“You’re a spoiled brat,” Sullivan called out after him.
“I think there are too many people in the showers all at once,” Carter said when he joined his brother in the kitchen. “I just suffered through a nearly ice-cold shower. It was not fun.”
“Sorry,” Sullivan said. “I guess we should have orchestrated this better, but it sounds like Skyler, Brenda, and Darby are all in their bathrooms right now. I keep forgetting that we don’t have hotel-sized hot water heaters in this place.”
“Where is Darby’s bathroom?”
“He’s using mine.”
“Is he still acting like he’s miraculously turned into a good guy?”
“He is not,” Sullivan said with a sigh. “He’s foul and grumpy today. Back to normal.”
“Fantastic.” Carter got busy pulling out frying pans and mixing bowls. “By the way, I’m determined to make a hearty breakfast that will impress that celebrity chef staying under our roof. She outdid herself last night and I want to pay her back.” He beat eggs, prepared slabs of bacon for the oven, and even mixed up a batch of honey butter for the sourdough toast. He sliced tomatoes and popped open a huge can of baked beans, too, intending to give his meal a British flair—that was one of the standouts he remembered from a trip to London a few years earlier.
While he cooked, the rest of the houseguests found their way to the kitchen and they lined up for coffee. Everyone crowded around the island, except for Darby, who found his way from Sullivan’s shower into Sullivan’s bed. He was fast asleep.
“What’s on the agenda for today?” Leonard asked the group.
“I’m going to walk the dogs before I go food shopping,” Brenda said as she tore into the bacon and scrambled eggs set in front of her. “I’m going to try to get everything we need for meals through Christmas Day. But, I do wonder if we might go out for one dinner—would that be okay with everyone?”
“Of course,” Carter said. “No one expects you to cook for all of us, Brenda. That’s not automatically your job just because…well…because it’s your job.”
“Good,” she said. “Because I was thinking we might have our Christmas Eve dinner down at The Compound restaurant. I called them. They have room for all of us and the menu looks absolutely marvelous. With Georgia, it’d be seven. Do we think she’d be up for going out to eat almost immediately after getting home tomorrow? On second thought, maybe that’s a bad idea.”
Skyler swallowed then said, “I’m all for it. I think breaking from tradition and going out to eat for a holiday meal is kind of fun. And Carter is right; you shouldn’t feel like you have to do all the shopping and cooking. I mean, I can help.”
“Oh lord,” Brenda laughed. “That’s the last thing we want.”
“What? I’m a decent cook.”
“Not really,” Leonard said. “She can manage spaghetti and calling out for pizza. That’s about it.”
“I will admit that I am good at calling for take-out. I singlehandedly keep several Dupont Circle restaurants in business, trust me.”
“And the restaurant owners are very grateful,” Brenda said. “Trust me.”
“Who the hell is that!” Leonard shoved back in his chair and rounded the table as he sprinted toward the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the hot tub on the patio outside. “Someone was just outside. Right there!” He squatted down and extracted the small .22 from under his pant leg; his larger, police-issued gun was holstered and hanging on the back of his suite’s bathroom door. “I’m going out.”
“Be careful, Leonard!” Skyler was right behind him. She ripped his jacket off a peg near the front door and threw it at him. “It’s cold out there.” The jacket fell to the floor as Leonard opened the door. “It’s not Maine cold, Sky. Come on.”
Carter sprinted to his room to grab his own weapon. “I’ll be right there!”
“They’re going to shoot each other, aren’t they?” Brenda asked.
“God, I hope not,” Sullivan said as the two hurried to the bank of windows. “I can’t finish the hotel on my own. Who do you think he saw? Was it Massimo? No. It couldn’t be.”
“I have no idea.” The chef stood up on her tip toes and craned her neck. “Right there! Behind the wood pile.” She turned to Skyler who was standing at the open front door. “Skyler, tell him to head toward the wood pile.”
