Dear Santa

by Alice Orr

  “Let’s go in the living room and take a look,” he said, stepping toward the woman and child.

  “Don’t kill us,” Sprite wailed and ducked behind Katherine.

  “I wouldn’t hurt you. I promise.”

  Vic took a step forward, but Sprite did not emerge. Katherine nodded in the direction of Vic’s right hand. He was still holding the gun.

  “This old thing?” he said, making his voice sound light and cheerful even though he was feeling like the biggest jerk in the universe. “I was just playing a joke with Katherine. This old thing couldn’t hurt a fly.”

  Vic hated lying to kids, especially since that was what had been done to him the whole time he was growing up. He’d kissed his family goodbye because of it, and other things. Consequently, there was hardly anything he disliked doing more. Katherine’s disapproving expression gave him no other choice right now. There was little he wouldn’t do to erase that veil of disapproval from her usually bright, blue-gray eyes.

  Vic moved toward the hallway stand where he kept the gun. He was vaguely aware that his own face must be wearing a fairly goofy expression as he tried to portray himself as harmless to Sprite, who was now peeking out with one eye from behind Katherine. He was reaching for the drawer with the hidden niche when he hesitated. Nobody in the world other than himself knew about that compartment. He kept it secret for safety reasons, other people’s safety and his own. He glanced at Katherine, whose eyes held questions now as well as disapproval. He told himself he’d be a fool not to trust those eyes, that hid so little of what she was thinking and feeling. Still…

  “Let’s go into the living room and see that Christmas tree,” he said.

  Vic slipped the gun into the back waistband of his jeans and pulled his sweater down to cover the weapon. He knew Katherine was watching his movements with suspicion, but the caution he’d learned from years of being a Maltese told him he had to remain secretive. Meanwhile, Katherine and Sprite had begun to look overly warm in their snow-soggy clothes.

  “Let me help you,” he said and stepped toward the two of them where they still stood in his hallway.

  Katherine backed hastily away, and the obvious rejection of that stung his heart as surely as if she had struck him across the face.

  “I don’t think she’s ready for that,” Katherine said, looking down at Sprite.

  Vic had a feeling Katherine was also talking about herself.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go into the living room, then. The two of you should get out of those wet things.”

  That apparently grabbed Katherine’s attention because she began walking toward the archway into Vic’s living room. She moved awkwardly with Sprite still attached to her coattail, but Vic didn’t try to help this time. The memory of Katherine’s rejection kept him at a distance as much as any practical consideration of encouraging Sprite’s cooperation could ever have done.

  “You do have a Christmas tree!” Sprite exclaimed. An instant later, she was darting toward the tall, green hemlock in the bay window of Vic’s living room.

  “She seems to have gotten over her fear,” he said.

  He always marvelled at the way kids could jump from one moment to the next sometimes, as if what came before had never happened at all.

  “Yes, she’s apparently forgotten all about it.”

  Katherine’s tone made it clear that she hadn’t done the same. She stared at him as if she might be able to see straight through his body to the gun in his waistband. He guessed she might have more questions about that gun than he cared to answer.

  “I’ll take your coat and hang it up to dry,” he said, reaching out a hand without stepping any closer to her. He didn’t want to cause her to back off from him again. “Give me Sprite’s coat, too.”

  Katherine hesitated a moment before unbuttoning her coat and handing it over to him, all without coming any closer to him. Instead, she went to Sprite, who was touching one of the metallic glass balls Vic had hung on the tree and staring at the distorted image of herself in its shiny gold surface with obvious delight.

  “I’m going to take your coat off now,” Katherine said in a calm, careful voice as if she might be afraid of startling Sprite with anything more loud or sudden.

  “Okay,” Sprite answered and unzipped her jacket without taking her eyes off the ornament.

  “I think she likes the tree,” Vic said.

  Katherine turned and handed him the damp garment. “Children react so strongly to new experiences.”

  She didn’t have to speak sharply for Vic to hear the pointedness of her comment. He decided not to respond. He was in a no-win position here and he knew it. Anything he said was just as likely to dig him deeper in as it was to help him out. He draped Sprite’s jacket over his arm on top of Katherine’s coat and turned to leave the room.

  “Are you going away?” Sprite asked, diverting her attention from the tree.

  A little of the whine that he’d heard before had crept back into her voice and some of the fear was returning to her eyes. She might have forgotten the gun he’d held a few moments ago, but Vic would guess she hadn’t forgotten how scared she was in general, scared enough to want as many protective adults around her at all times as she could get.

  “I’ll be right back, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m just going to hang your coats up where they can dry.”

  “Good,” Sprite said, apparently reassured, and returned her attention to the tree.

  The gentleness of his words to the child had inspired a similar softening in the way Katherine was looking at him. His heart lightened at the sight. He hurried out of the room before she could pick up on the relief he was feeling. His reactions to her were way too extreme, considering the brief time they’d known each other. He knew, from long-ago sad experience, that wearing your heart on your sleeve is a good way to get shot down.

