The Great Christmas Caper: When Santa Left Socks

THE GREAT CHRISTMAS CAPER: When Santa Left Socks

The neighborhood where I worked was called Arcadia Groves. It was home to rich people, even richer people, and people so rich they had a butler for their butler.

Every December, the neighbors turned their houses into Christmas wonderlands. The lights and decorations made Santa’s workshop look about as impressive as a light-bulb sale at the hardware store. Every night, tour buses rolled through the streets. People pressed their faces to the windows, oohing and aahing at the sparkle.

But behind those twinkling lights and giant wreaths, someone was planning the biggest heist of the year. Me.

My name is Susy. I scrubbed toilets and polished chandeliers in Arcadia Groves for fifteen years. I knew every security code, every hidden key, and every family’s Christmas Eve routine. I watched spoiled kids open five-thousand-dollar drones while my own grandkids got socks. I knitted those socks myself, stitch by stitch, because I could not afford drones like that. This year, I decided Santa was going to send a little of that wealth my way.

THE PLAN

I spent weeks getting ready to do some holiday shopping of my own, from under the Christmas trees of a few Arcadia Groves families. I rented a real Santa suit, complete with leather boots and a beard. It cost more than my entire monthly grocery budget. I bought a velvet sack at a costume shop and sewed in two layers of canvas to make it stronger. Gold bars are heavier than they look in the movies, you know.

“You want this for a party?” the clerk asked.

“Something like that,” I said with a smile. “Let’s call it a gift exchange.”

I packed some beef jerky, too. Fifteen years of cleaning houses had taught me which houses had dogs, and which dogs could be bribed. That is, all of them. Dogs are not complicated.

It was supposed to snow on Christmas Eve. That was bad because my footprints would show. But it was also good because every police officer in the county would be busy pulling minivans out of ditches instead of looking for me.

At 11:47 p.m., I slipped into the Santa suit and checked myself in the mirror. The pillow stuffed under my belly made me look nice and jolly.

“Ho, ho, ho,” I said, lowering my voice. “Who’s been naughty?”

Me, I thought. Definitely me.

On my way out the door, I grabbed the basket of socks I had knitted for my grandkids. Three pairs of thick wool socks with fancy stitch patterns: one blue, one green, and one red with tiny reindeer on them. I planned to drop them off on my daughter’s porch on my way home. Even a master criminal has errands to run.

THE HEISTS

House #1: The Worthington’s

I let myself in through the Worthington’s’ back door with the key they had given me. The house was quiet except for the hum of their huge Sub-Zero refrigerator. I tiptoed past the kitchen, where a plate of cookies sat on the counter beside a gingerbread village. Not just a single gingerbread house, but an entire village. It probably cost more than my car payment.

“Show-off,” I whispered to the gingerbread mayor.

Under the tree sat a mountain of presents, wrapped in paper so thick you could shingle a roof with it. I read the tags by flashlight. “To Chad, from Santa.” That would be the iPad. “To Muffy, love Daddy.” That would be something sparkly. I reached for Chad’s box.

Tink!

I froze. My elbow bumped a crystal reindeer ornament. It swung from the very edge of a branch, then stopped. I let out a breath.

“Purl stitches,” I whispered. “That was close.”

Upstairs, the bedsprings creaked.

“Honey?” called Mr. Worthington. “Did you hear anything?”

“Probably just Santa,” his wife mumbled.

I held my breath, sweating buckets beneath my fake beard.

Thump!

Footsteps crossed the ceiling above me. Someone had gotten out of bed.

Thud, thud, thud.

Oh no. Was Mr. Worthington heading toward the stairs?

Gurgle. Sloosh. Thud, thud, thud.

Then everything went quiet. I let out a breath. Just a midnight bathroom break. The bedsprings creaked again as Mr. Worthington settled back into bed.

I reached for Chad’s iPad again, and that was when I saw a letter propped against the cookie plate. It was written in fat pencil letters:

Dear Santa, I left you some extra cookies. Please bring something nice for Miss Susy. She fixes my broken toys, knows where everything is, and never gets any presents. Love, Chad.

I stood there in the dark for a long time, holding a bag strong enough to carry gold bars.

“Oh, dear,” I whispered. “Now, why did you go and say all that?”

I set the iPad back under the tree, right where it had been, and laid a pair of my socks on the cookie plate. The blue ones were close enough to Chad’s size. I took two cookies for the road. Santa has his traditions, and there was no point letting them go to waste.

I slipped back out into the night.

House #2: The Van Der Biltzes

The Van Der Biltzes had just gotten a smart-home system and bragged about it on my last cleaning day. They had given me the door code themselves. How else would I get in to dust their expensive Monet painting?

I entered the code, and the little light blinked from red to green.

Jackpot. I practically skipped into their living room.

The gift tags read like a Tiffany’s window display. A brand-new gaming console. Something small and heavy that ticked like a watch. A little box tied with a BMW logo bow.

I gasped. “Son of a seed stitch! Are those car keys?” I reached for the little box.

Woof! Woof! Woof!

Uh-oh. Tank. I snatched my hand back.

The Van Der Biltzes’ French bulldog, who barked like a mean German shepherd, thundered down the stairs and charged in like a furry freight train.

Thankfully, I had done my homework. The beef jerky was already in my glove. I tossed it high. Tank caught it in midair and dropped into a happy, chewing heap.

“Santa loves you, too,” I whispered.

I went to check the stockings hanging on the mantel. Propped among them was a card, stamped, sealed, and ready to mail. The envelope read, “Susy Merriweather, our Christmas angel.”

