Christmas Presence

The Mex Mysteries, Book 10

Chapter 1          

Veronica was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.

The old Veronica was dead, and a new, improved Veronica sat patiently in a hunter green, off-brand office chair, peering over her silver cheaters, correcting the lines spoken, ad-libbed in truth, by the venerable old actor who, bent awkwardly sideways at the waist, held still whilst a costume assistant measured his head.

“I have a big head,” he said, in all seriousness.

I had to look away.

If I’d met the new Veronica’s eye, immediately upon hearing that declarative statement, I would, quite simply, have lost it.

Big head didn’t begin to describe the gargantuan ego of the theatrical elder statesman in the third-floor Grand Ballroom of The Pink House.

His name was Percival Williamson, and he, like I, had been roped into a one-man production of A Christmas Carol by the prolific Charles Dickens, the man who, single-handedly, restored Christmas to Western civilization.

Oh, Mr. Dickens didn’t rope me into it. I wish. That office belonged to my dear friend, Rev. Gwynny. Short for Gwenhwyfar, not kidding. On whom, more later.

“You do,” murmured the assistant, jotting a number on her wrist with a blue Sharpie.

I had lassoed Veronica into stage managing what we had slowly discerned would be the more-than-probable fiasco.

Percival, never Percy, was factually Sir William Percival Williamson, many decades formerly of England. He’d splashed across the pond, as he was fond of saying, as though he’d swum, no, dog-paddled, to arrange for his, and I quote, pater’s funeral, he who had had—unfortunate, but it couldn’t be helped—an American arm-candy second wife. Her, um ... appeal, shall we say euphemistically, had apparently been enough to make pater stay, I quote again, in the Colonies, and he’d had the devilishly bad grace to die in that same annexèd (couldn’t resist) territory.

Well, through some bizarre actor grapevine, he’d zeroed in on Rev. Gwynny who, her molto liberal social justice leanings notwithstanding, loved the pomp and circumstance of high church, which was as close as he could approximate the Anglican in New York City on short notice. It certainly wouldn’t do to let pater get ripe. He’d hired her to officiate poor pater’s demise, and they’d remained bosom buddies since.

Sir Percival had agreed to do this show, I quote yet again, out of the goodness of his heart, because pater hadn’t been anywhere near close to poor, to raise sorely needed funds for dear Rev. Gwynny’s faltering, uptown pastorate. Namely, the building stood bravely in varying degrees of falling down, one flake of stone at a time, around their ears. Not to mention his faltering career. Made-for-television movies, and B-list, nah, C-list bus-and-trucks, also, dinner theatres, had been his long-term recent lot.

Most pastorates these days are faltering to one degree or another, at least on the East Coast. A Christmas Carol had a reputation as a failure-proof Christmas cash cow.

I’d thought at the time Gwynny mentioned the idea that Sir Percival could have simply given a sizeable donation to solve the falling-down-around-their-ears problem, but now I understood why he hadn’t.

The political climate was, in a word, abysmal. I lamented it the way true blue socialist George Bernard Shaw did Christmas.

Christianity was constantly displayed as an alleged example in arenas where it didn’t belong. That affected the economy, including investments. I was completely over it, so when Gwynny asked for my help, I said yes for several reasons. Or, that’s what I’d told myself.

Veronica, my once-upon-a-time beloved, was at sixes and sevens; she had not returned to the Met as a production stage manager for the fall season. She was tired of stage managing divas. Who could blame her?

Besides, her descent down the rabbit hole of heroin addiction—long story—was partially fostered by Metro Op goings-on. She’d also lost a dear Met friend to an overdose right at the start of rehab, and that wound remained slightly too raw to face it on a daily basis.

She hadn’t resumed her post, but she also hadn’t moved appreciably forward except in her recovery. She still hadn’t discerned what she wanted.

It had something to do with opera, that she knew. In fact, opera, we discovered, was part of what had made her able to hang on to her precarious psychological infrastructure for as long as she had, but I’ll get to that.

Veronica had been, and is, just for today, as are all those of us of the addicted persuasion, drug-free for eight months.

After her resurrection, detox, and rehab, she negotiated a return to The Pink House, my Queen Anne Victorian up the Hudson with not one, no, but two, slightly off, yet matching-enough, turrets. I prefer to think of them like the mismatched steeples of Chartres Cathedral—one solar, and one lunar.

