Malachi laughed so hard he pulled a muscle in his side, and Cherry laughed too.
Then Denise, Paul, and Theo noticed my fake beard and my too-tight suit.
“Damn, boss,” Denise said, looking me up and down. “Looking good. The fake beard has it all going on.”
“Eyes off, Virgin Mary,” Malachi said. He pointed to his vest. “The position of Santa’s favourite ho has been filled, thank you. If there will be one miraculous conception this year—”
I cut him off. “Okay, they don’t need to hear that.”
“I’m a donkey’s arse,” Theo said for no apparent reason. He smiled, his usual happy self. “We were going to be the three wise men, but this was funnier.”
Malachi was watching Paul. “So,” he hedged. “I seem to remember inventorying a riding crop not so long ago. I think it’s in aisle R-S.”
Paul spoke around the bit in his mouth. “I have one, thanks.”
Malachi nodded slowly. “I’m oddly not surprised by this.”
Paul neighed like a horse and Malachi laughed, and they walked off to the breakroom. The Virgin Mary and the arse of her donkey followed, and I looked to Cherry for some kind of answer but she just shrugged one bonbon shoulder.
“Coffee?” I asked.
“Yep.” We joined the others in the breakroom for our morning coffee, but Denise was called to the back loading dock, and soon enough, the Virgin Mary was driving the forklift with her blue dress hitched up to reveal her work boots underneath.
Even for Christmas Eve, the work never stopped. Cage trolley after cage trolley needed processing. I would certainly be happy when the Christmas madness was over for another year.
One thing about being so busy was that it made time fly.
Malachi revealed the plate of red and green cupcakes for morning tea, and we exchanged our Kris Kringle gifts at lunchtime.
It was a staff gift exchange with a five-dollar limit, which meant gifts were usually funny, and shopping at the dollar shop or a thrift store was recommended. I got a very small cactus, which would look great on the kitchen window sill, and Malachi received a unicorn tape dispenser. He absolutely loved it.
The other gifts were a coffee cup with stuff for hot chocolate that Denise loved, a mason jar of Christmas mints that Theo was very happy with, Paul was stoked with the retro alarm clock that Malachi had found at a thrift store, and Cherry was chuffed with her novelty fluffy reindeer socks.
But we got back to the never-ending supply of mislabelled and lost mail, and I’d lost track of time when Paul found me down the bottom of aisle M-N watching Denise on the aerial platform retrieve a box from the top shelf for me.
“Hey,” Paul whispered. “It’s almost four thirty. Am I right to use your office to make the phone call or do you want me to sit out on the back dock?”
Shit.
“Oh, god,” I mumbled, checking my watch. It was almost finishing time. “Uh . . .” Given we were closer to the loading dock than the office . . . “Where is he?”
“At his desk,” Paul replied.
“The loading dock, then.”
Paul nodded, took out his mobile phone, and walked out through the loading area. “Ah, yeah, hi,” he said, his voice perfectly different, higher but more scratchy.
How did he do that?
“What did you say your name was, sorry?” . . . “Oh, thanks, Malachi. Yeah, I sent something in the mail and it hasn’t arrived. I was hoping you could tell me if it turned up there?”
Too nervous to keep listening, I pushed my cart back up the aisle.
This was the final piece. Well, tomorrow’s Christmas gift was the final piece, but this was the last one that involved anyone else.
I made my way up to where I could hear Malachi on the phone. He was taking down the fake details that Paul was feeding him before he promised to call him back soon.
Malachi got up, frowning at the slip of paper in his hand, but walked to the far side of the warehouse to the old wooden file of catalogued cards. He always said they belonged in a 1950s library. Actually, he said they belonged in the library of Alexandria, by which he meant burned a long time ago.
Yes, we’d been digitalised for a long time, but the old catalogue cards were kept. The archive records were still valid, though rarely ever used, which was why I’d chosen them and probably explained Malachi’s frown.
Paul had to give him a reference number, which would take Malachi a little time to find. I watched him, holding a parcel in my hand in case he looked my way so I could pretend to be busy. He double-checked the reference number, found the catalogue drawer, and began filing through the yellowed cards for what felt like forever. Eventually he pulled out one card, his frown deepening.
Staring at the card and without a glance in my direction, he turned and walked down through a far aisle. He scanned the rows of parcels and letters, looking up to the highest rows, and he sighed.
“Denise?” he called out, going in search of her.
By the time she moved the aerial platform around to his aisle, we were running out of time. It was already a quarter to five.
But Denise found him the right storage box and handed it over, just like she was supposed to. He put the box on the ground and opened it, taking out various contents and scanning them, finding the one he was after.
“That doesn’t make sense,” he mumbled.
“What doesn’t make sense?” I asked, feigning ignorance. I pulled my cart to a stop. “What have you got?”
“A guy called saying a parcel never arrived. He couldn’t remember exactly when it was sent, but it was an older reference number. It should have been processed out of the system a long time ago.”
He was still holding the smaller box. It was a square box, maybe five inches across. I nodded to it. “What’s in it?”
“The inventory information was vague and incomplete. Who filled this out? Was this when Glenda was still here?”
I tried not to smile. “Open it.”
He opened the box and pulled out a clear Christmas tree ornament. It was a clear globe filled with strips of paper.
But not just any paper . . .
Malachi gasped, his eyes going wide. “This is the same . . . it can’t be . . .”
He took off up the aisle toward his desk. Denise waited until he was gone. “Well, it’s in the hands of the gods now.”
I felt a strange wave of relief. A calmness, a sense of well-being that all the wheels were in motion. Tomorrow morning, Christmas morning, would be the last piece of the puzzle.
If we made it that long.
“Ahhh!” Malachi yelled from his desk. It was loud enough to scare the pigeons off the roof. “It’s the same!”
I smiled at Denise and she grinned right back at me. “He’s going to drive you crazy tonight about this.”
“I’ve got Moni on it. We’re having dinner at her place because I knew we’d need the distraction.” I sighed. “I better go act like I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
“Give me your keys,” she said, holding her hand out. “I’ll put the box in the boot of your car, and I’ll leave the key on your desk.”
I handed the keys over. “Thank you.”
I turned and found Malachi with his desk phone pressed to his ear. “It’s not connected,” he said. “His number’s not connected. How can it not be connected? Did he give me the wrong number? Did they cut his phone off in the last twenty minutes? Julian, the number he gave me is wrong. I have no way of contacting him, oh my god—”