Dear Santa Part 7

"Desperate people don't always think too clearly," Vic said.

The rookie nodded.

"I'll write up an incident report." "You do that,"

Vic said.

He knew how little official action would actually be taken as a result of this guy's investigation and report. Vic might be disgusted by that, but he was also relieved. He didn't want this cop or any of his buddies in blue' poking around any further. Vic especially didn't want them nosing into the relations.h.i.+p between Tooley Pennebaker and the two children who were supposed to be her niece and nephew.

Vic had already figured out that Katherine had been trying to get a message across to him before about the racial improbability of that aunt-offspring pairing. Of course, there were a number of possible explanations, intermarriage or adoption to name two. Katherine's raised eyebrows when she mentioned Tooley and the kids suggested to Vic that the story might be different than either of those. He also had the feeling that this issue, as well as a couple of others, made it all the more crucial that they find Coyote Bellaway, and find him fast.

COYOTE WATCHED the whole scene from the top of the building across the street from Tooley's apartment. He'd even been up there, crouched down behind the short wall that bordered the roof, long enough to see the big man from the alleyway the other nighta"the one who'd chased Coyote with a guna"drive up in a black car and go inside Tooley's building. A half hour or so later, the man came out and drove away. Coyote snuck down to the street after that, crept across Ten Broeck and let himself into the apartment. He'd had his own key ever since he and Sprite started calling the place home almost a year ago. It looked more like a junk heap than anybody's home now. Coyote tried to keep the tears from sliding down his face. They slid down anyway. This was all his fault. All Tooley's stuff had been tossed around because of him.

Coyote was sniffling so loud by then that he nearly didn't hear Miss Fairchild and Mr. Maltese outside in time to make it out of the room before she was at the window looking in. Luckily, he'd locked the door behind him after he came in. Coyote knew that they couldn't get into Too-ley's place without forcing the lock, which gave him the few minutes he needed to run out the back way and sneak over to his rooftop watching post without being seen. He watched as the policeman came, then as Tooley showed up a little later on and started into the building. After that, he couldn't get himself to watch anymore.

Instead, he busied himself gathering up the things he'd collected in his makes.h.i.+ft lean-to of double-layered cardboard s.h.i.+pping cartons.

Some boosted blankets, and a stack of newspapers from the recycle pile outside one of the stores on North Pearl Street had kept him pretty warm these past nights. He couldn't drag those boxes and papers away with him now. He'd attract too much attention if he tried to do that. But he did have to get out of here. The police showing up let Coyote know that was how things had to be, no question about it.

He'd need to come up with some other way of keeping warm tonight. At the moment, he didn't have a clue what that way would be.

Chapter Eight On their way back to the center in Vic's car, Katherine shook her head and chuckled at herself. She often felt like shaking him in exasperation when they were alone together. ; Yet, as soon as she sensed that he was under attack from the police officer, she'd leapt to champion him like a she-bear at a threat to her clan.

"What's so funny?" Vic asked in response to her chuckle.

"Oh, nothing," she replied.

She was correct about that, of course. There wasn't any- ] thing the least bit funny about withholding information I.

from the police or about what could happen to her, and maybe to the center as well, if she were to be caught in the act of doing so. Equally lacking in humor was the question that had been niggling at the corner of her brain ever since she'd started across Ten Broeck Street toward Vic with Tooley Pennebaker at her side. Why had that young policeman been treating Vic so rudely?

The officer had been sneering at Vic in the most disrespectful manner she could imagine. She'd been on the defensive on Vic's behalf from the instant she saw the expression on the young policeman's face as he and Vic talked together, or snarled at each other, to be more exact.

The officer behaved quite politely to Katherine once she'd introduced herself. He'd been gracious, even gentle, with Tooley, doing his best to comfort her in her distress over what had happened to her home and belongings. He'd even a.s.sured her that the police department would do its level best to find the person who committed the break-in.

Katherine suspected that was an empty promise on the policeman's part. Vandalism cases like this one more often than not remain unsolved, but he was trying to make Too-ley feel better, anyway.

