Keepsake (13 page)

He thumped another wad of dough on the board and said, "I guess I'll have to reopen it on my own."

"Oh, Quinn—is that a good idea? You run the risk of alienating everyone in town."

"Including your parents, of course," he said, giving her a level look.

"Obviously. But that's not why I wish you wouldn't pursue this. The reason is—" She bit her lip, unwilling to trust those haphazard instincts of hers. "It's because
..."

He was waiting for her answer now. His green eyes were alight with curiosity: What dumb thing was she about to say
this
time?

It made Olivia veer away from the truth—that she thought they really might be able to have something together, if only he treaded gingerly and let people get to know him better.

But there was another truth, and it was nearly as compelling to her as the one she was afraid to say out loud. She looked him straight in the eye and said, "There's something unseemly about hurting innocent people to satisfy your own selfish needs."

That
got his attention. He wiped his hands on the dish towel that was jammed in his jeans, then tossed it on the table and walked over to her. Without the towel tucked in his waist, he didn't look so warm and friendly anymore. He looked big and strong and way too threatening.

She winced, afraid that he was going to boot her out of his kitchen. But that, apparently, was not on his mind as he caught her upper arm and brought his face within Tic Tac distance of hers.

"Listen to me, Miss Bennett. There was nothing
seemly
about having to skulk off with my father in the middle of the night. There was nothing
seemly
about changing over to my middle name and putting up with an itchy beard to hide my face. There was nothing
seemly
about runni
ng like a bat out of hell from a situation when my father could have—should have—been honored as a hero. There was nothing—"

"What do you mean, 'hero'?"

"Just what I said. It's ironic that he's being blamed for taking a life when the opposite is—aw, hell! Never mind."

He let go of her with something like distaste, which was more shocking to Olivia than his diatribe. She blinked and, after an eternity, remembered to exhale. "I guess you've made your intentions pretty clear," she said in lofty tones. "You're going to press your case for an exhumation."

"Bingo."

"Fine." Her lip began to tremble; she refused to let it. "Then let me wish you a merry Christmas and be on my way."

He gave her a look of cool contempt. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, in it that reminded her of Julia Child.

She turned and pulled the door open so quickly that it bumped her knee.
He's obsessed,
she told herself.
I'm out of here.

On the porch she tripped over the cardboard box filled with his trophies, which she never did get around to telling him she'd brought. She had started down the steps in a flight to her minivan when she stopped, reached into the pocket of her coat, and pulled out the green bow that she'd stuffed there earlier. She crushed the bow in her hand, then tossed it at the brass football sticking out of the box.

"Merry Christmas, my ass," she muttered, and hurried back to her car.

Two
apples
and
a mince: burnt to a crisp.

Quinn had checked out Mrs. Dewsbury's backup electric stove in the basement before he used it, and the burners worked fine. But it turned out that the oven was another story. Half an hour after he put the pies in, the piercing shrieks of two new smoke alarms brought him hightailing back from the storage shed where he'd been in the process of installing a motion-detecting spotlight to light up the yard.

By the time he aired out the smoke-filled house, found a supermarket still open, an
d re-peeled, re-cooked, and re-
baked replacements for the three casualties, it was marching up on midnight. Lucky for him that his new Dodge Ram had been delivered as promised earlier in the day; it made his mood a lot less foul.

There weren't many relationships in life more intense than that between a man and a brand-new truck, so Quinn searched for and found an excuse to take his sassy Ram out for another spin: to deliver the pies to Father Tom before Midnight Mass. It wasn't the most logical time to drop them off, but what the hell. It was Christmas Eve, and Quinn had just given himself the only present he was going to get.

He loaded the pies into the sparkling clean tool bins of his shiny blue pickup and then all the way to
St.
Swithin's had to fight an impulse to drive like a wild and stupid teenager. He liked owning his own vehicle outright. Always had, always would. Leasing left him cold, and renting had caused him physical agony. Yup. Buying a truck on the wrong coast of
America
was the only reasonable thing to do.

Ah, well. At least he hadn't ordered the plow attachment.

Yet.

Quinn intercepted Father Tom as he was about to enter the sacristy to don his vestments for the high
Mass.
The priest's greeting was distracted: The organist hadn't shown, and he should've been warming up the audience by then.

"I don't really see the parishioners muddling through the hymns
a
cappella,
he said wryly to Quinn. "We could use someone to give us the pitch. I don't suppose that you—?"

Quinn crisscrossed his hands in front of him as if poor Father Tom were Count Dracula in a cassock. "Not me, Father," he said in something like terror. "I don't have any musical talent at all."

"Then it's the only talent you don't have," the priest said generously. "Okay
... you may as well take the pies directly down to the hall. See that exit sign? Take the back steps next to it. You got Saran Wrap?"

"I brought a roll, just in case."

"Good man," said Father Tom, slapping him on the back. They broke up their huddle and the priest went off to nourish men's souls while Quinn made arrangements for their stomachs.

The basement was set up not with the usual long tables but with round tables that seated eight, giving the hall the cozy air of a family restaurant. Red checkered tablecloths and centerpieces of holly and winterberry were a nice touch. The ladies' auxiliary had done a great job. In no way, shape, or form did it look like a soup kitchen.

And really, why should it? People down on their luck or with no place to go should be able to spend Christmas in good company like anyone else. Better, actually: At least no one would be feuding in the halls of St. Swithin's.

