Secret Santa (11 page)

“Oh.” This was it? The thing he’d wanted to ask her? Was this the reason he’d chosen to come himself, to hit her up for complimentary medical care?

He must have taken her silence as a no because he levered himself from the chair and retrieved his hat.

“Aw, forget it,” he said. “It’s probably not ethical for you to treat me at home, huh? With all this overtime, I can’t take off to go to that guy—”

“No. That’s okay, Chief. I understand.” Charli didn’t hesitate. She moved off her chair and pulled it close to serve as an impromptu exam table. “You sit right back down and take your shoe and sock off. I’d be glad to look at your ingrown toenail.”

At least it’s not a boil on his backside.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“G
OT
ANY
MORE
of this week’s papers, Neil? We’ve sold out, and people are asking for more.”

Raucous background noise nearly drowned out Ida Cunningham’s words over the phone connection. Neil figured the morning round-up session at Ida’s Gas-n-Go had come to order. In addition to gas, lottery tickets, cigarettes, soft drinks and any kind of junk food that ever called for preservation with sodium benzoate, Ida ran a short-order kitchen out of the convenience store and had a couple of booths in the corner where the old-timers gathered.

As he stood behind the counter at the newspaper office Wednesday afternoon, Neil tucked the phone between his good shoulder and his ear to reach for his spare box of papers on the shelf behind him. His stash was thinner than he’d remembered. “Ida, I’ve got...exactly two dozen.”

He spread one of the papers out. A big, splashy headline―Secret Santa Brings Gift Early―stretched six columns wide under the banner. Anchoring the story was a three-column color shot of the heap of old greenbacks, with Louredes grinning with joy as she held one of the packets. Neil had titled a boxed sidebar Who Is Brevis’s Secret Santa? and had rounded up the community’s various theories of who the donor might be.

This week’s edition had been his bestseller yet in the entire year he’d had the paper. Something about Santa and the mysterious money had hit all the right buttons. A few more issues like this, and he’d be more than ready for the lean January to come.

Ida groaned. Neil could swear he heard a head slap on the other end of the phone. “Oh, come on, Neil! You know you’ve got to have more! Don’t hoard ’em! People get mad when they come in here and I don’t have a paper. They get riled up and leave without buying anything.”

The bell on the door jangled behind him. Neil shoved the box of papers back in its place. “I’m sorry, Ida. I didn’t realize they’d go so fast, so I didn’t order an extra big print run. You know you could actually subscribe and you’d have access to the digital edition—”

“What? Then I’d have all these yahoos hounding me for that free Wi-Fi everybody’s going on about. Plus, you know how many people can huddle over a computer screen? Three. But with a real newspaper, you spread it out and everybody can share. So give me all two dozen—”

“I can give you exactly six. I need a few here, plus I have to save a dozen for bound copies and archives.”

She said something decidedly unladylike but all too decidedly Ida-like. “Oh, all right. Bring me the six.”

“In a few. I need to make some calls, see if there’s anything new on the Secret Santa.”

“But I don’t have any more papers, Neil!” Ida howled.

“Hey, take comfort in the fact that nobody else has any, either,” he told her.

She didn’t sound at all cheered up about that, just hung up the phone in a huff.

Neil put the phone down. “Can I help—”

He stopped midsentence as he turned around to find Charli on the other side of the front counter, holding down the worn square of dun-colored carpet just inside the door. He took in a breath before saying, “Hey.”

The sunlight streaming in the front plate-glass windows turned Charli’s hair a shimmering gold.

She didn’t look tired now. She looked...good. Really good. Sophisticated in a trench coat that was cinched at the waist, over slacks and a print blouse, and she’d even tied another one of those frilly scarves her mother made in a complicated way that made her look like a model in a magazine.

She looked like a doctor. While he...

Well, suddenly the old flannel shirt and the jeans with the hole in the knee that had seemed just fine this morning had slid from Brevis’s business casual to complete slob.

“Hey,” Charli replied, smiling.

“I’ve been moving the arm.” To emphasize the point, Neil pumped his arm, sans sling, and showed her how much range of motion he had.

“Good! Keep at it and you may not need physical therapy.” Charli’s fingers strayed to her scarf. Her mouth parted—it was such a kissable mouth, Neil thought. Just the right shade of pink, with just the right amount of fullness.

And then he remembered she hadn’t made one mention of that kiss on the Ferris wheel. Or the goodbye kiss he’d planted on her before taking the Chathams to Savannah.

He struck what he hoped was a casual lean against the front counter. “Well, skipping physical therapy would be a relief, both in the pain and annoyance department and to the wallet. How can I be of service?”