Still, when he turned to talk to Vic, the sneer reappeared on the officer's face, and the challenge was back in his voice. Katherine had to a.s.sume some previous history there. So, what was Vic's relations.h.i.+p with the police? And, how did it come to-be so antagonistic? She might have put it down to something personal between him and this particular officer if it hadn't been for what happened as she and Vic were walking back to his car.

"Cops," he growledl "They're all alike. I can't stand any of them."

She might have asked her questions about Vic and the police right then, except that a dark frown had descended across his brow. She couldn't remember ever having seen a person look quite so fierce before. She'd decided that wasn't the moment to begin an interrogation, or to talk to him at all for that matter. They drove the few blocks from Tooley Pennebaker's place to the center in silence, other than for that brief exchange over Katherine's chuckle.

She was back in her office pondering the possible reasons for that silence when a knock sounded at her door. For an instant, she thought it might be Vic. Her heart made a little flip, as disconcerting as it was unexpected. Just as unsettling was the stab of disappointment when she glanced up to discover someone definitely not Vic outside her office waiting to be invited in.

The woman at the door was tall, what one might refer to as statuesque. She was also beautiful. She was, at first sight at least, all but perfect, the kind of woman other women look at and say, "Why can't I put myself together like " I that? "j Katherine realized she was staring and hurried out from behind her desk to open the door. " May I help you? " she asked. do hope so," the woman replied, in the closest thing to a purr Katherine could ever recall hearing in real life.

I "Please, come in and sit down." Katherine stepped aside and motioned toward the chair facing her desk. "I'm Lacey Harbison." i "Katherine Fairchild." She extended her hand. Ms. Harbison took hold of only Katherine's fingers and gave them : a restrained, ladylike shake.

*"I know," she said.

"I've been following the accounts of your good work in the Chronicle. I am most favorably impressed."

"Thank you."

Katherine had the definite impression she was being charmed, and wondered why.

"It's that work I've come to talk to you about," Ms. Harbison said. :i "What aspect of what we do interests you in particular?"

Katherine wished she could stop sounding like an oral report.

"Your Most Needy Cases Fund has struck my husband's fancy, and mine also. We would both like to become involved with the program."

"We welcome community support," Katherine said.

Maybe the Harbisons wanted to make a contribution. Katherine estimated that Mrs. Harbison was wearing the equivalent of several holiday dinners with all the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and some presents besides, and that was without counting the fur coat she had draped over her arm. Katherine widened her own smile to match her visitor's.

"We would like to take two children into our home for the Christmas holiday," Mrs. Harbison said.

Katherine hesitated a moment.

"That's a rather unusual request," she said.

"It's for my husband more than myself." Lacey Harbi-son's voice had gone even softer, as if she were sharing an intimate secret straight from her heart.

"He was raised in an orphanage without a true family of his own. Now, as it turns out, I can't have children."

She cast her gaze downward. Her posture, suddenly not so statuesque, suggested the grief caused by her childless state. Katherine wanted to sympathize, but she held back. "What, specifically, did you have in mind?" she asked. "We would love to have a boy and girl with us for the holidays, the boy about ten, the girl about eight. Those are the ages the two babies I lost would be if they had lived."

She looked up again, and Katherine could see the pleading in the woman's face. Still, Katherine's heart didn't respond. She was surprised by that. When she heard the sad stories of the families applying for Most Needy Cases Fund grants, she'd been close to tears with each one. Maybe she was prejudiced against Mrs. Harbison because of her expensive clothes. Katherine hoped that wasn't true. She knew from her own experience that material comforts were no protection against pain. Yet she continued to watch Mrs. Harbison from a cool distance.

"Do you have two children who fit that description? A brother and sister would be perfect, if that's possible."

"Tell me again exactly what you and your husband are proposing."

"Well, we have a large home, which we plan to fill with gifts and decorations and maybe even a party for your other children."

As Mrs. Harbison went on, Katherine nodded, but she was only partly listening. Her instincts kept telling her not to believe a word this woman said.

"This is a very interesting idea," she responded finally, just as Mrs. Harbison was launching into a description of the party she and her wealthy husband would throw for their holiday charges and their friends.

"Let me go and get the files for our program applicants and see if we have two children who match what you're looking for."

Lacey Harbison paused, her deep red, only slightly glossed lips parted. She was putting together some pieces of her own. Katherine could almost hear her doing it. I'll only be a moment," Katherine said.

