Father Christmas (17 page)

But if she made a habit of staying away from
the front desk, she would be unavailable for other parents who
liked to talk to her and hear about how their children were
progressing. And even if she could elude John for the entire week,
he might show up Saturday at her Daddy School class.

Not
likely
, she thought with a
snort.

It wasn’t like her to hide from
situations—or from people. She hated lying, or lying low. It simply
wasn’t her style.

Damn it, she wasn’t going to act as if she
were afraid of John Russo. Maybe he was afraid of her, but for
heaven’s sake, he was a cop. He was the one with the gun. What
could she possibly do to him, besides remind him that one time in
his too-constricted life he’d cut loose and had fun and kissed
Molly?

Her dentist found no cavities on Tuesday, so
Molly had no reason to return to the dental clinic Wednesday. She
took her station at the front desk in the morning, but when she
heard Michael enter, she gravitated toward the supply room, where
she remained for a safe ten minutes. If John had wanted to talk to
her, he could have marched right past her desk and into the supply
room, the way he had the first day he’d come to the Children’s
Garden. But if he’d entered the building at all, he left it without
making his presence known.

She managed to keep him away from the
forefront of her mind most of the day. The school was busy and
noisy. Swirls of snow descended from the sky and dusted the
backyard play area, forcing teachers to cancel their usual outdoor
activities. Cooped up inside, the children grew rowdy and restless.
The staff needed Molly’s help in keeping everyone occupied and out
of trouble. She organized the pre-K class to script and stage a
puppet show for the younger students. She opened and mopped up
several quarts of finger paint for the older toddlers, put together
a potty-training clinic for the young toddlers, and led circle
games for the tiny tots until her hands were sore from clapping and
her voice was faded from singing.

“
I’ve got to leave,” Cara
told her at five-thirty. “I promised to take my sister to the mall
for Christmas shopping tonight.”

“
Go ahead,” Molly
dismissed her. “Let me know if they’ve got any good sales.” She
watched her assistant zip up her parka, lift the hood over her hair
and set out into the snow. Only about an inch had accumulated. The
roads wouldn’t be bad.

Even with the roads cleared, though, Molly
was anxious to leave. She didn’t want to be around when John showed
up.

Unable to abandon her post by the front
door, she straightened out her desk, turned off her computer
rehearsed what she hoped was a non-threatening smile. When Elsie
Pelham came in, Abigail was so full of exuberant chatter about the
snow that her mother didn’t have a chance to vent about her custody
battle. Other mothers and fathers came and went. Each time the
front door opened, Molly’s heart lurched a little, then settled
back into its rhythm when she saw that the person entering wasn’t
John.

She waved off Keisha and her father, then
checked her watch. Six fifteen. No sign of John.

Shannon emerged down the hall with Michael.
“Everyone else is gone,” Shannon reported. “Do you want to stay
with him till his dad comes, or should I?”

“
I’ll stay,” Molly said.
She might as well see John and get it over with. It wouldn’t be so
bad, since they’d have Michael between them. They’d be so busy
wrestling him into his boots and jacket and mittens, they wouldn’t
have time to talk to each other. She wouldn’t have a chance to gaze
into his eyes. She wouldn’t have the chance to decipher his
smile—if he was smiling, which wasn’t likely.

Six twenty. Michael sat on the floor of the
hall, engaged in a fight to the death with his boots. He’d gotten
one boot halfway onto his left foot before giving up and attempting
to wriggle the other boot onto his right. Molly peeked past the
front door into the parking lot but saw no approaching
headlights.

“
Let me help you with
those boots,” she suggested.

“
My daddy’s
here?”

“
Not yet.”

“
My daddy’s a
police.”

“
I know that,” she said,
kneeling on the floor next to Michael and easing the boot over his
heel.

“
He’s at the policeman
place.”

“
I’m sure he is. He’ll be
here soon.”

“
We can go
there.”

“
I don’t know about that,”
said Molly. “If we go there while he’s on his way here, we’ll miss
him.”

