Chapter 7
She and Wilson returned to the café, where a smattering of customers had gravitated to the tables nearest the television. Someone had turned it to The Weather Channel. In front of the register counter, Dinah leaned on the bottom of Heidi’s rickety, paint-splattered aluminum stepladder. On the top of the ladder perched Clay.
“What is going on?” Heidi asked.
“Clay’s hanging mistletoe.”
“What for?”
“I think it’s his last-ditch effort to get lucky,” Sal muttered to her as he deposited fresh-from-the-oven gingerbread on the counter.
“As if we didn’t have enough problems with the icy stoop,” she grumbled, hoping there was some rock salt in the supply room. “Nothing says lawsuit like a customer on a ladder.”
“It was my idea,” Clay said, tacking the sprig in place by a silver ribbon tied around its stem. It stood out in the empty overhang—Heidi had been meaning to do something there, but couldn’t decide what.
Clay looked hopefully at Dinah. “What do you think?”
“Isn’t that stuff poisonous?” she asked.
Sal laughed. “It depends on who sees you standing under it.”
Clay climbed down and waggled his brows at Dinah. “You’re right under the mistletoe, Dinah.”
“Close your eyes,” she said.
Like a fool, he complied. Dinah reached behind her and pulled a piece of gingerbread off a tray. She smashed it into Clay’s mouth and then arched a brow at Heidi. “You can take it out of my pay.”
After catching the avalanche of gingerbread that crumbled down his sweater, Clay blinked in surprise. “That’s really good,” he said. “Did you make that, Di?”
“No, Sal did—and please don’t call me Di,” she said. “I’m not a princess, or something that gets rolled down a craps table. At least, not usually.”
Heidi reached for the television remote. She was as transfixed by the weather as anyone, but having it on made her feel as if she were in an airport lounge. She flipped it to TCM, which was showing a Robert Mitchum movie. The black-and-white images worked on her nerves like a tonic.
“Maybe you should go home now,” she suggested to Dinah.
“Why?” Dinah tossed a glance at her watch. “Does it take five hours to get to Penn Station these days? My train doesn’t leave till six thirty.”
“There might be trouble with the trains.”
“The sleet’s let up.”
“The weather guy was saying it’s going to start up again in the evening,” Heidi warned her. “You might need to change your reservation to another train.”
Dinah laughed. “Do you think there are dozens of alternatives to the Ethan Allen Express? On Christmas Eve?”
“Maybe you won’t get out at all,” Clay said. “If you need someplace to go on Christmas ...”
“I don’t,” Dinah said. “I’ll leave work this evening, catch my train, and be in Chippenhook by midnight.” She smiled and repeated, “Chippenhook by midnight—sounds like poetry, doesn’t it?”
“Not to me, it doesn’t,” Clay grumbled.
Dinah ignored him and studied Heidi. Worry must have shown in her face.
“I didn’t find the money,” Heidi told her in a low voice.
The younger woman put a hand on Heidi’s shoulder. “We know. Patrick told us awhile ago when he came by to pick up Marcus. I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t in my apartment, either. It could still show up, though,” Heidi added. “I’m going to start calling cab companies.”
“I can do that,” Sal said, taking out his cell phone. “I have an uncle who’s a dispatcher.”
Heidi’s heart picked up, then sank again. “It was a gypsy cab.”
“No worries,” Sal assured her. “Uncle Nick knows all these outfits. We’ll find it.”
Patrick, now Sal. Heidi felt so grateful to these people trying to keep her hope alive. Especially since there was only a chance in a million that the money was still out there.
She spent the rest of the afternoon serving up the usual lunch fare and baking way too much. She tried not to think about what the loss of that money would mean to her in concrete terms. Good-bye, new mixer and new sink in the café’s bathroom, which was rust-stained and pulling away from the wall. Come the new year, she would really be flying by the seat of her pants—one payroll away from disaster, really. It wasn’t as if there was a lot of fat that could be trimmed from her operation. She had Sal and Dinah, and she couldn’t imagine the Sweetgum without either of them. Short of putting all her belongings in storage and sleeping in the supply closet, she couldn’t think of many ways to cut corners.
Not baking more than she needed would probably be a good start. But if she wasn’t baking, she would be worrying. Sal was parked on a stool by the sink, still trying to find the car service that had picked her up—and having no luck, if his mutterings and occasional outbursts in Italian were any indication.
Dinah stayed all afternoon, even though there were never more customers than Heidi could have handled alone. She had the feeling that the waitress was hanging around to see if the money ever turned up.
At one point, Sal hung up the phone, clapped Heidi on the shoulder, and ran out. She and Dinah grinned at each other. Maybe she was finally about to run into some luck. The mood in the café lifted higher still when Clay got Wilson to say
mistletoe.
It came out as “mizzletoed,” but he said it—often—with gusto.
As daylight drew to a close, the sleet started falling again. More heavily this time.
“I better leave,” Dinah said, reluctantly picking up her suitcase.
Clay hopped up. “Walk you to the subway?”
Dinah looked him over with exasperation.
He upped the ante. “Treat you to a cab?”
A smile spread across her lips as she shook her head. “It’s a free country. You can waste your time and money if you want.”
He scooted to her side and helped her on with her coat as if she’d just agreed to a date.
“Have a Merry Christmas,” Heidi told her, pressing some cookies on her to take on her trip.
Dinah smiled. “You, too. Enjoy
Avatar.
And babysitting. And dog-sitting.”
When they were gone, Heidi sat Wilson in the chair by the fireplace with a ball of cookie dough, which during the course of the afternoon had become his obsession. He not only liked the taste, it also served as makeshift Play-Doh.
