A Christmas to Die For (23 page)

I need this, Father.
The cry came from her innermost heart.
I lost my family, and I need to bring it back together again. Isn't that the right thing to do?

The answer was there. It had been all along, but she hadn't been willing to face it. She couldn't go back and recreate the family that she imagined they'd been once. That idealized image had probably never really existed.

And she couldn't build a future based on a lie. Her heart twisted, feeling as if it would break in two. She'd already lost Tyler, and whatever might have been between them. She couldn't go on trying to cover up, trying to pretend her way back to an imaginary family.

I've been wrong, Father. So wrong. Please, forgive me and show me what to do.

She already knew, didn't she? If her father was guilty, the truth would have to come out. And if evidence of that guilt lay anywhere in the house or grounds, she'd have to find it.

She leaned against the couch back, too tired to move. She couldn't start searching attics and cellars now. Even if she had the strength, she couldn't risk waking Grams.

In the morning. She pushed herself wearily to her feet. She'd start in the morning, assuming the police didn't decide to arrest her by then for the attack on Phil. She had the list of items that were missing from the farmhouse. If any of them were on Unger property, she'd find them, and let the truth emerge where it would.

And in the morning Tyler would leave. She rubbed her temples. Lying awake all night worrying about it wouldn't change anything. She'd take a couple of aspirins and have a cup of the cocoa Emma had left on the stove. Maybe, somehow, she'd be able to sleep.

Tyler had been staring at the ceiling for what seemed like hours. Probably had been. He turned his head to look at the bedside clock: 4:00 a.m.—the darkest watches of the night, with dawn far away and sleep not coming. It was the hour of soul searching.

He got up, moving quietly to the window that looked out on the lane and drawing back the curtain. It was snowing again, the thickly falling drifts muffling everything. The lights in front of the inn were misty haloes, and nothing moved on the street.

Was he being unjust to Rachel? He understood, only too well, her need to protect her family. She'd been eight when she'd lost all the stability in her life. Small wonder that she was trying desperately to protect what she had left of family.

But she'd lied to him. Not overtly, but it was a lie all the same. If she'd just told him, the day he'd talked about the desk—

What would he have done? He hadn't remembered, then, about the initials. He wouldn't have been able to identify it any sooner. But if she'd been honest, they could have searched for the truth together.

That was the worst thing about it. That he'd begun to trust her, care for her, maybe even love her, and she'd been keeping secrets from him.

He moved away from the window, letting the curtain fall. There was no point in going over it and over it. Facts were important to him, concrete facts, not emotions and wishful thinking.

The desk was certainly concrete enough. It had seemed huge to him when he was a child playing underneath it, imagining it alternately a fort and a castle. He'd needed a shelter during that visit, with his mother and grandfather constantly at each other's throats.

Giving in to the urge to look at it again, he opened his door and stepped out into the hall. No need to worry about anyone seeing him in his T-shirt and sweatpants—he was the only person in this part of the house tonight. When he moved out in the morning, it would be empty.

The thought didn't give him any satisfaction. He ran his hand along the smooth surface of the slanted desktop. Rachel had done a good job with it, as she had with everything she'd touched in preparing the inn. She'd taken infinite care. Did she even realize that she was trying to recreate the family and security she'd lost?

He stiffened, hand tightening on the edge of the desk. That sounded like the dog, over in the other wing of the house. But Barney never barked at night.

A cold breath seemed to move along his skin. The barking was more insistent. Something was wrong. Someone—Rachel or her grandmother—would have silenced the dog by now. His heart chilled. If they could.

He was running, moving beyond rational thought, knowing he had to get to Rachel. Down the stairs two at a time, stumbling once as his bare feet hit the polished floor. The dim light that Rachel always left on in the downstairs hallway—it was off.

His fear ratcheted up a notch. He grabbed the door handle, already thinking ahead to how he'd get into the east wing if it were locked, but it opened easily under his hand.

