“Meg?” It was Michael. “You okay?”
I stuck the notebook and pen back in my pocket, opened the door, and walked out. He, Rob, and Dad were standing in a circle around the bathroom door, worried looks on their faces.
“I’m fine,” I said. “The parade isn’t. We don’t have a Santa.”
“We can find someone,” Michael said.
“Someone who fits the costume?” Rob countered. “Not too many people around here who can fit into a costume that short—where did they get it, anyway, the kid’s section of the Costume Shack?”
“Irrelevant,” I said. “Since the costume has a great bloody hole in the center of the chest—no one would want to wear it even if Horace hadn’t already packed it up in an evidence bag.”
“Meg,” Dad said. “I could do it. I already have my own Santa suit, remember?”
I remembered very well. When we were children, Rob and I had been firm believers in Santa Claus long after most kids our age had become cynical Santagnostics, in part because we had such dramatic proof of Santa’s existence. I still cherished the Polaroid Cousin Alice had taken, showing a blurred figure in a red and white suit, standing in the middle of our familiar living room, placing a present beneath the tree I’d helped decorate. Later on, I’d helped to create blurred Polaroids myself, or more recently blurred digital shots, to thrill my nieces and nephews.
Between the Polaroids and Dad’s practice of getting up in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve to stomp around on the roof, shaking a string of sleigh bells—wearing the suit, of course, in case any of the grandkids woke up in time to peek—Dad had a lot of practice at Santa.
He was certainly a lot closer to my idea of what the jolly old elf should look like than Mr. Doleson had been.
“Okay, Dad’s Santa,” I said. “But we don’t have a sleigh for him to ride in—the sleigh’s part of the crime scene, remember?”
“Can’t we just have him ride in a car?” Michael suggested. “We could use my convertible, so he could wave and smile at everyone.”
“Yeah, but it lacks that certain something,” Rob said. “No offense, Michael—love your new car, but convertibles are pretty humdrum in a parade.”
For once I agreed with Rob.
“I have it,” Dad said. “I have an inspiration! One that will make this Santa’s most dramatic arrival in the history of the parade.”
“This doesn’t involve the boom lift, does it?” I asked.
“The boom lift? I hadn’t thought of that,” Dad said.
“Then don’t start.”
“If we could rig up something that looked like a chimney that would ride along beneath the boom lift,” he said. “And I could tie a rope to myself and—”
“Don’t even think of it,” I said. “We already lost one Santa. We’re not going for a double header. Can you imagine how traumatic it would be to the children of Caerphilly, seeing Santa take a forty-foot fall from a boom lift? Go back to whatever idea you were having when I made the mistake of mentioning the boom lift. What was that, anyway?”
“Have you seen Clarence’s new motorcycle?” Dad asked.
Maybe I’d been too quick to reject the boom lift.
“It’s not a bad idea,” Michael said. “If we try to rig up a makeshift sleigh, it’s bound to look just that—makeshift. But this—well, once they find out what happened, everyone will understand that we had to do something, and meanwhile, it’s bold, it’s new, it’s in keeping with your goal of not having a boring, old-fashioned Christmas parade. Holiday parade,” he corrected himself.
Yes, and was he forgetting how much certain members of the town council hated some of my non-traditional ideas for the parade? If I sent Santa down the road on a motorcycle, they’d freak. They’d never let me hear the end of it. They’d—
They’d never, ever put me in charge of the parade again, not if Michael and I lived here in Caerphilly for the next fifty years.
“You’re on,” I said. “Biker Santa it is. Rebel with a Claus.”
“I’ll run over to the farmhouse to get my suit,” Dad said.
“I’ll find Clarence,” Michael said.
“I’m going to find my camera,” Rob announced. “This is going to be awesome.”
They all scattered. I pulled out my notebook and flipped it open to the page where, a few minutes before, in the bathroom, I had written. “Find Santa.” I pulled out my pen to cross it off, and instead of relief, I felt a wave of anger.