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Olive Snook has never liked secrets – unless they were her own. When she was four years, three months, and eleven days old and the glittering red-and-green explosive pomp that was Christmas was swirling around her in a veritable hurricane of trees and tinsel and cookies and stockings, young Olive became curious about the white-bearded man who brought her gifts each year – which her parents told her was entirely dependent upon whether she had been good or not and which Olive now knew to be absolutely untrue, as she still had the glorious rocking pony she had asked for last year and gotten, despite what she thought of as The Incident At The Playground that had happened the summer before when her parent's backs had been turned.
When Olive became curious about things, she simply asked about them. But this time when she asked, her parents had shared an odd, forbidding little look that had sent a very unpleasant shiver down young Olive Snook's back, settling as a cold little pool of sickness in her stomach. They answered her question, telling her that Santa had many helpers and this was how he defied the laws of time and physics. Olive would have none of it.
Her parents, she knew, were lying.
And so it was that on Christmas Eve night Young Olive made it her business to sneak downstairs and watch for this Mr. Claus – or for whatever it was her parents were surely hiding. For a moment, sitting up in bed in her bright yellow footie pyjamas, Olive considered that perhaps this was not the best course of action. In fact, she decided quite surely that it was not.
But she also decided her curiosity burned too painfully for her to bear.
This was how she came to see her parents carefully placing several stuffed animals and Clue Jr. under the tree. The same stuffed animals and Clue Jr. that, the very next day, they attributed to the kindness of Santa Claus.
And so Olive Snook learned that some secrets were simply better kept.
It is now twenty-six years, eleven months and twelve days later, and Olive Snook is currently stuffed into body locker 24C, desperately holding her breath and the decidedly hot nose of a happy dog, trying to muffle his snufflings at the same time as trying to keep his overeager tail from thumping loudly against the metal surrounding them and thereby giving them away, wondering just how in the heck she got here in the first place.
*
How she got into body locker 24C is this: it was a normal day at the Pie Hole and for Olive this meant having to watch Ned and Chuck and Emerson have another of their super special top secret conversations and, okay, Olive admits to herself that she does not need to be harbouring another secret. Really, asking for that kind of mental turmoil would just be insanity.
Then she hears Chuck's voice raise a little. "Santa died?"
It doesn't take long before she pushes herself into the booth, beside Chuck and across from Ned and Emerson.
"So what's up today, guys? You working on a new case? Getting ready to pound the pavement? Shoot the snow? Put some no-good good-for-nothing Bad Guy of Epic Bad Guy-ness in the clinker for life?"
They all stare at her. Olive thinks it's funny. She finds it disconcerting how often this happens. Stares instead of laughter. She sighs.
"Seriously, what are you working on?"
And Ned gets that look. The one that Digby gets when he has to go out for a walk and everyone is a little too wrapped up in their own business to notice his needs. Embarrassed and more than a little desperate.
"Nothing."
Olive stares at him. Usually, she would let this go. But today, something has put her over the edge. Maybe it was feeling Chuck's foot brush hers as it reached out to touch Ned's in some kind of footsie game. And Olive had thought they couldn't touch. What happened to the allergies?
"I just heard Chuck say that Santa died." Innocent lash-batting all the way. "Was I mistaken?"
A beat of silence. Then it's Emerson's turn to sigh. "Look, Itty-Bitty – "
"No." Suddenly Emerson has a dainty little finger stabbing in his face. "You know what? No. I have put up with hiding and secrets and – and dead stowaways and everything else under the sun." She gives each person a threatening look at the appointed time and they all look guilty. Well, bored, in Emerson's case. But he's good at hiding his true emotions. "So you do not get to call me Itty-Bitty and give me a nickname like I'm part of the team when in reality you're all like that snot-nosed little kid on the playground singing I know something you don't know over and over and OVER until it drives you so nuts you finally find yourself twisting his arm behind his back until he promises to tell you and thank GOD neither of your parents saw because you probably popped his shoulder out of his socket he was bawling so hard when he finally told you your epidermis was showing. Little punk," Olive snorts, and then the bell signalling the entrance of a customer rings and she is on her feet, leaving a rather stunned party behind her.
