Tommy's Mom

by Linda O. Johnston

  “I’ll take those.”

  Edie had risen. Now, she stood just inside the door. She was small, far from filling the doorframe. But she looked as threatening as Sheldon had earlier. For she had pulled a gun from the tote bag she had brought. A large and lethal-looking gun. She aimed it toward them.

  “What the hell?” Gabe demanded, rising to his feet.

  “Sit down, Chief,” Edie demanded, pointing the gun at his head. His large hands in the air, Gabe complied with a furious scowl. “Now, very gently, Holly, I want you to give me those papers.”

  “I don’t understand,” Holly said, making no move to comply.

  “You don’t need to,” Edie said.

  “You were in on the extortion scheme with Sheldon, weren’t you?” Gabe asked. He had put his hands down on the table. He sounded so matter-of-fact that Holly could have screamed—if it wouldn’t get one of them shot.

  She couldn’t bear it if Tommy were hurt.

  Or Evangeline.

  And certainly not Gabe.

  “It doesn’t matter now,” Edie said.

  “But I’d like to know,” Gabe persisted. “I’d imagine your plan is to kill us all anyway, so at least grant me that.”

  Holly’s dear friend suddenly looked more like a fiend from the fires of deepest hell than a pixie. She was sneering.

  “All right. Why not? I was having an affair with Mal Kensington when he and I came up with a way to make money we could use to escape this crummy little town. For it to work, we needed help from some patrol cops. After all, who ever heard of a protection scheme without someone to do the protection? I enlisted Sheldon by doing a little seduction number on him, too, so he’d get his fellow shop owners to cooperate.”

  “Interesting triangle,” Gabe said. “Mal and Sheldon and you. I’ll bet that didn’t last long.”

  “You’d win that bet. Problem was, cops are a bunch of prima donnas. First, Mal got nervous and out of control. Good thing Sheldon has a heart problem. We just had to give Mal a good dose of Sheldon’s digitalis, and he had a little ‘heart attack’ of his own. Then we paid off his family not to ask questions. They knew about Mal’s affair and his wife just wanted out anyway. She had no problem with a quick cremation and a new life.”

  “And Thomas?” Holly asked, feeling as if the world had tipped upside down on its axis. Edie, her friend, was a thief and a murderer. “Did you have an affair with him, too?” She felt Gabe’s eyes on her. She’d had to ask. Maybe she hadn’t felt that close to Thomas, but could she bear it if he’d been having an affair with her best friend?

  “Not that one,” Edie scoffed, leaning on the doorframe. “He was just in it for the money. Only after dear Mayor Sevvers got suspicious and brought her nephew here to investigate Mal’s death, Thomas got a little nervous. He decided to sell out the rest of us to save his own skinny little butt.” She nodded toward the papers Holly was holding. “He got all that together, then came to Sheldon that morning, who figured Thomas was trying to do his own little extortion game on all the rest of us. The man said he’d used a code, but he had us and our roles listed for whoever could crack it. I assumed you hadn’t figured it out yet or there would be a lot more heat on Sheldon and me, but I thought Thomas left the papers with you for his own protection. I never imagined they were in Sheldon’s possession this whole time, and I’m sure he didn’t, either. And I don’t think Sheldon meant to stab Thomas, but the letter opener was handy, Sheldon got mad, and there it was.”

  “What about the other cops involved?” Gabe demanded.

  Edie shrugged. “We didn’t need help before, though Thomas cozied up to Dolph Hilo and Bruce Franklin since they seemed to suspect what was going on. But with Thomas, and now Al, gone, we’d decided to start discussions with them about cutting them in. It would have ensured their silence, if they’d gone along. Or even if they didn’t, we’d have made sure they didn’t tell anyone….” Her grin was evil, anything but the sexy or pixielike expressions Holly was used to.

  Wasn’t anyone who she’d thought they were?

  Edie looked at Holly again. “Now, hand the papers to me.”

  Holly shrugged, hoping she appeared a lot braver than she felt. “Come and get them. You’re going to kill us all anyway.” She looked Edie in the eye. “Sheldon is in custody. You’re already sunk.”

  “Not if there’s no evidence to link me to what happened. It’ll only be his word against mine.”

  “Can you shoot us all?” Holly asked. “I doubt it. I mean, do you really think you can point a gun at a child and see him die?” Please, Lord, let her not be able to, Holly prayed.

  For a moment, Edie looked confused. That was enough for Gabe to roll onto the floor and grab her legs, tackling her. At the same time, he grabbed her arm. The gun went off, but he already had it pointing toward the floor.

  “Damn you!” Edie growled, struggling in Gabe’s grip.

  “No,” he said cheerfully as he pulled her arms behind her back, “I think you’re the one who’s damned here.” He looked up at Holly and winked. “We’re beginning to make a good team,” he told her.

  IT’S ALL OVER, Holly thought the next afternoon while Tommy napped. She was in her workroom, finishing the alterations to the costumes for the play. Her mind swirled like honey in a blender as the hum of her sewing machine filled the air.

  According to Evangeline, the show must go on—this one, without one of its major cast members: Sheldon Sperling.

