I'll Be Home for Christmas

by Dawn Stewardson

  “The finger?”

  “Oh...Kent didn’t tell you about that?”

  Logan shook his head.

  “Oh.” She hesitated again, this time because she felt queasy. “Somebody,” she made herself continue, “mailed Bob’s little finger to Vinny.”

  Chapter Four

  “I will, Nancy,” Ali said, gesturing to Logan that she was having trouble getting off the phone. “I’ll call you tomorrow. No, I’m really not a basket case yet, not quite...I know, if there’s anything at all I need...”

  Logan dumped the lukewarm remains of the coffee from the mugs, poured fresh refills and carried them back to the table, thinking Nancy McGuire just might have the worst timing in the entire world.

  He could understand her wanting to know if Ali had heard from Bob again, but he wished she hadn’t called at the exact second Ali’s finger line was hanging fire.

  “Somebody,” she’d said, “mailed Bob’s little finger to Vinny.”

  But had it really been Bob’s? It must have been, he decided. The RCMP would have checked that out, and it wouldn’t have taken more than two seconds for a forensic lab to determine whether or not it was his. So unless he was adding something up very wrong, Bob had intentionally faked his death—and had chopped off his finger and mailed it to his partner as proof.

  Logan slowly shook his head. Old Bob was sounding weirder than a lot of the fictional characters he dreamed up, and he wanted to get to the rest of the details. He waved at Ali, moving his hand in the circular motion that film directors use to speed things up.

  Film directors...L.A. He absently realized that since Robbie had vanished he hadn’t thought once about his move to L.A. Before that, he’d been thinking of virtually nothing else.

  Ali impatiently drummed her fingers against the counter until she finally managed to grab an opening for a goodbye. When she hung up she was almost wishing Nancy hadn’t called. Talking about Robbie had brought all her fears about his safety to the fore again.

  She did a little deep breathing on her way back to the table, reminding herself she was doing the most constructive thing she could. If she and Logan were able to make complete sense of the situation, she’d be in a better position to negotiate with Bob.

  “Where was I?” she asked, sitting down across from Logan once more.

  “The finger. You said somebody mailed it to Vinny. You meant from Nicaragua?”

  “Yes. And there was a note with it, saying double-dealers don’t live long there.”

  “And the note was from...?”

  She shrugged. “Vinny claimed he had no idea. Not about who it was from, not about what it meant. He swore Custom Cargoes’ business down there was legitimate, and he stuck to that. At any rate, when Vinny got the finger he called the police and...”

  “And?”

  “No, there’s no reason to waste time on all that. I only need to tell you about the insurance. Both Bob and Vinny had business insurance policies, so Custom Cargoes wouldn’t be at risk of going under if one of the partners suddenly died.”

  “That’s pretty standard,” Logan said.

  “I know. But what wasn’t standard was the value of the policies. There was five million dollars’ coverage on each of them.”

  Logan gave a low whistle and Ali shrugged again. “I guess they wanted it high because the shady side of the business was risky.”

  “I guess,” Logan agreed. “So if Bob died, the business would get five million and you’d get two, from the personal policy. And were both policies with the same insurance company?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, I’ll bet hearing he’d been killed made their day. But since he’s not really dead, there couldn’t have been a body. So you’re saying they paid out all that money without one?”

  Ali nodded.

  “That’s tough to believe.”

  “It gets even tougher when you hear the rest.”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  “Well, the personal insurance wasn’t originally worth anything like two million. And it was immediately before the trip to Nicaragua that Bob increased it.”

  “You’re right. It is getting tougher to believe.”

  “I know. The insurance people were really suspicious. Vinny told them that Bob had figured Central America was a dangerous place to be going, which sort of explained his upping the value. But what I never understood was why Bob had left me as the beneficiary. I wasn’t exactly his favorite person after we’d broken up, so I thought he’d have changed that. His mother is still alive. Or he could have named Robbie. After tonight, though, I think I see what he was up to.”

  Logan sat silently for a minute, then said, “If he’d died with Robbie as his beneficiary, the money would have had to go into a trust. Until Robbie’s an adult.”

  “Exactly. It’s all starting to come together now, isn’t it. If Bob planned this whole thing as an insurance scam, he’d want me to have the money because it would be easy to make me hand it over. All he had to do was...was exactly what he did.” Her eyes suddenly filled with tears and she blinked hard.

  “You want to take a break from this?” Logan asked quietly.

  She shook her head. “I want to get it entirely figured out.”

  “All right,” he said after a minute, “then tell me this. If that finger and note were the only so-called proof of death, why did the insurance company pay out seven million bucks?”

  “Well, at first they refused to. But Vinny wasn’t giving up without a fight, so he flew to Nicaragua to see what he could find out down there.”

  “And he obviously found something good.”

  “Supposedly. Although now I’m wondering whether he found it or bought it. At any rate, he came back with a sworn statement from a senior police official. I never saw it—well, it was in Spanish, anyway. But it said that Bob had been reported as missing by the fellow he’d gone down to meet with. The man was an important local, so the police investigated. That led to a tip about a body buried in the jungle.” She paused, feeling queasy once more.