It's only a moment before she's sliding into her seat again. "He wants apple pie. Ned, go."
Ned, still looking a bit stunned, goes.
"So as I was saying, it's getting tiresome, all these little secrets and me never in on them. So you don't get to nickname me any more until you actually include me. I don't want to settle for some second-rate second prize any more. I want the real deal, and I think it's time I got it."
Emerson and Chuck exchange a look. Emerson nods slightly, and Olive leans back in her seat, smiling.
"We got a Santa Claus who was killed by a falling piano at the mall."
"There were over a hundred children there waiting in line to see him."
"It was a player piano – kept right on playing Holly Jolly Christmas." Emerson snickers. "Not so jolly for him."
"Or for his elf." Chuck's demeanour is decidedly more sorrowful.
"Seems like it was just an accident but his elf swears up and down it was murder."
"And," Charlotte fixes Emerson with what could pass for a hard look if her whole skin didn't seem to be gleaming with sugar – not that Olive doesn't like Chuck, she does, it's just that it's against her own will and so sometimes a little residual bitterness ekes out in her mind – "said elf was willing to pay top dollar to bring in whoever killed her Santa."
Olive widens her eyes and denies any part of her that wants to giggle at the idea of Santa Claus being killed in front of children. That is horrible and nothing she should laugh at. If the pain of finding out he wasn't real was so great that it still stings once in a while, she can only imagine what it would be like to see him smushed beneath a baby grand when she was still all wide-eyed and innocent.
"So. Santa," she manages to say. "And his elf."
"Well, not really," Chuck says helpfully. "The elf was his girlfriend."
Emerson snorts. "Some kinky stuff going down in the North Pole nowadays."
Chuck looks pained. "Emerson." Then she turns back to Olive. "Santa and the elf were engaged – I mean, they were engaged before they got the job as Santa and helper. They wanted to work together over the holidays to help pay off the engagement ring."
Olive and Chuck share a misty-eyed moment.
"That really is … very sweet," Olive says finally, wiping delicately at one eye. "So how can I help?"
"By not getting diabetes," Emerson mutters.
"What?" Her tone as innocent as could be. But still a little pointed. So he'd know she heard his little passive-aggressive muttered-under-the-breath insult.
"We need to interview the girlfriend and the owner of the piano store … " Emerson flips open his little notebook that Olive swears is to him what big phallic-shaped cars are to other men. And he had that car, too – it just seems like the notebook serves even more of a purpose than the car does. "Peachy's Peachy Pianos."
"Peachy's??" Olive nearly stands up. "She gave me my first – and only – piano lesson. She rapped my knuckles with a ruler." And Olive Snook had rapped back, therefore terminating any future piano lessons.
"Good. You want to help, interview her with Chuck. And the elf."
Olive stands. "What about you? And Ned? What will you be doing?"
Another look. Olive stares each of them down, waiting.
"We just got stuff to do, Itty – you. So you can help by helping Chuck, all right?"
They always seemed to pair her with Chuck when she was trying to be included or get information. Olive has a sudden mental picture of being told to go play with the other children while mommy and daddy play chess. She was not down with being condescended to then, and she is not down with it now.
"All right," she says sweetly, as Ned returns, standing and waiting for the rest of them to get up. "Can I just have a minute alone with Ned?"
Ned looks at Chuck, who nods and smiles and leaves, and then sits across from Olive once Emerson vacates his seat.
"I – I guess I'll catch up with you in a minute," he calls, but the door is already closing.
"Don't worry, they'll wait for us." Olive grins in what she hopes is a disarming manner. "I just wanted to talk for a smidgen of a minute."
"Okay." But his hands are clasped tightly in front of him and his eyes are anywhere but on her winning smile. What do you have to do to get this guy's attention?!