Race through the library, pitch-black, stumbling into a chair, then a lamp table. Out into the small landing at the base of the stairs. Up the second set of steps, no breath left to call out, just get there. The dog's barking changed to a long, high-pitched howl, raking his nerves with fear.

Get to the upstairs hall, and now he knew his fears were justified. Barney clawed at Rachel's door, frantically trying to get in. From the crack under the door came a blast of cold air. One of the windows must be wide-open in the room. Or the door onto Rachel's tiny balcony.

Grab the knob. Locked. He'd known it would be. No time to analyze or plan. Draw back. Shove the hysterical dog out of the way. Fling himself at the door. Pain shooting through his shoulder. Throw himself at it again, wordless prayers exploding in his mind.

The lock snapped; the door gave. He stumbled into the room. The balcony door stood open, Rachel's slender body draped over the railing, a dark figure over her, pushing—

He hurtled himself toward them, out into the night, snow in his face, grabbing for Rachel, pulling her back, fending off the blows the other man threw at him, the dog dancing around them, snarling, trying to get his teeth into the attacker. Rachel struggling feebly, trying to pull herself back. But the man was strong, Tyler's bare feet slid on the snowy balcony, he couldn't get a grip, they were going to go over—

The railing screamed, metal tearing loose, giving way. He fell to his knees, grabbing Rachel's arm, holding her even as her feet slid off the balcony. Holding her tight and safe as the other figure wind-milled on the edge for an agonizing second and then went over, a long, thin scream cutting off abruptly when his body hit the patio.

He pulled Rachel against him, his arms wrapped around her. Safe. She was safe.

She pressed her face into his chest. "Who?" Her voice was fogged with whatever had been used to drug her. "Who was it?"

He leaned forward cautiously, peering down through the swirling flakes to the patio. The man lay perfectly still, sprawled on the stones, face up. The ski mask he'd worn must have ripped loose in the struggle. It was Jeff Whitmoyer.

W
ould this never end? Rachel sat at the kitchen table, still shivering from time to time, her hands wrapped around a hot mug of coffee. The coffee was slowly clearing her fogged mind, but it produced odd things from time to time.

"The cocoa," she said now.

Tyler seemed to know what she meant without explanation. "That's right. He drugged the cocoa Emma had left on the stove."

"Imagine the nerve of the man." Nancy topped off the mug Tyler held. She and Emma had just appeared, as they always seemed to at times of crisis, and Nancy had taken over the kitchen, apparently feeling that food was the answer to every issue. She slid a wedge of cinnamon coffeecake in front of Tyler. "Eat something. You need your strength."

Well, the police who swarmed around the place would probably eat it, if they didn't.

Emma was upstairs with Grams, refusing to leave her alone even though the paramedics had seen her and declared that she hadn't had enough of the drug to cause harm.

Tyler had dressed at some point in the nightmare hours before dawn. He wore jeans and a navy sweatshirt, his hair tousled. She'd put on her warmest sweater, but it didn't seem to be enough to banish the cold that had penetrated to her very bones when she'd been fighting for her life.

Not that she'd managed to fight very hard. "If it hadn't been for you—"

"If it hadn't been for Barney," he said quickly. "It was easy enough to drop something in the cocoa for you, but Barney had already been fed, so he had to take his chances that no one would hear the dog."

He didn't identify the person he spoke of. He didn't need to. They all knew.

The door opened, and Bradley Whitmoyer stepped inside. Usually he looked pale. Now he looked gray—as gray as a gravestone. He'd probably had to identify his brother's body.

She found her voice. "I'm so sorry."

Bradley shook his head. "I didn't come for that."

The words sounded rude, but she didn't think he'd meant them that way. He was just exhausted beyond reach of any of the conventions.

"You'd better sit down." Tyler didn't sound very happy at the prospect.

Bradley ignored the words. Maybe he didn't even hear them. "I have to tell you. I can't hold it back any longer. It will kill me if I don't speak."

She started to protest, but Tyler's hand closed over hers in warning.

"If this is something the police should hear, maybe you'd better wait until the chief comes in," he said.

