Plundered Christmas (8 page)

Most everyone was already there.

Jelly was on the porch so I went to go get him. The canine companionship would make me feel better at a time like this. I also ducked outside with him quickly to get him to do his business before the weather turned from worrisome to dangerous. Even close to the house, the wind was terrifying. I don't think I'd ever seen him tinkle so quickly. Well, maybe during the snowstorm last March. Only obedience to me kept him from racing back inside before he finished.

When we returned, Dad had gathered everyone he could find.

Oddly, William and his mother Anne were nowhere to be found.

The captain of the yacht, Eric Blake, came in from the back quarters as did the cook, Mrs. Smith, and her helper, a quiet, mousy and unassuming girl named Juliana.

Frank and Aimee stayed off to themselves talking. When Justin asked to check in on Uncle Frank, I urged him to leave them be. They had a lot of things to talk about if they did indeed plan on marrying.

“James,” Dad said. “Can you quickly check all the rooms? Maybe William and his mother are sleeping or resting and don't know about the current situation.”

James agreed, but took Charlie with him as the person who knew the most about the house. “I've only seen about a third of the rooms,” he said.

I didn't think I'd seen that many of them. What could all those rooms hide?

They weren't gone long before they brought back Anne. She had been sleeping.

William, however, was not in his room.

Charlie and James renewed the search.

Mary and I, though, wanted to know if Anne knew anything about her son's whereabouts.

“No, nothing,” she said a bit defensively. “He's a grown man. He said after lunch that he was going fishing.” She looked to the windows as if to see his face or some other sign of his presence. “But that was hours ago.”

I pointed outside. “A storm is also coming our way. I do hope he's not on the ocean right now. Even the Coast Guard can't get to us.”

At that news, her haughty demeanor dropped. Briefly. “He'll be back. My boy's an excellent seaman. Did you know he grew up on this island?”

I shook my head, no.

“Well, he did. My brother even told him that he would inherit. Raised him to take over the family shipping business. But then she,” the woman indicated her unconscious sister-in-law. “She talked my brother into selling the entire business to a conglomerate. All they kept was the island. What could my William run then? The kitchen?”

Margo stirred, but did not open her eyes. When she spoke, I could barely hear her. “We paid for his schooling. He could do with that whatever he wanted.”

Dad glared at Anne. “Margo has been seriously injured and you dare slander her? On Christmas Eve? In her own home?”

I thought Anne would look more repentant, but the anger in her expression didn't lie. She seriously believed that Margo and her husband had mistreated William. She turned away and looked at the tree.

Dad leaned in to Margo. “Can I get you anything to make you feel better?”

“I-I don't know. It hurts.”

Mary started up a laptop. “I'm going to see if I can get that doctor online that Charlie told us about.” She tapped rapidly on the keys, logging in and trying to connect. After several minutes of tapping, she cursed. “I can't get a signal.”

“Where's your cell tower? Or router hook-up?” I used up all of my computer knowledge and techno-speak in less than thirty seconds.

She pointed to the tree. It took me a moment to realize the word that came out next. “Upstairs. Not the safest place to be if the wind kicks up too high. Even with the hurricane glass, we've had to replace windows over the years. But I need to try.” She turned to her aunt. “Auntie Anne, can you come with me? I need someone to keep an eye on the storm and warn me when we should head back down.”

The woman didn't bicker or argue. She simply followed Mary up the stairs.

“That's odd.” I didn't realize that I'd said those words aloud until Margo answered me.

“My daughter and evil sister-in-law? I know.” She coughed, and then groaned when it moved her shoulder. “They've always been close. Why do you think I invite the woman for Christmas year after year? It's certainly not because of any love between us. At least that husband of hers didn't have the nerve to show his face. I caught him robbing the manor last year.” The emotion made her shake and then cry from the pain.

