Secret Santa

by Cynthia Reese

  Neil opened the car door and trailed behind the state health people, his camera in hand. They began an exhaustive tour of the run-down trailers.

  “So this was where they said the Patient Zero was?” asked one of the doctors, a tall thin lady whose pants were a quarter-inch too short for her, even in the flats she wore. Neil had learned she was an epidemiologist who had a string of letters after her name.

  “Yeah. We started at the first trailer, and the families kept pointing us to other people who had been sick. Best I could understand, one of the guys who lived here in this trailer was the first to come down with it,” Neil told her. He looked around at the space originally designed to be an open kitchen/dining area/living room. It was still crowded with stained folding cots—eight, if he’d counted right.

  The tiny bedrooms had been outfitted with rough bunk beds that slept another half dozen in all the spaciousness of a prison cell, but a whole lot less weatherproof. “Though, I guess calling this place a trailer is a bit generous.”

  “Too right,” the woman said. “Appalling. They didn’t even have a roof over their heads—I count three buckets in here alone to catch leaks.”

  When they went back outside, Neil listened as the doctors bounced ideas back and forth on the origin of the outbreak. He scribbled madly to get everything down for the next edition of the paper. The poor migrants weren’t the problem—Charli had been the problem. If she’d done what he’d advised her, the sick could have been treated without spreading the infection to the produce stand they ran.

  His coverage of the whole incident had unleashed a firestorm of xenophobic rage. What he’d written with the intent to arouse sympathy for the poor suckers who’d called this place home had generated the opposite effect.

  Readers wrote fiery letters, demanding that the community clinic be closed and that zoning ordinances be passed to prohibit settlements such as Whitaker’s. Neil could have cheered that last one, but those who pushed for the ordinance really wanted to run every Hispanic person out of town on a rail.

  The AP and state and national news organizations had picked up the story. Even CNN had been down to get some video. Already, major newspapers and internet blogs had called to offer him jobs. Other weekly editors had given him congrats for his bravery about taking on the system in the interest of public health.

  Still, Neil couldn’t help but feel guilty. He’d made all this splash on the poor unlucky fate of Bethie Brantley. Maybe he should have called DPH himself when he realized Charli wasn’t going to.

  “Hey, is that—that’s a herd of cows!” One doctor in the team shadowed his eyes and peered across the fence at the watering hole.

  “Why, yeah,” Neil couldn’t help saying. “We have cows around here. Lots of ’em.”

  Now the whole team became extremely fixated on the cows. Even as they crossed the field to the fence, one of them was counting the number of cows around the watering hole. Another was snapping pictures like mad on a small digital camera he’d tugged out of his pocket. A third was walking a straight line from the fence to the greenhouse.

  Neil couldn’t figure out what all the excitement was about. He lagged behind them in order to compose a photo of the doctors as a group. As he was about to hustle over to join them, the slam of metal caught him up short.

  Neil turned to see Lige Whitaker rounding the hood of his truck and striding over to him.

  Talk about someone coming out fighting. First thing Lige had done was very publicly suspend Charli’s privileges at the hospital. Next, he’d issued a typewritten statement asserting he’d had no knowledge of Charli’s failure to report the outbreak to the DPH.

  Who knows? Maybe Charli had overreacted. Maybe Lige hadn’t come right out and threatened her.

  Funny, though, how Lige dodged every one of Neil’s phone calls and visits.

  “You and your camera. Off my property,” Lige told him. “You’re trespassing.”

  “I don’t think so. You allowed the DPH access, didn’t you?”

  “Last I heard, you weren’t employed by the DPH. Unless you’re folding up that slanderous thing you call a paper—”

  “Libel. It would be libel. And it’s only libel if a) you can prove it’s not true, b) I knew it wasn’t true and c) I was malicious in intent,” Neil corrected him. “And the DPH asked me to come along.”

