I'll Be Home for Christmas

by Dawn Stewardson

  “What?” Her heart began beating triple time. “What do you mean, he’s not with you?”

  “You think it was me who took him?”

  “Of course that’s what I think! Are you saying it wasn’t?”

  “Hell, Ali, I’m not heartless.”

  Her knees were suddenly weak and her head was spinning. She leaned against the wall for support. A stranger had her son after all!

  Hysteria rushed over her like a giant wave, but just as the undertow began sweeping her away, Logan rested his hand on her arm and whispered that she had to stay in control.

  “Bob,” she managed to say after a moment, “I don’t understand. When you phoned before, you said Robbie was with you.”

  “No, I said he’s safe. And that once you do what I tell you, you’ll get him back.”

  “It’s the insurance money you want, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well you can have it, but what about Robbie? Where—”

  “Ali, he’ll be fine. And I’ll let you talk to him tomorrow. But I don’t think either of us would want him knowing I’m alive. Not when I’m just going to disappear again.”

  “But, I—”

  “Look, as soon as you give me the money, I’ll be out of your life for good. Robbie’s, too. So don’t you figure it’s better for him to just keep on believing I’m dead? Him and everyone else, too?”

  She took a deep breath, trying to think far enough through her fear and confusion to decide what was better.

  As long as she’d known Bob, his first and foremost concern had been about what would be best for him. So was he really thinking of Robbie’s welfare now, or did he have a hidden agenda? He’d arranged for someone else to take Robbie. Some stranger. Which meant Robbie was probably terrified, and that sure didn’t add up to Bob’s being concerned.

  But in a perverse way he was making sense. Maybe, in the long run, it would be better if Robbie went on believing his father was dead. Assuming there was going to be a long run. Thinking about the possibility there wouldn’t be started her stomach knotting.

  “All right,” she finally murmured. “All right, then, you’re doing what you think is best. But at least tell me who he’s with.”

  “Ali, he’s safe. That’s all you need to know. He’s my son, too, and I don’t want him hurt. I just had to make sure you wouldn’t give me any hassles.”

  Covering the receiver with her hand, she shook her head at Logan, trying to tell him she was in trouble. Her throat was so tight she wasn’t certain she could say another word, let alone continue this conversation.

  There was something going on that Bob wasn’t mentioning. And he could tell her he didn’t want Robbie hurt from here to China, but that didn’t guarantee a damned thing when Robbie wasn’t even with him.

  Logan rested his hands firmly on her shoulders, giving them an encouraging squeeze. “Just take it easy,” he whispered. “You’re doing fine. But has he agreed to let you talk to Robbie?”

  “Bob, listen to me,” she finally said, forcing herself to go on. “I’ll get you the money, but what if I can’t get it tomorrow? It’s invested and the broker will have to—”

  “Get it fast, Ali. The faster you do that, the faster you get Robbie back.”

  “Bob...Bob, I don’t know how you can be doing this. Not this way. It’s about the worst thing you could possibly have done. And...and if it does take me longer than just tomorrow, I want you to promise I can talk to Robbie the next day, too. Every day he’s not home.”

  There was a long silence at the other end of the line. She listened to the hammering of her heart and waited.

  “All right,” Bob said at last. “But only as long as you don’t try anything dumb. You don’t ask him any questions. Nothing like where is he or who’s he with. One question like that and it’s the last call. You understand?”

  “Yes. Perfectly.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll set things up for a little before nine tomorrow morning. And I’ll phone you again myself, right after that, to give you instructions about the money. Wait until you’ve heard from me before you call that broker. And listen, you did what I told you before? You didn’t tell anyone at the clinic it was me who called, did you?”

  “No, nobody. I said I didn’t recognize the voice.”

  “Good, make sure you stick to that. And remember what I said about no police. I’ll know if you contact them, Ali. I’ll know.”

  With that, the line went dead.

