Twin Threat Christmas (15 page)

SIX

A
lyssa was innocent.

Chris realized it all at once. He’d mostly thought it already, but the fact that she hadn’t wanted him to see inside her studio had rankled him, a nugget of doubt he couldn’t ignore.

But now he understood why she didn’t want him to see. Unlike the commercial statues that crowded her sale yard, the statuary in this room was art. More than that, it was deeply personal. The room was filled with pieces that had been carved from concrete, apparently when it was in a partially dry state.

There was a statue of Vanessa and Alyssa as little girls, hand in hand. Another of them as teens, half facing one another as if through a mirror, though the girl on one side had turned away and was leaving, and the other looked after her, fingers grasping, unable to reach her, an expression of grief on her face. There were statues of an old man who must have been their grandfather, statues of abstract forms bending like light rays, a couple with two little girls, more statues than he could see or identify.

One caught his eye in particular. A young woman, probably Alyssa or Vanessa, sitting alone, hugging herself, her expression lonely and despairing.

Chris didn’t know what to say. He cleared his throat. “These are amazing.” He took a step toward a figure that was Alyssa or her sister. “Beautiful.”

“See any sign of the smugglers?” Alyssa asked.

“Hmm?” Chris glanced around the room but saw only art. No, Alyssa hadn’t been smuggling anything out of this room. The only reason she hadn’t wanted him to see was because this room was full of her art. More than her art, it contained her heart, her deepest joys and disappointments, a side of her he doubted she let many see. “No, no sign of smugglers.”

“But you didn’t really look. You just— You— Oh.”

Still captured by the amazing artwork around him, it took Chris a second to turn back to Alyssa. By the time he saw her face, it was too late for him to explain away what she’d clearly already realized.

* * *

Alyssa glared at Chris. He thought she’d been smuggling the drugs, didn’t he? That was why he’d wanted to take a look around, why he was so interested in what was behind the door. He thought she was a criminal?

It made her feel sick. Worse than that, betrayed. She’d let him see inside her studio. She’d trusted him—maybe even started to think she ought to see more of him. Now she never wanted to see him again. “You need to go. Now.”

“I found heroin in your statuary. I’m not going anywhere.”

As the meaning of his words sank in, Alyssa felt her heart begin to pound so furiously, she feared it might wake the baby. The drugs were on her property. She couldn’t prove they weren’t hers. If she went to jail, what would happen to her nephew? What if Vanessa came back for him and he wasn’t here?

Alyssa took a deep breath and tried to think. She felt light-headed. It had been hours since she’d had anything to eat or drink, just that one cookie, and she’d only had a bit of sleep. But what could she say that would convince him of her innocence? The intruders hadn’t left behind any evidence that they’d been there—nothing but the drugs in her statue.

Chris spoke first. “Was the door unlocked when the intruders came in?”

“Yes. I was in here working. Then I sat down with the baby. I didn’t realize I was going to fall asleep.”

“Do you usually leave it unlocked?”

“During the daytime, yes, but then I’m coming and going all day long. Nobody could get in here without me noticing. And besides, I do most of my pours late in the day so they can dry overnight. And I lock my building at night.”

“Always?”

“Yes.”

“Your locks look as though they haven’t been changed in a long time. Are there any keys to the locks unaccounted for?”

Alyssa closed her eyes and exhaled slowly, gathering strength to speak. “My sister had a set.”

“Did her keys disappear with her?”

“Yes.”

“So you had keys unaccounted for to your workshop—and your house?”

“Yes.”

“And you never changed the locks? Whenever you have keys unaccounted for, you’re supposed to change the locks.”

Alyssa had wanted Chris to leave the moment she’d realized he suspected her of smuggling drugs. Now she wished even more that he was gone, that she didn’t have to explain. “My sister had her keys with her the night she disappeared. How could I ever change the locks? What if she came back and needed in? I can’t leave, you know. I can’t sell this place and go away to art school to learn how to become a real sculptor. I have to be here for her.” She hugged the baby closer. “She’s coming back. She left her baby here. I’m not changing the locks, not until I can give her the new key.”

