Wish Upon a Christmas Star

by Darlene Gardner

  “Drink too much of that and you’ll have to crawl home,” Frank told him. “I added more booze when Helene wasn’t looking.”

  “I can handle it.” The man took a swig of the punch and Logan saw him in profile. It was Repeat, one of Frank’s “cronies” from the poker game. The one who’d overheard the guy with the tattoo talking about naked photos.

  “Can I get some of that punch, too?” Logan would warn Maria that it was liberally spiked. He hoped she would drink some, though. She was still far too tense.

  “Hey, I know you,” Frank said. “Logan, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “I remember your names, too. Frank and Repeat.”

  “It’s actually Peter,” the other man said. “I’ve decided not to go by Repeat anymore.”

  “Since when?” Frank asked.

  “This afternoon,” he said. “Gladys doesn’t like the nickname.”

  “Do you listen to everything your wife says?” Frank demanded.

  “Hell, yeah,” Peter said. “Don’t you?”

  “Of course not!” Frank said.

  A gray-haired woman appeared at the door of the kitchen. “Frank,” she called, “you need to go out and buy more beer. Right away!”

  “Coming,” he said, then turned to Logan and Peter. “Excuse me. Duty calls.”

  “You mean Mariella called,” Peter said, chuckling. “What were you saying about not doing whatever she tells you to?”

  “Shut up, Repeat,” Frank muttered.

  “It’s Peter,” his friend called after him. He laughed and addressed Logan. “We like to give each other a hard time.”

  “I can see that,” he answered.

  Peter pointed at him. “Hey, did you find that guy with the serpent tattoo?”

  “No, we didn’t,” Logan said.

  “That’s too bad. Your lady friend really seemed to think he was her brother.”

  That was what Maria desperately wanted to believe. “A lot of people have serpent tattoos,” Logan stated.

  “I wish I could remember more about this guy. But like I said, I didn’t see him real good.” Peter snapped his fingers. “Hey, did I mention the tattoo was in color?”

  Logan’s heart felt as if it thudded to a stop as he pictured the design that had been on Mike DiMarco’s arm. “No. You didn’t mention that.”

  “Well, it was. That’s probably why I noticed it in the first place. I mean, how many guys have a red snake tattooed on their arm?”

  Logan knew of exactly one. Mike DiMarco had gotten the tattoo in honor of the band whose full name Logan just now remembered.

  The Ruby Serpents.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MARIA STOOD IN THE BACK corner of Helene Fryburger’s yard under a lit-up palm tree, holding her cell phone close to her ear in order to drown out the Christmas carols and the buzz of conversation coming from the other guests.

  She was also cursing herself for answering the phone in the first place.

  After Logan had gone in search of more punch and Kayla excused herself to use the bathroom, Maria got a call from her brother Jack, the DiMarco closest to her own age. When she didn’t answer, he’d sent her a barrage of threatening texts.

  Jack had vowed to keep phoning and texting until Maria returned his calls.

  “I’m a big girl, Jack,” Maria said. “You can stop worrying about me.”

  “Says the woman who called me daily last summer when I was rehabbing my shoulder,” he retorted.

  “That was different,” Maria said. It was after multiple doctors had told Jack, a minor league baseball pitcher at the time, that he needed to accept the fact his pro baseball career was over. “You’d taken off to the Eastern Shore of Virginia. I wanted to be sure your head was on straight.”

  “You’re in Key West looking for our dead brother,” Jack blurted. “You need to worry about your own head.”

  Maria felt her spine stiffen. Her grip tightened on the phone. “I have good reason to believe Mike is alive.”

  “I wouldn’t consider a few anonymous calls and letters and a man who spotted a tattoo of a snake on some guy’s arm good reasons,” Jack said.

  Since Maria hadn’t breathed a word of her investigation to Jack, Annalise must be filling him in on her progress. Maria had been avoiding calls from her sister, too, but she’d texted her an update yesterday.

  “What would you have me do, Jack? Not pursue the leads?” Maria spotted Logan walking across the backyard carrying a beer in one hand and her glass of punch in the other. In dark slacks and a long-sleeved blue shirt open at the neck, he almost looked better in his clothes than out of them. Almost. She nearly groaned at the direction her thoughts had taken, especially because she needed to keep her wits about her or she’d never find Mike.

  “I’d have you take the first plane back to Kentucky.” Jack lived in Virginia, but he and his girlfriend were spending the holidays at the DiMarco house in Lexington. Jack had obviously made it his mission to get Maria to leave Key West. “Mom and Dad are asking a lot of questions about what kind of case would take you away on Christmas week. You don’t want them to find out, do you?”

  “I want to bring Mike home to them,” Maria said. “Can’t you understand that?”

  “Sure I can,” Jack said. “He was my little brother, too. But sometimes wanting isn’t enough.”

  Logan stopped a few paces from her. She held up a finger to let him know she’d be only a minute.