As afternoon surrendered to Christmas Eve, Heidi sold lots of to-go things to people who were obviously headed to some holiday gathering. They came in for a dozen cookies, or a whole pie, or a loaf of pumpkin gingerbread. Some seemed happy, some frenzied.
The customers kept her busy enough that she’d almost forgotten about Sal until he appeared again. He didn’t come running in with the same enthusiasm as when he’d left. In fact, he seemed morose, and was hiding something under the arm of his jacket.
“You found the cab?” she guessed.
He nodded.
“And they hadn’t seen anything?”
He shook his head and slowly unfolded the bag that had been tucked under his arm. She recognized it right away as the shopping bag she’d used to haul around the cash box. It was intact ... except for the gaping hole in the bottom.
“Dude said it was like this when he found it.”
Heidi nodded as she inspected the bag—as if it would tell her anything other than the fact that her money was gone.
She reminded herself that she never really expected to find it. But that didn’t make losing eleven hundred dollars any easier to accept.
“I’m sorry, Heidi. When I found the right cab, I thought for sure it would be there if we searched—that maybe it could have slipped under the seat. But there was nada. Zip. Maybe the box fell out of the bag and one of his later fares found it.”
“Or maybe the bag broke before I got to Court Street.” In which case, the money really was gone, because it hadn’t been there when she retraced her steps.
Any way you looked at it, it was gone. Gone with the wind.
Get over it, Heidi. You’re broke. So are a lot of people. Move on.
Sal dug his hands into his pockets and surveyed the empty café. “Dinah take off?”
“A little while ago.”
“Clay go with her?”
She eyed him sharply. “How did you know?”
“Guy looked like he was going to stick to her like glue.”
“Poor Clay. She has her heart set on the master of the universe from Chippenhook.”
“Don’t write Clay off yet,” Sal said. A dough missile whizzed past him and he pivoted toward Wilson. “Hey, man! What have you got there?” Before he could take a step, the kid hurled another wad of dough through the air.
“Mizzletoed!” Wilson yelled, which apparently now was toddler-speak for “bombs away!”
He had surprisingly good aim. The buttery, sugary blob landed a few inches to the right of the mistletoe sprig, where it stuck to the wall.
“Mizzletoed!”
Heidi flinched—she wondered if she would ever hear that word again without wanting to duck. “Maybe I could make some extra cash marketing my cookie dough as an adhesive.”
“I’ll get the ladder,” Sal said.
He hurried to the storage closet and came back with the stepladder. Before he could start to climb, she stopped him. “I don’t need to accompany anyone else to the hospital this holiday.”
He tilted his head. “You have to be careful, though. You have a kid now.”
“Just on loan,” she said, gently nudging him out of the way. She climbed the few rungs with a rag in her hand and reached for the blob of dough. Gallant Sal stayed where he was, holding the base steady, so when the blob fell before she could grab it, he was in a perfect spot to get it splat on his head.
His face froze in an expression of comical disgust as he picked the sticky lump out of a stray lock of hair. “Exactly what I needed.”
Heidi laughed and reached over to wipe the residual grease spot on the other side of the mistletoe. At the same time, Sal stepped away from the ladder, which wobbled precariously. For a moment she worried that she would be joining Mrs. DiBenedetto in the hospital, but Sal turned and caught her before calamity could strike. He put his hands around her and hauled her off the step, which might have been a seamless maneuver if she’d weighed forty pounds. As it was, Sal staggered and the two of them nearly went down together before regaining equilibrium.
After more than twelve tense hours, Heidi finally found some release, laughing at the awkwardness of their Laurel-and-Hardy antics with the ladder. Sal was laughing, too, but when he looked into her face, he evidently saw the strain there. He brushed her hair away from her eyes.
“Hey,” he said. “You okay?”
She nodded.
They were still standing that way when the bell rang again. Sal crooked a brow at her playfully. “Just when we were finally alone at last.”
She snorted again and stepped away to right herself before facing the newly arrived customer.
Only it wasn’t a customer. It was Patrick.
His skin flashed from wind-burned red to pale shock and then back to red again. He looked as if he wanted to speak, but his lips remained clamped together.
“Patrick!” Heidi said, stepping farther away from Sal.
Whatever Patrick had been thinking—and it wasn’t hard to guess—apparently her action only made him think it more. “I came by to tell you that there was no news.” His voice came out clipped, strained. “About your cash box. At the hospital.”
“I didn’t think there would be,” Heidi said. “Sal found the shopping bag—but it was empty.”
Patrick narrowed his eyes on Sal.
Honestly. From the way he was acting, anyone would think finding clues to the cash box was some macho competition. It was ridiculous.
She crossed her arms, deciding not to dignify his petty jealousy with stammered excuses or explanations.
Sal, watching them, blurted, “We were just getting some cookie dough off the wall.” When no one responded, he added, “The kid threw it.”
Patrick glanced at Wilson and then buried his hands in his coat pockets. The shadow of sincere disappointment that crossed his features made Heidi question who was being petty. She wanted to laugh and jolly the tension away, but Patrick was already turning toward the door.
He pivoted back to say something, and Heidi’s heart lifted. “Mrs. DiBenedetto told me to tell you that the vet’s number is on her refrigerator. In case of an emergency.”
After the bell had jangled his departure, an enormous sense of letdown overwhelmed Heidi. He actually liked her. Or had. She could see that now.
It was always easy to see things clearly when they were all over. Her power of hindsight had been honed to laser sharpness.