  * * *

  LOGAN CHECKED ON CODY, who was still fast asleep in the living room, then went back to the kitchen and stood waiting for the coffee to finish perking, giving Ali a few more minutes to pull herself together.

  She’d managed to tell him that Bob had agreed to let her talk to Robbie every morning, but she’d been so close to tears when she’d hung up that she hadn’t been able to discuss the rest of the conversation right away. Hearing her half, though, had given Logan a pretty good idea of what was what.

  “Insurance money,” she’d said. That’s what Bob wanted from her. But how the hell much money did it take to make a guy snatch his own son?

  The coffeemaker began sputtering, so he grabbed a couple of mugs. While he was filling them, Ali wandered over from where she’d been standing by the stove.

  “When I hear from Robbie,” she said, her voice a little uneven, “he’s going to be on a cell phone, too. Bob will make sure of that, so there’s no point even hoping we’ll get a number.”

  “No...there probably isn’t.” He handed her a mug, leaned against the counter and waited for her to go on. “You feel up to telling me the rest of the details yet?” he prompted when she didn’t.

  “I...I think so.”

  “Okay, do your best to remember everything Bob said.”

  She took a sip of coffee, then put it down and started with his “Hello.”

  Logan saved his questions for later and just listened while she repeated the conversation.

  “And right before he hung up,” she concluded, “he told me that if I contacted the police, he’d know. That was the last thing he said.”

  “He was just trying to intimidate you,” Logan said—more to make her feel better than because he believed it. All Bob had to do was have somebody watching her, and he’d know if she went to the police or if they came to the house.

  “Well, his intimidation worked,” she murmured. “Oh, Logan, I’m really scared.”

  “Ali...we’re going to make this turn out okay.”

  She nodded, but her face was pale and her dark eyes were filled with tears.

  It had been a long, long time since anyone except Cody had stirred protective feelings in him, but right now he desperately wanted to keep Ali from being afraid. That wasn’t an available option, though. So instead, he mentally ran through everything she’d just told him.

  If tonight had been a chapter in one of his books, he’d have written a clue into Bob’s dialogue—had him say something that would have sent them racing out into the darkness, knowing exactly where they’d find Robbie.

  But this was real life, and things were far from that simple. Robbie was somewhere in a city of four million people, and Bob hadn’t given them even the slightest hint where.

  “This insurance money Bob wants,” he said at last. “It’s a payment you got because he was supposedly dead?”

  Ali nodded.

  “And how much are we talking?”

  She hesitated, then said, “You’re going to find this hard to believe, but two million dollars.”

  “Jeez,” he muttered, “that was quite some policy. And you’ve got the money invested in what?”

  “Mutual funds. Kent looked after everything for me—he’s a financial adviser. So I’ll call him first thing in the morning. And if he sells right away...it won’t take much time to free up the money, will it?”

  Logan swore silently.

  “Will it?” she repeated.

  “I think—no, I don’t think, I k
now. It takes five working days to get your money out of anything like that. The time’s set by the Securities Commission.”

  “Five days?” she whispered, her face turning an even paler shade of white. “Oh, no, Logan, you must be wrong.”

  “I wish I was, but...Ali, you can check one of your statements. It’ll say that right on it someplace.”

  “But five days would be until Friday. Robbie can’t be gone for five more days. What if...” She stopped speaking and tears began streaming down her face.

  Logan put his coffee onto the counter and reached for her, wrapping his arms around her and holding her while she cried. Once again, he could smell the crazy scent that made him think of chocolate chip cookies and forbidden desire. Not knowing what else he could do, he simply stroked her hair until she finally stopped sobbing.

  “It has to be such a traumatic thing for him,” she whispered at last. “He won’t know why he’s with a stranger, why he isn’t home with me. Logan, that kind of experience can shatter a child. What if the psychological damage...”

  “Shhh,” he murmured, “that’s not going to happen. He’s a well-adjusted little guy, and he’ll come through just fine. You’ll see.”

