The Christmas Pudding Lie Read online

  THE CHRISTMAS PUDDING LIE

  A New Watson Mystery

  By

  P. B. Phillips

  © 2010 P. B. Phillips

  All Rights Are Reserved.

  Chapter One

  Five AM, the seventh wave cracks upon the black sand beach marking the high tide line for the day. Its thunderous roar rolls through the sleeping village of Pelican Bay on California’s central coast. Victorian clapboard bungalows shudder. Anna’s eyes flash open, “Earthquake?” Waiting for the big one is part of the drill on Pelican Bay. She spies spider crossing in the light of a moon beam. As much as she detests spiders she is loathed to get out of bed at that ungodly hour lest she disturb the other goblins and witches who claim the gloaming as their domain. Over the decades Anna’s collected some interesting baggage. In her defense, she explains that a little superstition is good for the soul. It makes one more aware.

  Not able to get back to sleep, she convinces herself that the ghouls have settled in for a long day’s nap. With her compass points fixed Anna rolls out from under the goose down comforter. When her big toe touches the cold hardwood floor, she cusses under her breath, “Frigging cold!” Now in her sixties, Anna finds that cold has an added dimension, downright mean. No matter what the calendar reads, regardless of the season, mornings on the bay are always cold. She adjusts her frayed and tattered gray flannel pajamas. Her bones creak and crack in protest. However the cold escapes her attention in a flash. She’s been eager to get on with this day because today is much to her surprise ‘Moving Day.’ After twenty odd years of blissful living at the beach she is packing it in.

  On Monday she got it into her head that a move was absolutely needed. And now, here it is Saturday and she is about to close another chapter in her life. She strips the bed. As she looks around her empty nest, she feels like she swallowed a pit.

  “I never thought that I would find myself moving again. But here I am stuffing my life into cardboard boxes once again.”

  But she can’t falter now, notice has been given and a new lease signed. Mad at herself for wavering, she transfers her anger to the pillow. She punches life back into the tired feathers. And she reviews her reasons for pulling up roots at this her last stage in life.

  “Time has turned on me. I’ve crossed over. This is the last chapter in the winter of my life. I’ve got to make the most of it. I’m not doing anything here except chasing my tail. And I feel the Grim Reaper breathing down my neck.”

  Anna hates that old age has caught up with her. If truth be told she will never be ready for this her ‘third coming of age’. She didn’t fare well with the first coming of age, puberty. Ask and she will tell that the onset of menses reduced her to a piece of bloody meat. Every mangy mongrel, young and old, was on her tail. Not even her army green wool serge jumper and kaki long sleeve blouse, the signature St. Lucy’s school uniform, could cover her virginal scent. Every damn month she obsessed about being late. Menstruation and its inherent consequences dominated too much of her mental and physical energies.

  With menopause, the second coming of age, she found that the cessation of menses freed up considerable band width. Her brain was once again hers. Her obsession with feminine conceits receded. Anna embraced the day that she was taken off the butcher’s block.

  But the euphoria of emancipation was short lived. Much to her chagrin Anna is realizing albeit very late in life that Life has its own agenda. And she is but a bit player upon the human stage. There is no denying puberty, menopause or old age. Every age comes with trouble. Anna now worries if her back will carry her till the end? Or will it bend so low leaving her only the ground to see? Will her knees give in before her work is done on this earth? How long can see go without a hearing aid? She pines for that lost spring in her step.

  Secretly, she hopes that this move will stall the advance of time. But her well-trained mind steeped in the intricacies of conspiracy theory taunts her. Life is the ultimate conspiracy. You don’t get out of here alive.

  Anna dashes the feathery pillow across the room as the realities of old age sink in. Beyond the failure of the physical there is the deterioration of one’s most essential core, the mind. She cusses, “Senility! Now isn’t that something to look forward to. It’s but a matter of time. There are just no more long runs. Already I can’t seem to stay in the present. A word, a smell, a sight sparks a wild fire of disturbing memories. Friends are talking to me and my consciousness slips a gear. Their voices drift out to sea. They are standing two inches from my nose but I am not there. And now there are these daunting images from the past.

