Secret Santa (5 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

F
OR
ALL
HER
craving of silence and solitude, even after that first tough day back at the office, Charli found herself dreading going home.

The night was quickly darkening as she left her father’s practice. Hers, now, she reminded herself. Instead of turning toward home, she drove back to the downtown area and found herself cruising by shabby storefronts that told of a dying town.

Now that Charli’d had time to think, all the cash in that safe deposit box weighed on her mind. And she didn’t like where her thoughts were headed.

She knew of her dad’s financial struggles over the years. Not only was he a small-town family-practice guy—that in itself was not the road to fabulous riches—but he’d been saddled with debts from her mother’s shopping sprees and counseling over the years. Apparently, from what Lige had said, her dad had continued the practice of borrowing money to bail the practice out of the red.

But if he’d had a hundred grand in a safe deposit box, why had he needed to borrow money at all? Why hadn’t he used it? And where had the money come from if he’d been paying off the second mortgage on her parents’ home and a mortgage against the practice?

These same questions had robbed her of sleep the night before. She’d called her mother and hinted around about whether her dad had kept a secret slush fund, but her mom had seemed absolutely clueless. No, the only thing to do was to ask either Jed Cannady, the family’s lawyer, or Floyd Lewis, the CPA who’d done their taxes and helped with the practice’s books.

She’d get the truth then.

At the community center, cars filled the parking lot and crowded along the grass shoulders of the driveway. Lights blazed in the big front windows. At first Charli couldn’t figure what could be going on. It was a weeknight and the Brevis supper hour.

Then it occurred to her—the community cantata. Neil had told her about it, invited her. She couldn’t imagine her dad actually singing in the choir, though he was a good singer. He just wasn’t one to take direction from anyone, except maybe her mother.

On a whim, she parked the car and made the hike across the grass to the front steps of the center. The lobby was filled with people crowding around a long table laden with sandwiches and snacks. She hadn’t expected this—she’d hoped to slip in the back to hear them rehearse. Charli turned to leave.

“Charli Prescott!”

She stopped. Flora Smith, the bubbly choir director Charli recalled from cantatas past, strode up to her. “Oh, Charli! I’m definitely in need of another good alto! Neil was telling me—”

Now Neil slid in beside the woman and smoothly interjected, “How interested you were about your father’s participation. I did tell you Charli had said no.”

“Oh, yes, he was so wonderful!” Flora trilled. “And of course we have room for you this year! Even if you did miss last night’s first rehearsal. If you’re worried about being rusty, don’t—we’ll have you shaped up in no time!”

Charli’s feet itched to take her out of the crowded room. She opened her mouth to make excuses, but didn’t know what to say. The last thing she wanted to do was join the community choir and sing Christmas music. She opened her mouth to politely and firmly say no, knowing that would invite a flood of protests from Flora.

Neil interjected. “Maybe Charli should watch a bit of the rehearsal before committing herself—you know, Flora, it is a big commitment.”

Flora didn’t look happy about it, but at that moment, someone called her attention away. She nodded and hurried off.

“Did I get you off the hook?” Neil asked.

Charli looked past Neil in search of Flora. “Where’d she go? I need to tell her definitely no, or otherwise it will be like water torture.”

“Stay. Watch us. You might change your mind.”

She glared at him. “I won’t.”

“So...what are you doing here, then?” he asked.

Good question,
she thought. His pointed question served to cool her irritation.
What am I doing here?

“Just curious.” After all her protests that she wanted to be alone, Charli didn’t want to admit that an empty house wasn’t something she was looking forward to.

Behind her came a clatter of noise, and Neil put a hand on her arm to steer her away from someone loaded down with more trays of food. He pulled her into a quiet alcove that served as a coat-check area.

A tug against her throat halted her. She turned and realized that the end of her scarf had snagged on a nail at the doorjamb. “Wait—my scarf, it’s caught....”

Neil bent down and freed the fluffy pink knitted ruffles from the head of the nail. “There you go,” he said, lightly dropping it back in place over her shoulder. “That’s some kind of scarf. I don’t think I’ve seen one like it before.”

