The stupidest angel: a heartwarming tale of Christmas terror

local market without feeling as if they were actively spying. So what had started as a moment of sheer glee and a mild adrenaline surge for the six of them who were watching as Lena chased Dale through the parking lot, turned quickly to shock as the evil developer thwacked the Latin Santa-ette in the breadbasket with a satchel of minicubes. Five of the six merely missed a step or gasped, but Georgia Bauman – who had her treadmill cranked up to eight miles per hour at that very moment, because she was trying to lose fifteen pounds by Christmas and fit into a red-sequined sheath cocktail dress her husband had bought for her in a fit of sexual idealism – bowled backward off her treadmill and landed in a colorful spandex tangle of yoga students who had been practicing on the mats behind her.
    "Ow, my ass chakra!"

    "That's you're root chakra."

    "Feels like my ass."

    "Did you see that? He nearly knocked her off her feet. Poor thing."

    "Should we see if she's all right?"

    "Someone should call Theo."

    The exercisers opened their cell phones in unison, like the Jets flicking switchblades as they gaily danced into a West Side Story gang-fight to the death.

    "Why did she ever marry that guy, anyway?"

    "He's such an asshole."

    "She used to drink."

    "Georgia, are you all right, honey?"

    "Can you get Theo by calling 911?"

    "That bastard is just going to drive off and leave her there "

    "We should go help."

    "I've got twelve more minutes on this thing."

    "The cell reception in this town is horrible."

    "I have Theo's number on speed dial, for the kids. Let me call."

    "Look at Georgia and the girls. It looks like they were playing Twister and fell."

    "Hello, Theo. This is Jane down at BULGES. Yes, well, I just glanced out the window here and I noticed that there might be a problem over at the Thrifty-Mart. Well, I don't want to meddle, but let's just say that a certain contractor just hit one of the Salvation Army Santas with a bag of ice. Well, I'll look for your car, then." She flipped the phone shut. "He's on his way."
    * * *
    Theophilus Crowe's mobile phone played eight bars of "Tangled Up in Blue" in an irritating electronic voice that sounded like a choir of suffering houseflies, or Jiminy Cricket huffing helium, or, well, you know, Bob Dylan – anyway, by the time he got the device open, five people in the produce section of the Thrifty-Mart were giving him the hairy eyeball hard enough to wilt the arugula right there in his cart. He grinned as if to say, Sorry, I hate these things, too, but what aw you gonna do? then he answered, "Constable Crowe," just to remind everyone that he wasn't dickmg around here, he was THE LAW.
    "In the parking lot of the Thrifty-Mart? Okay, I'll be right there "

    Wow, this was convenient. One thing about being the resident lawman in a town of only five thousand people – you were never far from the trouble. Theo parked his cart on the end of the aisle and loped by the registers and out the automatic doors to the parking lot (He was a denim- and flannel-clad praying mantis of a man, six-six, one-eighty, and he only had three speeds, amble, lope, and still). Outside he found Lena Marquez doubled over and gasping for breath. Her ex-husband, Dale Pearson, was stepping into his four-wheel-drive pickup.

    "Right there, Dale. Wait," Theo said

    Theo ascertained that Lena had only had the wind knocked out of her and was going to be okay, then addressed the stocky contractor, who had paused with one boot on the running board, as if he'd be on his way as soon as the hot air cleared out of the truck.

    "What happened here?"

    "The crazy bitch hit me with that bell of hers."

    "Did not," gasped Lena

    "I got a report you hit her with a bag of ice, Dale. That's assault."

    Dale Pearson looked around quickly and spotted the crowd of women gathered by the window over at the gym. They all looked away, heading for the various machines they had been on when the debacle unfolded. "Ask them. They'll tell you she had that bell right upside my head. I just reacted out of self-defense."

    "He said he'd donate when he came out of the store, then he didn't," Lena said, her breath coming back. "There's an implied contract there. He violated it. And I didn't hit him."

    "She's a fucking nutcase." Dale said it like he was declaring water wet – like it was just understood.

    Theo looked from one of them to the other. He'd dealt with these two before, but thought it had all come to rest when they'd