“
He’s at the policeman
place,” Michael insisted.

“
I tell you what: I’ll
give the policeman place a call and see if he’s still
there.”

Michael followed her into the office area,
his boots clomping loudly with each step. Little boys had a way of
walking to maximize noise, and Michael proved himself to be an
expert at it. He looked so much like his father, yet in behavior he
was the opposite—loud, rambunctious, uninhibited and easily given
to laughter or tears.

While Molly looked up John’s business phone
number in Michael’s file, Michael experimented with jumping in his
boots. They made a clumsy galumphing noise which obviously pleased
him. He jumped again and squealed.

“
Quiet, please,” Molly
whispered as the phone was answered on the other end, a
weary-sounding woman identifying Arlington Police headquarters.
“Can I have John Russo’s line, please?”

She heard a click, then five rings, and then
John’s voice on a tape, saying he was away from his desk and she
could either leave a message after the beep or remain on the line.
She remained on the line.

After a minute, the woman who’d originally
answered the call said, “Arlington Police Headquarters. This call
is being recorded. Can I help you?”

Molly identified herself. “I’m trying to
find out if Detective Russo has left for the day. I have his son
here at my preschool, and it’s now—” she checked her watch and
scowled “a half hour past pick-up time.”

“
Hang on a second,” the
woman said. Judging from the muffled sound, Molly assumed she’d
covered the mouthpiece with her hand before shouting, “Hey, Steve,
you know John Russo’s car?” There was a pause, and then, “Is it
still in the lot?” Another pause, and the woman spoke back into the
phone. “His car is still in the lot, so I guess he’s still here. He
must just be away from his desk.”

“
Can you give him a
message?” Molly asked, following Michael’s clomping dance around
the office with her gaze. “Tell him to stay put. I’ll drive his son
to the police station.”

“
Okay. I’ll leave a
message.”

“
Thanks.” Molly hung up
the phone and smiled at Michael. “You were right. Your daddy’s at
the policeman place. Let’s go.”

***

THE SNOW WAS WET, and the ground was warm
enough to keep it from sticking. The roads glistened, but they
weren’t dangerously slick. Molly clicked on her windshield wipers,
and Michael burst into his version of “The Wheels on the Bus” once
more, crooning gleefully about wet-wipes going swish, swish,
swish.

“
Do you like snow?” she
asked, glimpsing him in her rear-view mirror. The school kept spare
child booster seats on hand, and she’d strapped him into the middle
rear seat of her Saturn.

“
I like snow,” he told
her. “It’s big and cold and you can make snowmen.”

“
Well, this snow looks
pretty slushy. I don’t know if you’ll be able to make a snowman
with it.”

“
I can make a
snowball.”

“
I bet you could do that.”
She turned the corner. Rush hour was winding down, but there was
still a fair amount of downtown traffic. Headlights reflected off
the streets and glared into her eyes.

Why hadn’t John picked up Michael? He’d
never before neglected to pick his son up on time. If he was
running late today, why hadn’t he at least called to let Molly
know? Did he really hate her that much?

Who cared if he did? He knew the school
rules, and he would be the first to describe himself as responsible
to a fault. Something must have happened, some involved case. Maybe
he was locked inside an interrogation room, breaking down a
suspect, making the poor guy sweat and squirm. Maybe the suspect
was about to spill the beans, and John didn’t want to halt the
interrogation when he was so close to a breakthrough. Maybe he was
flashing his gun under the guy’s nose, flashing his badge, rattling
the keys to a jail cell. Maybe he was throwing around his weight as
a police officer, intimidating someone, abusing his power.

And maybe she shouldn’t listen to Gail so
much.

They reached the police station, parked in
one of the spaces marked for visitors, and entered the sprawling
lobby. A seven-foot-tall spruce stood on one side of the room.
Michael let out a cheer and raced over to it, suddenly agile and
quick in his boots. “A tree, a tree! A Christmas tree!”

