"Roberto, do your business and let's get back to the hotel," Tuck called into the sky. The fruit bat barked and snagged an overhead limb as he passed, his momentum nearly sending him in a loop around it before he pendulumed and settled in upside-down attitude. The bat barked again, licked his little doggy chops, and folded his great wings around himself to ward off the coastal cold.
"Fine," Tuck said, "but you're not getting back into the room until you poop."
He'd inherited the bat from a Filipino navigator he'd met while flying a private jet for a doctor in Micronesia; a job he'd only taken because his U.S. pilot's license had been yanked for crashing the pink Mary Jean Cosmetic jet while initiating a young woman into the Mile-High Club. Drunk. After Micronesia he'd moved to the Caribbean with his fruit bat and his beautiful new island wife and started a charter business. Now, six years later, his beautiful island wife was running the charter business with a seven-foot Rastafarian and Tucker Case had nothing to his name but a fruit bat and temporary gig flying helicopters for the DEA, spotting marijuana patches in the Big Sur wilderness area. Which put him in Pine Cove, holed up in a cheap motel room, four days before Christmas, alone. Lonesome. Hosed.
Tuck had once been a ladies' man of the highest order — a Don Juan, a Casanova, a Kennedy sans cash — yet now he was in a town where he didn't know a soul and he hadn't even met a single woman to try to seduce. A few years of marriage had almost ruined him. He'd become accustomed to affectionate female company without a great deal of manipulation, subterfuge, and guile. He missed it. He didn't want to spend Christmas alone, dammit. Yet here he was.
And there she was. A damsel in distress. A woman, alone, out here in the night, crying — and from what Tuck could tell by the headlights of a nearby pickup truck, she had a nice shape. Great hair. Beautiful high cheekbones, streaked with tears and mud, but you know, exotic-looking. Tuck checked to see that Roberto was still safely hanging above, then straightened his bomber jacket and made his way across the street.
"Hey there, are you okay?"
The woman jumped, screamed a bit, looked around frantically until she spotted him, "Oh my God," she said.
Tuck had had worse responses. He pressed on: "Are you okay?" he repeated. "You looked like you were having some trouble."
"I think he's dead," the woman said. "I think — I think I killed him"
Tuck looked at the red-and-white pile on the ground at his feet and realized for the first time what it really was: a dead Santa. A normal person might have freaked out, backed away, tried to quickly extract himself from the situation, but Tucker Case was a pilot, trained to function in life-and-death emergencies, practiced at grace under pressure, and besides, he was lonely and this woman was really hot.
"So, a dead Santa," said Tuck. "Do you live around here?"
"I didn't mean to kill him. He was coming at me with a gun I just ducked, and when I looked up — " She waved toward the pile of dead Kringle. "I guess the shovel caught him in the throat." She seemed to be calming down a bit.
Tuck nodded thoughtfully "So, Santa was coming at you with a gun?"
The woman pointed to the gun, lying in the dirt next to the Maglite "I see," said Tuck. "Did you know this —»
"Yes. His name is Dale Pearson. He drank."
"I don't. Stopped years ago," Tuck said. "By the way, I'm Tucker Case. Are you married?" He extended his hand to her to shake. She seemed to see him for the first time.
"Lena Marquez. No, I'm divorced»
"Me, too," said Tuck. "Tough around the holidays, isn't it? Kids?"
"No. Mr., uh, Case, this man is my ex-husband and he's dead."
"Yep. I just gave my ex the house and my business, but this does seems cheaper," Tuck said.
"We had a fight yesterday at the grocery store in front of a dozen people. I had the motive, the opportunity, and the means — " She pointed to the shovel. "Everyone will think I killed him."
"Not to mention that you did kill him."
"And don't think the media won't latch onto that? It's my shovel sticking out of his neck."
"Maybe you should wipe off your prints and stuff. You didn't get any DNA on him, did you?"
She stretched the front of her shirt out and started dabbing at the shovel's handle. "DNA? Like what?"
"You know, hair, blood, semen? Nothing like that?"
"No." She was furiously buffing the handle of the shovel with the front of her tank top, being careful not to get too close to the end that was stuck in the dead guy. Strangely, Tuck found the process slightly erotic.