I'll Be Home for Christmas

by Dawn Stewardson

  “So?” Vinny snapped. “What was the deal with you and Ali going up there?”

  “I take it you didn’t call Mimi back and ask her?”

  “Brilliant deduction, Sherlock. I’ll let her calm down some, first. Besides, I got another message I wasn’t too happy to hear. Some cop wants me to phone him. Urgent, he said. That was the whole message. But I figure it must be something to do with Bob. Or Sinclair. So does Ali know anything? Has something happened with her and Bob and the Robbie thing?”

  “What was the cop’s name?” Logan asked, certain he already knew.

  “Lemme see what I wrote down...Hallop. Detective Frank Hallop. Why?”

  “I figured it might be. We just had a visit from him.”

  “So it is something about Bob.”

  “Yeah, it is. He’s dead, Vinny. Somebody shot him.”

  There was a long silence, and Logan would have bet the bank he knew what thoughts were going through Vinny’s mind. He no longer had to worry about trying to get things worked out as far as his five million was concerned. They’d been worked out for him. His partner was dead, so that business insurance was legally his.

  “Sinclair was the shooter?” he asked at last.

  “That would be the obvious guess. The police don’t seem to know it yet, though.”

  “What do they know?”

  Logan hesitated. He and Ali were already skating on thin ice with the police, so maybe he should keep quiet. But, hell, Hallop and his partner were going to ask Vinny exactly what they’d asked Ali. The questions had hardly been state secrets.

  “What did Ali tell them?” Vinny pressed.

  “Not much. They were only here a few minutes. Somebody still has Robbie and we didn’t want to sit around talking to the cops. We’ve got to find him.”

  “Right. Right...but just tell me what to expect so I don’t get any surprises.”

  “I’ve already told you. They’re going to tell you Bob was murdered. And I guess they’ll ask you what they asked Ali. Whether she knew he was really alive, that kind of thing.”

  “So what did she say? She tell them about Robbie and everything?”

  “No, she didn’t tell them anything. We managed to put them off for the moment.”

  “Well, what the hell am I supposed to do, then? If I don’t tell them she filled me in the other day, where does that leave me when they find out? Reed, I can do without having the cops on my back.”

  “Then I guess you’d better tell them the truth. The next time they come around, Ali’s going to have to tell them everything, anyway.”

  “Oh...okay, then. So did they ask about anything else?”

  “No, like I said, she just talked to them for a couple of minutes. The only other thing...”

  “Yeah?”

  Logan swore silently again. Why was he wasting time talking to Vinny? “A key,” he said. “They asked if she knew about some safety deposit key they found on Bob. Told her the number on it and—”

  “What was it?”

  “I don’t remember. Look, Vinny, I’ve got to go.”

  “Was it 3374?”

  “Yeah...yeah, you know, I think that was it.”

  This time Vinny swore. But not silently. “That,” he finally muttered, “is our safety deposit box number. Mine, I mean—Custom Cargoes’. And there’s only one reason Bob would have been carrying it around after all this time—know what I mean?”

  “No. What do you mean?”

  “I mean my good old partner was intending to clean the box out on me before he disappeared again.”

  * * *

  ONCE VINNY FINISHED ranting about his ex-partner and hung up, Ali wanted to hear both sides of the conversation. Logan rewound the tape and pressed the replay switch, but his conversation with Vinny wasn’t the first one up. Before that began, the call telling Ali to go to the Velardes’ cottage replayed. It began nagging at Logan while he listened to it, and stayed on his mind while the rest of the tape wound on.

  “It wasn’t Vinny after all, was it,” Ali murmured when the conversation with him ended. “Twice, I was sure he was the one, but he wasn’t.”

  “That woman who phoned is our clue,” Logan said, hitting Rewind again. “Not the message, but her.”

  “You think so?”

  Ali sounded as if she was completely out of hope, so he reached across and covered her hand with his.

