“They’re lovely,” Liz said, taking the flowers. “Would you like to step in and meet my friend Tom?” she added, stepping back from the doorway.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I had no idea you had a—a guest. I would never have barged in, had I known.”
“Please, join us in some champagne,” Tom said in a friendly tone that contrasted with the expression of sad perplexity on his face.
“I wouldn’t think of it. I’m interrupting,” the doctor said. “But thank you—both.”
After Cormac Kinnaird left, Liz carried the bouquet to her kitchen counter, pulled out a large spaghetti pot, filled it with water and set the stems in it.
“Aren’t you going to get a vase?” Tom asked. “It’s a nice bouquet.”
“I don’t have a big enough vase for it. And, even if I did, I don’t want to take the time away from our celebration to arrange them now. They’re in water. They can wait.”
Liz returned to her position across from Tom on the tablecloth.
“You’re probably wondering who that was.”
“That’s your business.”
“You’re right in more ways than you think. He’s someone I’ve met through my job—a forensics guy who’s helping me on the missing mom case.”
Tom made no reply.
“To return to more important things,” Liz said, “it’s time for you to open a present.”
This time, Tom was ready for his gift. Opening it with care, he smiled widely when he saw the heart at the center of the homemade star. And when he reached out for Liz’s hand and clasped it tightly she needed no words from him to realize how much it meant to him.
“Merry Xmas, Tom,” Liz said, pronouncing the “X” in honor of the billboard display.
“Merry Xmas to you, too,” he replied, handing her a small present in a jewelry box.
Liz was concerned. An expensive gift on top of providing an instant Christmas would be too much, she thought.
But Tom must have known that would be the case.
Slowly lifting the lid of the jewelry box, Liz looked inside and burst into gleeful laughter. The box contained a key ring and chain, on the end of which dangled a brass monkey.
If Tom had any concerns that his gift would be underwhelming after the arrival of Cormac Kinnaird’s magnificent bouquet, those worries were wiped out when Liz stood up, pulled Tom to a standing position, too, and threw her arms around him in an enthusiastic hug.
“Something’s missing! We need some music,” she said, removing the Erik Satie CD from the CD player and replacing it with a Bing Crosby Christmas album. As Bing crooned “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,” Liz sat down and began to string popcorn for the tree.
“Wouldn’t you like to string some more, too?” she asked Tom, who remained standing.
“Not yet. There’s something else missing, too, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll see,” Tom said. And picking up the ice pick, scissors, and strips of pie plate Liz had forgotten to clear off her desk, he set about fashioning a ring of foil with holes punched in it. Borrowing an extra needle and thread from Liz, he sewed the ring to the back of the star, making use of the holes Liz had punched on one of the star’s points. Then, he took Liz’s hands and pulled her to a standing position. Standing on a chair, he slipped the tin ring over the topmost point of the tree.
“But that’s your present!” Liz exclaimed. “You should take it home for your tree!”
“If it’s my present, I get to decide where it belongs. And I think your tree needs my stah,” he said in his winning Boston accent.
“You might just be right,” Liz said, smiling at him.
As Bing changed his tune to “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” Tom took Liz in his arms, kissed her tenderly on the lips, and led her in a slow dance on the popcorn-strewn tablecloth.
Chapter 13
The next morning, the thin winter sunlight that spilled through the window onto the Christmas tree could not hold a candle to the glow that had shone there the night before. Alone in her bed, regarding the tree from across the room, Liz saw this, and told herself it didn’t matter. It was enough to enjoy the memory of Tom’s surprise.
Nor was Liz disturbed by Tom’s 3:00 a.m. exit. Picking up the brass monkey key chain on her night table, she turned it over in her hands and recalled how relieved she had been to find it, rather than an expensive gift, in the box. It was pleasant to discover Tom’s evident affection, but she was also aware she had never before then considered him as a potential date. This line of thinking led her to wonder if her pleasure in remembering last evening stemmed from receiving unexpected attention and treats or if she would have been attracted to Tom without them.
Then, too, she mused, while regarding the large bouquet leaning at an angle in her spaghetti pot, how differently the evening might have progressed had the enigmatic Dr. Kinnaird arrived at Gravesend Street before Tom did.
Kicking off her covers at the thought of two men surprising her with Christmas attention she had not sought, Liz gave her body rather more attention than usual in the shower, and while her hair was drying, she set about arranging Cormac’s bouquet in a hammered metal ice bucket. Clearing her desk of the pie-plate scraps, ice pick, and scissors, she set the bouquet upon it and stood back to study the effect.
But there was little time to linger. Although it was Christmas Eve day, Liz was scheduled to show up in the Banner newsroom, so she put on a snow-white angora sweater and doe-colored slacks, grabbed a plastic bag full of chocolate Santas, and donned her coat and gloves. Then, with a look over her shoulder at the tin star on the top of her Christmas tree, she smiled and left her house. As Liz crossed the short distance to her car, she noticed that the sunlight had fought and lost a battle with a sky full of clouds. The weather was unexpectedly mild, too. It looked like it would rain.
The raindrops that soon followed, splattering onto her windshield and soaking into the snow cover, might have dampened her spirits. But Liz was too intent on business to think along those trite lines. Instead, she pulled into an ugly strip mall made even less attractive by a huge sign with the words “EXTENDED SHOPPING HOURS!!” spelled out in large plastic letters set in slits on a vinyl signboard. The eyesore was also eye-catching, since it was elevated on the back of a flatbed truck.
Fortunately, the cellular phone shop was less mobbed than the toy store next door to it. If cell phones were in demand this year, those who shopped for them evidently did so at a more reasonable hour than did the last-minute toy crowd. Liz was disappointed to learn that although she could purchase a cell phone on the spot, thanks to the holiday, it would take forty-eight hours to activate it. Still, she made the purchase, and drove on to the Banner newsroom.
“How would you like to cover some hard news for a change?” Dermott McCann asked Liz as she handed him a chocolate Santa. “Mind you, you’re not getting the assignment thanks to this big bribe,” he added, unwrapping the candy and swallowing it in two bites.
“Where’re you sending me?”
“Poultry place in East Cambridge. Seems some guy dressed in a Santa suit ripped off a ton of turkeys in the early hours of the morning.”
Liz wrote down the address and, tossing holiday greetings and chocolate Santas to her co-workers as she passed by their desks, crossed the newsroom to her own desk. She used the phone book there to look up the address of the Arabic-speaking book dealer who had been recommended to her by Molly at Widener Library. As she had recalled, his shop was located in the same multi-ethnic neighborhood as the poultry place.