December Deadly Dolls: A Xara Smith Mystery

By Bill McGrath

Female private investigator Xara Smith of Irving, Texas gets the most unlikely of clients. Little ten year old Samantha Dover wants to hire a detective to help find her missing friend. Xara, along with her business partner Jill, and her girlfriend Jana try their best to protect little Samantha from her own mother, the drug dealer, the pimps, and the human trafficker. As the mystery moves along we start wondering if it will be a happy Christmas for Samantha or not. Warning! The scene where the drug dealer is interrogated is pretty rough and not appropriate for younger or more sensitive readers. Girl scout cookies, Russian stacking dolls, Christmas presents, gum shoe detecting, stun guns, Mr. Hammer, girls in pink costumes, a tent set up in a barn, and a surprise ending.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bill McGrath
• Release date: Dec 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301861569

Bill McGrath

Bill McGrath has lived in the north Texas since 1989. He is married and has raised three daughters and a son. He has had several careers including; Computer Programmer, Cab Driver, Factory Worker, Volunteer Coordinator, and Customer Service Representative. Now that you have bought this book he will also claim that he is an Author.

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December Deadly Dolls

A Xara Smith Mystery by Bill McGrath

Copyright 2012 Bill McGrath

Smashwords Edition

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All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

Other Books by Bill McGrath available on Smashwords.com:

The Xara Smith Mystery Series, including;

January Juggling The Jentons

February At Feldman's On Fifth

March Of The Mustangs

April At The Antique Alley

May Might Mean Murder

June Jumping The Jaguar

July Jill's Justice

August Avenging Arlene

September Surgeon Shamed

October Octagon Occult

November Naughty Nurse

December Deadly Dolls

Also by Bill McGrath:

Virika – Maiden

Bill McGrath Web Site:

WWW.WIX.COM/WGJM53/BILLMCGRATH

To contact author please send email to [e-mail]

CHAPTER-01.

Sitting at noon at my desk in my office, gazing out the window, I took the first bite of my salad. It was delicious. I am not a big salad eater. In fact, I eat way too much fast food, but I had all of the ingredients for the salad in my refrigerator, and I guess I was being too lazy to go out.

My name is Xara Smith. I am a thirty-one year old, six foot three inch, two-hundred pound, muscular, blond, athletic, quirky, socially misfit, female, private detective, who lives in Irving, Texas which is itself a suburb of Dallas. Three years ago I bought a big old house and converted the front two rooms into my office space, leaving plenty of room in the rest of the house for me to live in. Nine months ago I met a nice young woman named Jill Stepho. Jill was twenty-three at the time, but she has had a birthday since. She is petite, brunette, stylish, you know; everything I am not. Jill became my friend, my room mate, and after getting properly licensed by the State of Texas, my business partner. To round out my immediate family, I also have a girl friend named Jana Little. Jana is closer to Jill's age than mine and almost exactly her size. She owns an antique store and her own house, so she spends half of her nights in her own bed, and if I am lucky, the other half in mine.

Today was Thursday, December first, so just a week ago we had celebrated Thanksgiving. I am not much of a cook, but somehow we three women had managed to wrestle a nineteen pound turkey into and then out of my oven. We served the bird to not only ourselves, but a small handful of our closest friends celebrating the holiday in traditional fashion.

There was a lot of meat left over and I had chopped it all up and properly stored it. That is why I was now eating a salad. A head of lettuce, a chopped up tomato, a little chopped onion, a handful of left over turkey meat, drown it in ranch dressing and you have a quick and delicious salad that will feed three or four.

Of course, this report is not supposed to be about my choice for lunch, and I promise it won't be, but that is where this mystery all started. As the owner and primary operative in my own detective agency, I am very busy when I have a case to work on, but I do not always have a case. Just before Thanksgiving we had wrapped up a difficult case, and we have not been hired yet for our next. So I was spending this day like a professional business owner. I was sitting at my desk officially watching the front door in case any new client came through it, and unofficially playing Spider Solitaire on my clunky old computer.

I took another fork full of the wonderful salad noting that next time I would add some croutons, and as I was chewing I looked out the window to my front driveway. That is where any potential client would park their car before coming into my office. What I saw though was the most unlikely of new clients.

I watched as a ten year old girl pedaled her bicycle to a stop right in front of my house/office. She carefully worked the combination to her lock, unwound her chain, wrapped the back wheel and frame in the chain with one part of the chain going around the handrail of my porch steps, and locked her bike. She was wearing a jacket but I could see sticking out from the jacket a tan skirt that vaguely resembled a Girl Scout uniform. Immediately my mouth started watering and I said a silent prayer that she was here to sell me cookies. Yum!

I watched as she carefully took a package out of the basket on her bike. Whatever she brought with her, it was in one of those plastic grocery sacks. Judging from size, at most, it would be one or maybe two boxes of cookies.

I live and work in a house that has been converted to be my business office, but from the outside it looks just like a house. When I am open for business I hang a sign in the window explaining to the person on the other side of the door that they may walk right in, but virtually everyone still knocks. I was quite surprised when this little ten year old paused at the door, read the sign, and did just what the sign told her to do.

As she stumbled through my door and worked to close it behind her she said My name is Samantha Dover and I need to hire a private detective. Am I in the right place?

I got little Samantha seated in the guest chair on the other side of my desk. When I sat in my chair back on my own side of my desk Samantha stood up and moved her chair a foot to the left because she was not tall enough to look me in the eye over my computer monitor.

