Christmas At Timberwoods Read online

  Backslide. Big time.

  It was wonderful how a pizza or two could ease loneliness. And that wasn’t all. That had been eight years ago, just about the time they were beginning construction on the Timberwoods shopping complex. With a glowing recommendation from his instructor, Charlie had landed a job with the refrigeration crew. Night after night he had studied blueprints, munching down the facts and figures along with homebaked cookies and milk. By the time the duct was being installed on the roof, he had regained twenty pounds.

  Charlie’s face flamed red with the remembered humiliation of being stuck in a shaft where they were stringing the main air-vent duct. It had taken a crew of six men forty-five minutes to extricate him. Ten minutes later he had left the site with the foreman’s cruel words and his coworkers’ laughter ringing in his ears.

  An anonymous smart aleck had drawn and posted a cartoon of him, which he’d ripped off the board and kept. Not signed, but a few others had added their comments, which were hard evidence of discrimination. He still had it. Dumb shits, what did they know? He had vowed to show them all, to make them sorry.

  After that, he’d nearly starved himself to death to get the weight back off. He’d lost most of it, but it was a constant fight to keep it off—a fight he would be glad not to have to worry about any longer. He didn’t have to. Heather Andrews was taken and he, Charlie, was out of the running.

  The harassment he’d endured could be exploited in more ways than one. He’d never have to work again if he filed a discrimination suit. He’d studied the lawyers’ ads on the bus stops. Some awards were in the millions—why not him?

  His flesh tingled with excitement. What the hell. He’d show them all—the guys. Heather. Everyone who’d ever made him feel like two cents waiting for change. But the lawsuit would come second. First, the very air duct which had caused him so much humiliation would become a secret method of retribution that would go down in history. Charlie Roman laughed just thinking about it.

  He sobered, thinking that the legal proceedings would take a while. He’d have to lie low, maybe move out of the area. But there’d be no way his glorious revenge could ever be traced to him—he would act alone and the evidence would be obliterated. He should have done it years ago, but he hadn’t had the nerve. Suddenly he did. He thought and thought, driving on. All this planning was making him hungry. He longed for a thick slab of homemade apple pie.

  The great glass-walled conference room at Timber woods Mall looked down on the parking lot. It was only eleven in the morning when Harold Baumgarten, chief of security, called the unscheduled meeting. Now, fifteen minutes later, the conference room was filled with the forty-three men and women who comprised the mall’s security force.

  Harold squared his shoulders and shed his ominous frown. It wouldn’t be seemly for the security chief to look anxious. His men could handle any crisis, and this was a crisis; he knew it in his bones. His hands were perspiring freely as he shifted the crumpled letter from one hand to the other. He wiped his palms on his trousers, sucked in his breath, and opened the door to the conference room. A sea of faces greeted him as he walked on his short legs to the platform from which he would address his crew.

  He held up his hand and waved the letter in the air. The buzzing group began to quiet. Baumgarten’s eyes raked the room, searching for Heather Andrews’s face before he remembered it was her morning off.

  “You all know that I run a safe, secure shopping center, and I intend to keep it that way. But I have here, in my hand,” he said briskly, “a written threat.” He paused importantly, waiting for the gasps of shock and wide-eyed displays of interest. His audience, being inured to their chief’s dramatics, gave him no satisfaction. They merely waited politely for him to continue. Clearing his throat, Harold obliged. “According to the police, the first two threats were sent by the same person. I don’t have to remind you that this is the third such letter I have received in the last three months. For this one, we’ve called in the state police and the bomb squad. The officers will be in civilian dress, and I want all of you to assist them in any way that you can. As of right now, the security in this mall is doubled. But under no circumstances are you to alert the shoppers of this threat—or the media. If there’s one thing we don’t need now, it’s a panic.”

  “Do you think this is just another scare like the last two?” asked Eric Summers, a detective on loan from the local police department, who was acting as special assistant to Baumgarten over the holiday period.

  Harold stared into Summers’s serious, intelligent face. The detective was not a yes-man, and he seemed to specialize in annoying questions. If there was a bomb and it did go off, he almost wished Summers could be standing next to it. He schooled his face to be objective and answered: “It’s the same type of letter. The words were clipped from newspapers and pasted onto plain white tablet paper. The only difference is that this time they are saying the bomb will go off in seventy-two hours. That difference is what’s causing us the worry. I want all of you out there sniffing out this bomb.”

  The clipped-out letters were a possible clue right there, Summers thought. Match them up with recent headlines and they would know what newspapers the man read. At least he assumed it was a man. Could be wrong on that, he told himself. Times were changing faster than ever. It also occurred to him that someone young would have used the Internet, not newspapers or magazines, to make his threat, and then dared the law to find him.

  But it was early in this lethal game, too early to know anything for sure. Summers stood up. “You do realize that we could comb this shopping center from one end to the other and find nothing. We have to consider the fact that the device might not be planted until the eleventh hour. The police department will want to concentrate on finding the person who sent that letter—which, by the way, is crucial evidence and might have helped in finding the sender had it not been so carelessly handled.”

