The year 1923 is whirling to a close for the Discreet Retrieval Agency. Business is brisk. There’s just something about Christmas carols tootling over radio sets, glittering shop displays, and clanging Salvation Army bells—not to mention all the sooty slush—that has got New Yorkers hellbent on crime.

Take today, for instance.

9:05 a.m. My detecting partner, Berta Lundgren, and I retrieve a holly wreath stolen from the door of Dove White Launderette. The case is a cinch—we locate the wreath, with only a few berries missing, nailed to the door of a tobacconist’s shop around the block. Berta strong-arms the shopkeeper into a tearful confession by bluffing that she photographed him red-handed.

9:42 a.m. The proprietress of Dove White Launderette pays us with the promise of two free loads of starched whites.

10:00 a.m. At our agency headquarters (otherwise known as the kitchen in our poky walk-up apartment), we take a few telephone calls and go through notes for cases involving two lost parcels, a stolen heart (that one’s a doozy), and a missing gingerbread recipe. We hope the gingerbread case will involve taste-testing. Then it’s time to take the subway uptown.

11:17 a.m. December is prime shoplifting season for Wright’s Department Store on Fifth Avenue. So, they hire lots of undercover gumshoes—including Berta and me—to prowl the premises in search of thieves. Berta is required to dress as an elf. My job is pretending to be a shopper, loaded down with bags and parcels, because the head store detective says I have “that dizzy look.” Just because a girl adores Maybelline cake mascara doesn’t mean she’s dizzy, and I almost tell the gink as much, but before I do, Berta stomps on my toe. I wince. But she’s right. We need the extra dough for Christmas gifts.

12:00 noon. Lunch consists of putty-colored roast beef and gravy in the store cafeteria. Berta says we would dine better in a Bulgarian work camp. To her extreme annoyance, the bell on her hat jingles as she speaks. I notice Santa Claus gazing at her with interest as he chews his lunch.

1:35 p.m. The crowds are thickening. I catch and release a pimpled young thief pocketing silk scarves.

3:12 p.m. I glimpse Berta sitting upon Santa Claus’s lap as he ho-hohos. She must’ve let him sample one of the cookies in her handbag.

4:21 p.m. My feet ache inside my three inch-high pumps. Still, I manage to chase down and collar—literally—a woman making off with a sable stole from the third floor fur salon. The store detective begrudgingly congratulates me as the police paddy wagon rolls away.

7:07 p.m. My Wright’s shift is over and I step out the revolving doors onto the sidewalk to await Berta in the fresh air. She is making plans to meet Santa Claus later at a speakeasy.

Feathery snowflakes stream down from a purple-black sky. A Salvation Army girl in red rings her bell rhythmically. And who should emerge from the stream of pedestrians, looking dashing in a fedora and overcoat?

My gentleman caller and maddening distraction. Ralph Oliver, private eye.

“Hiya, kid,” he says with the lopsided smile that makes my knees behave like bowls of vanilla custard. “How’s tricks?”

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“I got a call for a job in Chicago—”

“What? But it’s almost Christmas!” I had been indulging in fantasies that began with me serving perfectly browned roast fowl of indeterminate species (never mind that I can’t cook), and which ended with fascinating occurrences under the mistletoe. “Ralph, this was to be our first Christmas together.”

“I’ll be back by then. Maybe.”

“But—”

“Fact is, I’ve got a train to catch out of Grand Central tonight, so I met you here to take you out to dinner before I go. What sounds good? The grill? Your favorite Italian joint?”

Cake. I require cake the way locomotive engines require coal. “The Automat,” I say.

“Automat?” someone says with a Swedish accent. Berta pulls up beside me with her own felt hat clamped on and her big black handbag held in front of her like a bumper. “I am so very hungry. Oh, these infernal bells everywhere I go!” She shoots the Salvation Army girl a glare.

“The Automat it is.” Ralph grins. “Cake’s on me.”

He knows me so well. I loop my arm through his. He tosses a quarter into the Salvation Army kettle and the three of us—Ralph, Berta, and I—make our way up the bustling, snow-sugared sidewalk.

Lola Woodby’s next detecting adventure picks up just after this one in Naughty On Ice (Discreet Retrieval Agency #4).

Naughty on Ice is the latest in Maia Chance’s dazzlingly fun Prohibition-era caper series featuring society matron Lola Woodby and her stalwart Swedish cook, Berta.

The Discreet Retrieval Agency is doing a brisk holiday business of retrieving lost parcels, grandmas, and stolen wreaths. But with their main squeezes Ralph and Jimmy once more on the back burner, both Lola and Berta pine for a holiday out of New York City. So when they receive a mysterious Christmas card requesting that they retrieve an antique ring at a family gathering in Maple Hill, Vermont, they jump at the chance. Sure, the card is signed Anonymous and it’s vaguely threatening, but it’s Vermont.

In Maple Hill, several estranged members of the wealthy Goddard family gather. And no sooner do Lola and Berta recover the ring―from Great-Aunt Cressida Goddard’s arthritic finger―than Mrs. Goddard goes toes-up, poisoned by her Negroni cocktail on ice. When the police arrive, Lola and Berta are caught-red-handed with the ring, and it becomes clear that they were in fact hired not for their cracker-jack retrieving abilities, but to be scapegoats for murder.

With no choice but to unmask the killer or be thrown in the slammer, Lola and Berta’s investigations lead them deep into the secrets of Maple Hill. In a breathless pursuit along a snowy ridge, with a lovelorn Norwegian ski instructor and country bumpkin hooch smugglers hot on their heels, Lola and Berta must find out once and for all who’s nice. . .and who’s naughty.

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About the author
Maia Chance is the national bestselling author of ten mysteries. When she isn’t writing she is waiting hand and foot on her darling children, flinging tennis balls for her Labrador-Aussie mix, drooling over kitchens on Pinterest, and, okay, indulging in vintage cocktails. She lives on Vashon Island, Washington. Please visit her at maiachance.com.

All comments are welcomed.