Molly smiled and let him dance around the
tree for a minute. It was adorned with flashing colored lights and
ribbon-wrapped Styrofoam balls. Across the vaulted lobby stood a
huge menorah topped with nine flame-shaped red light bulbs, none of
them yet lit.

“
Come on, Michael,” she
said when it seemed he wasn’t going to leave the tree without
urging. “Let’s go find your daddy.”

“
A Christmas tree,” he
explained to her, slipping his small, mittened hand into hers and
letting her lead him away. “Santa Claus leaves presents under the
tree. He comes down the chimbley.”

“
Chimney,” she corrected
him. “That’s right.”

“
Where’s the chimbley
here? They got a chimbley in the policeman place?”

“
Sure they do.”

“
And a fireplace? Gotta
have a fireplace. Santa comes down the chimbley to the
fireplace.”

“
I don’t know if they have
one of those,” Molly said, leading Michael over to a broad counter
behind which officers and dispatchers swarmed. “But Santa knows how
to get into buildings even if they don’t have fireplaces. He’s very
clever.”

Michael nodded in agreement. “He’s smart. He
gives children toys.”

Molly suppressed a laugh as she crossed the
lobby to the counter and caught the eye of a uniformed woman on the
other side. “Excuse me—where can we find John Russo? He’s a
detective here.”

“
Russo? Up one flight of
stairs and turn left.”

Molly thanked her. Still holding Michael’s
hand, she headed for the stairs. A slow anger began to simmer
inside her. John should have called the school. He should have been
as responsible today as he always was. He shouldn’t have neglected
his child, even though Michael was too excited about this new
adventure—driving in the school director’s car to the police
station at night, seeing snow, seeing a Christmas tree—to care much
about his father’s oversight. Molly cared. And her anger built.

They reached the landing and she turned
right, entering a small squad room with six desks occupying the
cramped space and a glass-walled office overlooking it. No one was
in the squad room. She ventured in, thinking that if she could
figure out which desk was John’s, she could leave him a scathing
note about his carelessness toward his son. Before she could locate
the desk, the door to the glassed-walled office opened and a man
emerged. He was of average height, his chin softened by age. “Can I
help you?” he asked, peering at her through thick eyeglasses.

“
I’m looking for John
Russo. I’m Molly Saunders, the director of the preschool where his
son Michael is a student.”

The man looked troubled. “Didn’t they call
you? Someone was supposed to call you.”

Molly’s anger was doused by a shower of icy
fear, colder than the snow falling outside. “No one called me.”

“
He—uh...” The man glanced
toward Michael, then wove among the desks to Molly’s side, so he
could speak in a softer voice. “I’m Lieutenant Coffey,” he
identified himself. “John ran into a bit of trouble today. He’s at
Arlington Memorial Hospital.”

“
Oh, my God.” The words
emerged in a quiet rush, and she instinctively tightened her grip
on Michael’s hand. She responded to the lieutenant’s words not as a
teacher but as John’s friend, someone who cared about him and his
child. “Is he all right? What happened?”

“
Well...” He sighed. “He
brought down a perp. Unfortunately, the perp had a
knife.”

“
Oh, my God,” she said
again, only this time she scarcely had the breath to pronounce the
words.

“
He was taken directly to
Arlington Memorial, and he told one of the uniforms at the scene to
make sure someone called his son’s preschool. But with one thing
and another...” Lieutenant Coffey sighed again and lowered his
eyes. “I guess it slipped past us. I’m sorry.” He glanced down at
Michael again.

Michael’s wide, dark eyes focused on
Lieutenant Coffey and then on Molly. He looked worried. He couldn’t
have understood everything the man had said, but he understood
enough to know something terrible was going on. “I want Daddy,” he
said in a tremulous voice.”

“
I know you do.” Molly
staggered through her thoughts, trying to construct a plan of
action. If she brought Michael to the hospital, he would be with
his father. But what if his father had been gravely injured? What
if he was right this minute in intensive care, plugged in to tubes
and monitors, fighting for his life?