Holiday Hooligans: Cozy Mystery (The Teasen & Pleasen Hair Salon Cozy Mystery Series Book 3) Read online

  “And Art, even though we are putting up decorations, the prices here at Teasen and Pleasen are staying the same.” Not that our prices affected Art any. He was a spectator at the salon, not a customer. “We might have to raise them next year because our costs keep going up, but we aren’t hiking them up and gouging our clients who want to look nice for the holidays.”

  Nellie smiled at Ellen. “You know, Ellen, I think you’re right that Christmas can be overdone—almost anything can be overdone. But maybe you are missing the point of that early start—stirring up that holiday mentality, the enthusiasm for celebrating is what gets people out into restaurants and stores.”

  Ellen sighed. “It sure wears thin when you try to make it last an entire month.”

  I agreed, to an extent. “A sprint, not a marathon.”

  “Well said,” Ellen said.

  “I always prefer thinking about the holiday as mostly the twelve days of Christmas, myself. But everyone can get together tonight, and it’s only the ninth, so this year Teasen and Pleasen will wind up celebrating seventeen days of Christmas.”

  “That’s it, Savannah,” Ellen said. “We can make Knockemstiff the town that celebrates the twelve days of Christmas. All the decorations and sales would start twelve days before the big day.”

  Selena Ferrara, who was sitting in Nellie Phlint’s chair, coughed. I tensed slightly, waiting for the other shoe, as that was the sign that she was about to inflict some undesired and unwanted fact on our conversation.

  I looked over and saw that Nellie had given her long, black acrylic nails with little gold stars on them. Selina was our resident alienist and spiritual consultant—self appointed on both counts. She actually knew quite a lot more about such things than anyone else wanted to know and loved to share. “There really isn’t a twelve days of Christmas, as such, just the ones in the stupid song,” she said. “And the song is about the twelve days AFTER Christmas, not before.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling foolish. “There goes my theory.”

  “And my marketing plan,” Ellen sighed.

  “In fact, in the northern counties of England it was called the ten days of Christmas. The other two days were added later. But it isn’t a thing. It’s a development of the Christmas holiday season and most of that was taken from elements of the Roman feast of the Saturnalia and the birthday of Mithra.”

  “Whoa,” I laughed. “Mithras?” I asked. “Is that a stand-up comic?”

  “He is the prophet of the Roman cult of Mithraism and possibly the god from Zoroastrian sources. A lot of our holiday traditions came from them, but the whole idea of the yule log and gift giving came from the Saturnalia.”

  Nellie snorted. “Now does anyone want to guess who has been spending all her free time on Wikipedia lately?”

  Undeterred, Selina shook her head. “So, to your point… Saturnalia originally ran from December 17th to the 23rd, so there really should be six days of Christmas.”

  “Unless you count both the 17th and 23rd, in which case there are seven,” Nellie said, grinning.

  “And you’d have to count the 24th and 25th, wouldn’t you? So we are up to nine again,” I said.

  Selina wasn’t going to let math mistakes destroy her pointed lecture. “And the Christmas tree itself, as a symbol—“

  “Enough!” I said. “I appreciate the history lesson, but that is far too much information. Honestly, no matter what they did for a good time in Rome in 300 AD, here in Knockemstiff, Louisiana, in the sovereign land of Teasen and Pleasen, in the twenty-first century Christmas will be exactly what we make it.”

  “Hear, hear,” Ellen said.

  Selina’s expression turned sour. “I thought you’d appreciate knowing the truth.”

  Nellie laughed. “Clearly you have us confused with a roomful of scholars. It’s a mistake I often make myself—confusing myself with a scholar, I mean.”

  “Selina,” I said, “I’m a thirty something who owns a hair salon in a little town; a woman who looks forward to Christmas so much that she might be tempted to scalp people who rain on her parade.”

  “A thirty something with emphasis on the something,” Nellie said.

  “Well excuse me,” Selina said.

  “Don’t be upset,” Nellie said, nodded toward the coffee pot. “Feed your disappointment with some traditional Christmas samosas I got at Parambets’ this morning.”

