Dear Santa Part 18

"As I say, I can tell that this is one of those few times."

She'd been like this for as long as Vic could remember, able to read him with almost scary ease.

"Why don't you come inside and sit down," she said. He hesitated.

"Victor, your father isn't here now," she added with a shake of her head.

She turned and walked away from him, back to the double doors, which she pulled open. Vic had no choice but to shrug and follow his mother.

The foyer was pretty much unchanged from what he remembered, except for a fresh coat of paint on the woodwork and a lighter shade of wallpaper in what he figured was probably silk brocade. After all, Gabriel Maltese never settled for anything but the best. The living room, on the other hand, had undergone a complete transformation. The original mahogany panelling had been replaced by light-colored surfaces. The heavy drapes were off the windows. Even the furniture, formerly large antique pieces, was all different and much less old-fas.h.i.+oned and imposing. The only object in the room that wasn't white or pale-toned was the tall, floor-to-ceiling live evergreen tree in the bay window that looked out onto the vast lawn. Its boughs were hung with the gla.s.s angels he remembered from his childhood.

"What's this, Ma?" he asked, referring to the decor. "Your California period?"

She laughed, and he was suddenly aware of how much he'd missed heating her do that.

"Your father," she said.

"One day he decided we needed to brighten things up around here. You know how he is."

"I know how he is."

His mother must have chosen to ignore the sharp way he said that because she kept on talking.

"He gets an idea in his head, and immediately we have a project on our hands.

He's even more that way these days, since he retired."

Vic stifled an exasperated groan. She talked about his father as if he'd been a regular businessman going off to the office every day, instead of what he really was.

"Besides, it isn't true that you know how your father is," she was saying.

"You don't know much about him at all, especially not now."

"I don't want to get into that," he said, unable to hide his impatience.

"I know you don't," his mother answered with a smile that couldn't help but soften him some.

"Sit down with me and we'll talk about what you did come here for."

She'd taken a seat on a long, off-white sofa upholstered in fabric with a pattern of small flowers. Vic couldn't imagine his father picking out furniture, or anything else, with flowers on it. His mother patted the cus.h.i.+on next to her and smiled up at him. She'd always been beautiful, and in the bright daylight of this room he could see that she was beautiful still. She probably colored her hair to cover up the gray, but she never would have talked about such a thing. Her skin was as smooth as it had ever been, and she didn't wear much makeup. She was dressed as he always remembered her, in simple, well-made clothes that came from the best stores, but were never flashy or deliberately expensive-looking. It had occurred to him many times that she was way too elegant to be called "Ma," but she seemed to love him doing it all the same.

"Sit with me," she repeated. "I don't know..." he began. "Sit."

Vic shrugged once again and sat down on the long sofa. "Now, what is it you need your father to do for you?"

"Ma, I think that's something I have to talk about with him, not you."

"Why is that?"

Her eyes were completely clear, as if she'd never had a secret or could never tell a lie. He'd felt that about Katherine's eyes, too, though he hadn't really known it till this minute.

"Why is it you don't think you can talk about the same things with me that you could discuss with your father?"

"Ma, this is business."

She laughed again.

"You act as though you think this is some kind of Hollywood movie where the wife keeps herself deliberately ignorant of her husband's professional involvements."

Vic stared at his mother. He always had thought something just like that.

"I know you don't approve of some of the people your father has a.s.sociated himself with over the years," she said. "Maybe I didn't entirely approve myself, but I love your father and I support whatever he does or whatever he may have done."

"Ma, he's a..." He didn't want to say the word.

"You think your father is a gangster." She supplied the word for him.

"He is not. He simply knows people who know things."

He breathed a heavy sigh. This was why he didn't come here. He was ashamed of what his father had done with his life, how he had made the money that bought this house, and the one in Colorado, and the one in Barbados. Vic was ashamed, and n.o.body else would even admit there was anything to be ashamed of. He made a move to stand up and leave, but his mother took his arm to stop him.

"I sense that you want to know things yourself now. Why don't you tell me what they are, and I will speak to your father."

Vic usually knew exactly what he had to do. He wasn't so sure about that now.

"I would guess that your question must be of great importance to you," his mother added.

"Otherwise, you would not have come here."

Once again, she had read him accurately. There was more at stake here than his differences with his family, even his feelings about his father. By the time the knock sounded at the double doors, he had told his mother most of the details of the situation with Coyote and his suspicion that professional criminals of the organized variety might be involved. He needed to find out specifically who those criminals might be and what they were up to. As his mother had said, his father knew people who knew things. If anybody could dig up the information Vic was so desperate to find out, that somebody was Gabriel Maltese.