  “Go to—” Lige sent a fist toward Neil’s jaw, but Neil swept up his arm—the one with the cast—and stopped the punch with a block to Lige’s forearm. The older man stepped back, his mouth slack, and rubbed his arm.

  “It’s nice to be nice,” Neil told him. “But I don’t have to if you insist.”

  “You, smearing my name, practically accusing me of ordering Charli Prescott to cover up this mess.”

  “You didn’t? You want to go on the record with that?”

  “I most certainly did not. Charli made her own decisions. All I did was take two sick guys to her house one night for treatment. She’s the one who covered it all up. I guess it’s because she’s partial to those illegals. And now look! All my help, sick and well alike, has run off and I can’t get my crop planted. I’m on the hook for a million plus!”

  “Right.” Neil wanted to deck the man. This was the guy who had stolen Charli from him, and part of him still believed that, without Lige, she would have never contemplated such a cover-up. “You didn’t have a thing to do with it. She decided, on her own, that it would be better to keep this under the radar. Because she has a soft spot for migrant workers.” Neil didn’t bother to keep the sarcasm from his words.

  “It’s just like I explained it to that CNN fellow. She donated all that money to ’em, now, didn’t she? Could have helped tax-paying legal citizens here by donating it to the hospital, but no, she had to go give it to freeloaders. And you—you son of a—”

  Lige’s focus suddenly moved from cussing Neil out to the group by the fence. “What are they doing? That’s my wellhead they’re messing with. And my greenhouse!”

  Lige stomped off toward the fence. Neil followed, frustrated that Lige hadn’t finished what he’d been saying. Had Lige known all along that Charli was the Secret Santa? Maybe Lige had indeed given Charli the money, a payoff to keep her quiet.

  Neil came up to the team in time to hear sharp words being exchanged. He was amazed to see that Lige was so angry he’d dispensed with his usual “aw shucks” charm that Neil now realized had been a mask.

  “Heck, yeah, I put this wellhead here! I drilled this deep well my very own self, like my daddy taught me. How else do you think I could irrigate this field? And that one over there, too.” Lige snapped at the epidemiologist with the alphabet soup after her name.

  “And these irrigation lines...they go to what?” the epidemiologist asked.

  “To these onion fields! Weren’t you listening? And to my greenhouse there. And I gave them ungrateful illegals free water out of it!” He shook his head and reached into his shirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes. It took him two tries to tap a cigarette out of the pack, his hands were shaking so badly.

  Neil quietly raised his camera and captured the scene, really liking the way the confrontation gave the photo’s composition energy.

  The epidemiologist nodded at Lige and scribbled some notes down on her clipboard. She delivered the next question in the blandest of tones. “Uh-huh. And was this greenhouse the source of the produce at the farmer’s stand?”

  “Is that a crime? Can I help it if those sorry good-for-nothings brought some dread disease here from wherever they came from and got snot and spit all over my vegetables when they were running my stand?” Lige’s fingers still trembled with agitation as he thumbed a lighter to the cigarette he’d stuck in his mouth. But a deep draw of the cigarette seemed to calm him.

  The epidemiologist pressed on. “Did you get clearance from the health departmen
t, Mr. Whitaker? For the well? And were you in compliance with state regulations concerning the sale of fruits and vegetables?”

  “Missy, I am the health department in this county!” Lige ground the words out around his cigarette and jabbed a finger into his breastbone. “You’re talking to the chairman of the Broad County Hospital Authority.”

  The woman didn’t look a bit browbeaten by Lige’s tone. She raised an eyebrow at her fellow team members. They nodded at her unspoken message.

  “What?” Lige’s confidence seemed shaken. “What are y’all saying?”

  “Mr. Whitaker, by order of the state, we’re closing this well and anything watered from it, pending testing.”

  “No, by God, you’re not.” He jerked the cigarette out of his mouth and leaned within inches of the woman’s face. “I need that water! It’s my right! And those fields are my livelihood! You can’t do that, not in the United States of America!”