  I’ve got to move. This may very well be my last run. I dread the day when I find my left shoe on my right foot. ”

  But Anna pulls the plug on her mini self-pity soap. She turns to the matter at hand and surveys her surroundings. The bedroom is bare but for the fold up futon bed. She makes her way to the kitchen. Her cracking knees echo in the emptiness. She grabs the lone remaining purple mug and fills it with Evian, bottled water from the French Alps. The microwave nukes the water. Three heaping tablespoons of Peets Espresso Forte fill the single cup melitta. Coffee is an art form, maybe even a sacrament, on Pelican Bay where there are more coffee houses than churches. The rich fragrant aroma of caffeine awakens Anna’s senses. She eyes what needs to be packed yet.

  She’s waited till the very last minute to tackle the rusted out and much dented filing cabinet. It has traveled far with her. She eyes it with hesitation. It houses the very private files of her myriad personae. With a burst of abandonment, in one great swoop, she trashes everything. “Damn the past!”

  She jumps with a loud knock at the front door. It is her next-door neighbor, Barbara, who is utterly surprised and bursting with curiosity. It’s barely morning and she looks as smart as ever. Today she looks ever so chipper in her clam diggers the color of yellow crocus. Her lavender voile shirt is neat and crisp. Anna always feels especially shabby in comparison. But she refuses to get out the old ironing board just to make a fashion statement. Her attitude is, ‘I’m wrinkled so why should my clothes be any different.’

  Barbara, in a tone of complete disbelief asks, “Hey, what’s going on? I went out to get the paper and I see you packing up. You just got back from your trip south. I never did ask you how it went!”

  Barb, too shaken to grasp the obvious, that her long time friend is leaving her, presses on, not allowing Anna a word.

  “Tell me did you get to see the lavender, the lobelia, the nasturtium… any poppies, what about the agapanta, the daisies, the oxalis…”

  Anna interjects, “Yes, yes and yes the calendula, salvia and the verbena were all bewitching and beguiling. Wild flowers in spring are truly nature’s poetry.”

  Barbara’s thoughts flow to the coast, “I so love that drive along Route One, the fossil encrusted mountain on one side and the deep blue and aquamarine sea on the other. All your senses soar. It’s a transcendence of time and place.”

  Anna allows Barbara to wax on, “And when you think that you’ve taken it all in, you round a bend and a magnificent waterfall pours out of a chasm in the earth.”

  The two women go silent. What can one add? But Barbara returns to her original question, “So if all went well on your trip, what possesses you to leave us without as much as a goodbye?”

  Then Barb has a flash, “Don’t tell me! You met someone! Who is he? Or her…?”

  Anna giggles a nervous tick she’s never been able to overcome.

  “First. I’m moving all of twenty miles east of here to the hills in Aromas. It’s not a big deal. But you are sort of right. I did meet someone.”

  Barbara’s eyes widen, “Oh my God. I was just teasing you. I need a cup of coffee.�
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  Anna digs out another mug from the one still open box in the kitchen and prepares another cup of Peet’s espresso forte.

  Barbara can’t contain herself. “Tell me the suspense is too much for my blood pressure.”

  Anna hands her the piping hot cup of coffee and announces, “I met myself or at least my past self.”

  Barbara grabs the coffee mug with two hands lest she drop it. She doesn’t know what to make of this pronouncement. She dismisses immediately the possibility of encroaching senility.

  Anna sees the look of grave concern on her good friend’s face. She continues quickly with her story so as to ease her friend’s apprehension.

  “It happened on my way home. I’d been driving non-stop for seven hours. I was weary. There was that damnable on shore wind blowing. It gets on my nerves in the best of situations. This day it kept nudging the car towards the cliff’s edge. I was coming around the hairpin curve at Nepenthe birthplace to the ménage a trios.”

