The Last Noel

by Heather Graham

  Quintin looked at him, a strange, twisted grimace on his face. “But you’re not armed, are you?”

  “Scooter can give me his gun. You don’t need two of them down here.”

  “I don’t think so,” Quintin said, staring at Craig.

  Craig shrugged, as if it made no difference to him. “Whatever.”

  Scooter let out a sound of aggravation. “Next time, you do it,” he told Quintin.

  “Just get going,” Quintin said flatly.

  Scooter stared at Jamie and Frazier. “Come on.”

  To Skyler’s surprise, Quintin looked from David to her after the others left and said, “This is really nice, this whole family thing, the music.” Without warning, his eyes hardened. “So don’t go ruining my good mood, okay?” He turned to Brenda then. “What about you? You play an instrument? Or do you just sit around looking pretty?”

  Skyler put an arm around the girl. “Brenda is pre-med.”

  “She’s going to be a doctor?” Quintin started to laugh.

  “What’s wrong with that?” Brenda asked him, surprising Skyler by speaking up so firmly.

  “Are you tall enough to reach the operating table?” Quintin asked.

  “She’s not just tall enough, she’s smart enough,” Skyler snapped.

  “Why don’t you leave them alone?” David asked, his tone low, his words spoken with a tremendous dignity that squeezed Skyler’s heart.

  “I could,” Quintin mused. “But I don’t want to. And hey…I’ve got the gun.”

  Skyler rose and, hands on her hips, stared at the man who was destroying her family. “Brenda is at the top of her class. One day, when you’ve been shot and there’s a bullet lodged in your brain, she could be the doctor operating on you. She plans on making something of herself. That’s more than what some people here can say.”

  David stood, and she knew she had frightened him, that he was afraid Quintin would retaliate violently.

  “Sit down, both of you,” Quintin said patiently. “I’m just an old chauvinist—sorry. The kid is smart? Good for her. Are you and the boy engaged, then?” he asked Brenda.

  “No,” she said.

  Quintin turned to David. “And you don’t mind them shacking up in your house?”

  David stared back at Quintin. “Yes, I mind. But I love my son, and I respect Brenda.”

  “Still, it’s not like it was when you were a kid, huh?” Quintin said.

  “No,” David agreed flatly. “Times change.”

  “That they do,” Quintin said, and though his voice was quiet, there was menace in his tone. “That they do.”

  Kat, who’d been watching from the second-floor balcony, leaped up lightly and fled as soon as she saw Scooter and her brothers coming up the stairs.

  She raced to her room, grabbed the phone from the charger and leaned against the closed door, her heart racing as she tried to listen to what was going on.

  While she listened, she punched buttons frantically and tried to send out a 911 text message, but whether or not it got through, she didn’t know.

  Not that it mattered. Until the storm abated, no one could get here anyway, she thought, then went back to eavesdropping.

  “Come on, come on,” Scooter said, as he ushered the two boys along the hall. “He just has to have his damn music, so let’s just get the damn fiddle and be done with it.”

  “You have something against violins?” Frazier asked belligerently.

  “Calm down and don’t be a jerk. You’re just like Dad,” Jamie accused him.

  “I’m not like Dad!” Frazier denied heatedly.

  “Oh yeah? You get pissed off every time someone is late. But then you’re late to everything, and you say it’s because you think everyone else will be late.”

  “Who are you to talk? Ever since you got that car, you never even show up for family occasions half the time.”

  “That’s because I’m stuck with them all the time,” Jamie reminded him.

  “Because you’re sixteen,” Frazier told him.

  “At least you’re a twin. You always had Kat around. I have to deal with Mom and Dad all alone.”

  “You have a twin?” Scooter asked Frazier suspiciously. “Where?”

  Against the wall, Kat sucked in a breath and held it.

  “She escaped,” Frazier said quickly.

  “Escaped?” Scooter echoed.

