The Last Noel

by Heather Graham

  Skyler shrugged. “Fine. David carves. See that the bird is in front of him.”

  “I want some skin,” Scooter said.

  “You can have all the skin you want,” David said.

  Everything was even tenser, even worse, than it had been, Kat thought, and all because the wind had stopped. The storm was winding down. Soon the plows would be out, and it would be time for Quintin and Scooter—and Craig?—to run. But before they ran…

  “I’ve got the turkey,” Kat said, and carried the bird over to the table.

  “Let me,” Craig told her, and managed to take the heavy platter and set it on the table in front of her father, who, she saw, was trying not to look at the carving knife too longingly.

  “Wait,” Quintin said. “Put that knife down.”

  “You have a better suggestion for how to carve a turkey? You want to do it yourself?” David asked Quintin.

  Quintin stared at him steadily. “All right, carve. But I’ll be watching you.”

  “First, grace,” Skyler announced.

  “Hurry up,” Quintin told her, his patience visibly fraying.

  “Thank you,” she said, then bowed her head and spoke. “God is great, God is good, and we thank him for this food. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.”

  No sooner had she finished than Scooter shot up, waving his gun around. “Did you hear it?” he asked.

  “Hear what?” Quintin demanded.

  “That!”

  “What?” Quintin repeated.

  “There’s someone in this house,” Scooter claimed.

  Quintin stood, grabbed Skyler by the hair, and dragged her out of her chair and out the door.

  David leaped up to follow.

  “Stop!” Scooter shouted, and when her father turned around in response and she saw his face pale, Kat suddenly realized that Scooter had his gun aimed right at her.

  “Stop it, Scooter,” Craig snapped, and to Kat’s amazement, he stepped between her and the gun. “Come on, we have to see what’s going on.”

  Before Scooter had time to object, Craig caught him by the arm and pulled him out. In a rush, the family followed them into the living room, where Quintin was holding Skyler in front of him, a human shield, while he looked wildly around, brandishing his gun as if in search of a target.

  Kat saw her father start to rush the other man, but Craig caught hold of him. Not hurting him, just stopping him.

  “Everybody calm down,” Craig pleaded. “Quintin, stop hurting her.”

  “I’ll hurt her, all right. I’ll put a bullet right through her head if whoever is up those stairs doesn’t come down right this minute.”

  “Quintin, what the hell’s the matter with you?” Craig demanded.

  “Scooter isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but he’s like a damned dog,” Quintin said. “If he says someone is up there, someone is up there.” He raised his voice. “And whoever the hell it is needs to come down here. Now.”

  He cocked his gun, and the sound seemed louder than any storm.

  “Now!” Quintin raged.

  Kat held her breath, a rush of terror weakening her knees, threatening to make her pass out.

  Her mother…

  Quintin…

  The gun…

  “Get down here now or she’s dead, and you will have killed her.”

  A split second passed. Then, from the second-floor landing, a male voice said, “Stop! Wait!”

  Kat gasped in dismay, sucking in air, all hope lost, as Tim Graystone walked down the stairs, both hands high in the air.

  “Throw your gun down,” Quintin demanded.

  “Let her go first,” Tim said. Kat could see that he was trembling, but his expression was determined. And he was alone.

  “I should just shoot her and be done with it,” Quintin said disgustedly.

  “Shoot me instead,” Tim pleaded.

  “Stop it! Don’t shoot anybody,” Craig thundered.

  Amazingly, everyone in the room turned to stare at him. “Calm down, everyone. Quintin, please, let go of Mrs. O’Boyle. Officer, toss down your weapon. Come on, people.”

  “Put that gun down slowly,” Quintin commanded.

  “All right,” Tim agreed.

  Quintin eased his hold on Skyler as Tim set down his weapon on the floor right in front of Quintin.

  “Get it, Scooter,” Quintin said.

  He didn’t suggest that Craig take it, Kat noticed.

  “Where’s your partner?” Quintin demanded.

  “My partner?” Tim said.

  “I’m not stupid. Your partner, the woman who came with you last night. She’s got to be around here somewhere.”

