Crime for Christmas

Book 0: A Vic Varallo Mystery

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

It's Christmas, but there isn't much Christmas spirit in the Glendale Police Department. Delia Riordan's father has just died, Detective Jim Harvey's family have left for the holidays, there are power blackouts, and of course no let-up in murders, muggings, burglaries and a perplexing triple murder/suicide. The department's mood improves with the addition of a dog and a family of kittens to the office. Some crimes even have comic outcomes, including the burglar who is given away by a trail of wool. So it turns out to be a happy Christmas after all - except for the victims. 'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune

Release date: July 28, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

O’Connor marched into the detective office at Glendale headquarters about the middle of the afternoon. Varallo was the sole occupant, reading a report. “Will you
tell me, for God’s sake,” said O’Connor savagely, “why I ever thought police work would be interesting? My God, talk about monotony! I might as well be in an assembly plant
screwing in bolt forty-six all day!” He perched a hip on the corner of Varallo’s desk and lit a cigarette.

“For God’s sake, don’t complain of monotony,” said Varallo. “You’ll call down a spate of offbeat ones on us, Charles.”

“I wouldn’t much care,” said O’Connor moodily. “At least it’d be a change. This new thing down—another damn fool punk kid, DOA on dope, and of course
nowhere to go on it. Mother went out shopping this morning—he’s twenty, out of work—came home and found he hadn’t got up, looked at him and he’s dead. There’s a
little stash of heroin left in a dresser drawer. She didn’t have a clue that he was on dope, she says—no idea where he could have got it—my good God, anywhere on the
street—or where he’d have got the money. He’s got a little pedigree of possession. Nowhere to go.”

“Write the report and file it,” said Varallo.

“I get so damned tired of the stupid punks,” said O’Connor. Absently he hitched up the .357 magnum in the shoulder holster. “Damn waste of time—go talk to his pals,
probably users too, they don’t know where he got it, oh, no, don’t know nothin’. I get so damned tired.”

“Just a thankless job,” said Varallo wryly. “I’ve got some more of it. This pair of heisters, there’s just nowhere to go. I’ve been downtown all morning with
the latest victims, and they couldn’t make any mug shots. They say Latin types, but they all look alike, and it was so fast, I just couldn’t say.”

“Those jewelry store heists. The way it goes,” said O’Connor gloomily. “There was a time I thought of going in for law. I couldn’t afford it.” At this time of
day his square bulldog face needed another shave, his chin was blue; as usual, his tie was crooked and his shirt rumpled. “Anything new gone down?” he added without much interest.

“I couldn’t say, I just got back, but everybody else is out on something.” And it was threatening to start raining again—gray and overcast. Last winter had brought them a
spate of rain before Christmas, and then nothing the rest of the wet season in southern California; this winter had started out bringing early heavy rains again. This first week of December had
seen a torrential three-day downpour and then a couple of gray, dry days; now the forecast was for more rain.

Sergeant Joe Katz and Detective John Poor came in, shed their coats at the door, and sat down at their respective desks. “And I’ll tell you something,” said Katz bitterly to
Varallo. “Sooner or later these jokers are going to end up with a homicide charge, and it’ll be your baby. And good luck to you on it. There’s no making head or tail of the damn
thing—just no goddamned handle at all—my good God, this makes fifteen of them—fifteen in just under a month and no goddamned leads at all. And sooner or later—” He
slumped back in his desk chair and shut his eyes.

Poor said, “All elderly people. Scared and upset. And the same pair—we keep hearing the same story—but damn all on any leads.” They were both looking discouraged and
tired.

There was silence for a few minutes in the big square room; O’Connor smoked and brooded; Varallo finished reading the report; Katz and Poor sat and stared into space. The tall windows
began to stream with gray rain. Varallo sat back in his desk chair, lit a cigarette, and emitted a long column of smoke. “The thankless job,” he said. “We go through the motions,
Charles.” And then his gaze went past O’Connor, and he added roughly, “What the hell are you doing here?”