  She didn’t even smile. He doubted she could have if she’d tried.

  “I think she has to be,” he said.

  But what good was a clue when they didn’t know what to make of it? What use had it been to borrow this recorder from his father when nothing they’d taped had helped them in the slightest?

  The tape finished rewinding and he pressed Play again.

  “Hello,” the woman said once more. “Is this Ali Weyden?”

  “Yes,” said Ali’s voice.

  “I have a message for you, Mrs. Weyden. From your husband.”

  “Yes,” Ali’s voice said again.

  Logan waited while faint background noise filled the following pause.

  “The message,” the woman finally began again, “is that—”

  “Oh, jeez,” he muttered. He stopped the tape midsentence and rewound it a little.

  “What?” Ali said, gazing at him.

  “Let’s see just how good this baby is.” He slid the recorder closer so he could read its dials more clearly.

  “What?” Ali asked a second time.

  “Look at all these controls. Remember, when I first brought it, I said it could do amazing things? Well, my father gave me a quick run-through, and this background enhance control is supposed to clarify that noise we’re hearing. And I can really juice it up, so let’s have a shot at it.”

  He turned the dial halfway, then tried the tape again.

  A tiny shiver raced through Ali’s entire body. “It’s not just noise anymore. It sounds like a train.”

  “A subway train. That has to be what it is. No other train would pull in and out of a station that fast.”

  “And the other noise... Logan, it’s a woman whispering. It’s that same woman’s voice, but I can’t make out the words.”

  “I’ll play it again. I didn’t have it nearly as high as it can go.”

  Ali held her breath while he rewound the tape once more.

  When he played it back this time, her hands flew to her ears. The volume was so loud the conversation level had risen from talking to screeching.

  “From your husband,” the woman screamed.

  “Yes?” Ali’s own voice screamed back.

  The sound of the train was so clear they might have been in the subway station. And then they were able to make out what the woman was saying.

  “Deloras,” she whispered, “keep Robbie quiet, will you?”

  * * *

  “THAT’S ROYAL YORK ROAD we’re coming to,” Logan said, slowing for the red light ahead. “And Islington’s the next major intersection after that, right?”

  Ali nodded, still weak with relief that they’d finally learned who had her son—and that it wasn’t Nick Sinclair. As much as she disliked Deloras Gayle, she was a far cry from a murdering gangster. And it was Deloras who had Robbie. This time, all the pieces fit.

  Even though few women were listed in the phone book under their full names, there’d been a listing for a Deloras Gayle. And, given her address, the subway sounds made perfect sense. According to Logan’s street guide, the number on Islington was at the corner of Bloor, which meant it was one of the big apartment towers that sat on top of the Islington subway station. It seemed most likely that the woman had been calling from a cell phone, inside Deloras’s apartment.

  Adding that to the unusual spelling of Deloras, the listing just had to be for their Deloras Gayle. Or Vinny’s. Or maybe calling her Bob’s Deloras would be the most accurate. Sometime during the past eighteen months, Bob must have gotten hold of his old girlfriend and enlisted her help. Or maybe she’d know
n all along that he was alive. Maybe she’d even helped plan his disappearance.

  Whatever the details, while Deloras had been following her normal work routine this week, the picture of innocence, Robbie must have been right in her apartment, with the woman she and Bob had gotten to look after him. And now, in no time at all, they’d be reaching that apartment. So unless...

  “What’s the matter?” Logan said a second later, as if he could read her mind.

  “I...I just can’t help thinking that when they phoned it was nine o’clock this morning and now it’s four in the afternoon. What if they’re not still at the apartment?”

  “They’ll be there. Deloras had to have been waiting to connect with Bob—either expecting him to call or to arrive. So she won’t have gone anywhere.”

  “But what if she was supposed to meet him someplace? What if that’s how they’d arranged things?”

