Chapter Eight
One good thing about living on the coast of Oregon: we knew how to weather the storms.
Things didn’t usually get sketchy in our sturdy little town until the winds reached somewhere above an hundred-mile-an-hour.
But there were always little damages from high wind gusts. A fence, a store sign, garbage cans in the wrong yard.
Mrs. Yates’s penguin getting stolen.
Not that the wind had taken it, but apparently a storm was the perfect cover for the pranksters who liked to abscond with her concrete yard penguin.
“It’s Christmas for goodness sakes,” Mrs. Yates said for the tenth time as I stood there on her twinkling light-draped porch taking her complaint. “I always decorate the yard.”
“It looks nice.”
“And the house.”
“That looks nice too.”
“And the penguin. Really, he’s the star of the whole thing.”
“I understand.”
“He has a blog, you know.”
I did know. The penguin’s frequent kidnappings, creative hiding places, and hostage photos had taken a small corner of the internet by storm.
That penguin was pretty much our most famous citizen. And Mrs. Yates ate up the stardom-by-proxy with a spoon.
I’d always suspected that most of the kidnappings had been orchestrated by the high school kids, but lately, the kidnappings and photos seemed more professional.
Almost as if the kidnappers were a well-oiled, well-coordinated machine.
It wasn’t just Mrs. Yates who liked the limelight. Most of the town was totally into our adorable concrete claim to fame.
“He deserves to be home for Christmas,” she said. “We all need him home for Christmas, Delaney. It would mean so much to the town.”
And that’s when I knew I wasn’t going to get out of penguin search and rescue duty.
“I’ll do what I can to find him before the night’s over.”
“Yes,” she said, finally happy. “People drive by to take pictures of him in the yard, you know. Tourists too. Especially tourists. We wouldn’t want to disappoint them.”
She fluffed her hair and stared past me at the road, looking for drive-by photo ops.
“No,” I said. “I’m sure we wouldn’t.”
Chapter Nine
“Where?” Jean asked.
I took another drink of the Tom and Jerry Myra had made from scratch from the family recipe. It had just a splash of bourbon in it to cut the thick, sweet warm milk and nutmeg, and it warmed me all the way down.
The music was playing softly in the background, Ryder’s arm was draped over my shoulder, the house was decorated in that cozy but classy way that only Myra seemed to be able to pull off.
If I decorated like her, it would end up looking like I was living in a garage sale.
“Aaron’s patio at the back of his nursery,” I said.
Aaron was the owner of the garden shop. He was also the god of war, Ares, who up until a few months ago, was vacationing here.
Since he was gone, we kept an eye on his property for him.
“Doesn’t seem like much of a hiding place,” Hogan, Jean’s boyfriend, said.
The baker had had a drink or two, and he and Jean were cuddled up on the loveseat, both wearing hideous holiday sweaters. Hogan had accessorized with a pair of felt reindeer horns that flashed red and green.
Jean wore a hat shaped like a Christmas tree, lights and all. Apparently, it also sang.
Apparently, Myra had yanked the batteries out of the “obnoxious thing” after hearing Oh, Christmas Tree on repeat for an hour straight.
Apparently, Myra was “no fun” but since she “made a boss Tom and Jerry” the Christmas tree hat had remained silent.
“They weren’t trying to hide it, not really.” I shifted and Ryder tucked me in a little closer to his chest.
He was quiet, relaxed, and looked right at home with his stockinged feet propped up on Myra’s coffee table.
His bruises were just bruises, and the knock on the head was not a concussion.
As accidents went, he had been very, very lucky.
“They wanted the pictures on the blog for Christmas?” Myra asked.
“I think that’s what they were going for. This had to have taken some time and more than one person. They set up a whole holiday scene, using a bunch of the other statues on his lot complete with Christmas tree, a menorah, and a kinara and corn. Here.”
I leaned forward and Ryder sighed at the loss of contact, his fingers drifting down my back as I pulled my phone off the table.
I hadn’t gone home to change, since the penguin hunt had taken so long. They’d waited on me for dinner, which was nice of them.
Dinner was delicious and perfect because Myra had inherited almost all the cooking genes in our family.
