A Christmas to Die For (20 page)

"I suppose you know what significance this is supposed to have, but I'm sure I don't. I suppose it's possible that the odd military piece might have passed through my hands at some point in my career. I really don't remember."

"Don't you?" Tyler took a step closer, his hands clenched so tightly that the knuckles were white. "Funny, I'd think you'd remember that. The medal belonged to my grandfather. It was stolen from his house the night he died."

He'd gone too far—she knew that instantly. He couldn't be positive the medal had gone missing that particular night, even if he were morally sure of it.

Phil straightened, grasping the significance as quickly as she did. He swung around to face Tyler, his face darkening.

"I've been accused of a lot of things, but this is a first. I doubt very much that you could convince anyone, including the police, that the medal was stolen, or that it disappeared the night he died. Your grandfather could have sold it himself."

"Are you saying you got it from him?"

"No, certainly not. But he could have sold it to someone else."

"He didn't. He wouldn't. It was important to him. He wouldn't have let it go."

Phil shrugged, seemingly on surer ground now. "We just have your opinion for that, don't we? The old man was on the outs with everyone, even his own family. Who knows what he might have done? All your detective work, running from Bethlehem to New Holland—"

Before she could guess his intent, Tyler's hand shot out, stopping short of grabbing the front of Phil's expensive cashmere sweater by an inch. Phil leaned back against the showcase, losing color again.

"I didn't mention Bethlehem. How did you know we went there?" He shot a glance at Rachel, but she wasn't sure he saw her. At least, not her as a person, just a source of information. "Could he be the man you saw watching us?"

Startled, she stared at Phil, certainty coalescing. "No. Not him. But I know who it was. I knew he looked familiar. It was one of those men who were loading the truck that first time we came. The men you said worked for you, Phil."

Now Tyler did grab the sweater. "Did you send him to watch us? Did he try to push Rachel down the stairs?"

"No, no, I wouldn't. If he—if he was there, it didn't have anything to do with me."

"You were involved. You had the medal. You sold it, months after my grandfather died. I suppose you thought it would disappear into a private collection and never surface again. But it did. Now, where did you get it?"

"Tyler, don't." Her heart thudded, and she tugged at his arm. "Don't. You shouldn't—"

He wasn't listening. Neither of them were.

Phil shook his head from side to side. "I didn't. I didn't do anything. I bought it." He glanced at Rachel, a swift, sidelong gaze. "I bought it like I bought a lot of little trinkets around that time."

"Who?" She found her voice. "Who sold it to you?"

"I'm sorry, Rachel."

He actually did sound sorry. Sorry for her. Her heart clutched. She wanted to freeze the moment, to stop whatever he was going to say next. But she couldn't.

He cleared his throat, looking back at Tyler. "I bought the medal from Rachel's father."

I
f her head would just stop throbbing, maybe Rachel could make sense of what everyone was saying. Her mind had stopped functioning coherently at the instant Phil made that outrageous claim about her father. The next thing she knew, she was sitting in the library at the inn, Grams close beside her on the couch, clutching her hand.

Zachary Burkhalter sat across from them. The police chief should look uncomfortable with his long frame folded into that small lady's armchair, but at the moment he was too busy looking annoyed with Tyler.

Tyler. Her heart seemed to clench, and she had to force herself to look at him. He sat forward on the desk chair that had been her grandfather's, hands grasping its mahogany arms, waiting. If he was moved by the chief's comments, he wasn't showing it. He simply waited, face impassive, emotionless.

That was a separate little hurt among all the larger ones. Such a short time ago, he'd said—hinted, at least, that there was a future for them. Now, he thought her father was a murderer.

"I told you I'd investigate." Burkhalter's tone was icy. "If you'd been able to restrain yourself, we might have been able to gather some hard evidence. You can't just go around accusing respectable citizens of murder."

"
You
can't." Tyler didn't sound as if he regretted a single action. "I'm not the police. At least I got an admission from him. What hard evidence do you expect to unearth at this point?"

