Always You (4 page)

John shot off of the bed, took her by the shoulders and steered her into the tiny half bath adjoining the room. He helped her lean over the toilet, and his own internal alarm system flared as he smoothed her hair back from her suddenly sweaty brow.

“It’s just a microchip,” John started. “What’s the big deal?”

Chiara tightly gripped the edge of the pearly pink basin with one hand and bowed her head over it. “No, it’s not. This is bad, John, it’s really bad.”

“I installed it, but I couldn’t read it,” John said lightly. “It’s password protected. No harm, no foul, baby.”

She angrily displayed the microchip. “This is it!” she hissed. “This is the chip that Mr. Grayson is looking for. Zhou took it! And for reasons known only to him, he put it in a place where one of us was sure to find it!” She collapsed onto the lid of the closed toilet and squinted her eyes behind her hand. “What was he thinking?” Tears of confusion and fear burst from her eyes. “What could he have possibly been thinking when he came all the way to St. Louis to bury this chip?”

John quietly dampened a white washcloth with cool water. He used it to mop Chiara’s tears, then her forehead, before he folded the cloth in thirds and laid it across her nape. He leaned against the edge of the basin, his arms loosely folded across his chest, his head lowered in thought. Zhou’s death…Grayson’s internal investigation…Chiara’s distress…a missing microchip…John raised his head and fixed his eyes on Chiara.

“Maybe this was Zhou’s way of telling you that he was in trouble,” John carefully suggested. “Maybe…maybe he knew that his life was in danger.”

Chiara opened her hand once more and looked at the chip. Whatever Zhou’s problem was, Chiara knew that she’d now inherited it.

John left her in the bathroom splashing cold water on her face while he crept downstairs for coffee. By the time he returned, Chiara had calmed and was sitting on the bed. The master chip was back in its envelope and basking in the light of the brass lamp, but Chiara couldn’t seem to take her eyes off it.

John handed her a delicate bone china cup filled to the brim with steaming black coffee. “How did Zhou know about our hidey hole?” he asked, easing onto the bed so as not to make Chiara spill her hot coffee.

“I told him about it ages ago. We got to know each other pretty well during our day-long flights to the Far East.”

“What do master chips do?”

“I don’t know,” she sighed. “We sell the R-GS chips to our clients, then Zhou programs the sales codes for that lot of R-GS chips onto the master. Once the full block of R-GS chips is sold, the master is filled up and Zhou turns it in to Mr. Grayson.”

“So that thing is a form of inventory control?”

Chiara nodded. “I suppose.”

“Zhou hid it in a place you were sure to find it, so he must have meant for you to do something with it.”

Chiara shook her head. “Not me. You. You’re the one in information systems. You’re the computer expert.”

“I tried to install it, Chiara. There’s nothing I or anyone else can do with it unless they know the password to enable the chip. Zhou made a mistake.”

Chiara sipped her coffee, certain that no truer words had ever been said.

“What do you think we should do with it?” John wondered aloud.

“I think we should turn it in to Mr. Grayson when I go back to work next week.”

Something in her voice gave John pause. “What do you
want
to do with it?”

“My partner might have lost his life over that chip. He left it for us to find for a reason. I think we ought to find out what that reason is before we give the chip back to Mr. Grayson.”

Gripping his head in both hands, John leaned back and released a long sigh. “I had a feeling you’d say that.”

* * *

“Mama?”

Chiara quietly closed the front door behind her. Even though her mukluks were totally silent against the thin Persian runner leading from the foyer, she tiptoed, sincerely hoping not to arouse any more attention than necessary from the family and friends remaining in the house.

The house wasn’t as full as it had been earlier when she’d first cased it, and she was thankful. She was even less in a mood for an onslaught of great aunts and unfamiliar family friends than she’d been before.

“Mama?” she dared once more after peeping into the living room and finding it empty, and then veering left at the empty stairwell to enter the abandoned dining room. She paused at the Victorian black pine buffet against the wall adjacent to the swinging door leading into the kitchen. Even though the buffet had been cleared, Chiara could still smell the savory scents of her mother’s cooking in the air. Spice-encrusted eye of round roast, baked chicken with bay leaves and oregano, a baked ham with cloves, pineapple rings, maraschino cherries and her mother’s delicious cinnamon-orange glaze…For the first time since Zhou’s death, Chiara felt the vague rumblings of an appetite.

