Free Father Christmas by Judith Arnold Page B

John Russo,”
John said, nodding toward the children. “I’ve already met Sean and
Erin.”
    The twins shot each other a nervous look and
then studied their hands intently.
    “ Would you care to fill me
in?” Murphy asked. “I got a call at my office that the kids had
been arrested.”
    “ Brought in for
questioning,” John corrected him. “They’ve been accomplices in a
series of ATM robberies.”
    Murphy narrowed his gaze on John for a
moment, then turned to his children. “Start talking,” he said.
    “ It was Todd’s idea,” Erin
explained feebly.
    Murphy frowned. “Todd?”
    “ The
baby-sitter.”
    John smiled privately. Maybe he wouldn’t
have to interrogate the children; their father would do his job for
him. “Todd who?” Murphy asked, making John wonder why a father
wouldn’t know the name of his children’s after-school
baby-sitter.
    “ He lives across the
street from us,” Sean volunteered, punctuating his statement by
exchanging another nervous glance with his sister. “Mom asked him
to watch us.”
    “ And he talked you into
robbing a bank?”
    “ We didn’t know that was
what he was doing,” said Erin. “He was just giving me a shoulder
ride, I thought.”
    John leaned against the door and folded his
arms across his chest. The twins were speaking the truth. He’d
observed them during his Santa stake-out, two tykes, cute as all
get out, walking down the street with a tall, indolent teenager in
a lined denim jacket, baggy jeans, a spiky hairdo and a
diamond-chip earring, the vision of adolescent chic. Just before
entering the bank, the teenager—Todd—had swooped Erin up onto his
shoulders. Then the threesome had entered, and Todd had positioned
himself in the ATM vestibule so that Erin’s navy-blue jacket
blocked the lens of the surveillance camera. Then Erin’s brother
Sean had pushed the buttons on the ATM, removed the cash and handed
it to Todd.
    “ He told me what buttons
to push,” Sean said earnestly. “He said it was his money. I liked
pushing the buttons. It was cool, Daddy, you know? Like on a space
ship or something. All these buttons.”
    “ He wouldn’t let me push
the buttons,” Erin complained.
    “ You got the shoulder
ride,” Sean countered.
    “ Where the hell was your
mother in all this?” Murphy asked, his voice a low
growl.
    “ Out,” Erin
said.
    “ With her boyfriend,” Sean
added.
    John took it all in without reacting. Murphy
scowled and turned to John to explain. “My ex-wife has custody,” he
told John. “ I had no idea this was going on. I mean—I know she’s
got a social life. I just didn’t know she was leaving the kids in
the care of a criminal punk.”
    “ Todd’s nice,” Sean
argued. “He let me push the buttons.”
    “ Todd,” John clarified,
“was robbing money from his parents. That wasn’t his money. It was
theirs. He was withdrawing money from their account, with his
mother’s ATM card.” The card was currently marked as evidence. John
had recovered it when he’d arrested the threesome. “Do you know how
Todd got his mother’s card?”
    “ Was that the little
credit card?” Sean asked.
    “ The card you put in the
machine before you pushed the buttons.”
    “ He said it was his
card.”
    “ Did it have his name on
it, or his mother’s?”
    Sean studied his hands again. “I don’t
know.”
    “ Did he tell you how he
got the card?”
    Sean shook his head. John directed his gaze
to Erin, who shook her head, too.
    “ He stole it,” John told
them. “He stole it from his own mother.”
    “ That wasn’t very nice of
him,” Erin said quietly.
    “ And then he took his
mother’s money while you blocked the bank camera.”
    “ I didn’t know,” Erin
said, then glared accusingly at John. “And you know what? I think
it’s very mean of you to pretend you’re Santa Claus. I think the
real Santa Claus wouldn’t like that at all. I think he’d be very
mad at you.”
    Unable to come up with a defense,