  “Traditional Christmas samosas?” Selina laughed. She started to say something, noted the glare I flashed her and changed her mind.

  “They are red and green,” Nellie said, speaking quickly to keep Selina from lecturing us about evolving Christmas traditions. “The Perambets are making tacos out of red and green tortillas too. They make their own, of course.”

  “They like to cover all the bases,” Ellen said. “It’s good business. I wish more of our merchants were more creative.”

  Nellie waved a tube of something green. “We were thinking about offering red and green hair coloring at half price,” she said. “How would you like to be our first holiday victim, Madam Mayor. I mean our first customer for this special holiday offer. Get one color or both, same price.”

  Ellen laughed. “No thanks.”

  Nellie sneered. “So being creative is for other people, eh?”

  “Anyone who wants to stay around after we close and help decorate is welcome,” I said, changing the subject. “We’d appreciate any creative additions.”

  “Will the coffee pot and samosas be available?” Art liked to know those things.

  “No. The cafe area is where the tree is going to go.”

  Art’s frown was almost interesting. “That’s a terrible waste of money.”

  I knew his real concern. “We will still have coffee and snacks, just less area for sitting.

  “It’s a big, sassy spruce, with an attitude,” Nellie said.

  “I need to get home,” Betina said. “Sorry.”

  “Sarah will be disappointed,” I told her. “She’s coming here after school to help. She likes it when we are all doing things together.”

  “Yeah. Sorry.” Even saying it twice, didn’t make the sentiment sound as much apologetic as depressed, or tragic. I knew that some people got down at the Christmas season, and Betina seemed to be one of those. I just didn’t know why, and it didn’t seem polite to ask.

  “You will come to Sarah’s birthday party though? Seven is an important year, she tells me. We’re having her party on Christmas day in the afternoon.”

  “Oh I wouldn’t miss that for the world,” Betina said.

  “That poor girl,” Miz Tikkermann said. “What an awful day to have to celebrate your birthday.”

  “She doesn’t have much of a choice, does she?” I said. When it came to Sarah, I had a tendency to get a little defensive.

  “I suppose not.” Logic was not going to mollify the woman’s dislike of Christmas. I pictured the tree I’d stashed in the back room and the decorations we’d gotten and the sourness melted away. No one was going to keep us from having a lovely tree decorating party and a cheerful holiday season.

  “Ho, ho, ho,” a small voice said.

  I turned and saw my own little elf, the two weeks from seven year old Sarah Jameson. “Sarah Claus, I presume?”

  “Ready to decorate the tree.”

  I nodded toward the cafe. “Soon. I think there are some Christmas samosas left. Help yourself.”

  “Miz Lacey said I can make pumpkin pie rugelach for the class party.”

  “Isn’t that a Jewish dessert?” Ellen Hart asked. “Why would you make a Jewish snack for Christmas?”

  Sarah put her hands on her hips. “Sometimes in school we study things that we don’t know about. Mrs. Lacey thinks that it can be hard to learn about other religions and customs in a small town, so she is teaching us about other holiday customs and celebrations that are celebrated this time of year. I read that rugelach is a treat that is popular to make during Hanukkah.”

  “Well I gue
ss that puts me in my place,” Ellen said, trying to make light of the fact that Sarah had very much put her in her place. “But why a Hanukkah dish for a Christmas party?”

  “Miz Lacey said that this year Hanukkah overlaps Christmas.”

  Nellie laughed.“Doesn’t it always?”

  “No. The date of their celebration is based on the Hebrew calendar and it’s different. This year Hanukkah starts at sunset on the 24th and goes until sunset on Christmas day. So this year on that day we can celebrate both.”

  Miz Tikkermann moaned. “So now I have to deal with Christmas and Hanukkah?”

  Nellie grinned. “The appropriate expression is ‘Oy vey’.”