Skyler stuck four fingers in her mouth and whistled with all of her might, then pointed wildly when Leonard looked back at the front door. She was shoved into the door jam when Carter barreled out of the house, his weapon drawn. “Jesus Christ!” She righted herself and massaged her right shoulder.
“Are you okay, honey?” Brenda was behind her and placed a hand on her back.
“I’m fine. That one should get a job as a linebacker for the Redskins.”
“I’m calling the police,” Sullivan said. He pulled out his phone. “I don’t see them anymore, do you? Where did they go? I should call the police, yes?”
“I’m going out there, too,” Skyler said as she headed down the front steps to the gravel walkway, but she was stopped at the bottom when someone grabbed her left arm and ripped her back around.
“You most certainly are not!” Brenda bellowed. “Do you want your boyfriend or that trigger-happy Lowery brother to shoot you? Get back in the house. Leonard is a police officer. He’s got this.”
Skyler reluctantly obeyed. “I can help. I need to do something, Brenda.”
“Uh, huh. Inside!”
Sullivan slammed his cell phone down on the front hall table after the girls were back inside and the door was closed and locked. “I didn’t get through. The reception up here royally sucks. It’s better at night. It’s worthless during the daytime. I have no idea why that might be.”
“Is there a landline?” Brenda asked.
“Is it 1987?”
A quarter mile from the house, Leonard was down on one knee trying desperately to control his breathing. He’d lost track of the subject in a thick grove of trees somewhere in front of him. He didn’t hear running anymore. He listened for any sound of human movement, but all he could hear were light footsteps behind him.
Carter was inches away. “Anything?” he whispered.
“No.” Leonard looked to their right. There was a steep embankment sloping away from them. “Go that way and make a large arc back to the left. And don’t shoot me as I come toward you. I’m pretty sure he’s wearing black. I’m wearing red. Remember that.”
“Roger that.” Carter took off.
Leonard waited a few beats before moving. It wasn’t police training that prepared him for this moment—it was instinct. The Maine Police Academy never sent trainees out into the cold winter woods to track down potential stalkers. This was more like hunting deer with his father, but there’d be no venison on the table after this was over.
He pushed forward, careful to move branches without making too much noise. He held the gun down at his side; he was determined not to kill Carter—or anyone for that matter. He knew the mounds of red tape would ruin Christmas.
A flash to his left. Something moved quickly. He changed direction and picked up his pace. He was sweating as if it were a mid-summer afternoon instead of a brisk New Mexican morning in December. He had trouble catching his breath, too. He knew he had to quit smoking once and for all or he’d never catch anyone in the woods.
A tree branch slapped him across the face as he started running toward the figure. It was moving faster.
And then he ran straight into Carter and they fell to the ground on top of one another. In the same instance, Carter’s gun fired. The sound echoed through the trees and seemed to last several long seconds.
“What the fuck, dude?”
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” Carter said. “I didn’t mean to pull the trigger.” He carefully placed the handgun on the ground and got to his feet. He put out a hand to help Leonard up. “Oh shit, oh shit.”
“What is wrong with you?” And then Leona
rd felt it. His upper arm was searing with pain.
“Leonard, man. Oh my God, man. I shot you.”
The cop felt lightheaded. “No fucking kidding.”
“Was that a gun shot?” Skyler had been standing on the front porch. “I hope they didn’t kill anyone. I’m going out there.”
Brenda grabbed her friend by the arm for the eighth time that morning. “Do I need to tie you to a bed or something? What is wrong with you?”
“What is wrong with our life that gun shots are the new normal?”
“It’s not our new normal,” Brenda said, escorting Skyler back into the house. “But if there are people hell bent on screwing with us, well, then I’m glad Leonard and Carter have guns.”
“Carter has never fired that gun, has no license, and has absolutely no training,” Sullivan said. “It was our father’s pistol and it was locked in a box for decades. I didn’t even know we had ammunition for it.”
