Heidi smiled and tried to explain what had happened, but the paramedics were understandably more interested in getting Mrs. DiBenedetto off the sidewalk. Heidi decided the best thing to do at that point would be to take Marcello into the house. She scooped up Mrs. DiBenedetto’s keys from where the woman had dropped them on the stairs and then hurried with the dog into the landlady’s apartment. A stale, meat-loafy aroma hung in the air.
Marcello crept along the wall, trembling and freaked out, and kept up a constant growl at Heidi that periodically burst into a full-fledged bark. In the kitchen, she threw open cabinets until she spotted his dog chow, which she poured into the food bowl on the floor. He sniffed it and then growled at her as if she were trying to poison him. Heidi sighed and sloshed fresh water into the neighboring bowl.
“There, I’m done. You can relax now and I’ll be back in the morning.” She reached down to pet him and he bared ferrety little teeth at her. When she let herself out and locked up the apartment, he started barking in earnest.
On the way back out, she dashed into her apartment to grab a dry coat—a hideous beige puffy coat that she’d bought for thirty dollars at Costco, thinking that if she ever had to wear it, it would be practically in whiteout conditions and she wouldn’t care if she looked like a giant broiled marshmallow. For once she’d been right.
Outside, the paramedics had given Mrs. DiBenedetto a shot of morphine to kill the pain so they could load her onto the stretcher. The drugs must have addled her mind a little, because as they were hoisting her into the ambulance, the woman’s arms started flailing and she pointed at Heidi. “You take care of my Marcello!”
Five minutes earlier she had been calling Heidi a murderer.
“You take good care of my baby!” she slurred.
“Of course. He’ll be fine.”
“You take care of him or else!”
The EMS workers were ready to close the back of the ambulance. “Wait,” Heidi said. “I’m going too.”
“Sorry—you’ll have to follow.”
She didn’t believe him at first. People rode along in ambulances all the time in the movies. “But I don’t have a car!”
“I’m sorry. Family only. You’ll have to hail a cab.”
“But where are you taking her? I need to go with her.”
“If you want to check on her, she’ll be at Methodist.” Heidi’s blank expression must have spoken for her, because he added, “New York Methodist—it’s in the Slope.”
It wasn’t that she wanted to spend her night in a hospital emergency room, but it would be awful for Mrs. DiBenedetto to be stuck in emergency, drugged, with nobody to speak for her.
Reluctant to let the EMS vehicle out of her sight, Heidi snatched her snow-covered purse and the shopping bag off the sidewalk and ran after it, nearly falling a few times before she reached the corner of Court Street. The ambulance was long gone by the time a cab slid to the curb to pick her up.
“Can you take me to Methodist Hospital?” she asked the driver.
“You called me, right?”
She blinked, confused. “Well, no, I didn’t—”
“Yes, you did. Otherwise, this trip would be illegal, because only yellow cabs can pick people up on the street.”
“Oh.” She sighed. “Right. I did call. What took you so long?”
He nodded. “Methodist Hospital, coming right up.”
Heidi sat back and watched the near-deserted, snowy streets glide by as she frantically prayed that Mrs. DiBenedetto would be okay. It seemed likely the woman had broken something, since she hadn’t been able to get up. But sometimes old people fell and there were complications. What if she’d hit her head on the way down? People could seem fine after a bump on the head and then die hours later.
Suddenly, any dreams of shiny industrial mixers, true love, or just a quiet day in her jammies watching Avatar evaporated. All she wanted for Christmas now was not to have killed her landlady.
Chapter 4
By the time Heidi dragged herself back home again, it was past one thirty. She was unlocking her door when her neighbor Martine appeared, dressed in a wool coat over a pair of satiny-looking pajamas, her hair pulled back in a haphazard ponytail. The French girl worked as an au pair for Janice, a woman who rented the apartment that took up the second and third floors of Mrs. DiBenedetto’s house. Janice, who traveled for her job with the UN, wasn’t around half the time to enjoy her luxurious spread. Money was wasted on the rich.
“What is happening!” Martine yelled as if Heidi were a half a block away instead of a mere foot from her face.