  “Oh, Sheila,” Tim said.

  “Yes, her. She needs to get down here right now.”

  “She can’t. She’s checking out a possible emergency,” Tim said.

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not,” Tim insisted. “It’s just the two of us, and we had to split up.”

  There was a horrible, staggering moment then, when Quintin struck Tim with his gun. Hard. So hard that the young deputy fell back, crashing into the wall. Then he aimed at Tim. “Where’s your partner?”

  “Answering a call out by the highway.”

  Quintin took a step toward him. Aimed at his kneecap. “Where’s your partner?” he repeated.

  “You can shoot me to death piece by piece,” Tim swore. “But I can’t change the facts. She’s on another call. I had a hunch something was wrong, but she thought I was nuts. Said she wouldn’t come back with me because of the kid, not when there might be a real emergency.”

  “What?” Quintin demanded.

  “He’s talking about me,” Jamie groaned. “I pulled a prank last year, pretended I needed help…. It’s my fault.”

  Craig moved forward, standing between Quintin and the downed man. “Quintin, think about it. Don’t you think she’d have come down here by now if she was in the house?”

  Quintin stared back at Craig, lifted his gun and aimed at Craig’s face.

  “Go on, shoot me, then,” Craig said impatiently. “That’s not going to change the fact that she isn’t here. And listen. It’s the wind again. The storm hasn’t stopped yet.”

  “It will. Soon,” Quintin told him, narrow-eyed.

  “We all need to calm down,” Craig said quietly, facing Quintin, ignoring the gun only inches from his nose.

  Quintin looked around the room. He was rigid and furious. Kat was amazed he hadn’t fired yet. “I want him tied up. Tight.” He kicked Tim for emphasis.

  “We don’t have any rope,” Scooter said.

  “Get that phone cord,” Quintin said.

  Craig went for the cord, ripping it from the wall.

  “Tie him up, and don’t fuck with me. Tie him tight,” Quintin ordered.

  “I won’t fuck with you,” Craig promised. Kat could see him looking at Tim with sorrow and a prayer for forgiveness.

  Tim seemed to give him a little nod, as if to say, You gotta do what you gotta do.

  “I want to see how you’re tying him,” Quintin said. “Scooter, you keep an eye on them.”

  “I will, Quintin. I’ve got my gun on them. I’ll shoot the suckers, turkey or no turkey, I swear I will.”

  Quintin watched as Craig bound Tim with his wrists tightly behind his back. When he was done, Quintin started to laugh.

  “What the hell…?” Craig said.

  “Cuffs. He’s a cop. We should’ve just used cuffs. Oh, well, you did a good job. Now bring him into the kitchen, so we can keep an eye on him while we eat.”

  No one moved; tension held them as if they were glued in place.

  “Move!” Quintin snapped. “Help Craig bring the cop in the kitchen,” he added, turning to Frazier.

  Frazier stared back at Quintin for a moment, then hurried to Tim Graystone’s other side, helping to support him.

  In the kitchen, they all took their places again, after Craig and Frazier had used an old exte
nsion cord to tie Tim Graystone to the banister of the servants’ staircase.

  “Serve the turkey,” Quintin said to David.

  David looked at Quintin. “White or dark meat?” he asked, hatred and fury thick in his voice.

  “White.”

  Somehow everyone was served, but nobody made a move, despite the food on their plates.

  “Eat,” Quintin said.

  Skyler took a forkful of turkey, stared at it, then set down her fork. “I can’t eat. And I won’t.”

  “You know, I have been a patient man,” Quintin said. “But you’re going too far.”

  Skyler leaned forward and met his eyes. “Am I? You’re the one who plans to kill us. All of us. You’ve only waited because…well, I don’t know why. Maybe you didn’t want the mess while you were hiding here. Maybe so Scooter could have Christmas. Who knows? But all this time you’ve made us dance like puppets so we can live a little bit longer. You can make us sing, make us open presents, but you can’t make anyone enjoy a Christmas dinner. You can’t make me swallow when there’s a lump in my throat the size of Texas. Not when a good man is hurt and tied to the banister.”