  “Well...he certainly couldn’t have shown up to meet her, could he,” Logan said quietly. “And when he didn’t, she’d have concluded something had gone wrong and come home—assuming he’d call her there.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Ali gazed out at the passing stores on Bloor, wondering if Logan was really as confident as he sounded. But all the pieces fit this time, she reminded herself. So he had every reason to be confident. And so did she.

  “I should have realized it might have been Deloras, you know,” she said at last. “Especially once we’d ruled out everyone else I could think of.”

  Logan shrugged. “Hindsight always makes things seem more obvious.”

  “Well...yes.” But still, she should have at least thought of Deloras. After all, it had been Bob’s fooling around with the woman that had been the final nail in the coffin of their marriage. And Deloras could have found out about the Christmas party simply by listening in on Vinny’s line.

  So why hadn’t she and Logan put things together sooner, when now that they had it all seemed crystal clear? Bob had intended to clean out Custom Cargoes’ safety deposit box this morning. Then he’d have taken off with Deloras today, instead of waiting until Friday and risking spending any longer in the same city as Nick Sinclair. But just by delaying his departure until today, Bob had waited too long.

  “That’s a good omen,” Logan said, interrupting her thoughts. “There are spaces in the visitors’ parking area.”

  He wheeled into one of them and she realized they’d arrived. They were surrounded by high rises, and in only a few more minutes they’d be standing outside Deloras Gayle’s apartment. They wouldn’t be standing in the hallway for long, though. They’d get inside if they had to kick the door in.

  Despite an afternoon sun that was so bright Logan had been wearing sunglasses to drive, the temperature was dropping and a strong wind had come up. It was swirling nastily around the parked cars, so Ali and Logan hugged their scarves more tightly to their throats as they climbed out of the Jeep and hurried for the building.

  When they reached it, there was no sign of a concierge beyond the glass interior doors. But there was a security lock system. Logan stuck his sunglasses in his pocket and started to check the names beside the buzzers. “She’s in 2115,” he finally announced.

  “What?” Ali said anxiously. “The twenty-first floor? Logan, what about the subway noise. There’s no way it could reach that high, is there?”

  “Well...it must, because we heard it. So there has to be some weird sound drift or something. I think there’s a principle of physics that would explain it...called the Doppler effect, I think.”

  There’d been too many “I thinks” in that explanation to give Ali any confidence. But she didn’t know a damned thing about physics, so maybe he was right. Pushing the worry that he wasn’t back behind all the other worries preying on her, she asked him how they were going to get inside.

  “No problem. Go stand by the door until somebody unlocks it for us.” He began pressing the buzzers, starting at the top of the first column and working his way down. After he’d tried half a dozen or so the lock buzzed and Ali pulled the door open.

  Getting in had been so easy that she actually felt herself smiling. If the rest of the plan went as smoothly, she’d be with Robbie in only a few more minutes.

  The thought made her heart sing. Then it began to pound as they rode the elevator up to the twenty-first floor.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The elevator doors opened on Deloras Gayle’s floor and Logan took Ali’s hand, saying, “It’s almost over.”

  She tried to smile, but after all they’d been through, she wasn’t going to count on anything being over until Robbie was safely back in her arms. They started off in the wrong direction, then had to retrace their steps. With each passing second, her heart was hammering harder.

  “This is it,” Logan whispered, stopping in front of 2115. He pulled his sunglasses from his pocket, put them on, then tugged up his scarf so it covered the bottom part of his face.

  “You stay out of sight,” he added, gesturing at the peephole.

  Ali stood pressed against the wall after he’d knocked, straining to hear something from inside the apartment. But she couldn’t hear a thing, let alone someone coming to the door. Apparently Logan couldn’t, either, because he knocked a second time.

  Panic began seeping through her when there was still no response. If Robbie wasn’t in there...

  “Keep an eye out,” Logan said. “And if anyone comes into the hall, give me a quick poke.”

  She glanced either way down the empty corridor, then looked back at him. He’d produced some sort of little tool and was working away at the lock with it.