At some point, as she was talking, the baby had begun to squirm. It wasn’t until Alyssa gulped in air, trying to keep her emotions under control, that she realized her nephew was waking up. He wriggled in her arms. She moved to wipe her eyes.

Chris reached out a hand to help.

She wavered indecisively. Who was this man, this police officer, she’d come to trust so quickly? He wasn’t really trustworthy, was he? He didn’t trust her. He thought she was working with the smugglers. Was he the same guy who’d been driving past her place every half hour for the past year or two? Undoubtedly.

She wished he’d never come here at all.

And yet, as the baby squirmed against her, she realized she needed Chris’s help. It wasn’t something she wanted to need, but that didn’t change the fact that he knew more about the baby, more about the smugglers and drugs, more about all the craziness in her life than she did right now. For all the things she’d handled alone in the past six years since her grandfather’s death—bills, taxes, funeral expenses, even loneliness itself—this was a battle she sensed she couldn’t fight alone.

Chris met her eyes with an uncertain understanding that mirrored what she felt. He didn’t know a whole lot about what was going on, either, did he? But he knew more than she did, and he was willing to help. It occurred to her that perhaps she ought to feel grateful, though she hated to think about what he’d suspected her of doing.

Alyssa stepped forward, unsure if Chris was offering to take the baby or if he simply knew of some way to quiet the child. His arm curled around the baby’s back, and his hand landed on her shoulder.

His touch had an immediate soothing effect on the baby, who’d turned his head the other direction and now seemed prepared to fall back to sleep. Alyssa froze half tucked into Chris’s embrace, unwilling to move for fear of reawakening the baby. She’d had too much trouble getting him to calm down the last time and was in no state to figure out his cryptic baby ways if he started wailing again.

“Shh,” Chris soothed, the sound hardly more than a breath. His face hovered just above the baby’s, mere inches from hers. “Shh.”

Alyssa wanted to believe he was making the sound for her nephew’s benefit, but it had a soothing effect on her, as well. She drew in a long breath and felt her shoulders relax even as she detected the masculine scent of Chris’s shampoo or aftershave, or whatever it was. She drew in another breath. The scent was faint but attractive.

She didn’t want him to step away or let go of them. Everything felt out of control. She didn’t think she could trust Chris, but nonetheless, it was comforting to stand there with him, with his strong arms hugging both her and the baby, like the family she’d lost too many times—first her parents, then her grandmother, her sister and finally her grandfather, until she was the only one left, as cold and unfeeling as the statues in her yard.

Chris’s embrace made her feel human again, part of the world of people who lived and breathed, unlike the frozen concrete forms who made up her family most days.

“I believe you,” he said in a tiny whisper, the words too faint to disturb the baby. “I believe someone has been planting drugs in your statues, but we need to catch them.”

Still wary after the way he’d looked at her so accusingly not moments before, Alyssa wasn’t sure if he meant the words or was only pretending to be on her side in order to get her to open up and tell him more.

She wanted him to believe her, wanted him to wrap his strong arms tighter around her and tell her everything was going to be okay. But everything had not been okay for the past eight years, so why should she allow herself to hope things would be different now?

Alyssa looked down at the downy-soft hair of the baby she and Chris held between them, and she knew why she dared to hope. Because of this child, this baby she’d found in her manger. Because of him, she knew her sister was alive.

Looking up from the baby, she allowed herself to study Chris’s face. He said he believed her. Looking into his eyes now, she believed him. Was he really on her side? She wanted him to be, wanted it so much it frightened her. Would it be crazy to trust him?

Maybe. But since she was truly innocent of any knowledge of the drugs, she figured she might as well tell him what she knew. Surely it would only help.

