Unforgettable Christmas Dreams: Gifts of Joy

by Rebecca York

  Rufus used a napkin to dry his tears. “I should’ve known it wasn’t you who’d died. They wouldn’t let me see your body, said better the casket remained closed. I was so sorry about the way things ended between us, boy. I was no good to anyone then. I couldn’t take care of you the way a father should. I couldn’t take care of myself. I’m so ashamed.”

  Giving into the regret he’d bottled up for years, Simon said, “Drink made you hell to live with, but you’re sober now. You changed.”

  “I’m a different person,” Rufus agreed. “I’m just sorry I didn’t sober up when you needed me.”

  “We always need our parents,” Simon told him. “That was the last straw, you know. Your saying I was no son of yours. That’s when I decided to run.”

  Rufus didn’t say anything. Suddenly he couldn’t meet Simon’s eyes and Simon’s gut quaked. What the hell?

  “What is it, Dad? What aren’t you telling me?”

  Rufus didn’t answer immediately, but finally he said, “I-I love you as much as any father could love a son.” He still was averting his eyes. “You got to believe that.”

  “All right.”

  “But I wasn’t able to give your mother a child… The disappointment nearly killed her. We had some problems with the marriage over it. Then she got pregnant. Not by me.” He looked up, locked gazes with Simon. “She never told me who he was. She said it was okay if I wanted to leave her. I didn’t though. I loved her more than anything. Her death nearly killed me, too.”

  It was taking Simon some time to process this. “So you’re not my father?”

  “I am your father in every way that counts!” Rufus said. “I couldn’t have loved you more, boy, since before you were born. But I was weak and jealous of your mother. I found comfort in the bottle every time I thought about her and another man, not that she catted around on me. It was just that once. She swore it, and mostly I believed her. And then when she died…”

  “You forgot about me.”

  “I didn’t forget about you, Simon. Never. Not once in the last thirteen years.” More tears rolled into his beard. “I never stopped regretting denying you that last night when all you were trying to do was stop me from taking another drink. I love you, boy. I always have.”

  Simon couldn’t help but wonder who his biological father might be, but he knew he loved Rufus Shea, no matter what. He settled down at the bar and talked with the old man until it was time for the Duck Blind to open.

  Only then did he reluctantly leave, promising to be back.

  His thoughts filled with the way Rufus had turned his life around, Simon wondered if it was possible for someone as damaged as he was to do the same.

  Chapter Sixteen

  As the sun set and the snow started falling in big fat flakes, the first of hundreds of guests arrived for the Drake Foundation charity ball, and Drake House lit up like a beautiful Christmas tree.

  Having arrived early and alone, Lexie thought to keep herself busy, rearranging plants and tweaking the vases of flowers. Eventually, she acknowledged that the decorations already looked perfect and found a niche just inside the ballroom where she could see everyone as they came in.

  Marie and Brandon stood together in the middle of the foyer, greeting each new arrival. Marie looked spectacular in an off-the-shoulder green velvet gown and made the perfect partner for Brandon, who could have been born in a tux. For once he was smiling. That she’d even had the smallest doubt about him made Lexie’s heart twist in regret.

  Shelley Zachary stood to one side, taking people’s coats and handing them off to Isabella and another young woman to hang on specially set up racks just inside the private wing. Wearing what was obviously a designer black dress, Isabella looked ready to join the ball. From her expression, Lexie guessed that Cliff hadn’t invited her to be his date, and Isabella wasn’t at all happy playing maid tonight.

  So far, a few dozen people had entered the ballroom, oohing and aahing that they’d never seen anything quite so beautiful. Lexie knew she should take more pleasure in the approval, but the Grinch was back.

  She blamed Simon for her dark mood.

  Oh, he’d seen to his duty as her bodyguard when she’d finished at Drake House earlier, then had followed her back here this evening. For the few hours in between he’d barely spoken to her, hadn’t noticed her red silk chiffon gown with its ruched and beaded bodice and a studded bow at the hip. Indeed, he’d seemed preoccupied with his own thoughts.

