Mrs. Claus unlocked the door to Aardvark Detective Services and put her bag down to open the door. In her other had was a bag with her tightly-wrapped Chicken Tikka Masala burrito from their neighbor Viva India!, who specialized in Indian/Mexican fusion street food. They had become so popular that there was a line out the door every day at lunch. She knew them well enough, though, that she just texted the owner with her lunch order and it was ready for her to pick up on the way to the office.
The Aardvark office was on San Pablo Avenue well away from the university and in the heart of West Berkeley. She loved the area as it had an eclectic mix of businesses including their own as well as a range of interesting concepts from a vegan donut place to a Nordic marketplace.
Mrs. Claus had decided to come into the office to read their mail and see if there was anything that required a response. She loathed working on Aardvark business at home and hadn’t been in the office for about a week and was resigned to a day with junk mail and the odd bill.
She removed the business laptop from their safe, plugged it into its power supply and started it up. While she waited she went through their snail mail and exchanged bites on her burrito with shredding the letters she didn’t need to answer.
When she was done with lunch the computer had long been ready and she opened the e-mail program. She sorted through the various mails and moved them into one of three sub-folders- urgent, medium and WOB (waste of bandwidth).
She found their utility bill and put that into the urgent folder and almost everything else went into the WOB folder. When she was near the bottom of the unread mails one sender jumped out at her. It was from MrClaus24or25, which was Mr. Claus’s Twitter handle. Or at least it was until he took a hiatus from the platform in the recent shakeup and change of ownership. She wasn’t sure what to make of it but was suspicious and expected it to be about browsing habits and paying into a bitcoin account to keep things quiet. But it was not.
Dear Mrs. Claus,
In an effort to stem the infiltration of capitalism and greed into what should be a celebration of the beauty of winter I have taken your husband hostage.
Sincerely,
Cailleach
She immediately picked up her phone and texted Leroy and William.
Mrs. Claus: He’s been kidnapped
William: Again?
Leroy: Damn!
William: I’ll be there ASAP
Leroy: Can you get me one of them burritos? I’ll be there in 30
Mrs. Claus: He’s been kidnapped and you’re worried about food?
Leroy: They’re good and I am hungry. What can I say?
William: Make that two
Mrs. Claus: Alright boys but hurry up
Leroy: Yes, ma’am
William: Gracias. See you pronto
