The Christmas List
Page 6
“Look, Linda, it’s James Kier and I’m not dead. I can prove it. Ask me something only I would know. Anything.”
The voice was his, Linda thought, but the tone was anything but James Kier. “Who was your ten o’clock meeting with Friday morning?”
“My attorney, Lincoln, my wife, Sara, and Steve . . . no, that was before. It was with, uh, Allen. Vance Allen of Scott Homes.”
Linda’s voice relaxed. “Before that meeting, what was the last thing you said to me?”
He thought back to that morning. “I told you not to talk to Vance. I wanted him on edge.”
There was a long pause. “Everyone thinks you’re dead. It was all over the news.”
“I know. It was a case of mistaken identity; it was another James Kier who died. I just went to his memorial service.”
“This is so weird.” She was obviously embarrassed. “I don’t know what to say.”
“The good news is you don’t have to look for a new job.” Kier noticed that she didn’t say anything. “I guess the bad news is you still have to work for me. I need to meet with you as soon as possible. Can you meet me today?”
“I was on my way to church.”
“I can meet with you after church. Please, Linda, it’s very important.”
“I’ll have to bring Mason . . .”
“That’s okay. We’ll only be a few minutes. Please.”
“I get out of church around four. I need to get Max some dinner, but I could come to the office around five-thirty.”
“Five-thirty will be great. Just great. Thank you.”
In all the years she had worked for him she had never heard him speak this way. It suddenly occurred to her why he was calling.
“If you’re going to fire me, you can just do it now.”
“Why would I fire you?”
“I just wondered what could be so important that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow.”
“I’ll explain everything when I see you at five-thirty.”
“All right. See you then. Goodbye.”
Kier flipped up the phone closed. “Thank you,” he said to no one. He started his car and drove home.
CHAPTER
Seventeen
Kier was in his office reading freshly posted comments under his article when he heard Linda unlock the building’s back door and enter. She was speaking to her son, Mason. “Now don’t get into anything. You can sit here and draw. I’ll be right out.”
“Can I have a can of root beer?”
“Not can, may.”
“Can I have a may of root beer?”
“No, may I have a can of root beer.”
“Can I?”
She groaned. “Just a minute.”
Kier shut off his computer. The comments on his “obituary” had continued to accumulate, for the most part it was just more of the same kind of attacks. He wasn’t sure what drew him to the site; it was like rubbing his tongue over the sharp edge of a cracked tooth. No matter how much it hurt he just couldn’t leave it alone.
He heard Linda say, “There’s no root beer. I got you a grape soda.”
“Okay. Thanks, Mom.”
There was a pop as the boy opened the can, then Linda appeared in the doorway, “Good afternoon, Mr. Kier.” She wore a crushed velvet burgundy dress and her hair was done up in a simple twist. Kier had forgotten how pretty she was. “Sorry I’m late. Mason’s Sunday school teacher stopped me on the way out.”
“It’s okay. Come in.”
She looked pensive as she stepped inside the office. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No, of course not. Would you mind shutting the door?”
“My son is out there . . .”
“Oh, right.” Kier stood up and walked to the front of his desk. He motioned to the chair in front of him. “Please, sit down.”
She had never heard his voice so gentle; she knew it was irrational but it frightened her. She walked over and sat down in the chair, her body tense with anticipation.
Kier leaned back against his desk, sitting on its edge. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” she said, unconvincingly.
“Are you afraid?”
She looked like she was going to hyperventilate. “A little.”
“Thank you for your honesty. Let me get to the point.” He looked at her for a moment, then said, “What do you think of me?”
“I beg your pardon.”
“It’s a straightforward enough question—what do you think of me?”
Straightforward as a minefield, Linda thought. “I think you’re good at what you do. Really good.”
“And what is it that I do?”
“Develop and manage real estate and other investments.”
“Yes, I’m good at that. But what do you think of me as a person?”
She looked down at the ground as she searched for a safe answer. Kier’s gaze never left her.
Finally she said, “I don’t understand what you’re asking me.”
“Let’s try it this way. What kind of a person am I?” When she didn’t look up he rubbed his chin and sighed. “Okay, I’ll make this real simple. Am I a good person, a bad person, or somewhere in between?”
Linda carefully picked her words, “You’re . . . you’re smart . . .”
“Am I the kind of guy you’d, say, want to marry?”
She looked up sharply. “Would I what?”
“Don’t be scared. I’m just using the question as a point of reference. If you weren’t married, would you want to be married to me?”
“It would be inappropriate,” she said.
He smiled. “A safe answer, but not really a truthful one. Because if you really wanted to marry me you wouldn’t care, would you?”
She took a deep breath. “Probably not.”
“Good.” Kier shook his head slowly. “Thank you for being honest.” He walked back to his desk, sat down, then picked up a pencil and set it down in perfect alignment with his desk pad. “I know this is hard, but could you be a little more specific? Why wouldn’t you want to be married to me? I’m rich. I’m not bad looking. You could do worse.”