  Had he been making plans to break into the Manor at Drake Acres or plans to leave Jenkins Cove? Maybe both, she thought sadly.

  “Lexie, there you are!”

  “Mom, Dad.” Lexie focused on her parents. Her mother was wearing a new deep blue cocktail dress and her father his old tuxedo. “You two look great. Where’s Katie?”

  “With Carole. They’ll be along in a minute.”

  Her father kissed her cheek, saying, “My, you look glamorous.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” She forced a grin. “Nice that someone noticed.”

  Katie and Carole entered arm in arm. Rather Carole had her arm linked with Katie’s as if she were pulling her niece inside against her wishes. Apparently still miffed at being dragged from her party the night before, Katie was wearing a green dress that matched her eyes — Simon’s eyes — as well as her best mulish expression.

  Noticing that Katie had also worn the pendant that Lexie had given to Katie for her birthday, a gold abstract representing a mother and daughter with a square-cut emerald the color of her eyes in the middle, Lexie decided to act as if nothing was wrong. She moved to the other side of her daughter, where she linked arms.

  “I picked out a table for us.” She indicated a large round one not far from the door. She needed to be easily found, just in case.

  “It’s so nice to have the whole family together outside of home or the store,” her mother said.

  But the whole family wasn’t together. Lexie thought as they took their seats. Simon wasn’t here with them and probably never would be. Their argument had crystallized things she hadn’t wanted to face.

  As the tables filled up with guests, Lexie looked around the room, transformed with plants and decorations and lighting special effects. The ballroom looked like a setting in a fairy tale. Kind of like the story she’d been trying to tell herself about her and Simon.

  Not wanting to spoil the evening for her family, Lexie temporarily set aside her heartbreak and concentrated on them. She checked out the buffet with her mother, who put her seal of approval on the menu. She examined the silent auction contributions with her sister, who made bids on several items. She danced with her father, who tried out new steps he’d learned in the weekly class he took with her mother. She tried to get Katie interested in anything about the ball, but her daughter was stubbornly silent, refusing to interact with anyone any more than she absolutely had to.

  “You know, there are other young people here,” Lexie said. “A couple of cute boys your age. They came with their parents, too. I bet you know some of them.”

  Katie simply sighed and did her best to look bored. Carole rolled her eyes at Lexie, who bit the inside of her lip so she wouldn’t laugh. She was trying to figure out how to handle her stubborn daughter when Katie suddenly reminded her of Simon.

  Feeling a little too vulnerable, Lexie excused herself and wandered over to the windows that overlooked the terrace and gardens and faced a small cove on the bay. The wind had picked up and the snow whirled and swirled in delicate patterns. On the other side of the inlet on another promontory, soft light made every window at the Manor at Drake Acres glow. Lexie felt as if she were looking out at a Christmas card.

  That Simon had probably already broken in to the Christmas card seemed ludicrous to her. And frightening. How long would it take him to learn that he was wrong? she wondered.

  Or that she was?

  Just then, the band at the far end of the room stopped playing and Brandon and Marie stepped up onto the stage. Lexi
e hurried back to her seat at the family table.

  Her daughter wasn’t there.

  Her pulse picking up, Lexie asked, “Where’s Katie?”

  “Said she had to go to the powder room,” Carole whispered.

  Lexie relaxed as Brandon and Marie stepped up to the microphone on a stand.

  “Welcome to Drake House,” Brandon said, leaning more lightly on his cane than usual. “Marie and I want to thank you all for giving your support to the Drake Foundation.”

  “Remember that we have some exciting items contributed to the silent auction,” Marie said, “so don’t forget to put in your bid. The winners will be announced at midnight.”

  “Ah, winners…” Brandon said. “My Uncle Cliff has an announcement to make.” He indicated that Cliff should come up to the microphone, then, with his arm around Marie’s waist, left the stage.

