Duck the Halls: A Meg Langslow Mystery (Meg Langslow Mysteries) (12 page)

“That’s good,” I said. “What are the boys—sheep?” Most of the smaller children ended up as sheep.

“They’re going to wear their Halloween costumes,” Michael said.

“But they were dinosaurs for Halloween,” I pointed out. “I don’t think there were a lot of dinosaurs in Bethlehem in biblical times.”

“Picky, picky,” Michael said. “Robyn’s got a more expansive approach to the pageant. Wait till you see it.”

I felt a brief twinge of guilt at weaseling out of the service, but my eyelids were drooping more and more. And if Michael and the boys were attending not only the service but also the rehearsal, I might have time for a proper nap.

With visions of soft pillows and our down comforter dancing through my head, I headed for the exit. Unfortunately I got caught up in the human traffic jam in the vestibule, as several hundred Catholics tried to leave the sanctuary at the same time that a similar number of Episcopalians tried to enter. It wasn’t just the sheer numbers but the fact that everyone wanted to clump in little groups to share news and gossip with friends they didn’t usually get to see on Sunday morning. And by the time I managed to escape to the parking lot, so had a lot of the departing Catholics, while late-arriving Episcopalians were cruising up and down the lanes, looking for vacant spaces that would have been a lot easier to create if the impatient new arrivals would stop blocking in the departing cars.

By the time I was finally out of the parking lot and on my way, I felt distinctly low on Christmas cheer. The words “Bah! Humbug!” kept trying to escape from my lips. Clearly I needed an attitude adjustment, so I turned on the radio and tuned in the Caerphilly College station.

Normally at this time of year KCAE radio was shorthanded because most of the student staff left for the holidays. The few who remained usually filled airtime with long, interrupted sequences of Christmas carols. My spirits rose at the prospect.

Unfortunately today the radio station appeared to have fallen into the hands of a few students who were either more enterprising or perhaps enjoying the opportunity to play around with minimal faculty or editorial supervision. I quickly deduced that they’d been running around interviewing various people in town about the pranks, and then interspersing audio clips from the interviews with clips from the Marx Brothers’
Duck Soup.
I couldn’t quite decide whether the juxtaposition made the interviewees sound a lot funnier or a lot less intelligent. Or both.

I finally punched the off button and tried to hum for the rest of the way home. And for some reason as soon as I spotted the first few sheep belonging to Seth Early, our neighbor across the road, I cheered up immensely and began singing aloud.

“Shepherds shake off your drowsy sleep, rise and leave your silly sheep.”

Although I hoped Seth wouldn’t hear me referring to his dignified Lincoln sheep as silly. And I had to admit there wasn’t anything silly about them, since he’d resisted Mother’s suggestion that he decorate them all for the holiday with big red bows.

At least twenty additional cars were parked up and down both sides of the road in front of our house. Several women with piecework totes or brown paper grocery bags were trotting down the path that ran along the left side of the house and led to the backyard where the library had its own entrance.

A real hostess would have gone and greeted the ladies, made sure they had enough light, offered them coffee and tea.

Instead, I scurried up the path and let myself into the house, looking over my shoulder, and managed to shut the door just as another car pulled up.

I took a deep breath. And then another. The house wasn’t quiet—soft instrumental carols were playing through the sound system Mother had set up. But it was peaceful. I inhaled the cinnamon, clove, and evergreen smells. I looked around. Mother had upped the ante on the decorations, all right. The foyer didn’t look like our foyer. It looked like a set for a movie. A movie set at Christmas, back in Victorian times. Maybe a new remake of
A Christmas Carol
. Any second a director would yell action and a flock of actors would walk in, the women in crinolines and the men in frock coats and—

“Meg?”

Rose Noire was standing in the hallway from the kitchen, holding the large coffee urn we used for parties and looking at me with a worried expression.

“Is something wrong?” she asked. “You were just standing there staring at the chandelier.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Long day already.”

“Yes,” she said. “And you need to be very, very careful over there.”

“Careful?” I said. “I’m only over at Trinity. It’s not exactly hazardous duty.”

“Not physically, no.” She set the urn down on the floor by the stairs, stood up, and clasped her hands dramatically. “But I sense unseen danger there.”