Too bad she didn’t know much. “The little lambs are my bestselling items. It was an original design of mine—I cast the molds over a sculpture I made—I just figured people really liked it. But if they’ve been using them to smuggle drugs...well, I guess that explains why it sells so well.”

“Do you have a record of who you’ve sold them to?”

“Not cash purchases, but I have the invoices for all the orders that came in from my website on my computer. But I can remember some of the local people who have bought a lot of the lamb statues with cash. I don’t have records that prove they bought them, but if it would help just to know their names—”

“It would help,” Chris insisted, still whispering quietly, still holding her and the baby. “Not everyone who bought the statues was necessarily smuggling drugs, but they’re all worth looking into.”

“Do you think so? I’ve had dozens of lamb statues stolen during the night before. Why would they buy them when they could just steal them?”

“Given the street value of those drugs, the cost of the statue is nothing to them. It was probably a question of which was easiest—buying during the day, stealing them at night. I suppose, once they realized you hadn’t reported the crime, they figured stealing them was easier—no paper trail, no face to recognize from a cash sale. Maybe they thought they’d bought too many in person, and you might get suspicious.”

“That makes sense,” Alyssa admitted, mentally compiling a list of those who’d purchased the statues with cash over the past few years. “Dorothy Farris has bought several over the years, but she told me they were for her grandchildren.”

“She doesn’t strike me as the type who’d smuggle drugs,” Chris admitted, “but you never can tell about people.”

“Let’s see, also Doug Larson, Marjorie Flint, Kathy Williams.” She paused to sigh. “None of these people strike me as drug dealers.” Then she laughed. “Oh, and Dick Edwards, the former police captain. I don’t think any of them sound suspicious at all.”

“Considering that they’ve probably been at it for years without getting caught, my guess is they’re not going to be who you’d expect. They have a cover that works.”

“You’re probably right. I’ll look over my shipping invoices and see if there are any repeat buyers.”

“Do you have any record of when the other statues were stolen? Maybe we could find a pattern?”

“I noted the loss for tax purposes.”

“I wish you’d filed a report.”

Alyssa sighed. She couldn’t go back in time and change her choice, but she could help Chris understand why she’d made it. “I didn’t want to get the police involved. When my sister went missing, they seemed to think maybe I or my grandfather had done something to make her run away. They treated us like we’d done something wrong. And they never found her. So I didn’t figure it would be worth the trouble to report anything.”

Chris stayed silent, and Alyssa risked looking up from her nephew’s sleeping face to try to see what Chris was thinking. She hadn’t realized his face was so close to hers. He looked angry.

“I’m sorry,” she added, hoping to appease him.

“No, I’m sorry,” he told her flatly. “I wasn’t part of that area of the investigation, but I was on the force when your sister went missing. They shouldn’t have treated you like that. There are a lot of things I would have done differently if I was in charge of the investigation, like grilling all the people who were at The Flaming Pheasant that night to see if they noticed anything out of the ordinary. They interviewed everyone, of course, but I wanted to go deeper, ask more questions—who had she been talking to, each day, every day before she disappeared? But when I brought it up, they told me not to—that I might throw off the investigation. I was new on the force and did what I was told, but in retrospect, I wish I’d trusted my gut.”

Alyssa had done a good job holding back tears so far, but hearing his words and the regret in his voice, she felt her emotions getting the best of her. Rather than let him see, she took a step away, out of the warmth of his arms, and headed for the door from her studio to the main workshop.

She stepped through the doorway of her small art studio, around the chair, past the large shelving units that had blocked the main workshop from their view while they’d been in the studio, and froze. “Oh!”

Chris was one step behind her and clearly saw what she’d seen. “No.” His voice fell. “No.”

All the lamb molds that had been sitting on the counter, as well as the packet of heroin Chris had dug out and placed on the counter, were gone.

SEVEN

C
hris sidestepped Alyssa on his way across the room, evaluating the empty countertop in a sweeping glance. Everything was gone except the mold he’d removed the heroin from. He turned to the door, which was still open, just as he’d left it when he’d burst in to make sure Alyssa and the baby were okay.

