The Nightingale Before Christmas (14 page)

“I hate to be a party pooper,” I said finally. “But I'm getting hungry, and Grandma and I have to get back to the show house.”

We had a quick lunch at Muriel's Diner, home of what had now been certified, by last year's fair, as the best apple and cherry pies in the state. And then Michael dropped Mother and me back at the show house, and took the boys off for naps so they could stay up late for tonight's show. I suspected he and his mother and Dad were also planning on a nap.

Mother and I were made of sterner stuff.

She returned to inspecting red paint. I was half expecting her to ask me to drive her back to the fire station to match her samples against Santa's sleigh. Or worse, send Mateo on the thankless errand of getting the local hardware store to match the sleigh's paint. But after another quarter hour of dithering, she made a decision. The walls would be resplendent in “Red Obession.”

After dealing with a few crises that had popped up while I was gone, I decided the only way I'd get any work done was to retire to the garage. It was a little chilly, but at least it was out of the way. I'd begun to realize that if I was underfoot, the designers would come to me with every little hangnail-sized problem, but if I was in the garage, it took a much larger problem to make them take the trouble of hunting me down.

Though I did walk through the house every hour or so. Pocket door construction was going nicely. Mother and Eustace were positively cooing at each other as they watched Tomás doing whatever they had agreed to have him do to the archway. Mateo and Randall's workmen had almost finished returning the master suite to the condition it had been in before the murder—and for that matter, before the flood. Sarah's room looked back to normal, though she had a disconcerting tendency to jerk open drawers, look under chair cushions, and search every other nook and cranny of the room, all of which she'd already searched at least a dozen times. And to my relief, Ivy had begun working on her “Nightingale” mural in the part of the upstairs hallway that was visible from the great room below. Mother had been counting on that as a key part of her decoration.

I walked into the dining room to make sure the workmen had pruned Linda's portion of the Christmas tree, and that she was happy with the results.

Linda was sitting on one of her flowered chairs, crying, quietly but steadily. A small heap of tissues lay on the floor on the right side of her chair. As I watched, she dropped the tissue she was using with the others and took a fresh one from the box.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

I took a few steps toward her but paused when she held up her hand like a traffic cop ordering cars to stop.

“I'll be fine,” she said. “This is just an upsetting time for all of us.”

I nodded and watched as she added another tissue to the pile.

“It's a very small world, you know,” Linda said. “The design community.”

I'd figured that out weeks ago. Coming in to take charge of organizing I'd felt like the new kid starting school in the middle of a semester.

“We all fight over the same clients. The same vendors. Read the same publications. Follow—or try to break free from—the same trends.”

“The designers in the show house all seem pretty individual to me,” I said.

“That's because it's a small town show house,” she said. “Half of these people wouldn't get into a sophisticated big city event. Sarah maybe, and your mother, and Eustace. But not Violet and Vermillion or those nice ladies with the quilts. And not me.”

Maybe that was supposed to be my cue to reassure her. But I didn't think I could do it and fool her.

“And Clay?” I asked. “Would he have made the cut?”

“God, I hope not!” She plucked another tissue from the box with such a violent tug that it fell to the floor. “He was a horrible person.”

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“I'm sure somebody already has,” she replied. “Did anyone tell you about the hilarious prank Clay played on me?”

“No one's told me about Clay doing anything hilarious,” I said. “Or even mildly amusing. Remember, I'm a stranger in this strange land of Decoratorville. What nasty prank did he play?”

She looked up, assessed me for a few minutes, then closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair, as if surrendering.

“I've been widowed for ten years,” she said. “No family. And a couple of years ago, I decided to try one of those online dating sites. And I didn't like it at first. I was almost going to close my account. Then I met this man who seemed really nice and normal. He was a doctor. A widower. Fiftyish. We spent hours online talking. We bonded. I told him things…”

Her voice trailed off and she shook her head.

“We finally agreed to meet in person,” she continued. “At a restaurant in Richmond. I was so nervous. I must have tried on a dozen outfits before deciding on one. I'm not young or skinny.” She lifted her chin defiantly. “But I look pretty good for my age. I take care of myself.”

“Absolutely,” I said. And I meant it. I might not like her taste in décor and clothes, but I had a hard time imagining that the fiftyish widowed doctor wouldn't be pleased to see her across the table.

“I waited in that restaurant for an hour and a half,” she said. “Drinking the water and nibbling the bread and eventually ordering a glass of wine so the waiters wouldn't think I was just some crazy person taking up space. And when I finished my wine, the waiter brought me another glass, saying it was from one of the other customers.”

I had a bad feeling about this.

“It was Clay,” she said. “I found out he'd overheard me telling a friend about joining the online dating site. He figured out what my user name was and he pretended to be that nice, widowed doctor. I told him things I'd never told anyone—not even my late husband. And then he sat there in that restaurant, for an hour and a half, watching me wait.”

“What a horrible thing to do!”

“So, ever since then—as I said, a very small community. No way I could keep from running into him. And he was always digging at me. Dropping little hints about things I'd told him online. Calling me ‘Linda May.' That's what my mama used to call me, but when I got out of high school I dropped the ‘May,' 'cause it sounded too Southern and country.”

She shook her head and blew her nose vigorously.

“And I'm sure everyone else knows all about it, and someone must have told the chief,” she said, more briskly. “And he's right to suspect me of knocking off Clay. I didn't do it, but I half want to thank whoever did. I just wish I had some kind of an alibi.”

“What were you doing instead of being alibied?” I asked.

“At home, watching TV and using the computer,” she said. “All by my lonesome, so I can't prove a thing. So maybe the chief should just come and put the cuffs on now.”

“Because you hated Clay?” I said. “Take a number.”