  Gabe had called earlier. Sheldon and Edie were spending a lot of energy accusing one another of being the mastermind and murderer-in-chief.

  Edie had been the one to break into Holly’s house searching for Thomas’s missing papers. She’d also tampered with Holly’s tires when Holly had been parked in an isolated area near Tommy’s doctor. According to her, that had been a spontaneous act to warn Holly to cooperate.

  The bloody doll had been Sheldon’s brainstorm. So had implicating Edie by putting her return address on its package, to make sure no one suspected her.

  He had made the threatening calls to Holly. He had shooed little Tommy into the back room of his store where he’d seen the monster mask. As with the doll, he’d wanted to keep Tommy scared and off balance so he wouldn’t talk. That way, Sheldon wouldn’t have to kill the child.

  He had killed Al, though, the night before when his cold feet led him to threaten to expose them all. And Sheldon, of course, had been the one to murder Thomas.

  They’d both been equally involved with disposing of Mal Kensington.

  The missing papers that had been in Sheldon’s shop the entire time had been put together by Thomas before he died, because he’d wanted out. They contained a list of all the shops along Pacific Way, their owners, who contacted them for payoffs, and how many complied. The perpetrators’ names were in code, but Jimmy Hernandez had quickly cracked it.

  Evangeline Sevvers was not among the perpetrators listed. She was exonerated. She had only tried to get Gabe off the Kensington investigation because her life, and his, had been anonymously threatened.

  Edie was implicated, though. Like Sheldon’s, her name appeared frequently on the list, in code, as having contacted shop owners for money.

  The scheme hadn’t stopped with the death of Mal Kensington and Thomas. Al Sharp had been peripherally part of it, and he’d been asked to become more involved. He had cooperated, but only to a point. And he had been murdered.

  The roles of Dolph Hilo and Bruce Franklin were not clear yet, but Gabe believed they’d known what was going on. They might even have been contacted to take part—especially once the letter opener that killed Thomas was planted on Al, who’d gotten very nervous. Al’s role in the ongoing scheme had been limited from then on. He’d known it. That was why he had gone to Gabe. So far, he was the only cop besides Thomas whom the evidence implicated directly.

  The shop owners hadn’t been told that no police were involved any longer. The scheme had taken on a life of its own. Until they had stopped it�
��Holly and Evangeline and Tommy…and Gabe.

  The media had been informed. Evangeline was effusive in her praise of her police chief nephew and astonishingly grateful to Holly and her brave little boy. A bigger political career was definitely in her future, Holly thought wryly. But that didn’t keep her from continuing to be the consummate businesswoman. She had told Holly she was considering buying Artisans from Sheldon if he would or could sell. If not, she would start her own crafts boutique in the area. Holly would still have someplace to sell her work, thank heavens.

  And Evangeline had even suggested that Holly might want to manage it, too, for a small salary and a share of the business.

  She hadn’t given Evangeline an answer yet, but the idea excited Holly. Tommy was nearly ready for preschool, and she could fix up an area where she could supervise him when he was around. And when the shop wasn’t busy, she could work on her creations, too.

  The phone rang. “Hello?” Holly said. At least she would never again have to fear the threatening calls.

  “Holly, it’s Gabe. Look, I wanted to stop by tonight. I know you’re not in danger any longer, but I wanted to talk to you. The thing is, the details on this case have me tied up, and there have been a couple of armed robberies in a residential neighborhood that I need to look into. I may not make it by there tonight, but we need to talk as soon as I can break away.”

  Yes, Holly thought. We need to say goodbye to one another.

  Gabe was doing just as he should. His duty.

  He had put his job before anything else. Before Tommy and her. She understood, for that was who he was. He had taken on the job of chief of police, and he was a really good one.

  The best cop she had ever met.

  But she had to let him go. For his sake as well as her own.

  With Thomas’s murder solved, the threats over, they had no need to stay involved with each other anymore.

  She cared for him. She loved him. But it was over. And so she said the thing she knew would keep him from feeling he had to come by and explain.

  “It’s all right, Gabe,” she said. “Whenever you get here will be fine. But I want you to know that, now that it’s all over, I want to put everything that happened behind me. I’m still mourning Thomas and who I thought he was. In a way, I always will. But some of my closest friends turned out to want to harm Tommy and me. Everything is topsy-turvy. Right now, I don’t want to have anything to do with any of them, or with you. I need to begin a new life, starting now.”

  The silence at the other end of the line was so loud in what it shouted to her that it nearly broke her eardrum. Had Gabe hung up?

  And then she heard him say, “Right. I understand. Have a good life, Holly. Bye.”

  When she heard the click signaling he had hung up, she began to cry.

  “WHERE’S GABE?” grumbled Tommy after they finished their dinner of soup and sandwiches. “I want to play ball.”

  Holly smiled sadly at her adorable, brave little son, who sat at the kitchen table across from her. She had taken him to the doctor that morning to have his wrists and ankles checked.

  She’d taken him to the psychologist, too, for a special appointment. He had been pronounced on the road to healing after his terrible ordeals. He was talking about them now, and that was a major step.