“Why did he bring it to Santa Fe?” Skyler asked.
“He was certain this was the wild west and that everyone would be carrying guns out here. And this is a very different world than New York City, I’ll give him that. Can you imagine him grabbing a gun and chasing a pickpocket down Madison Avenue in broad daylight?”
“This is insanity,” Skyler said. “Sullivan, try calling the police again.”
The front door opened and a stone faced, shirtless Carter entered first, followed by Leonard. Carter’s shirt was tied around Leonard’s upper left arm. It was soaked with blood.
“Massimo shot you?” Brenda asked.
Skyler rushed to her boyfriend and grabbed each cheek in her palms. “Oh my God, what happened?!”
“I’m fine. We need to get the bleeding stopped. I’m just grazed, so don’t get all excited. An inch lower though and it would have gone straight through my damned arm bone.” He shot a look at Carter. “I want your gun, by the way.”
“You shot Leonard?!” Sullivan screamed.
“It was an accident,” Carter said. He slumped down into a chair. “And she got away.”
“She?” Skyler asked.
Leonard stood in front of the hall mirror and examined his wound—it wasn’t very deep and not as ugly as he’d imagined it would be. It had pretty much stopped bleeding. “It was a woman, yes. Or at least she looked like one. She was much too short and thin to be someone named Massimo.”
“He’s right. It was not Massimo,” Carter said.
Brenda went to Leonard’s side and examined his upper arm. “We need to get you to the hospital.”
“No, we don’t,” he said, pulling away from her. “I’m going to go take another shower and then we’ll get this bandaged up. I saw a first aid kit under the sink in our bathroom.”
“Honey, we have to have a doctor check you out,” Skyler said.
Leonard turned to face his girlfriend. “And then what happens? We would be barraged with a thousand questions. The police would get involved—hospitals legally have to report gun shot wounds. I know a little bit about this kind of thing. It will take many hours, Carter will have to surrender his unregistered and unlicensed gun, and, well, it’ll just be a royal pain in all of our asses the day before Christmas Eve. I’m fine. We’ll all be better off if we just keep this to ourselves.”
“Will we?” Sullivan asked. “Carter should lose that damned gun once and for all. And the police have got to be told that there’s yet another person terrorizing us. Am I right?”
“We were hardly terrorized,” Leonard said. “But we do need to up our game.”
“What does that even mean?” Brenda asked. “Perhaps we should pick up Georgia and then get the hell out of Santa Fe. That’s what we should all do. Why would we stay here and be on edge twenty-four-seven? We could fly over to Las Vegas and have Christmas at the Golden Cactus. Anything is better than this. The authorities are already looking for Massimo. We just have to tell them that we had a new intruder on the property today, so that they’ll be officially looking for her, too. And then we can cut and run.”
“Sully and I can’t leave Santa Fe, Brenda. Not now,” Carter said. “We have a hotel to finish. We’ve got millions of dollars on the line. You all can certainly leave if you want to, but I’m afraid we’ve got to stay. We’ve got crews returning to the site the day after Christmas. We have to be here.”
“What the hell is going on? Can’t a guy get some sleep around here?” A completely nude Darby stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the back hall, scratching his ass.
“Merry Christmas to us,” Skyler said.
“Indeed,” Brenda said with a big smile on her face. “Merry Christmas.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
After he purchased a ticket with the last of his cash, Massimo carried his pharmacy shopping bag of toiletries, underwear, and socks to the Albuquerque-bound Greyhound bus and found an empty seat in the second to last row. He’d never before rode on a bus and he was unnerved by being so close to so many people, together with all their many bags of giftwrapped packages. He assumed that they were collectively on their way to relatives’ and friends’ homes for the holidays. He wished he was anywhere but the Flagstaff, Arizona bus station two days before Christmas, his first holiday away from his family.