“I’m going to look outside.”

“Are you sure it’s safe? They had a gun.”

Chris could have screamed with frustration. At the very least, he should have held on to the packet of heroin, but he hadn’t wanted to touch it for fear of wiping out any residual fingerprints.

Now it was gone. In a flash, he realized his mistake. The guys had only just left when he arrived, but he hadn’t seen any car lights. They hadn’t ever really left, had they? They’d just ducked out and stuck around to watch what happened when Chris showed up moments later. And since Chris had left the door open, they’d had no trouble seeing everything. They’d probably watched him fish the drugs out of the mold, then waited and slipped in to grab it while he and Alyssa were in the studio with the baby.

If he hadn’t been so suspicious of Alyssa, so eager to see what was behind the little door, he’d have taken her claims about the intruders more seriously. But he hadn’t trusted her until he’d stepped out of the room, turning his back on the evidence.

And since he wasn’t on duty anymore, he wasn’t wearing his body armor. He pulled the gun from his ankle holster, aware it was his only defense. Going outside would be dangerous.

But letting the smugglers run free wasn’t an option.

“I’m just going to take a look around.” He darted outside, gun up and ready. The darkness and the shadows made it difficult to see anything, but he knew one thing. Alyssa had said there were two guys. And five statues, complete with bulky molds, had gone missing. Besides being heavy concrete, they were close to two feet across in their longest direction. The smugglers wouldn’t get far carrying them on foot.

They had to have a car somewhere. He ran for the road, looking up and down in both directions, gritting his teeth as he realized Alyssa lived in just enough of a valley that the hills on either side quickly blocked his view of the road.

They could have gone in any direction.

Or they could still be hiding out. The cluttered yard of concrete statues provided unlimited hiding places. Chris would have to walk up and down between all the statues in an attempt to find them—and in the dark, they could dart out of sight and hide elsewhere when he wasn’t looking.

He pulled out his phone and called the police station, quickly relaying his location and the situation.

“Mitch is on patrol. I’ll send him over.”

Relieved to know he’d have an armed officer on his side in a few moments, Chris took another look around the yard. The smugglers could be anywhere nearby, waiting to eliminate Alyssa. If they realized she’d seen them, even in the dark, she could be in even bigger danger.

Chris ran back into the workshop, relieved when he saw Alyssa was okay, although the baby was crying again.

“Did I wake him up?” Chris realized he hadn’t been very quiet at all. He’d been too upset that the evidence was missing.

“Do you think he wants another bottle?”

“It would probably help.”

Chris escorted her back to the house, determined to check all the rooms to be sure no one was hiding inside. Fortunately, the cottage was tiny. There weren’t many places anyone could hide. The fact only made him feel a tiny bit better.

Halfway through his search, the police cruiser arrived.

“What’s that?” Alyssa looked up, startled, from preparing a bottle, as bright headlights pierced the windows.

“I called for reinforcements.” Chris realized he should have mentioned the fact already, or perhaps even consulted Alyssa, since it was her property, but the baby was still crying, and it was difficult to talk. He ran outside to meet Mitch and let him know what they were looking for.

Then, while the officer performed a thorough search of the property, Chris went back inside. Alyssa had the bottle ready, and the baby quieted down to eat.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was calling for backup. I just reacted. Two guys with guns—they outnumber us, and we don’t know where they are.”

“You did the right thing.” Alyssa blinked rapidly as she looked down at her nephew, who was contentedly sucking the bottle. “I should have called when my statues went missing. Maybe we could have avoided all this.”

“I understand why you didn’t call.” Chris cleared his throat. “I shouldn’t have turned my back on the drugs we pulled from the statues. Now all the evidence is gone.”

“If you hold the baby for me, I can pull up those files of orders. Maybe that will give us a clue.”