  She stepped smartly back, careful not to touch him. “See those cows over there, Mr. Whitaker?” the epidemiologist asked, sweeping a hand in the direction of the herd across the fence. “See their watering hole?”

  “Yeah? They gotta have something to drink.” Lige folded his arms across his chest, his cigarette dangling from his fingertips. “What, you gonna kill my cows now, too?”

  “No. But we will need to check to see if you’ve sold any of those cows for beef without proper inspection. That watering hole backs up to your wellhead.”

  “So? So?” Lige spat out the word. “You think you’re so smart with your college education and your state car and your—”

  “Sir.” The epidemiologist broke in, implacable, totally unscathed by his abuse. “That wellhead is a straight shot down, a sure path for any contaminants. And I’d bet dollars to doughnuts those cows have contaminated that watering hole, which contaminated the well, which...well, you can follow the logic.”

  Neil’s breath caught as he began to understand the epidemiologist’s train of thought. His mouth went dry. Nausea roiled in his stomach.

  “No! Nah, no way, no how!” Lige’s voice went reedy-thin with rage. “It was that Prescott woman! She covered up those migrant workers! She didn’t let me know how sick they were! If I’d known she was hiding the truth, well, I’d have turned her in myself!” Whitaker shouted.

  The epidemiologist’s mouth curled in disgust. She shook her head. “Mr. Whitaker, you have it wrong. It wasn’t the migrant workers or Dr. Prescott’s failure to report the outbreak that caused all of this misery. If I were you, I’d get a very good lawyer, because an army of personal injury attorneys are going to be gunning for you.”

  “Me? They should be suing her! She’s the quack in all of this! She’s the doctor!”

  “Sir.” The epidemiologist’s tone was careful, measured and completely contemptuous. “From our review of the records, that little girl became ill before you took the migrant workers to Dr. Prescott for care. She became ill at about the same time they did. So, no. It wasn’t Dr. Prescott’s failure to promptly report the outbreak. Your total lack of compliance with and utter disregard for state regulations? That’s what caused that little girl to almost die.”

  Lige Whitaker turned a sickly shade of green. He looked as though any second he might retch.

  And Neil? Neil felt the same way.

  Sure, he’d reported the facts as he’d known them. But in his anger with Charli, he’d made sure to choose words that would vilify her. He had crucified Charli. He had hung her out to dry, spread her face across the nation’s newspapers and television sets as the woman who had caused all this sickness.

  When, actually, she’d been as much a victim as Bethie Brantley and all those poor miserable migrants.

  He’d exploited someone’s mistake for his own purposes. Sure, he’d thought he was on the side of right—no, he’d been certain of it. But no matter what his motivation, Neil had been happy to trash Charli’s reputation with no thought to the possibility that he’d erred in his assessment of the situation.

  Was he any better than Lige Whitaker?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHARLI STOOD AMID crowds of people of all ages in the lobby of the Westin, in Savannah, surrounded by gingerbread houses like she’d never seen before. She didn’t have time to appreciate the artistry it must have taken to create an elaborate gingerbread version of Savannah’s Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, though.

  She was looking for her mother.

  After she’d finally got Bethie on the helicopter for CHOA, it had taken Charli two days and at least a dozen humiliating phone calls to various people in her mom’s address book, but finally, finally, one of the ladies had miraculously known where Charli’s MIA mom had vanished to.

  The Westin Golf Resort and Spa. In Savannah.

  Classic move, Mom, Charli thought bitterly. You picked another ritzy resort to blow your credit card to smithereens.

  Her mother’s friend hadn’t seemed the least concerned about Charli’s mom. She’d brushed away Charli’s fears with a laugh and told Charli, “Oh, she mentioned something about a girls’ trip to Savannah with Brenda Arthur and another friend—now, who was it? They were going to the Westin.”

  It fit the Violet Prescott Charli knew to a T: elegant surroundings, dolled up for Christmas in one of her favorite locations, Savannah. If Charli hadn’t been so swamped with catastrophes, she might have realized this was exactly where Violet would have bolted.