I leaned back into Ryder. He grunted softly in contentment.
I scrolled through my photos to the pictures I’d taken of the concrete gathering, held it up for Ryder. He chuckled.
“They went all out,” he agreed.
“Lemme see.” Jean made grabby hands, and I relinquished my phone.
She made big fake wide eyes in big fake surprise. “Look at that Hogan. All those statues doing all those holiday things. How cute is that? They even remembered Kwanza.”
“Mmm-hmmm.” He planted a kiss somewhere below the boughs of her hat and then grinned at her over her shoulder. “Kwanza doesn’t get nearly enough representation here in Ordinary.”
Okay, they were being totally suspicious.
“Here, Myra. Look at what those awful vandals did.” Jean waggled my phone toward Myra who was giving Jean and Hogan a narrow-eyed glare.
“Was the lock broken?” Myra asked me even though she wasn’t looking away from Jean.
I wasn’t looking away from Jean either.
“No. Whoever did it had a key to the gate.”Jean had a key to the gate. We all kept keys to the businesses the no-longer-vacationing gods had left behind.
“Probably just some high school kids finding some other way into the place.” Jean waved, then dropped back against Hogan.
She threaded her fingers between his hands where they were clasped on her waist.
I studied their fingers. Dark against creamy white. Their knuckles looked a little abraded. Like maybe they’d been moving heavy concrete statues around in the middle of the night.
“Oh, for real?” I groaned. “Jean, tell me you were not involved in theft, breaking and entering, and trespassing last night.”
“I plead the Fifth.”
“Why?” I moaned. “I spent hours looking for that penguin. In the rain. In the cold. On Christmas Eve!”
She shrugged. “They were already there doing their thing. And, no, I’m not going to rat them out. So we just helped them get it all set up.”
“We, babe?” Hogan asked. “I guess it’s the Fifth for me too, Reed ladies.”
I shook my head in disappointment.
“They were supposed to take pictures and get the penguin home before dark,” Jean said. “Probably the storm got in the way.”
“I can not believe this. Haven’t you had enough with yard statues? Remember the gnome debacle? Two month ago. Involving zombies?”
Jean wrinkled her nose at me. “Do not mention the gnome-zombie debacle. Hogan still has Abner’s head on the dash of his car.”
“Ew,” Myra said.
Hogan ran his fingers through Jean’s red and green hair. “He won’t be alive again until next October. Why not let him see things around town until then?”
“Nice,” Ryder said.
I opened my mouth to get us back on the subject of Jean and Hogan being any part of the penguin kidnapping, but Jean talked right over whatever I was about to say.
“You know Mrs. Yates loves that penguin being a star, no matter what she says. It makes her feel young and special. All that attention. All those tourists coming by to catch a glimpse of the famous penguin in her yard with the flower beds she likes to fuss over. If someone hadn’t stolen it for a big Christmas photo-op, she would have been disappointed.”
“Rule breaker,” Ryder noted with a yawn.
“Settle down, Mr. Warden. I didn’t break any actual contracts.”
“Theft is illegal,” Myra pointed out.
“One, I didn’t steal it, I just found the people who did. Two, Are you going to arrest your sister on Christmas Eve for being a part of a community building exercise?”
From the look on Myra’s face, she was thinking pretty seriously about it.
“You’ll tell me who did it,” I said. “All the people involved in this little ‘community building exercise’.”
Jean sighed noisily. “Fine. Yes, boss.”
“We’re going to talk to them and their parents, if necessary. Make them apologize to Mrs. Yates and pay any damages she asks for. We can’t let something like this slide. That was private property, Jean.”
She made a rude noise. “I was very stern with them as we were arranging the photo shoot. Told them I disapproved of their shenanigans, but that I’d let it pass this once, because it was Christmas and it was going to make an awesome picture. They really did promise to get the penguin home safely.”
Ryder’s fingers had shifted so that he could brush the side of my shoulder. I didn’t know if he realized he was petting me, but it felt so good, I didn’t tell him to stop.
“Please tell me you’re not going to make me call them on Christmas Eve,” Jean said. “Can’t we just put it off a bit?”