Charli picked up the end of the scarf and stroked the kitten-soft yarn. “It’s something, isn’t it? My mom knitted it for me—she’s on a knitting frenzy since my dad...passed away. I hated not to wear it after she worked so hard to finish it. Even after all these years, she’s still trying to force me into pink ruffles.”

“You’re not the pink-ruffle type?” he asked. Now he reached over and stroked the soft knit. “Well, I think it looks nice on you. She obviously put a lot of effort into it, and I like the fact you wear it even when it’s not to your taste. Your mom—she stays busy, doesn’t she? I can’t think of a single important committee in this town that she’s not a part of.”

“So strange.” Charli closed her eyes. Her fingers continued to stroke the yarn. “I never knew either of them to be involved in much of anything, community-wise. It’s like I’m Rip van Winkle, and I’ve woken from a long sleep and come home to find everything’s different.”

She opened her eyes again and found that she’d uttered her words so softly Neil had been forced to lean in to understand them. He was close enough for her to see the stubble on his cheek, to breathe in his scent. Close enough to kiss.

He must have heard her quick intake of breath at his nearness, because he moved away a half step.

“Sorry—the noise in the background. Better?” Neil asked.

Oh, no. It wasn’t better at all. Had her mother’s matchmaking put ideas in her head? She realized with startling clarity that she’d wanted to see Neil tonight—maybe not talk to him, but just see him, hear him sing. She’d wanted to know what he sounded like, whether he was a clear-voiced tenor or a strong bass.

But how to say that without coming across like a blithering idiot? “You asked me why I’d come tonight. I guess you made it sound interesting,” she finally said.

“Good. I’m really glad to see you. It seems like I keep ticking you off, and I don’t mean to do that.” He leaned against the doorjamb, giving off that I’ve-got-all-the-time-in-the-world vibe Charli found refreshing. The men she’d known—in college, in med school, her fellow residents—had never been so patient.

“If you’ll give me a pass on all things Christmas, I expect we’ll get along swimmingly,” she said. “I’m not usually a Scrooge....”

“I know.” He nodded and grinned. “It’s the timing. I get it. I guess I’m like Flora—I try to convert the world to my own obsessions.”

She liked his self-deprecation. Again, this was like none of the guys she’d been around for a while. They seemed to take every opportunity to remind her that while she was planning on going into the lowly family-practice field, they would be elbow-deep in neurosurgery or cardiothoracic surgery or trauma or oncology.

Here, Neil had no such pretensions, and she liked the way he seemed at ease with himself.

It soothed her—and her anxiety about her father’s money, and what that amount of cash could mean. She felt certain, all in a moment, that she could tell the man in front of her anything and he’d understand it, help her through it.

It was on the tip of her tongue to blurt out about the money and ask Neil for his opinion. But then the lights dimmed twice, and she recalled it was Flora’s signal to get back to the grindstone.

“Gotta go,” he told Charli. “Why not stay and watch?”

She did. As she slid into one of the old wooden seats in the back of the auditorium, she discovered Neil’s voice to be a strong, clear tenor that nailed a solo in an old English Christmas carol.

He probably had sung right beside her dad the Christmas before. She hadn’t come home for Christmas last year. She would have if she’d known that Christmas was to be her father’s last one. It was a regret she knew she’d have for the rest of her life.

Still, as Charli watched Neil sing with the rest of the choir, she was glad of the interruption that had prevented her from spilling the beans about the money. What on earth had made her think telling Neil about the money was a good idea? What could he do about it? And he owned and edited the newspaper. Would he feel compelled to report her discovery before she had a chance to figure things out?

The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became. That amount of money couldn’t mean anything good.

* * *

T
HE
NEXT
MORNING
, Charli awoke gritty-eyed and groggy. Thoughts of the money and Neil had chased themselves around in her head until the small hours of the morning. When she faced herself in the mirror, seeing the bags under her eyes, she knew something had to give.

She called Marvela at the office and told her she’d be a half hour late coming in. “I’ve got a stop I need to make first,” she told her.

That stop was at Floyd Lewis’s house. Floyd had been her dad’s CPA for years. Charli hadn’t seen a professional listing in the yellow pages for his office, so she’d rung his house and he’d told her he’d retired three years before, but to drop in at home.