She gently pushed open the swinging door, willing the old hinges to keep their silence. Abby Winters, her matronly figure dressed in Christmas red, a linen apron embroidered with holly and jingle bells tied about her waist, stood at the sink, her back to the door and Chiara.

She hummed as she rinsed her best bone china plates before arranging them neatly in the lower rack of her big dishwasher. The tune was not one that Chiara recognized, but the warm, melodic sound started a much-needed feeling of security and comfort welling in Chiara’s heart. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the sound of her mother’s voice, the warmth of her embrace. It was all she could do not to tackle Abby and wrestle her into a fierce bear hug.

“Mama,” she said sharply, her nose tingling with the threat of tears.

“What is it, baby?” Abby said casually, turning.

Chiara watched her mother’s eyes. With five daughters, “What is it, baby?” was Abby’s rote response to the sound of the word “Mama.” Chiara always enjoyed the moment of recognition, when Abby actually looked at her and registered who she was.

“Merry Christmas, baby!” Abby squealed. In a flash, she had crossed the kitchen and had tugged Chiara into a tight but soggy embrace. “Oh, I know I’m ruining your big fancy fur coat, but I don’t care,” she exclaimed. “I’m so happy you’re here!”

Chiara was the shortest of Abby’s daughters, but she still had an inch or two over her mother. She allowed her mother to enfold her into her arms and hold her as close to her heart as she could. She breathed deeply of her mother’s rose-scented silvering hair, wallowing in the special treatment she seemed to receive as the baby of the family.

Abby withdrew too soon and took Chiara by her upper arms. “You must be hungry,” she declared. After helping Chiara out of her coat, she scanned her from head to toe. “Oh baby,” she sighed sadly, her shoulders slumping a bit. “You’ve lost so much weight since the last time I saw you.”

Chiara cupped her elbows and lowered her eyes. “I’m fine, Mama. Just a little bit tired.”

“Yes, well, grief can wear you out.” Abby hung Chiara’s coat on a hook mounted on the wall near the back door before seating Chiara on a stool at the butcher-block preparation island in the middle of the kitchen and bustling back to the refrigerator. The stainless steel vault, a recent gift from Kyla and Zweli, was almost as large as those found in restaurants. When Abby swung open the door, Chiara’s eyes widened at the enormous assortment of leftovers arranged on the deep, wide shelves.

“Would you like some ham?” Abby asked, heaving out the gigantic platter before Chiara could answer. “You’re definitely going to have to try some of my winter squash medley. It came out so beautifully. It’s one of Kyla’s recipes, from her cookbook. You have a copy of it, don’t you?”

Chiara nodded. “Kyla gave me one when I was home in June.”

“I gave you what in June?” Kyla said, entering the kitchen from the hallway. She went straight to Chiara and swallowed her up in a hug. “Glad you made it, road runner.” She glanced at the digital clock built into the stove. “And with an hour to spare. I suppose this counts as being home before Christmas.”

Chiara’s eyes slightly narrowed. Of all her sisters, Kyla was the one who continually gave her the hardest time about keeping away from the family so much. Chiara wondered if Kyla ever listened to the pointed comments she made—if she had any idea how they actually sounded to the person she aimed them at.

“I got here as soon as I could,” Chiara said with a defiant tilt of her chin. “I work for a living, you know.”

“So I’ve heard. Mama says that you and Chen Zhou were the top-selling sales duo at United States IntelTechnologies.” Kyla half-heartedly punched the air in a fake salute to her sister’s success. “Gotta peddle those microchips, come hell or high water, I guess.”

At the opposite end of the prep island, Kyla leaned one elegant hand on the butcher-block top. She was gorgeous in a slinky red dress that highlighted her caramel-gold complexion and the best parts of her new figure. The birth of her daughter had given her body a lushness that it had lacked during her days as a struggling actress in California. With the recent success of her cookbook, the birth of her daughter and the post-production work she was doing on her first feature film, Kyla radiated confidence and self-assurance, the two things Chiara suddenly felt herself lacking as she continued to kindle the fight with her sister.

“It must be nice to be able to come home whenever you please,” Chiara said. “Those of us with
real
jobs don’t have that luxury.”

“Zweli and I make the time to be with the people we love,” Kyla said. “Don’t get mad at me because you broke your word to Mama.”

