Dear Santa

by Alice Orr

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Sandra Thomas and her crew had cleaned up so well Vic could hardly tell there’d been a party here yesterday. He could find no trace of anything like a good time inside himself either. He walked from one room of his house to another as if he were shuffling in and out of a nightmare where everybody looked perfectly normal but nothing, in fact, was. Worst of all was the sadness in Katherine’s eyes and how bravely she tried to hide it, especially when Coyote was around. She didn’t fool Vic for a second. She’d already had one child torn away from her in her life. Vic had grown so close to her in these past few intense days that he could feel the depth of her sorrow.

  Tooley Pennebaker had been with them since shortly after he, Katherine and Coyote got back from Empire State Plaza. He had sent a cab to pick her up and bring her here to join in the long wait with the rest of them, as he knew she would want to do. As it turned out, she’d already known that something had happened to Sprite, though she had no idea the child had been abducted. According to her friend, Sprite had been fretting about looking for Coyote, and when Sprite had vanished from in front of their home where she was staying, the friend’s mother thought the little girl had left to search for her brother.

  Tooley stayed the night in one of his guest rooms. Katherine and Vic agreed that Tooley shouldn’t be alone during this ordeal. No one had slept much. They wandered up and down stairs and drank cups of coffee, which was the last thing any of them needed. They all looked pretty worn out this morning, as Megan Moran had been quick to point out with her usual bluntness when she arrived an hour ago, head bandage and all.

  And, of course, there were the cops. They’d been here all night too, asking questions, taking down statements, setting up electronic connections to Vic’s phone line. He had to hand it to all of them for trying as hard as they did to stay out of the way and be as inconspicuous as possible. Still, nobody, particularly not Vic, could forget for a minute that his house was under constant surveillance, his telephone was tapped and there was a makeshift police command post set up in his dining room. For someone who’d tried to avoid cops most of his life, Vic certainly had brought a carload of them down on himself today. Strangely enough, he was glad to have them here. Anything that would help get Sprite back was okay with him. He only wished he could do more to help.

  “It’s driving me crazy, sitting here not knowing what to do,” Tooley said, echoing Vic’s thoughts and shaking her head slowly.

  Megan sat down next to Tooley and put her arm around the woman’s shoulder.

  “It’s up to the police now,” Megan said. “We have to let them do their jobs. They’ll get Sprite back. I know they will.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do then, either,” Tooley said, sounding very close to tears. “I thought I could take care of these kids and do my job plus overtime hours, too, but I know now that I can’t. I promised their poor mama I wouldn’t let them go into foster care, but I talked to her doctors just last week and it looks like she’s going to be in the sanitarium for a long time. Even when she gets out, she won’t be strong enough to take care of those children. Lord knows I want to keep my promise to her. I just don’t know how.”

  Almost before he realized he was going to say anything, Vic stepped forward and put his hand on Tooley’s shoulder.

  “You don’t have to worry about any of that,” Vic said. “I’m going to help you.”

  Tooley and Megan both looked up at him expectantly. All of a sudden, Vic knew exactly what he wanted to say. He’d never been so sure of anything in his life before, except maybe how much he had come to care about Katherine.

  “I’d like Coyote and Sprite to come here and live with me,” he said.

  Tooley shook her head again. “How’re you going to manage that on your own? You’ll have most of the same problems I did.”

  Before Vic could respond, the phone rang. The room went suddenly still except for the echo of that first ring, while they all waited for the next. He had his instructions from the police. He was to let the phone ring three times, then pick it up. He was at the phone with his hand poised over the receiver before the second ring could sound, and Katherine was at his side.

  “Hello, this is Victor Maltese,” he said when it was finally okay to answer.

  “Vic, it’s your mother.”

  Her voice on the other end of the line was almost the last one he would have expected to hear.

  “I can’t really talk right now, Ma,” he said. “There’s a lot going on here.”

  “I know exactly what is going on, son,” she said.

  Vic wasn’t surprised to hear that. His father had friends who kept him informed, from both sides of the law. As soon as the Maltese name appeared on the police blotter last night, somebody from downtown would have called Gabriel to tell him exactly what was what.

  “I’ll be there soon myself,” his mother went on. “I wanted to call you first to let you know your father is already on his way.”

  Vic began to count to ten. He felt Katherine’s hand on his arm, as if she’d seen the way his jaw had tightened. He stopped counting. Her touch soothed him more than a row of numbers ever could.

  “Look, Ma. This isn’t the time…” he began, more calmly than he would have thought possible right now.

  “This is precisely the time,” she said. “You must take my word for that. It is time for us all to be together as a family.”

  There was a sternness in her voice that Vic had heard very seldom in his life. He understood how futile it would be to disagree. He’d save that for his father.

  “All right, Ma. I’ll expect him. Thanks for calling.”

  Vic hung up the phone and stood stock-still as a heavy weight of dread settled over him. This was on its way to becoming the worst Christmas Eve Day on record. At the same time, it could very possibly be the best day of his life. He felt the warmth and closeness of Katherine next to him. He had no right to the joy her nearness gave him, but he couldn’t help what he felt in his heart. Suddenly, he realized that no one could ever help that.