  As usual, Cliff was one of the handsomest men in the room. Certainly, he was the best dressed in a designer black tux and black silk shirt, Lexie thought, trying to push out of mind the idea that he could be a mastermind of evil. She looked around for Doug Heller, but couldn’t find the operations manager among so many people.

  Holding a large envelope in one hand, Cliff stepped in front of the mike. “As you know, every year the Merchants’ Association sponsors a contest for the best and most tasteful holiday display. They asked me to announce this year’s winner.” He went on to read the list of nominations before opening the envelope. “And the winner is… Sophie Caldwell, owner of House of the Seven Gables Bed-and-Breakfast! Sophie, come on up here and say a few words.”

  Lexie heard the announcement as if through a filter. She couldn’t help it. She barely saw Sophie’s beaming face as she left the table with her niece, Chelsea, and Chelsea’s fiancé, Michael, and stepped up to the mike. Though she wanted to put everything but the here and now out of mind, Lexie simply couldn’t. She scanned the crowd for Doug Heller before looking back to the stage where Cliff was handing Sophie the envelope.

  Staring at Cliff, she tried to see through the outer facade, tried to discern the face of evil.

  If it was there, she simply didn’t recognize it.

  Would Simon find something to prove otherwise?

  ***

  In position for several hours, using night-vision binoculars, Simon had watched the occupants of the Manor at Drake Acres abandon it. The cars had left one at a time until none but a few high-priced toys in the main garage were left. The snow was coming down more heavily now, and it was getting more difficult to discern details. Certain that the grounds were truly empty, though, he made his run from the tree line to the redbrick buildings that comprised Cliff Drake’s home.

  In addition to the main house, with its three-story white pillars and the nearly-as-tall white-cased windows and balconies on each floor that overlooked the water, there were two garages — one for Cliff, the other for the servants — a guest house, a cabana and outdoor pool, and farther back from the water, the stables. At the water’s edge, there was also a large boathouse and a pier jutting from it, a high-performance boat docked there despite the weather.

  Did Drake Enterprises really make Cliff enough money to support such ostentatiousness? Or did a secret source of income provide him with a lifestyle most people only dreamed of? Simon guessed that the latter was more probable.

  Rather than trying to breach the main house directly, he decided to approach from the rear. Overriding the security system, he didn’t even need a key to open the door. He slipped inside the largest kitchen that he’d ever seen in a private home. Several doors lined the opposite wall. The first one he checked was a pantry. The second a half bath. He went straight out the third and down a hallway that led to a two-story atrium at the front of the house.

  Lights were on all over the house, as if leaving him a trail of breadcrumbs to the first-floor office located off the atrium.

  Once inside, he spotted the file cabinets immediately.

  They were the wrong ones.

  Not only were they modern, rather than antique, but the key wouldn’t go into the locks.

  “What the hell?”

  He’d been so sure he would find the fit to the key here, but it looked as if Lexie had been correct. Then where would the damn cabinets be? What if there weren’t any others?

  Or…

  What if he hadn’t been wrong and had simply looked in the wrong room?

  The manor was certainly big enough to house more than a single office. This one was situated in a high-traffic area, accessible to anyone coming in the front door. Not a good place to store valuable documents, especially not ones that could mean a prison sentence.

  There had to be another office, so Simon vowed not to leave the building until he’d checked every room.

  He started on the first floor and found another office, smaller than the first, but this one didn’t even have file cabinets.

  The second floor held a third office, but no luck there, either.

  As he went through the house, Simon realized that unlike what Lexie had said about Drake House, all the furniture here was ultramodern, the artwork abstract, as if Cliff had purposely made the Manor at Drake Acres as different from Drake House as he could. Those old file cabinets simply wouldn’t fit in here.

  Admitting he’d run into another dead end, Simon stood in the atrium for a few moments, looking out into the snowy night. A night transformed by wind and fog like the one when he’d been taken from Jenkins Cove and thrust into a world he hadn’t imagined.

