Christmas Lone-Star Style

by Linda Turner

  The morning dawned clear, bright and cold. A brisk wind still blew out of the north, but the clouds were gone and the only sign of last night’s storm was the puddles in the street. Becky didn’t appear to remember her little walk in the garden the night before. As perky as she usually was in the morning, she chatted happily all the way to school about the field trip her class was taking to the zoo later in the week.

  Jealous, Robby snorted disdainfully as Phoebe pulled up before the front door of the elementary school. “The zoo’s for babies. There’s nothing there but a bunch of dumb old animals, anyway.”

  Biting back a grin, Phoebe put the transmission in park and turned to face him with a pretended frown of disappointment. “Well, darn! That’s too bad. Grandma Louise told me she was going to send you some mad money you could spend anyway you wanted. I thought maybe you might want to spend it at the zoo and park. You were the one who said you wanted to ride the ponies in the park, weren’t you?”

  That got his attention. His eyes as big as saucers, he gasped, “You mean it, Aunt Phoebe? Really?”

  “Well, of course I mean it.” She laughed. “Of course, if you think the zoo’s for babies—”

  “No. No! I want to go!” Launching himself at her, he gave her a fierce hug, then turned and scrambled out of the car.

  Rolling her eyes like a woman three times her age, Becky said, “How come boys are so goofy, Aunt Phoebe?”

  “I don’t know, honey,” she admitted, laughing. “When I figure that one out, we’ll both have it made in the shade.”

  Twenty minutes later, Phoebe arrived at work, still chuckling over the incident. Her smile, however, faded the second she stepped through the doors of Wainwright Pharmaceutical. She’d worked there for three years, and she had to admit that she was treated fairly enough. Oh, she could have used a raise, but couldn’t everyone? No, she had no complaints about Wainwright. As a secretary to one of the vice presidents, she knew she had it better than most. It just wasn’t what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. She wanted to be a writer, and somehow taking dictation wasn’t the same thing.

  Greeting Larry, the guard at the gate, she headed upstairs to her office and dreamed of the day she could walk in and give her notice. For all she knew, it could be as early as tomorrow. She’d written some children’s stories for the family, but it was in mysteries that she planned to leave her mark on the literary world. She’d already written one, which was currently circulating through the different publishing houses in New York, and she had every reason to believe that it would eventually sell. It had been rejected by two of the top mystery publishers in the business, but she was far from discouraged. She’d received very nice letters from the editors who had read the manuscript, and they’d both been very encouraging. So she’d sent it to a third publisher, then started writing a second manuscript. It was, she knew, only a matter of time, before all her hard work paid off.

  In the meantime, though, she still had a job to do, and she did thank God for it, especially now that the kids had come to live with her. Like most people in their early thirties, her brother and his wife had never thought that they would die so young, so he and Karen had only had the most basic of insurance policies. After their funeral and bills were paid, there was nothing left for the kids. If she hadn’t had a decent-paying job, Phoebe knew she still would have found a way to take them, but things would have been much rougher than they were.

  She’d just hung up her jacket when her boss, Ned Grisham, stepped into the open doorway that connected their two offices. A man of average height with a plain, good-natured face, he was usually smiling. But not this morning. His normally ruddy complexion was gray, the look in his eyes more than a little lost.

  Alarmed, she stepped toward him. “Mr. Grisham, what’s wrong? Are you sick? Here...sit down while I call the nurse—”

  “No!” Taking the phone from her, he hung it back up. “I’m all right,” he assured her when she frowned at him searchingly. “Really. I’m not going to drop dead at your feet or anything like that. I’ve just had something of a shock.”

  “What kind of shock? Is it Janice? Has something happened to her?”

  At the mention of his wife, he gave her a sad, defeated smile that scared her to death. During the three years she’d worked for him, she’d never seen such a look on his face. “No, it’s not Janice or the kids or anything at home. Please...come into my office and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Bewildered, her heart pounding with a dread she couldn’t explain, she followed him into his spacious office and dutifully took a seat in one of the two chairs angled in front of his desk. She expected him to take his own chair, but he moved restlessly to the window, where he stared blindly out and seemed to totally forget that she was even in the room.

