Naughty Nine Tales of Christmas Crime (2 page)

Connie smiled as she handed Ethel the little brightly wrapped package, but all Ethel saw were fangs. She didn't bother to open the gift. She wrapped it in her paper napkin and left it sitting next to her plate like something unpleasant she'd picked out of her food.

And then, the presents distributed, Santa took his place on his "throne"—a metal folding chair at the front of the hall.

"Ho ho ho! Who wants to come and sit on Santa's knee?" He turned to Connie. "How about my little elf first?"

Connie hesitated, blushing.

"Come on!" Bud patted his lap. "Come here and tell old Santa what you want for Christmas!"

There were shouts from the audience—"Yeah!" and "Go, Connie!" and "Ignore that dirty old man!" Ethel barely fought back the urge to screech "Don't you
dare
, you cheap floozy!"

Connie grinned at the crowd for a moment before taking her place on Santa's lap. There were a few cheers.

"So what can Santa Claus pull out of his sack for you, little girl?" Bud boomed.

Connie whispered in his ear.

Bud waggled his eyebrows and gave out a hearty "Ho ho hoooo!" And then he kissed her.

Some people laughed. Some people applauded. And one person walked out of the room, went to her trailer and began plotting Connie Sandrelli's demise.

Ethel scoured her trailer for instruments of death. Soon she had assembled on her kitchen table a pistol (for shooting), a steak knife and knitting needles (for stabbing), a hammer and a scorched bust of former Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight (for bludgeoning), a pillow and a plastic Winn-Dixie bag (for smothering), a toaster (for dropping into a water-filled bathtub) and a fruitcake (for eating—Ethel was hungry).

The pistol wouldn't work because Ethel couldn't find any bullets: Ralph had hidden them somewhere, though he refused to explain why. He just said it was "a precaution." The steak knife, knitting needles, hammer, bust, pillow and bag were out due to Ethel's arthritis. Some nights, she could barely get her dentures out. A life-or-death struggle with a woman five years her junior definitely seemed like a bad idea.

That left the toaster. Ethel sat at the table for fifteen minutes, chewing on her fruitcake, running various scenarios through her mind. But no matter how she imagined it, she couldn't quite see a toaster attack panning out. She'd have to wait until Connie was taking a bath, break into her trailer, creep into the bathroom and plug the toaster in without being noticed—and then hope that the electrical cord was long enough to reach the tub.

No, she needed something easier. Something less risky. More sneaky.

She took another bite of fruitcake. Her false teeth clamped down hard on something brittle. It crunched. She cursed.

The cake had come from the grocery store, that was the problem. Those big chains put all kinds of crazy things in their fruitcakes—candy and cherries and whatnot. You never knew what you were going to bite into.

Ethel stopped chewing.

Her chief weapon in the war for Bud Schmidt had been food. Why change strategy now?

The next day, she baked a fruitcake.

* * *

Ethel Queenan's Christmas Surprise Fruitcake
1 cup diced candied orange peel
1 cup diced candied lemon peel
2 cups diced citron
3 cups raisins, chopped
1/2 cup two-year-old leftover red wine from back of fridge
1/2 cup amaretto (because brandy is too expensive and what's the difference, really?)
1/2 cup peppermint schnapps (because it's been sitting around forever so why not use it?)
3 cups flour
3 teaspoons cinnamon
6 teaspoons nutmeg
2 teaspoons cloves, ground
2 teaspoons allspice
1 cup rat poison
1/2 cup Ajax
6 teaspoons dead husband's heart pills, ground
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter
2 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
1/2 cup molasses
1 teaspoon spittle

Mix fruit in a large bowl; pour in wine and brandy substitute. Stir and set aside. Start sipping leftover schnapps.

Sift flour with spices, Ajax, rat poison and pills. Add baking powder and salt and sift again. Start second glass of schnapps. Throw in more spices just to be safe. Then more poison. Then more spices.

Cream butter, add sugar and eggs, mix thoroughly. Add molasses and stir. Spit in batter. Sprinkle with more rat poison. Start third glass of schnapps.

Heat oven to 300 degrees. Feel queasy. Pour remaining schnapps down drain. Lie on couch for twenty minutes.