  He took the coats to the small first-floor bathroom, picking up two hangers from the hall closet on the way. He hung the coats on the shower bar and smoothed out the damp material of both. Sprite’s jacket was too lightweight for winter wear. Vic remembered noticing the same thing about Coyote’s clothing that morning. Now, he was out in the storm somewhere. Vic would have liked to quiz Sprite for any information she might have on her brother’s whereabouts, but she probably didn’t trust Vic enough for that kind of questioning just yet. The incident with the gun had set him back several paces in the trustworthiness department, which reminded him of his intention to get that particular item back into its hiding place ASAP. He was on his way to the hallway stand when Katherine stepped through the archway from the living room.

  “Did you find a warm place to hang our things?” she asked.

  “Yes, I did.” He examined her face and saw the flicker of fear that remained in her eyes. He lowered his voice and asked, “What’s going on? What brought you and Sprite here at this time of night?”

  From what he had figured out about Katherine so far, she didn’t come across as the kind of person who would show up at somebody’s door like this without calling first.. What was going on with her? That question resonated in Vic’s mind as she glanced furtively back toward Sprite before answering.

  “Somebody broke into my apartment,” she said in a near whisper.

  “Broke in?”

  Katherine raised her finger quickly to her lips and shushed him. She glanced back again at Sprite who had sat herself down in front of the tree and was playing with Vic’s miniature train set, one of the few mementos he’d been able to bear to keep from his childhood.

  “She’s not paying any attention to us,” he said. His own voice dropped to a whisper now. “Tell me what happened at your apartment.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, just a little tremulously. She’d managed to get rid of that tremor by the time she spoke again. “All I know is that somebody came into my home and damaged something I value very much.”

  “What was that?”

  Vic longed to cross the space between t
hem in a single, eager stride and take her in his arms, but he needed to know what she was talking about even more.

  “They slashed a small portrait I keep on my mantelpiece.”

  She paused. Vic could see on her face the effort she was making to calm and control herself. He almost did take her in his arms then.

  “It was a portrait of Daniel,” she whispered before he could move toward her.

  Vic stayed where he was. The slope of her shoulders and the angle of her neck as she clutched her hands in front of her and stared down at them told him she didn’t want to be touched right now. She needed to be self-contained, at least for the moment, inside the grief he could feel emanating from her. He respected that need while his own heart ached for her pain. He waited for her to lift her head slowly to look at him again before he spoke.

  “Do you have any idea who might have done such a thing?”

  Vic asked that so gently he wondered, when she didn’t respond right away, if maybe she hadn’t heard him. Then, she reached into the pocket of the skirt he recognized to be the same one she’d had on all day.

  “They left this.”

  She handed him a piece of paper that had been crumpled into a ball. He smoothed it out and read the typewritten warning.

  “This is about the kids,” he said. “Coyote and Sprite.”

  They both glanced over at Sprite this time. She was lifting the toy-train cars one by one from the red felt skirt beneath Vic’s tree and setting them up again, one after the other, in a line on the carpet. She was obviously way too engrossed to have noticed the mention of her name or her brother’s.

  “I think it has something to do with the woman who came to my office today,” Katherine whispered after she’d turned her attention back to Vic. “Lacey Harbison.”

  Vic nodded agreement. “So, you’re finally tying her into the melodrama.”

  To his surprise, Katherine flushed at this reminder of the statement she’d made in her office.

  “Well,” he continued, “I agree with you. I think she and whoever she’s mixed up with are after Coyote and Sprite for some reason. We have to find out what that reason is.”

  Vic stepped forward, but Katherine took his arm.

  “What we have to do first is get some food into Sprite,” Katherine said. “She hasn’t eaten since lunchtime at school. She needs nourishment.”

  Vic looked at the small, pale child in his living room and then back at Katherine, who was almost as thin.

  “I’d guess you could use a good meal yourself.”

  Katherine shrugged. “Maybe we could send out for pizza or Chinese food.”

  Vic raised his hand in protest. “We don’t do takeout in this house,” he said.

  He took Katherine by the arm before she could answer and led her back into the living room.

  “Come with me, ladies,” he said, extending his free hand to Sprite. “You have a very special treat in store.”

  Chapter Ten

  This had been a day of shocks and bewilderment for Katherine. She might have thought there was nothing left in the world to surprise her at the moment. At least, she might have considered herself way too exhausted by it all to master so much as a show of mild curiosity. Yet, when she burst through Vic Maltese’s front door and then had a moment to calm down a bit, what she found there could hardly have been less expected.

  She’d seen Vic’s hot car and his wardrobe. She’d listened to his wisecracks and observed his edge of street savvy and impatience. None of that had prepared her for the hearth crackling in his living room or the Middle Eastern wool-weave carpets on polished fir flooring as warm in its luster as the milk-glass sconces on his walls. Cut-velvet drapes in pale olive were tied back by braided cords to reveal a veil of snow outside as it swirled in the illumination of the two carriage lamps on wrought-iron posts, one at each side of the half dozen steps leading up to Vic’s door.