"Here's the thing, Ned." She tries to make her voice as soft and non-threatening as possible, like coaxing a little baby bird into her hand. "I know there's some kind of secret going on here."
He looks up in alarm, just as she'd thought he would. "What?"
She tilts her head and shakes it, grinning. Jokingly wags a finger at his face. "I know when something is up, and something has been up with you for a very long time."
"… Some things are better left unasked. Untalked about. Un … un-anythinged."
Olive sits back in the booth, smiling easily. "Oh, I know. But sometimes … sometimes people earn a little information, don't you think? Through time, and friendship, and showing an ability to keep secrets …"
Pointed? Not pointed at all.
"Yes, they do," Ned answers uneasily, rubbing one hand with the other now. "But still, some things are just better left … left left."
"Ned." Olive reaches out to grasp his hand and he pulls away. It amazes her that no matter how many times this happens, it still hurts. "I have been by your side longer than anybody. I've been here before Emerson. Before Chuck." And I've loved you even longer than that, I swear that I have. "And they – they know things I don't. I can feel it. And … and it hurts me, Ned. Why can't you tell me? What's so bad about trusting me?"
She looks up, and sees that he looks pained. It's another Digby-look. The what, you guys get all you can eat pie and ice cream and I get this cardboard kibble crap? Please tell me you're kidding me look.
"I'm sorry, Olive." He's already getting up. On the run. Olive stands, anticipating his moves and awkwardly trying to scoot out of the booth. "It's just – I just can't."
Olive has a hand on his arm, restraining him. She wants to put her arms around him, bury her head in the front of his jacket and smell that unique sweet flour and fruit and clean soap smell of his. But she knows it would only make things worse.
For both of them, probably.
"It's okay, Ned – just – "
And that is when Olive Snook channels her little yellow-footsied self and a slightly wrong, slightly not-a-good-idea devious kind of plan comes to her. One that, no doubt, has come to her before. One that no doubt is not really a very good idea at all. But the sights and sounds of Christmas and the chanting from a long-ago playground scene seem to be catching up with her.
She looks around dramatically. “Gee, there’s no one here left to look after the Pie Hole. I can’t go after all!” She starts to push Ned out the door. She can’t blame him for looking confused, but she wants to use it against him, too. Get him out fast. “Can you just tell Chuck for me? I hope she’s not too disappointed. Good luck with your stuff!”
Then he's out the door, and as soon as she feels the coast is clear, Olive hurries around to where Digby's sleeping and grabs his leash off the hook on the wall. Because while Olive believes the Pie Hole can function on its own, she also believes that Digby cannot.
"C'mon, Dig," she says, with a gleam of excitement behind the façade of grimness. "Let's go smoke us out a couple foxes."
With that, Olive marches to the front door, Digby’s leash in hand, and points at the man with the apple pie. “You!” she says, voice loud and commanding. The man looks up in genuine fear, crumpled crust and golden apples spilling off his fork. “You’re in charge until I get back! Capisce?”
Then, leaving no time for arguments, Olive hurries out and up to the apartment she shares with Chuck before rushing back down and hailing a cab. She can still see Emerson’s ridiculous penile-implant of a vehicle.
And she takes no small amount of pleasure in dramatically telling the driver, “Follow that car!”, even if she does have to add on an instruction that they must not be seen.
Just in case.
*
Of course the cab will be seen, but it doesn't matter so much because Olive and Digby both are wearing scarves over their heads – warm and fashionable! – and oversized sunglasses. You’re supposed to protect your dog’s eyes from UV rays too, you know. Besides, yes, it helps in trying to be incognito.
Maybe not inconspicuous, but incognito.
Olive and Digby wait in the car, watching as Ned and Emerson disappear inside the offices of the coroner and medical examiner. Olive curls her lip. Jeepers Creepsters.