Once she got her bearings again, puttering in her workshop, locating her preferred NA meetings, getting her upstate tribe in order, then began her real recovery work.

Recovery is a phenomenal process, as is addiction, but in reverse. In addiction, you lose your spirit, break your own heart, as well as those of everyone who loves you, and ultimately damage your body.

In recovery, you get your body healed first. Next comes the emotional and mental work to heal your broken heart, amends to heal the broken hearts of your loved ones, and then, at last, grace kicks in and restores your spirit.

Veronica was still in the emotional and mental phase of the work, and she did it diligently, working with her sponsor, a lovely man named Jay-Jay, as well as a therapist named Ginger, who walked her patiently, and somatically, through her childhood trauma via IFS, Internal Family Systems, bit by painstaking bit.

We had become friends again, for which I was supremely grateful. I still didn’t know if we’d return to our status as lovers and/or affianced, but I was so happy that she was out of the rabbit hole, and on the mend, that I was content to wait and see what would happen over time. Or so I told myself.

I corralled her into stage managing for my direction of the show because I thought it would be fun to work together, as we had done so brilliantly for Brigadoon in Scotland lo, those many years ago.

Not, mind you, that directing is my real work. It isn’t. But time had come to the beginning of November, and the intuitive investigating business tends to taper off starting then until the new year.

Xennie, my former housekeeper, and new assistant, in preparation for a massive turnover, was in full delivery of her final-term curriculum for our latest team members, Adeline and Dona, on how to take care of all things domestic Mexicali Rose Stone. Oh, damn.

Mex!

That’s Spirit, the inner voice that runs my life, when I let her. When I don’t, God help me. In fact, God help us all.

The existence of Spirit explains how I am an intuitive investigator. I quit swearing for Lent more than twenty years ago, and she will not let me forget it.

Swearing is gratuitous, and not flattering to a lady.

Well, I am that. A lady, I mean. Oh, not Lady as in titled, or of the peerage, like our ego-driven Sir Percival. No, I am, instead, a high femme, a particular kind of queer female, very much a lady. And yes, my real, given name is Mexicali Rose Stone.

Don’t howl. My mama gave it to me.

Mama was a cabaret singer, long on the Otherside, named Amelia Jackson Stone. She sang all over the world. Mexicali Rose, that sappy lament made popular by singing cowboy Gene Autry, was her signature song because she and my daddy had honeymooned in Mexicali.

Alright, go ahead, but get it over with.

My temper was slightly frayed.

Sir Percival would do that to anybody.

“Mex?” came the dulcet tones of the best associate in the world, Gareth B. Hawkins.

“Let’s call it a day, shall we?” I said to Veronica and Sir Percival.

“Tomorrow at eleven,” Veronica responded, closing her production book in complete relief. “Thank you, Sir Percival.”

She had been a production stage manager for more than thirty years; she was always formal and the consummate professional. She collapsed her foldable glasses and stuck them in the breast-pocket of her shirt.

He packed quickly, and left for estates unknown. We were in the Hudson River Valley, after all, where the wealthy families of New York City had summered for many a long year.

He stayed with a dowager friend whose estate had at one time been stunning, and remained that in potential, but was now significantly rundown, to be pitied for lack of cold, hard cash.

Veronica excused herself to go to a meeting.

“Thank you, darling,” I said. “Good meeting.” I addressed Gareth. “Yes, Gareth? Thank you for ending my misery.”

“Don’t thank me yet, Mex. I may kick you right back into your misery.”

“Not possible, darling,” I said. “Sir Percival has a monopoly on his personal brand of same. You’re an amateur.”

Gareth lifted an eyebrow.

“Compared to him,” I added.

Gareth ignored my qualifier.

“Kelley called.”

Kelley would be Michael Ryan Kelley, NYPD Sergeant, my self-appointed techno-mentor, and surrogate daddy. He’s my absolutely best source for referrals.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Martha Cratchit hasn’t appeared for rehearsal in an Off-Off-Broadway theatre company production of A Christmas Carol three days running. He asked us to check into it. On the Q.T.”

“What company?”

“The Coffee Bean Theatre.”