Quinn saw the folding buffet table that the priest had told him would be for desserts; it was lined up against the far wall, with cups and saucers arranged on it, along with two
stacks of dessert plates way higher than Quinn had pieces of pie for. He hoped that Father Tom wasn't kidding about the brownies and the pressed cookies.

He was impressed to see that they were using real cloth napkins, rolled around what must have been silverware and laid out alongside the plates.

Or not
.
At first puzzled and then with a quickening sense of dread, Quinn approached the
long
table. What looked from across the hall like large rolled napkins were in reality
... bleached bones, lined up as neatly as any hostess could wish.

The sight of them in the innocent setting was like being kicked in the stomach, and it left Quinn much more breathless than the smashed-in windshield had done. He dumped the two pies he was holding onto another table and returned to the macabre display.
Bones.
Of what, for God's sake?

A dog, most likely. Someone had dug up the family pet, cleaned off the bones, and laid them here. It was a reasonable presumption, and it left Quinn reeling. Disinterment, that's what this was about. Someone was making a statement about Quinn's latest foray down the halls of justice. And if Quinn hadn't stumbled into the basement hall at that unlikely hour, some white-haired volunteers with kind intentions and weak hearts would have had the shock of their lives when they showed up the next day to help serve. News of the prank would have traveled at warp speed, dinner would have been a disaster, and it would have been Quinn's fault and no one else's.

Damn it to hell!

He worked quickly, clearing the table of everything but the bones and then shrouding them in the cloth that they were laid out on. Quinn's sense of liturgy, never very precise, was turned upside down by the grisly prank. This was the season of birth, not of bones. He stuffed the hapless pet's remains, still in the tablecloth, into a black garbage bag and looped the open end of the bag into a tight knot, and then another.

I'll have to stay here the whole blessed night.

It was going to be pointless to stand guard over the hall—no one would be back, he was sure—but if he went home he knew he wouldn't sleep a wink. He looked around for a nice soft La-Z-Boy, but all he saw were metal folding chairs. So, okay, it was going to be not only pointless but painful to spend the night there.

Quinn slung the garbage bag over his shoulder, feeling more like the Grim Reaper than Santa Claus, and carried it out to his truck. After that, he decided to take a quick walk around the white-steepled church, not so much for the cold night air, which he welcomed, but to see if anyone strange and twisted was lurking in the shrubbery.

Who? That was the question. Obviously it had to be someone who knew that Quinn had gone to the D.A. with a request for exhumation.

Hold it. Back up, Doughboy.
It could have been somebody who knew from Chief Vickers that Quinn was
planning
to go to the D.A.

Well, that really narrowed it down.

Whoever did it must also have known that Quinn had volunteered to help out with the church dinner. Could the villain of this disgusting little pageant conceivably be a member of the parish? A deacon, a lady on the auxiliary committee, the freaking organist, even?

Where was the organist, anyway?

Quinn peered behind the fl
at-topped yews and rummaged through the holly bushes, expecting with every poke to see someone's evil, beady eyes staring back at him. Before long, he realized where the organist was when he was yanked from his spooky reverie by the sonorous notes of the church's old Wurlitzer rising up and through the stained glass windows: "Do You Hear What I Hear?"

The Christmas carol was too appropriate, somehow; it gave him chills. What was he listening for? What was he looking for?

Was someone reminded
,
by Quinn's presence in Keepsake
,
of his own lost promise in life and taking it out on Quinn? Or was someone afraid that Quinn was going to
prove Francis Leary's innocence—and in the bargain, prove that person's guilt?

Quinn continued his circuit around the church but paused at the life-sized cr
è
che that was set up facing the busier of the two streets that the church abutted. Although Quinn hadn't practiced his faith for many years, he felt obliged to make sure that no one had stolen the straw from baby Jesus' crib again or committed some other wickedness there.

Things looked okay. Baby Jesus looked snug and warm, and nobody had broken off the nose of one of the three kings or moved the donkey into some scandalous position.

Hey guys. You see anyone suspicious go skulking past?

The swarthy kings were silent, but Quinn had the sense that they knew more than they were letting on. He turned his gaze to the illogically blue eyes of the infant lying in the manger and thought,
I
know that
you
know. But you
're not gonna say, are you?

Quinn sighed. He was hoping for an offhand miracle, just like in the movies. He swept his gaze from the kings to Mary to Joseph to Jesus again, but no one moved, no one spoke. The only one puffing white breath into the ice-cold night was Quinn. He was warm, he was alive, and he was utterly alone in the universe.

It was his first Christmas without his father, and it was yet another Christmas without a wife and a family of his own. His isolation threw him into a sudden and profound depression.

"It Came Upon a Midnight Clear
..."

Again Quinn was struck by the irony of the organist's choice of hymns. He looked up at the sky, awash with stars twinkling cold and remote. It was midnight, and it was clear, but what was it that had come? Who? That's what he wanted so desperately to know.

After a last sweeping glance around the cr
è
che, Quinn decided to head back to the basement hall, to spend the night in dreary vigilance. As he passed the double arched doors of the historic
New England
church, he heard the strains of
a
carol that was his father's favorite: "Angels We Have Heard on High."

Quinn stopped where he was at the foot of the steps. He could hear his father asking good-naturedly, "Why are all the best songs always about angels?" He could hear his father's voice, a surprisingly rich baritone, singing the refrain: