Christmas Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel by Alex A. King

Author:Alex A. King [King, Alex A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-03-19T22:00:00+00:00

Xander came with me. First I tried escaping out the bathroom window at McMenamins, but it didn’t have window, and the poster on the wall wasn’t covering an escape route. So much for my Shawshank moment.

The Washington Square Mall and I had seen too much of each other this holiday season. Avoiding it like ground zero of a zombie breakout was the best course of action during December, and yet this was the second time I’d wound up parking out in the boonies when I wasn’t even here to shop.

We found Aunt Rita with one of Sephora’s black baskets looped over one arm and Grandma carrying a second basket on the verge of overflowing. Aunt Rita swooped me up in her perfumed embrace and hugged the toothpaste out of me.

“I have missed you so much!” she gushed. She reluctantly let me go when Grandma said, “Let me look at her.”

For the next thirty seconds I stood still while Grandma inspected me for bruises and other defects. In a Greek attic somewhere, there’s a portrait of Grandma in her prime that grows prettier and perkier each year, while the flesh and blood Grandma battles gravity’s callous effects and loses. Probably she used to be my height, but time used her as its own personal concertina and now she’s almost a foot shorter. Because she’s a widow, her wardrobe is exclusively black, and she wears her steel gray hair trapped in a bun at the back of her head. Next to her, Aunt Rita is a giant. Aunt Rita used to be my uncle until she switched teams. As a woman she’s downright fabulous, and today she was fabulous in a slinky black dress that made JLo’s famous green Versace dress look demure.

“I feel like a watermelon,” I said.

“If you were a watermelon Mama would be cutting you open to take a look,” Aunt Rita said.

“Then I’m glad I’m not a watermelon.”

Finally, Grandma seemed to come to a decision. “You are too skinny. You should eat. Here.” She thrust a container of koulourakia at me; they magically appeared from inside her large black handbag. I peeked under the lid. No green flecks. These weren’t Grandma’s infamous cannabis cookies.

“No pot?”

“That was one time.”

“What about hallucinogens?”

“That was one other time,” she said.

I grabbed one of the twisty orange-scented cookies and stuck the end in my mouth. A sales associate appeared at my elbow. Every product sold in the store was simultaneously on her face or fingers.

“You can’t eat in here,” she said.

Aunt Rita held up both baskets. “How about now?”

“Would you like a chair to go with that cookie?” the sales associate asked me.

Despite her change of heart, I pocketed the koulouraki for later. I had respect, damn it. I wasn’t one of life’s rule breakers. That’s why I’d come home: to stop an impending death spiral into utter lawlessness.

“I told you not to come,” I said to Grandma.

“Did I listen? No. You do not get to my age by listening to everybody who speaks.

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