Chris agreed readily. While Alyssa coaxed her aging computer to life, Chris stood, holding the baby and reading over her shoulder.

“I’ll sort by item number,” Alyssa explained once the order spreadsheet was open on the screen. Then she highlighted all the orders that contained the lamb and copied them to another page before printing off a couple of copies. “This way we can both look at it and underline orders from the same place.”

Even before the pages emerged from the printer, Chris spotted several towns with multiple orders in Wisconsin. “Lake Geneva, Como, Delavan, Elkhorn. Can you open up a map of Wisconsin?”

Alyssa opened another tab and zoomed in on a cluster of lakes and golf courses hardly ten miles north of them, across the state line, in Wisconsin. All the little towns were within a mile or two of one another.

“I had vaguely realized I’d sent more than one order to this area,” Alyssa admitted. “I just figured someone had seen my statues in a friend’s yard and wanted one of their own. But obviously it wasn’t my statue they were interested in. Still, they all shipped to different people, and the billing addresses match the shipping addresses. Do you really think there are that many different people involved?”

“Could be—but I doubt they’d want their names all over it. No, I’d say more than likely somebody just has a bunch of friends. All a guy would have to do is ask his golfing buddy to place an order for him, say it’s a surprise gift and he doesn’t want the wife to see it on the credit-card statement. He hands his friend cash, takes the statues and successfully dodges the paper trail.” He’d recently heard about someone who’d moved up to Lake Geneva. While Chris explained the theory, he tried to remember. Who had it been? Before he could recall the name, Alyssa spoke.

“It makes me want to look up the people who ordered and ask them who the statues were for.” She took the baby from him and leaned him against her shoulder again, burping him after his bottle.

“That might not be a bad idea. The only downside is, if they talk to the smuggler—or worse yet, if one of them is the smuggler—then you’ve tipped him off that you’re on his trail. If he goes into hiding, we might never catch him.”

Loud rapping echoed from the back door, and Mitch let himself inside. “The yard looks clear,” his colleague announced. “No sign of anybody. Now explain about the missing heroin?” Mitch scratched the balding area where his hair used to be.

Chris filled him in on the drugs he’d found, including his suspicions about connections to the drug residue found on the statuary fragments in Pennsylvania. Mitch narrowed his eyes and looked concerned but didn’t appear to be too surprised. Mitch wasn’t surprised by much. He’d joined the force less than a year ago after working in law enforcement in Chicago and had mentioned before how much more laid-back life was in their small town.

As Chris wrapped up his explanation, showing Mitch the printed spreadsheets of Alyssa’s order history, he remembered who’d moved to Lake Geneva. “You started on the force before Dick Edwards retired, didn’t you, Mitch?”

“That’s right.”

“Doesn’t he have a cabin in the Lake Geneva area?”

“Lots of folks do.”

But now that he’d remembered, Chris was almost certain the recollection was correct. “Doesn’t that seem like an odd coincidence?”

“Maybe. I need to get going. Can I talk to you alone for a moment?” Mitch headed toward the door.

Chris followed him out, glancing around the yard, wishing he could see something that would answer his many questions.

“Don’t mess with Dick Edwards,” Mitch told him bluntly once they were outside. “You don’t want to get in over your head.” The officer gave him a sharp look, then hopped into his patrol car and drove away.

The words churned uneasily in Chris’s stomach as he went back inside and joined Alyssa.

She stood in the kitchen, the baby still fussing on her shoulder, though his cries weren’t nearly so loud now, after the bottle. “He took my spreadsheets.”

“Mitch took your spreadsheets?” Chris clarified, realizing then that he’d shown them to the officer, but hadn’t intended to part with them. “As evidence?”

“I guess. But he didn’t seem to think much of our theories.”

Chris debated telling her what Mitch had said. He didn’t want to worry her. But then, he got the sense she’d want to know. And maybe she’d have an insight into what was up.

“Mitch said something when we went outside. He told me not to mess with Dick Edwards—that I don’t want to get in over my head.”