  Any chance the detective got to needle Harold, he took. Baumgarten flushed deep red. Covering his embarrassment with bravado, he shouted, “It’s up to the state police to find that person! Your job is to cover each area. Twice. Then go back and begin again, if necessary. Do I have to tell you how to do your job?”

  “No, sir, you don’t. I’m the best in the business and I have nine citations to prove it.”

  Harold pointedly ignored him and addressed the others. “Mr. Richards will be here shortly, so we’ll have to wait. Meanwhile, I’d like for each of you to come up and view this letter—without touching it, of course,” he added sarcastically without looking at Eric Summers.

  His mind was racing. Goddamn it, where the hell was Dolph Richards? Probably in the sack with the busty woman who ran the Lingerie Madness store. So said the rumor mill, anyway. He fumed. Here they were, faced with a credible, three-strikes-you’re-out threat, and the mall CEO was nowhere to be found, he thought viciously.

  Summers smirked. He’d be willing to bet five bucks that Dolph Richards would keep them waiting till he’d finished laying some broad. He wondered what the prick’s screwing average was.

  Richards appeared as if on cue, his fly unzipped. Summers suppressed a guffaw. He knew Richards would deliberately wait until he got up on stage to zip it, so Harold could see. The two of them had a running feud that went way back.

  Dolph Richards walked up to the platform and waved a greeting. He was slim and tall with a youthful lift to his step that belied his sixty years. He plucked at the lapel of his Italian suit and passed a hand over his glossy hair. He silently mouthed a greeting to someone in the room, displaying perfect teeth. Squaring his shoulders, he slowly and deliberately checked the zipper on his fly. Satisfied with the glare he got from Harold, he started to speak.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, happy holidays to all of you. I understand we seem to have some sort of problem. Another one of those nuisance letters that Baumgarten keeps getting.” He sighed wearily, as if the weight of the entire mall rested on his shoulders. “I’ve come to the concl
usion that these pesky letters are aimed directly at the security chief himself. I think, Harold, that someplace in this complex you have an enemy. No one would dare to blow up Timberwoods—I won’t allow it. You men and women were hired to see that things like this don’t happen, so go out there and find whoever this is who has it in for our security chief. When you find him, bring him to my office.”

  Richards singled out Eric Summers and stared at the detective from beneath quirked brows. His wide smile froze into a stiff line. “Understand this, Summers—I don’t want the state police crawling all over the place.”

  Baumgarten reddened and mumbled, “The authorities have already been notified.”

  Richards bristled, then visibly brought himself under control. He threw his hands in the air, breathing a sigh of resignation. “All right, all right. If you think there’s someone out there, go and find him. This is the season to be jolly, a time for goodwill and happiness. People don’t plant bombs at Christmastime.” He offered his audience a congenial smile and wrapped it up, ignoring the disgusted silence that followed his lame reassurance.

  “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for giving me your time. Go out there and do your job—and don’t be surprised if you don’t find anything.” With a jaunty wave of his hand, he was off the platform and striding through the doorway.

  The chief of security’s face looked pained as he, too, waved a hand to show his own dismissal. “Quarter-hour reports,” he shouted after the retreating staff.

  “Amen,” snarled Summers.

  Angela awoke to the gray light penetrating the filmy drapes at her window. She yawned and blinked her eyes, then glanced at the clock. Eight o’clock. She had slept nearly fifteen hours. Again.

  After her unpleasant encounter with the guy from the mall who’d said he was Santa’s helper, she had come home, taken a few pills that were supposed to relax her, and crashed. Since then, her sleep cycle had gone out of whack for almost two days. Now, in the half fog of awakening, her fears returned. Pulling her football jersey down over her underpants, she padded across the soft carpeting and out the door. Her first stop was her mother’s bedroom. Empty. She traced a path through the house and discovered she was alone.

  Frightened, she fled the emptiness and ran back to her bedroom. The same dirty jeans she had worn for a couple of days were in a heap near the bed. Hastily she pulled them on, then reached for her favorite old boots. Ignoring the tears streaming down her cheeks, she dug in her purse and withdrew a wad of crumpled bills. Forty, sixty, eighty—she smoothed them out and counted more carefully. One hundred and forty dollars, total.

  She should leave home. But she couldn’t get far on that. Angela willed her gasping breaths to slow down.

  Wait. Her father had said there was money in his dresser, five hundred dollars, told her to take what she wanted. That brought the total to six hundred and forty dollars. She could sell the Porsche, take off for Hawaii on a cheap excursion flight—she had a friend from college on the Big Island, living for nothing on a pineapple plantation as a caretaker. He’d put her up.

  She desperately wanted out. She had to leave here, get away from the coldness, emotional and physical. Angela suddenly craved the sun and the ocean. Maybe, just maybe, she could escape her bizarre visions if she went halfway around the globe and found herself an island.

  She’d reached out, tried to explain, and ended up trapped in a nightmare. No one wanted to listen, she’d convinced herself of that. Why would anyone believe someone else’s dreams?

  Angela reached for the phone to book a ticket, not wanting to go online—she needed to hear a human voice. Seconds later, a pleasant airline associate wished her a happy holiday and asked if she could be of assistance.