She nibbled on her bottom lip. Neil marveled at the whiteness of the nicely even teeth as they did precisely what he wanted to do to her mouth.

Get it together, Bailey.

But moving his gaze farther up her face didn’t help much. All he saw were those big blue eyes as they darted first toward him, and then downward. Her eyelashes, incredibly long, fluttered against cheeks that were touched with just a hint of pink. He wondered how those lashes would feel if they were grazing his face.

Maybe she is remembering that kiss,
he thought.

But she didn’t mention kisses or Ferris wheels or compliment his Christmas decor. She just extended her hand and dropped two quarters on the counter. “I came to buy a paper.”

Without hesitation, or a bit of guilt, he pulled one out of the half dozen he’d promised Ida. “Good thing you came by when you did, because I’m pretty much sold out all over town.”

“Wow, all this fuss over someone who obviously doesn’t want the attention,” she said. She shifted the strap of her handbag on her shoulder.

“So what’s your theory about Santa?” he asked.

“Didn’t you know?” Charli gave him an arch grin. “He’s a fairy tale made up by masochistic parents.”

“No, I’m serious. About this guy.” Neil thumped his knuckle on the article.

“Probably just someone trying to do a good deed. Not everyone wants to advertise their generosity to the world. So does this issue cover the latest on the money? Have you heard anything more? Did the clinic get to keep it?”

“Not yet. It’s still at the crime lab.”

Charli appeared to be on the verge of asking another question.

The door jangled again. Darius Heath burst through, one hand hitching up a pair of overalls that stretched over his wide expanse of a belly. Neil stifled a groan.

Darius was a talker who would park it here all afternoon and wax on about the pros and cons of different lures on trotlines—only slightly irritating on days when Neil had nothing better to do, but hugely annoying when he had something pressing.

Or someone. Like Charli.

Neil was glad to see her face had fallen at the interruption. He’d expected her to step back, let Darius closer to the counter. But though Neil could see her body turn toward the door, her feet still pointed straight toward him. Neil wondered if that pop-psychology business about the direction of feet really meant anything, or was it pure baloney?

Charli began again. “I—you know, I was curious—”

Darius steamrolled around Charli, nearly knocking her sideways. “Hey, Neil! I netted me a whopper of a catfish! It’s bent my hook and weighs nearly sixty pounds! Come on out to the truck, where I got it in a bucket. You can get a picture of me holdin’ it.”

“Wow! That’s a big one. Sure, I’ll be with you in a minute, Darius. Charli, I—”

Darius turned around, registering Charli’s presence. “Oh, you got the new Dr. Prescott in here! I’s just thinkin’ about comin’ around to see you—this here is perfect timing.” Darius looked back over a meaty shoulder at Neil. “Neil, buddy, you know what I say about timing—that only true fishermen have got talent at perfect timing.”

“That’s right, Darius. That’s what you tell me.”
Every blessed time you come in here.

Charli had donned her professional “doctor” smile. “Why, thank you. It’s Darius Heath, right? Well, Mr. Heath, call the office and make an appointment and—”

Darius frowned. He reared back and surveyed her from his considerable height. Charli, despite her high heels, barely came to the man’s midchest.

“Aw, your daddy never fooled around with appointments. I could just find him on a street corner somewheres, and he’d doctor me. And don’t think I didn’t forget him, or that I was some sort of deadbeat lookin’ for free medical advice, no siree. Many’s the string of fish I laid on his back doorstep, yes sir! He got his money’s worth. Told me my fish were the best-tastin’ fish he’d ever eaten.”

Charli’s head dropped in a slow incline, then rose again. “I seem to remember that,” she replied.

In an instant, Darius was pushing down the straps of his overalls and had his plaid shirt splayed open and slid off. He stood in the middle of the newspaper office clad from the waist up only in a stained undershirt that smelled strongly of fish. This he jerked up, showing a mound of doughy white belly fat.

“See here?” Darius pointed to a straight line of blisters around his waistline. “I got in some kind of poison ivy.” Darius’s version of the word
poison
came out
pie-zun.
“But glory be if I know how. Since your daddy found that mela-mamma cancer on me and sent me to that cancer doctor, I been real good about wearin’ long sleeves and hats and all. It burns and itches and pains me somethin’ awful. So what is it, Doc? Can you tell me what plant I done got into so’s I can avoid it? And maybe I can go over to the county extension office and find out what to spray on that demon vine to kill it.”

“Umm...” Charli bent low to inspect the angry scarlet line of blisters Neil could clearly see even from behind the counter. “Mr. Heath, I can’t be positive in this light, but I believe you may have a good case of shingles.”