  “Listen, Jack, I’ve gotta go,” she said.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he promised.

  She shook her head, but trying to dissuade him would be useless. “Tell Tara she might want to rethink dating such a stubborn son of a gun.”

  “Look who’s talking,” he retorted.

  “Bye, Jack,” she said and clicked off.

  “Sorry it took a while,” Logan said, extending the punch to her.

  “Thanks.” She took the glass, tipped it back and drained half the liquid in a single gulp.

  “Whoa!” Logan said. “Go easy on that. Kayla’s uncle warned me that was pretty strong stuff.”

  “I need something strong,” Maria said. “Jack was giving me a hard time.”

  Logan shrugged his broad shoulders. “He’s worried about you.”

  “I know.” Maria sighed. Since Mike’s death, the DiMarco siblings had kept close tabs on each other. She was the guiltiest party. Jack hadn’t been exaggerating about the stretch last summer when she’d called him every day. “Annalise must have filled him in on what’s going on in the investigation.”

  The back corner of the yard was fairly isolated but in full view of the festivities occurring closer to the house. Noise from the carols and the party guests filled what seemed to Maria like a pregnant pause.

  “It wasn’t Annalise,” Logan finally admitted. “Jack called me earlier today when you wouldn’t answer your phone.”

  Yet Logan had waited until this moment to inform her. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

  “Jack asked me not to,” he said. “He thought I could get you to stop searching and come home. He must have given up on my powers of persuasion.”

  “Do you still think I should stop searching for Mike?” She hadn’t broached the subject in a few days.

  Logan scratched his jaw. “I think we haven’t moved off our conclusion that there isn’t any more we can do until Caroline Webb gets a ransom demand.”

 
It seemed to Maria that Logan was evading the question.

  “You told Jack about the guy with the tattoo of a serpent on his arm,” she said. “Don’t you think that’s a promising lead?”

  Logan pressed his lips together, appearing deep in thought, as though he was debating something with himself. “There’s something I need to tell you, something I just found out from Repeat.”

  “Repeat’s here?” Maria scanned the party guests and caught sight of the older gentleman who’d provided the lead about the tattooed man. “What did he tell you?”

  Logan shuffled his feet, then inhaled and exhaled. Even though he’d brought up the topic, he seemed reluctant to continue. “That tattoo Repeat saw... He remembered it was red.”

  The full name of Mike’s favorite alternative rock band came to her in a flash: the Ruby Serpents.

  “Mike’s tattoo was red.” Maria clutched at Logan’s arm, feeling excitement build in her. “That’s further proof Mike is here in Key West.”

  “It’s circumstantial evidence,” Logan said. “It’s not proof of anything.”

  She dropped her hand and shook her head. “Why do you find it so hard to believe?”

  “Why do you find it so easy?” he countered.

  Easy was the wrong word. Nothing about this quest to find out if her brother had really died on 9/11 was easy.

  “Can’t you at least entertain the notion that Mike might be alive?” Maria asked.

  “If he’s alive,” Logan said slowly, “it would be a miracle.”

  “Christmas is the season of miracles,” she countered.

  Elvis Presley’s distinctive voice drifted to where they stood at the edge of the yard. He was singing about how blue his Christmas would be without the woman in his life. On the back patio a few yards from them, some couples were slow dancing to the music.

  Logan reached out a hand to her. “Dance with me?”

  “Here?” she exclaimed. “In Kayla’s mom’s yard?”

  He kept his hand outstretched. With the moon and the twinkling Christmas lights shining down on his dark hair, he looked like temptation itself. “Why not?”

  “The case.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “I feel like we’re so close to solving it but so far away.”

  “There’s nothing we can do right now,” he pointed out.

  But was that true? They’d pounded a lot of pavement since arriving in Key West. They could be out pounding more. Sometime in the past few days, however, Maria had subconsciously decided that canvassing Key West hoping to stumble across her brother or someone who knew him was fruitless.

  At the moment she wasn’t sure whether she’d arrived at the decision because it was the right one or because so many things were getting in the way of her investigation. Concern for Kayla. The knowledge that her siblings wanted her to suspend the search. But most of all, Logan.

  “Come on,” he cajoled. “Just one little dance.”

  “I’m not sure I can,” she said. “I keep thinking I shouldn’t be at a party enjoying myself when Mike could be out there somewhere.”

  “If you like, I’ll step on your toes while we’re dancing,” Logan said. “Then you won’t enjoy it.”

  She tried to suppress the giggle she felt rising in her throat. It erupted, anyway, along with a memory. “You stepped on my toes at senior prom without even trying.”

  “My mom’s fault,” Logan said. “I practiced with her for hours so you’d think I could dance.”

  “Really?” Maria hadn’t known that. “Why was that important to you?”

  “Are you kidding me?” He rolled his eyes. “I was a teenage boy in love with the most beautiful girl in school. I didn’t want anything to ruin the night.”