“You can sense it all the way out here?” I tried not to sound too incredulous.

“I went in yesterday to take lunch to your Mother after Michael came back to stay with the boys,” she said. “I sensed something at Trinity.”

“Something?” I repeated. “Like evil?”

“Danger.”

Her voice carried a note of firm conviction that alarmed me. I didn’t quite believe Rose Noire had the psychic ability to sense danger. But I didn’t ignore her premonitions, which all too often turned out to be accurate. My theory was that she was very good at observing facts and danger signs and even subconsciously adding them up but either unable or utterly unwilling to recognize that she was making deductions rather than having premonitions.

“I don’t trust that man,” she murmured. And then, before I could ask, she clarified: “Mr. Lightfoot. His aura is very dark and troubled. He’s not what he seems. And it’s infecting the whole choir. I sense nothing but pain and unhappiness around them.”

“Doesn’t take a psychic to figure that out,” I said. “I could tell as much just from attending a rehearsal.”

“Your instincts are good,” she said, nodding with approval. “He has something to do with the pranks.”

Not unless I was completely wrong about Ronnie and Caleb.

“Lightfoot?” I said aloud. “Seems unlikely. Why would he try to sabotage his own concert?”

“Your mother didn’t believe me either,” she said. “And I think the man she was talking to only pretended to. A tall, elderly man she was arguing with,” she added, seeing my inquiring look. “I think he has something to do with running the church.”

“That would be Mr. Vess, Trinity’s resident gadfly,” I said. “And I’m sure he’s quite willing to believe anything negative about Lightfoot.”

“I hope he takes it seriously, then,” she said. “He could be in danger, too.”

Perhaps he had taken her warning. Was it Vess who’d tried to look up Lightfoot’s history on the computer? And was he acting on his own suspicions or because of Rose Noire’s warning? I had a hard time seeing him as a believer in premonitions, but if Rose Noire hadn’t bothered to share the source of her conviction that Lightfoot was not what he seemed …

“Well, I’m taking this to the sewing ladies,” she said, stooping over to pick up the urn. “Are you going to join them?”

“Maybe later,” I said. “I was up before dawn, and I need a break.”

“Your arm is hurting you,” she said.

“Not that much—” I began.

She frowned slightly.

“Why, yes,” I said. “I hadn’t noticed it till now, but I think it is hurting me. I’d better go up, take some of those painkillers, and lie down.”

She smiled happily.

I glanced into the living room. Spike and Tinkerbell were curled up in front of the hearth, where a much larger than usual fire was blazing merrily—no doubt to impress the sewing circle attendees if they wandered into the living room. If Michael and I had to chop and split our own wood, I’d have protested the extravagance of the huge fire, but since I knew every log was helping put food on the family dinner table for one of Randall’s poorer cousins, I just pulled out my notebook and jotted down a reminder to check the level of firewood in the barn and call for a new supply if necessary. Tinkerbell raised her head and thumped her tail on the floor in greeting. Spike opened one eye, sniffed vigorously for a few moments, and then, having detected no trace odors of anything edible, went back to sleep.

“I don’t think those two have left the fireplace in days,” I said. “What did Mother do, glue them to the cushions?”

“She might as well have,” Rose Noire said. “They’re heated cushions.”

She sailed off toward the library, carrying the huge coffee urn.

Okay, now it made sense. I cast an envious glance at the cushions before trudging upstairs. Maybe it was time to break down and buy an electric blanket. I didn’t like the idea of sleeping under a tangle of wires, but if the weather kept on being this cold …

I’d worry about it later. I fell onto the bed. In a few minutes I’d gather enough energy to crawl under the covers, I told myself.

Then I realized that I felt grungy. I hadn’t had time for a shower before racing off this morning, and I’d been spending a lot of time in close proximity to duck poop.

I had plenty of time to take a shower before my nap. In fact—I felt a twinge of deliciously guilty pleasure at the thought—I had enough time to take a good, hot, soaking bath.

I ran down into the basement, because while I’d done a lot of laundry over the last several days, none of it had yet traveled upstairs from the enormous folding table I’d installed. “Getting dressed in the basement” was my own private shorthand for being woefully behind not just on niceties but on essential household chores. I needed to tackle the folding table soon.