"Probably none, now that you've jumped in with both feet and tipped Longstreet off that he's under suspicion. If there is anything, he had a chance to get rid of it before I could get a search warrant."

"Is Phillip under arrest?" Grams's voice was a thin echo of her usual tone, and her hands, clasped in Rachel's, were icy.

Burkhalter's expression softened when he looked at her. "No. The district attorney isn't ready to charge him with anything at this point. We're looking for the man who works for him—the one you thought was following you in Bethlehem. He may shed some light. And it's possible we might trace some of the things that have been stolen recently to him."

Rachel cleared her throat, unable to remember when she'd last spoken. Shock, probably. Anger would be better than this icy numbness, and she could feel it beginning to build, deep within her.

"What does Longstreet say now?" Impossible to believe she was talking about someone she'd considered a friend, someone she'd worked with and argued with on a project that had been so important to both of them.

And all the time—all those meetings when he'd sat across from her, when they'd shared a smile at some ridiculous suggestion from Sandra, when they'd talked plans for Churchville's future—all that time he'd been hiding this.

"He sticks to his first statement. Says he bought the medal, and some other small collectible pieces, from your father shortly before he left town. Claims to have been guilty of nothing more than not inquiring too closely where the objects came from."

Tyler stirred. "He knew. He had to."

"He's confident we won't prove it at this late date." Burkhalter turned to Grams. "I don't want to distress you, Mrs. Unger, but I have to ask. Longstreet implied that some of the things he bought might have come from this house. Did you ever suspect your son-in-law of stealing from you?"

Grams's hands trembled, and Rachel's anger spurted to the surface. "Leave her alone. Can't you see how upset she is? You have no right—"

"No, Rachel." Her grandmother stiffened, back straight, head high, the way she always met a challenge. "Chief Burkhalter has his duty to do, as do I." The fine muscles around her lips tensed. "We had suspicions, that summer. Things disappeared, perhaps mislaid. A silver snuffbox, an ivory-inlaid hand mirror, a few pieces of Georgian silver. My husband thought that my daughter's husband was responsible."

"Did he accuse Hampton?" Tyler was as cold as if he spoke of strangers. Well, they were strangers to him. Just not to her. Her heart seemed to crack.

Grams shook her head slowly. "Not at first. He wanted to, but I was afraid."

"You're never afraid," Rachel said softly. She smoothed her fingers over her grandmother's hand, the bones fragile under soft skin.

"I was afraid of losing you and your sisters." Grams's eyes shone with tears. "I was a coward. I didn't want an open breach. But we lost you anyway."

"Not at first?" Burkhalter echoed. "Did there come a time when that happened?"

"Something vanished that my husband prized—a cameo that had been his grandmother's, supposedly a gift from a descendant of William Penn. He'd intended it for one of our granddaughters. That was the last straw, as far as he was concerned. But before he could do anything, Donald was gone. Maybe he guessed Frederick was about to confront him."

"Didn't people wonder about it?" Tyler asked. "Hampton disappearing so soon after my grandfather's death?"

Burkhalter shrugged. "I've done some inquiring. As far as I can tell, Hampton came and went so much that nobody questioned his leaving at that particular time. You don't automatically suspect someone of a crime for that."

"Of course not!" The words burst out of Rachel. She couldn't listen to this any longer. "This is my father you're talking about. My father. He wouldn't do anything like that."

Grams patted her hand. Tyler said her name, and she turned on him.

"This is your fault. You're trying to make yourself feel better by blaming all this on my father." She was standing, body rigid, hands clasped, feeling as if she'd go up in flames if anyone tried to touch her. "He didn't do it. He wouldn't do anything to hurt anyone. He was gentle, and charming, and he loved his children. He loved me." She was eight again, her heart breaking, her world ripping apart. "He loved me."

She spun and raced out of the room before the sobs that choked her had a chance to rip free and expose her grief and pain to everyone.

Rachel came down the stairs from her bedroom, glancing at her watch. Nearly seven and dark already, of course, although the lights on Main Street shone cheerfully and pedestrians were out and about, probably doing Christmas shopping. The house was quiet, the insistent voices that had pushed her to the breaking point silenced now.