  “Escaped the family this Christmas. Which is exactly what I should have done,” Frazier said quickly.

  Their voices faded as they walked farther down the hall. When she could tell from their footsteps that they were outside Frazier’s room, Kat dared to open her door and peek around the jamb. Her brothers were looking her way, and their eyes grew big when they spotted her. She shook her head in warning, and they nodded almost imperceptibly.

  She held up her phone and mimed dialing, hoped they understood, then mouthed, “I love you,” and slipped back inside her room, shutting the door carefully. A moment later she heard them coming back down the hallway.

  Suddenly the phone clutched in her hand let out a beep. She froze.

  “What was that?” Scooter demanded, and she realized he was right outside her door.

  “What?” Jamie asked.

  “That noise,” Scooter said.

  “What noise?” Frazier demanded, sounding impatient. “This is an old house. It creaks and groans all the time.”

  “It wasn’t any fucking old-house sound,” Scooter snapped. “It was a beep. Now come back here and open that door.”

  Frazier did his best to stall. “That door?”

  “What are you, stupid? Yes, that door. Open it.”

  Kat could hear their voices, even though she had dived into her closet and hidden as best she could behind the clothes, scrunching into a corner and pulling an old comforter over herself.

  “Get in there,” Scooter snapped to Jamie and Frazier.

  Her heart pounding, afraid her every breath was a thunderous gasp, Kat cowered as far back as she could go and listened.

  “Don’t you two pull anything,” Scooter warned.

  “What are we going to pull?” Jamie demanded.

  Kat heard a thump and realized Scooter had gotten on his knees to look under the bed.

  “What the hell do you think you’re going to find?” Frazier demanded.

  “Whose room is this?” Scooter asked, ignoring Frazier’s question.

  “My sister’s,” Jamie said. “When she bothers to show up.”

  “But she didn’t show up?” Scooter asked.

  “Have you seen her?” Frazier asked in return, sounding aggravated by the question.

  “She’s in love,” Jamie said. “She went away with her boyfriend.”

  “Yeah?” Scooter said, doubt still evident in his voice.

  “Will you hurry up and look wherever you’re going to look?” Frazier queried impatiently. “Your crazy friend is down there with my family and my girlfriend, and he’s going to start thinking something’s wrong if we don’t get back.”

  “Open that closet door,” Scooter said.

  Jamie snorted derisively. “Why? You think the bogeyman is in there?” he asked.

  “Do it!” Scooter yelled. He sounded tense and on the edge of hysteria.

  The door opened.

  “Nothing here,” Jamie said impatiently, although he had to know she was there.

  She heard footsteps on the floorboards outside her refuge. Scooter?

  “I heard something,” Scooter snapped.

  “I bet I know what it was,” Jamie said. “You must’ve heard one of the smoke detectors. The battery’s probably going or something.”

  “A smoke detector?” Scooter said doubtfully.

  “Yeah, look. There’s one right there. On the ceiling.”

  “I dunno,” Scooter said. “Make it beep again, kid.”

  “I don’t know how to make it beep,” Jamie argued.

  “Then figure it out,” Scooter said. “Figure it out
.”

  Quintin rose, his gun in his hand.

  David stayed seated and did his best to remain calm, but the other man had a firm grip on his weapon, and it was clear that he knew how to use it. He’d used it before, David was certain. There was something in the man’s eyes. A coldness. A complete lack of conscience.

  He liked to be amused. Entertained. And right now they were entertaining him. He didn’t want to think what would happen when that stopped.

  Quintin was starting to look nervous, David realized. The others had been upstairs for what felt like a long time.

  Maybe Craig had picked up on the same thing, because he suddenly said, “Quintin, you want me to go see what’s going on?”

  Quintin flashed him an impatient glance. “No.”

  “What the hell do you think I’m going to do? I’m half-dead and I don’t have a weapon. I’ll just go up and see if Scooter needs help.”

  “Go to the foot of the stairs,” Quintin said, “and just yell for him.”