But not right now. I collected clean clothes and a clean bath sheet. I heard voices coming down the hall from the library, and voices coming up the front step. Someone else would have to deal with them. I ran upstairs, laid out the clean clothes on my side of the bed, then dumped my dirty clothes in the hamper, snagged my fuzzy robe, and marched into the bathroom. I was trying to decide between the cinnamon-apple-spice bubble bath Michael’s mother had given me last Christmas—nice enough, but not my favorite, although, it would be tactful to finish it off before she arrived, probably bearing this year’s bubble bath offering—or Rose Noire’s homemade rose and lavender soak, which was my favorite, and tended to vanish almost as soon as a new supply arrived. And after my bath—

I was reaching to turn the faucet when I heard a noise behind me.

“Quack-quack-quack!”

I whirled, throwing my robe around me as I did.

A large white duck waddled out of the shower stall.

I pulled on my robe and belted it as I peered into every cranny of the bathroom.

No one there. Just the duck. Which looked up at me expectantly.

“Quack-quack-quack!” it said again. It fluttered up to the rim of the tub and marched up and down, looking down at the tub and then up again at me.

I could see that the plug was in the tub. The old, worn-out plug, which leaked slightly—replacing it was another one of those neglected tasks. I suspected that someone had filled the tub with water, put the duck in it, and then left, not realizing that eventually our winged visitor would be left high and dry.

“No,” I said. “I am not filling the bathtub for you.”

I left the bathroom, closing the door carefully behind me. I put my nice clean clothes on, which seemed a bit of a waste, since I hadn’t managed to get myself clean to go with them, but I didn’t fancy digging the dirty ones out of the hamper.

I pulled out my cell phone. Should I call 911? No. I put it away again. The duck didn’t necessarily mean that our house had been hit by the prankster. There could be some other perfectly logical reason for the duck in our tub. Maybe it was intended as a Christmas present. Not for me or Michael, presumably, or the giver wouldn’t have hidden it in our bathroom. And I had a hard time imagining anyone in my family giving the boys a duck. My nephew Eric had had a pet duck for many years, and they all knew how much trouble it had been. And they all knew we’d only just adjusted to the amount of work required by the chickens we’d acquired this fall. I’d spent the last several months making it very clear to anyone I could even imagine giving the boys a present exactly how we’d feel if they inflicted more livestock on us.

Maybe someone in the family had been helping with the duck removal at St. Byblig’s and failed to notice one of the trespassers stowing away in his vehicle. And by someone in the family I mainly meant either Rob or Dad. Anyone else would have noticed a stowaway duck long before they got all the way out here or, failing to notice it, would find something a lot more sensible to do with it—either taking it back to town or stowing it in the barn for the time being. I couldn’t imagine anyone but Rob or maybe Dad putting the duck in our tub.

I could tell by glancing at the cars outside that neither of my prime suspects was around to be confronted.

And I really needed that nap.

So I collected the duck, took him upstairs to Rob’s bathroom, drew him an inch or so of water in the tub, and made sure the door was closed firmly.

I wasn’t keen on having that soaking bath until I’d cleaned the bathroom thoroughly to remove the last vestiges of the duck’s occupancy, so I settled for a hot shower before my nap.

And I actually did manage to sleep for an hour and a half before my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe began whispering in my ear that I should be paying attention to it. After that, sleep was impossible, so I went downstairs to see what was up.

I ran into Rose Noire in the hall.

“Do you have any idea why there was a duck in Rob’s bathroom?” she asked.

“I put it there,” I said.

She blinked.

“Okay,” she said finally. “Why did you put the duck in Rob’s bathroom?”

“I was afraid it would keep me awake if I left it in Michael’s and my bathroom. And before you ask, I have no idea why there was a duck in our bathroom. Maybe it’s left over from the church prank.”

“I think we should take it outside,” Rose Noire said. “I can set up a nice place for it in one of the sheds and—”

“No,” I said. “It’s not staying. It needs to go back to wherever it came from as soon as possible, before the boys see it and want to keep it.”