  As it was, now that Charli was here, she hadn’t spotted her mother, and the desk clerk hadn’t admitted to a Violet Prescott or a Brenda Arthur having registered at the hotel. Privacy? Or had the reservation been made in the name of the third musketeer?

  Charli couldn’t think, not with all the hubbub of excited kids around her—or the gingerbread villages. All the exhibits made her think of was Neil—everything Christmassy made her think of Neil.

  He was gone. She had lost him. She needed to focus on the things she could still salvage from the wreckage she called a life. Charli took a deep breath and watched as people milled around the villages.

  Clustered around tables with fake snow and lights, the visitors oohed and aahed over the intricately decorated gingerbread creations.

  Charli didn’t know what to expect whenever she finally did track down her mom. At first, Charli had been sure her mom would bounce back to Brevis pretty quickly. Maybe Charli had been foolishly hoping her mom hadn’t been lying about the thousand-dollar credit limit.

  But she’d been gone for four days now, and all Charli’s phone calls had gone to voice mail, with no return calls. It spoke of guilt for sure—an unwillingness to face Charli or her debt.

  Who knows how many cards she managed to get approved, or how I’ll pay for it? The first person she’d talked to was Jed, who’d admitted that he’d agreed with Violet about applying for the Chase card. But he’d been genuinely shocked to hear that Violet had applied for a loan at Lige’s bank. He’d taken the whole thing hard, blaming himself for not doing a better job of looking after her mom.

  Charli had spent the past two days desperately searching for anyone who could tell her where her mother might have gone to ground.

  At least she wasn’t in Brevis—after the one hundred and twenty-nine messages on her cell phone and various reporters looking for her, she’d stopped answering anything but the state medical board’s calls or the numbers of her mother’s friends or support group members.

  Neil had even called a time or two. She had erased the messages without listening to them. Hearing his voice, as cold and impersonal as it had been that last time, would have hurt too much.

  And then Charli spotted her. Amid all the gingerbread admirers, there was her mother, her head thrown back, laughing along with three other ladies. They looked very much the part of ladies of the club, with their designer handbags, t
heir coiffed hair, shopping bags dangling from wrists.

  Shopping bags. Charli groaned. She could finally understand the depth of her father’s antipathy for all things Christmas if this is what the season did for her mother.

  No. Her mother had done this to herself. Just like Charli had put Bethie’s life in danger. It was your own choices that got you.

  Charli pushed through the crowd, trailing her mother through the exhibit. She moved past an elderly lady and a little girl, which reminded her all over again of Julianne and her granddaughter.

  “Mom!” But her mother was too engrossed in what someone was saying about a particular entry in the gingerbread contest to hear her. Charli grasped her mother’s arm, causing her to whirl around.

  “Charli! Look, girls! It’s Charli! Oh, this is wonderful! I’m so glad you decided to take time off to join us.”

  “Mother.” Charli hated the way the word came through gritted teeth. “Where have you been? I’ve called everyone I could think of.”

  “Honey.” Some of the joy faded from her mother’s face, replaced by a wary defensiveness Charli knew all too well. “Is something wrong?”

  “Something—” Charli choked on her anger. “You disappear off the face of the earth, and I don’t have a clue where you are? And you ask—”

  “But I left a message. Charli, I left a message on your phone. I told you.”

  “That you needed a change of scenery. Yeah. And you found it all right. Right here. Only the most expensive hotel in Savannah would do, right, Mom? Just a little shopping therapy?”

  Now it was her mother whose mouth went tight and angry. “Charli, let’s not make a scene. Why don’t we find a quiet place, so we can talk? Girls―” now she turned to her friends “―will you excuse us?”

  “Excellent idea,” Charli muttered.

  She followed her mother away from the exhibit, to the hotel’s main restaurant. At this point in the day—midafternoon—the dining room was deserted. They were seated at a table, their iced tea served, before her mother spoke to her again.