She called Luther, and no one answered. He'd better be up on the roof.
They met in front of the peanut butter, both seeing each other at the same time. She recognized the shock of red hair, the orange-and-gray beard, and the little, black, round eyeglasses, but she couldn't think of his name. He, however, said, "Merry Christmas, Nora," immediately.
"And Merry Christmas to you," she said with a quick, warm smile. Something bad had happened to his wife, either she'd died from some disease or taken off with a younger man. They'd met a few years earlier at a ball, black tie, she thought. Later, she'd heard about his wife. What was his name? Maybe he worked at the university. He was well dressed, in a cardigan under a handsome trench coat.
"Why are you out running around?" he asked. He was carrying a basket with nothing in it.
"Oh, last-minute stuff, you know. And you?" She got the impression he was doing nothing at all, that he was out with the hordes just for the sake of being there, that he was probably lonely.
What in the world happened to his wife?
No wedding band visible.
"Picking up a few things. Big meal tomorrow, huh?" he asked, glancing at the peanut butter.
"Tonight, actually. Our daughter's coming in from South America, and we're putting together a quick little party."
"Blair?"
"Yes."
He knew Blair!
Jumping off a cliff, Nora instinctively said, "Why don't you stop by?"
"You mean that?"
"Oh sure, it's a come-and-go. Lots of folks, lots of good food." She thought of the smoked trout and wanted to gag. Surely his name would come back in flash.
"What time?" he asked, visibly delighted.
"Earlier the better, say about seven."
He glanced at his watch. "Just about two hours."
Two hours! Nora had a watch, but from someone else the time sounded so awful. Two hours! "Oh well, gotta run," she said.
"You're on Hemlock," he said.
"Yes. Fourteen seventy-eight." Who was this man?
She scampered away, practically praying that his name would come roaring back from somewhere. She found the caramels, the marshmallow cream, and the pie shells.
The express lane-ten items or less-had a line that stretched down to frozen foods. Nora fell in with the rest, barely able to see the cashier, unwilling to glance at her watch, teetering on the edge of a complete and total surrender.
Chapter Seventeen
He waited as long as he could, though he had not a second to spare. Darkness would hit fast at five-thirty, and in the frenzy of the moment Luther had tucked away somewhere the crazy notion of hanging ole Frosty under the cover of darkness. It wouldn't work, and he knew it, but rational thought was hard to grasp and hold.
He spent a few moments planning the project. An attack from the rear of the house was mandatory-no way would he allow Walt Scheel or Vic Frohmeyer or anybody else to see him in action.
Luther wrestled Frosty out of the basement without injuring either one of them, but he was cursing vigorously by the time they made it to the patio. He hauled the ladder from the storage shed in the backyard. So far he had not been seen, or at least he didn't think so.
The roof was slightly wet with a patch of ice or two. And it was much colder up there. With a quarter-inch nylon rope tied around his waist, Luther crawled upward, catlike and terrified, over the asphalt shingles until he reached the summit. He peeked over the crown of the roof and peered below-the Scheels were directly in front of him, way down there.
He looped the rope around the chimney, then inched back down, backward, until he hit a patch of ice and slid for two feet. Catching himself, he paused and allowed his heart to start working again. He looked down in terror. If by some tragedy he fell, he'd free-fall for a very brief flight, then land among the metal patio furniture sitting on hard brick. Death would not be instant, no sir. He'd suffer, and if he didn't die he'd have a broken neck or maybe brain damage.
How utterly ridiculous. A Fifty-four-year-old man playing games like this.
The most horrifying trick of all was to remount the ladder from above, which he managed to do by digging his fingernails into the shingles while dangling one foot at a time over the gutter. Back on the ground, he took a deep breath and congratulated himself for surviving the first trip to the top and back.
There were four parts to Frosty-a wide, round base, then a snowball, then the trunk with one arm waving and one hand on hip, then the head with his smiling face, corncob pipe, and black top hat. Luther grumbled as he put the damned thing together, snapping one plastic section into another. He screwed the lightbulb into the midsection, plugged in the eighty-foot extension cord, hooked the nylon rope around Frosty's waist, and maneuvered him into position for the ride up.
It was a quarter to five. His daughter and her brand-new fiance would land in an hour and fifteen minutes. The drive to the airport took twenty minutes, plus more for parking, shuttling, walking, pushing, shoving.
Luther wanted to give up and start drinking.
But he pulled the rope tight around the chimney, and Frosty started up. Luther climbed with him, up the ladder, worked him over the gutter and onto the shingles. Luther would pull, Frosty would move a little. He was no more than forty pounds of hard plastic but soon felt much heavier. Slowly, they made their way up, side by side, Luther on all fours, Frosty inching along on his back.
Just a hint of darkness, but no real relief from the skies. Once the little team reached the crown, Luther would be exposed. He'd be forced to stand while he grappled with his snowman and attached him to the front of the chimney, and once in place, illuminated with the two-hundred-watt, old Frosty would join his forty-one companions and all of Hemlock would know that Luther had caved. So he paused for a moment, just below the summit, and tried to tell himself that he didn't care what his neighbors thought or said. He clutched the rope that held Frosty, rested on his back and looked at the clouds above him, and realized he was sweating and freezing. They would laugh, and snicker, and tell Luther's story for years to come, and he'd be the butt of the jokes, but what did it really matter?
Blair would be happy. Enrique would see a real American Christmas. Nora would hopefully be placated.
Then he thought of the Island Princess casting off tomorrow from Miami, minus two passengers, headed for the beaches and the islands Luther had been lusting for.
He felt like throwing up.
Walt Scheel had been in the kitchen, where Bev was finishing a pie, and, out of habit now, he walked to his front window to observe the Krank house. Nothing, at first, then he froze. Peeking over the roof, next to the chimney, was Luther, then slowly Walt saw Frosty's black hat, then his face. "Bev!" he yelled.
Luther dragged himself up, looked around quickly as if he were a burglar, braced himself on the chimney, then began tugging on Frosty.
"You must be kidding," Bev said, wiping her hands on a dish towel. Walt was laughing too hard to say anything. He grabbed the phone to call Frohmeyer and Becker.
When Frosty was in full view, Luther carefully swung him around to the front of the chimney, to the spot where he wanted him to stand. His plan was to somehow hold him there for a second, while he wrapped a two-inch-wide canvas band around his rather large midsection and secured it firmly around the chimney. Just like last year. It had worked fine then.
Vic Frohmeyer ran to his basement, where his children were watching a Christmas movie. "Mr. Krank's putting up his Frosty. You guys go watch, but stay on the sidewalk." The basement emptied.