They hurry out not much later, speeding off in Emerson's car. Olive pays the rather disgruntled cab driver – extra for waiting and watching. "I'll be out in just a skiffy," Olive promises, then runs with Digby, whipping her head this way and that to make sure Ned and Emerson don't return.
Then, she's in! She made it! Triumph!
She is being yelled at.
"Get that dog out of here!" A man behind a counter is gesturing wildly and spit seems to be flying from his mouth. "This is, for all intents and purposes, a medical facility! That dog don't belong here!"
Olive smiles. "Service dog. You know those guys who were just in here?"
The man stops. Sits down. Steeples his fingers. "Perhaps I'm not at liberty to say."
"Oh. Okay." Still smiling. "Well, perhaps I could have a moment with the body of … of …" And Olive, for the first time, falters. And the man, for the first time, smiles.
"Yes?"
Olive gathers her bravery. "Of the Santa who died." She wipes an imaginary tear away and clears her throat.
Another smile. More a baring of teeth. "Do you have the real name?"
Olive leans in close to him. Digby sits down and scratches at his ear. "I think it was … Andrew Jackson?" No reaction. "Ulysses Grant? No?"
Olive practically snarls at him. And steps back away from his desk. If this doesn't do it, she's walking. Really. "Oh, now I remember. It was Benjamin Franklin."
The man nods, almost licks his lips. "Yeah. That sounds more like it."
"Now," Olive says, digging in the purse at her side, "Think you can find it in yourself to relieve yourself of some information on the two gentlemen who were just here, since you're being so kind?"
"Honey," he says, eyes on her purse. Hopefully on her purse and nowhere else in the purse's vicinity. "I don't ask questions no more. I just collect and open the door."
*
And so, after emptying her wallet until it is in a sadder state than the corpses in the room before her, or so Olive believes, the medical examiner leads her into the room where they keep the bodies and leaves her there. After pausing to stow her and Digby's disguises in her purse, Olive doesn't take long to find Santa – the flat look of the sheet and the black fur-trimmed boots are a dead giveaway.
She goes over. Pokes at the sheet. And jumps back with a tiny squeal when she feels … something. Digby looks up at her interestedly, but –
"No treats just yet, buddy," she mumbles, looking around and trying to get some kind of clue as to what it actually could be that Emerson and Ned did here. She could think of nothing. Maybe they … scraped under the nails or something. Eww.
Olive is just standing there, surrounded by bodies that could give her no answer, when she hears three resounding thuds, like someone smacking their foot against the floor. And then she hears a voice she would know anywhere.
"We, uh, we forgot to get a … sample. Of something …"
"–something important. You got your money, now let us in."
Olive, wide-eyed, feels her heart thrumming in her chest like a hummingbird. She doesn't want them to know she'd been following them – it would break Ned's trust in her! Besides, if she could hide – if she could hide, she might be able to overhear what they did here.
And that is when Olive looks over at the open door of a body locker. She rushes to it and stuffs herself in, laying flat and curled before begging Digby to jump up beside her. He does, she scootches down into the locker as far as she can, and holds her breath. And Digby's muzzle. And manages to place one foot over Digby's happy tail, ready to thump at the presence of his master.
And then Ned and Emerson walk in.
*
Olive is stuck in the semi-darkness of body locker 24C and can't see much, but she can hear.
"Someday that guy is going to figure it out …"
"You're the one who forgot your watch, all drippy with Christmas thoughts about dead girl …"
That's odd, Olive thinks. Emerson has never called Chuck that in her hearing before. Kind of harsh.
Not that she blames him. Faking your own death? Serious business.
"Well, if you ever wore a backup watch it wouldn't be an issue."
"Oh, just shut up and find out who killed Santy Claws and then we can get our money and go home. Go on, do your thing."
Olive hears the swish of a sheet being pulled away. The tiniest of clicks. And then something … something like a little whoosh.
Ned is speaking quickly. "Hi. We don't have much time, but you're dead, and we need to find out who killed you."