Their female detective, Delia Riordan, was just coming into the big communal office. She took off her trench coat and draped it across the back of her desk chair; she gave them a faint smile.
“What’s the point of just going home, Vic? I’m all right. I wanted to finish typing that report—tomorrow’s my day off.” She sat down at her desk and took the
cover off her typewriter.

They all watched her a little uneasily, not knowing what to say. There had been a time when O’Connor had bitterly resented being banded with a female detective, even one with the valuable
experience on the LAPD; but she was a good girl, Delia, a good police officer. In the four years and more she’d been with them, they’d come to appreciate her. These last few years she
hadn’t been as reluctant to show her femininity: her dark brown hair was longer and waved loosely, she wore a little more makeup and neat tailored dresses instead of pantsuits. She was really
a very good-looking girl, Delia, not looking her age—which they happened to know was thirty-two—with a slim, neat figure; if she wasn’t pretty in the ordinary sense, she had good
regular features, a smooth, milky skin, good blue eyes. She was one of them; they all liked her.

“You should have gone home,” said Varallo.

“Why? No point, Vic. I’m OK.” Delia bent over the typewriter and began to transcribe her notes.

“It’s supposed to go on raining tomorrow,” said O’Connor.

“And the traffic is something else,” said Katz. “All the Christmas shoppers. It took me half an hour to get back from Kenneth Road.”

Delia heard the desultory exchange of talk vaguely. She hunched over the typewriter, deciphering the notes she’d taken yesterday, aware that the men were watching her
covertly, aware of their silent sympathy—but of course, she thought, it wasn’t necessary, not at all.

There were stopping places in life, she thought, where you came to the end of one thing and started on another phase, as it were. You could say that the place she’d got to today marked the
end of her whole life up to now. All those long years of proving herself as an LAPD policewoman, the long hours of study acquiring all the useful skills to make her more efficient, the fluent
Spanish, the courses in police science—most of the time working the swing shift, so unavoidably she had lost contact with friends—you couldn’t say it had all been for nothing, but
of course it had all been for Alex. It had had to be the thankless, sordid job, for Alex. Alex Riordan, losing his first wife after twenty years of childless marriage, marrying a girl half his age
only to lose her in childbirth a year later. Delia didn’t know much about her mother. They had managed somehow, she and Alex, with a succession of housekeepers, until the year he was
sixty-five and Delia was thirteen. He’d been full of plans for her first time of entering the junior target pistol competition—he’d started her with a gun on her seventh birthday.
Then, just two days before his official retirement, he’d gone out on his last call—Captain Alex Riordan, Robbery-Homicide, LAPD—and taken the bank robber’s bullet in the
spine. That had been a bad time for a while, and then they’d found Steve—ex-Sergeant Steve McAllister, LAPD, just short of twenty-five years’ service when he lost a leg in an
accident: a widower with a married daughter. The three of them had been together for fourteen and a half years—the new leg hadn’t hampered Steve from manipulating Alex’s
wheelchair, and Alex had always liked to cook. Of course, of course, it had had to be this job for Alex—she was all he’d ever had. This job—pretending to be the son Alex had never
had.

Neil had seen that from the first, and hadn’t he tried to make her see it—stubborn, blind, foolish Delia resisting him all the way. She and Isabel Fordyce had been best friends all
through school, and Neil not really the superior elder brother—a friend, until he was something else. How desperately she had held out against him, blindly committed to the all-important job
for Alex—and how they had hated each other, of course—the two strong characters.

And it hadn’t been until three and a half years ago that she had, in one devastating moment, realized the truth: that the little victory she had won was less than meaningless. Neil coming
to say good-bye and good luck—and she had known, starkly, that she had nothing at all in return for the sacrifice of resisting him. In the years of hard work on the job, all her friends had
drifted away. She hadn’t even talked on the phone with Isabel for a year before that last time of seeing Neil; and a month after that she’d had the last letter from Isabel—Isabel
so happily married, with three children now: the note telling her noncommittally that Neil had married a Spanish girl he’d met in Ecuador. He’d been directing an archaeological dig
there for the University of Arizona.

So it had come to her that it had all been for nothing. The promise of a meaningful life, a woman’s life, exchanged for a mess of pottage. And most frighteningly, she had suddenly seen her
two idols, Alex and Steve, as two rather commonplace men of narrow interests and little knowledge outside their dreary job.

