Jessie his daughter?” Sasha asked.

“Yes. But he hadn't seen her in years. He ran off with some tramp when she was just a little baby.”

I stood up and started pacing the room. “He was going to jail, Ms. Kingsley. Can I call you Debbie? My name is Nick, by the way. This is Sasha.” We said a quick round of hellos and I went back to my point. “I think he was planning to be away for a long time. He came here, to give you something for Jessie. Before I give it to you, you should know, I don't think it's in anyway traceable. The police don't know that he came here to see you, and I have no intention of telling them. He was feeling guilt, Debbie, about the way he treated you and the way he abandoned his daughter.”

I handed her the gym bag. She opened it up and her eyes got wide.

“I don't know how much is there,” I said. “It should be enough to help you start a new life. Take care of your daughter.”

“Thank you.” She was crying and the words came out garbled.

I led Sasha to the door. Time to leave her alone to deal with her own guilt. Sasha stopped at the threshold and turned back. “Debbie, did James have any allergies?”

The woman nodded. “Peanuts. They made his throat close up and he'd have to go to the hospital.”

Sasha shook her head and we left.

We were sitting on my couch, fireplace going, lights down low. Her feet were tucked up under her and she leaned against me, watching the fire.

“So, the candy bar wrapper?” Sasha asked. “It was peanuts, right?”

“Right.”

“Did she kill him?”

“No, it was suicide. Good catch.”

“Where do the ghosts fit in? She asked.

“Well, he's obviously a fan of Dickens or that artist's name would never have come up. Maybe it was just a clever metaphor for his desire to put things right.”

“Maybe he was having a nervous breakdown and the delusions were leading him along.”

“We'll never know for sure.”

I ran my fingers lightly through her hair. It was midnight now, Christmas morning. “I bought you a singing mouse,” I said.

She looked up at me. “What?”

“A singing mouse. For Christmas.”

She thought about it for a minute. “What does it sing?”

“Jingle bell Rock.”

She burst out laughing. “You're a weird guy, Nick.”

I stood up and walked over to the fireplace. “Listen, Sash, we've talked a lot about your future, college, your career. There's one part of the future that we never really talk about.”

“Nick…”

“Wait. I know you've got your whole life ahead of you and I know I'm just a busted up old man…”

“You're not old.”

“I'm getting there pretty damn fast. Not the point, though. What I mean to say, well, to ask….” I pulled a small black box out of my pocket and opened it up. I felt my throat catch as I got down on one knee in front of her and presented her with the open box. Inside was a diamond on a thin band of white gold.

“Sasha, will you marry me?”

She was crying, but she was also smiling when she said, “Yes.”