“Come in,” Heidi said. The snow was still coming down, and it was too cold to be talking in the doorway.
She led the way into her apartment, and Martine scrunched her face as she glanced around. Whatever was bugging her evaporated momentarily in the face of Heidi’s primitive conditions. “Mon dieu!”
The apartment was one room, really—a straight shot from the front door through the living room to the back wall, except that about three-quarters of the way, futons and old chairs gave way to an ancient refrigerator and a stove that Heidi still didn’t entirely trust after a year. A bathroom with a leaky shower, an addition tacked on by the late Mr. DiBenedetto to make the space rentable, was located off the kitchen.
“It’s not the Waldorf,” Heidi agreed.
Whatever was disturbing Martine, this peek at Heidi’s living conditions didn’t help. All at once, she put her hands over her ears and let out a shriek. “Je n’en peux plus!” When Heidi stood blinking at her, she stamped her foot and translated. “I can’t take any more!”
“Any more what?”
Martine bugged her eyes and pointed to the ceiling. “You cannot hear it? The barking constantly of the dog?”
Heidi tilted her head. Now that she was listening for it, Marcello’s yapping upstairs was hard to miss. She’d been too glad to be home—and too distracted by Martine—to notice the noise.
“It’s been going on for hours!” Martine cried. “He will not stop. I knocked on the door of Mrs. DiBenedetto, but she does not answer.”
“Oh—Mrs. DiB had an accident. I took her to the hospital. She fell down the front steps and broke her hip. Sprained her wrist, too—but the hip is going to be the big problem.”
Martine sank onto the futon as if boneless, buried her head in her hands, and started bawling like a baby.
Heidi gaped at her. She’d never gotten the sense that Martine liked Mrs. DiBenedetto—or anyone, really. “I’m sorry—I had no idea you’d take the news so hard.”
Martine shook her head. “I’m crying because my father is in hospital. In Lyon.”
“Oh.” She understood the problem now. Or thought she did. “That’s awful.”
“He is so sick, Heidi. I think maybe he might not get well. Maybe I won’t see him again, ever.”
Heidi sank onto the sofa next to her. Slumped there, her eyes red, Martine looked about eighteen years old. Which she might have been. Heidi wasn’t sure. When she’d first met her, Martine had been with Janice, and Heidi hadn’t wanted to say, “You look too young to be taking care of someone’s kid.” But it was true. Right now, she looked like a child herself.
“Oh, Martine. I’m sorry.”
“And I cannot go home,” she continued, snuffling. “I cannot leave Wilson.”
Wilson was Janice’s baby. Well, he’d been a baby when Heidi moved in. Now he had to be one and a half, maybe going on two.
“Because Janice is ... where, exactly?”
“Darfur.”
“Oh.” Not within easy reach, then.
“I cannot sleep.” Martine’s face squinched up as she tried not to cry again. “And then the dog starts barking and the kid cries and cries.”
Heidi straightened. Wilson. He must be up in the apartment by himself. Heidi knew nothing about kids, but she was pretty sure leaving them alone in an apartment wasn’t kosher. She got up and attempted to rally Martine. “It’ll be okay. I
’ll fetch Marcello and make him shut his yap, and you go back up to Wilson and try to get some sleep. Things will seem better in the morning than they do now.”
Martine stood on a sigh, and dragged to the door. “Thank you, Heidi. I have no one else here.”
If Heidi was all she had, she was in bad shape. They barely knew each other. “It’ll be okay, Martine,” she said, trying to sound reassuring.
She grabbed her own keys and Mrs. DiBenedetto’s thick key ring and headed for the apartment upstairs. Through the door, Marcello sounded ferocious, but when she stepped into the living area, he bleated and streaked toward the kitchen. Heidi gave chase. The little fur ball growled as she scooped him up, but she was too tired to care about getting bitten. All she wanted now was sleep.
Holding the Pomeranian under one arm like a football, she grabbed a bag of dog food with her free hand and made her way back downstairs. The unfamiliar surroundings in the basement succeeded in shutting Marcello up, but if he did start kicking up a fuss again, at least there would be an empty apartment as a buffer between him and Martine.