  I looked over at my friend and shook my head. She had, I thought, summed things up nicely.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Saturday & Sunday Dec 10 & 11

  Sarah and I had a quiet, although busy, weekend. The annual ‘decorate the salon’ party on Friday after work had been fun but exhausting. Saturday Sarah and I pulled the stash of Christmas stuff out of the attic and spent the day decorating the entire house—putting up our tree, strings of outdoor lights and wreaths.

  Sunday we took to the yard. I'd been neglecting the garden and wanted to clean it up a little. Naturally we had able assistance from Finnegan. When he saw us digging a dead lavender bush out of the yard, he pitched in, enthusiastically digging a number of random holes around the yard for us. He seemed very proud of himself.

  It was lovely working in the yard. December in Knockemstiff is when it starts getting cooler, but at it’s worst it’s more like Fall in other places—places up in the northern climes. When I was in high school I spent a couple of Christmases in Michigan. My grandmother lived there, and my mom and her sister and I went up to visit her when she was sick. I didn’t learn that much about Michigan, but it gave me some first-hand experience with their version of winter and I lost any romantic notions about snow quickly.

  While Sarah and I we were putting mulch on the flower beds, my cousins or their kids were probably shoveling snow. The price of a white Christmas could be a lot of unpleasant work. I was happy where I was.

  We spent a happy day, Sarah and Finnegan and I, and got the yard cleaned up, random holes dug and refilled, and then we made hot chocolate and talked through what we might do with the yard, including new plants we might put in, when Spring came.

  I didn’t say anything to Sarah, but part of me wondered if she would be around to help me plant anything in the Spring. Sarah Jameson has been living with me since her parents went off to New Orleans. That was around six months before, and I’d inherited Sarah and Finnegan at about the same time.

  Bea and Lester had been going through a rocky patch in their marriage. They intended to sort themselves out and wanted me to keep Sarah while they did. Sarah and I had a good relationship and I’d been happy to take her in, but I hadn’t counted on Bea and Lester disappearing. We hadn’t heard a word from them since they left.

  Now, with her seventh birthday coming up on Christmas day, I wondered if they’d be in touch. Sarah hadn’t said anything about them one way or another, but then she had a pragmatic streak a mile wide. I suppose I could’ve asked her what she felt about their absence, but she seemed so happy I didn’t like the idea of raising the issue. I did hope her parents would at least call her and wish her a happy birthday. But I was enjoying her company and what she added to my life.

  Sunday evening, after dinner she asked if we could make cookies.

  “Any kind in particular?”

  “Sugar cookies,” she said. “A big bunch so we have a few for us to eat and some you can take to the salon.”

  “That sounds like fun.” I enjoyed doing things with her, and she was eager to pick up tips on all sorts of things. “I think that’s a great idea.”

  It did, so I got out my holiday cookie cutters that would cut the dough into Christmas shapes — trees and Santa heads and bells — and covered them with red and green sprinkles.

  “Miz Tikkermann wouldn’t want any of these,” Sarah said. “And yet they taste exactly like sugar cookies should.”

  “Most people react to things in terms of how they relate to their current world,” I said. “A starving person wouldn’t care what shape the cookies was in. A person who loves Christmas might like them more because of their shapes, and Miz Tikkermann wouldn’t like them at all.”

  “I wonder why she hates Christmas.”

  “We can’t know unless she tells us. And it might not be Christmas she hates at all.”

  Sarah gave me a startled expression. “Then what?”

  “She might not like seeing people being happy.”

  “How could someone not like happiness?”

  “Some feel cut off from it… alone, and seeing other people happy makes them feel worse.”

  “We’re happy, aren’t we?” she asked.

  It was a heavily loaded question for a seven-year old. “I’m happy and I hope you are.”

  A cagey smile crossed her face. “You were looking a little sad earlier.”

  “My daddy said that sometimes when I get too happy for my own good I have a habit of borrowing trouble from the future.”

  “Where is your daddy?”

  “He died years ago.”

  Sarah handed me a Santa cookie. “I think I would have liked your daddy. He sounds smart. I hope he warned you about borrowing sadness from the past too.”