I started by asking her why she was not in school. She replied by telling me that today was called an In Service day. That means that all the teachers had to show up but the kids got the day off. She then added that she supposed it was when the teachers got some training for themselves. At any rate, if she was telling the truth, and I had no reason to doubt her, then I was not dealing with a truant.

As we sparred through our first few lines of conversation Samantha tried to keep her eyes on me but they were constantly being drawn to the salad I had not yet finished.

When was the last time you ate? I asked her.

I had breakfast she said, but then she looked down, embarrassed, and added yesterday.

I stood up, picked up my salad bowl, told Samantha to follow me, and headed to my kitchen. Without argument or questions, Samantha stood up holding the treasure she had brought inside in the grocery sack, and obediently fell into step behind me.

I put my salad bowl down on one side of the kitchen table and fixed a large bowl full for Samantha. I got her a fork and made sure there were napkins on the table. I reached in the refrigerator and grabbed a fresh can of Diet Coke for each of us. We both sat down and started digging in.

I let her eat several quick bites and then asked her to tell me why she needed to hire a detective.

It is a missing person case. Someone I care for has suddenly gone missing, and I want you to find her. Samantha stated confidently.

I like talking with you, Samantha I answered, Sometimes I have to speak to an adult for as much as a full hour before I get a straight simple answer like you just gave, but I am going to need a lot more details.

Samantha then launched into a long story that pretty much told me all about her life. She started by telling me that she lived in Longhorn West. In our city, Irving, Texas, on the south side of town there are two massive trailer parks split down the middle by Beltline Road. The first of the two parks had been built on the east side of the road and had been called Longhorn Estates. A decade or so later when the first few manufactured homes had been set up on the west side of Beltline they had simply called it Longhorn West. The land was less expensive and more readily available on the west side so Longhorn West grew a lot faster and larger than Longhorn Estates possibly could have. Now, Longhorn West holds nearly a thousand mobile homes. It is by far Irving's largest trailer park. If you drive south out of Irving on Beltline Road, on the right side of the street, you will see a dozen spacious, expensive, large, double-wides that are well kept and well maintained. It makes the place look fabulous. Once you turn into the lot and follow the drive west, as it constantly seems to slope downwards as if you were driving down a hill, the homes get smaller, less impressive and less well cared for as you go, eventually turning into everyone's worst dream of a crowded, dilapidated, trailer park full of trailer trash and trailer rats.

Samantha's story started with a young woman and a young man falling in love and without the benefit of wedlock plopping down a large cash down payment thus buying their first home together on lot 134 of Longhorn West, which was still a nice double-wide far enough up the hill to be a desirable place to live. Soon the young woman became pregnant while the young man, a carpenter, bounced from one construction project to the next. Samantha was born and all should have ended happily ever after.

Around the time Samantha was five years old her father got a job at a long time construction project at the major airport. He was a good man who worked hard to take care of his significant other and their daughter, but each Friday evening after work he would stop with many of his construction mates for a few beers on his way home. Her mother had her own bad habits and more than once Samantha witnessed her drunk father and stoned mother get into a Friday night brawl that would end up with flashing lights disturbing the tranquility of the Longhorn West.

Samantha clearly remembered the night when the deputy sheriff knocked on their trailer door to announce that her father had wrecked his car and killed himself on the way home from the bar.

There was a little life insurance money from his job, but a funeral and two mortgage payments later that was gone.

By this time Samantha's mother was twenty-six years old, a stoner, and had never held a job in her life. Obviously they could not afford the fancy double-wide, so, her mother made a deal with the trailer park owner/manager. He took over payments on their nice trailer, and her mother got free and clear a tiny single wide at the bottom of the hill in lot 978. They had gone from nearly the front of the trailer park where all the nice units were to the very last row, but her mother would not have to make any mortgage payments.

The monthly Welfare check paid the lot fee and kept the utilities turned on but did little more. The only person to visit on Samantha's six birthday was her mother's drug dealer, but Samantha remembered that he had brought her a coloring book and the biggest box of crayons she had ever seen.

After this much of her story, Samantha had finished off her salad. I interrupted her long enough to cut us each a large piece of cheesecake which I drenched in chocolate sauce. So much for my nice healthy lunch. I then asked her to continue.

As Samantha told it, they had the crummy little trailer to live in, and the welfare check kept the utilities on, but for food and to feed her growing drug habit, Samantha's mother needed another source of income. Soon the drug dealer would visit, sometimes alone, but more often with a friend whom would always be male but always a man that Samantha had never seen before. When the men would visit, Samantha was always told to go play outside even if it was after dark, which it always was. They would never be there for more than an hour or so, and when they left her mother would have a fresh supply of crack cocaine and a little cash. It did not take Samantha long to figure out what her lovely mother was doing to earn the cash. All she had to do was go outside, but then quietly look in the windows.

One August day her mother sobered up and cleaned up well enough to take Samantha to the local public grade school and enroll her. The following Monday her mother proudly walked Samantha up the hill to the front of the trailer park and showed her where to await the school bus. When Samantha got home from school that afternoon her mother did not meet her at the bus stop and was quite high when Samantha tried to tell her all about her first day of school.

Samantha was not happy with her lot in life, and not very proud of her mother, but she did not know what to do about it. She made a few friends from her end of the trailer park and found out that her mother was definitely not the only crack-ho in the area. At this same time Samantha also started doing small chores for neighbors in exchange for a tiny amount of money. Even at her young age, there were always leaves that needed raking or windows that needed washing.

There were lots of garage sales at the trailer park and Samantha learned how to hide her money and save it up so she could buy things she wanted or needed. It was, in fact, how she had gotten the bicycle.

Life went on and around the time she was in third grade, so eight years old, her mother took