Heidi slipped into the first flannel pajamas she could find—ones with Snoopy in a Santa hat all over them, the cuffs of which were trimmed in white faux fur. They had been a gift from her mom and were still stiff from non-use, but they were warm. Not bothering to make up the bed, she pulled her comforter out of the closet and crashed on the futon as it was, still folded into a couch. She rolled toward the backrest until she hit a tiny body behind her. Marcello snarled a warning, sending Heidi scrabbling back to the edge.
But this was ridiculous. She wasn’t going to be dictated to by some furry little piranha. She sat up to explain the rules of the apartment to Marcello, but was interrupted by a knock on her door. Marcello launched himself off the futon and skidded to the door in full Pomeranian bray.
Heidi hitched the comforter around her shoulders and tromped toward the door, expecting to find Martine again.
Instead, she swung the door open and came face-to-face with Patrick. He was still wearing his uniform topped with a dark coat that had reflective patches all over it. He took off his hat, shedding snow in the doorway. Heidi gaped at him, confused, until the instant that gaze of his locked onto her.
She gulped. Of course. She knew why he was here.
“I saw your light on,” he began.
She blurted out, “I wasn’t trying to kill her.”
He blinked as if he didn’t know what she was talking about—as if he hadn’t come by to wring a confession out of her.
“Mrs. DiBenedetto?” she said, in answer to his clueless look. Oh, he was good. She turned to let him into the apartment, although Marcello had no intention of being such a pushover. “Marcello—quiet!”
The dog growled at her.
“That’s why you’re here, right?” she asked, shutting the door after Patrick had batted more snow off himself and stepped inside.
He glanced around, his squint indicating he was no more impressed by her apartment than Martine had been.
“We heard there was an EMS call to your building,” he explained. “I came by to see ... well, what happened.”
“The EMS workers probably told you about Mrs. DiBenedetto calling me an assassin, but it was all just a mix-up with Marcello’s leash—he got stuck in the Christmas tree.”
“The one on the sidewalk?” Patrick’s eyebrows arched. “The one Miss Scrooge swore she didn’t want?”
Heat zipped into her cheeks. “Okay ... I brought it back with me. Seemed stupid to waste a perfectly good tree.” She tugged the comforter more tightly around her, in the vain hope that he hadn’t noticed she was wearing fur-trimmed Snoopy-Santa pajamas.
He nodded slowly, a smile tilting his mouth. “And so you were dragging the tree home, the dog got tangled in it, and this woman, this—”
“Mrs. DiBenedetto, my landlady.” Heidi gave a blow-by-blow account, going back to the accidentally pilfered begonia and Mrs. DiB’s crazy notion that Heidi had stolen the tree. When she was done, she was close to certain she’d convinced Patrick that she hadn’t intended to kill or maim anyone.
Patrick leaned down and petted Marcello, who, having accepted that the intruder was here to stay, fell on his back for a belly scratch.
Heidi looked on, amazed. “He hasn’t done that for me.”
Patrick mumbled some doggie-speak at Marcello and angled a smile at her. “Maybe he still sees you as a mad assassin.”
“So ... are you going to write this in your report?”
“What report?”
“The incident report.”
He stood. “Actually, I’m off duty, but since I was passing by, I wanted to make sure that everything was okay here. That you were okay.”
“Oh.” For the first time since he’d come through the door, Heidi began to breathe easier. He wasn’t about to toss her in the hoosegow, then. Except ...
He’d come to see her?
She swallowed. “You want some ...” She tried to think of something she had to offer. “Hot chocolate?”
“Sure,” he said, looking around again. He kept his expression neutral, but she could tell he was thinking what any sentient being would. What a dump.
She hurried to the stove to boil some water. From the back of the cupboard, she pulled out a box containing hot cocoa packets—God knows how old, since she didn’t remember buying them—the contents of which had solidified into thin slabs. She knocked a couple of packets on the counter to break them up before tearing into them. “So you just finished work?” she asked.
He leaned against the fridge, watching her preparations. “Till tomorrow.”
“You work the holiday? You don’t mind?”
“Nah. The duty sergeant tries to let the guys with families have a little free time. And since I’m single ...”