  An unexpected chill shot through the atrium, pebbling Simon’s flesh. For a moment, he could hardly breathe.

  He felt the weight of the dead on his shoulders.

  Of the injustice.

  Felt as if myriad ghosts were pleading with him not to give up.

  Looking deep into the fog curling up to the house, he could almost see them — men, women, the kid he’d seen killed. Did he really see them or was it an illusion? He blinked and when he looked again, they were gone. But the weight of their deaths wasn’t. He felt it like a tangible thing, knew their souls wouldn’t rest — that he couldn’t rest — until he avenged them all.

  But at what cost?

  Had he already lost Lexie? She didn’t trust him, but could he blame her?

  He’d known from the beginning that what he’d been through had turned him into a man she wouldn’t want to know. He’d lived on the edge his entire adult life, long enough that he didn’t have any idea of how else to be.

  His father had changed, he reminded himself. No matter that he’d learned another painful truth that afternoon, Rufus Shea would always be his old man. And if his father could choose to straighten up his life and be a man a kid could be proud of…

  Shaking his head, Simon left the house the way he’d come. Only when he was about to make his way back to the road did he stop and consider the other buildings on the property. Primarily the guesthouse.

  Was it really?

  Suddenly an arctic cold whipped through him and he felt invisible hands pushing him, urging him toward the guesthouse. Simon acquiesced.

  As he crossed the back of the property, the cold followed. His inner ghosts filled him with tension. He gazed around, on the lookout for trouble. The small hairs at the back of his neck stood up, but he saw no reason for it. He checked the ground. For as far as he could see through the snow, the fresh white cover remained undisturbed by recent footprints except for the ones he was leaving.

  Only him and the ghosts, he thought, his mood darkening.

  Upon reaching the guesthouse, he was surprised to find the security system unarmed. Edgy now, he tried the door handle. It turned and the door swung open. Too easy, he thought, unless there was nothing here to protect. Stepping inside, he turned on the light.

  The place looked occupied, as though someone was living there. Furnished in a combination of comfortable couches and chairs and some antique wooden pieces, it had a totally different feel from the main house. The artwork
was different, too — all related to the Chesapeake Bay and the Eastern Shore, from the framed watercolors on the walls to the metal sculptures of bay creatures decorating the various old end tables and a hand-carved buffet in the dining area.

  Assuming that Cliff had guests for the holiday, Simon was about to leave when a cold breeze shot down his spine. He stopped and examined the room again. A briefcase lay on the coffee table. He drew closer, and saw the initials DH engraved on the metal clasp.

  DH for Doug Heller?

  The briefcase was filled with Drake Enterprises work. Why else would Heller have left it in the guesthouse if he hadn’t made himself at home here?

  Simon gazed around the room. Instincts buzzing, he headed for a closed door and opened it to a bedroom. A familiar canvas jacket, one he’d seen on Doug Heller, was thrown on the chair across from the bed, making Simon think the operations manager did live, or at least work, in the guesthouse.

  So where were the damn file cabinets? Simon wondered as he left the bedroom.

  Another door on the other side of the living area called to him. A rush of sound like wails of pain and grief unnerved him, but Simon knew it was all in his own head. He crossed to the door. His hand actually tingled as he gripped the knob. Swinging the door open, he turned on the room light to face another office.

  Against the opposite wall was a file cabinet with leaf marquetry. Simon crossed the room, pulled out the key and tried the lock.

  A match.

  He could hardly breathe as he opened the drawer. Inside were file folders with names written across the top. Inside his head, the victims chanted their names. Anna Bencek… Franz Dobra… Tomas Elizi… Lala Falat…

  Exactly as Bray had seen when he’d touched the key.

  Simon pulled Anna Bencek’s folder, which held proof of a medical check and blood workup and Anna’s signed statement that she was voluntarily donating a kidney for transplant. It also held her current information — address, phone number, name and address of her shop.