Page 5 of Jingle Spells

“Is that so?” Jasper spun around. “With the original lyrics? Or are they tidying up all the naughty words?”

“Well . . . it is an office party . . . and some of the language is pretty rough, so . . .”

“Listen, friend. Shane MacGowan wrote about particular types of characters who lived in a particular time and place. Do we agree with everything they say? No, we definitely don’t. But he was a damn poet and that’s his work whether it’s comfortable to us or not. One does not put trousers on Michelangelo’s David, and one does not fix Shane MacGowan.”

“You’re getting a little intense over a Christmas song, Jasper.” The deputy’s words echoed off the cold stone floor. “And you’re pretty full of yourself for a charity case. Maybe as a New Year’s resolution you should work on your attitude?”

“Deal with it.” Jasper marched on toward the stairwell, rolling his eyes.

Toby’s remark about him being a charity case was a cheap shot about the fact that only part of Jasper’s salary was paid by the county. The half of his job that involved fishing licenses and property deeds—the tedious, clerking part of the job—that was deemed worthy of taxpayer funding. But the good half of his job—the archival research, the historical preservation—that had to be underwritten by an anonymous donor. Every Christmas, a generous check arrived to fund Jasper’s study of county history. Every Christmas, Jasper tried to discover out who his benefactor was . . . and every Christmas he was forced to accept that he couldn’t figure it out and likely never would. All he could do was hope that whoever it was didn’t die anytime soon.

He strode to the back of the building where the stairwell was flanked by twin elevators, yet another sacrilegious modernization. Yes, of course he respected the need for accessibility. Jasper took a back seat to no one in his love for local government or in his belief that it should belong to everyone. He understood that the elevators were a key part of making the clerk’s office available to every citizen.

But personally? He detested any changes to the building he loved, even the good and necessary ones.

Fortunately he didn’t need to confront the elevator very often. Jasper’s domain was archives and records, just a short jog down to the basement. He was reaching for the stairwell door when he noticed a woman standing at the building directory, her finger trailing down the list of offices. Even in his rush to escape the Christmas music floating down the corridor, he couldn’t help but notice her red-rimmed eyes and the way she kept dabbing at her nose with a crumpled tissue.

Jasper yanked open the door, took one step through . . . and stopped. With a quiet sigh, he turned back.

“Can I help you, miss?”

“What?” The woman startled, then tried to compose herself. “Oh, I . . . My mother passed last week, and I have all these papers, but . . . I’m not sure where to . . .” She gestured helplessly at the directory.

Jasper’s expression softened. He’d seen that lost look far too many times. Given that nothing is certain but death and taxes, Jasper could never understand why the bureaucracy of death had to be so damned complicated.

He gave the woman’s arm a gentle squeeze. “Fourth floor, probate,” he told her quietly. “When you exit the elevator, you’ll see a receptionist. Ask for Anita, she’s the chief probate clerk. She’ll need the death certificate. And did Mom have a will? Anita will also need that.”

“Ohh, okay. Thanks very much. Yeah, I’ve got all that stuff here, I’m pretty sure. To be honest I haven’t been able to understand what everybody wants from me at all. Everything is just so . . .” She sighed. “Anyway . . . you think Anita will be helpful?”

He chuckled. “Not one fiber of my being suspects Anita will be helpful, no. Especially if the rum balls have already come out. Still, though, she’s the probate clerk, so she’s your woman. I wish you the very best.” Jasper patted the mourner on the shoulder and headed for the basement stairs.

“Thank you, sir,” she called. “And Merry Christmas.”

“Ugh.” The door slammed behind him.

Jasper descended the stairs, each step taking him deeper into history. The stairwell walls displayed a gallery of his archivist ancestors—his spiritual family. And, in a real sense, his chosen family, given that he made the effort to salvage the portraits from a dumpster during yet another “modernization redesign” in 2018.

He remembered that day with perfect clarity: standing in the parking lot, watching maintenance workers cart out the “outdated decor” and toss it in piles. The second he spotted that gilt frame poking out from beneath a stack of broken venetian blinds, Jasper was in motion: stripping off his wool coat, rolling up his sleeves, and climbing into the trash container. The maintenance crew had watched in bewilderment as he’d excavated each portrait, carefully wiping away all the coffee grounds and plaster dust.

Now the portraits formed a perfect timeline on the basement stairs. More recent photos showed archivists from the 1980s, their faces illuminated by the sickly glow of the first IBM computers to infiltrate the archives division. Jasper touched one of these frames lightly whenever he passed it—a silent acknowledgment of the moment when efficiency had first trumped personality, when typed ledgers had given way to databases. The technology was useful, he had to admit, but something had been lost when they’d started reducing human lives to ones and zeros.

Then came the Sixties and early Seventies crew, who looked like they’d wandered in from a folk music festival. The Fifties bunch were all sharp angles and Don Draper haircuts, while the 1920s portraits showed a fascinating mix of old and new—men in starched collars and women in bobbed hair, all of them gathered around massive ledger books with the same reverent expressions Jasper himself wore when handling original documents.

The faces kept marching backward through time, clothes evolving in reverse like a fashion documentary being rewound, until photography gave way to paintings and sketches. The oldest portrait of them all hung at the bottom of the stairs: a hand-drawn portrait from the turn of the eighteenth century, showing a woman with sharp eyes and an expression that suggested she’d brook no nonsense when it came to proper procedures. Sometimes, alone in the archives, Jasper would pause beneath her portrait and imagine her approving nod or, on bad days, her stern disappointment. She must have been extraordinary, he thought, to have claimed that role in an age when even a basic education for women wasn’t guaranteed.

Jasper’s domain had mercifully escaped the modernization plague that infected the floors above. Oh, various committees had tried—for example, a line of atrocious fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling. But Jasper never used them. Instead, he relied on the original wall sconces and a collection of carefully placed desk lamps, creating pools of warm light between the towering shelves. The effect was rather like a Victorian gentleman’s study. The air itself felt different down here: cooler, quieter, thick with the musty perfume of aging paper and leather bindings.

His desk was placed in a strategic corner position, allowing him to monitor both the main aisle and the research table where the rare visitor would work. The desk itself was a monument to controlled chaos: seven different projects spread out in precise arrays, each one marked with color-coded tabs. A lineup of German mechanical pencils stood at attention in a wooden holder. A place for everything, as his grandmother always said, and everything in its place. Which is why the messy pile of papers dumped in his inbox looked like meatballs dropped on a white tablecloth.

“Savages.” His colleagues treated the archives division like some sort of paper-eating monster’s lair. Just toss the documents down the stairs and run away, leaving Jasper to maintain order on their behalf.

Jasper hung up his coat, put away his case, and took a restorative swig on his still-warm tea. Rolling up his sleeves, he attacked the pile with the precision of a surgeon, sorting each document into its proper category. A property deed for the new subdivision in Litchfield. No fewer than three divorce decrees (apparently Jasper wasn’t the only person immune to Christmas cheer). A stack of business licenses for a parade of food trucks and home-based crafting enterprises.

And then, at the bottom of the pile, something strange: a liquor license for a business he’d never heard of: J&J, Incorporated.

There was nothing particularly off about the license itself, but the name was unfamiliar . . . and that was the odd bit. To obtain a liquor license, firms had to leap through a complex series of bureaucratic hoops, applications, and committee meetings. Inevitably, by the time the formal approval hit Jasper’s desk, the business owners were regulars at the clerk’s office and well known to everyone in the building. And yet, Jasper was certain he’d never heard of J&J, Incorporated. Not once.

Then he saw the address, and his jaw dropped low: 278 West 113th Street.