When she pulled up to Floyd’s house, she saw a Corolla parked at the curb—a Corolla that looked suspiciously like Neil Bailey’s. Her heart went into overdrive as two emotions battled for primacy—a little jolt of joy at seeing Neil again, and frustration that she wouldn’t have a chance to talk to Floyd alone.

Maybe it’s not Neil. There have got to be a dozen cars in Brevis that look like his.
She soldiered on, up the steep little hill of grass between the curb and the sidewalk. Good thing she’d ditched her heels in favor of flats today.

But, no, it was Neil. There he was, struggling to get out of his car one-handed, diving back in for a camera he slung around his neck and the skinny reporter’s notebook he jammed into his back pocket.

“Fancy running into you. I figured you’d be neck-deep in office hours, or at the hospital,” Neil said by way of greeting. “I see you’re sporting another one of those scarves. Your mom’s handiwork?”

Charli’s hand went to her scarf du jour, a frilly confection of aqua and black. “Yeah. Should I put in an order for you? She’s about to bury me in yarn.”

“I’m kind of a hot-natured guy—hardly ever wear a coat if I can get out of it. Maybe you should ask her to knit you a throw or something—that would take longer, right?”

She chuckled. “You might have an idea there.” Twining the scarf’s end around her fingers, she said, “You visiting Floyd?”

“Yeah. So...you here to see the chicks, too?”

“What?” Did he mean chicken chicks, or...

“The baby chickens. Floyd is raising chickens in his backyard, and he wanted me to do a story on it. He called me and said he had about a dozen hatchlings.”

“Oh.” Charli groaned. “What a lovely way to raise a good case of salmonella.”

Neil came to full alert. “Really? That’d be a good counterpoint to balance the article. Can I quote you on that?”

“No!” she said firmly. “It’s just that I treated a whole family who had an outbreak of salmonella after the mom had decided eggs from the supermarket were nasty.”

“Wow. How do you get it?”

“The salmonella? From the chickens. Wait. This is not on the record. I don’t want to come across as the new-in-town know-it-all doctor who’s out to be a spoilsport. So before I say anything, I repeat—this is off—”

“Got it. Background only, so I’ll know what to look up on Google.”

“Chickens can carry salmonella, and people can get it from handling the birds or their...poop. And there’s the whole bird-flu worry. In China, it was domestic flocks, not commercial, that really started that scare. But—” Charli could see him struggling to one-hand his reporter’s notebook out of his pocket. “I’ll send you a link, okay? If you’re careful when you raise chickens, you’re not likely to get sick. I just don’t want people to think growing your own chickens is as easy as simply throwing some chickens and scratch into your backyard.”

“Thanks. Now let’s go back and see if ol’ Floyd is a Typhoid Mary.”

At least I distracted him from wanting to know why I’m here,
she thought.

In the garage, empty of a car, and full of chicken brooders, Floyd was leaning over one waist-high pen. “Hey, Neil! You made it! And Charli, too! I mean
Dr. Prescott.
”

“Hi, Floyd. Thanks for the flowers you sent—and the egg salad.” Suddenly her stomach churned. Had she eaten salmonella-laden homegrown eggs?

“Hatched those eggs right here! My very own flock of chickens! Can’t beat the taste, can you? Made the mayo myself, too. My mama’s recipe.”

Honestly, Charli couldn’t remember whether she’d partaken in any of the egg salad. She usually steered clear of any buffet-served dish that had mayo—homemade or otherwise—in it, for precautionary reasons.

But she was pleased to see Floyd was wearing coveralls and elbow-length gloves. At least he was taking his care seriously.

Floyd brought out a few chicks to show off, fluffy little balls of feathers he had raised in an incubator. “Got ’em in the garage because the weather’s cold. See my heat lights? Got two of ’em over each brooder in case one of ’em fails. Redundancy. That’s the way to go.”

Neil dived into the interview, bracing the notebook on the top of the brooder and scrawling notes with his good hand. Charli looked on with dismay. She wasn’t going to have time to wait out the interview for a chance to speak to Floyd alone.

As she was about to go, Floyd said, “Neil, why don’t you go on and get a picture of my big girls in the backyard? I can’t leave these little guys just now—I’m sexing ’em, and I need to do it now.”