  “A good man?” Quintin mocked.

  “A good man,” she repeated.

  “And what makes a good man?” Quintin demanded, sneering. “Being a cop? Bull. A good man is one who knows who to trust—and who not to trust. Who can be trusted by those who depend on him.”

  “And by that definition, Tim Graystone is a good man,” Skyler said.

  “I care about Scooter. Does that make me good?” he taunted.

  “If you want me to think you’re a good man, let Tim come sit at the table and have something to eat,” Skyler said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Quintin snapped.

  “Quintin, you can keep him tied up,” David suggested. “But let him come to the table and one of us will feed him.”

  “Or none of us will be able to eat,” Skyler said.

  “I don’t understand you at all,” Brenda said suddenly, startling them all. She smiled and looked at the ring on her finger, then over at Frazier. “Here,” she said, taking off the ring and setting it in front of Quintin. “You’re thieves, right? I mean, you were going to take it before you left, anyway, right? I don’t even want to think about how.”

  “Brenda…” Frazier said, his voice breaking.

  “Frazier, it’s all right. Let him take the ring. Quintin, it’s just a thing, a symbol, but whether I have it or not, I know Frazier worked hard to buy it.” She smiled. “And I know he did it all on his own, because I could see by his parents’ faces that they didn’t know anything about it. You can take it away, you can even take away our lives, but what Frazier and I feel…what we have…no one can ever take that away. And no matter what happens, I feel sorry for you.”

  Quintin just stared at her, reduced to speechlessness for a moment, but then he reverted to form and said, “Very nice. Now, everybody, shut up and eat.”

  Scooter, oblivious to the mood around the table, dug in, delighted with his breast meat covered with the perfectly roasted skin, but nobody else did anything except push the food around on their plates.

  “Shit. Get the damn cop, then,” Quintin snapped.

  Craig got up to go for Tim Graystone, and Quintin sent Scooter to find a chair. It didn’t look to Kat as if Craig and Tim exchanged any words as Craig helped him to the table. Skyler stood as they neared the table.

  Once Tim was settled, Quintin looked at Kat. “You’re still not eating.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  To her surprise, he leaned forward accusingly. “You ungrateful bitch,” he told her. He leaned back again, staring around the table. “You all think I’m a monster, don’t you? And maybe I am. But it’s people like you made me one.”

  “No,” David said. “We all have to take responsibility for what we become.”

  “Easy for you to say. You have everything.”

  “I didn’t have everything,” David said. “My parents were immigrants and worked nonstop all their lives. I started mowing lawns when I was thirteen and dragging ice for a soda fountain when I was sixteen. I’ve worked my whole life, too.”

  “No, no, you don’t get it,” Scooter said.

  “Shut up, Scooter,” Quintin said.

  But Scooter ignored him and went on. “It’s not always about money.”

  “That’s a strange comment, comin’ from a guncarryin’ thief,” Paddy put in.

  Scooter barely afforded him a glance. “You really don’t understand. Quintin’s mother, she was a prostitute. She didn’t know who his father was. And she couldn’t really keep him herself, so he went to a foster home.”

  “Scooter…” Quintin said warningly.

  “Some folks just take in kids because when you take in kids, you get money. It’s a lousy thing for a kid to end up there. Really lousy.”

  “Scooter, I’m going to shoot you in about ten seconds,” Quintin threatened.

  “Now my mother,” Scooter continued. “Hell, she just drank. Drank and beat the tar out of me. By the time I was about fourteen, I’d had a dozen broken bones and I’d had to sit in the bathroom about eighteen million times while she slept with her latest guy. The first time I stole, it was for her. She wanted a bottle of vodka. I never looked back.” Scooter waved his fork. “So then I’m seventeen, and I get hauled into court, and they decide they’re not going to try me as a juvenile. So I wind up in prison, with a pack of big-ass jerks, and when I get out, guess what? No one wants to hire you when you’ve been in jail. So I go home to my mother. Then, I don’t know what happened. She was drinking and yelling at me and waving the vodka bottle around. I swear to God, she fell. I didn’t kill her. The bitch deserved it, but I didn’t kill her. Hey, can I have some more gravy, please?”