  “And they identified the body as Bob’s,” Logan concluded.

  “Yes. The story was that his ID was on it...and it was missing the little finger.”

  “But didn’t the insurance company ask them to ship it up here? So they could have it examined themselves?”

  “It disappeared.”

  “What?”

  Ali shrugged. “I don’t know, Logan, Vinny was the one down there.”

  “And you think he might have helped arrange for it to conveniently disappear? So the insurance company couldn’t have it examined?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe there was never really any body in the first place. I just don’t know.”

  “Incredible. So they paid the claims mainly on the statement Vinny got.”

  “Yes. It took a while, but I guess they finally decided Vinny’s story was likely to hold up in court.”

  “Because nobody would ever suspect a police official in Central America of taking a bribe,” Logan muttered. “What a joke. But that all took time. When did you actually get the money?”

  “Not until a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Then Bob turns up fast—before you have a chance to spend any of it.”

  “I’d never have spent any of it,” she said quietly. “When Bob and I separated, our agreement gave me the house we’d lived in. It was one of those enormous old things in Rosedale and—well, I sold it after he’d...disappeared. That gave me enough money to buy here and go back to school. But I’d never have touched the insurance money. That just wouldn’t have felt right, somehow, so I invested it for Robbie.

  “It’s ironic, isn’t it,” she continued after a moment. “Now I’ll be using it to get Robbie back. But the money doesn’t matter. All I care about is getting him home safely.”

  “I know. I know, and you will. Everything’s going to turn out just fine.”

  Ali smiled a little, making Logan glad he’d said that—even thoug
h hearing the story hadn’t prompted a single brilliant idea about what they should do. He rubbed his jaw, hoping he looked thoughtful rather than uncertain, but he knew they needed help with this.

  “Look,” he said at last, “I’ve got a friend named Wes Penna who’s a private investigator. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to call him—tell him about all this and see what he thinks.”

  Ali didn’t look exactly happy with the suggestion. “We can trust him not to say anything to anyone else?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well...I guess. Do you want to do it right now?”

  “No, I don’t have his number with me.” He hesitated. It was getting late, but he didn’t like the idea of leaving Ali on her own. What if old Bob took it into his head to phone in the middle of the night or something?

  “You know,” he finally said, “maybe I should go home, grab a few things and come back. Cody and I could spend the night here so you aren’t all alone. Sort of moral support.”

  He thought she’d say no, but she didn’t. “You’re sure you wouldn’t mind?” she asked quietly.

  “Positive.” Shoving himself up from the table, he started for the hall, saying, “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  He took a quick look into the living room at Cody, then grabbed his jacket from the coat tree and headed out into the cold.

  * * *

  ON THE WAY to his place from Ali’s, Logan decided he’d call Wes before he went back. That way, he could ask whatever questions he wanted to without running the risk of making her even more worried.

  He unlocked his front door and started straight for the kitchen, ignoring the trail of snowy footprints he was leaving in his wake. Ignoring Sammy, though, was a different story. The moment the cat heard the key in the lock he was on his way downstairs, loudly calling his resentment about having been left alone.

  Once they reached the kitchen, the cat switched to complaining about being on the brink of starvation. And when Logan grabbed his address book first, instead of the empty cat food bowl, Sammy pointed out the error in no uncertain terms by wrapping himself around Logan’s ankles and meowing piteously while Logan flipped through the pages to find Wes’s number.

  The cordless phone in his hand, Logan punched in the number, then grabbed the box of cat food from the cupboard and poured some in a bowl. That brought forth more yowls, these intended to inform everyone within two blocks that Sammy much preferred canned food over dry.

  “It’s been a tough night for all of us, Sam,” Logan muttered, just as someone picked up at Wes’s house.

  It turned out that Wes was on the East Coast. He’d gone to Halifax on a case. Fortunately, though, his wife had the number of his hotel. Once Logan reached him, he summarized the facts as quickly and concisely as he could. When he was done, Wes asked several questions, then fell silent.

  “Well?” Logan finally said. “What do you think?”

  “I’m just wondering why she’s so sure the kid’s going to be safe. This guy doesn’t exactly sound like father of the year.”

  An uneasy feeling settled in the pit of Logan’s stomach. He’d had that exact thought himself—more than once.

  “She didn’t really say why,” he told Wes. “Maybe it’s just what she wants to believe.”

  “Yeah, well, I sure wouldn’t count on him worrying about what happens to anyone but himself. And frankly, I don’t like the sound of anything about this.”

  That sent the uneasy feeling spreading through Logan’s entire body.

  “You’re talking about a guy,” Wes went on, “who’s put one helluva lot of effort into making people think he’s dead. And for someone to go to such extremes...well, it strikes me as maybe too much just for money. I think there must have been something else driving him.”

  “It’s a lot of money, Wes.”

  “Not to a guy who’s been running contraband booze for years. And since that’s a major area of organized crime, I’m wondering if somebody wanted him seriously dead.”

  “Ahh, you don’t think you’re kind of reaching?”