"Come in," Vic's mother said in response to the knock. Vic might have been disgusted by the palooka who came through the door and how typical he was of the kind of guy Vic's father had to keep around him for protection, but Vic wasn't thinking about that now. He was too startled by who the palooka had in tow.

"Katherine!" Vic exclaimed.

"What are you doing here?"

THAT WAS MORE QUESTION than Katherine was prepared to answer at the moment.

Before she answered anything, she had some questions of her own.

"What are you doing here?" she said, not bothering to be polite about it, despite the presence of the very distinguished-looking woman sitting next to Vic.

"I used to live here," he said.

"I suppose you must have had his job then."

Katherine indicated the brawny grounds keeper or whatever he was, who had escorted her in here.

"I was a little closer to the family than that," Vic said in a slightly amused tone that made Katherine want to punch him right in the nose.

"In fact, I'd like you to meet my mother."

The woman on the long sofa stood up, as Vic had done when Katherine first came in.

Katherine smiled and said, "How do you do," because she was too stunned to respond any other way than with the automatic courtesy she'd been taught from childhood on.

"Mother, this is Katherine Fairchild. We work together."

Vic still sounded amused.

"I'm so pleased to meet yoU," the elegant woman said with a radiant smile as she came around the sofa with her hand outstretched to greet Katherine.

"Won't you come in and sit down?"

Katherine was searching for signs of resemblance between the two faces in front of her. She supposed there could be a few, mostly around the mouth and in the way they were both smiling now, though Vic was wearing more what she'd call an irritating grin.

"Come, Miss Fairchild. Sit down," Vic's mother said again and took Katherine's arm to lead her into the room.

When she moved to follow, her right leg smarted and she flinched from the pain.

"Are you all right, my dear?" Vic's mother asked sounding truly concerned.

"Are you hurt?"

"She was trying to climb over the back wall and she skinned her knee," Katherine's brawny escort explained.

Vic's mother gazed down at Katherine's torn stocking and the b.l.o.o.d.y sc.r.a.pe underneath, then looked up with a' confused expression.

Katherine was feeling the same, and embarra.s.sed as well. She couldn't help being grateful when Vic stepped forward to what she hoped would be her rescue.

"I told Katherine about the gardens at the back of the house, Mother," he said.

"She couldn't wait to see for herself."

Katherine smiled in what she meant to look like agreement.

"If you'll excuse us for a moment," he went on before she could babble some kind of response about her alleged interest in the gardens, "I'm going to take a look at her injuries."

"Yes, you must do that," his mother said. I'll send in a pair of stockings to replace those torn ones. The downstairs bathroom is beyond the staircase.

"I remember how to get around this place," Vic said with an edge in his voice that made Katherine all the more curious about what might be going on here.

However, after he had supported her by the arm while she hobbled across the marble floor of the foyer of this very grand house and they were out of earshot inside the equally grand bathroom, he was the one to begin the questioning.

"How did you get here?" he asked.

"I followed you."

"You trailed me all the way from the center?" "Yes, I did." "Why?"

He'd seated her on a chair in front of a dressing table with three mirrors, each offer ing a separate view of her flushed face.

"I wanted to find out more about you," she said.

He laughed.

"Well, I guess you're doing that. Aren't you?"

She didn't know what to say. The mirrors had already told her she looked as bewildered as she was feeling.

"I'll bet this place comes as a real shock to you," he said.

"Not what you expected from me. Right?" "Right."

She knew it might be more diplomatic to tell less than the whole truth, but she didn't feel like being diplomatic just now.

"You probably had me pegged as coming from the wrong side of the tracks."

Katherine only sighed in response to that one. Then, she gasped. Vic had lifted the leg she'd hit against the stone wall onto his lap as he knelt on the floor in front of her. His touch seared through the thin material of her torn stocking. That was what caused her to gasp.

Fortunately, the sound was covered by his next remark.

"I see you have these silly boots on again," he said. She felt the blush begin in her already red cheeks. He'd reminded her of why she'd dressed this way that morning, because she wanted to look s.e.xy for him. Now, all of that and her foot in his lap struck her as very out of place. She pulled her leg away.

"I have to leave now," she said, standing up and doing her best to ignore the sting in her sc.r.a.ped leg.

Vic stood up next to her.

"We need to talk," he said. "I don't think so." He backed against the door as she was moving toward it.

"You came all the way here to find out more about me.

That's what you just said. Right? "

"That's right. Now, I wish I hadn't done that."

"I think it was a good idea," he said.

Something had changed in his voice, softened in a way that made her stop trying to get past him to the door, at least for the moment.

"Why do you think that?"

"I want to tell you about myself. You deserve to know the truth."

Katherine suspected she should resist the temptation to agree with him. She wished she was that strong.