She was out from behind her desk and through the office door in seconds, smiling widely all the way. She waited till she was just out of sight before she began sprinting down the hallway toward the gym.

Vic had changed into gray athletic shorts, a T-s.h.i.+rt and sneakers.

She registered the tense, long muscles of his upper thighs and the round curve of his biceps somewhere in her consciousness, but she didn't let herself think about them. Instead, she grabbed his arm and was towing him back toward her office before she could even begin her breathless explanation.

He followed her more readily than she would have thought. They hurried along so fast she barely had time to blurt out her suspicions regarding the too-coincidental similarity between Coyote and Sprite Bellaway and the plan that had been described to her by the woman sitting beside Katherine's desk. Unfortunately, when Katherine and Vic got to her office, it was as empty as she had feared it would be. They made a quick search of the rooms at that end of the building and a dash to the parking lot. But the woman was gone, along with any trace of who she was or why she might be trying to get to the Bellaway children.

"SHE KNOWS who you are and that you're connected with the Bellaway kids."

Vic had been trying to make a point to Katherine for nearly half an hour, but she'd made it clear she wasn't paying much attention.

"I think you should listen to him, Katherine," Megan Moran said.

Vic didn't usually look for support from anyone. Still, he was glad to have it now, especially since he could feel the leash he tried to keep on his temper wearing thinner by the second. Obviously, Katherine Fairchild possessed the ability to aggravate him as much as she did the ability to attract him.

"I've listened to both of you," Katherine said, "and I don't agree.

I'm not the target, the children are. Notfeven both of them, either, just Coyote? "

"I've got a bad feeling about this whole deal," Vic said. "Tooley seemed to think Coyote could handle himself out on the street, even though she had no idea where he might be. But I think there's a lot more to what's going on than any of us can even guess at. We could be up against some very bad people here."

"What makes you think so, Vic?" Megan asked.

He shrugged. He didn't like to be an alarmist. He especially didn't like to be seen as one. He knew his statements were reinforcing that image, but Katherine's safety was more important than what anybody might think about him right now.

"Call it a sixth sense," he said, and he could tell Katherine picked up on his reference to their earlier conversation.

"I've been out here long enough to sense dangerous situations, too."

"I didn't claim to have a monopoly on the ability." Katherine sounded pretty aggravated herself. "Something besides just instinct is bothering me here," he went on.

"I got a closer look at Tooley's place than you did, Katherine, and I didn't like it."

"What exactly did you see?" Megan asked.

He searched for the right word. The one that came to mind struck him as too far out, but he decided to pa.s.s it on anyway.

"Rage," he said, "and I didn't only see it. I felt it. Whoever tore that place up was angry enough to..."

He hesitated. Once again, he didn't want to cause alarm, except what he was thinking had him most alarmed of all. "Angry enough to do what, Vic?" Megan pressed. "Angry enough to kill."

The word echoed in the silence that followed his saying it, as if that one syllable had the power to strike everybody dumb.

"Well, n.o.body's going to kill me," Katherine said finally, breaking the spell.

"In fact, if you want to know what I think, we're all more likely to drown in this flood of melodrama that you've both got gus.h.i.+ng over us than at the hand of some evil villain."

Vic opened his mouth to fire back an answer in a tone at least as sarcastic as hers. He clamped his lips together instead. Nothing he really wanted to say to her was either sharp or sarcastic. Only tender words of concern and protection came to mind when he thought about Katherine. He : knew she wouldn't care to hear those things from him now, maybe not ever. So he said nothing at all.

KATHERINE COULD HAVE kicked herself for the ludicrous statement she'd thrown at Vic in her office. She disliked deceit above all things, but she'd had a good reason for violating that rule. If he had found out about the arrangement she'd made with Tooley Pennebakera"that she was going to pick Sprite up at school and take her home with hera"he'd have tried to stop her. Katherine was certain of that. Yet, her apartment was a much safer place than Too-ley's for the little girl right now. Besides, the vandals, whoever they might be, had broken Sprite's bed and sliced her mattress open. Tooley, who had her hands full just figuring out what to do about the mess that had been made of her life, was very happy to have Katherine take over where Sprite was concerned.