The trip was bumpy, but uneventful. They stopped every two hundred miles for bathroom and cigarette breaks and arrived in downtown Albuquerque at half past three in the afternoon.
He knew it was risky, but he located another pharmacy and purchased a cold tuna fish sandwich, a bag of potato chips, and a banana. He used his debit card and asked for $100 cash back, the maximum the store allowed.
After devouring the late-lunch on a chilly park bench, he went back to the Greyhound station and inquired about buses to Santa Fe. Not one seat was available. The clerk suggested the commuter train and he stood in line for over a half hour just to discover that they were oversold, too.
An elderly Native American man approached Massimo in the waiting area. “Hey, mac, can you spare a few bucks for a veteran?”
Massimo was annoyed, but not altogether uncaring of his fellow man. “For what?”
“I’m trying to get home to see my grandkids for Christmas.”
“Where is home?”
“Roswell.”
“And Roswell is where?”
“About 200 miles from here. I’ve got $30 but I need…”
“200 miles in which direction? I’m not from around here.”
“Well, I could tell that from your accent,” the man said with a hearty laugh. “Roswell is south. It’s south-east, actually, as the crow flies.”
Massimo didn’t think about it for very long. “I don’t know about this crow you speak of, but I think this might be your lucky day, signore,” he said. He knew the purchase would be beneficial…for both of them.
Massimo used one of his credit cards to buy a one-way bus ticket for the very grateful old man, then he set out to find a himself a good Samaritan who might offer him a ride in the opposite direction.
* * *
Back in Flagstaff, an incredibly antsy opera singer was going out of her mind. She repeatedly asked the hospital staff to release her early, but her doctors were determined to keep her under observation for another 24 hours. Besides a slightly sore scalp and a few abrasions here and there, she felt like her normal self again—despite the diet of barely edible hospital ‘food,’ including a mushy Salisbury steak that she was absolutely certain wasn’t actual meat—and her normal self wasn’t used to laying around in bed all day doing nothing.
She did vocal exercises until the woman in the next room complained and a nurse came to ask her to stop. She tried to watch the wall-mounted television, but all she could find were trivia game shows, pathetic people confessing dreadful things in front of dreadful audiences, and overwrought anger and crying on soap opera melodramas. She’d always had a low opinion of these shows and the kind of people who watched them. And she’d already read three well-worn issues of People M
agazine that were each a few months old. So, she did what was most natural to her, she asked around until she found someone who could recommend a hair and makeup person and she asked that they come just as soon as was humanly possible. She had no intention of letting the twins see her in her natural, unkempt state.
When the pretty young woman arrived late in the afternoon, Georgia found her bubbly and enthusiastic and hoped that she knew what she was doing. She guessed correctly that Flagstaff, Arizona beauticians didn’t work on too many celebrities.
“I’ve seen you on television,” the girl admitted. “One of those weekend morning news shows, I think.”
“C.B.S. Sunday Morning did a profile on me last year, yes,” Georgia beamed. “I didn’t know anyone actually watched that.”
“Oh, tons, I’m sure. I was fascinated by your story. I even watched one of your operas on P.B.S. on-demand that very day. I didn’t understand a word, of course, but there were captions at the bottom of the screen, so, you know, I could read along. You had such passion and poise and, wow, you really belted it out, huh?”
“Thank you,” Georgia said. “Do you remember which opera it was?”
“I want to say, Butterfly?”
“Madam Butterfly. It’s one of my favorites. I believe that particular production was filmed in high definition at the Palais Garnier. In Paris, of course.”
“Of course.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“I did, very much,” the young woman said. She set a large plastic case on the bedside table and wheeled it into place. “So, are we doing a stage look or something more every-day?”
Georgia let out an emphatic belly laugh. “I don’t think I want to fly home for Christmas wearing eight pounds of pancake makeup and three sets of false eyelashes, no. I want to look presentable, yet stylish.”
“Hair, too?”
“Hair, too.”
“How much time do we have?”
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