Free The Ho Ho Ho Mystery by Bob Burke

predictably enigmatic that the cops used to play a game when he was working on acrime scene: try to guess which expression he’ll use next. The scoring was complicated but could be summarised as: sunglasses on or off = one point, meaningful pause = two points, withering stare = three points, and enigmatic quip = four points. All four at once got a bonus of ten points. The current record stood at thirty-four and I was determined to beat it.
    ‘The same, but you have to admit he knows his stuff,’ said Jill.
    I didn’t doubt it. Grimmtown PD’s forensics team was one of the best in the business and Crane was their boss. If they couldn’t find evidence at a crime scene then that evidence didn’t want to be found. Still, it was worth a shot. Maybe my piggy eyes would pick up on something they’d missed.
    ‘Can I go in now?’ I asked.
    ‘Sure, it looks like our guys are packing up so there’s no risk of you contaminating the scene.’
    I gave Jill an ‘as if I would’ sort of look.
    I walked around the sleigh, examining the ground carefully. The kidnappers had certainly been thorough; all footprints, hoof prints or any other kind of print had been very carefully obliterated. The sleigh itself, dents apart, looked like it had been gone over by a professional valeting service after it had landed. It was sparkling. This meant, in effect, that regardless of how hard I looked, I wasn’t going to find anything.
    As I examined the sleigh’s interior, there was a clearing of a throat from the far side. It was the kind of polite coughing that suggested that the cougher wasn’t too pleased to see me, that I was interfering with their work and that they’d much rather I was somewhere else. It had to be Crane.
    I looked up into a stern-featured face dominated by a long beak and topped by an unruly mass of bright orange feathers, parted to the right. The eyes were masked by a spanking new pair of sunglasses.
    ‘Dr Crane,’ I said, grinning widely just to annoy him further. ‘DI Jill said I could take a look around.’
    Crane took off his sunglasses and stared meaningfully at me. ‘That’s Lieutenant Crane.’ There was a pause – which I presumed he intended to be more meaningful as he continued to gaze at me. ‘What,’ another pause, ‘are you doing here?’ The glasses were put back on. At least now if he continued to stare at me, I wouldn’t have to see it – and I was nine points up already.
    Small mercies.
    ‘Sorry, Lieutenant, I forgot.’ I hadn’t, I just did it to annoy him. He was very particular about his title.
    ‘Hmph,’ was the indignant response.
    ‘Anyway,’ I said, being even more cheerful, ‘did you find anything?’
    The sunglasses came off again and this time he was giving me a significant stare – which I assumed was one step up thescale from meaningful but still only garnered three points. Now I was up to thirteen and looking good.
    ‘That, my friend,’ pause for effect, ‘is a good question.’ Fifteen.
    ‘I know it is. I’m a detective. It’s my job to ask questions, so I’m pretty good at it.’
    Another pause and stare (but I couldn’t tell if it was withering, significant or another type of stare entirely). Twenty points; record here I come.
    ‘And,’ pause, glasses on, ‘to answer your question, all we have found so far,’ long pause (definitely for effect), glasses off again, ‘is tobacco’. Twenty-six; I was on the final stretch, the record was looking good. No, I wasn’t enjoying this but I still needed as much information as I could get so, if it meant I had to listen to Lieutenant Crane, then this was a sacrifice I had to make.
    ‘Well, one of my techs found traces of tobacco just behind that rock there.’ He waved one of his wings, indicating a large boulder some distance from the sleigh. ‘It’s ordinary pipe tobacco.’ Pause. ‘You can get it in any store so it’s not much of a lead.’ Pause, glasses on. ‘It could have been left there by anyone.