  Barbara tilts her head and furrows her brow. Anna explains, “Surely you know the story. It was at Nepenthe that sea, sky and land fell in love. But back to the trip…the moon roof was open. On the tip of my tongue I captured salty dewdrops infused with the scent of a thousand wild flowers. Then it happened. I met the Sirens of the Pacific Coast Highway.”

  Barbara’s first fear that her neighbor did indeed take a wrong turn at the road marked Senility grows. But she holds out hoping that this is one of Anna’s famous shaggy dog stories. Anna is so animated. Barbara lets her go on with this wild tale.

  “At first there was utter confusion. Tiny splats of blood began to cover my windshield. I couldn’t see ahead. As I looked into the rear view mirror I was frozen. I somehow had driven into a Hitchcock thriller. Butterfly remains in the thousands littered the highway. And black carrion crows were lined up two rows deep along the highway feasting on the carnage. Thousands of migrating monarch butterflies were caught in a rip tide of traversing trade winds. There was no way to avoid the fragile creatures.

  In that moment, in that bend in the road, I swear that I crossed the time line where there is no future. I knew then that I had just entered the last chapter of my life. Like it or not my end is now my future.

  I tell you that I was so shaken by my own reality that I got off the highway as soon as I could.”

  Silently, Anna chides herself, ‘too much information, you old fool!’ Feeling extremely self-conscious, she begins to clear away the cups and saucers. Barbara wipes up the crumbs of the slightly stale English water biscuits. She presses Anna.

  “But we all have to face that reality. We don’t leave our home and friends. Do you think that moving is going to keep away…?”

  Barbara pauses trying to find the political correct word for death.

  Anna anticipates that her deepest fear is about to be exposed. She can’t allow it. She tries to shift the focus to a positive note. In fact, she’s been practicing all week the speech about why she is leaving town. She will say that she always wanted to live in the country and the time seemed right. But now all she can do is stutter, “I…I…”

  Out of habit, Barbara looks at her watch and shrieks,

  “Oh drat, look at the time. I’m late. So what else is new? Audrey is going to give me a golf lesson”

  She gives Anna a long hug and adds, “I guess in the end a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do. I’m going to miss you terribly woman. But I’ll be back to help you with the packing. Don’t overdo it.”

  Anna thanks her. As Barbara walks out, she asks, “What’s your new address and phone number?”

  Anna is not giving out either. She is serious about forging a new life, a new identity. But years of constant support and friendship require her to say, “I’ll e-mail you.”

  Throughout the day, neighbors stop by to offer warm tidings of good-bye. However, a few are shocked and in a tizzy. One such is the poet, the vivacious Miss Marplot. She gets right to the point “Who said you can leave? You don’t have permission. Have you taken leave of your senses?”

  She rushes on, “You silly woman, don’t you know that you will miss terribly the rising sun pirouetting across the serene the bay, the bliss of the full moon’s tryst as it races to meet the tide. The light, the fog, the ever-changing grace and pace of the surf, you will miss. Here you chance to spy every morning and every evening the sky kissing its sweetheart the deep blue sea.”

  She doesn’t wait for an answer from Anna. She marches away in a huff. Her gossamer silk shawl of muted pastels accents her words in the wind, “Rats! You've gone mad! I hope you have a miserable time. You are going to be lonely.”

  Marplot’s misgivings have Anna thinking on what her family will say about this sudden departure. But she is not too worried. She’s been out of the familial loop now for decades. The family expects that every few decades or so Anna comes down with nomad fever. She will e-mail them also.

  Back to the move she tackles the medicine cabinet next. Again in one swift swoop, she knocks all the meds into the wastebasket. She is adamant about forging a new lease on life and declares, “Hey when death comes knocking I’ll be long gone.”

  She takes one last turn around. A spasm of sadness stings as she plops down in the middle of nothingness. Her mind keeps returning to that trip south.

  “I know that something else spooked me on that return. What was it? Damn I feel as though I sprung a leak in the inner tube of my complacency. I make that trip every year. What the hell has come over me?”

