The Nightingale Before Christmas (20 page)

“No,” Randall said. “But she did tell me we ought to get a lot more detailed contracts for these show house participants. Next year, I'll make sure I listen to her.”

Probably not the best time to mention that next year I planned to make sure someone else was here doing the thankless job of riding herd on the designers.

“So does this have anything to do with Clay's murder?” Randall asked.

“I have no idea,” I said.

“I'm going to fill Chief Burke in, just in case,” Stanley said. “Because you never know what little bit of information will crack his case. See you later.”

With that he hung up.

“And before you ask, I'm off to fetch the mattress for Clay's room,” Randall said as he strode down the hallway. “And the sheets.”

As I was standing in the foyer, putting my coat on, Sarah appeared in the doorway of her study.

“You're leaving?”

“Important family stuff,” I said. “Back in a couple of hours. How's it going?”

“Getting close,” Sarah said. “I decided I needed a lot more books on the shelves. After all, it's a study.”

I winced, and stepped farther into the room so I could see what she was doing to her books, and whether I needed to rescue another flock of unloved dust jackets.

But to my delight, Sarah was filling her shelves with real books in their natural state. Many of them had dust jackets, and I had to admit that some of the individual dust jackets were gaudy. But once she arranged them on the shelves, the individual jackets blended into a pleasing mosaic. And some of the books were jacketless, shabby, and obviously much read, but they also blended in and added to the patina.

I found myself remembering a period, from when I was nine or ten until I went off to college, when Mother and Dad would often take me with them to Virginia's Garden Week or any other event that opened other people's homes for tours by the paying public. Mother was interested in the décor, of course, and Dad went along because many of the houses had beautiful gardens. He was prone to complaining in the car afterward if not enough of the houses had landscaping worth looking at. I wasn't that keen on any of it, though I did find it rather interesting to snoop into how other people lived. I only came along because I didn't want to be left home with Rob and the babysitter—or later, as Rob's babysitter. Mother always said that if she lost track of Dad and me in one of the houses, she'd think back over the rooms she'd seen. If one of them had books in it, she'd head back there, and would find the two of us standing side by side in front of the shelves, browsing the books—both of us with our hands clasped behind our backs, because you weren't supposed to touch anything, and leaning forward to read the titles. And if there weren't any books, we'd be outside, kicking our heels till she emerged.

Sarah's books would have kept Dad and me happily occupied for however long Mother wanted to spend in a house.

“Nice selection,” I said, adopting the traditional posture with my hands clasped behind my back and my body leaning toward the shelves. “You must patronize a better class of thrift shop than Violet.”

“Actually, I brought in some of my own books,” she said with a laugh.

Better and better. I saw a lot of my own favorites, both childhood and adult, and Dad would have been gratified by the large selection of crime fiction. And she had interesting tastes in history and biography.

“I admit, I left my small collection of first editions at home,” she said. “And I'm sort of arranging these by color, which I wouldn't do at home. I'm strictly alphabetical there.”

“Michael and I do alphabetical within subject,” I said. “Although we recently pulled together all the kids' books that we want the boys to find and read over the next few years, and put them on shelves in their rooms. And we also decided to get a few locked bookcases for the stuff we didn't want the boys to get their hands on for a couple of decades.”

“Good idea.” She took a few steps back, tilted her head, and squinted to see what effect she'd created. “So is my library more interesting than Violet's?”

“No idea,” I said. “She's covering all her books with pretty pastel paper.”

Sarah winced. She was a reader. She got it.

I made a mental note to come back later and peruse Sarah's shelves.

“So is this photographer really coming to see the house?” Sarah asked. “Or is he coming to see the place where a murder took place?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said. “But who cares, as long as it gets the show house some publicity?”

“And if he shows up and only wants to take pictures of the crime scene?”

“Then I'll tell him that I have to get permission from the police to let him do that, and in the meantime, would he like to take some pictures of the other rooms.”

