Secret Santa

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She liked his self-deprecation. Again, this was like none of the guys she’d been around for a while. They seemed to take every opportunity to remind her that while she was planning on going into the lowly family-practice field, they would be elbow-deep in neurosurgery or cardiothoracic surgery or trauma or oncology.

Here, Neil had no such pretensions, and she liked the way he seemed at ease with himself.

It soothed her—and her anxiety about her father’s money, and what that amount of cash could mean. She felt certain, all in a moment, that she could tell the man in front of her anything and he’d understand it, help her through it.

It was on the tip of her tongue to blurt out about the money and ask Neil for his opinion. But then the lights dimmed twice, and she recalled it was Flora’s signal to get back to the grindstone.

“Gotta go,” he told Charli. “Why not stay and watch?”

She did. As she slid into one of the old wooden seats in the back of the auditorium, she discovered Neil’s voice to be a strong, clear tenor that nailed a solo in an old English Christmas carol.

He probably had sung right beside her dad the Christmas before. She hadn’t come home for Christmas last year. She would have if she’d known that Christmas was to be her father’s last one. It was a regret she knew she’d have for the rest of her life.

Still, as Charli watched Neil sing with the rest of the choir, she was glad of the interruption that had prevented her from spilling the beans about the money. What on earth had made her think telling Neil about the money was a good idea? What could he do about it? And he owned and edited the newspaper. Would he feel compelled to report her discovery before she had a chance to figure things out?

The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became. That amount of money couldn’t mean anything good.

* * *

THE NEXT MORNING, Charli awoke gritty-eyed and groggy. Thoughts of the money and Neil had chased themselves around in her head until the small hours of the morning. When she faced herself in the mirror, seeing the bags under her eyes, she knew something had to give.

She called Marvela at the office and told her she’d be a half hour late coming in. “I’ve got a stop I need to make first,” she told her.

That stop was at Floyd Lewis’s house. Floyd had been her dad’s CPA for years. Charli hadn’t seen a professional listing in the yellow pages for his office, so she’d rung his house and he’d told her he’d retired three years before, but to drop in at home.

When she pulled up to Floyd’s house, she saw a Corolla parked at the curb—a Corolla that looked suspiciously like Neil Bailey’s. Her heart went into overdrive as two emotions battled for primacy—a little jolt of joy at seeing Neil again, and frustration that she wouldn’t have a chance to talk to Floyd alone.

Maybe it’s not Neil. There have got to be a dozen cars in Brevis that look like his. She soldiered on, up the steep little hill of grass between the curb and the sidewalk. Good thing she’d ditched her heels in favor of flats today.

But, no, it was Neil. There he was, struggling to get out of his car one-handed, diving back in for a camera he slung around his neck and the skinny reporter’s notebook he jammed into his back pocket.

“Fancy running into you. I figured you’d be neck-deep in office hours, or at the hospital,” Neil said by way of greeting. “I see you’re sporting another one of those scarves. Your mom’s handiwork?”

Charli’s hand went to her scarf du jour, a frilly confection of aqua and black. “Yeah. Should I put in an order for you? She’s about to bury me in yarn.”

“I’m kind of a hot-natured guy—hardly ever wear a coat if I can get out of it. Maybe you should ask her to knit you a throw or something—that would take longer, right?”

She chuckled. “You might have an idea there.” Twining the scarf’s end around her fingers, she said, “You visiting Floyd?”

“Yeah. So...you here to see the chicks, too?”

“What?” Did he mean chicken chicks, or...

“The baby chickens. Floyd is raising chickens in his backyard, and he wanted me to do a story on it. He called me and said he had about a dozen hatchlings.”

“Oh.” Charli groaned. “What a lovely way to raise a good case of salmonella.”

Neil came to full alert. “Really? That’d be a good counterpoint to balance the article. Can I quote you on that?”

“No!” she said firmly. “It’s just that I treated a whole family who had an outbreak of salmonella after the mom had decided eggs from the supermarket were nasty.”

“Wow. How do you get it?”

“The salmonella? From the chickens. Wait. This is not on the record. I don’t want to come across as the new-in-town know-it-all doctor who’s out to be a spoilsport. So before I say anything, I repeat—this is off—”

“Got it. Background only, so I’ll know what to look up on Google.”

“Chickens can carry salmonella, and people can get it from handling the birds or their...poop. And there’s the whole bird-flu worry. In China, it was domestic flocks, not commercial, that really started that scare. But—” Charli could see him struggling to one-hand his reporter’s notebook out of his pocket. “I’ll send you a link, okay? If you’re careful when you raise chickens, you’re not likely to get sick. I just don’t want people to think growing your own chickens is as easy as simply throwing some chickens and scratch into your backyard.”

“Thanks. Now let’s go back and see if ol’ Floyd is a Typhoid Mary.”

At least I distracted him from wanting to know why I’m here, she thought.

In the garage, empty of a car, and full of chicken brooders, Floyd was leaning over one waist-high pen. “Hey, Neil! You made it! And Charli, too! I mean Dr. Prescott.”

“Hi, Floyd. Thanks for the flowers you sent—and the egg salad.” Suddenly her stomach churned. Had she eaten salmonella-laden homegrown eggs?

“Hatched those eggs right here! My very own flock of chickens! Can’t beat the taste, can you? Made the mayo myself, too. My mama’s recipe.”

Honestly, Charli couldn’t remember whether she’d partaken in any of the egg salad. She usually steered clear of any buffet-served dish that had mayo—homemade or otherwise—in it, for precautionary reasons.

But she was pleased to see Floyd was wearing coveralls and elbow-length gloves. At least he was taking his care seriously.

Floyd brought out a few chicks to show off, fluffy little balls of feathers he had raised in an incubator. “Got ’em in the garage because the weather’s cold. See my heat lights? Got two of ’em over each brooder in case one of ’em fails. Redundancy. That’s the way to go.”

Neil dived into the interview, bracing the notebook on the top of the brooder and scrawling notes with his good hand. Charli looked on with dismay. She wasn’t going to have time to wait out the interview for a chance to speak to Floyd alone.

As she was about to go, Floyd said, “Neil, why don’t you go on and get a picture of my big girls in the backyard? I can’t leave these little guys just now—I’m sexing ’em, and I need to do it now.”

“Sexing?” Neil’s eyebrows shot up, and Charli burst out laughing.

“He means he’s trying to detect the gender of the chicks. He’s not doing anything to them.”

“Oh. Okay. I’ll go get those pictures.” Neil left them, albeit looking a little confused.

Now Floyd asked, “What’s on your mind, Charli? I guess I didn’t think you’d have anything private to say, or I would have told you Neil was coming.”

“I can come back—”

“Nope. Me and the missus are heading down to Savannah for some Christmas shopping, and we’ll probably crash at Lila’s to see the grandkids. I won’t be back for a week. Got a buddy of mine to check on the chickens for me. So? What’s on your mind? Make it quick, because Neil will be back any second.”

“Um, did you know if my dad had a lot of cash?” The tentative way she asked certainly didn’t fit in with his suggestion to “make it quick.”