  KATHERINE’S PULSE had quickened when Vic offered to have Coyote and Sprite live with him. She had known how much she cared about the Bellaway children for some time now—the same way she knew now how much she’d come to care about Vic. She would have staked her life on the certainty of all of that. Now, she knew how he felt about Coyote and Sprite, too. She wished she could be equally sure what he felt about her. She exasperated him sometimes, she realized, till he looked like he was ready to start tearing out his gorgeous, black hair. Maybe they could get past that now, and the children would bring them closer together still. Katherine was praying so hard for this to be true and to get Sprite back unharmed, that she jumped when the phone rang.

  They’d all been waiting for a call from the man called Cuda or from Lacey Harbison. The policemen seemed surprised that call hadn’t yet come. When the phone finally rang, Katherine had seen the officer with the headset in the dining room signal thumbs down and shake his head after listening for a moment. The call wasn’t about Sprite, after all. Still, Vic sounded upset as soon as he started listening to the voice on the other end of the line. Then Katherine had realized he was talking to his mother and understood his agitation.

  He had ended the conversation, but still stood with his hand on the receiver. She could tell by the way his dark brows knitted together in a scowl that he was unhappy about something. She could feel tension in the muscles of the arm he had around her.

  “What was the call about?” she asked quietly.

  “Almost the last thing in the world I want to hear right now.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. Could this be bad news about Sprite after all?

  “My father is on his way here,” he added.

  Her relief was profound, but she understood that Vic wouldn’t share that feeling.

  “He probably wants to be here to support you through this bad time,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “How d
id he know what was going on?”

  There’d been no reports in the papers or on the broadcast news. Mariette Dugan had been here earlier, but the police had sent her away. She was probably hanging around somewhere close by. Still, she’d been given nothing definite to report as yet.

  Vic shrugged. “My father knows what’s happening to me almost before I do. I didn’t move far enough away to stop that. Maybe I should have done what you did, put half the country between myself and my past.” He glanced at her quickly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “You should say exactly that because it’s true. I don’t mind hearing it now, either, because all of that is changing for me.”

  “In what way?” he asked.

  She could feel him gazing down at her.

  “I’m starting to put the past behind me and think about living for the present and the future,” she said.

  She looked up into the warmth of his dark eyes, and he touched her cheek with his fingers.

  “Could be it’s time for me to do the same thing.”

  “Could be,” she said.

  Katherine was thinking very much in the present, about how she would like to kiss Vic now, a gentle kiss to give comfort to them both, if only there weren’t so many people in the room. Before she could decide whether she might forget about audience and act on that thought anyway, the doorbell rang. Megan went to answer it, and her squeal a moment later could not have been mistaken for anything but joy.

  “It’s a miracle,” Megan trilled from the foyer.

  A tall, very distinguished-looking man appeared in the archway to the living room. His hand was firmly in the clutch of none other than little Sprite Bellaway.

  “I brought her back to you, son,” the tall man said to Vic. “It is the very least I could do.”

  THE HOUR that followed was as miraculous as the sweet child’s return had been.

  Gabriel Maltese revealed his role in Sprite’s rescue. The kidnapper was a man named Barricuda Taft, sometimes referred to as Cuda. He and Leta Hatcher, alias Lacey Harbison, had siphoned off a considerable amount of gamblingoperations money from some people even more dangerous than themselves then tried to cover up the theft by killing the bookkeeper, Gilford Vogel, who found the discrepancy. Mr. Maltese’s contacts from his former life had tracked Cuda down during the night. Gabriel himself had persuaded the pair to turn themselves in, rather than face the much harsher judgment of their criminal colleagues.

  An even more startling revelation came when Vic’s mother arrived and told everyone, over her husband’s protests, that the Secret Santa who’d made the huge donation to the Most Needy Cases Fund had been none other than Gabriel Maltese. As Vic had said earlier, Mr. Maltese kept close tabs on everything his son was doing, including this program at the Arbor Hill Center. That, and how deeply Gabriel’s heart had been touched by Katherine’s interviews in the Chronicle, had moved him to make the generous gift. At that news, Vic reached out to embrace his father.

  Katherine was at Vic’s side all the while, tears coming to her eyes, joy filling her heart. She knew it would take more than money for Mr. Maltese to earn his way back into Vic’s life. She also knew the journey had begun.

  They would be a real family some day, and soon. She could feel it. The people in the room were a family already—Katherine, Vic, his mother and father, Coyote and Sprite, their mother, Megan and Tooley, too.

  Katherine and Vic stood watching the excited crowd in his living room. He wrapped an arm around her to move her a few steps to the archway into the hall.

  “Were you serious when you told Tooley you wanted Coyote and Sprite to come live here?” she asked.

  “More serious than I’ve ever been, with one exception,” he told her, looking deep into her eyes. “But I won’t do it alone,” he added in a voice so calm and certain, she knew what his words implied.

  “No, you won’t do it alone,” she echoed, answering his unspoken question.

  He put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her closer to him.

  They moved back into the living room as Vic’s father lifted Sprite up to hang a sparkling glass angel, which Mrs. Maltese had brought from another tree in Loudonville, on one of the highest branches.

  Coyote reached for Katherine’s hand.

  “Way to go, Sprite,” he cried out more happily than Katherine had ever heard him sound.

  Just for an instant, as the angel came to rest against the fragrant bough, Katherine imagined she heard Daniel’s precious voice. Her heart soared at the joy in his tone as he said, “Cherish the love you find in one another at this blessed time of year, and forevermore.”

  eISBN: 978-14592-6183-9

  DEAR SANTA

  Copyright © 1998 by Alice Orr

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road; Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A. ® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

  Printed in U.S.A.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Books by Alice Orr

  Dedication

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Copyright