“Shhh,” my dad urged. The last years with Mom had given Dad an amazing bedside manner. He plumped her pillow without moving her body or having any impact on the injured shoulder. “You shouldn't be talking. You have a serious wound.”

Margo used her good arm to push herself up on the couch, evidently trying to find a more comfortable position.

“Stay still.” ordered Dad. “James managed to staunch the bleeding, but you keep that up and it will start all over again.”

“But…” Margo tried.

“But nothing,” Dad said.

“Someone pushed me into the water. Hard. Then, I heard another splash near my head and saw a chunk of meat floating past me.”

I could see what she was getting at. She wanted us to know that she was in danger—we were in danger.

She looked around the room from her trapped position on the couch. “Someone tried to kill me,” she whimpered. Instead of looking haughty, wealthy, or powerful, those images she worked to convey fled in light of her current situation. She appeared fragile and suddenly much older.

As best as he could, Dad comforted her after that. He patted the hand not connected to the injured shoulder, told her how beautiful she was, and sent a lot of pretty phrases into her ears. It helped. She calmed down.

“Papa,” Josie asked. “Do you think Miss Margo would mind the rest of our Christmas Eve tradition?”

“And what would that be?” Margo asked, her voice barely audible.

“We were in the process of reading the gospel of Luke,” Dad said. “The Christmas story. We had just started when Charlie told us that you were wounded and needed our help. He cares for you a lot, Margo. Worries about you.”

“I know.” She gave his hand a squeeze. “I would love to hear the Bible. It would remind me of when I was little…” She coughed again. Then she gave a little scream of anguish.

I couldn't imagine how much it hurt.

She bit her lip to stop herself and then tried to smile up at my father. It looked as if she had a lemon rind between her teeth, but we could tell she wanted to beam up at him.

Dad took it in the spirit it was intended. He pulled his Bible from the couch where it had dropped and opened to the account.

Frank, Aimee, and the kids all came in closer at the sound of my dad's sonorous voice. “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census…”

 

****

 

When James and Charlie returned, they quietly joined us as Dad had nearly finished.

Margo had closed her eyes while “her dear Robert” read from the Scriptures, and they didn't know she was conscious.

As Dad finished, James said, “We can't find William anywhere. We have checked every room in the house. He's nowhere to be found.”

Margo's eyes snapped open. “He probably ran after he pushed me. Did you see that miserable yellow boat of his anywhere?”

Charlie looked like he would faint. “Miss Margo! You're OK!”

“No, Charles, I am most definitely not OK. I am, however, still firmly in the land of the living despite my nephew's intentions.”

I could tell her words did not sit well with Charlie. “Master William? I can't believe he would do such a thing to you, ma'am. He's a good boy deep down.”

I could tell she wanted to sit up, even stand and give her commanding presence a real work out as she told her servant a thing or two.

But my father kept patting her hand and whispering, “Easy. Easy, Margo.”

“The yellow craft was still tethered when we rescued you,” James said. “So if William left the island, he didn't do it that way. But personally, I can't believe anyone could have left the island recently. Maybe this morning when we were getting the tree or earlier this afternoon while the weather was still pleasant, but in the last four hours? Absolutely not. The winds are much too high.”

“See,” Charlie insisted. “I told you he was a good boy.”

“But,” James reminded him. “The fact is that we can't find him anywhere in the house or in the immediate grounds.”

Jelly chose that moment to bark.
The bark
. Those in the know all turned apprehensively to find out what the pooch wanted to warn us against.

We couldn't see anything or anyone outside the window he faced. But seconds later, we realized it couldn't be an intruder.

Rather, Mary and Anne were coming back downstairs.

“I got a hold of the doctor!” Mary said triumphantly. She raced to her mother's side. Mary immediately shooed Dad out of the way, and slowly and carefully lifted up the pads. She didn't remove them entirely, just raised them enough so that she could see the wound.