She laughed a little at that.

“And besides,” I went on. “Maybe you can prove you were home. Were you doing anything online with your computer?

“Why?” She suddenly looked wary again.

“Because creepy and Big Brotherish as it sounds, these days they might be able to trace what you were doing online, and where you were doing it from.”

“Really?” She didn't look upset at the idea. More hopeful.

“Really. Mutant Wizards, the computer game company my brother owns, had a problem last year with confidential information getting leaked, and they were able to figure out that someone was logging into the company's computers from the house of an employee of his biggest competitor. They shut down the leak and I think the DA filed criminal charges against the data thief. So if you were doing something online…”

“I was.” She looked embarrassed. And just when I thought she wasn't going to say anything else, she blurted out, “I reactivated my online dating profile. I've been talking to
two
guys, for a month or two now. Neither one of them seems quite as perfect for me as that nice, widowed doctor Clay pretended to be. But that could be because they're real people. At least so far I think they are. Could be a while before I get up enough nerve to meet either of them in the real world to be sure. You think there's any chance one of them might alibi me?”

“They would have no idea where you were chatting from,” I said. “But whatever company you get Internet from might be able to tell that you were online, and where, and for how long. I don't know for sure, but it's worth a try,” I said.

“How do I go about finding out?”

“Tell the chief. He's got excellent consultants he can use. And I know that for sure, because they work for my brother. After that data theft problem, he realized there was a big market for cutting-edge forensic data analysis, so he started a division to do it. If anyone can prove your alibi, Mutant Wizards can. Just tell the chief.”

“Thanks.” She stood up and squared her shoulders. “I will.”

“If you like, I can tell him what you just told me,” I said. “So you don't have to explain it all over again. I don't even have to tell him about what Clay did. Just that you were chatting online with friends, and had no idea that could be traced.”

“Oh, would you?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Thank you.” She sat down again, and began stringing her garland again, but she wasn't quite so slumped, and she seemed to have more energy.

I decided not to call to tell the chief. Linda had already suffered enough from people overhearing her business. I typed out a detailed e-mail on my phone.

By around five, most of the workmen and decorators had left. Mother was still rearranging ornaments on her Christmas tree, and Ivy was painting away above her head, but the rest of the house was peaceful. And it was getting cold outside, so I moved my base of operations back into the foyer.

“Meg! It's lovely!”

My old friend Caroline Willner popped through the front door and begin shedding her scarf, gloves, hat, and coat. “Your mother invited me to come and get a sneak preview.”

“Is this going to take long?” Grandfather came stumping in behind her. From his expression I suspected he'd have considered wrestling alligators preferable to inspecting interior design. But he and Caroline were good friends—she often accompanied him on his trips to rescue abused animals and endangered species—so I assumed he was returning the favor by coming along to keep her company.

“We won't be long,” Mother said, giving Grandfather a kiss on the cheek. “Why don't you talk to Meg while we do our tour.”

She and Caroline sailed off, and from the amount of time they were taking in the first room—Sarah's study—I could tell that her definition of “not long” would probably differ significantly from Grandfather's.

“So, is this where you had one of them bumped off?” he asked.

“Not here,” I said. “Upstairs. And all I did was find him.”

“Show me.”

 

Chapter 12

I led Grandfather upstairs to the master suite, but since the workmen had done a good job of cleaning up and repairing it, there wasn't that much to see. But while he was poking around—hoping, perhaps, to find a stray blood spatter the workmen had overlooked—I went out into the hall to see how Ivy was coming along.

Her “Nightingale” mural was splendid. The Emperor of China, clad in cloth of gold, sat in the center, surrounded by courtiers, all staring at a tiny bejeweled clockwork bird. Up in the top left corner of the wall lurked a small bird whose muted gray-brown color echoed Ivy's soft, drab garments.

Grandfather ambled along the hall and studied the glittering court with little interest. Then he spotted the bird.

“So what's this?” Grandfather said. “Ah!
Luscinia megarhynchos!
”

“The common nightingale,” I translated. Grandfather rarely stopped to consider the feelings of people who, not being professional zoologists, hadn't memorized the Latin names of every species in creation.

“Not bad.” Grandfather was on his tiptoes, inspecting the nightingale at close quarters. “Not bad at all. What's all the rest of this?”

“You know Hans Christian Andersen's story of the nightingale, don't you?” Ivy asked.

“Not much for fairy tales,” Grandfather said.

“The Emperor of China had a wonderful palace,” Ivy began, not looking up from her work. “It was built entirely of porcelain, and in the garden all the flowers had tiny bells tied to them that tinkled gently with the slightest breeze.”

“Hmph.” Grandfather's snort seemed to suggest that he found this a silly kind of place, but he didn't actually interrupt Ivy.

“But the emperor heard that the nightingale's song was more beautiful than anything in his palace,” Ivy went on.

Grandfather nodded approvingly at this note of natural history.

“So he sent for the bird to sing at his court. And everyone loved the bird's song so much that the emperor decreed that she should live at his court in a golden cage and sing for them every night. And she was only allowed to fly outside the cage with twelve courtiers holding on to her with silken ribbons.”

I was relieved to see that Grandfather refrained from denouncing this shocking example of animal abuse, contenting himself with frowning thunderously.

“And then the Emperor of Japan, the Chinese emperor's arch rival, sent him another nightingale—a clockwork one, encrusted with gold and jewels. And even though it always sang the same song, the golden nightingale was so ingenious, and so beautiful compared to the plain brown nightingale—”

“Sounds perfectly ghastly to me, actually,” Grandfather said. “Give me the real thing any time.”

“—that they lost interest in the real nightingale, and forgot to close the door to her cage, and she flew away back to the forest.”