“I like the way you think,” Sarah said. “And if he doesn't bother with our rooms—”

“Then the chief won't give his permission.” My phone had started ringing, so I nodded to Sarah and stepped out into the hall to answer it.

“Do you put marshmallows on your sweet potatoes?”

Michael's mother again.

“I don't, because I never make sweet potatoes,” I said. “And I have no idea what Mother does, because I dislike sweet potatoes and never eat them. You could make some with and some without.”

“But what's your family tradition?”

“I'll ask Mother,” I said.

I stuck my head into the great room.

“Mother! Sweet potatoes! With or without marshmallows?”

“Well, I prefer them without,” she said. “But your father and your brother love marshmallows. And while I don't know about—”

“Some of each,” I said to Michael's mother. “Gotta run.”

The relief I felt at getting out of the show house for an hour or two was a little preview of how happy I was going to feel when it had opened. Better yet, when it was all over but counting up how much we'd raised for the historical society.

 

Chapter 17

Downtown, the sidewalks were full of shoppers—the sidewalks, and in a few places, the streets, where residents and business owners hadn't yet done a good job of snowplowing. A lot of unfamiliar faces, so it looked as if Randall's annual Christmas in Caerphilly tourism campaign was working.

Last year, Randall had had to scale back his plans when the county council had balked at any major expenditure. But after seeing the dramatic increase in revenue from local shops, restaurants, and lodgings generated by Randall's relatively modest efforts, the council had authorized a much more ambitious plan this year. Nearly every building in town had been decorated to the hilt and the street swarmed with low-paid or volunteer reenactors in Victorian costume. The clothing shops featured bustles and top hats in their front windows. The toy store displayed wooden toys and elaborately painted nutcrackers. The candy store featured rock candy, candy canes, and old-fashioned taffy.

Volunteers in thick Victorian greatcoats lurked on every third corner, ringing bells and collecting funds for Caerphilly Cares, a consortium of local charities. Parties of carolers roamed the streets in hoop skirts and frock coats, serenading the crowds with Victorian-era carols. Chief Burke had drawn the line at forcing his officers into old-fashioned London policemen's outfits, so Randall had recruited a volunteer security force who strolled about the town wearing their distinctive custodian helmets and twirling realistic looking truncheons. And some of the more enterprising shopkeepers had begun showing up in costume and claiming it increased sales.

About the only holdout to the Victorianization of Caerphilly was Muriel's Diner, whose owner was so firmly entrenched in her attempt to maintain its original 1950s décor that even Randall couldn't sway her. But she'd decorated the building with so many garlands, bows, angels, holly branches, and “Merry Christmas” banners that you couldn't see the chrome and vinyl booths until you actually stepped inside, so no one minded.

My route to Grace Episcopal took me past the town square, where the Christmas tree—“just a smidgen shorter than the National Christmas Tree,” according to Randall—was beautiful, even though a lot of the ornaments were presently obscured by snow.

The Methodists, who would be hosting the annual live nativity on their front lawn tomorrow night, were busy. They'd decided not just to build their usual manger but also to surround it with a cluster of houses to represent the rest of Bethlehem. And they'd set up a tent to represent one that the wise men might have slept in during their travels from the east across the desert. The original idea had been to exhibit the camels from Grandfather's zoo there on warm days, but so far we hadn't had any. So the camels stayed indoors, and there was just the tent, its intricate painted decoration—done as a Christmas project by the Methodist children's Bible study classes—also, alas, obscured by the snow.

But the Methodists were getting busy for tomorrow's big event, shoveling the area around Bethlehem and the wise men's tent—and with luck, once they dug a path to it they'd clear off the tent as well.

I arrived at Grace Episcopal in plenty of time for the rehearsal. I waved at Robyn, the rector, but I'm not sure she saw me. She had her hands full. There were at least twice as many children appearing in the pageant as last year, which spoke well for Robyn's efforts to recruit new members and get the existing ones more involved. But as any parent can testify, doubling the number of children in any given situation quadrupled the amount of noise and confusion.

