Secret Santa (14 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A
FTER
SHE
’
D
BID
N
eil good-night and sent him across the hedge a final time, Charli collapsed into
a puddle of limp exhaustion.

I’m so not cut out for this,
she thought, rubbing her eyes.

I should have told him the truth.

Well, at least part of the truth. Maybe she could have told him her dad had wanted to donate the money—

No. Neil would have asked why her dad had waited. Or where the money came from.

Where the money came from. Blast you, Lige Whitaker. My dad was a good man—a hard man, but a good one. I don’t know how you made him do this, what hold you had on him, but he couldn’t have done it for the money. If he had, wouldn’t he have spent it, not socked it away in a safe deposit box?

No, if she came clean about the Secret Santa being her alter ego, she’d have to explain exactly what had happened. And that was something she still didn’t know herself.

Maybe before this morning, before that awful confrontation with Lige, Charli would have been able to.

She rubbed her eyes and considered her next move. Maybe she could tell Neil. She’d swear him to secrecy and ask his advice—

No. He was the type who felt honor bound to protect the purity of news and the people’s right to know. She could predict he’d talk about a “breach of public trust,” or something like that.

Well, he’s right. They should know. And if I didn’t have Mom to worry about—not to mention a gajillion dollars in student loans to pay off—I’d march right over there and tell him now.

Or would she?

What would Neil think of her if she did tell him? Would he still think she was an honorable person? Would he understand why she hadn’t gone to the authorities at once?

Charli yawned. Getting up from her chair, she stumbled on weary feet to her bedroom. Neil’s Christmas lights slanted through the closed blinds, right onto her pillow.

Light. It had a nasty way of showing the worst dirt you were trying to hide.

* * *

M
ARVELA
SLAPPED
ANOTHER
minitower of charts onto Charli’s desk. “I am so sorry, honey, but these need signing off on, too, and now if you don’t mind,” she said. “We can’t bill until the chart is complete. Speaking of billing...”

Charli slumped back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. A brown water stain made a perfect concentric circle around the heating and air vent cover.

Terrific. A roof leak. At least the hospital authority owns this building.

But thinking about the hospital authority immediately led to thoughts of Lige Whitaker.

“Are you in there?” Marvela’s voice brought Charli back to the moment. Charli raised her gaze to Marvela, who had taken off her purple-pink framed bifocals and was shaking her head.

“Honey, you are dead on your feet. You have
got
to get some rest.”

“How did my dad manage all this?” Charli asked. “For every patient I see, I’m pushing a forest’s worth of paper.”

“Welcome to modern medicine, honey. You’ve been working in hospitals where they’ve got armies of staff to handle billing and insurance. Here, it’s just me. And I could use some help.”

This was not the first time Marvela had said something similar—not even the first time that day. Charli bent her neck in first one direction and then another to work out a crick that had lodged there. “Oh, Marvela... You see our cash flow. How am I going to afford to hire another person? Huh?”

“Well, what about part-time? Somebody who could answer the phones and handle the front desk, in the afternoons, when it’s busier?”

“Who would we find that was willing to put in those few hours?” Charli reached for the next chart on her pile and flipped it open. “You have anybody in mind?”

“No.” Marvela’s voice sounded as dispirited as Charli felt. “Maybe we could put an ad in the paper?”

The paper. Neil.
A shiver ran through Charli as she thought about the night before, when he’d come so close to kissing her. She’d willed him to kiss her, long and sweet, and hold her....

At which point, she’d burned the chicken. And compounded her bad cooking by lying to him.

I will not think about that videotape. I will not. Nobody can tell it’s me.

“Marvela, I don’t know. We’d have everybody in the county applying, and when would I have time to go through all those applications? I might fit them in between one and two in the morning.”

Marvela muttered something that didn’t sound so pleasant and headed for the door.

Another happy customer.
Charli was racking them up these days, and she particularly hated to disappoint Marvela, who’d been nothing but a mother hen in fuchsia to her. At least she had groceries in the house again. It had been nice to have a slice of bread to jam in the toaster—

“Wait, Marvela!” The thought of the grocery store had jogged Charli’s memory. “Do you know a Jennifer—maybe Jen, for short?―who works at the IGA?”