“Didn’t they do that edgy Marat/Sade?”

“They did,” he agreed, and added, “It’s Patie’s company.”

Oh yes, Patie, proper name Patience, is my ex Seraphim’s longest-time best friend and a kickass theatre director as well as Founder and Artistic Director of The Coffee Bean Theatre. They have an office and a small theatre way uptown past Harlem.

“Not an option for me to miss rehearsals, though.”

“I know,” he said. An audible gulp preceded, “What if I take lead on this case?”

His words hung crisp and shining in the air.

The time had come for him to take lead on some case or other. He was always lead on his own cases, but never on one we’d worked together. That responsibility had always been mine. I am the eponymous owner of Mex Stone Associates, Intuitive Investigators.

“Would you like that?”

“What’s not to like? New York City at Christmastime? Radio City Music Hall? Macy’s? Rockefeller Center? Rockettes?”

“Point taken.”

Gareth is one of the great boons of my life. He made sleuthing me his first case because he wanted to learn the way I work, namely intuitively. He solved it, too, albeit at Mama’s memorial service at St. Malachy’s Actors Chapel on 49th Street. Fortunately for the right side of the law, he’s good at it.

“Why not?” I concluded.

“Good,” he spoke briskly. “That’s what I told Kelley we’d do. I’m going into town to get Kelley’s, I use the word loosely, file. I’ll call you later to brief you and Xennie.”

I said softly, “Gareth, have fun please.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he acquiesced amiably, leaning down to kiss my cheek. His admonishment followed. “You, too, missy.”

I said more to myself than to him as he exited the furthest of the three sparkling French doors from the Grand Ballroom, “I’m so proud of you.”

His ga-thumps down the stairs decrescendoed. I faced the stage end of the sumptuous room.

“Damn,” I said aloud to the empty room, “what am I gonna do with Percy, Spirit?”

Sir Percival, Mex, she corrected. Nothing.

I hadn’t been expecting a response.

Nothing?

No, that’ll sort itself out.

How?

Are you rehearsing at the church any time soon?

No, why?

Because you should.

Then she zipped her metaphorical lip.

Usually, that signifies there’s something I need to do, or work out, and that I won’t get any more guidance until I do it or work it out.

I tabled it. It would come when it came.

“Mex?”

I whirled to give Veronica’s sponsor, Jay-Jay, a full-body hug. He’s a tall, lanky boy-man, age fifty, but unbelievably so.

Jay-Jay had been an Alvin Ailey dancer, then drugs dragged him into the street, and from there to the sewer via the gutter, by his own report. He’s a gorgeous cocoa color with brilliantine brown eyes that miss nothing, and judge nothing either.

We’d connected heart-to-heart over our discovery, and Gareth’s resurrection, of a close-to-dead Veronica in a fifth-floor walk-up in Alphabet City.

Kelley pulled some strings, or so I’d thought at the time, but to be transparent, he simply made a call to Chez St. Claire, a very special rehab on which Board of Directors he sat. It’s run by the Sisters of Never-Ending Reciprocity. That ought to tell you something.

“Are you busy?” Jay-Jay, always respectful, asked.

“No. We just now finished rehearsal.”

“Good,” he said, sliding his arm through mine. “Let’s go see if Adeline has made her famous Scottish shortbread cookies.”

I agreed.

“Besides, I want to run something by you.”

We scampered down the servants’ stairs in the rear of the house in a mad spiral chase, arriving in the kitchen in breathless giggles.

“Yo, Chocolate Mama!” Jay-Jay called.

I stared at him. Adeline describes herself as a chocolate mama, but I’d never dare to call her that to her face. I’d known Adeline for more than twenty years. She cleaned my office on West 49th Street when it still functioned as my apartment.

Because Gareth wanted his Ph.D., and Xennie was therefore promoted to his former position, Adeline and her friend Dona had joined the burgeoning team of Mex Stone, Intuitive Investigators.

For most of my career, I was a solo act, but starting from the time that Gareth solved his first case at Mama’s memorial service, we had slowly been growing Team Mex, and it had become an insight of intuitives.

Adeline bellowed from the pantry, “Momentito, muchacho!”

I hadn’t known Adeline, who is from Jamaica, spoke Spanish.

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