“Your friends?” I asked skeptically. “You have two friends and I know them both.”
“I’m friends with my ex-bodyguard, and you don’t know her.”
“I knowofher, though. Okay, three friends. Three friends does not a council make.”
“Well, they’re friends I’ve never actually met.”
I reached over and gripped his shoulder. “Isaac Kelly, are you being catfished?”
He shrugged. “If anyone’s doing the catfishing, it’s me.”
“Explain,” I demanded. “Now.”
Isaac looked over at the post office, then at his phone. He shook his head and sighed, resigning himself to... something. “I have a hobby, okay? Lots of people have hobbies.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And my hobby just so happens to be solving cold cases with fellow citizen detectives.”
I blinked. Once. Twice. “And do your fellow citizen detectives know who they’re dealing with?”
“I wouldn’t even be relevant to them if they did know, and it’s all online, so I’m pretty much anonymous.”
“Why wouldn’t you be relevant to them?” I asked.
“Let’s just say that INK wasn’t really catering to their age demographic.”
Nodding for a moment, I let all that sink in. “So let me get this right. Isaac Kelly anonymously solves cold cases online with a bunch of old ladies.”
“Not just ladies,” he clarified. “There’s Sampson too, but if I’m being honest, I think he’s just surfing the boards, looking for love.”
“Okay, and could we circle back to the Cat Committee?”
“The Cat Advisory Text Thread. I put out a call, asking for help with Mr.Tumnus. I’ve never had a cat. I didn’t know how to get into his good graces!”
“Mr.Tumnus doesn’t have good graces,” I said simply.
“Well, I know that now, but at the time I didn’t realize he was a very ancient demon trapped in the body of a feline.”
I closed my eyes in prayer. “Praise the dark lord.”
“Anyway, I told Betty, Judy, and Dee about your Christmas miracle predicament and they’ve really sunk their teeth into this one.” He paused, a little pleased with himself, and began to get out of the truck. “I think it’s putting them in the holiday spirit, if I’m being honest.”
I jumped out of the truck, immediately feeling the Vermont chill deep in my bones. “So, wait a minute, you’re telling me that you have an entire message board of retirees helping you withyourend of our bargain, but allmymatchmaking efforts are fair trade organic Sunny Palmer labor.”
“It’s not theentiremessage board,” he clarified as I ran across the street after him.
He held the door of the post office open for me and guided me inside with his hand gently resting on my lower back. “Just Betty, Judy, and Dee,” he said in an inside voice. “And does it matter if I outsource my labor as long as it gets done? Besides, I’m the man on the ground.”
I narrowed my eyes at him as the middle-aged rosy-cheeked man behind the counter wearing an official United States Postal Service cable-knit sweater let out a dramaticbrrrrr. Behind the counter were several canvas carts full of mail and packages—many of them hand-decorated for Christmas.
The man took a comb from his pocket and brushed his mustache before saying, “The last truck already went out for the day, so whatever you’ve got for me won’t go out until the morning, I’m afraid.”
“We’re actually not here to mail anything,” Isaac told him as we walked up to the counter.
The man chuckled, and now that we were closer I could see that his name tag readian. “Then you might be in the wrong place.”
“I know it’s a long shot,” Isaac said, “but we’re trying to track down the name of a postal worker from 1944, when this place was still called Piney Notch. See, she’s working on a project inspired by the local legend about the angel and the mailman—”