When head stops swimming, get up and put cake batter in oven. Bake for three hours. Lie down on couch again. Vow never to touch another drop of schnapps. Imagine painful, pleasing death of husband-snatching Jezebel wench.

* * *

It baked up quite nicely. Ethel thought it was the most beautiful fruitcake she'd ever seen. She was almost sorry she couldn't try a slice.

Her alarm clock beeped her awake at four a.m. the next morning. She rolled out of bed, put on her darkest outfit (a navy blue polyester pantsuit she'd purchased in 1979) and walked to Connie Sandrelli's trailer. She left the fruitcake on the doorstep. It was covered in wrapping paper with a red bow on top. Attached to the bow was a note.

Merry Christmas, beautiful
!

—
Your Secret Admirer

Ethel walked away humming "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen." When she got home, she climbed back in bed expecting to be awakened soon by the sweet sound of sirens.

* * *

When Connie Sandrelli found the fruitcake next to her morning paper, she knew immediately who it was from.

Bud Schmidt.

A week before, Bud got it into his head that it would be cute if
he
started cooking for
her
for a change. The first dish he brought her was something called "cheeseburger Italiana"—or, as Bud called it, "cheeseburger Eye-talian." It was a casserole. He'd found the recipe on a box of Bisquick.

As a serious, marinara-in-her-veins Italian-American, Connie had to try very hard not to be offended. She had to try even harder when she tasted it.

Bud, it appeared, hadn't done much cooking in his life. He didn't seem to know the difference between garlic powder and cumin, for instance. And ketchup and tomato sauce were considered interchangeable. Somehow, Connie kept a smile on her face even as she choked down the man's blasphemous culinary abomination.

When Bud came by a few days later with something he called a "Velveeta sausage log," Connie let him know she wasn't hungry just then but she sure was looking forward to a heaping plate later on. Over the next week, she transferred one hearty slice a day from the refrigerator to the bottom of the garbage can.

Given her earlier encounters with Bud's kitchen experiments, Connie was in no hurry to chomp into the man's first stab at cake baking. She'd always found the pleasures of fruitcake to be fickle and fleeting under the best of circumstances. A Bud Schmidt fruitcake could be dangerous.

So Connie gave the cake a place of honor amongst the cookies and biscotti and chocolate balls sent down by her relatives up north, but she never took a bite. She only mentioned the fruitcake to Bud once, fearful that he would suggest brewing up some coffee and tucking in.

"Thanks for your little surprise," she told him. "It's lovely."

Bud smiled and gave her an "Awww shucks, it was nothing" shrug. He thought she was talking about the Velveeta sausage log. Or maybe something else he'd done. His memory wasn't what it used to be. And anyway, forty-three years of marriage had taught him not to question a woman's gratitude. If it's something you earned, great. If it's
not
something you earned, even better.

Over the next week, the mountain of holiday treats in Connie's kitchen was gradually worn away by the erosion of near-constant snacking. Yet the fruitcake remained, inviolate, untouchable, like some moist and mysterious monolith.

It had to go.

Connie couldn't just throw it away, though. It was a symbol of Bud's devotion . . . though, in all likelihood, a spectacularly nasty one.

So instead of tossing it out, she dressed it up. She plated it with candy armor— gumdrops and Skittles along the sides, peppermints and candy canes on top. When she was done, the fruitcake was unrecognizable.

She covered it in Saran Wrap and walked it to the trailer of Always Sunny's most hated resident: George "Bones" Heaton, the manager. She felt a little guilty about pawning off someone else's gift as one of her own. But wasn't there an old legend that there's really only one fruitcake in the world—it just keeps getting passed around? Who was she to stand in the way of tradition?

* * *

Bones (short for "Skin and . . .") was a small, grizzled man with a large, fleshy mouth that spewed ill will like a smokestack. Always Sunny's residents were not, on the whole, a rowdy or unreliable bunch. So Bones spent very little of his time breaking up wild parties or overseeing evictions. Instead, his duties as manager leaned heavily toward maintenance work and general handymanery.

As undemanding as these chores generally were, however, Bones seemed bound by holy oath to make them as unpleasant as possible for all concerned. His rote response to any complaint, large or small, were the words "Whadaya want
me
to do about it?"

Even if you told him
exactly
what you wanted him to do, the odds weren't good that Bones would actually do it. Your chances for success worsened considerably if you got on his bad side somehow—which was easy to do, since his "bad side" comprised the majority of his being.