  They were all dead still, just staring at him. Then Kat heard her mother gulp. “Jamie…the gravy. Please.”

  “I know your life was awful,” David said to Scooter. “But you can change it.”

  Quintin started to laugh. “Fuck you, O’Boyle.”

  David turned to Quintin. “And you. You think you can blame everything you do the rest of your life on being brought up in a lousy foster home.”

  Quintin laughed bitterly. “Let me think. Yeah, I do.”

  “We all make choices in our lives,” David said stubbornly.

  “Right,” Quintin said. “How about you, college boy? What’s your story? Make it a good one. Maybe I’ll fall for it.”

  Kat couldn’t help it. She stared at Craig, too. What is your story? she wondered. Make it a good one and maybe I’ll fall for it, too.

  Craig shrugged. “Mine is easy. Cocaine,” he said.

  “You aren’t a cocaine addict,” Kat said, staring at him.

  He smiled slowly, ruefully. “No. I didn’t mean me.” He hesitated. “My dad. He didn’t start off that way. Then…I’m not sure what came first, Alice Diaz or the drugs. Anyway, long story short. One day this man came to see me. He told me my dad owed him a lot of money, and he was going to kill him if he didn’t get the money. What was I supposed to do? It was my dad,” Craig said. “It was the drugs that changed things. And I knew he could change back.”

  “I think you ought to get your violin,” Quintin said dryly to Frazier.

  “Shh,” Scooter said. “This is a good story.”

  “Go on,” Kat told him.

  He shrugged. “Well, I was a student with a part-time job. There wasn’t any way I could get the kind of money they wanted. They knew that, of course. They had a plan for me. They’d wanted my dad to do it, but he wasn’t in shape, so I was the next best thing.”

  “What was the plan?” Scooter demanded eagerly.

  “My father had worked for a security company till he got so drugged-out he lost his job. He’d installed the system for a jewelry store. They got the information from him, then took me with them. I think I was like insurance for them, to make sure my dad wouldn’t lie to them. They
told him they’d kill me if he didn’t tell them how to get past the alarm, and they told me they’d kill him if I wouldn’t help them. So I did.” He hesitated. “Then they shot me. But they didn’t do it right, so I lived. But they cleaned the place out and killed the owner. And then they killed my father anyway.”

  There was silence.

  Craig was staring at Kat.

  She stared back. Why didn’t you tell me? she asked silently. Why didn’t you go to the police? But she knew. She knew when your family was threatened, you were ready to do just about anything. You would kill for them.

  And you would die for them.

  “Hear, hear!” Paddy said, breaking the silence.

  They all stared at him. Either he was drunk, or he was doing a great job of pretending to be, Kat thought.

  “Uncle Paddy, you’ve had enough,” Skyler said gently.

  “Good God, not nearly enough, me lass,” Paddy protested. “A man should be totally drunk before being shot.”

  “No one is going to shoot anyone,” Craig said. Quintin stared at him, arching a brow.

  “It doesn’t make any sense to shoot anyone,” Craig went on, and indicated Tim. “Don’t you understand? His partner didn’t come with him, but she knew where he was going.”

  “It’s true,” Tim agreed.

  “It’s like I said before, killing these people won’t change anything,” Craig finished.

  “I think we should have dessert now,” Quintin said, as if Craig hadn’t spoken.

  “What?” Craig asked, confused.

  “I believe Tim’s partner is in this house. I figured we’d go ahead and have dinner, and then I intend to find her. Of course, finding her won’t be all that hard. I’m sure she’s within earshot right now. But she knows she can’t possibly get both of us, so she’s not going to try anything. So…dessert.”

  They all just stared at him.

  “Dessert,” Quintin repeated. “Now.”

  Kat felt her heart was sinking.

  The police had failed, and the end was coming.

  And now…

  Craig looked at her, held her gaze and mouthed something she couldn’t make out.

  She frowned. What was going on? What was he doing?