  Craig nodded and got up. “Yeah, sure. Hey, Scooter!” he yelled when he’d reached the stairway. “What’s going on?”

  “He’s being a jerk!” Jamie shouted from above.

  David felt his stomach lurch. Please, Jamie, for the love of God, watch your mouth. We’re playing a dangerous game.

  “Hey!” Scooter objected angrily.

  Craig glanced at Quintin, frowning.

  Jamie appeared on the landing. “He thinks I can make the smoke detector beep again,” he called down.

  A beep? David thought. They’d heard a beep? It had to be Kat’s phone. He didn’t know whether to feel hopeful or even more terrified.

  “Hey, Scooter, get back down here,” Craig called.

  He was gripping the banister to stay upright, David realized. He didn’t look well, but he was basically fit, and he was still on his feet, despite being hurt and then left out in the car.

  Scooter had defended Craig, David mused. And Quintin didn’t trust him. He filed that information away for later.

  Scooter appeared at the top of the stairway, the boys in front of him, and looked down. “Do smoke detectors beep?” he asked Quintin.

  “Of course they beep,” David answered. He hoped he had just the right note of impatience in his tone.

  “Do they?” Quintin asked him.

  David frowned, hoping he was a decent actor. His pulse was pounding, and he realized that Quintin might not have to kill him, because he felt ready to have a heart attack all on his own. “A smoke detector beeps when you need to replace the battery,” he said.

  “Then why isn’t it still beeping?” Scooter asked loudly.

  “Because the battery beeps slowly at first, to warn you,” David answered.

  “Did you look around up there?” Quintin demanded.

  “Of course,” Scooter said.

  “And?”

  “I didn’t find anything.”

  “Then get back down here.”

  “All right. One more minute.”

  David swallowed hard. Was Kat about to be discovered? And that beep…

  Had her phone worked?

  Knowing he had to do something, David got up and started to walk toward the stairs.

  “Where the hell are you going?” Quintin demanded.

  “Upstairs.”

  Quintin shook his head. “You stay right here.”

  “Look, I know what the problem is. I can show Scooter, so you two don’t have to be worried about anything going on.”

  “I’ll go,” Craig said.

  “What? Are all you people deaf or just stupid? I said you stay here,” Quintin snapped.

  David forced himself to sit back down calmly, then looked over at Skyler. She looked scared, her eyes too wide as they met his. He hoped Quintin wouldn’t notice and realize something was going on.

  She must have realized the danger, too, because she looked away and trailed her fingers over the piano keys. “Come on, guys, hurry up,” she called. “It’s time for Irish music.”

  “Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling…” Uncle Paddy began.

  Scooter was prowling around the room again. Kat could hear him from her hiding place in the closet.

  “Please, come on,” Jamie begged, real fear in his voice. “Didn’t you hear him? Your friend is starting to sound dangerous.”

  “Starting?” Scooter said distractedly. “He always sounds dangerous. He is dangerous.”

  “So let’s get down there.”

  “I’m telling you, I heard something beep.”

  “What? You think we have a bomb?” Frazier demanded.

  “I think something’s…not right,” Scooter said.

  “Please,” Jamie begged. “Can we just go back downstairs?”

  Kat willed herself to be perfectly still. She prayed her heartbeat wasn’t as loud as it sounded to her own ears.

  The floorboards creaked as Scooter kept walking around her room. It felt like forever, though it was certainly only seconds, before the closet door was flung open once again and he started pushing the hangers around.

  Any second now, he would find her, and then they would all be dead.

  Kat could almost feel him as he reached for the comforter on top of her. She felt the pressure as his fingers closed around it, and then she heard a scream as the entire house was pitched into darkness.

  The power had gone out at last.

  SIX

  “Hell of a night,” Deputy Sergeant Sheila Polanski said, rubbing her hands together in a vain attempt to warm them.