She rounded the corner of the stairs into the kitchen. Grams sat at the table, a cup of tea steaming in front of her, Barney curled at her feet. He spotted her first, welcoming her with a gentle woof.

Grams looked up, her blue eyes filled with concern. "Rachel, you must be hungry. I'll get some soup—"

Rachel stopped her before she could get up, dropping a kiss on her cheek. "I'll get it. It smells as if Emma left some chicken pot pie on the stove."

"She sent Levi over with it. She knows it's your favorite."

Rachel poured a ladleful into an earthenware bowl, inhaling the rich aroma of chicken mingled with the square pillows of dough that were Emma's signature touch. "That was lovely of her. Please tell me the entire neighborhood hasn't found out about our troubles so soon."

"People talk. And I'm sure quite a few heard a garbled version of the police searching Longstreet's antiques and saw the police car parked in our driveway." Grams sounded resigned to it. She'd spent her life in country places and knew how they functioned. "Did you sleep any, dear?"

Rachel sank into the chair opposite her, pushing her hair back with both hands. "A little." After she'd cried her heart out—for her father, for the trouble that would hurt everyone she loved, for what might have been with Tyler and was surely gone now. "I guess I made an exhibition of myself, didn't I?"

"Let's say it startled everyone," Grams said dryly. "Including you, I think."

She nodded and forced herself to put a spoonful into her mouth, to chew, to swallow. The warmth spread through her. Small wonder they called this comfort food.

"I thought I'd accepted it a long time ago. Maybe I never did." She met her grandmother's gaze across the table. "This business of Daddy taking things from the house—did Mother know?"

"She never admitted it if she did." She sighed, shaking her head. "That was what precipitated her taking you away. She was upset and angry over your father leaving, and Frederick—well, his patience ran out. He said, 'At least we no longer have a thief in the house.'"

She'd thought she was finished crying, but another tear slid down her cheek. "You tried to stop them from fighting. I remember that." They'd huddled at the top of the stairs, she and Andrea, listening to the battle raging below, understanding nothing except that their lives were changing forever.

"It was no good. They were both too stubborn, and things were said that neither of them would forget." She took a sip of the tea and then set the cup back in the saucer with a tiny
ching
. "I thought all that unhappiness was over and done with, and that with you and Andrea back, we could just be happy."

"I guess the past is always ready to jump out and bite you. If Tyler had never come—" That hurt too much to go on.

"Perhaps it was meant to be. I know we can't see our way clear at the moment, but God knows the way out."

The faintest smile touched her lips. "When I was little, you told me God was always there to take my hand when I was in trouble."

"He still is, Rachel. Just reach out and take it." Grams stood, carrying her cup to the sink. "I believe I'll read for a while, unless you'd like company."

Rachel shook her head. "After I finish this, I'll take Barney out for a little walk. The cold air will do us both good."

"Don't go on Crossings Road, dear. Not after dark."

"I won't." Grams couldn't help remembering her accident. "We'll take a walk down Main Street, where the shops are still open."

Grams came to pat her cheek and then headed for the steps. "Look in on me when you get back."

"I will. I love you, Grams."

"I love you, too, Rachel."

Barney trotted happily at her heels a few minutes later as she pulled jacket, hat and mittens from the closet. He knew the signs of an impending walk, even if no one said the word.

She stepped outside, the dog running immediately to investigate the snow, not content until he'd rolled over several times in it. Must be close to four inches, but it had stopped at some time since she'd come back from the antique shop. The sky above was clear now, and thick with stars.

She whistled to Barney and started down the street. Grams hadn't mentioned Tyler's whereabouts, but his car wasn't in its usual spot, so he was probably out to dinner. Or even moving out.

She tried to ignore the bruised feeling around her heart. Tyler believed her father guilty of killing his grandfather. They could never get past that in a million years, so it was better not to try.

She tilted her head back. The stars seemed incredibly close, as if she could reach out and pick a frosty handful.

Why did You bring him into my life, when it was bound to end so badly? I thought I was content with things the way they were, and now—