Six Geese A-Slaying (2 page)

Chapter 2

I tensed and reminded myself that Mother wasn’t necessarily reporting a problem or making a complaint. Still, I took a deep
breath as I turned to see what she wanted. She was standing behind me, dressed in an elegant cobalt blue velvet Victorian
party dress, complete with a matching parasol.

“You look lovely,” I said. Which was true. Rob had inherited his aristocratic blond looks from Mother, whose hair, in her
sixties, was still a rich if implausible shade of gold. As usual, I felt dowdy by comparison. Years of practice helped me
refrain from patting at my own wayward brunette mane whenever I saw Mother’s sleek coif. And was it fair that well short of
forty, I already had to fight to keep my figure from turning matronly, while Mother was still as slender as she had been in
high school?

I could tell she was eyeing my costume with dismay. I’d dressed for warmth and comfort, and then thrown on one of the county-issue
shepherd’s robes—cheap, one-size-fits-all garments that some past parade organizer had had made several decades ago so volunteers
who didn’t have their own costumes could throw on a robe and blend in. Since no one had bothered to launder the robes for
years—if ever—the only people who ever wore them were those like me, who didn’t remember till the last moment that they needed
a costume. I suspected that once the parade was over, Mother would have a few words to say about my appearance.

Of course, I had no idea what her own stunning costume had to do with Christmas, but at this point, I didn’t much care.

“I’m glad you like the costume, dear,” Mother said, beaming a gracious smile at me and smoothing a bit of the dress’s black
lace trim.

“By the way,” Clarence said, “the house looks lovely.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But it’s all Mother’s doing.”

Mother beamed widely.

“Really?” Clarence said. “It’s fantastic!”

Of course, Clarence already knew Mother had done the decorations. But he’d come to know our family well enough to guess that
nothing was more guaranteed to put her in a good mood than a compliment to her decorating skills.

The house really did look fantastic. The exterior of our once-dilapidated three-story white Victorian was now in immaculate
condition, thanks to the Shiffley Construction Company and Michael’s and my depleted checkbook. Left to my own devices, I’d
have stuck electric candles in the front windows and a tasteful wreath on the door and called it quits. In fact, and given
how busy I was with the parade, I’m not sure I’d even have managed that. I’d assumed that Mother would expend her holiday
decorating energy on their summer cottage—actually a farmhouse that she and Dad had bought, on the next farm down the road
from Michael and me. But when she realized that hundreds—perhaps thousands—of holiday tourists would be seeing our house with
its minimalist holiday décor, she’d immediately offered to take care of the decorations and had enlisted a small army of helpers
from the ranks of the Hollingsworths, her vast extended family.

Every single stretch of roofline, including all the dormers and gables, was trimmed with a three-inch fringe of icicle lights.
Every shutter, window-frame, and doorway was outlined with evergreen garlands trimmed with red bows. Every window had been
painted to look like stained glass and behind each set of brightly colored panes glowed not only a flickering electric candle
but a small constellation of prisms to reflect and scatter the light. Fortunately, Mother’s taste didn’t run to reindeer on
the roof, but she had sent a team up to drape it with a giant banner that read “Peace on Earth.” A pair of Christmas doves
the size of turkeys hovered over each end of the banner, pretending they were holding it up, though in reality that function
was performed by a sturdy cable around the chimneys on either end of the main house. A wreath the size of a truck tire obscured
most of the front door, and more evergreen garlands made a festive path down to the mailbox. As we watched, the cousins were
arranging the cartload of poinsettias into a bank of red and green on the front porch.

It wasn’t exactly my taste, but considering that I hadn’t lifted a finger to bring it about, I wasn’t going to complain. I
just had to remember not to fetch the paper in my bathrobe for the rest of the holiday season—in the three days since Mother’s
crew had finished it, the house had become a minor local tourist destination.

Even as we spoke, another family group flagged down a passerby to take their picture on our front steps. All in all, the decorations
were a smashing success, and boded well for the interior design business Mother had announced she’d be opening in the spring.

“Thank you, dear,” she said. “I just stopped by to ask where the Dickens are.”

“Where the dickens are what?” I asked.

