Greeting from the Author: Hi ya all. Trouble at Christmas is a mystery novella, not a full book but a nice little story of suspense. If you like it, "like it". If you like to read more, buy my full size Paul Trouble novel "Troubleshooter" (Available on Amazon and all most other eTailers) which plays right before our Christmas story starts. Enjoy the story, kind regards, Alex Ames
Chapter 1 - The Trouble Ranch
Two days before Christmas. Paul’s rental car navigation system guided him through the snow-covered landscape toward Welcome, Montana. Even after twenty years of technological marvel, the shortcut via Telegraph Road hadn’t found its place into the digital domain. Paul smiled at this anachronism, made the right turn like so many times before and drove the last miles through rolling white hills. This was Trouble Ranch country, left and right, ahead and behind. Long-haired, brown Angus cattle stood patiently, scattered below an overcast sky, some moving their heads after the car but mostly re-chewing their lunches from the noon-feeding.
Then the car rolled over the peak of the last hill, and his heart made its usual skip as he overlooked the place where he had been born and raised. Trouble Ranch consisted of the main house, three smaller buildings for the staff, some stables for giving assisted births, two utility buildings that hosted central heating, machinery and a small workshop for the never-ending repairs of a forty-thousand acre, two-thousand pieces livestock farm.
Frank Trouble stepped out of the utilities building cleaning his big hands with an oily rag. He was followed by a small stocky man in jeans and a thick brown leather jacket.
Paul got out of the car. “Hi, Dad!”
“Son, good to see you.” Father and son hugged briefly; both were long past difficult and emotional ceremonies. “Shelly has reminded me about one million times that you hadn’t been home in two years.”
Frank Trouble was a fifth-generation rancher in a family string that reached back until the first white man’s settlements in Montana—of which, Welcome was the second. And, to Frank Trouble’s regret, he probably would be the last one. In his prime, Frank had been a big man, a John Wayne prototype, Stetson and all. Paul hadn’t inherited all of the size but most of the physical energy. At sixty-five years, Frank’s hair had turned grey and thin and he couldn’t lift calves anymore. A push of adult diabetes had forced him to change some habits and delegate many of the daily ranch operational management to the ranchhand Cody, but authority was still in him.
“Still not a fireman in Brooklyn?” Paul greeted Cody O’Leary, Frank’s stocky second in command.
“There is still time, later,” Cody’s standard reply to Paul’s standard greeting. The men shook hands, then Cody pulled Paul close for a brief friendly hug.
“Let’s get your stuff into the house. Shelly has prepared lunch to feed a whole division. She is still afraid that you starve to death out there.”
Paul smiled, retrieved his luggage from the trunk, and carried it after his father into the house. The sights and smells were unchanged from his memories. The left side of the ranch house held the Troubles’ private quarters while the right side had the kitchen and the dining room for the staff. The cowboys and stablehands could enter through the side door and the perfunctory tiled floor made cleaning easy. When Paul entered the hall, two shepherd dogs with alert eyes and hesitant tails greeted him. They could smell the genetic resemblance to their master, but Paul wasn’t around enough to identify him as part of the family. Paul let them sniff his hands until they were satisfied and then he greeted Shelly, the housekeeper. Shelly was a little older than Frank Trouble, close to seventy. She had run the house since the day Paul’s mother had died of cancer almost twenty-five years ago.