  “Oh, I hope so. I only hope...I’ll be back in a minute,” she said, moving out of his embrace. “I’m just going upstairs...need to wash my face and...I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He sank onto a chair once she’d left the kitchen, trying not to dwell on the issue of how this might affect Robbie. They’d worry about that once they had him back.

  But Ali was right. It didn’t take a degree in psychology to realize the potential for damage. And the longer Robbie was gone...well, they had to get him back as soon as they could.

  Of course, the decision on how to play this had to be Ali’s, but he had a gut feeling she shouldn’t just sit back, go along with what Bob wanted and assume everything would come up roses.

  All he needed was a brilliant idea about what she should do.

  * * *

  IT WAS A GOOD HALF HOUR before Ali reappeared downstairs, and Logan’s gut feeling that they should be actively doing something had been growing stronger the entire time she’d been gone. She poured herself fresh coffee, then slid into the chair across the table from him, looking like death warmed over.

  “Feel any better?” he asked.

  “A little. I...I checked the fund statements and you were right about the five days. So I guess I just have to keep telling myself that, no matter how long this takes, Bob would never let anyone hurt his own son.”

  Logan fleetingly wondered if she was really sure of that, but he refrained from asking.

  “You know how long five days can be for a little boy, though,” she continued. “And he’s got to be awfully frightened. So don’t you think Kent should be able to speed up the process somehow? Get my money faster?”

  “No...no, we’re going to be stuck with playing by the rules.”

  “But there must be a way.”

  Raking his fingers through his hair, Logan tried to decide what to say. Since her husband wasn’t really dead, she should never have gotten that insurance money in the first place. And now, legally, she was required to pay it back—not hand it over to Bob.

  That obviously hadn’t occurred to her, but it sure would occur to Kent, and if she asked him for the money he’d have no choice but to tell the insurance company what was going on. If he didn’t, he’d be making himself a party to fraud and putting his entire career at risk. But as soon as he opened his mouth the police would get involved.

  “Surely,” Ali was saying, “if Kent told whoever’s in charge how urgently I need the money...”

  “Ali...look, if you want the money we’re going to have to circumvent Kent.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’d know you wanted it for Bob, so you’d be asking him to bend his ethics totally out of shape. But who do your statements come from? The brokerage house he bought the funds through?”

  She nodded.

  “Good. Then you can bypass him by calling them directly. You can just say you’re looking after your own investments now, but you can’t say that you need two million bucks urgently, to pay a kidnapper. Somebody’d call the cops for sure—figure they were obliged to. So unless we decide we want to involve the police after all...”

  Logan could tell Ali was about to start crying once more, so he hurried on. “Let’s consider a different angle. I’ve been thinking there might be some way, some sort of deal we could make with Bob, that would get Robbie back faster.”

  “What sort of deal?” She gazed at him with a faint glimmer of hope in her eyes.

  “I’m not exactly sure, but if we could come up with an idea before you talk to him again...”

  Ali wrapped her fingers around the warmth of her mug, telling herself that if Logan thought they might be able to play “Let’s Make a Deal” with Bob, then the most useful thing she could do was concentrate on thinking about that. She had to try to stop focusing on her worries about Robbie.

  “Let’s run through what we know,” Logan suggested. “See if anything leaps out at us.”

  “All right.”

  “Okay, square one is that Bob was supposed to be dead, but he’s not. And he wants that money, so he takes Robbie to make you hand it over. And—”

  “And someone helped him.”

  “Yeah, you mentioned that part. He doesn’t want Robbie to know he’s really still alive, so he got someone else to—”

  “No, I didn’t mean whoever he got to physically take Robbie. I meant that somebody who knows me helped him.”

  Logan looked at her curiously. “If you’re right, that puts a whole new twist on things. But why are you thinking that?”