“The shingles!” Darius leaped back, bumping into the counter with such force he knocked over the stack of newspapers Neil had sitting there. “That ain’t the cancer come back, is it?”

“No, no, it’s not—why don’t you stop by my office so I can get a better look under my exam light.”

The door jangled again, this time Olivia McBain. “Gracious!” the prim little librarian gasped. “Put your clothes back on, Darius Heath! Before I get a switch to you!”

“Miss McBain, I’s just gettin’ Doc here to look at my very important skin disorder....”

The librarian soured her lips and sniffed. “I don’t care if it’s jungle rot, Darius. You can’t be taking your clothes off in public. You’re not six anymore, you know.”

Darius began to dress himself, hanging his head. “Yes, ma’am. The doc was just here, and I just thought—”

“You didn’t think a thing, that’s what you didn’t do. Now, if you had something on your face—this little mole here, for instance...” Olivia jabbed a finger against a mole at the corner of her mouth. “Dr. Prescott, don’t you think I should have this removed? Because of the risk of cancer? I mean, it’s on my mouth, so easily irritated.”

With a sinking heart, Neil saw Charli take a step back toward the door. “You know, I think you’d better come in so I can have a look—”

Darius broke in. “Doc’s got a newfangled exam light, she does, and it shines on it and tells you if you’ve got the cancer. I’m gonna go by and have her shine it on me.”

Charli had taken two more steps back. “Call Marvela, Miss McBain. She’ll fix you right up with an appointment, and we’ll see exactly what’s going on.”

And then she bailed on Neil, leaving him with two less-than-satisfied patients—and her paper still on the counter.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

O
UTSIDE
ON
THE
SIDEWALK
,
Charli dearly hoped Neil would run interference for her until she managed to get to the sanctuary of her car.

Charli had clicked her car’s key fob to unlock her door when her phone buzzed. She answered it, and Lige Whitaker greeted her with his usual Southern charm.

“I know you’re busy, but do you mind stopping by my office, Charli? I need to go over something with you.”

“Which office? You only have, what? Two?” She couldn’t help but tease her father’s friend a bit. He had a finger in every pie in town, it seemed.

Lige, as usual, didn’t take offense. “Three, actually. One at the farm, one at the bank and then one at the hospital, and that’s about three too many. Today I’ve got my hospital hat on, so come on across the street. I guess you’re at your dad’s—I mean, your—office?”

“Actually, no, I was downtown. I’ll be there in a bit—five minutes or so?”

“Sure.”

Five minutes later, Charli poked her head into the small office Lige kept at the hospital, just off the conference room.

“Am I in trouble?” she asked.

Lige peered over reading glasses and waved her in. “Come in, come in. Shut the door behind you, and pull up a chair.”

She obeyed, worry bubbling up within her for the first time. It wasn’t like Lige to call anybody into his office. Usually, if he needed to speak to people, he simply stopped in their office or shop. It was part of his “no pretensions” persona. And if it had something to do with the day-to-day running of the hospital, the hospital administrator would usually handle it. Lige was generally a big-picture sort of guy.

So why was Charli here?

He didn’t enlighten her for a moment or so, just continued scrawling signatures on paper and reviewing what looked to be an Excel spreadsheet.

He was like no other hospital board chair she’d ever seen, that was for sure. Charli could smell hay and cigarette smoke waft off him. From the long fingers of his left hand dangled the source of part of the odor—a forbidden half-smoked cigarette with a long gray bead of ash. Lige must figure the hospital’s strict no-smoking rules didn’t apply to him.

Then he sighed and stubbed out the cigarette in a battered plastic ashtray. He pushed aside the paperwork. “That’ll keep. How are things going?”

Was the question small talk or was this the reason for the meeting? She folded her hands and tried not to let her nervousness show. “Busy. I can see why Dad wanted someone to help out with the practice.”

“Chuck was a great doctor. There’s been some talk that we should rename the hospital after him, in fact, for all he did for the community. He was proud of you, Chuck was. And yeah, he was looking forward to handing it off to you.” He beamed. “I’m glad you’re busy. I was a little worried you’d find it hard to get established here quick enough to suit you. Some doctors—the new out-of-towners who come in from med school—they complain, say there’s not enough volume, and then they’re outta here for greener pastures. Got to pay off those student loans.”

“Those loan balances do tend to grab your attention once you graduate,” she allowed.

“So your dad didn’t leave you any money to help with that?” Lige asked.

This was bordering on too personal for Charli, even if Lige had known her father for decades. “You knew my dad. You said it yourself. He wasn’t much for business.”

“True, true.” He leaned forward and removed his glasses. “I take it you’re not too busy to do me a special favor? Not a favor, actually, because I’m willing to pay for it.”