So all that was left to her was that job. It was nothing of any importance to her as a woman; but if all that was left to her was the sterile job, it was something, a job she could do well. And
Alex was proud of her; Alex and Steve loved her.

And then that had changed, all in a moment, like the patterns changing in a kaleidoscope. It was two and a half years ago that Alex had had the crippling stroke, and he had been in the
convalescent home ever since, helpless and paralyzed. There had been good days and bad days: sometimes he knew her; increasingly of late, he hadn’t. When it had become evident that he was
never coming home again, Steve had gone back to Denver to live with his daughter; he wasn’t much of a letter writer, and Delia seldom heard from him.

And then, after the long, heartbreaking time, last Friday Alex had slipped away to some other place. One thing this long time of living alone had given Delia was time for reading for pleasure,
and in these last years she had read voraciously; and she no longer believed that Alex had been dissolved into nothing: there was too much evidence on that, which had nothing to do with orthodox
churches. He had gone somewhere else, the Alex she had known in his prime—irascible, stubborn, opinionated, and tough—and he was all right. Somewhere. But he had been violently
antireligious, and she couldn’t have inflicted on him any kind of orthodox service.

He had been cremated this morning, and she had accompanied the urn with the ashes up to the mausoleum at Rose Hills cemetery this afternoon. The Varallos and O’Connor had offered to go
with her, and she had said to them, what was the point? It wouldn’t make any difference to Alex. It was all over, and the entire thirty-two years with Alex had decided the whole course of her
life. She couldn’t mourn for him; she could only be thankful he was released from the frustration and misery; and she couldn’t mourn for herself, for it had been her own stubbornness
that had kept her on the course which had left her with only the sterile job for the rest of her life.

She smoked too many cigarettes, laboring over the typed report: the report on the heist that had gone down Saturday night, the latest in a series probably pulled by the same pair. There
wasn’t much meat in it. Varallo had taken the victims downtown yesterday to look at mug shots, and they hadn’t made any. This report would get filed away with the other reports of
similar heists, and it was unlikely that any charges would ever be brought; but the paperwork went on forever, and it was something to occupy her mind. Alex, she thought wryly, would thoroughly
approve of her going back to the office right away.

She finished the report at five-thirty, separated the triplicate forms, filed one to be sent to the captain’s office, filed the other two, and decided to go home early. O’Connor had
gone back to his cubbyhole of an office; Katz and Poor were studying reports; Varallo was on the phone; and nobody else had come back.

It had started raining in earnest, a workmanlike steady drizzle. Delia found a plastic rain hood in her bag, went out the back door of the station to the parking lot, and ducked into the car in
a hurry. It was slow driving in the dark down to Brand Boulevard, across town through Atwater into Hollywood. The traffic was thick, and she was held up through two changes of traffic lights at
Riverside Drive, but eventually got past the intersection and turned off Los Feliz down to Waverly Place.

As she slid the Ford into the garage, she thought vaguely that she had better put the house up for sale. Ridiculous to go on living in the huge, two-story old Spanish house with its four
bedrooms, and it had long been clear of any mortgage. It was in a good residential area and with prices inflated would sell for a good deal more than Alex had paid for it. She thought, a nice
little apartment somewhere closer to work, not so much housework, more cheerful. There hadn’t been anybody to welcome her home for a long time, but the old house seemed somehow more dank and
dark and empty today. She went around quickly turning on lights; she looked into the freezer and selected a TV dinner at random. Tomorrow was her day off, and she would do all the usual things:
have her hair washed and set, do a laundry, change the bed. Sometimes she and Laura Varallo met for lunch, but the forecast said more rain and it would be a nuisance for Laura.

She picked out one of her library books at random to read over dinner.

Varallo came home to the house on Hillcroft Road at six-thirty. A high wind had got up, and the old trees lining the street were bending and tossing; it had turned cold. When
he came in the back door, the kitchen was invitingly warm and Laura was setting the table in the dining room. “You’re late—I’ll bet the traffic was murder.”

