The Snow White Christmas Cookie

it up.”

“You thought of every little detail. You even left my business card on the seat next to Hank’s phone. You were very clever, Paulette. But you weren’t smart. You left bruising on his neck and forehead when you forced him to drink that bourbon. You also failed to account for how Hank managed to rig up the hose to his tailpipe without ever getting out of the car. It was pouring rain out. Yet, somehow, his hair was dry. So were his shoes and his floor mat. The duct tape and box cutter were wet when I got there. The passenger seat, too. And the passenger-side floor mat was missing.”

“I panicked a little,” Paulette conceded. “Actually, I panicked a lot. I guess it was the … finality of it.”

“Yeah, death is pretty damned final.”

“I started shaking and couldn’t stop. So I sat back down in the passenger seat to collect myself. I wanted to make sure that we’d done everything right before I turned on the engine and we left him there. When I realized I’d gotten the floor mat all wet I took it along. Figured it didn’t matter if the duct tape and box cutter were wet.”

“And what about the seat?”

Paulette took a small sip of her wine. “There was nothing I could do about it. I hoped you wouldn’t notice. That was a mistake.”

“It wasn’t your only one. You also took the Jack Daniels bottle with you.”

“That was Casey’s doing,” she acknowledged glumly. “I told him to leave it there. The poor fool thought he was being thorough. He just didn’t understand.”

“Where is it now?”

“He tossed it in a Dumpster this morning when he went out to buy cigarettes.”

“And what about the.38 that you held to Hank’s forehead?” Questa asked. “We traced an identical weapon to one of your carriers, Abe Monahan. Abe is currently on vacation with his family. How did you get the weapon out of his house? Did Tina Champlain help you?”

“Tina?” Paulette blinked at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Where’d you get the.38, Paulette?” Des asked.

“Casey bought it last year from some lowlife at the Rustic. It made him feel manly to have a gun.”

“Where is it now?”

“In the bottom drawer of my dresser. Do you want me to get it?”

“That’s okay. We’ll do it.”

“Whatever,” Paulette said hopelessly. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now that he’s gone. I was his mother. When you’re a mother you do whatever it takes to protect your child. He was desperate. I gave him every penny I had. And when that still wasn’t enough I did what I had to do. What any mother would do. None of you are mothers. You don’t know what it means. Casey came from inside of me. He was connected to me. And he wasn’t strong. He still needed me. He never stopped needing me.”

“And now he’s dead,” Des pointed out. “And you got him killed. When you murdered Hank you wrote Casey’s death sentence. There was absolutely no way Slick Rick and Tommy the Pinhead could let him stay alive. Not once they knew that the postal inspectors were grilling him about Hank’s so-called suicide. Casey wasn’t strong, like you said. They were positive he’d rat them out to save his own skin. They had to create some daylight between themselves and Casey. You left them no choice, Paulette. By killing your own boyfriend to protect Casey you ended up getting Casey killed.”

“I did not,” Paulette insisted heatedly. “Don’t you dare blame me for what happened. It’s Josie Cantro’s fault. Every damned bit of it.”

“Are you implicating his life coach in these crimes?” Grisky asked.

“I’m saying she led Casey on. He thought she was in love with him. He thought they had a future together. That’s why he started betting so much money on football games. He wanted to make a fortune so that they could run away to Hawaii together. He did it for Josie. She’s the one who ought to be locked up. If it hadn’t been for that manipulative blond bitch, none of this would have ever happened.”

“She told me she was trying to help him be more assertive,” Des said.

“How?” Paulette demanded. “By filling his head with crazy fantasies? He was still a child. I should never have brought those two together. That’s what I regret. But after she helped Hank quit smoking I thought that maybe, just maybe, she could help Casey, too. Biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life. I’ll never forgive myself. I’ll never forgive her. She’s supposed to be a professional. She should have known that he’d fall head over heels in love with her. Why, he even talked about her as if the two of them were actual lovers.”

Des didn’t touch that. None of them did. There was no point. Was Josie Cantro America’s sweetheart? Not really. Did Des approve of her methods? Not really. Did trouble seem to have a way of following her around? Yeah, it did. So did lucrative estate settlements. But was Josie legally responsible for anything that had just gone down? No, she wasn’t. Not unless the M.E. discovered that Bryce Peck’s death was something other than a straight suicide. So far, he’d found no evidence of foul play and Des’s gut feeling was that he never would. Bryce Peck was a burn-out case who’d taken his own life.

“Paulette, we can debate Josie Cantro’s ethics all night,” she said. “But it won’t alter the simple truth of this matter, which is that Josie didn’t steal the U.S. Mail or kill Hank. You did.”

Paulette said nothing in response. Just stared morosely out the front window at the street.

“Well, I guess that’s it then,” Grisky concluded, rubbing his hands together.

“Real solid work, Master Sergeant,” Sam Questa said.

Grisky nodded his jarhead in agreement. “Good job, girlfriend. If you ask me, your talents are wasted in this town.”

Des looked at Paulette, who was still staring out the front window, before she said, “You couldn’t be more wrong, Agent Grisky. This is where I’m needed. And I’m still not your girlfriend.”

EPILOGUE (ONE DAY LATER)

The world-class pissing contest didn’t stop after Paulette’s arrest for the murder of Hank Merrill. Since Hank was an employee of the U.S. Postal Service his murder constituted a federal crime and the Department of Justice wanted to take the case away from Connecticut’s prosecutors and try it in a U.S. Court. What with Casey Zander being a postal service employee, too, the feds also wanted their hands on Tommy the Pinhead, hoping they could persuade him to flip on Slick Rick Fontanella and the Castagno crime family.

The case got a lot of media attention in the days leading up to Christmas. Mitch followed it online when he was feeling well enough. Mostly, he stayed in bed with his two cats and his ten toes that ached beyond belief. His fingers weren’t so terrific either. He also had a wicked headache, blurry vision and got so dizzy whenever he tried to stand up that he had to lean against the nearest piece of large furniture. But Dr. Cindie had assured him his head would feel a little bit better every day. Also that he’d suffered no permanent nerve damage to his fingers or toes. He just had to take it easy for a while.

Des stopped by regularly to fuss over him and to remove her yellow string bikini from his Chanukah bush. Much to Mitch’s delight, she’d found his wallet and his grandfather’s Omega in the trunk of Tommy’s Trans Am. Tommy hadn’t bothered to dispose of the stuff after he and Gigi left Mitch on the beach with Casey to die. Apparently, he’d been more interested in scoring a pizza and boinking Gigi.

They didn’t call him Tommy the Pinhead for nothing.

When Mitch started to feel a bit more alert he logged on to the NOAA Web site and computed the temperature, wind velocity and windchill factor out on Breezy Point when the sun was falling that day, to determine just how long he could have survived out there. Near as he could tell, if it had taken Des and Yolie longer than twenty more minutes to find him he’d now be hobbling around with no toes-if he was lucky enough to be hobbling around at all. If being the operative word. If Rut Peck hadn’t called Des from the Rustic when he had. If she and Yolie hadn’t made a beeline to the Rustic, then the Yankee Doodle, then Tommy the Pinhead’s apartment. If Tommy the Pinhead and Gigi hadn’t been home in bed. If …