  “Uh-uh. If the RCMP investigated him, he wasn’t small potatoes. Which means he had to have been playing with the big boys. And he only had to cross the wrong guy once. So if that’s what happened, scamming the insurance company wasn’t his main reason for going to ground. He hid out to save his skin. But now he wants the money for spending cash while he’s setting himself up in a new life.”

  “So what the hell do Ali and I do? Call the police? Give Bob the money?”

  “There’s no cut-and-dried answer. You’ll have to make a judgment call, based on what you know.”

  “Dammit, Wes, what I know is fictional crime. You know real life. What would you do?”

  Wes hesitated, finally saying, “Well, as far as the cops go, if you involve them, your guy’s likely to find out and...well, they might come up with something, but they don’t have a real good track record for getting kidnap victims back alive.”

  “So you’re saying we shouldn’t call them.”

  “No, I’m not. Logan, I can’t advise you not to call the cops. Not if I want to keep my license.”

  “Okay, I hear what you aren’t saying.”

  “Good. And as for your friend handing over the money, if she does, she’ll be making herself an accomplice to insurance fraud.”

  “Yeah, that already occurred to me. But I can’t imagine even an insurance company prosecuting her under the circumstances.”

  “Maybe not, but I’d lay odds they’d do their damnedest to get their hands on any assets she has—restitution for at least some of their loss.”

  “Well, right now, that would be the last thing Ali would worry about. So if giving Bob his money is the best way...”

  “I didn’t say that, either, Logan. I said you’ll have to weigh the alternatives. I mean, he gets his money and then what? After all the trouble he’s gone to, to convince people he’s dead, you figure he’ll want to leave anyone around who knows he’s really alive?”

  Logan closed his eyes and tried to force away the image of Ali and Robbie lying dead.

  * * *

  THE EXTERIOR of almost every house on Palmerston was decorated for Christmas. Colored lights sparkled in the cold night, strung among tree branches and outlining windows and roof lines. Santa’s entire team of reindeer pranced in a floodlit front yard across the street. Logan was vaguely aware of the displays as he walked back to Ali’s, but he doubted all the holiday cheer in the entire city would have done anything to lighten his mood.

  Ali was a gutsy lady, but she’d already had a horrendous night. That tempted him to leave telling her about his conversation with Wes until morning. Or, at the very least, to minimize Wes’s concerns. But the sooner they made some decisions the better. And they weren’t going to make the best ones if he glossed things over. This wasn’t, he reminded himself, one of his books. This was real life for two people he cared about a lot—maybe even a lot more than he’d realized.

  Real life. And, if Wes was right, possibly real death. Thinking of that again sent a shiver through him that had nothing to do with the frosty air.

  He climbed the porch steps and opened the front door, without even thinking that Ali might not have left it unlocked for him. Then it struck him that maybe she shouldn’t have. In this part of Toronto, he’d never normally have a concern like that, but tonight...

  “I’m back,” he called quietly, and felt relieved when she replied.

  He tugged off his cowboy boots, then clicked the dead bolt into place. Not that it would do much good if someone really wanted in. The upper halves of the old front doors in the neighborhood were almost entirely glass, which had been fine back in the 1890s when the houses were built. But this was the 1990s.

  Almost no one, though, had replaced the old doors. And not a single neighbor had ever installed bars over the glass. Palmerston was a safe street in a safe city. So, he decided, hanging up his jacket and heading down the hall, it was only t
he events of the night that had his nerves on edge.

  In the living room, Cody was still curled up on the love seat, under his quilt, and Ali was sitting on the couch. Dim light from a single lamp was highlighting golden strands of her hair.

  “I put some towels in the guest room,” she told him as he sank down beside her. “But I didn’t bother changing Robbie’s bed for Cody. I thought you’d probably feel better if he slept with you tonight.”

  He nodded. It might be silly, but she was right.

  “I was just sitting here watching him,” she continued quietly. “Just thinking that if I’d been watching Robbie more carefully at the party...”

  “Oh, Ali,” he murmured, brushing away the tear trickling down her cheek. “Ali, don’t. It wasn’t your fault. You’re the best mother I know.”

  “Then why is my son gone?” she whispered, fiercely wiping away more tears.

  “Because of Bob. Not because of you.” He inched closer to her and draped his arm around her shoulders. She buried her face against him. The fresh-meadow scent of her hair made him forget it was winter and think of spring.

  After a few moments she straightened up and gave him the most dismal attempt at a smile he’d ever seen. “You were gone longer than I expected. I was starting to worry.”

  “Sorry. I took time to call Wes Penna.”

  “And he said...?”

  “Well, he said quite a bit. You’re going to find some of it upsetting, but I’m going to be perfectly straight with you—so we can decide what’s best to do, okay?”

  “Okay,” she murmured.

  He started in, wishing to hell Wes had said even one or two things that sounded encouraging. But it all seemed even more pessimistic than it had originally.

  When he got to Wes’s suspicions that Bob had faked his death because he was on the run from the mob, Ali merely nodded, as if she figured that was a good guess. In fact, she was taking everything he told her surprisingly calmly. Then he realized that wasn’t really true. The longer he talked the paler she grew. By the time he was almost done, he was thinking again about not mentioning Wes’s most serious concern until the morning. But he pressed on, knowing he should get everything on the table at once.