“In over your head? Because he’s a former captain?”

“He’s retired now. He doesn’t have any authority over me, other than maybe influence with the current captains and chief.”

Alyssa continued to bob slowly up and down with the baby, who didn’t seem happy, perhaps because he missed his mother. “How long has Edwards been retired?”

“Less than a year. Maybe six months.”

“And these orders go back a few years.” Alyssa looked at the last remaining spreadsheet. “How long has he had a cabin up there?”

“I didn’t hear anything about it until his retirement, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t had a vacation home up there, maybe even for years. What are you thinking?”

“Do you think maybe he knows about the statues and the drugs? Maybe he’s trying to track them down, too.”

Chris nodded slowly, analyzing the idea with the other facts he knew. “I first saw the story about the statues well over a year ago, before Edwards’s retirement. He surely saw the same story. And you said he’s bought statues from you? When was that?”

“I can’t remember, exactly. They were cash purchases, so I don’t have a record of the buyer’s information, but it had to have been months ago, at least. Maybe a year or more. Do you think he bought them because he saw the story?”

“It’s certainly possible.” But Chris wasn’t sure how to reconcile that information with what Mitch had said. “But why would Mitch tell me to stay away from him?”

Alyssa bobbed silently for a few more minutes, her expression puzzled, offering the baby his pacifier in an attempt to get him to settle down and fall back to sleep. She caught Chris off guard when she asked, “Is there a reward?”

“Hmm?”

“For catching the smugglers?”

“A pretty-good-size reward.”

“Maybe Mitch is working with Dick Edwards.”

Chris laughed at the thought. “Mitch and Edwards never got along. In fact, I was pretty relieved when Edwards retired, because those two had snapped at each other so many times, I was afraid they might take a swing at each other.”

“Hmm.” Alyssa rubbed her eyes with one hand, holding the baby with the other. “Maybe Mitch is working with the smugglers.”

“What?”

“You said it had to be a good cover—that it would be someone we wouldn’t expect.”

But Chris was more concerned with the exhausted circles under Alyssa’s eyes than he was with her theories, at this point. And more than either of those things, he was concerned for her ongoing safety. “You need your sleep. Why don’t I take the baby while you go to bed? If you hurry, you might be able to get a few hours of sleep before morning.”

Alyssa looked as if she wanted to protest, but when Chris reached for the baby, she handed him over, then rolled her head back. “I was getting a bad kink in my neck. That feels better. But I can’t let you—”

“Go. Sleep. You’ll be no good to anyone if you don’t get some sleep.”

“But what about you?”

“Is that chair a recliner?” He pointed to an aging afghan-covered seat in the corner.

“Yes.”

“If the baby will let me sit still, I’ll sleep in the recliner.”

“I can sleep in the recliner with him. You can go home—”

“If I go anywhere, it will be out to my Jeep to watch over this place, but I’d rather be inside. The closer I am to you, the better I can protect you. The woods are too thick around here. Somebody could sneak up from any direction.” Chris saw the fear that leaped to Alyssa’s eyes and realized he’d made his explanation a bit too bluntly. “Not that they’re going to, but I don’t want to take any chances.” He hung his head, wondering if he was making things better or worse. “You go get your sleep, okay?”

When Alyssa finally relented and shuffled off to her room, Chris watched her go. He stared at her closed door a few moments until the baby demanded his attention. Who was this woman who’d been making such art on the edge of town for so long, without his even realizing it? He’d been so worried about what illegal activities she might be engaged in that he hadn’t ever really looked at
her,
hadn’t ever really seen her.

Now that he’d met her and gotten to know her, he knew a few things for certain. He should have met her sooner. He should have been watching out for her, protecting her, instead of being suspicious of her. One way or another, he had to keep her safe. The smugglers had to be stopped, locked away where they could never bother Alyssa again.

And he knew one other thing.

He didn’t want to go back to not having her in his life.