“Christmas shoppers,” said Varallo, kissing her. “Delia came back to the office. I wish she hadn’t. It seems—”

“Why?” asked Laura. She surveyed him calmly, his lovely brown-haired Laura, looking serene. “Let her handle it her own way, Vic. She’s been alone, to all intents and
purposes, for quite a while. She’ll be all right.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” he said doubtfully.

“Don’t fuss her. Delia’s all right,” said Laura. “Do you want a drink before dinner?”

“Maybe I deserve one. We’re never going to get anywhere on those damned heists, and there’s another homicide, not that it’s anything to work, just another idiotic kid
overdosed on dope. The autopsy will say what, and there won’t be a hope of finding out where he got it.”

“Go and sit down and relax. I built a fire. I’ll bring you a drink.”

Varallo went into the living room to be pounced on by the children. A year ago Ginevra had demanded to be read to; these days, in first grade, she wanted to read to him and was gratifyingly
proficient at it. Johnny, at four, was glib on the alphabet but still wanted the bedtime stories. There was a crackling fire on the hearth, and the majestic gray tabby Gideon Algernon Cadwallader
was basking somnolently on the hearth rug. Varallo sat down in his big armchair, accepted the brandy and soda gratefully, and looked at Laura over Ginevra’s blond head where she snuggled in
his lap.

“I just wish she hadn’t come in. I suppose it’s silly.”

“Yes,” said Laura calmly. “From all we know, he was very much the career cop, Vic. He’d have wanted her to. She hadn’t anywhere else to go, after all.”

“I suppose not.”

O’Connor hunched his shoulders against the rain, getting out to open the driveway gates, ran the Ford into the garage, latched the gates, and dived for the back door. It
was raining steadily. In the service porch he was greeted exuberantly by the outsize blue Afghan, Maisie, and said, “Down, damn it.” He shed his raincoat and hat. “I’m damn
sick of this weather.”

“We’re spoiled,” said Katharine. “Think of what the rest of the country’s getting—snow and ice. I won’t ask if you had a good day.”

O’Connor kissed her and said, “Don’t. Delia came back to the office.”

“And why not?” asked Katharine reasonably. “Nobody at home for her.”

“Well, no,” said O’Connor. “It just seemed—queer.”

“You leave Delia alone,” said Katharine. “Do you want a drink before dinner?”

O’Connor sneezed and said thickly, “Yes.”

“You aren’t coming down with a cold?”

“No, no, I’m all right.”

“Well, you’d better not, or Vince’ll get it.”

“Such a very sympathetic wife. I just sometimes feel,” said O’Connor, “that I’d have done better to try to get through that law course. This goddamned job—day
in, day out, the same goddamn stupid things going on, the mindless punks and the thugs doing what comes naturally—I swear to God, Katy, I get so damn tired of the whole goddamned
mess—”

Katharine surveyed him amusedly. “You’d be bored stiff in any other job. Relax and forget it. Dinner in half an hour.”

Grumbling, O’Connor built himself a drink, ripped his tie loose, and went into the living room, where four-year-old Vincent Charles was crawling over the carpet making realistic engine
noises for a toy fire truck. He erupted at O’Connor joyously.

“Daddy—tell the story about Santa Claus again! Mama says we going to have a big Christmas tree—bigger than last Christmas but I don’t bemember last
Christmas—”

O’Connor collapsed into his armchair, and Maisie tried to climb into his lap. Vince shoved her away and got there first. “Tell again about Santa Claus, Daddy!”

O’Connor sipped his drink, sneezed, and hoped uneasily that he wasn’t coming down with a cold. “Well, he’s a very good, kind saint, and he loves all little
children—”

“We seed him at the store downtown—Mama and me—and I don’t think he loves everybody,” said Vince. “He was comin’ out of the door into the store and he
was talkin’ to a man and he said, ‘Damn these kids.’ Why do you think he loves everybody, Daddy?”

“Well,” said O’Connor. “Well, he was just dressed up like Santa Claus, Vince. The real Santa Claus really does love everybody and all little children.”

“How do you know?” asked Vince reasonably.

The night watch came on—Bob Rhys and Jim Harvey; it was Dick Hunter’s night off. The. . .