  The power at the sheriff’s office had gone out long ago. They had switched over to their emergency generator smoothly enough, but since everything was run at taxpayer expense, the emergency generators didn’t allow for much heat.

  And they called it Taxachusetts.

  Hell, she called her beloved home state Taxachusetts herself, but even so, the state budget didn’t kick in much to supply heat for this particular sheriff’s office out in the country. They were small and located in an area where there was seldom trouble, so they were expected to run on a shoestring.

  There was only one person answering to her tonight: Tim Graystone. Tim had managed to pull the Christmas Eve gig by being their newcomer. Young and raw, only on the job for a month. And honestly, it wasn’t as if his inexperience mattered. This area was sparsely populated and too far east to share the crimes that faced their neighbors in ski country, where an abundance of tourists made an appealing target for theft. And they were too far west to run into the troubles that Springfield, with its larger population, had to deal with.

  Then again, Sheila had learned in her twenty years of duty, anything could happen. Three years ago, Barry Higgins, as mild mannered as they came under most circumstances, drank too much and shot up the civic center, killing his own minister in the process. In ’95, Arthur Duggan had murdered his wife. That had been sad, but bound to happen. The best minds and hearts in social services had tried to get her to swear out a warrant against her husband, not to mention leave him. They’d told her over and over again that he would kill her one day, and finally he had.

  But those were the only two violent crimes that had ever come their way. So even though they were a skeleton crew, it didn’t seem likely that young Tim would have much to deal with tonight. The phone and electric lines were down, and the storm continued to rage. There wasn’t much for them to do other than sit around and bitch about the weather.

  Tim grinned. He was a good-looking fellow, just turned twenty-seven. Despite a hitch in the service, he’d gone through the academy and college before joining the force here, reporting to Sheriff Edward Ford. All told, there were only twelve officers working the county, six by day and six by night, though the schedule didn’t mean much, because they were always subbing for one another. Edward, as the boss and the only duly elected official, usually stepped up to the plate and took Christmas Eve duty, but he had just remarried and the new Mrs. Ford, though forty, had decided to p
rocreate. So Edward and his bride were already checked into one of the many offshoots of U Mass Medical, awaiting the new little Ford.

  As a result, Sheila was working with Tim tonight. He was working here because, after his time in the service, he had come home to find his father dying of heart disease, leaving his mother alone to raise his much younger sister. He’d decided to stick around to guide her through the teenage years and throw some financial support his mother’s way. Sheila didn’t warm to just anyone, but Tim, she liked.

  If she’d ever been able to have kids, she would have wanted one like him. But she hadn’t been able to, and her husband had left her because of it.

  She sat down, though she had been pacing back and forth to keep warm. Tim might have been living in warmer climes for the last few years, but he didn’t seem to feel the cold. He was seated at a desk, his fingers laced behind his head and his feet propped up.

  “Met any women up here yet?” she teased.

  He shrugged. “A few. How about you?”

  “How about me what?” Sheila asked.

  “When are you going to get remarried?”

  “Tim, look at me. I’m sixty-two years old, and I look like a mop. Bone thin, and my hair’s gray and frizzy.”

  “You’ve got great blue eyes,” he said, then leveled a finger at her. “And we’re off at six. You can sleep for a few hours, then drag your butt out of bed and come on over. My mom’s an expert with a turkey.”

  “Maybe. You don’t have a bunch of old geezers coming over to try to fix me up with, do you?”

  “No—and I’m not asking you to find anyone for me, either. Just a nice Christmas dinner.”

  She shrugged.

  “You’re coming?”

  “Sure,” she said, then jumped as Tim dropped his feet to the floor with a thump and sat up straight to stare at the computer screen.

  “What is it?” she demanded.

  “Look at that,” he said.

  Their emergency phone lines went straight to the computers once the power went down and the generators kicked in, though it was a makeshift system that only let them receive calls, not respond or call out. Now they both stared at the screen, which registered a text message sent from a cell phone.