  She hadn’t really registered those lamps on her way up the steps except to say a quick prayer of thanks for the light that made his house number visible through the storm and darkness. She’d been in a state of barely controlled panic at the time, unable to shake the fear that whoever had invaded her apartment might have been lying in wait for her outside and could have followed her here. She’d had to force her foot to lighten on the gas pedal, no matter how much she wanted to propel her Cherokee across town like a rocket to what she hoped would be safe refuge with Vic. Even four-wheel drive might not have been equal to avoiding a disastrous skid if she accelerated too fast in this weather.

  So, she had endured the cautious but maddeningly slow journey from State Street to Livingston Avenue. About halfway between the two, it occurred to her that he might not be at home. Consequently, his carriage lamps had shone like rays of hope for her. Then she’d knocked on the door—and knocked and knocked and knocked. She told herself he had to be inside, because she had no idea what to do if he wasn’t. So she’d knocked until the door flew open at last.

  Now here she was in the most unanticipated circumstances she could imagine. Vic had sat her down in a cushioned spindle rocker with an afghan tucked under her chin. They were in his kitchen on the basement level of his house. A green-painted cast-iron woodstove gave off a cozy heat. Vic had settled Sprite beneath a quilt among the pillows of a window seat with heavy hemp-cloth curtains drawn behind her to shut out even the hint of a draft. The child’s eyelids were already almost closed despite her obvious struggles to keep them open. With a pang of toosharp memory, Katherine could see Daniel doing the same thing, fighting against sleep for fear of missing so much as five minutes of whatever might happen next.

  “Are you all right?” Vic asked.

  He’d stopped stirring the pot on the restaurant-sized range.

  “I’m fine,” she said, but she could tell by the look on his face that he didn’t believe her. She needed to throw him off this track before he asked her more questions she couldn’t bear to answer right now. “I’m just feeling a little overwhelmed by…”

  “By what?”

  There was his impatience again. She lifted her arm from the folds of the afghan and made a sweeping gesture to indicate the room.

  “All of this,” she said, amazed by how light her hand felt at the end of her arm, as if it might fly straight off if she were to swing it too hard.

  Vic laughed and turned back to his stirring.

  “What did you think? That I’d live in a flophouse?”

  Katherine didn’t answer. She couldn’t tell him she’d been thinking something very much along those lines.

  “I didn’t expect you to have a Christmas tree.”

  “Oh, that.” He chuckled. “I have an open house for the kids from the center a couple of days before Christmas. I put up the tree for that.”

  “You wouldn’t do it otherwise?” Something in his tone made her ask that.

  “Probably not.”

  “I see.” This time something in his tone made her say no more, at least not on that subject. “What are you cooking?”

  “Sauce and pasta,” he said and chuckled again. “I know what a cliché that is. The guy whose one dish is spaghetti.”

  “Some clichés are nice.”

  Katherine heard the wooziness in her voice. She was beginning to feel like Sprite, as if she had to struggle to stay awake.

  “For your information, I cook lots of things,” Vic said.

  Katherine managed a sleepy smile. “For your information, I’ll bet you do,” she whispered before her voice trailed off.

  The comfort of the rocker and the warmth of the woodstove had already transported her too far down the road toward dreams for her to be surprised by much of anything any longer.

  VIC CARRIED SPRITE upstairs first. He’d turned the burner off under the sauce pot and set the drained pasta aside before making the climb. He settled Sprite on the bed in the guest room on his second floor and covered her carefully. She hardly stirred through all of that, or when he tucked his long-saved teddy
bear into the curve of her arm. He left the door ajar and a light on in the hallway outside the guest room. He was a veteran of enough haunted nights to be aware of the need to keep the darkness at bay.

  He went back down the two flights of stairs at the rear of the house to the kitchen. What he saw there caused him to come to a dead stop, and not just because he didn’t want to disturb Katherine’s sleep.

  Light from the fading flames of the woodstove threw shadows across her face, across the pale skin of her brow and the long lashes against her cheek. Her full lips were parted just slightly. The urge to kiss them thrilled through Vic like an earthquake tremoring straight to his loins. God, she was beautiful. And so still that, before he could think how nonsensical it was, he leaned closer to hear above the anxious beating of his own heart if she might have stopped breathing. He noticed the flush of her cheeks then, too high, too red even for her.

  This had been the kind of overwrought day that might put anybody under the weather. Speaking of weather, she’d been out running around in a snowstorm, too. Working at a place like the center meant being exposed to the virusgerms kids carry with them, especially during the winter, as readily as they carry a basketball. Being adolescents and resilient, they most likely wouldn’t come down with anything more serious than a twenty-four-hour bug. An adult, on the other hand, could be more susceptible, particularly one who pushed herself as hard as Katherine did and looked so much like she needed a good, hearty meal.

  He touched her forehead with the back of his hand. Her skin was moist and warm but not hot enough to be feverish. Vic sighed with relief. He didn’t want her to be sick. He was amazed at how strongly he didn’t want anything bad, or even a little uncomfortable, to happen to her. He was resisting the temptation, which felt more like a deep need than an impulse, to caress her cheek, when her hand crept out from beneath the afghan and she clasped his wrist. The movement was unhurried and delicate, like the flicker of firelight on her cheek. Still, he couldn’t have been more startled if she’d struck him in the face.