  Yet the night had been ruined, not by Logan stepping on her toes but by Maria pressing for a decision about their future.

  She’d known by then, of course, that he’d accepted his offer of admission from the University of Michigan. She’d been holding out hope that the prospect of living with her while attending art school in Louisville would be too much for Logan to resist. His love for her would win out and he’d withdraw his acceptance.

  He’d told her on that long-ago prom night that he wasn’t going to do that. She’d spent half the evening in the bathroom in tears.

  They hadn’t broken up that night but it had marked the beginning of the end.

  “I’ve always wanted a do-over,” he said, and she knew he was talking about much more than dancing. “Let me prove to you how much better I am now.”

  She simply wasn’t strong enough to resist. She placed her hand in his and he drew her close. The slight chill that had entered the air as the evening wore on immediately dissipated, replaced with an all-over warmth. Maria wasn’t sure why, but the weight of disappointment she’d been carrying around over not finding Mike suddenly seemed lighter.

  They swayed to the music, with Elvis still crooning about how blue his Christmas would be without the woman he loved.

  “I shouldn’t be trying to persuade you to go back to Kentucky,” Logan whispered, his breath sending tiny shivers down her neck. “I get what Elvis is singing about.”

  Whenever they left Key West, they’d also be leaving each other. Maria would spend the holidays in Kentucky while Logan would be in New York City.

  “You never told me what your boss said about you delaying your return,” she said. “He couldn’t have been happy.”

  “He wasn’t,” Logan confirmed, “but I’m happy right where I am.”

  He captured her lips and, at least for now, all her concerns melted away. She, too, was exactly where she wanted to be.

  * * *

  THE MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH choir raised their voices in song Sunday morning two days before Christmas, belting out a string of glorias in perfect harmony.

  Kayla and her mother usually waited until the minister was all the way down the aisle before leaving church. Not today.

  Her mom was home with a cold, something Kayla had discovered only when she swung by to pick her up. If she’d known earlier, Kayla would have skipped church so she could sleep and avoid embarrassment.

  Throughout the service, she’d worried people would whisper that she was responsible for the photo in the newspaper of Devil Santa. Never mind that she’d arrived late and sat in the last row so she’d be less visible.

  She’d failed in her attempt to save the merchants association from additional embarrassment, and today was the day she would suffer the consequences.

  She darted out of the pew, for once wishing she’d worn flats instead of her signature high heels so she could move faster.

  Nevertheless, she was one of the first people to leave the building. The church was only three or four blocks from home. She headed for the sidewalk, intent on making a quick getaway.

  “Kayla! Wait up!”

  The voice summoning her was male and familiar, although she couldn’t quite place it. She slowed down, hid her grimace with a smile and turned to greet whoever was preventing her escape.

  It was James Smith, the devil himself. She kept her forced smile, because that characterization wasn’t fair. James had done nothing wrong. Kayla was the one who hadn’t done her job satisfactorily.

  “You sure got out of church fast,” he said as he approached her. “I was sitting a few pews away and I almost didn’t catch you.”

  He’d been seated near her? Kayla hadn’t noticed him. She did now. He was dressed much the same as he’d been
for his young cousin’s play, in dress slacks and a lightweight shirt, with his hair combed back from his angular face. Jimbo aka James Smith was really quite something when he smiled, as he was doing now.

  “I’ve been awake all night,” Kayla said. “I need to go home and sleep.”

  “Still keeping watch on Santa?” he asked.

  Kayla held up her smartphone, which she’d been checking at regular intervals throughout the service. “I haven’t been fired. Yet, that is.”

  “James! Look what I drew!” A boy about six years old, with olive skin and dark hair, ran up to them. He thrust out a pamphlet that Kayla recognized as literature for children about the scriptures. On the back, the boy had drawn some sort of robot.

  “It’s a Transformer.” He came close to James and pointed at the drawing. The boy’s shirt had come untucked from his dress pants and one of his shoelaces was untied. “See how it has wings!”

  “Cool,” James said, “but should you have been drawing this in church?”

  The boy thought for a moment. “Angels have wings, too. It can be a Transformer angel.”

  James laughed and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Kayla, this is my cousin Manny. And those are his parents,” he said, nodding at a young couple approaching them. Kayla had noticed them in church before. The woman, who had coloring similar to her son’s, was long limbed and gorgeous. Her husband, several inches shorter than his wife, had a friendly, open face. “Silvana and Harry, this is Kayla.”

  “So nice to meet you!” Silvana exclaimed in a voice that was slightly accented. “James told us all about you.”

  He had? Kayla cast a glance at him. A faint red stain appeared on his cheeks. Was he blushing?

  “We went to high school together.” Kayla wasn’t sure what else to say.

  “James told us that,” Harry said. “You’ll have to come over for dinner sometime, Kayla. Silvana is a wonderful cook.”

  “He’s right,” Silvana said with a laugh. “I’m not shy about admitting it, either.”

  The little boy suddenly took off, his destination unclear.