Marvela turned around very slowly. “Yes. Yes, I do. Her parents are Bobby and Sue Isley. Pretty good kid. Why?”

“She’s got a head for chemistry. And she seems...” Well, customer service hadn’t been her strong point, not at first, anyway, but Charli wanted to encourage any girl to better herself.

“You mean, ask her? About working part-time?” Marvela’s beringed fingers came together in a prayerful little clasp in front of her ample bosom. “You mean it? You’d hire her?”

“Maybe. Why don’t you call her in and interview her? See what you think? She wants to go to college and major in chemistry, so she’s motivated.”

Marvela’s shoulders lifted, her back straight. “Oh, sure. I can certainly do that. Interview her, I mean. I was always telling your father I could handle all the staff hires, at least at the initial level.”

Oh, my word, but I’ll bet you did. And I can imagine how Dad reacted to that.
“Sure,” Charli told her, trying to smother her laugh at what her father’s control-freak reaction would have been. “You will be the one to work with her the most.”

The phone rang before Marvela had a chance to get back to the front desk, so Charli snatched it up. “Family Medicine,” she said into the phone as she read over a chart before making a note on it.

“May I speak to Dr. Prescott, please?” A man’s voice, somewhat officious. Could be a telemarketer.

“Speaking.” She skimmed down the page, flipped to another, decided it would do and signed off on the chart.

“This is Special Agent Brian Mulford with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The GBI is reviewing the cash donation made to the Broad County Community Clinic. I was wondering if I could talk to you?”

Charli clutched the phone in suddenly sweaty fingers and gasped like a dying fish. This was one phone call she wished she’d left to Marvela. Marvela would have demanded he set up an appointment. Had the sound carried over the phone line? “Yes?” she responded, more of a question than an answer.

“Yes, ma’am. Well, we’d like to ask you a few questions. Are you free now?”

* * *

B
REVIS
C
OMMUNITY
B
ANK
popped up on the newspaper office’s caller ID. Neil picked it up, expecting to hear Nora Evers or one of the other ladies at the bank reporting a discrepancy in the paper’s night deposit.

“Well, well, Neil! How’s that paper of ours coming along?” Lige Whitaker boomed over the phone. “Ya know, if ya ever need to refinance that loan of yours, let us take a look at it. I’ll bet I can get you a sweet deal.”

“Thank you, but I’m happy where I am for now.” Not for the first time was Neil glad that he’d taken the prior owner’s advice about not applying for a loan with Lige—because that’s really who the Brevis Community Bank was, in the end. Or the Broad County Hospital. Or any of the many endeavors Lige ran here in Broad County.

And you didn’t want someone who could call in your loan to be involved in so many activities and news stories as Lige was here in Brevis, even if he was a pretty easygoing person. It could lead to untold numbers of conflicts of interests.

“Can’t blame a man for tryin’, now, can you?” Lige had apparently moved on from banking to the real subject of his call. “I wanted to tell you, the boys and I met last night—”

“The hospital authority met? Without notice? That’s an illegal meeting, Lige. You know that.”

“Oh, pshaw! Even you with your stuffed-shirt attitude won’t quibble about this one. The authority voted to rename the hospital after Chuck Prescott. Figured you’d want to know. Seems right, doesn’t it?”

Neil collapsed back into his chair. To be honest, it didn’t exactly make sense, though Prescott had fought beside Lige to keep the hospital doors open. Plus, Prescott had been the one doctor Lige had kept around for years.

The timing, for one thing, was off. The authority had met at least once before in the weeks since Prescott’s death. Why had they waited until now?

And it was unlike Lige, who watched every penny, to okay a potentially expensive name change for a hospital on such a shoestring budget—he’d fought against one previously, complaining about the wasted letterhead, and the expense of signage.

“That’s—that’s very generous, Lige. I’m sure his family will appreciate it.”

“Yeah, yeah, that Violet, she’s a piece of work, isn’t she?” Lige seemed to have lost interest in the subject at hand. For a moment, silence reigned.

Lige broke it by saying, “Well, Walt’s gonna get you a press release. And I’ve told young Dr. Prescott, so you go on over there and get a quote from her, okay?”

