Heidi nodded. “He does, in a way.”
“Right—the same way I sort of look like Scarlett Jo-hansson,” Dinah said. “In other words, not at all. It’s ridiculous. What’s the matter with me? I can’t have Mr. Unattainable, so I’m hopping in bed with Mr. Overly Available, who vaguely resembles the guy from
Death to Smoochy.
”
“He’s really great, and he likes you.” Unlike a certain someone Heidi could mention.
Dinah was up and pacing now. “The worst part is, if I break it off with him, I’ll lose the best-tipping customer I have.”
“You can’t stay in a relationship with a guy because he tips well. Why would you even consider it?”
“Well ... it turns out he does other things well, too.” Heidi would have gotten the drift even if Dinah hadn’t arched her brows meaningfully. In fact, she could have figured it out from having seen the smile on Dinah’s face when she was looking at him as they walked in. “So what’s the problem?”
“The problem is it’s
Clay
. The boy scout CPA who tells you to wear your mittens. Not exactly my dream man.”
“Your dream man sounds like a jerk,” Heidi laughed. “But I’m the last person you should come to for advice—my guy compass has always been out of whack. My ex-boyfriend is in a medium security federal lockup. I should be so lucky as to find a nice concave-chested CPA from Bug Tussle to fall in love with me.”
Or a cop.
“Bog Hollow,” Dinah corrected her. “And it’s not concave, exactly. He’s one of those strong, wiry guys.”
Erica skidded into the storeroom. The alarm in her eyes stopped Heidi’s heart. “You’d better come quick. The police are back. I think they’ve come to arrest you!”
Heidi rushed out and found the lights from patrol cars parked outside strobing through the café’s windows. Patrick’s lips were turned down with tension. Marcus looked uncomfortable, too, and no wonder—between him and Patrick glowered Janice, Heidi’s upstairs neighbor, her face mottled red and tear-stained.
“What have you done with my son?” she screeched.
The blood drained out of Heidi’s face. Damn. She’d forgotten to leave a note.
“Janice, he’s fine.” She turned to the fireplace, where Wilson was curled up asleep in the armchair, like a cat.
Janice burst into tears and fell on Wilson with such ferocity that he woke up startled and began to cry.
“My poor baby!”
Heidi observed the tearful reunion with equal parts gladness and defensiveness. “Martine asked me to look after him before she went back to France—”
Janice broke off Heidi’s sentence with a huff. “Martine! I’m going to sue her for child endangerment.”
“I left messages for you,” Heidi continued, “but you’re a hard person to get a hold of.”
“Nonsense! I have a dozen contact numbers.”
“Yes, but some of them are in Africa, and you obviously weren’t there. And if you don’t check the others—”
“Are you saying I’m negligent?” Janice snapped.
Heidi stammered before spitting out, “N-no ...”
“How dare you call me a bad mother!”
“Excuse me,” Erica interrupted, Jeeves-like, slipping between Heidi and Janice with a steaming mug of coffee and a warm cinnamon scone on a plate. She held the plate close to Janice’s face. “Scone?”
Heidi could tell the moment the whiff of cinnamon hit Janice’s olfactory nerves. Her eyes widened and she pincered a scone, inspecting it only briefly before she took a nibble. Erica was still there with coffee at the ready when she needed it. Her performance was all the evidence Heidi needed of the soothing effect of superior service.
“Thank you,” Janice said. The act of swallowing seemed to have calmed her down where words, and the obvious well-being of her child, had failed.
“I’m glad you can take him home now,” Heidi told Janice. “You two will still have a few hours of Christmas together.”
A look of cold fury crossed Janice’s face, although this time it wasn’t aimed at Heidi. “But I can’t take him home. I came back all the way from Africa to discover there’s no electricity here. And our street hasn’t been plowed yet. What’s the city doing?”
She directed this last question at Marcus, as though a police uniform made him stand-in mayor during a crisis. He kept a concerned yet placid expression on his face. “We have shelters.”
Her eyes flashed in horror. “I am
not
taking my child to a
shelter.
I’ll call hotels, is what I’ll do.” Janice flopped down in a chair and pulled out her cell phone.
Patrick took Heidi aside. “You handled that well.”
She shook her head. “Erica handled it. I wanted to shake the woman.” Still did.
“When Marcus and I arrived at her place after she discovered Wilson missing, I worried she was going to insist we have you booked for kidnapping, even though we assured her he was here.”
“So arrogant!” Heidi said, stewing. “And not a word of thanks for taking care of Wilson. Not that I did much, but ...”
“Maybe when she’s calmed down a bit,” Patrick said.
“I’m not holding my breath.”
But, actually, she was. Because looking into Patrick’s eyes, and smelling that woodsy cologne again, made it difficult to breathe normally. Her heartbeat quickened when he was standing next to her. It was difficult to tell whether her galloping pulse could be laid at Janice’s door, or Patrick’s.
“I saw Mrs. DiBenedetto today,” he said. “She’s feeling better—she even admitted she liked your cookies.”
Heidi smiled. “That’s good.”
Tension showed in Patrick’s brow as he looked down at her. “Heidi ...” he said, his voice a husky whisper, as if lowering it would provide them some kind of privacy. “About yesterday ... I felt like a jerk.”
She swallowed.
“That is—”
One minute there were two of them huddled together, and, in the next instant, Marcus was between them. Heidi would have groaned with frustration at the interruption had it not been for the urgency in Marcus’s eyes. “Sorry to break this up, but we gotta fly. There’s been an incident.”
Patrick straightened, all business. “Right.”