Those eyes lasered in on her, and she shifted uncomfortably in her comforter cocoon. She drummed her fingers on the frigid counter tiles. “Is it too cold in here?”
“It’s nippy, for sure. I guess that’s why you’re bundled up.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I was worried you’d already be in bed, but it looks like ...” He frowned and scanned the room again. “Don’t you have a bed?”
“I fold down the futon,” she explained, pulling the kettle off the stove. She tossed the petrified cocoa powder chunks into mugs, sloshed the hot water in, and gave the liquid a few stirs. Then she rearranged the comforter, tossing one corner over her shoulder, toga-style, to free up a hand.
“Thanks,” Patrick said as she handed a mug to him.
They drifted back to the futon, each perching on either side of it, and took cautious sips of cocoa. It was on the weak side, with sad, desiccated marshmallow chips bobbing on the surface.
“So ... all alone for Christmas,” he said.
Marcello darted into the space between them, sidling closer to Patrick. Heidi laughed. “Not as alone as I’d anticipated.”
“Doesn’t your mother live around here?” he asked.
“She lives in Connecticut, but this year she’s in Cancun with her husband. Christmas Eve is their first anniversary. I was invited to Cancun, actually, but, you know ... three’s a crowd.”
Great conversation. She took another swig from her mug and wished there was rum in it. Why did she feel so nervous? He was just a guy. Just an incredibly good-looking guy who’d dropped by at two in the morning.
“It’s officially Christmas Eve day right now,” he said.
“That’s right.” She remembered last year. “Last Christmas Eve was all about my mom’s wedding—I was maid of honor. Then she and Tom flew off on their honeymoon and I came back here and glutted myself on wedding cake and watched the Turner Classic Movies’ Christmas marathon. It wasn’t pretty.”
“Last Christmas I got shot,” Patrick said. “That wasn’t pretty, either.”
She gasped in a breath, nearly choking on her cocoa. “You got shot? How?”
“Fast-food robber
y in Bed-Stuy. Christmas is a big time for armed robbery. Lots of money pressure on people.”
“But you came out of it okay, right?”
“Sure—Marcus and I even managed to catch the guy. The bullet only nicked my arm, but it still got me a few days off.”
“I don’t like guns,” Heidi said with a shiver.
“Hopefully, you’ll never have one pointed at you.”
Too late for that hope. Images flashed through her mind of being hunkered down in a horse stall in Texas with a gunman firing at her. Laura, of all people, had rescued her. Laura, who had always seemed to want her dead. It was tempting to tell the story to Patrick, but she wasn’t sure explaining that her ex-boyfriend had hired a thug to kill her because she’d discovered his embezzlement racket would put her in the best light.
She sipped her watery cocoa. “So ... do you have a big family?”
He laughed. “Huge. Five brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts and nephews all over the place. We’re the kind of family that has to set up card tables in two rooms to squeeze everybody in at holiday meals. And I can’t even remember the number of Lego sets I wrapped up for Christmas presents for my nephews in the past week.”
A stupid grin seemed to have frozen itself in place on her face. A real family. One that actually liked you. What would that be like?
“And so your mom’s it?” he asked.
“Well ...” She cleared her throat, mentally fishing for some angle that would make her life seem less isolated and desperate. “I’ve got a couple of ex-stepdads, and some ex-stepfamily in Texas. That’s where the café’s name comes from. Sweetgum, Texas.”
He nodded.
“Sometimes I dream of having more family—real family—but I’m not sure I would know what to do with them. Maybe I should kidnap a few kids, give it a trial run.” She felt her face go scarlet. “That is, I wouldn’t really kidnap anybody.”
Those eyes skewered her. “Like you wouldn’t actually yank an old lady off her stoop?”
“Oh God.”
He laughed and put his hand on her shoulder. The touch startled her. She hadn’t realized how close he was. His eyes, which had laughter in them at first, darkened. His entire expression changed, and a charge snapped in the apartment’s frigid air. She pulled her gaze away from his eyes, but it landed on his lips. She’d never noticed how full they were.
Making Spirits Bright Page 11