  If Phoebe needed any further evidence that something was horribly wrong, she got it when he finally turned to face her and she saw the tears in his eyes. Alarmed, she moved to his side, her own eyes stinging in sympathy. “Please tell me what’s wrong, Ned,” she pleaded. “I can’t help if I don’t know what the problem is.”

  “I started working here right out of college,” he said simply, “and never wanted to go anywhere else. Oh, I know I probably could have made more money somewhere else, but I never did like the idea of jumping from job to job in search of the almighty dollar. The working conditions were great, the salary was acceptable, and I was content to stay put and work toward retirement.”

  Shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe his own stupidity, he laughed without humor. “It never entered my head that I might not get to stick around that long.”

  Startled, Phoebe gasped, “Are you saying you’ve been fired?”

  “Not just me,” he said grimly. “There was a board meeting last night, and it was decided to terminate all the vice presidents.”

  “All of them?”

  He nodded. “Letters were waiting for each of us on our desks this morning. We didn’t even get it from the big guy himself.”

  “Oh, Ned, I’m so sorry! No wonder you’re so upset! Have you told Janice yet?”

  “I called her right after I read the damn letter. It was, needless to say,” he added with a wry grimace, “not the kind of surprise she expected on her birthday.”

  “Her birthday! Oh, she must be devastated.” Her heart breaking for both of them, she wished there was something she could say to make the hurt less, but there wasn’t. “I don’t understand how Mr. Wainwright can justify this,” she said, frowning in confusion. “I know the company’s downsizing, but you don’t get rid of your best employees just to improve the bottom line. Not if you want to have any kind of decent business left. Maybe if you talked to him—”

  “Talking won’t do any good. The board’s made its decision, and we’re stuck with it. That includes you, Phoebe.” At her blank look, he said gently, “If there are no vice presidents, then there are no secretaries to vice presidents. I’m sorry, but it looks like we’ve both been eliminated.”

  Stunned, she didn’t remember moving, didn’t remember reaching for her chair. Suddenly she was sitting again in front of his desk and had no idea how she’d gotten there. She stared up at him in shock. “You’re firing me?”

  He winced, then nodded, his mouth pressed flat into an angry white line. “Believe me, I didn’t have any choice in the matter. There isn’t a man on the board who had the guts to look you and the other secretaries in the eye and tell you that you got caught in the fallout, so I had to be the one to do it. Spineless cowards,” he muttered bitterly. “I don’t know how they sleep nights.”

  Feeling like she’d just been flattened by an eighteen-wheeler that came out of nowhere, Phoebe hardly heard him. Fired. How could she be fired? She was a responsible, dependable employee who never even took a sick day unless she was almost dead. Over the course of the three years she’d worked there she’d only been late once, and that was just last week, when she had to enroll the kids in school—

  Her
thoughts ground to a halt at that, horror curling sickeningly into her stomach. The kids! They looked to her to protect them, to provide for them, to keep them safe and warm and out of harm’s way. And now, not only did she not have a home for them, she didn’t have a job. Dear God, what was she going to do?

  “Phoebe? Are you all right?”

  If she hadn’t been so sick at heart, she would have laughed. All right? She was homeless, jobless, and closer to hopelessness than she’d ever been in her life. And it scared her to death. She wasn’t a person who lost faith. Even when her brother and his wife were killed, she’d managed to take comfort in the thought that God, in his infinite wisdom, found it fitting to take together two people who loved each other so much. But this...this made no sense. There was no silver lining, no rhyme or reason, no explanation for the run of bad luck she’d had over the course of the last week and a half.

  If she’d been the self-centered type, she would have asked Why me? and never given a thought to the fact that she wasn’t in this mess alone. But that wasn’t her nature, and she only had to see the disillusionment in Ned’s eyes to know that the change in their circumstances had hit him every bit as hard as it had her.