Without so much as a goodbye, Lige clunked the phone down, leaving Neil listening to a dial tone.

Hmm. Lige hadn’t seemed all that fired up about the name change. Maybe Violet or Charli had pressed the hospital authority to do it? Maybe it was a rare revolt by the other members of the hospital authority?

Or maybe it had something to do with the Secret Santa? The timing, coming right after the donation, was at least suspicious. Neil had long ago learned to suspect coincidences.

“Neil? Buddy?” Dawn’s voice wafted over the cubicle divide. “You’re awfully quiet. What’s going on over there? A break in the Secret Santa case?”

Neil exhaled. Dawn didn’t know the half of it. He considered again telling Dawn that Charli might be Santa. But he could be wrong, and information that wasn’t substantiated wasn’t news—it was gossip and speculation.

He drummed his fingers and decided to keep mum. For now. “Dawn, you’re my buddy and my pal, but honestly, you’re beginning to sound like the managing editor I quit on because he nagged so much.”

“Just hoping for a raise.”

“Remember. I’m your boss.”

She laughed. “I do. Promise. Every year on Boss’s Day. Don’t I get you something?”

Neil muttered in the affirmative and punched in the number for the Brevis Family Medicine office. “Hey, Marvela.” He tried to inject the right amount of friendly casualness into his voice.

“Hold on a minute, won’t you, Neil?” Marvela didn’t bother to cover the phone as she hollered, “Oh, no, you don’t―we did not order a thing from any company named Christmas Wishes! I know, because Dr. Prescott has said she doesn’t want a tree this year. So you don’t put that thing down!”

“Marvela! Marvela!” Neil shouted into the phone to get her attention.

“Neil, can you call back? This delivery guy is insisting that we ordered something—big old box that’ll take up half the waiting room!”

“Uh...uh, about that, Marvela.” Gee. What had seemed like a good idea at the time now suddenly didn’t. “I bought it for her.”

“You what?” Marvela’s attention was pulled away again. “No, you don’t, you sorry sapsucker! You can’t leave that there! You come back here—oh, last time I ever work that fellow in without an appointment. What were you saying, Neil?”

“If it’s a big package from a company called Christmas Wishes, I ordered it for her. But it was supposed to come in a small box—oh, no. They probably got it wrong and put my order and her order in the same shipment.”

“Well, she forgot to tell me, and I want you to know, Dr. Prescott has an excellent memory.” She sniffed.

“I—I didn’t exactly tell her about it. It was going to be a surprise. You know, she doesn’t have any decorations up at her house—not even a wreath. They were supposed to deliver it to her house.”

“Something about a signature. They were trying to be nice. Neil, I don’t know that she’s gonna like this. She won’t even let me put up a tree. And you know Dr. Prescott—Dr. Prescott’s daddy—he set quite a store by Christmas.”

“I know. I was trying to help. I’d hoped she’d changed her mind, because her part of the order is a tree—a predecorated one.”

“Well, go, you! I think that’s great. So is that what you were calling about?”

“No. Lige called me to tell me that they were naming the hospital in memory of Charli’s—Dr. Prescott’s―dad.”

“Praise be!” Marvela sighed happily. “Oooh, that’s so great!”

“Yeah, well, I wanted to talk to Charli—Dr. Prescott―about it.”

He could hear Marvela’s long nails tapping against her front teeth. “That could be a problem. Dr. Prescott’s in a meeting with the GBI.”

Whoa.
Brian hadn’t told him they would be interviewing Charli. Had Neil’s interest in the fact that it was a woman—and the scarf—tipped Brian off? Or had the GBI found out something else?

“The GBI? Do you know which agent?”

“I couldn’t say,” Marvela told him primly. “As a matter of fact, I’ve probably said too much already.”

“Hmm. Do you think she might have a few minutes? Long enough to get a quote? It’s about Dr. Chuck Prescott, and how he served this community.”

“Well...” Marvela wavered.

He threw in what he hoped was the clincher. “And I’d come take that package off your hands while I’m at it.”

“Can you come right now?” she asked.

Thank goodness for delivery screwups.
Neil sprang from his chair and told her, “I’ll be there in five minutes!” Without even telling Dawn, he was out the door.