She looked up at him. “I don’t think you would care that much about me. Or my son.” Her eyes started to well up with tears. “Please don’t fire me, Mr. Kier. You know I need this job.”
“I’m not going to fire you, Linda.” He leaned back in his chair. “You studied English in college. You know Robert Burns, the poet?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“O wad some power the giftee gie us, to see ourselves as others see us.” He looked at her with a strange expression. Linda suddenly wondered if he’d been drinking.
“The truth is, I already knew the answer to the questions I asked you. So let me say what you were afraid to say: You wouldn’t want to be married to me because I am selfish and inconsiderate. I would take from you what I wanted and give nothing in return. In short, I would use you. Am I right?”
“I didn’t say—”
“Don’t worry—this is my confessional, not yours.” He paused, looking for the right words. “Do you know why there’s a Nobel Peace Prize?”
She stared at him, wondering what this could possibly have to do with their conversation. “No sir.”
“It’s an interesting story, really, and . . . relevant. Alfred Nobel was the inventor of dynamite. A useful thing, of course. It was used in mining, clearing land—it saved years building the transcontinental railroad. But it was also used in war. People lost their lives. Many, many people.
“As fortune would have it, in 1888, Nobel’s brother Emil died. A French newspaper mistook his brother for him and ran an article with the headline, Le marchand de la mort est mort, ‘The merchant of death is dead.’ It went on to say that Dr. Alfred Nobel became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before. That was the first of many such articles. Nobel was so upset by what he read about himself that he decided to change his legacy. He left his fortune
to the establishment of the Nobel Peace Prize.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It’s true.” Kier rubbed his chin. “I know, it’s a little like a drug dealer leaving his money to a drug rehabilitation clinic. At any rate, Nobel and I have something in common. We’ve both left a trail of suffering in our wake, and we both got a glimpse of our legacy before we died.
“It’s a blessing, really. Painful but not without benefit. It’s like seeing your report card while there’s still time to change your grade.” He looked down for a moment. “I know what you think of me, or at least what you should think of me. I’ve hurt people. The Bible—yes, I’ve read the Bible, I was even a deacon once—the Bible says that true religion is to help the widow and the fatherless. I’ve put them both on the street. I’m like the opposite of true religion. I am not good.”
He looked at her, unsure of how she was taking this. Linda sat quietly, her hands laced in her lap. “You don’t have to disagree,” he said, though she showed no sign of doing so. “No, I’m not a good person. You, on the other hand, are.” He leaned forward. “You are kind and forgiving and remarkably selfless. You work forty-five, fifty hours, a week, then go home and take care of your husband and son. I would wager that you couldn’t even tell me the last time you did something just for yourself.” She didn’t respond. “You can’t, can you?”
“I took a long bath last weekend.”
“My point exactly.” He stood, then walked back to her. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I need your help.”
“What kind of help?”
“We’ve been together a long time, you and I. You know more about me than anyone else does. You know just about every meeting I’ve ever had, every phone call I’ve taken. You know my own clients better than I do. You send them birthday and wedding presents with my name on them. I don’t even know if they’re married and you send them flowers on their anniversaries. Am I right?”
She nodded.
He lowered his voice. “You also know the people I’ve hurt, don’t you?”
After a moment she nodded. “Yes.”
“You’ve been with me for a long time, Linda. You’ve seen me change. Not just the change in business, but the change in me. You’ve seen my son grow up without a real father. You’ve seen my marriage fall apart. Like it or not, you are my life’s witness. That puts you in a unique, if unenviable, position.” He crouched down in front of her. “That’s why I need your help. I want you to make me a very special list.”
Linda raised an eyebrow. “A list?”
“I need the names of everyone I’ve hurt and my crimes against them. And I need to know where they are now. I want to make it up to them.” He looked down for a moment as if the weight of his own words had just fallen on him. “I want to fix things, if possible.” He looked back up at her. “Will you help me?”
“When would you like me to start?”
“As soon as possible. I’ve wasted too much time already.”
She thought it over. “I can do that. Anything else?”
“No, I think that’s enough for now.”
She stood. “Then I’d better get Mason and get home to Max.”
Kier got to his feet. He put his hand on her shoulder but quickly removed it as he could see it made her uncomfortable. “Thank you for coming.”
“You’re welcome, Mr. Kier. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She walked out of the office and called to her son. “Come on, Mason. It’s time to go home.”
Kier sat back in his chair and thought about the commitment he had just made. He wondered if he were strong enough to follow through with it.
CHAPTER
Eighteen
Kier arrived at work at his usual time on Monday. As he walked down the hall he was followed by double takes and stares by his employees, their mouths falling open as if they’d seen a ghost. There were even a few audible gasps. He walked directly to Tim Brey’s office. Tim was on the phone and froze when he saw him. “I gotta go,” he said and dropped the phone into the cradle without waiting for a response from whoever was on the other end of the call.
