Have Rights, Too! Say Yes To Christmas. Save Our Snow Mountain. Save Santa. As they marched around in a circle, they chanted, “Heck no, the elves won’t go.”
It was an unlikely-looking group of protestors—not a dreadlock or pierced body part on any of them. Lots of gray hair out there, with one glaring exception, of course.
Her hair, where it showed beneath the brim of her fur-trimmed Santa hat, was catching the sun, and looked like it was spun through with gold.
It seemed to him Lila Grainger was as eye-catching in that hat, bundled up in a pink oversize parka that made her look like a marshmallow, as she would have been in a furtrimmed bikini.
The CLEM TV mobile van from Spokane was pulling up. Bruce Wilkes from the Snow Mountain News was already happily snapping pictures.
“What are you going to do, Chief?” Randy Mulligan asked uncertainly.
Tag slid Hutch a look. Have a heart attack, came to mind. The chief looked apoplectic.
Of course, his niece, looking positively radiant, was in the very middle of the mêlée. When she separated from the other protestors to go and talk to Jade Flynn, who was getting out of the news van, it was more than obvious who was in charge of the protest.
Tag, instead of making the professional assessment ringleader, noticed that aside from the fact she looked cute as a button, she was still limping.
“You didn’t even catch a whisper of this when you went to see her?” Hutch asked Tag accusingly.
“No, sir. She told me they were going to ask Jamison to play Santa—”
“Like hell I’m playing Santa,” Jamison muttered indignantly, putting enough curse words between playing and Santa to do his Marine corps heritage proud.
“—and that they’d come up with a new name. That’s it.” Well, that wasn’t it. Tag had known she was up to something naughty. He could now clearly remember the guilty blush when she’d mentioned getting city hall to change their minds. He felt he’d probably been distracted by naughty thoughts of his own, especially after he’d carried her down that endless hall to her bathroom, and then spent agonizing minutes administering first-aid to the cut on her foot.
You didn’t admit to your boss you’d had naughty thoughts about his niece, thoughts that might have prevented you from seeing certain things coming, he told himself.
Besides, the grim news about Boo had been pretty fresh that night; Tag knew it had clouded his thinking, and still did, though he wore the mask of functioning perfectly.
“Go arrest her,” Hutch said, thankfully to no one in particular.
Randy Mulligan obviously thought of some urgent work he had to do. He stampeded from the room as if the Hells Angels had arrived in town and he had to personally deal with them.
“Arrest her?” Pete Harper said. “Are you kidding? You know how that’s going to look on the evening news? This town has barely recovered from the elf on fire last year.”
“How’s it going to look if I don’t arrest her and she’s my niece?” Hutch snapped. “Like I’m playing favorites, that’s how. If I don’t do something decisive right now every special interest group in Snow Mountain from the Grannies for Justice to Pals for Pooches is going to think they can shut down the town anytime they don’t get what they want. Pals for Pooches has been trying to get an animal shelter for a lot longer than Lila’s been trying to save Christmas.”
Unfortunately Tag could see his point.
“Well, I’m not arresting her,” Pete said. “My mother would kill me.”
His mother was out there right beside Lila, carrying a sign that showed a tombstone with Santa on it, RIP, and then Killed By Snow Mountain Town Council. Jeanie Harper was also dispensing cookies to the news crews, practically guaranteeing all stories would be slanted in favor of the protestors.
As if they wouldn’t be anyway.
“I ain’t arresting nobody, either,” Jamison said. He jerked his thumb at Pete. “His mother wouldn’t bake me cookies anymore.”
Pete shot him a look. “My mother bakes you cookies?”
“Go arrest her, Tag,” Hutch said wearily.
It fell neatly into that category of a job no one else wanted to do, and besides, he was the one who had missed the signs that this was going to happen. Now that he thought about it, hadn’t there been something stuffed in that dark corner of the hallway by her bathroom?
Oh, yeah, signs.
“You mean arrest her?” Tag hedged uncomfortably, “Or just take her aside, and try to talk some sense into her?”
Her uncle sighed. “She’s just like her mother. Talking sense to her is like trying to explain algebra to a chimp. Impossible. Besides, you think she’s going to give in quietly? What kind of news story would that make?”
Unfortunately Tag could see his point. He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, turned and lifted his jacket off the back of his chair, pulled on his hat. Boo, who had been snoozing under his desk, lifted her head and thumped her tail on the floor, hopeful for an invitation.
“Fat chance,” he told her sourly, while silently searching for signs of the dog’s deterioration. “I count on you to warn me about who I have to keep an eye on. You failed me on this one, Boo. You loved Lila Grainger.”
He realized he did not want to be using the word love in any sentence addressed to Boo, especially one that also included the name Lila Grainger. She was just that kind of woman, the kind who could storm a man’s defenses before he even knew he was under attack.
The kind of woman where you noticed the fact she was limping, rather than the fact she was leading an insurrection.
The kind of woman with a foot so enchanting, you overlooked the signs of revolt brewing all around you.
The dog sighed, put her head back down and closed her eyes. Almost easier to go out there and deal with that than the dog’s easy surrender to being left behind.
Moments later, he was shouldering his way through a crowd worthy of a big-city Santa Claus parade, with the same attitude of excited anticipation in the air. There hadn’t been this much excitement in Snow Mountain since the Snow Leopards, the high school football team, had made state finals three years ago.
Over the chanting, Tag could hear a tinny loudspeaker wailing out a sentimental rendition of the song, “You Light up My Life.”
It seemed as if the entire population of Snow Mountain—plus most of the surrounding area—had known about the demonstration. This was a town that could not keep secrets, so how it had stayed below the police radar was something of a miracle.
The air of celebration toned down a bit as he shoved his way through to the center of activity. He tried to tell himself he had probably been in worse positions, but he could not remember when.
By the time he arrived in front of Lila Grainger, he was very aware of the hostility