Mother allowed a small note of exasperation to creep into her sigh.

“The Dickens
characters
, dear,” she said. “For the
Christmas
Carol
float. You know—Scrooge, Tiny Tim—”

“Oh, right.” I checked my clipboard. “Front yard, to the left of the walkway. Who are you, anyway?”

“You can tell she’s having a bad day when she can’t recognize her own mother,” Clarence said, almost managing to keep a straight
face.

“I’m playing Mrs. Cratchit,” Mother said. She floated off toward the front yard, pausing briefly to straighten the evergreen
garland decking one of the trash barrels. As Mother was fond of saying, it’s those little details that really make a design.

“I thought the Cratchits were paupers,” Clarence said.

“They were. Poor as churchmice. Mrs. Cratchit is described as ‘dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in
ribbons, which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence.’ ”

“Have you memorized the whole book?” he asked. “I’m impressed.”

“Only parts of it,” I said. “The abridged version. Michael’s rehearsing for his one-man
Christmas Carol
show, so by the time he’s ready, I’ll have the whole thing down pat.”

“Oh, wonderful! When?”

“Six P.M. tomorrow night at the college auditorium; tickets ten dollars at the door; proceeds to benefit the Caerphilly Children’s
Fund,” I rattled off.

“What a lovely way to spend Christmas Eve,” he said. “I’ll be there. Meanwhile, don’t worry about Larry. He’s fine.”

“Larry?” I repeated. My glance strayed down to my clipboard. Was I missing a Larry?

“Larry the camel.”

“Oh, that’s right. Trust Dr. Blake to name his zoo’s camels after the Three Stooges.”

“A wonderful sense of humor, your grandfather.”

I made a noncommittal noise. Less than a year ago we’d learned that Dr. Montgomery Blake, the world-famous conservationist
and animal welfare activist, was Dad’s long-lost father. I was still working on thinking of him as “Grandfather” instead of
“Dr. Blake.” I hadn’t yet begun learning to appreciate his odd, curmudgeonly sense of humor.

“Anyway,” Clarence was saying. “Larry always fakes a limp when he wants attention. I’ve got them feeding him some camel treats,
and he’ll be fine by parade time. By the way, you do realize that you sent the elephants to unload in the pasture where the
drummers and fifers are rehearsing, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “If you’re heading there anyway, see if you can convince the drummers and fifers that all that racket they’re
making could spook the elephants.”

“It would if they kept it up,” he said, frowning. “Where do you want them to go instead? The musicians, that is.”

“In the cow pasture behind the house. It’s farther away—and downwind.”

“You don’t really intend to inflict a dozen bagpipers on a herd of defenseless cows?” Clarence said, with mock fierceness.

“There are no cows in the cow pasture at the moment,” I said. “It’s too full of Boy Scouts—they had their annual pre-parade
campout there. And good luck spooking them—Rob was out last night helping ride herd on them, and he reports that they laughed
at all his scariest ghost stories.”

“This modern generation,” he said, shaking his head. “Well, I’m off to cope with the camels and elephants.”

Of course the moment he left, I wondered what he meant by camel treats. Did one of the leading pet food companies manufacture
such a thing? And if not, what did you use to bribe a sulking camel back into good humor?

I could ask him later. I looked back at my check-in sheet. I was using a tiny self-inking stamp of a holly leaf to mark everyone
present and accounted for. I smiled with satisfaction at the almost unbroken garland of leaves marching down the right-hand
side of the page.

I accepted a piece of peanut brittle from a small angel with red pigtails and a cup of eggnog from a passing cousin. I waved
at a local farmer who strolled by herding a small flock of white turkeys with red bows around their necks. Evidently they
were marching in the parade—which meant, I hoped, that they wouldn’t be anyone’s dinner this holiday season. Someone in the
front end of a reindeer costume, complete with a battery-powered flashing red nose, wandered by scanning the crowd as if he’d
lost something. Probably whoever was playing the hind legs.

“Aunt Meg? We’re here.”