  I looked at my little self-appointed shrink in surprise. “As a matter of fact, he did exactly that.”

  “So eat your cookie and be happy you had a smart daddy who gave you good ideas.”

  I couldn’t think of some grand adult things to say, so I followed another piece of my daddy’s advice—one I didn’t follow nearly often enough. I kept my mouth shut. Well, not really shut—I stuffed a cookie in it. Whenever I was being foolish, daddy would quote Francis Bacon. “Silence is the virtue of fools.” I could use a little more virtue.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Monday, December 12th: Twelve days before Christmas

  It was a clear, coolish Monday morning. Sarah and I put a batch of the Christmas sugar cookies we’d made into a plastic container, got her lunch and then, with Finnegan darting eagerly ahead of us, we walked the few blocks from my little house to the salon.

  Nellie arrived at almost the same time looking pretty chipper. She took a look at the container in Sarah’s hand. “Oh, boy. Unless I miss my guess, those are Christmas cookies, right?”

  Sarah nodded. “Yes, Miz Phlint. Savannah and I made them for the salon.”

  “Sarah did most of the work and it was her idea to do some baking.”

  “Fantastic. I wish my kids saw food from that end of things and weren’t limited to devouring vast quantities.”

  “You do seem to like Christmas a lot, don’t you Miz Phlint?” Sarah asked.

  “Of course I do. Who doesn’t like Christmas? Everyone likes Christmas.”

  Sarah made that face — the one she puts on when she suspects someone might be talking down to her. “Well, not everyone. Miz Tikkermann doesn’t for sure; Mr. Granger doesn’t really seem to either, but then he doesn’t like anything that isn’t on sale. And then I think Betina is unhappy for some reason and even if she likes Christmas, it isn’t cheering her up.”

  Nellie cocked her head. “Okay, kiddo, looking at things from your global perspective, which is to say a perspective that takes into account people I often choose to ignore, I’ll admit you got me on that one. And I’d forgotten that Betina was looking down in the dumps. Still, I think most people in our little town enjoy the holiday—it lifts their spirits. And yes, I like it a lot. I find it hard to be down about things when people are cheerful and there are all the decorations around, and the parties…”

  “…the food,” I said.

  “…and eggnog.” She added. “I do like my special eggnog.”

  Nellie talks to Sarah a lot like I do — like she’s an adult who just happens to be from a sl
ightly different universe. It’s like she’s at our intellectual level, but with a different knowledge base. “Well then, seeing as we’ve established that all present at this meeting like Christmas, let’s go in and enjoy our wonderful preparations,” I said, swinging the door open wide.

  Sarah was in front, well, behind Finnegan, leading the human delegation into the store with the cookies tucked under her arm. Suddenly she stopped and stood frozen in the doorway. “We can’t,” Sarah said.

  I wondered why she’d stopped. “Why in the world can’t we enjoy them, Sarah?”

  “Because they aren’t there,” Nellie said. “Everything is gone.” She stood behind Sarah looking right over her head and into the salon.

  That was when I looked. My stomach twisted as I saw they were right. The salon had been stripped bare of Christmas. Every last decoration, present, ornament, anything that smacked of Christmas, was gone. Everything, including the tree. In its place was Billy Jasper, one of Rudy Phlint’s many shirttail cousins and the part time janitor at Sarah’s school. He was standing in the salon, staring blankly at the spot where our lovely Christmas tree once had been and then at us. All that remained of the things we’d put up Friday was a circle of spruce needles and some silver icicles. It felt like the aftermath of the Grinch's holiday foray in Hooterville.

  “Our tree! Our beautiful tree is gone,” I cried.

  Finnegan sniffed around the salon, then went to curl up on his rug.

  “The tree is gone and Billy is here,” Nellie said.

  Billy nodded dully. “I saw the back door was open,” he said. “I came in to see if anything was wrong.” He looked dazed, but then Billy always looked a little dazed. He rotated his head, looking at the nothingness. “I heard you decorated the place last night, but there’s nothing here.”