I’ll Be Home for Christmas
Dawn Stewardson
To D’Arcy Lynn Stewardson and Bob Hacking, who helped play with the plot.
And to John, always.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Ali Weyden—When her six-year-old son vanished, every mother’s worst nightmare became her reality.
Robbie Weyden—His kidnapper said the boy was safe. The question was, for how long?
Logan Reed—He’d been biding his time with Ali, but suddenly time was running out—for all of them.
Bob Weyden—Everybody thought Ali’s husband was dead. Or was there someone who’d always known he was alive?
Celeste Weyden—Ali’s mother-in-law loved her grandson. But what if she had to choose between his life and her own son’s?
Vinny Velarde—Bob Weyden’s business partner had a lot to lose if Bob wasn’t really dead.
Deloras Gayle—How much did Vinny’s secretary know?
Mimi Velarde—Vinny’s wife was mysteriously out of town. Could she be the one who had Robbie?
Nancy McGuire—Ali was sure her friend would never cross her. Not even for two million dollars.
Kent Schiraldi—Nancy’s boyfriend knew all about Ali Weyden’s money. Mysteriously, so did the kidnapper.
Nicky Sinclair and Chico Gonzalez—These mobsters were after Bob Weyden. But who else was in danger from them?
Contents
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 One
He hung up and allowed himself a relieved smile. Finding out what he’d needed to know had been almost too easy. And the situation would be almost too perfect.
It was enough to start him worrying that he was missing something crucial.
Going over the plan in detail once more, he decided he wasn’t. He had plenty of time to scope the layout, find the room, figure out the best place to make the snatch. And no doubt every little rug rat in the neighborhood would be there, making for total pandemonium. With a whole roomful of excited kids, nobody was going to miss one small boy in the time it would take to grab him.
Glancing at what he’d jotted down, he checked it a final time, making certain there was nothing more he needed to know.
Sunday, December 18. Harbord Street Children’s Clinic. Activities room. Three till six.
That definitely took care of it, nothing he’d forget, so he lit a match to one corner of the paper, then dropped it into the empty trash can and watched it burn.
On the radio, the announcer’s baritone rolled over the final strains of “Jingle Bell Rock.”
“We’re going to take a short newsbreak, folks, see what’s happening on the snowy streets of Toronto. It’s colder than a witch’s kiss out there, but it’s hot, hot, hot here on CTOR, big-city radio. And when we come back we’ll have a song for everyone leaving the big T.O. to spend the holidays with family. We’ve got the King himself, cued to sing ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas.’”
He couldn’t contain a second smile—even more relaxed, now that he felt certain things would go his way. I’ll be home for Christmas. He liked the sound of that. He’d remember to have the boy say it when the time came.
* * *
LOGAN REED PULLED into his narrow driveway, the Cherokee’s tires crunching the inch of new snow that had fallen over the past couple of hours.
That triggered a thought, so he wrote a quick reminder. Killer’s car leaves clear tread marks in fresh snow. He stuck it into the folder that held his notes on how to lift a strangler’s fingerprints from a victim’s throat, then climbed out of the Jeep and into the sub-zero afternoon.
The wind wrapped its icy fingers around his neck, so he zipped his bomber jacket the rest of the way up, reminding himself he’d soon be trading Canadian winter for California sunshine—or L.A. smog, if he wanted to be cynical about it. In some ways the move couldn’t come soon enough. In others...well, there were a lot of things he’d miss about Toronto.
His breath forming tiny clouds, he strode along the slippery sidewalk, past the two houses that separated his from Ali Weyden’s, thinking that the cold wasn’t one of them. This neighborhood was, though. As close as it was to downtown, its streets were quiet, safe and peaceful—emanating a sense of stability that he doubted existed anywhere in L.A.
Most of the trees here had put down their roots a century ago, and the big brick houses exuded the charm of faded grandeur. Especially those on Palmerston. Take away the parked cars, and the entire street would look much as it had decades ago, right down to its original streetlamps—ornate wrought-iron standards, each topped by a large white globe.
He climbed the steps to Ali’s front porch and turned the knob that rang the old-fashioned doorbell, wishing he didn’t have to tell her he’d be abandoning her to the perilous world of paid baby-sitters. The shared child-care arrangement they’d fallen into had beaten that all to hell, and while he’d always had his parents to rely on in emergencies, Ali didn’t have that sort of safety net. Her mother was dead, her only sister lived in Vancouver, and she’d never mentioned her father. So even if he was alive they couldn’t be close.
He was reaching for the bell again when Ali appeared at the door. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have taken her for eighteen rather than twenty-eight. Since she’d gone back to university in the fall as a “mature student,” she’d been looking less mature by the week.
Today she had on jeans that were so baggy they probably contained twice as much denim as his, an equally baggy black sweater, and pink bunny slippers that were bigger than live snowshoe hares.
“You murder the short couple while I was gone?” he asked, looking past her into the empty hall. Nine times out of ten, it was the boys who answered the door. “Plan on pleading justifiable homicide?”