My twelve-year-old nephew, Eric McReady, appeared at my elbow, at the head of a swarm of brown-clad shepherds around his own
age. The Boy Scouts. Eric had recruited the local troop, who would be earning credits toward the next rank by performing public
service. They’d be acting as mobile cleanup crews, with groups marching in the parade behind the camels, the elephants, the
horses, and all the other large animals. Had the bagpipers evicted the Boy Scouts from their campground already? Or had Eric
succeeded in getting his volunteers to show up on time? Either way it was good news. I smiled as I stamped them as present.

“Are we really going to have a white Christmas?” one of them asked.

I glanced up at the sky again. I’d been doing it so often all morning that I was getting a crick in my neck. The latest forecast
I’d heard called for a small storm to dump two to six inches of snow on us sometime today. Normally two to six inches would
have constituted a fairly large storm by central Virginia’s standards, but the meteorologists were almost ignoring it to focus
on the massive storm system currently pummeling the Midwest and scheduled to unload another six to twelve inches on Christmas
Eve.

“Yes,” I said. “I just hope it waits until the parade is over.” Or at least until the tail end of the parade was closer to
town than our house. I had no desire to be snowbound with half the population of Caerphilly. Or with the dozens of animals
we’d recruited for the parade—for this evening, I’d arranged quarters for the animals in town, in the barns belonging to the
Caerphilly College Agricultural Sciences Department. I only hoped the snow would hold off long enough for them to get there.

“Snow! Snow! No school tomorrow! No school tomorrow!” chanted a dozen voices, as the Scouts capered around me in what I assumed
was a snow dance.

Yes, two to six inches were more than enough to cancel classes. In their enthusiasm, they seemed to have forgotten that the
schools were already closed tomorrow for the Christmas Eve holiday. In my school days, we’d have called this a wasted snow.
But that didn’t seem to bother the exuberant flock of miniature shepherds.

“Ten-hut!” Eric called.

Behind him the rest of the shepherds fell into formation, saluted in unison and then clanged their shovels against their buckets.

“Cleanup patrol reporting for duty, ma’am,” Eric said.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” I said. And thank goodness they’d stopped calling themselves the Dung Fu Fighters and other
worse names. “We just had a camel incident over there,” I added, pointing to the offending spot.

Most of the troop scurried over toward the small pile of camel dung and began squabbling to see who got to shovel it up.

“It’s okay if Cal helps us, isn’t it?” Eric asked.

I glanced down at the small form at his side—much smaller than any of the other shepherds. A round brown face peered out of
his hood, and I recognized six-year-old Calvin Ripken Burke, the youngest grandson of our Baltimore-born chief of police.

“As long as it’s okay with his grandfather,” I said.

Cal grinned, and ran over to join the rest of the crew.

“His brother is home sick with a cold,” Eric explained. “So Chief Burke asked me if I’d look after him. Otherwise he’d have
to stay with his grandmother and march with the choir. Cal would much rather shovel . . . um . . . dung.”

“You’re a good egg,” I said. “Here—I made a list of the animals that are marching today. It would be great if you could assign
a squad to follow each group.”

“Roger,” he said. “I’m going to do the elephants myself!” With that he ran off to organize his troops.

All by himself? Well, he’d learn. Then again, as the youngest of my sister Pam’s six children, Eric was always running as
fast as he could to keep up with his siblings, and was doomed to become a teenage overachiever. The parade cleanup was in
good hands.

And it sounded as if Clarence, reinforced by the threat of stampeding elephants, had finally resolved the piper and drummer
problem. Now I could return to checking in the remaining participants and keeping them from causing too much trouble before
the parade started. Which would be in . . . a little over three hours.

I glanced up at the sky. No snow yet, thank goodness. Cold as it was, any snow that fell would undoubtedly stick around.

“What’s wrong?”

I turned to see my husband, Michael, tall and resplendent in his wise man’s costume.

“Just fretting over the weather again,” I said, giving him a quick kiss. “You look very dashing. Have you got your myrrh?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, giving a deep, elegant salaam that went well with the vaguely Middle Eastern costume. “Not with me,
of course; it’s on the prop table in the barn with the frankincense and fake gold. Your grandfather’s giving a lot of the
kids camel rides, so I thought I’d see if you needed any help. So nothing’s wrong?”