  “I’d like a reservation for Hawaii as soon as possible.”

  “I’m sorry.” The voice returned after a moment’s silence. “There are no seats available until December twenty-eighth. I can put you on standby if that will help.”

  “You don’t understand! This is an emergency! I have to leave as soon as possible,” Angela shouted, tears choking her voice.

  “Let me try some of the discount carriers. You never know, right?”

  “No. You never do.”

  The voice returned. “There’s one cancellation on the morning of the twenty-sixth. If you care to leave your number, I’ll call you back . . .”

  “No. Too late. Thanks for checking.” Angela ended the call with a push of a button. Flinging herself on the bed, she let the tears flow.

  She was still trapped—in the all-too-real nightmare of her parents’ house, unable to escape her mother’s icy moods and meanness.

  Damn everybody and everything, she raged. Just this once, why couldn’t you help me, Mother? I tried so hard to be what you wanted. Why can’t you accept me the way I am? I know I’m not pretty like you, and I don’t dress well, but I’m your daughter and that should count for something. If you’d only look at me, really look at me. Touch me, tell me that you love me. Just once. Is that too much to want?

  It hadn’t always been this way, she reminded herself. There had been a time—a long time ago—when she had led a normal life. She and her mother had been comparatively close and she’d felt loved. As a family they had shared meals, gone on trips together, and talked to each other. When had it all changed?

  When she was twelve, Angela realized. Right after she’d had her first vision. Her mother had shrugged it off as a bad dream. But as the visions had become more frequent, she and her mother had become more distanced from one another. Angela’s bad dreams had become her mother’s nightmares, even if Sylvia would never admit to that.

  From that day on, she had never been good enough. Suddenly Angela jerked upright. She still wasn’t.

  When was the last time you had a bath? Why don’t you put on a little perfume? Her mother never went for the jugular. She favored little cuts that were calculated not to leave visible scars.

  But there were scars.

  “All right, Mummy darling, a bath it is,” Angela shouted to the empty hallway as she darted into her mother’s dressing room. She scooped up several little bottles of Givaudan 50 from the top of the dresser and raced into the bathroom. Pouring the costly fragrance into the tub, she turned on the hot tap. Two hundred bucks an ounce dissolved into gallons of rushing water. She’d leave the empty bottles where her dear mother would notice them.

  She watched with clinical interest as the water gushed into the bathtub. The strong, almost suffocating scent of Givaudan wafted into the bedroom in a cloud of steam. Angela swiftly calculated how long it would take to flood the upstairs and ruin the downstairs ceiling, then stuffed a washcloth into the overflow drain and turned the water on full force, then did the same thing with the sink. Next she moved to the sinks and showers in the other two upstairs bathrooms and blocked them. Before she could regret her actions, she turned back to her room and collected her purse and jacket.

  Shortly after noon, Heather Andrews tapped on Felex Lassiter’s office door before storming in. “Lex, I guess you know I’m going to hang for this.”

  Lex lifted his blond head. He had been reading through the file folders on his desk and quickly closed the one on top. “What?”

  “For this,” Heather said in exasperation. “This was my morning off. When I came in, I learned about this new bomb scare. Lex, I never wrote out that report on Angela Steinhart for Harold. She was so damned cagey. But now I think she was trying to warn me—about herself!”

  “You think. You don’t know that.” Lex rose and walked over to her.

  “Look, I didn’t take the time to draw her out. Now how am I going to tell him about it? I’m gonna swing for this one. Did you know the whole mall is crawling with security? And state cops? Eric Summers finally had to bring in the local police, too.”

  “Sit down, Heather. Take it easy. It isn’t as bad as you think.” Lex’s protective instincts kicked in. He put his arm around her and led her to a comfortable chair.


  “The hell it isn’t! Oh, why should I care, anyway?” She sat down and buried her face in her hands. “If I get fired, I can collect unemployment—but—Felex, I should have written out that report. Not just for Harold. For Eric and the rest of those poor people who are wasting their energy trying to track down a bomb and find the person who made the threat. I have a very good idea who it is.”

  “Maybe. And maybe not,” Felex emphasized. “You only know what the girl told you and you said yourself she wasn’t very specific.”

  Heather squeezed her shaking hands together to control her nervousness. “I’ve been through this before, remember? I know what goes into checking out these threats. From what I hear, this one is different.”

  “Right,” Lex encouraged. “I didn’t come forward with what little I knew about Angela because I thought it was your place. Secondly, things just don’t fit. The note says seventy-two hours, but Angela was asking questions about the peak of holiday shopping. If it was Angela who sent the threat, wouldn’t she have offered details to back up her story to you about her visions?”

  “Who the hell knows? Crazy people don’t think rationally.”

  “Do you think she’s crazy?”

  “No,” Heather said slowly. “I didn’t then, and I still don’t. Maybe troubled is a better word, really troubled. I don’t know exactly what I saw in her eyes. Nothing you could put into an official memo. But it was still my decision to keep it to myself.”

  “You shared it with me, right?”

  “That’s not going to get me any points with upper level management.”

  “Look, we’ll square it with Eric Summers. Okay? I’ll have him come up here and we can both talk to him.”