Disappointment rose in Heidi’s throat, along with an edge of panic. What was an incident? “Wait!” She felt a moment of shock when her hand clasped around muscle—she hadn’t intended to reach out and stop him, but she hadn’t been able to help herself. “Will I see you again?”
Something sparked in his eyes. “I certainly hope so.”
She watched him go, wondering at the hollow in her stomach, the kind that couldn’t be cured by a cinnamon scone.
The lights kept flashing as the patrol car accelerated down the street, which made her uneasy. Last Christmas, Patrick had been shot. What if they had been called to another robbery?
An incident.
The grating sound of Janice on the phone in the background, chewing out desk clerks who had the audacity to work at hotels that had no vacancies, punctuated her thoughts. The whole café probably felt relieved when the woman finally found a friend on the Upper East Side who could give her a room for the night.
“
They
have power, naturally,” Janice said. “I never should have moved out to the boondocks.”
It was harder than Heidi would have imagined to see Wilson go, even when he started screaming at being bundled up again and realized he’d be leaving. “Mizzle-tooooooeed!” he shrieked through tears as Janice wheeled him out.
Later, it seemed that that was the moment when the natives had become restless. Or maybe it was just the moment when
she
became restless. Wilson dragged away shrieking, bankruptcy ahead, Patrick called away to heaven only knew what kind of crime ... all was not merry and bright. That others were suffering from flagging patience became clear when a fight exploded near the end of a viewing of
In the Good Old Summertime
.
“It’s not even a Christmas movie!” yelled a man who was lobbying for a switch to The Weather Channel.
“Yes it is,” said a woman, a relative newcomer near him. “It’s Christmas at the end of the movie, when Judy Garland discovers who Van Johnson really is. Just like
The Shop Around the Corner.
”
“Which we just saw!” A vein throbbed on the man’s forehead. “What’s the point in watching the exact same story twice in a row?”
“Well, what’s the point in watching the weather?” someone else said. “We know what the weather is—bad.”
“
Look!
” Erica ran over to the door and pressed her face against the glass. “It’s snowing! Cool!”
Her enthusiasm wasn’t shared by the rest of the residents of the café.
“What is this?” grumbled the cranky guy. “They said it was supposed to warm up.”
“Really?” Heidi asked.
“Into the upper thirties!”
“It needs to be warmer than that to melt all this ice.”
The Judy Garland woman claimed that it all depended on the humidity. “Even above freezing, it might not be humid enough to melt ice.”
The first guy looked as though his head were going to start spinning. All Heidi’s efforts to soothe the world with soup, buttery baked goods, and hot beverages had gone down the toilet in a matter of minutes. “Are you an idiot?” he asked the woman.
“Wait a second,” Dinah said, leaping into the fray. “Don’t call people names, asshat!”
Clay tugged at her elbow. “
Dinah ...
”
“No,” she said. “If this guy is going to call people idiots, let him say it to a person who has a carafe of piping hot beverage aimed at his crotch.”
Heidi held her breath—it felt as if everyone in the café did—half expecting Dinah to make good on the threat. But instead of more insults, or a man screaming in agony as hot coffee made contact with his privates, the next sound she heard was a resonant, beautiful note from a violin. Everyone turned toward a heavyset man, one of the old-timers who’d been in the café since the night before. Closing his eyes, he began to play an achingly beautiful rendition of “Silent Night.”
The sound of a violin so close, so expertly played, brought goose bumps to Heidi’s flesh. Or maybe her reaction was due to the fact that music had halted the hostilities so abruptly. She scrambled to turn off the CD player and the television.
The next song he played was “We Three Kings.” Some people started singing along. When the impromptu concert and singalong continued for a third song, she began to relax again, and retreated to the kitchen, where she found Erica leaning against the fridge. Her eyes were glistening.
“You know what this reminds me of?” Erica asked in a low voice.
Heidi knew. Rue’s kitchen. Before Rue had died, Sassy Spinster Farm had taken in guests who wanted to experience living on a working farm. The house had always been full of music and movies and conversation. Sometimes bitter arguments had cartwheeled into laughter, or dancing.
She went and leaned against the fridge, too. “I love thinking about the summer I spent on the farm. Especially when things are rough here. I envy you having such a great place to call home. You’ve got roots.”
Erica swiped her eyes with her sleeve. “God, I’ve really screwed up.”
Heidi frowned. “Wasn’t your dad in a better mood today?”
“Yeah, he was—but I know he’ll never trust me again. And then, I called Aunt Laura and she wasn’t home, and she never called me back. I guess I really teed her off.”
“Of course you did.” Heidi nudged her with her shoulder. “Everything annoys Laura. Why should you be any different?”
Erica smiled grudgingly and sniffled. “She’s been better lately. She really has. Except for being sick—that’s made her sort of cranky.”
“I’ll bet.”
“I hope she’ll forgive me. I guess I haven’t shown much enthusiasm for Hortense—”
“
Who?
”
“That’s what she calls the baby.”
“She would,” Heidi muttered. “Instead of a college fund, we should set up a therapy fund for that child.”
“But I really am glad for her,” Erica said. “I guess Hortense will seem a lot more interesting to me than Angelica. And Mom would have been so excited, don’t you think? Hortense would have been her niece. She’d want me to do something nice for her—or him, if Hortense turns out to be a he. I wish I’d learned to knit ...”
Heidi gave her a hug. “You can do better than knitting booties. When Hortense is bigger, you can give her rides on Milkshake. And when you’re sixteen and you get your license, you can take her to movies and stuff. It’ll give you a legit excuse to borrow your dad’s car.”
Erica grinned. “Or Laura’s truck.”
“Just think—it’s not that far away. Two years.”
“Two and a half,” Erica said. “I might even have all the money paid back by then.”