"I'll tell them." He looked surprised at the comment. "But Rachel has the right to know first. And you. It was my fault, you see."

Tyler seemed to recognize the terrible strain Bradley was under. He looked at her, shaking his head slightly as if to say he didn't know what else they could do but let the man talk.

"I was home from college that summer." Bradley didn't need to say what summer. They knew. "I was desperate for money for my education, you see. I wouldn't have gotten involved with him, otherwise."

Her heart clutched. Was he going to name her father?

"Who?" Tyler's voice was tense.

"Phil Longstreet." He looked surprised that they had to ask. "He had this scheme—he would talk people, elderly farmers, mostly, into selling things, usually for a fraction of their value. While he was in the house, he would identify the really desirable items."

"And then you'd go back and steal them." Tyler finished it for him.

"We did." Bradley looked faintly surprised at the person he'd been. "I didn't…I didn't see any other way I could stay in school. I don't suppose Phil expected to get away with it for long. He was always talking about leaving here, he and Hampton both."

Her heart hurt. Oh, Daddy. Why did you have to get involved in that?

"They did all right, for a while. Then they tried it on John Hostetler." His gaze touched Tyler. "Your grandfather sold them some pieces of furniture. Then we went back when we thought the house was empty. He met us with a shotgun. He knew what we were doing. He was going to tell Phil's uncle, tell everyone—" His voice seemed to fade out for an instant. "There was a struggle. I don't know how it happened. I knocked him down. He lay there, clutching his chest. He was having a heart attack. I knew it, and I didn't help. I let him die."

His face twisted with anguish, and he seemed to struggle to control it, as though revealing his pain was asking for sympathy he didn't deserve.

"So you made it look like a robbery and you ran." Tyler didn't seem to have any sympathy to spare.

"The next day I was going to go to the police. I couldn't stand it. But I told Jeff, and he said he'd take care of everything. I couldn't ruin my future. So I kept quiet."

"My father?" She was amazed that her voice could sound so level.

"I heard he'd left town. The investigation died down. No one ever asked me anything. I went back to college, then medical school, and then I came back here to practice."

That was why, she realized. He'd come back as some sort of atonement for what he'd done, as if the lives he saved could make up for the one he'd taken.

Bradley's hands closed over the back of a chair. "I kept expecting to be exposed. Sometimes I thought it would be a relief. But years went by, and no one ever knew. And then you came back." He looked at her, eyes filled with pity. "And Jeff told me you had to be taken care of. And he told me why."

She shook her head. "I don't understand." But she knew something terrible was coming, and she couldn't get out of its way.

"It was because of what you wanted to do. You wanted to get rid of the gazebo. He couldn't let you, because if you did, they'd find your father's body, where Jeff buried it the night he killed him to keep him quiet."

It was Christmas Eve before Rachel thought she'd begun to understand everything. Andrea and Cal had rushed back from their honeymoon, and Andrea's calm good sense had helped her get through all of the things that had to be done. Even Caroline had come, all the way from New Mexico, making light of it but seeming to feel that all of the Hampton girls had to be together at a time like this.

The police had superintended the removal of the gazebo, and the family had had a quiet memorial service for their father at the church. She'd only broken down once—when the police gave her the tarnished remains of a child's gold cross on a chain that had been in her father's pocket.

The numbness that had gotten her through the past week had begun to thaw, and she wasn't quite sure what was going to take its place. She looked around the faces reflected in the lights of the Christmas tree. Grams, Andrea and Cal, Caroline.

And Tyler. With every reason for him to leave, Tyler had stayed.

"Now that Longstreet is awake and talking, it sounds as if he's blaming everyone but himself for what happened." Cal, Andrea's husband, leaned back in his chair, a cup of eggnog in one hand. "According to what I heard, he now says that your father decided to go to the police instead of leaving town, as they'd agreed. Jeff Whitmoyer had been working on the construction project, so he knew it was ready at hand. And he wasn't going to let anyone spoil the bright future he saw for his little brother."

"We don't need to talk about it now." Andrea leaning close to her new husband, reproved him gently.