  She watched, while what he was doing sank in. He was picking Deloras’s lock. So that’s how he’d gotten into Kent Schiraldi’s apartment. Lord, when he’d told her he’d learned some useful tricks, doing research for his books, she’d never imagined this was one of them.

  She checked both ways again, telling herself not to think about the fact that Robbie didn’t seem to be here, where they’d counted on finding him, or about how the police would view Logan’s little trick. And then she heard a quiet click and Logan was cautiously pushing the door open.

  They stood listening to the silence for a moment, then slipped inside and closed the door.

  Robbie definitely wasn’t in the apartment. Ali was certain of that without taking another step, and it made her sense of panic almost impossible to control. She took a deep breath and tried with all her might not to let it overwhelm her.

  “Come on,” Logan said, reaching for her hand again. “Let’s see if there’s any sign he’s been here.”

  There was nothing in the living room, kitchen or bathroom that hinted there’d ever been a child in Deloras’s apartment. No toys, no childrens’ games or clothes lying around, nothing. The bedroom was the last place they looked, and there was nothing apparent there, either.

  Ali opened the sliding closet door, just in case...and found herself staring at a few odds and ends of clothing and a lot of empty hangers. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Most of her clothes are gone.”

  Logan had a quick glance into the closet, then strode over to the dresser and yanked open a couple of drawers. “These are pretty empty, too,” he muttered. “And there aren’t any suitcases around, which means she must have already taken off. So let’s get out of here.”

  They started back toward the front door, Ali numb to the point of feeling nothing. Her son wasn’t here, where they’d been sure he’d be, and neither was Deloras. They’d gotten so near, but not near enough. And Ali was utterly terrified that they’d missed their only chance. She desperately wanted to ask Logan where they went from here, desperately needed him to have an answer, but the question refused to come out.

  “Okay, what we do next,” he said, going into his mind-reading routine again, “is try to find out where Deloras went. She must have taken Robbie with her, so we’ve got to figure out where they’ve gone.”

/>   The question how? wouldn’t come out, either. So when Logan opened the door Ali simply followed along, down the hallway to the next apartment.

  He knocked, but there was no answer. They tried the apartment across the hall, and when that produced no results they backtracked to the other side of Deloras’s place and tried there.

  Just as Ali was deciding every single resident in the building was at work, a woman called, “Coming.”

  “Bingo,” Logan whispered.

  They waited, Ali barely breathing, until the door opened on its chain.

  “Yes?” a middle-aged woman said, peering out at them.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Logan said, “but do you know Deloras Gayle?”

  “Why?” The woman glanced suspiciously from Logan to Ali, then back to Logan.

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” he said. “I mean, there’s no problem. It’s just that she doesn’t seem to be home. She told us to come around four, but...”

  He paused while the woman checked her watch, then added, “We thought, if she figured there was a chance she’d be late, she might have asked one of her neighbors to watch for us or something.”

  “You friends of hers, then?”

  “Yes,” Ali said, almost surprised to discover her voice was working again. “We’re good friends. From out of town.”

  “Well...she usually works till five. You’re sure she said four?”

  “Yes, she said she had the day off and she’d be here. You didn’t see her go out or anything?”

  “No, sorry.” The woman shut the door.

  Watching it close made Ali feel as if all hope was gone. They had missed their chance. Tears formed in her eyes, but before they began to spill over the door opened again.

  “You could try asking her sister,” the woman suggested. “They’re always running back and forth, so Julie might be able to help you. Or you could wait in her place, maybe. She’s between jobs, as she puts it, so she’s usually home. She’s down on the second floor. It’s 207. No...yes...well, I think it’s 207.”

  “Oh, great, thanks,” Logan said. “I’ve never met Julie. But she’s married, isn’t she?”

  The woman shrugged. “Not exactly. Divorced, I think. Or maybe just separated.”