My own name, in Mrs. Van Der Biltz’s own looping handwriting.

I stared at the envelope, then at the little ticking box, then back at the envelope. Mrs. Van Der Biltz called me their “Christmas angel.” Me, of all people. All I did was dust and mop for them. Sometimes I fixed the kids’ lunches. Once, I rushed their little girl to the emergency room after she tumbled off the bottom stair. I was nothing special, but for some reason they called me their angel.

I tucked the pair of green socks beside the card and gave Tank one more piece of jerky for keeping my secret. I left the little ticking box under the tree and let myself out.

House #3: The Pembrokes

This was the big one. The Pembrokes’ son, Elliot, collected old video games worth thousands of dollars. His game room put the Apple Store to shame.

I put the key in the lock but paused in the doorway. “What are you doing, Susy?” I muttered to myself. Was I really going to steal from these people? The worst thing they had ever done to me was ask me to drop off their dry cleaning on my way home. Maybe I would just look around first and see if there was something they wouldn’t miss.

I turned the key and slipped inside.

In the game room, just past the giant Christmas tree, I spotted two sealed video game consoles on a shelf, still in their boxes. Elliot didn’t have just one but two, both in perfect condition.

I reached for one. It wasn’t even a present. He had gotten it the year before for raising his math grade from a D-plus to a C-minus.

I was putting the console in my bag when I saw an envelope taped to the tree. Written on it in big capital letters was “SUSY.”

I set the console back on the shelf and peeled the envelope off the tree. Inside was a Christmas bonus check with so many zeros that I counted them three times.

My eyes burned with tears. There I stood, in a rented Santa suit, in the house of the people I had planned to rob, holding proof that they had been thinking of me all along.

The guilt landed heavier than any sack of gold bars. How could I possibly take this gift after what I had planned to do?

“I can’t,” I whispered.

I slipped the check back into its envelope and taped it back on the tree. Then I knelt down and left my last pair of socks under it. The red ones with the tiny reindeer. My best work. I would just have to tell my grandkids that Santa was short on socks this year.

As I backed away, my heel landed on the one squeaky floorboard I had been trying to avoid.

Creeeeak.

Every light in the house came on.

THE GETAWAY (THAT WASN’T)

Mr. and Mrs. Pembroke stood at the top of the stairs. Mr. Pembroke was gripping a golf club like a weapon. “Freeze!” he shouted. Then he squinted. “Santa?”

I put my hands up. My pillow stuffing had shifted, and my beard dangled off one ear. I dropped the sack. The two cookies from the Worthington’s’ house were probably nothing but crumbs by now.

“It’s not what it looks like!” I said.

“It looks like Santa is crying in our game room,” Mrs. Pembroke said.

“Okay, it’s exactly what it looks like.”

So, I told them everything. The suit. The sack with its double layer of canvas. My whole plan to clean out half of Arcadia Groves.

“That’s why I can’t take your check,” I said. “Not after what I came here to do. I didn’t think you people even noticed me, let alone cared.” I couldn’t look them in the eyes, so I stared down at my velvet bag, half glad it was empty and half embarrassed for bringing it at all.

Mrs. Pembroke came down the stairs and took my hands. “Noticed you? Susy, this house does not run without you. Half the neighborhood does not, either. Who do you think organized that bonus? The only thing Arcadia Groves has ever agreed on is you.”

“The check is yours,” said Mr. Pembroke. He set down the golf club, looking a little embarrassed himself.

That was when Mrs. Pembroke spotted the socks under the tree. She picked them up and turned them over in her hands. “What are these?”

“Socks,” I said. “I knit them. They were meant to be a gift for my grandkids. I guess they’re more like an apology now.”

“Apology accepted,” said Mr. Pembroke. “Tomorrow, you’re coming to Christmas dinner. Bring your grandkids. We have enough food to feed a whole tour bus.”

“You know,” Mrs. Pembroke said, still turning the red socks over in her hands, “my grandmother’s family in Iceland gave socks like these every Christmas. You give someone warm socks because it means you want to keep them cozy all winter. It’s not a small gift at all, Susy. It’s a tradition.”

I looked at the socks, then at the Pembrokes. “On one condition,” I said, finally finding my voice. “Nobody mentions the Santa suit.”

Mrs. Pembroke winked. “No promises.”

THE AFTERMATH

On Christmas morning, the strangest rumor spread through Arcadia Groves. Santa had visited three houses, taken nothing but cookies, and left hand-knitted socks behind.

The Worthington’s told me that Chad wore his blue pair to breakfast on Christmas morning and announced he wasn’t taking them off until Easter. Tank, the Van Der Biltzes’ French bulldog, claimed the green pair, they said, and buried one sock in the yard.

At the Pembrokes’ Christmas dinner, my grandkids each ate three desserts while Mr. Pembroke stood at the head of the table to tell the story properly.

“So, there’s this Santa,” he announced to everyone in the room, “standing right there in our game room, holding a bag built for gold bars, crying over a check. Best Christmas Eve this house has ever had.”

By New Year’s, everybody in Arcadia Groves wanted a pair of my socks. I could not knit them fast enough.

As for me, I learned three things that Christmas Eve. First, being Santa is way more exhausting than it looks. Second, everybody’s got a heart in there somewhere, no matter how much money they have. And third, giving turned out to be far more rewarding than taking ever could have been.

Sometimes you just must break into three houses after midnight to find that out.

Just kidding. Don’t do that.

The End