In December, there were two sure-fire ways to inspire his wrathful sloth: (A) coming to his door singing Christmas carols or (B)
not
coming to his door with a present. Bones had been known to chase away suddenly-not-so-merry carolers with a garden hose. Gifts, on the other hand, he accepted greedily, if not graciously.

Her new neighbors had let Connie know that a Christmas offering to Bones was mandatory. Connie was, of course, outraged and offended. But she also had cracks in her driveway and a box elder that was growing perilously close to her telephone line. So she brought Bones a gift.

"Huh," the little man grunted when he saw it. "You say there's a cake under all that candy?"

Connie came as close as she could to a good-natured laugh. "Oh, yes. It should be a tasty one, too. I had my niece Gina make it for me. She's a pastry chef up in New York. A real wiz kid with the baking. Sometimes she gets kind of fancy with the ingredients . . . you know, experimental. But she—"

"Yeah, okay, thanks," Bones said, signaling that Connie's audience with him was at an end. The door to his trailer was closed before she could finish her farewell "Merry Christmas!"

Later that day, Bones's wife Virgie found the fruitcake on the kitchen table when she returned from the latest meeting of her divorce support group. She'd never been divorced before. She was just trying it on for size. After four weeks with the group, she still couldn't figure out what everyone was complaining about.

"What's this?" she called out.

Bones was in the living room, approximately twelve feet away, watching Judge Judy dole out justice reality-TV style.

"What's what?" he hollered back.

"This thing with all the crap on it!"

"What?"

"This hunk of crud in the kitchen!"

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

"This weird-lookin' blob on the counter!"

"That's a fruitcake!"

"A what?"

"
A frrrrruitcaaaake
!"

A fruitcake? Virgie thought it looked more like a candy-encrusted brick.

"Where'd it come from?"

It took five more minutes of yelling to work out the details. Virgie never left the kitchen, and Bones never left his seat.

When it was all over, Virgie took the fruitcake to its new home. She thought the cake looked more decorative than edible, so she placed it amongst the snow globes, nutcrackers and miniature angels on the mantelpiece of the double-wide trailer's faux fireplace. There it stayed for the next twelve months.

Virgie and Bones usually packed up their Christmas decorations around Valentine's Day or, at the very latest, Easter. But this year it became a one-man job—and the man in question was reluctant to commit to any project that required him to put down the remote control.

When Virgie left Bones, she chose the timing carefully. She didn't want a big fuss. So she started packing her bags five seconds after the kick-off of the Super Bowl. She was out of the trailer by half-time. Bones tracked her down the next day to attempt a reconciliation—over the phone.

"Awww, you don't care if I'm there or not, George," Virgie told him. "I bet you didn't even stop watching the game after I left last night."

"Well, yeah," Bones admitted sheepishly. On the widescreen TV a few feet before him, Judge Judy was scolding a man for selling his best friend a sickly parrot. "But I didn't enjoy it."

The reconciliation did not take root, and Bones found himself single for the first time in fifteen years. It didn't really affect his life much, except that there was a lot less shouting around the trailer and no more bickering about what to watch on TV.

* * *

The following November, Bones's bachelorhood produced an unexpected dividend. Through no effort of his own, the man suddenly found himself with an admirer.

Ethel Queenan began dropping by every day with food.

"That wife of yours never fed you right," she'd say as she handed him the latest creation from the pages of her
new
cookbook:
Bake Until Bubbly!
. "And now that she's gone, you're just wasting away to nothing."

In attempting to seduce Bones Heaton with fiesta chicken and tuna noodle strudel, Ethel knew she'd scraped all the way through the bottom of the barrel deep into the dirt beneath. She was desperate.

Whether Connie Sandrelli didn't care for fruitcake or simply had a cast-iron stomach, Ethel would never know. But the man-stealing hussy not only survived the holiday season, she married Bud Schmidt just a few months later. To show that there were no hard feelings, Ethel baked them a chocolate cake—or, to be more precise, a chocolate, Clorox, Cascade, Tide and lemon-fresh Pledge cake. The resulting black sludge was so noxious with chemicals Ethel had to throw it out, pan and all. She nearly passed out from the fumes.