  For both their sakes, she pasted on a smile and determinedly squared her shoulders. “Well, I can’t say I feel like dancing a jig or anything,” she replied in a weak attempt at humor, “but I was looking for a job the first time I came in here. I guess it’s only fitting that I’ll be looking for one when I walk out for the last time. I suppose the firing’s effective immediately.”

  “Actually, it’s not,” he said, surprising her. “I think the board was afraid of bad press so they’re giving us until Friday to get out. I know that’s not much notice, but it could have been worse. And you have vacation time coming to you, of course. Take the rest of the week if you’d like to look for another position. You know I’ll give you an excellent reference.”

  She’d never doubted that for a moment. Thanking him, she knew that the sooner she hit the pavement, the better, but when she drove out of the employee parking lot a short while later, she literally didn’t know where to turn. She felt like a child who’d been given permission to play hooky and didn’t know what to do with her time. Where did she go from here?

  Three hours later, she was still asking herself the same question. Everywhere she went, she was told the same thing. Companies either had no openings or they weren’t hiring until the first of the year. Considering that it was nearly the middle of November, she understood why a business would want to wait until after the holidays to hire new personnel, but that didn’t help her situation any. She needed a job now!

  In growing desperation, she went to an employment agency, but the positions she found listed there paid dismal salaries. She could have gotten any one of a number of those, but that would have meant she’d have to take a second job at night just to make enough to get by. If she’d had only herself to consider, she wouldn’t have ruled that out as an option. But she couldn’t leave Robby and Becky with full-time baby-sitters. They’d been through enough already.

  Disheartened, disillusioned, she walked out of the employment office without a clue what she was going to do. Twenty minutes later, she braked to a stop in front of the offices of I Spy Private Investigators. Owned and operated by her friend, Dana Winters, it was the one place where she knew she wouldn’t find a job. But if anyone knew what was going on in the city’s business world, who was hiring and firing and up to their eyeballs in industrial espionage, not to mention playing around on their wife, it was Dana. She made it her business to know.

  Pulling open the front door, she stepped inside to find Dana on the phone. “Yes, ma‘am,” she said into the phone as she shot Phoebe a quick, surprised smile of greeting. “I’m a licensed private detective. I can find out just about anything you need found, from friends you’ve lost touch with to the driver who crashed into your fender while you were in the grocery store.” With a wave of her hand, she motioned for Phoebe to take one of the chairs in front of her desk, then arched a brow at a question from the woman on the other end of the line. “Unfaithful husbands? Yes, ma’am, I’ve been known to track down my fair share of them. But it’s too delicate a job to discuss over the phone. Why don’t you come into the office this afternoon and you can give me the particulars. Around four? That’ll be fine. I’ll see you then.”

  Hanging up, she leaned back in her chair, her green eyes sharp and knowing as they swept over Phoebe. “Why aren’t you at work? What’s wrong?”

  Not surprised that Dana immediately sensed she was in trouble, Phoebe didn’t even try to pretend there was nothing wrong. They’d been best friends since fourth grade and had always been able to read each other like a book.

  “The board met last night and decided to trim the budget by eliminating all the vice presidents,” she said bluntly. “The secretaries—and yours truly—got caught in the cross fire.”

  Outraged, Dana straightened like a poker. “They fired you? Are they out of their minds? You’re the best thing that ever happened to that damn company!”

  Phoebe had to laugh about that. No matter what the situation, she could always count on Dana to be in her corner. “Oh, yeah, I made a big impression on the board members—I doubt there’s one of them that even knows my name. The firing wasn’t personal, Dana.”

  “It damn sure was,” she countered hotly. “You’re out of a job, aren’t you? That makes it personal.”

  “Nowadays, everything comes down to the bottom line. The board answers to the shareholders, and profits are down, so they decided to look at management and see who could be eliminated. It was just my misfortune that I work for management.”