  “Because of everything Bob knew. I’ve been so upset that I only realized it while I was upstairs, but somebody must have told him I was taking Robbie to that party. And when I said I’d moved here, he already knew. He had my number, even though it’s unlisted. Logan, there has to be somebody else involved.”

  He sat rubbing his jaw for a minute, then said, “Finding out where you’re living, or even getting the phone number, wouldn’t have been tough. And I just assumed Bob had been watching the house and followed you to the clinic. But, you know, that snatch was so damned smooth maybe he couldn’t have set it up on the spur of the moment.”

  “You think I’m right, then?”

  “I think you might be. Who do you figure it was?”

  She took a deep breath. She didn’t know where this was going to get them, but at least Logan hadn’t laughed at her suspicions. “I think there’s only one person it could be. His name’s Vinny Velarde, and he was Bob’s business partner.”

  “And he knew Robbie would be at the party?”

  “Yes, he called the other day and I mentioned it. He’s not my favorite person, but he keeps in touch—says he likes to know how Robbie’s doing. But maybe it’s actually that he and Bob...”

  “Okay, let’s develop that scenario a little. Bob decides he’s going to take Robbie, and he gets this Vinny to check out a good time.”

  “Vinny might even have been the man Cody saw,” Ali said. “That would explain why Robbie didn’t yell or anything. He’d have gone with Vinny if he’d thought there was some reason to.”

  Logan nodded. “Okay, so it’s possible Vinny was the man. But even if he wasn’t, if he’s been feeding Bob information, then he knew Bob wasn’t dead. So does that mean Vinny’s been in on things right from the beginning? You’d better fill in some of the background for me.”

  “I...oh, Logan, it’s all so complicated that I don’t know where to start.”

  “Just pick a place. If I get confused, I’ll tell you.”

  She thought for a minute, then said, “All right, I’ll start with the insurance money, explain why the policy—no, I should start back further, with Bob’s murder.”

  “Which never actually happened.”

  “Apparently not.” She took
a sip of coffee and did her best to organize the facts in her head. “All right,” she finally said, “keep in mind that Bob and I were separated, so all I know is what Vinny told me. That and the odd thing the insurance people said.”

  Logan nodded.

  “All right, then. Bob went to Nicaragua about eighteen months ago, on some sort of business trip. He and Vinny had an import-export business, called Custom Cargoes, which Vinny still owns. According to him, Bob made the trip to set up a link with an exporter there. But I gather the RCMP thought—”

  “Wait a minute,” Logan interrupted. “The RCMP? Why did the feds get involved if this imaginary murder happened in Nicaragua?”

  She hesitated. Even after all this time, it was embarrassing to admit she’d married Bob without even suspecting he sometimes wandered onto the shady side of the law. But if she was going to tell Logan the facts, there was no way around telling him all of them.

  “Ali?”

  “Yes, I’m just deciding how to simplify this so it doesn’t take forever. The RCMP got involved because they were suspicious about what Bob was importing. And maybe they were right to be—no, probably they were right to be. After Bob and I had been married for a while, I began to think there had to be two sides to Custom Cargoes—and that one of them was anything but legitimate.”

  “You began to think,” Logan said. “Did you ever find out for sure?”

  “No, but my best guess is that they’d been running illegal alcohol into Canada for years. A while after Bob and I had called it quits, I know the RCMP were checking Custom Cargoes out. They talked to me—thought I’d know more than I actually did. But neither Bob nor Vinny were ever charged, so there couldn’t have been enough evidence.”

  “But what about Nicaragua? Why were the RCMP interested in what happened there?”

  “I think they figured Bob’s trip had something to do with expanding the business. Or diversifying—however you’d put it. There was probably a drug connection down there. Or guns, maybe. Everything seemed to add up to that. Bob was making a deal, it went sour, so he ended up dead. Which explained the finger, too. I mean, it’s the sort of thing drug dealers or guerrillas would do to make a statement, isn’t it.”