She smiled and shook her head. “I think writing crime fiction has warped your brain. But come on in and I’ll make coffee. The ‘short couple’ is wreaking havoc in the basement, and I’m under orders not to disturb them. Not even for you.”
When he stepped in out of the cold, the welcoming warmth smelled of Christmas. The aroma of fresh baking was wafting from the kitchen and mingling with the scent of pine from the tree he’d helped her wrestle into the house.
Glancing into the living room, he noted that the presents beneath it had been multiplying at a great rate. Then he turned his attention to tugging off his snowy cowboy boots—glad to see there were no holes in his socks.
“To quote your son,” Ali was saying, “they can’t be interrupted because they’re making something ‘top secret.’”
“Like a bomb?”
“Don’t worry, I always keep that possibility in mind, but I think today it’s just our Christmas presents. They’re using mason jars, uncooked macaroni, finger paints, glue and gold glitter, so be prepared for the worst.”
When Logan grimaced she rewarded him with another smile. She had an inordinately nice smile. In fact, most everything she had was inordinately nice. That had started him wondering, way back, whether she thought of him only as Cody’s father.
Tossing his jacket onto the coat tree, he followed her past the stairs and along to the kitchen. Months ago, he’d decided that one day he was going to check out just exactly how she did think of him. But she tended to maneuver around personal questions, and he wasn’t sure exactl
y how long she’d been widowed before she’d moved onto Palmerston. That had made him leery of pushing without any sign of encouragement from her. So he’d just been biding his time. And now it had suddenly become too late.
When they reached the big old kitchen he spotted the source of the baking smell—cookies cooling on the stove. It was the smells that gave her kitchen the homey feeling his lacked. He just never managed to get the kind of smells from his microwave that she produced with her oven.
“Chocolate chip?” he asked, doing his best not to drool.
“Half. Half are peanut butter. I had a sudden urge to bake. I suspect I’ll be spending most of the Christmas break doing things I haven’t had enough time for since September. Why don’t you put some on a plate while I fix the coffee?”
“Hey, I wasn’t hinting, you know.”
“Sure you weren’t.” She flashed him a grin. “The boys don’t need all of them, but watch the cookie sheet. It’s still hot.”
Logan dug a plate out of the cupboard and slid some cookies onto it, acquiring nothing worse than a first-degree burn to one finger. Then he sat down and watched Ali fiddling at the counter, thinking how he’d capture her appearance if she were a character in one of his novels.
He’d call her long hair either golden red or pale copper, he wasn’t quite sure which. Her eyes were easier—big, brown and luminous. And her mouth...luscious was definitely the word that came to mind. Just as he’d ruled out thin for her figure, and decided on slender but shapely, she started over to the table with two mugs of coffee, asking him to get the milk.
He pushed back his chair and crossed to the fridge. There was a familiar-looking invitation stuck to its door with a pig magnet.
“You’re going to this thing tomorrow?” he asked, gesturing to the invitation and glancing back at her.
“Uh-huh. One of my friends is a social worker at the clinic. Nancy McGuire? My age, shoulder-length brown hair, blue eyes?”
He shook his head to say he didn’t know her. Most parents in the neighborhood took their children to the clinic, because it had a family feel. But he and Cody had only met the doctors and nurses.
“Well, anyway, it was Nancy who sent the invitation,” Ali told him as he grabbed the milk carton and headed back to the table. “She said Robbie would love it.”
“He will. Cody had so much candy at it last year he was sick the next day. But would you do me a favor since you’re going? Take Cody, too?”
“Sure, no problem. You’ve got something else on?”
“Not something else, but I have to get there early. As of this morning I’m their Santa. The original volunteer broke his arm—slipped on some ice.”
“Oh? I’m surprised Cody wasn’t bubbling over with the news. Having a father stand in for the real Mr. Claus has to be big stuff.”
“That’s exactly why I’m keeping it a secret until tomorrow. He’d want the whole world to know, so I’d have half the kids in the neighborhood climbing on my knee and saying, ‘Hi, Mr. Reed.’”
Ali eyed him for a moment, trying to picture him as old Saint Nick. It wasn’t easy, not even when she imagined him in a red suit rather than jeans and that creamy fisherman sweater. Logan Reed was all lean muscles and chiseled features—definitely appealing on real men, but hardly choice Santa Claus material.
“What?” he demanded. “You don’t think I’ll be any good?”
His injured expression was so blatantly phony that she laughed. “Well, let’s see. You’re thirty-three, right? And Santa’s supposed to be what...eighty-something? Your hair is brown, not white, and it’s neither curly nor as long as his, and—”
“Wait a minute. I’ve got blue eyes. That’s a match.”
“All right, I’ll give you the eyes.” She could hardly not. They were the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. “But you’re clean-shaven and Santa’s got whiskers down to his belt. And you can’t weigh more than...a hundred and eighty?”
“One-seventy-five.”
“Even worse,” she teased. “But I guess, aside from those few minor details...”
“So, you haven’t heard of padding? And false beards and wigs? Hey, give me a couple of pillows and I’ll be terrific. By tomorrow, I’m going to have the best ‘ho-ho-ho’ you’ve ever heard. Just wait and see.”