“What sort of favor?”

“Nothing too big. It shouldn’t take up much of your time. In fact, your father helped me out like this now and again.”

“If I can help, you know I will,” Charli told him.

Lige rubbed his chin and nodded approvingly at her. “That’s what I like, someone who remembers who her friends are. That’s why it’s refreshing to have a hometown face back here.”

If his words were supposed to be taken as a compliment, they had the opposite effect. They made Charli uneasy. She found herself regretting her offer to help him.

I did say “if.”

“So what’s this project?” she asked.

“You know I’ve got a lot of workers coming in. It’s onion planting time. Some of ’em aren’t feeling so pert.”

That was all? “Sure. Send them to my office. Marvela will block out some appointment times—”

He cracked his knuckles. “See now, that’s not what I had in mind.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your dad, now, he would work with me. He’d either drive out to the farm or they’d come by his office after hours.”

Charli stared at him, perplexed. “Lige, I don’t see what the problem is. If they’re uninsured and you’re worried about containing costs, I’ll do my best. Or better yet, why not send them to the community clinic. I mean, they cater to migrant workers and speak Spanish better than I could ever dream of.”

“I don’t think you quite get it, Charli.” Lige’s jaw tensed, and she could see his eyes had lost their twinkle. “I want you to do this. Just like your dad did. And I’ll pay you. Just like I paid your dad. We don’t need to be bothered with any paperwork.”

The tiny office seemed to close in on Charli, the room rank with the smell of Lige’s cigarette. She could focus on nothing but his face, tanned and wrinkled from years in the sun. She’d never felt intimidated by him before, but suddenly, though he sat across from her behind a cheap desk wearing his trademark chambray shirt, she was afraid.

Because she knew. She knew where that hundred thousand dollars in her father’s safe deposit box had come from.

“Lige, if you’re asking me to treat patients, I’ll be glad to do that. I’ll even be glad to do some indigent care work for you. But I won’t cover up whatever it is you’re asking me to cover up for you.”

He laughed. Fifteen minutes earlier, that laugh would have completely taken in Charli. But now? When she’d seen the hard light in his blue eyes?

“Charli, I’m not asking you to do anything unethical. I mean, honestly. We’re not bilking Medicaid here. We’re not defrauding an insurance company. I’m just paying you to take care of my workers. Your dad did it.”

“Did he cover up a TB outbreak for you?” she asked.

It was a rash question for someone in her position to ask, but she had blurted it out without thinking.

His chuckle came a few seconds too late to fool her. “Charli, what’s the big deal here? You’re seeing conspiracy theories everywhere. So your dad and I had an arrangement. So sometimes he bent a few rules for me. What’s important is the patient gets care, right?”

She stood up on knees that trembled. “I think you’d better get someone else to see to your farm workers, Lige.”

He came around the desk, blocking her way to the door. “Charli, here’s what I think. I think you’ve got the wrong idea. And I would hate for you to go off half-cocked, spouting stuff to people. I mean, I don’t know that your dad actually reported all that income. I’d hate to see your mama have to deal with the IRS. Besides...it would be awfully hard to pay for it now that she’s donated it to the community clinic.”

“She didn’t—” Charli clamped down on her words, but the damage was done.

“Doesn’t matter who did, Charli. I can’t help it if your dad didn’t report income I paid him. I thought it was a little strange he wanted to be paid in cash all these years....”

“You liar.” She spat the words. “You paid him in cash—just like you were hinting at paying me. Why did he do it? What did you have over him?”

“Who said I had anything over him? Maybe he was more pragmatic than you, Charli. Maybe he understood that money was money, especially when he had a wife who spent it like water.”

He folded his arms across his chest. He was so close now that Charli’s nose twitched from the overpowering stench of the cheap cigarette he’d been smoking. She lifted her chin.

“The doctor I knew—the man I knew—wouldn’t have done this for money. And I won’t, either.”

His mouth twisted, and he shook his head in disgust. “You young kids. You don’t know how to work with people. You think you got all life’s answers handed to you with that medical degree. Well, think again. You don’t work with me, I won’t work with you. And your mama will be mighty disappointed when that hospital isn’t named for your dad.”

He thinks that will get me to do his dirty work?
“Dad wasn’t much for ceremony. Thank you, but the hospital doesn’t have to go to that length. Plant a tree instead,” Charli told him in a terse voice, and pushed past him.

“I’d give my offer some more thought, if I were you.”

The words were addressed to her back. She heard the flick of a cigarette lighter before she had taken another step.

Charli glanced back over her shoulder to toss another, “Thanks but no thanks,” but what she saw in his face stopped her.