"Unnnhhhhn …"
"Oh, damn."
"I – I'm sorry, but we can't understand you."
A pause. "Guess that means no. Guy sounds like … damn, crushed by a piano. It's like he was killed by Bugs Bunny."
"Emerson! He's right there. Do you mean that you weren't killed?"
"Unnnhhnhhhh! Unnnshhh! Unnnggggg …"
"Can't understand a damn word …"
"But I think he said no…"
"Iuuhhhh. Unnshhh … trggggghhnn. Wynthhhhhr…"
"Time!"
And then there is silence.
Olive's great-aunt Bethy had lived without her teeth for a long time. Her dentures hurt her mouth and she didn't care enough about appearances to keep them in too often. Olive had loved her Great Aunt Bethy because she gave her taffy and had little plastic horsies and dogs and cats set up in dioramas all over her home, and so she had spent much time with her and much time learning the language of Mumbly. It was not possible to communicate with Great Aunt Bethy if you didn't know it.
Santa had just told Ned that he had not been murdered. The "no" was quite definitive. Olive supposes that won't stop Emerson from looking – how can she tell him what she's heard without giving herself away? Besides, really, how could Santa know whether that player piano from Peachy's on the second floor of the mall hadn't been deliberately pushed? Obviously someone who played Santa … well, he was going to see what he wanted to see. What he believed in.
Olive is inclined to believe that what Santa believes is right, anyway.
And he said he wanted his elf to find love with someone else. Shannie. To sell the diamond and find someone else.
And that he'd love her and wait.
Olive assumes he was going to finish by saying wait for her.
But he hadn't had time. Olive had heard that tiny little whoosh again.
And again he was silent. Dead.
Olive has a moment of missing Chuck. She knows she would have "aww"ed for her as she lay silent in the body locker, heart bursting over Santa's last stolen moments. If she'd understood Mumbly.
*
When Olive gets home, it's dark, and Chuck looks up from her chair and smiles, yellow light from the lamps washing over her as she drops the copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz she had been reading to her side, and smiles happily.
"Where have you been?"
Olive just stands in the door. "You're dead."
Chuck knits her eyebrows together. "Yeah, I – haven't we been through this?"
"Except … that you were really dead, right?"
Charlotte shakes her head. "Olive, I – I don't know what you're talking about. Are you okay?"
Olive has a moment – just one moment – of happily believing the lie. She was wrong, at least about this. Maybe Ned could raise that dead but that's not what happened with Chuck. She just faked her death because she couldn't handle her life or something and life can be normal again and everything can go back to the way it was before she figured all this out, before she had a hint of the truth, before everything suddenly made so much outrageous sense –
And then it all comes crashing down around her as if Chuck had just revealed the truth and Olive hadn't been sitting ruminating on it for hours now. It can't be ignored. It can never be ignored again. And Olive is surprised to find that it breaks her heart.
Her hands fly to cover her mouth. "Oh my god, you're dead!"
Chuck, seeing the utter panic on Olive's face, rushes to put her face in front of Olive's, eyes wide as if she could convince with those big doe eyes alone. Well, Olive won't fall for it. Even if she wants to. "No I'm not! I'm not! I'm really really not!"
Olive's eyes are wide, her chest is heavy. Digby has settled into a snooze at her feet. "Ned. Ned brought you back to life, didn't he?"
"Olive, you're – "
"Didn't he?"
"Olive – "
"Why only a minute? Why does he stop?"
Chuck's whole face changes. It gets older. And tired. And so sad that Olive doesn't even want to look at her.
"After a minute – someone else has to die."
Olive has to go sit down. Once she's on the couch, she puts her head between her knees and breathes for a minute. She feels the weight of Chuck sitting down beside her.
"Olive?" A soft arm on her shoulder. "Are you okay?"
Olive finally lifts her head again. "Oh."
That's all she says. All she can say.