  But there was one hurdle they still had to leap over—and it was one that caused Holly’s heart to hurt as if she’d been flung from the heights of happiness into the bottomless pit of loneliness.

  Maybe she had been. But she had brought it on herself, for falling in love with another cop.

  “Gabe is very busy catching bad guys,” she explained to her son. “He’s still working on everything that happened last night, you know.”

  Tears flowed into his big, sad eyes. “Is Aunt Edie a bad guy?”

  Holly sucked in her breath. But she had to tell him the truth. “Yes, honey, I’m afraid she is.”

  “And Mr. Sperling, too. He’s a monster.” Tommy smiled at that, then jumped down from his seat at the table. His resiliency seemed boundless.

  Thank heavens, Holly thought.

  “But I want to play ball with Gabe.” Tommy stopped near the kitchen door, his small arms crossed, his expression adamant. “Now.”

  “Tommy, I told you—”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Gabe!” Tommy shouted and ran toward the entry.

  “Tommy, wait. Don’t open the door. It could be a stranger.”

  But when Holly got there and looked out the peephole, Gabe stood there. He was dressed in jeans and an orange Naranja Beach T-shirt that looked liked Tommy’s.

  Where was his suit? His gun?

  Holly’s mind did flip-flops as she opened the door. Why was he here? Did he have more questions to ask them about the case?

  She opened the door. “Hi,” she said. She didn’t move. Not a smidgen. For if she did, she was liable to fling herself into his arms, and that would undo everything she had said before.

  “May I come in?” he asked. He looked relaxed. His wide, masculine smile made the lower parts of her body ignite in recognition, but she reined in her inappropriate thoughts of desire.

  “Yeah,” Tommy said. “Come in. I was waiting for you to come and play ball with me, but Mommy said you were too busy.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, sport.” Without waiting for Holly’s okay, he swooped down and lifted Tommy into his arms, then filled her small entryway with his broad shoulders and commanding presence.

  How was she going to get through this? She’d already said her goodbyes. She didn’t want to have to do it again. In person.

  “Let’s go into the living room, okay?”

  Why ask me? Holly thought ungraciously. I only own this house. But she followed him down the hall.

  She expected him to sit on the reclining chair, remote from anyplace she could sit. Instead, he sat in the middle of the sofa. He kept Tommy on his lap.

  “Please, Holly, sit here.” He patted the soft beige pillows at his side.

  She glanced longingly at the upholstered chair at the other end of the coffee table, but she obeyed him. “Gabe,” she began, “I don’t want you to think—”

  “What I think, sport,” he said, addressing Tommy, “was that I made a mistake. I told your mommy that I was too busy to get here early tonight. I do have lots of work to do, you know.”

  Tommy nodded as if he recognized every bit of responsibility that rested on Gabe’s shoulders.

  “The thing is, there’s nothing more important than people we love. Do you know that?”

  Again Tommy nodded. “I love Mommy, and I love Daddy, but he’s dead. And I love you, Gabe.”

  Holly’s heart wrenched, as if Tommy had hugged it. Tears filled her eyes. She looked at her son. “Tommy, honey, Gabe isn’t—”

  “Gabe is,” the man of that name contradicted, as if he knew just what she was going to say. “Gabe is a person who loves a little boy named Tommy. And Gabe does understand that Tommy’s mother needs some space in her life and time to heal. She’s been through a lot. But Gabe is also a patient man. Gabe also loves Tommy’s mother. He’ll wait for as long as it takes for her to feel ready to test a new life. One with him in it.”

  His words were addressed to Tommy, but he was looking at Holly.

  Her breathing had ceased. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t respond.

  “In the meantime, I know what’s really important. My job is important, sure. I like being chief of police. But I love Tommy, and Tommy’s mother. Whenever they need me, I’ll be here. I have people in my department who can help me take care of the city, but I’m the one who wants to be here for you.”

  “Oh, Gabe!” Holly began breathing again in a rush. Her lips trembled so she couldn’t say any more.

  “So, Tommy,” Gabe said, looking at her son, “I want your permission to ask your mom to marry me. When she’s ready, of course. Is that okay with you?”

  “Will t
hat make you my daddy?” Tommy looked bewildered.

  “I won’t replace your real daddy, but I’ll be your new daddy. If it’s okay with you?”

  “Cool!” Tommy said and grinned.

  Gabe put him down on the floor, then stood and drew Holly into his arms.

  “And what about Tommy’s mother? I love you, Holly. I’m willing to take a chance on waiting for you, if you’re not ready yet. I know it’s on the rebound, and you want a new life, and—”

  Holly silenced him with a finger on his mouth. She cupped his strong and angular chin in her hand. His skin was rough with shadow and warm. He turned his head and kissed her palm.

  “I love you, Gabe.” She smiled. “Even if you are a cop. And I’m ready. Believe me, I’m ready.”

  “Then will you two marry me?” Gabe asked.

  “Yeah!” Tommy yelled up at them.

  “Yeah,” Holly said, and closed her eyes to await the ecstasy of his kiss and their future together.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-4301-9

  TOMMY’S MOM

  Copyright © 2002 by Linda O. Johnston

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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