His eyes―cold, sharp, unrelenting in their intensity―didn’t leave her face. His next words were as gruff as before. “You need to think about people beyond yourself, Charli. You need to think about all the folks who depend on you. Your mama. Marvela. Your nurse—what’s her name? People who cross me—
doctors
who cross me—find themselves without a job and without references. And their staff? Their families? They’re the ones who suffer for somebody else’s pigheaded self-righteousness. Now that you got none of Daddy’s slush fund left to pay off your student loans and help folks out, you
might
want to remember that.”

With that, Lige rounded the desk, lowered himself into his chair and turned his attention to the paperwork on his desk. Charli couldn’t get away from him fast enough.

* * *

I
T
TOOK
N
EIL
a solid half hour to persuade Darius to go bug someone else, and that was only after, in a rash moment of weakness, promising the man to do a half-page article on all of the lures Darius had invented. Ever.

In the meantime, Ida had already called twice for the papers. “I need ’em now! Or you can save ’em for catfish wrappers. What sort of business sense do you have, boy?” she snapped the last time she’d called.

So Neil flipped the closed sign on the door, ushered Darius out ahead of him and twisted the key in the lock.

In the car, bracing the steering wheel with his cast, Neil dialed his contact with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Brian Mulford answered on the first ring. “No.”

“What?” Neil tried to push a note of aggrieved injury into his question. “I call you to—”

“You call, nothing. You call to get the dirt on somebody or something or wheedle me into running a tag or do a criminal background check. Buddy, you owe me about five pizzas for all the free work I’ve been doing for you. How many
Georgia Press
awards have I won for you?”

“Three. Give up the badge and the gun, and you can be a reporter, too,” Neil told him.

“Then what would I use to shoot aggravating newspaper guys like you?”

“And if you shoot me, who would make you look good on the front page? How many promotions and pay raises have I earned you?”

Brian bellowed with laughter. “All right. Five. You win on that score. I guess we’re even. You do have a way of paying me back dividends. So what’s up?”

Neil made the turn onto the main drag and drove out to near the county line. There, in the middle of nowhere, sat Ida’s Gas-n-Go, a mecca for gossips and junk-food lovers alike. The parking lot was overflowing with pickups and SUVs, all featuring gun racks and hunting logos. Neil had made the mistake of going hunting just once—and embarrassed himself by pleading for the life of the deer he was supposed to shoot.

“The video from the community clinic,” Neil started as he pulled into a parking space. “You heard anything back on that?”

“Weird case, huh? Somebody wants to donate a hundred big ones, they can come find me and give me some charity.” Brian started listing all the ways a hundred thousand dollars would come in handy, from bass boats to a year’s supply of pork rinds.

Neil cut him short. “Well, anything pop on the video? Or something else? You know, fingerprints on the money?”

Brian scoffed. “Are you serious? Man, don’t believe what you see on TV, okay? Yeah, we got prints on the money. Partial prints. Smudged prints. Thousands of ’em. Anything
usable?
What do you think, genius?”

“I take that as a no.”

“And you would be a winner.”

“So nothing, huh?” Neil saw Ida, standing at the door of her establishment, hands on her generous hips, hair sticking out like Medusa’s snakes. He levered himself out of the car, only banging his hurt arm once.

“Well...” Brian’s voice took on that note of self-importance he always used when he was in the possession of anything resembling a clue.

“Give.” Despite Ida’s frantic waving, Neil stopped halfway to the convenience store’s entrance. Trying to hear anything in Ida’s establishment was a fool’s errand.

“Not for publication, right?”

“You’ve got a witness?”

“A witness? Is this even a crime? Giving away a hundred grand is not exactly a crime, least not according to the Georgia code. So feel free to—”

“Brian, Ida Cunningham is about to clock me if I don’t get her extra papers into the Gas-N-Go in, like, thirty seconds, so
feel free
to dispense with the drama.”

“Oh, man, I’d give anything to have some of her chicken tenders right about now. Or one of those onion things she makes.”

“Brian, you don’t spill what you’ve got now, I’m going to tell Ida it was you who delayed me, and you’ll never get her chicken tenders again.”

The threat worked. “Go after a guy’s weak spot, won’t you,” Brian grumbled. “Okay, our tech guys have managed to do a little magic on the tape. And we may have something.”

Ida had a spoon in her hand now, and she was miming some fierce motions about what she would do to Neil with that spoon if he didn’t hurry up. Neil gave up on the drama-free version of Brian’s story and headed to deliver Ida’s papers. Maybe if he were still on the phone, Ida wouldn’t abuse him so badly.