  Still disagreeing, Dana shook her head in wonder. “You never cease to amaze me, girlfriend. You’re the one out of a job, yet you’re making excuses for the jerks who canned you. So what are you going to do?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me who might have an opening. I hit the employment agencies this morning, but no one seems to be hiring until after the holidays, and I can’t wait that long. I’m in trouble, Dana.”

  Puzzled, Dana frowned. “Don’t you think you’re being a little negative here? I know you’ve got the kids to think about now, but it’s not like you’re destitute. You’ve got your savings and a roof over your head—”

  “No, I don’t,” Phoebe cut in quietly. “That’s why I’m in trouble.” Feeling like a fool all over again, she told Dana about the fiasco at the Lone Star Social Club. “I still can’t believe I was so stupid. I didn’t check his references or anything.”

  “And why should you?” Dana demanded, jumping to her defense. “He appeared to be the landlord. He was in the apartment, for God’s sake! Why would you be suspicious of him?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I just thought I’d know a crook when I saw one. Instead, I gave him almost every penny I had and now I don’t even have a place to stay to show for it. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Ryan’s generosity, the kids and I would have had to go to a shelter last night.”

  “You could have stayed with me and Troy,” Dana said quietly. “The apartment’s a crackerbox, but we do have a guest room you could have used. And it wouldn’t be forever...and once we finish building the house, there’ll be plenty of room for all of us.”

  Not surprised that Dana would take in her and the kids just like that, Phoebe smiled and shook her head. She appreciated the offer, but there was no way she could accept it. The slab for Dana’s dream house had just been poured that week. It would be months before it was finished and there was no way she could impose on anyone, even her best friend, for that long. No, this was her problem, and she would deal with it.

  “You know I can’t do that,” she replied. “Troy would have a stroke.”

  “He would not! He loves you like a sister!”

  “And what man wants a sister around when he’s still practically on his honeymoon?” she quipped, grinning.

  “We’re
not on our honeymoon. That was weeks ago.”

  For the first time in hours, Phoebe laughed. “And now you’re an old married couple? Yeah, right! I’ve seen you two together, remember? You can’t be in the same room together for five minutes without touching. The last thing you need right now is me and my tribe moving in with you.”

  The fact that it was true didn’t make it any easier for Dana to accept. “But where will you go?” she cried, frowning. “Damn it, Phoeb, I’m worried about you! You can’t expect me to just stand around with my hands in my pockets while you and the kids get tossed out into the street.”

  “Nobody’s tossing us out,” she assured her. “I’ve made arrangements with Mr. Ryan to stay at the Social Club for the rest of the week, so it’s not like we’re camping out on the sidewalk or anything. And by the time we do have to get out, I hope to have something else lined up.”

  “How? You don’t have any money, and even if you got a job tomorrow, you couldn’t make enough in a week to put anything down on an apartment. And with everything we’ve got tied up in the house, I don’t have any to loan you.” Swearing, she reached for the phone. “I’m going to call Troy. There must be something we can do to help—”

  Without a word, Phoebe leaned forward and took the phone from her. “No,” she said quietly. “I didn’t come here for a loan or a place to stay or to worry you to death. I just need a job. Who’s hiring?”

  Her frown fierce, Dana started to argue, only to give in with a sigh of disgust. “You always were stubborn as a post.”

  Far from insulted, Phoebe only grinned. “You taught me everything I know.”

  “Of course I did,” she chuckled. “That’s what friends are for.”

  Scribbling a list of names down on a yellow legal pad, she tore off the sheet and handed it to her. “Try Morton-Barker first,” she suggested. “I did a little surveillance work for them a couple of weeks ago and caught one of the secretaries to a vice president helping herself to company funds. Word is she’s going to be indicted next week. I haven’t heard if they’ve hired anyone to replace her yet, but ask to see Morton himself and mention my name. I don’t know if it’ll help or not, but it won’t hurt.”