A Christmas for Katie Read Free Page A

realized that there really wasn’t anyone in her life to call.
    And how sad was that?
    She’d been in Jacob’s Crossing for just over a year. Soon after moving she met John Weaver. Though they’d only dated a brief amount of time, she’d really thought there was something special between them. When he broke things off in order to see someone else, she’d become so heartbroken that she’d practically shut herself off from everyone else.
    Which had been really dumb.
    No wonder she’d been reduced to reading self-help books in the stacks.
    Seeing the older woman lying there on the ground all alone gave her a peek into her future that she didn’t like. “Things need to change, Jayne,” she told herself. “No way are you going to end up old and alone. You’ve got to make more of an effort to reach out to people.”
    As she watched a pair of EMTs help the injured woman onto a stretcher and two other uniformed men speak with Connor, Jayne felt tears spring to her eyes.
    She felt sorry for the woman, out at night all by herself.
    But Jayne realized she was also frightened. Had the woman been attacked on purpose? If Connor hadn’t arrived and kept her occupied, could she have been the woman getting loaded on the stretcher?
    Jayne winced as the sirens rang out and the ambulance turned around and sped down the street, one of the police cars on its tail. Slowly, she went back to the circulation desk and sat down in the comfortable chair behind it.
    Quickly, she closed her eyes and said a prayer for the woman, and for the drivers and doctors and other medical personnel.
    Even Connor.
    Connor! Funny how now she was thinking of him on a first name basis.
    With a whoosh , the glass door opened and Connor stepped in, followed closely by two other officers.
    “How is she?” Jayne asked.
    Connor exchanged a wry glance with the other two men. “I think she’s going to be all right,” he said cryptically. “It seems Mrs. Jensen was walking past the nativity when she was grabbed on the lawn, then fell.”
    Jayne felt a shiver flow through her. “That’s awful!”
    “It is, but I’m not exactly sure what actually happened. The man I was talking to? He seems to think he saw her slip and fall against the side of the wooden crèche. Or maybe a rock or something.”
    “There are some fairly big rocks around there. It was one of the reasons I put the display where I did. Most people go out of their way to avoid them.” Then she recalled what the woman had said. “But she said she had been attacked.”
    “Yeah.” Another man pulled at the collar of his shirt, like it had suddenly become too tight. “She might have . . . or she might have made up her story when she got caught.”
    “Got caught doing what?”
    “Trying to steal a figurine, to be exact,” Connor said with a smile.”We saw quite a few tracks around the figures, and something that certainly looks like skid marks from something being pulled away.”
    “So, we’re missing one of the pieces?”
    “I’m afraid, so.” He glanced at the other man before meeting her gaze. “Two other figures were toppled over when we got there. Mrs. Jensen could have fallen while trying to take yet another figure and tripped or something.”
    Jayne couldn’t believe that anyone would want a piece of her very old nativity set. “Oh my goodness. How does something like that happen?”
    He looked at the other two officers again. “I don’t know, but I’m a little irritated. She wants to file a report. Which means I’m going to have to at least pretend I believe her and look around here a little bit closer. Not the way I wanted to spend my Friday night.”
    “I wonder why anyone would want one of our old figures?” she mused, mainly to herself.
    Connor shrugged. “I’ve given up trying to figure out why folks do things. One of us will go to the hospital when we’re done here and get a better statement. If she was hurt by a mugger, that’s a pretty serious crime and we