“I didn’t break my word,” Chiara fired back. “I said I’d be home before Christmas, and as you pointed out, Christmas is a good hour away.”

“Now, now, girls.” Abby turned away from the Ziploc bag of dinner rolls she had just opened. “You haven’t been together for two minutes, and you’re already fighting. It’s time you grew out of this constant bickering.”

Scowling sullenly, Chiara reluctantly agreed with Abby. She and Kyla had always been at each other’s throats, usually over nothing. And usually Kyla started the nothing. “I had a funeral to go to,” Chiara put in. “I got here as soon as I could.”

Kyla used an index finger to gracefully tuck a lock of her glossy dark hair behind her right ear. “Mama said that that funeral was on Saturday. That was almost a week ago. You could have come home sooner.”

Chiara pursed her lips. Yes, she could have come home sooner…if she’d felt like being suffocated by questions and concern from her mother and sisters. Chiara suddenly realized that John was lucky. He had only one domineering battleaxe of a mother. Chiara had five.

Blithely chewing the corner of a dinner roll nicked from the plate Abby was preparing for Chiara, Kyla blew her most lethal verbal dart. “I don’t see why you went to Chen Zhou’s funeral. You couldn’t be bothered to come home for Grandma Claire’s.”

Chiara slammed her fists on the butcher block. “Zhou wasn’t just my partner, he was my friend. I don’t have to defend my decision to go to his funeral! As for Grandma Claire,
I couldn’t come home!
” erupted from her with a furious burst of hot tears. “I tried to! I wanted to, but Mr. Grayson wouldn’t let me leave until Zhou and I had signed our new clients, and by the time we were done, it was too late!”

“Why are you bringing that up, Ky?” Abby accused. “That was…” Abby’s mouth went slack. “Good Lord, that was five years ago today, wasn’t it?”

Kyla nodded, her jaw stiff with emotion. “I just think it’s important for us…for
all
of us…to be together at Christmas.”

Chiara angrily swiped at her tears. She was thirty years old, but no matter how old she got, she always felt like a helpless kid around her big sisters. “It’s important to me, too,” she said. “And I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner. I’m sorry I wasn’t here when Grandma Claire passed. I didn’t have much of a choice.”

She bit back a bitter laugh. Her final statement perfectly summed up her experience working for USITI. She had never felt threatened, exactly, but she’d always felt pressured to place the job above all else. She hadn’t minded because she’d always been able to balance the pressure against her level of success. She’d enjoyed the travel and knowing that she was the best at what she did. Above all else, USITI had given her the chance to thrive well out of the bright light cast by her overachieving big sisters. But as she stood facing off against Kyla, her longest and most beloved adversary, Chiara wished that she’d found her spotlight a little closer to home.

Abby rushed to Chiara and crushed her into a hug. As though she was five years old again and crying over a skinned knee, Chiara clung to her mother and sobbed, her petite frame shaking.

“Baby?” Abby questioned, her concern evident in her voice. “Oh my Lord, child, what’s gotten into you?”

“Guilt, probably,” Kyla muttered.

“Would you just shut the hell up?” Chiara shouted in a wet spray of tears.

“Hey, ladies, what’s going on in here?” Zweli Randall, Kyla’s husband, hurried into the kitchen. “I just got the baby down and I’d like her to get a good night’s sleep. She’s going to need it tomorrow for her first Christ—” He spotted Chiara, who raised her face from her mother’s shoulder.

“Hey, Zweli,” Chiara said, drying her eyes on Abby’s shoulder.

“Chiara,” Zweli greeted warmly, stealing her away from Abby to give her a long, tight squeeze. He pressed a loud kiss to her forehead. “Good to see you, baby sister.”

“At least one Randall is glad to see me.” She shot a dark look around Zweli at Kyla.

He released her and stood between the two sisters like a referee, a very well dressed one, Chiara noted. Zweli wore his holiday finest, a pair of sleek trousers in grey worsted wool belted at his trim waist, and a crisp white shirt of Egyptian cotton so fine it looked like silk. He no longer had his stubby dreadlocks, and instead wore his hair in a longish but well-kept wavy afro. His green eyes sparkled as he looked from Chiara to Kyla.

“I’m glad to see you, Chi,” Kyla said. “That’s the whole point. I’d like to see you more frequently. You said you were moving home ages ago, and you still haven’t done it.”