“Hi, Tim.”
Brey stared at him speechless.
“What’s up?”
“I don’t understand,” Brey said.
“Understand what?” Kier was enjoying this.
“The paper said you were . . .”
“Dead? I know. I read it. Then I checked my pulse and concluded it was just poor reporting.”
“Oh, thank God.”
Kier rubbed his hands together and approached Brey’s desk. “Really? Because I would think from what you wrote that you weren’t really all that happy working for me.”
Brey turned pale. “What are you talking abo—”
Kier lifted his hand and stopped him. “Please, Tim, don’t insult me.” He reached into his pants pocket and fished out the comments he’d printed out that morning, and read: “Kier’s only motivation in life was money. Gain was his only criterion for action, no matter who was hurt, no matter who was left in ashes. Just yesterday he celebrated taking some old man’s property. Believe me, I knew Kier—I played squash with him every week for seven years.” Kier looked back up at Brey. “Did you want to add anything to that, Supertramp?”
Brey stared at him in horror, “So is this where you throw me under the bus?”
Kier smiled. “Saturday I might have. Wanted to. Actually, I was kind of looking forward to it. But I’ve had time to think. There was some truth to what you wrote. More than I wanted to hear, but I needed to hear it. So I came in to thank you.”
Brey looked at him skeptically. “Now you’re insulting me. Go on, get it over with.”
“No, I’m serious. I owe you.” Kier put his hands in his pockets. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to be working at home for a while on a project.”
“What kind of project?”
“A special one. Let everyone know that the news of my death was premature. I’m sure that will ruin their week but they’ll get over it. I don’t know how long I’ll be out, but I trust that you’ll run things with your usual efficiency.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good man.” He started to go but stopped at the doorway. “Oh, and Brey, get someone to put up a tree or something.”
“What kind of tree?”
“A Christmas tree. You know, deck the halls, that sort of thing. Christmas is only three weeks away. From the looks of things you’d never even know it was the season.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good man.”
Brey sat stunned, as Kier walked out of his office.
CHAPTER
Nineteen
Kier smiled at Linda as he passed her going into his office.
“Good morning, Linda.”
“Good morning, Mr. Kier,” she replied awkwardly. His changed demeanor was still unnerving to her. A few minutes later she paged him. “Mr. Kier?”
“Yes?”
“May I come in?”
“Of course.”
A moment later, she stepped inside his office carrying a file folder. “I’m done.”
“Done?”
She walked up to his desk. “With the list.”
“You’ve finished it already?”
“It’s all right here. . . .”
He took the folder from her. “I didn’t expect it so soon.”
“The people on it were never that far from my mind.”
Kier opened the file and glanced inside. There were five names on the memo, each with their own page and a brief description of their circumstances. He was surprised to see so few names. He looked back up at her. “Only five?”
“Think of them as the finalists.”
“Finalists?”
“Mr. Kier, if you want a list of all the people you’ve hurt or offended, I’ll drag in the file cabinet.” Linda herself was surprised at her own forwardness. “I’m sorry. These are the ones who would keep me up at night.”
; “Fair enough,” Kier said. He read their names aloud.
Celeste Hatt
Eddie Grimes
Estelle Wyss
David Carnes
Gary Rossi
“I put their contact information under their briefs.”
He thumbed through the attached pages. “The first one here, Celeste Hatt—there’s no contact information.”
“That’s because I can’t locate her. But I’ll keep trying.”
Kier continued reading.
“When are you going to start?” Linda asked.
Kier looked up. “Tomorrow morning. I’ll be working at home for the next few weeks, Tim knows and I expect between you and him things will run smoothly. If you need anything signed, just bring it by the house. On second thought, why don’t you just come by the house every day. Say, around four.”
“Okay. Do you need anything else?”
He closed the folder. “No, that’s all for now.”
She turned to leave.
“Linda.”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
She smiled cynically. “Tell me that after you’ve seen them,” she said and walked out of his office.
Kier opened the folder again and looked at the list. Five names. Five damaged lives. Five lives connected to his own. It was his plan to reach each of these people before Christmas and make things right. This was his Christmas list.
CHAPTER
Twenty
Eddie Grimes
Former owner of Grimes Construction. You forced him out of business and into personal bankruptcy. His current residence: 657 Gramercy Avenue, Salt Lake City.
An inversion had settled into the valley, leaving the air brown and thick. Kier sat in his car with the heater on, Linda’s list in the folder on his lap. While visiting these people and doing what he could to make things right had seemed a good idea in theory, sitting in his car outside the home of the first of his visits cast his plan in a different light. According to Linda he had ruined these people’s lives. What kind of reception could he expect?