After looking and cocking her head in several different angles to examine the shark bite, Mary replaced the pads and sighed. The relief in her expression was easy to read. “I showed the doctor a picture on my phone of Mom's shoulder. I told him about our situation and spotty reception. He told me what to look for and what to worry about. I didn't see any pus or white discharge in the sore. It looks clean, but raw. He said in that case, to wait an hour or so before changing the gauze or absorbent pads as the case may be. He also said that as long as Mom was conscious, she could take ibuprofen for the pain, drink water, and eat a little. Like the kind of stuff she would eat at the hospital.”

The cook beamed. “I have just the thing, ma'am. I made some broth.” She ticked off the contents of her refrigerators by pointing to different fingers on her hands. “And I made a gelatin mold for the children.” Mrs. Smith turned to Josie and Justin. “You dearies don't mind if I share some of it with Miss Margo, do you?”

They assured her that they didn't. Josie didn't even like wobbly desserts, with the exception of canned cranberry sauce—with the berries. She would choke down a small serving whenever aunts or well-meaning neighbors made some for Justin and included her in the “treat.” Rather than traditional kid foods and desserts, our daughter had more upscale taste. If you wanted to excite Josie about dessert, it required two words “chocolate” and “fountain.” If she could repeatedly drench everything from strawberries to saltine crackers in warm chocolate, Josie was happy.

I wonder where she inherited that food obsession from
?

The cook hurried off to get a small something for Miss Margo. Mary dug some painkiller from her purse, and Juliana ran to fetch a bottle of Margo's favorite brand of water.

Dad, in the meantime, did what Dad did best. He made sure she was comfortable and talked to her about anything and everything that didn't relate to her pain.

By this time, the fire roared comfortingly against the harbor side of the house.

The kids located Margo's stereo system and with her permission, selected a couple of CDs they recognized from titles that Mom had passed down to me. Soon, the soothing tones of Nat King Cole made the entire room feel like Christmas could indeed happen at this place and time.

Josie danced in time to the songs, pirouetting like a ballerina.

Justin had pulled out his handheld game system and sat under the tree trying to better a previous score on a favorite conquest.

If not for the fact that a shark-bitten woman sat on her couch, it would have been idyllic.

Margo had nearly finished her broth and gelatin when the wind kicked up higher.

It sounded like the gales wanted to push the great house closer to the ocean, if not into it. The lights flickered and the stereo whined as it stopped and then started. Twice more, the power flickered and recovered. Then, the house went dark.

It was the loss of the flickering Christmas tree that I missed the most. Instead, a dark mass filled the shape inside the staircase. Sometimes, when the glow of the fire caught it just so, it looked like a giant lunging for us. Without planning to, we all gradually moved away from the tree and closer to the fire.

Thankfully, near the crackling flames we could see each other and feel its warmth. Nobody spoke much and when they did, it was hushed as if the loss of light took away sound as well.

“I'll go round up some candles and torches,” Charlie said.

As the older man headed toward the supply room in the east wing using the glow of Miss Margo's phone, Jelly started barking for all he was worth.

“Calm down, boy,” said Justin. “It's just the storm.” But in spite of his efforts to calm the bulldog, our faithful friend kept barking.

Charlie had taken only a few steps toward the east wing when the front door blew open and crashed into the wall behind it.

The older man turned to the noise and instinctively headed for the open door to close it, but a shape ran through and knocked him over.

Whoever or whatever it was, kept going through the house at top speed. Moments later, we heard the rear door open.

I ran over to Charlie. “Are you OK?” I knelt down next to the man to try and help him up. He tried to push me away, and get up on his own. He made it to a semi-seated position, but then fell back when he tried lifting himself further. He must have hit his head harder than I thought. I put an arm under him to keep his head from hitting the tiled floor again.

“Who? What?” he managed.

Meanwhile James along with our alert, and quite correct, canine went over to the front door to sniff it out and latch it. (James latched it and Jelly sniffed out the area to make sure it was all clear.) Then the pair went to the back door past the kitchen and repeated the process.