  Then a disturbing thought surfaces, “I remember now. My nerves were shattered by the monarch murders. I was coming up on Spy Hill home to the Foreign Language Institute. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure dressed in a neat blue serge suit trimmed with gold buttons walking along the promenade. I began to shiver. I swore it was I forty years ago. Then something buried so deep, for so long, rushed forward: memories of my last hours at university streamed into consciousness.”

  Anna startles herself and jumps up suddenly. The cottage walls reverberate. With great agitation, she creates circles within circles as she paces. She is at odds with bringing up that part of her life. She was well on her way to making a modest reputation for herself as a conspiracy theorist in the political science department. But things did go awry. She blames herself. She made bad choices during those years. She sits and tries to refocus. She allows ghostly shadows to creep across the landscape of her mind. Struggling for a clearer vision, she coaxes her subconscious, “I keep coming back to those long hard cold corridors at university. All about me is darkness. Why can’t I flip on that light switch at the north end of Porter Hall? I know that my office is the third door on the left. But I can’t open my door. It’s locked. Why? I was locked out! Damn! Why?”

  The sterile white bare walls of her beach bungalow close in. She is visibly shaken by this new revelation. She puts the kettle on again hoping that a cup of strong tea will provide that last burst of energy needed to get out of this place once and for all. With scalding hot tea in hand she returns to the back room beyond the scope of spying eyes. Her thoughts emerge, collide and tangle. She finds only questions. She startles herself as she exclaims, “Damn if I wasn’t banished!”

  She chides herself, “Stop! You don’t know that. It was your decision to take up that foreign post. You thought it would be exciting. Right…? ”

  Anna gulps the hot tea only to spit out the burning liquid. Wiping up, her concern magnifies, “Good god what did happen all those years ago? One day I was on the fast track to tenure, the next I was on a plane to a war torn country and the demise of my academic career.

  The last thing that I recall was that I was with my colleagues. We had just left a presentation by a young recruit. Without thinking, I blurted out that it looked like we had another spy knocking at the door. I think that was the last time anyone at the university spoke to me.”

  Anna protests “Don’t get paranoid, not now. This is just toxic waste from the long years as a c
onspiracy hunter. This is now. I am about to open a new chapter, even if it is the last chapter!”

  But she can’t let it go. After all these years, Anna is irate. Tears threaten to stream from her sorry sepia eyes. Melancholy threatens her resolve. Her lips quiver as she dares to asks the real questions,

  “Has my life been a lie? Have I been a mere pawn? Am I making the right move?”

  She dashes to the sink. She splashes cold water on her burning eyes.

  “I’ve got to get out of here! There’s not one thread of evidence to support such an outlandish conspiracy. After all I’ve been a damn hermit. I am but a chronic conspiracy nut, an obsessive conspiracy ditz.”

  In Anna’s world, conspiracies determine the universe. She chides herself.

  “I can’t have conspiracies drag racing in the corridors of my mind. I can’t become a full blown conspiracy junky again.”

  Just as Anna is about to return to real time she gets another notion: what if this is truly the onset of senility? Her answer, “Whatever, I’m screwed.”

  Running on caffeine and sheer adrenalin, Anna proceeds to take out the last box marked in big black letters ‘Earthquake provisions.’ The car is jammed with those pesky possessions difficult to pack, ironing board, broom, mop, vacuum cleaner and clothes. She jumps up into the driver’s seat. She takes one last look into the rear view mirror. The surf rides to shore in splendid synchronicity. She remembers her neighbors one last time.

  ‘I’ve never come across such a broad-spectrum of alternative lifestyles living side by side in perfect harmony. Life here was a mind expanding experience. I’ll never forget how shocked I was when several of my women neighbors developed prostate troubles.’

  She throws her head back and laughs. She turns her eyes forward and guns the engine, “Forward! Move 'em' out!” She reminds herself of one very important lesson that she learned the hard way, ‘never look back.’

  Chapter Two