Nikki
leaned back in her chair, regarding me with the lazy eyes of a cat. She crossed
her legs, spent a moment arranging the skirt of her dress, and then folder he
hands in her lap expectantly.
Jessie had
pulled up a chair to the side of my desk, practically bouncing with excitement.
I still
stood with the red and white Santa hat in my hands. I sat down and rubbed my
chin.
“Do not try
and weasel out of this one, Matthew,” Nikki said tersely. “You promised an
explanation.”
“I’m not
trying to weasel out of this, I’m trying to figure out where to start.”
“At the
beginning.”
“Yeah,
thanks for that. That’s the problem. The beginning isn’t the beginning. It just
leads to the beginning.”
“You are
stalling. Tell the complete story.”
I set the
hat down firmly on the desk, and took a deep breath. “Okay. This is going to
take some time, so buckle up. It was shortly after Max and I got a divorce.”
“You were
married!” Jessie nearly fell out of her chair.
“No,” Nikki
said evenly. “I believe he means when he and Maxwell went their separate ways
and divided up the city. Matthew came here, and Maxwell kept his old office.”
“Oh. Oh, I
get it, now.”
“Like I was
saying,” I continued. “He kept Shadow Valley, Dante, and Shoreward. I took
Meriville, the Grind, Fairhaven, and the rest.”
“The Ritzy
digs I believe you called them once,” Nikki said.
I nodded.
“Anyway, I got hired to find a Nativity.”
“You mean
the thing they put on at Christmas?” Jessie asked. “How can you steal that?”
“Well, this
one wasn’t performed by people. They had, well, dolls, little statues, I don’t
know what you want to call them. It was put outside of the church for people to
see all the time. It was supposed to be a small job for a friend of a friend of
my minister. I thought it was probably some kids, so I started canvassing the
neighborhood, asking the people at church if anyone ever harassed them. . . .