Katherine tried not to think about hoTM the stuffing from the child's mattress had been ripped out in huge chunks or about the amount of physical force and determination it must have taken to do that. Most of all, she didn't think about those chunks of stuffing as POssible confirmation of Vic's theory of an enraged and lethal, maybe desperate, attacker. Yet, it was precisely that scenario which made Katherine so intent upon actin gas Sprite's protector. Katherine had been compelled to watch helplessly while Daniel suffered and struggled and was eventually taken away from her. There'd been nothing at all she could do to stop that. "Make him as comfortable as you can" was all the doctors could say. She'd never felt so totally without personal power in her life.

She wasn't going to let that happen again. She wasn't going to sit idly by while another innocent child suffered. Instead, she had offered her apartment as refuge for Sprite instead of a public facility. Tooley was offered the same alternative for herself but chose to stay at her home and keep watch over the few belongings the intruder had left intact.

Sprite and Katherine would be on their own for the night. Katherine had been on her way to Arbor Hill School to meet Sprite when Vic burst in with Megan in tow, both of them insisting that she should stay at Megan's for a few days, or however long it would take to find out who was after the Bellaway children. If she went along with that arrangement, she'd have to tell them she had volunteered to take Sprite home for the night. Katherine was fairly certain Vic would object to that, and insist on the children's shelter alternative, and that Megan would agree with him. They would have the law on their side as well.

Social Services Department statutes and child-custody codes were clear. Sprite's natural mother was incapacitated. Tooley had no legal guardians.h.i.+p status and, therefore, no legal authority to a.s.sign Katherine to take care of the child. Sprite would be considered a temporary ward of the state until a judge could rule on the case.

Katherine could pet.i.tion for guardians.h.i.+p and, with Mrs. Bellaway's approval, might even be awarded custody, at least for a while.

Unfortunately, that was a time-consuming process. Katherine wasn't about to wait for the wheels of family-court justice to grind slowly toward a conclusion. She'd done enough waiting with Daniel. Now, she intended to act.

Consequently, she had extricated herself from Vic and Megan's overprotective clutches as soon as that was possible and headed for the Arbor Hill School. Tooley had called to inform the school that Katherine would meet Sprite at the end of the day. The little girl waited in the vice princ.i.p.al's office, her eyes wide and fearful above the small fist with its thumb shoved into her mouth. Katherine understood immediately that being abandoned had to be one of this child's greatest fears. Abandonment had been a recurring experience of her young life. First her father had left, then her mother, now Coyote. Whatever their reasons for going, they had all deserted little Sprite at one time or another. Katherine didn't want her to feel that Tooley was abandoning her as well. Katherine dropped to her knees next to the couch where Sprite was huddled, her frail body almost hidden among the cus.h.i.+ons.

"h.e.l.lo, Sprite. Do you remember me?"

She spoke slowly and kept her voice soft as she smiled with what she hoped the child would recognize as rea.s.surance. Sprite sucked audibly at her thumb, her eyes more round and huge than ever.

"I came here this morning to talk to you and you told me all about your brother, Coyote," Katherine went on.

Sprite stopped sucking and pulled her thumb partway out of her mouth.

"Did Coyote come home yet?" she asked.

"He'll be back soon," Katherine said, not exactly answering.

The thumb shoved in again, and the sucking sound resumed as Sprite heaved a small but deep sigh.

"I have a surprise for you," Katherine said gently. She had to steer the conversation away from Coyote and the other distressing elements of Sprite's situation.

"Do you like surprises?"

Sprite hesitated a moment before nodding her head once only.

"I was thinking we could go to my house and have a party, just the two of us.

Do you like parties?"

The nod came a little more readily this time.

"What do you like best for a party? Cake or ice cream?" The thumb came out almost all the way. "Cake and ice cream," Sprite said.

"Cake and ice cream it will be."

Katherine held out her hand. Sprite stared at it for a moment without moving, but the sucking had been suspended, at least temporarily.

"We'd better hurry up before the cake-an dice-cream store closes,"

Katherine said.

Sprite pulled her thumb all the way out of her mouth and slid to the edge of the couch cus.h.i.+on.