That made her laugh again. Logan was easy to be around. So much so, that when they’d first met she’d been surprised to learn he was unattached. She assumed marriage had left him feeling much the way it had her—once bitten, twice shy. Still, she knew he’d been divorced for years, and it seemed strange that some woman hadn’t managed to wangle her way into his life. He had that rugged kind of attractiveness a lot of women went for. In fact, if she had any interest in men, even she might...
But she had no interest in men. At the moment, the only important things were getting her life on track and ensuring that Robbie was happy.
“Ali?”
She glanced across the table and Logan caught her gaze in the blue depth of his. She felt the little sexual tug that completely belied her total disinterest in men—in this particular one, at least. And it was a tug she’d been feeling more and more often recently when she was near him.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” Logan said. “I heard from L.A. yesterday. My film agent called and she pulled it off. I get to collaborate on the script.”
“Oh, Logan, that’s wonderful. You must be thrilled.”
“I am. Connie worked a miracle. Hollywood hates to let an author adapt his novel for the screen, unless he’s someone who’s already done it a dozen times.”
“But you were dying for the chance, weren’t you.”
He nodded. “Doing the screenplay gives you a shot at keeping the story’s integrity intact. Otherwise, you’ve got absolutely no control over it.”
“This way you will, though. Oh, I’m really, really happy for you. What a great Christmas present.”
“There’s one catch,” he said after a moment. “It means Cody and I have to move to L.A. At least until the film’s in the can.”
That little news flash took her completely by surprise, and she suddenly wasn’t quite as happy for him. It was totally selfish, of course, but she’d miss having him around...miss it more than a little. And Robbie would miss Cody. The boys had been inseparable since the day they’d met.
“I feel badly about leaving you in the lurch for a sitter,” Logan said.
“Don’t. I’ll work something out. But how long until the film’s ‘in the can’?”
He shrugged. “It depends. They want me there by the end of January, and it’ll take three or four months to work on the script. Then however long the shooting takes. But they’ve optioned two of my other books, so...well, the move could turn out to be permanent.”
“Oh.”
He caught her gaze again. This time she glanced away, trying to ignore the ridiculous feeling that he was abandoning her. They were friends, nothing more. That’s the way she’d wanted it. And friends came and went in life.
“Robbie will be devastated when he hears,” she said.
“Well, don’t say anything yet. I’m not going to tell Cody we’re going until after Christmas. And I’ll be keeping the house for the time being. See what the situation looks like in a few months, then decide whether or not to sell it.”
She nodded. He was already considering selling. The more he told her, the more it sounded as if permanent was a foregone conclusion.
Strange how things worked out. Or didn’t work out, as the case might be. She’d been living two doors away from Logan for almost a year, yet it had only been in the past few months that he’d been making her feel... She couldn’t quite describe it, but lately, every time she looked at his broad shoulders, or he smiled at her with his sensual smile, she felt...a hot little rush of excitement. That was as close as she could come to describing the feeling. And the way it had been getting stronger and stronger had started her thinking that maybe...
But he
r timing with men was apparently no better than her taste in them had ever been.
“Do you like the idea of living in L.A.?” she finally asked.
“I haven’t had much time to think about it. I always figured one of the benefits to writing was that you can do it anywhere. But according to Connie, no one writes for Hollywood without living in L.A. You have to be on hand for a hundred different reasons. So I can write novels living there, but I can’t do scripts living here.” He raised his hands, palms up, saying he had no choice.
“The boys will really miss each other...whether it turns out to be short-term or long.”
As if they’d picked up vibrations that said they were being talked about, Robbie and Cody thundered up from the basement. To Ali they sounded more like an invading army than two six-year-olds, and when they burst into the kitchen they replaced the calm with a whirlwind of chaos—chaos liberally smeared with finger paints and dusted with gold glitter.
“Cookies!” Robbie shouted, his dark eyes dancing. “You shoulda called us!”
“Dad!” Cody yelled. “Dad, I made you the neatest thing, but you can’t see it. Not till Christmas Day.”
“Me, too, Mom,” Robbie assured her. “Can we have pop with the cookies?”
“Milk,” she said firmly, nodding at the carton. “And pour very carefully.”
“Milk?” Cody said, wrinkling his nose.
“Milk,” Logan told him.
Wordlessly, the boys divided up the task—Cody getting the glasses, Robbie pouring. They managed it without mishap, then descended on the cookies like a couple of starving vultures attacking road kill.
Robbie grabbed one and stuffed the entire thing into his mouth at once—something Ali had told him at least ten thousand times he wasn’t to do.
Then he grinned and gave her such an exaggerated “Mmmm” of appreciation that she laughed despite herself.
“Monsters,” Logan muttered to her under his breath. “Neither of them is even slightly civilized, you know.”
Ali looked at Robbie once more. He could be a monster at times, but he was the most important thing in her life. And whether he was uncivilized or not, she couldn’t conceive of ever loving another human being as much as she loved her little monster.
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