Because, like realizing that perhaps Santa Claus isn't real, Olive Snook realizes that only for the love of his life would the love of her life break the rules of life and death. And that love is sitting beside her on the couch, looking sick and worried and gently rubbing Olive's back.
"Please don't tell Ned you know."
Olive head snaps around, fully alert now. "Why not?"
She wants him to know she knows. She wants to hold it over him a little, even. See? Even if you don't tell me I can figure it out. She wants to prove to him she can keep his secret. She wants to prove she's as good as Chuck. Better.
"Because." Chuck is pulling away now, clasping her hands between her knees and looking anguished. "He – he needs this."
"Needs what?" Olive is honestly confused. He needs a lie? He needs her not to know? Why? So he can lord it over her? So he can forever keep her on the outside like the Little Match Girl of Secrets and Love and the Inner Sanctum of Ned?
"Because," Chuck continues in a softer voice, closing her eyes. "When he's around you – around someone that he knows, that knows him, who – who loves him and who doesn't know – he can – he can be himself, you know? He can just be the Piemaker, the guy who makes pies and is sweet and shy and wonderful and who has no complications. No strange gifts. Just … Ned." Chuck turns, takes Olive's hands in her own. "He can be who he really wants to be." Her eyes turn suddenly sad and shiny. Olive kind of wants to hug her. "When he's around you."
Warmth floods Olive Snook's heart. A sense of importance to the one she loves. Being special.
It feels like a light from above is shining specifically down on her.
But then she looks at Chuck again. Chuck, who had been dead – really dead – and now is right here before her. Ned has it on his conscience that someone else paid the ultimate price for this watery-eyed girl to be sitting here with them, Digby snoring at their feet.
Olive leans forward and envelops Chuck into her arms.
"You need to go visit the elf one more time," she whispers softly. "I'm not sure Ned and Emerson understood the message they were supposed to give her. But I do now."
*
Today is blueberry pie. It's full of antioxidants and you'd think it'd be pretty darn popular, especially this time of the year – it seems so warm to Olive, so deeply purple and comforting – but everybody seems to go nutty for pumpkin and apple during the season. So today Olive is focusing all her love and energy on blueberry.
She turns around from her latest customer (cranberry-apple mini-pie-cup, but Olive's sure the next one will order blueberry) and sees Ned wiping his forehead, smearing flour across his skin. It looks like he's trying on a pair of Abominable Snowman eyebrows. Olive tilts her head and smiles a smile that starts out pure and plain, affectionate – he is just so endearing and adorable – but then a little sadness creeps in as she watches him.
There's her competitive side – the one screaming out, "I'm better than her! I'M NOT DEAD! YOU CAN TOUCH ME!!" It's strong. It's victorious. Finally. It's that longed-for answer and trophy and it's hers and, oh, it's just within her reach. It's her chance. A chance to finally come out ahead of Charlotte Charles after she just came swanning in and stole Olive's chance right out from under her. The voice telling her patience, perseverance, hard work, it's always worked for you before AND IT WILL NOW is back, is in full force in her head again after she forced it to lie dormant for so long, and, yes, it's so, so strong. It could take Olive's breath away, it's so strong.
But her heart is just a little stronger. And her heart tells her that she actually, whether her brain is skeptical about it or not, really wants Ned to be happy.
Because of a lie, or not. Whether with her. Or without.
Just happy.
She really, really hopes for that. And no matter what, she will continue to hope. And to believe. It's how she's made.
"And what will you have this fine December day, sir? Isn't it just oh so lovely and Christmassy – or, you know, holiday-y, depending on what you celebrate – well, isn't it just lovely out today? What can I get for you?"
The man looks around the Pie Hole as if some kick line of dancers holding pies out for him to view will magically appear to help him choose. But then he looks up at Olive and smiles. "I think blueberry – a'la mode – would be just the thing for a day like today."
"You know what?" She says. "I could not agree with you more."
And Olive Snook smiles her big bright Olive smile and goes to get the man his pie.