Disclaimer: I don't own anything here. I make no money from. well, almost anything, but most particularly this story.

Author's Notes: I've gotta get some Kibbles and ds_flashfiction. Written for the Miracles challenge.

Story Notes:

"You know what this reminds me of, son?"

Benton Fraser replied over his shoulder without thinking of his surroundings -- a habit he repeatedly told himself to break -- "The Miracle of '73. I thought of it too."

"Thought of what, Fraser?" Ray, it appeared, was sufficiently used to his spontaneous non sequiturs simply to pretend they were natural -- one of many traits that puzzled Benton.

"That the missing woman may be perfectly safe. There's no way to know that any ill has come to her."

"No way? Well, gosh, Fraser, let's review the evidence, shall we?" Ray held up his hand between them, counting points on his fingers without ever taking his eyes off the road. "One, she was dating a known mafioso. Two, this mafioso's brother turned up in the lake a week ago with a threat pinned to his body. Three, she was last seen in a restaurant belonging to said mafioso's rival. What are you thinking, Frase, she ascended bodily into heaven?"

Benton had a brief image of the woman in question, a petite woman with short red hair, floating up out of her wheelchair and being tugged upwards. "That seems unlikely. However, de Rossi's rivals have in the past confined their threats to people directly involved in his operation, and in fact pride themselves on leaving innocent bystanders out of their disputes."

"Yeah, so? They're the bad guys, they--"

Bob Fraser took this opportunity to start up again. "Buck Frobisher had a family matter to attend to, so we both took leave. I was at your grandparents'--"

"For the first time in over a year, as I recall--" Benton muttered quietly enough not to interrupt Ray's speech.

"Quiet, son. It was a warm spring. There were highs in the twenties--"

Benton sighed "Fahrenheit or Celsius?"

"I'll tell you something, Benton. Once you're dead, you don't have to go metric anymore. It's one of the blessings. Now where was I?"

Ray's voice continued unheeded in the background: "--chucking pancakes onto a Tilt-a-Whirl--"

"Ah yes. A woman's wallet turned up in a snowdrift, with money but no identification. No one in town knew whose it was."

"I do know the story, Dad." But Benton found himself ignored, as usual.

"--all in all, you know, a good thing I already knew I wasn't straight, cause the whole circus clown thing was weird enough--"

"We quickly mobilized the town. Search parties went out every night. Bulletins were sent over the wire. I myself accosted several local ne'er-do-wells and intimidated them, trying to get information."

"--and anyway, penguin fishbone jammarammadingdong; come right down to it, Fraser, I like boys pretty well, wonder if you like boys, probably not, bow tie half-nelson Pontiac--"

"'It'll go poorly for you,' I said, 'if you don't tell us what you know.' But nothing. For days this went on."

Benton realized the car had come to a halt in front of Erin James's house and Ray was looking at him expectantly.

"I'm sorry, Ray, my mind wandered." He got out of the car, quite pointedly closing the door on his father.

They were barely halfway up the walk when Mrs. James burst out the front door, waving excitedly. "Oh, Mister Detective! It's all okay! She's back!"

And indeed, Erin St. James was sitting quite comfortably in her living room, the victim only of her mother's bad memory.

"So you weren't kidnapped?" Ray asked with a furrowed brow.

She rolled her eyes. "No. I went away with my boyfriend for the weekend. I told Ma I was going."

"Wait-wait-wait. You went away with de Rossi? But he was here all weekend. His bodyguard got in a fight and he came to bail him out."

"Uh... no, he was in Wisconsin with me. What bodyguard? What are you talking about?"

Fraser spoke before Ray could. "Ms. James, do you have a picture of Mr. de Rossi?"

"Yeah, sure," she said, "right on the mantle, there."

On the mantle stood a photo of Erin James, with a young man sitting on the floor next to her chair. The young man, while clearly of Italian ancestry, lacked the distinctive nose and the fashion sense of the de Rossi crime family.

Ray seemed at a loss. "Oh. Huh. That guy's your boyfriend?" She nodded. "And you weren't kidnapped?" A head shake. "So, uh... there really wasn't any crime?"

"Exactly."

After that it was merely a manner of extricating themselves from Mrs. James's apologies and congratulating Ms. James on her engagement, and they were headed back to the station for the paperwork necessary to declare this case not a case at all. Ray was mumbling about the need for a crazy duck chase stamp as Bob took up his story.

"A week later, Jenny de Rossi from the hotel came into the station to speak with me. Apparently, a young woman had called saying she had bought a new wallet while in Inuvik and so only noticed upon returning home that her old wallet was missing." Bob shook his head in remembrance. "Had not a thing to do with anything. Total coincidence. I kept that case in the back of my mind all my life, but nothing ever came of it. Never thought I'd see the day."

But Benton was no longer paying attention to his father. "Ray? Did you say something about a Tilt-a-Whirl earlier?"

Ray looked at him, startled. "Jeez, miracles do happen, huh?"

From the backseat came his father's voice. "Now what was the woman's name? Something English-sounding. Charles, maybe."

Benton shook his head. "I prefer not to call them miracles, Ray. Most things can be explained by the laws of probability. Now tell me about the circus clown."

End Miracle of 76 by Hel Virago: lorelei_fic@hotmail.com

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