I wondered briefly if any of the children came from the women's shelter. I thought I recognized one small sheep as the child Vermillion had been carrying. What if—

And then I shoved Vermillion and the shelter and the show house and the murders out of my head and tried to concentrate on enjoying the pageant.

There were several mothers helping, and I needed a break from my own set of rambunctious and badly behaved charges—by which I meant the designers, not Josh and Jamie—so I just sat with Michael in a pew a few rows back from the temporary stage and braced myself to leap into the fray if either of our angels did anything particularly heinous.

The church was beautifully decorated, as usual, with spruce and fir garlands, clusters of holly, and banners along all the walls in red, green, gold, and purple—since we'd all figured out that purple was Robyn's favorite color. The bracing evergreen smell that permeated the whole sanctuary lifted my spirits and cleared my sinuses, all at the same time.

And one of Robyn's innovations for this year was an actual curtain, to make the altar end of the church, where the play would take place, even more like a real theater. The curtain was made of deep-blue plush material, representing the night sky, with sparkling stars all over it, and there were a few palm trees on the far right and left sides.

The pageant began, as always, with Mary and Joseph entering the back of the church to wend their way down the center aisle to Bethlehem. In another of Robyn's innovations, Mary was going to be riding a real donkey, lent by a local farmer who certified him docile and highly reluctant to answer any calls of nature if he wasn't in his favorite spot in his own back pasture. But Robyn had decided not to push our luck by having the donkey in rehearsals, so the boy playing Joseph appeared to be leading his wife down the aisle with a rope around her wrist, while Mary, with a sullen expression on her face, slouched along, chewing her gum and occasionally blowing a small bubble. The organist played “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” to mark what the choir would be singing at the real performance, and Mary and Joseph eventually climbed up the shallow steps onto the sanctuary/stage—was the donkey going to be able to do that?—and ducked behind the blue curtain.

Cut to the shepherds, who filed out from behind the curtain to abide in their fields by night—the fields being represented by the area in front of the curtain and a potted palm tree. Josh seemed to think that abiding meant walking up and down at the front of the stage with his crook over his shoulder like a sentry's rifle, glowering at any sheep who even thought of leaving his or her assigned piece of turf. Jamie took a milder view of his duties, and was happily sitting in the midst of the sheep, his head barely visible over the sea of woolly forms.

It was at this point that I deduced that Jamie and Josh's promotion to shepherd had occurred not because they were so much older and wiser but because, thanks to the new influx of families, the church had an overabundance of children even younger.

I caught a glimpse of Robyn, looking harried, peeking out from behind the curtain. It occurred to me that she was filling much the same cat-herding role for the pageant that I did at the show house. Though at least her charges had an excuse for behaving immaturely. And so far none of them had slaughtered each other, though if Josh kept waving his crook about wildly that, too, was a possibility.

I was about to hiss a cease-and-desist command at Josh when the angel of the Lord appeared stage left, causing Josh to leap to the defense of his flock. Some of the smaller sheep, startled by the angel's sudden appearance, cried a little and huddled closer to Jamie for protection. But the angel ignored Josh's dramatic flourishes of his crook and mimed speaking while Michael intoned the relevant verses from Luke.

And when Michael read out that a “great company of the heavenly host appeared,” a dozen assorted preteen angels shuffled out from the wings and put their hands together as if in prayer. Most of them weren't in costume yet, but they were all wearing their wings, because not putting each other's eyes out with the wings was the tricky part that they needed to rehearse. Along with not knocking each other down and not stepping on the sheep as they lined up between the sheep and the curtain. Robyn took them through their entrance half a dozen times, to the great displeasure of the sheep, who were impatient to get to their favorite part of their roles, singing “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” along with the choir.