A Carol for a Corpse

by Claudia Bishop

  “We opened our presents on Christmas Eve,” Nate said.

  “You didn’t!” Quill paused, not sure how to pose her question without sounding like an idiot, then she decided she didn’t care. The strings of lights under the eaves of the cobblestone storefronts made her feel positively swampy with holiday good sprits. “You guys didn’t believe in Santa Claus?”

  “We’re Swedes. We don’t have Santa Claus. The next day,” Nate went on with satisfaction, “we visited all the aunts and uncles, one by one. That was the chance for all the aunts to bring out the lefse, the lutefisk, the smorgasbord, the works.” He sighed happily. “On Christmas Day, we made our way up one side of Lake Minnetonka and down the other. We didn’t have time to miss Santa Claus.”

  “Meg believed in Santa Claus until she was eight.”

  “What happened when she was eight?”

  “Rupie Farnsworth,” Quill said. “He ratted Santa Claus out. He was in my class in sixth grade. A born bully, Rupie was.”

  “With us Swedes, the oldest girl in the family puts a lot of candles on her head and we all sing and maybe say a prayer.”

  “Santa Lucia,” Quill said. “Sure. It must be a beautiful ceremony.”

  “Not very,” Nate said dispassionately. “The candle wax got in my sisters’ hair all the time. And one year the head-dress set my sister Ingrid’s hair on fire.”

  They pulled into the Hemlock Falls Church of the Word of God parking lot. The life-sized carved wooden figures of Mother and Child were illuminated by the soft amber glow of lights from a tall menorah. The saddles of the three camels accompanying the Three Kings glowed with glass rubies, diamonds, and emeralds. The kings had been placed in a procession toward the crèche. The display glowed in the light of a seven-foot-high minaret with a miniature prayer platform at the top.

  “Looks pretty good,” Nate said.

  Quill, who thought that the unorthodox display of the three great religions displayed a true holiday spirit, said, “It looks wonderful,” and she and Nate walked up the stone sidewalk and onto the church steps in perfect accord.

  Like most of the cobblestone buildings in the village, the church had been built more than 175 years ago. The pews were made of polished mahogany. The scuffed oak aisles were partly covered by a long, worn runner of that indeterminate red carpeting characteristic of old churches everywhere. The walls were wainscoted, surmounted by moldings carved with fruits and vines. And like all old churches, the scent was faintly musty, a combination of worn leather hymnals, furniture polish, and the passage of time itself. The aisle ended at a shallow step that led up to the nave. To the right of this step was a spinet piano. Esther West sat at a bench in front of it, studying sheet music.

  At the far end of the church, a fair-sized pipe organ occupied the left side of the nave; to the right was the entrance to the robing rooms and the sacristy. The altar cloth was gold and white, and urns of white Christmas roses had been placed just beneath the marble altar itself.

  Three steps down from the altar were the pews for the choir, two rows on either side. Harvey was busily directing basses and altos to the right, sopranos and tenors to the left. Nate took his seat with the basses with a cheerful wave. Quill stopped in the middle of the aisle, not sure where she should turn. Except for an occasional outburst in the shower, she hadn’t sung a note since high school.

  Harvey, dressed in a red vest, tartan-patterned trousers, and a white button-down shirt, was in the middle of a heated discussion with Harland Peterson and Marge. He caught her eye and waved her closer. “There you are, Quill, at last. Would you please remind both these people that the choir-master’s decisions are final? Final. You, Harland, are a tenor. You, Marge, are a contralto. Contraltos to the right. Tenors to the left.”

  “I told you this was a bad idea,” Harland said to Marge. He took off his John Deere hat, wiped his forehead with his sleeve, took a glance at the altar, and tucked his hat in his back pocket. “What d’ya mean, tenor? I’m the same as Johnny Cash.”

  Marge jerked her thumb in Harland’s direction. “He thinks Harvey thinks he sounds like a girl. And he thinks if he doesn’t sit next to me, he’ll lose the tune. I sing loud enough so he won’t go off the key.”

  “Mario Lanza,” said Quill firmly, “was not a girl. Mario Lanza wasn’t even remotely girly, Harland. And Mario Lanza was a tenor.” Then, in a moment of inspiration, she added, “So was Dean Martin.”

  Harland remained dubious.

  “I’ll tell you something that’s not generally known,” she added. “John Wayne was a tenor.”

  “That ain’t right,” Harland said skeptically,

  “Sure it is,” Marge said, with a large wink in Quill’s direction.

  “Can’t be. The Duke?” Harland shook his head, and muttered, “What the hey, it’s Christmas,” He took his place next to Dookie Shuttleworth and the high school principal, Norm Pasquale, with a resigned air.

  Harvey heaved a huge, beleaguered sigh. “Okay. Now, Quill. I’d say you were a soprano?”

  “I have no idea,” she said humbly.

  Harvey hollered, “Esther?! Give us a note!”

  Esther played a cadenza on the piano. Harvey motioned at Quill. Quill opened her mouth and closed it. Esther played the cadenza again. Then a third time. Quill took a breath and sang: “Ah-ah-ah-ah.”

  Harvey frowned. “Are you doing that on purpose?”

  “No, Harvey. I am not doing that on purpose.”

  “Well.” He scratched his head. “Sit next to Marge, okay? Harland’s right. She sings loudly enough so that if you sing along with her, you won’t lose the note.”

  Quill sat next to Marge in a state of mild dudgeon. “I told Harvey I didn’t want to do this.”

  “You need to warm up,” Marge said. “That’s all. You warm up, you’ll be surprised at what you sound like.”

  “I just hope no one else is surprised.”

  “You want surprise, I got a surprise. You see Will Frazier anywhere?”

  Quill scanned the ranks of would-be choristers. Will caught her eye and nodded. He sat between Frank Harley and Ossie Newcome; Quill recognized both men from her occasional appearances at church. She nudged Marge. “He’s over there.” She watched the three men for a moment. “You see that?”

  Marge craned her neck around. “I see Will and I want to talk to him. What else am I supposed to see?”

  “Well, Frank’s manager of the QuickStop. And Ossie’s a teacher at the high school. I’m pretty sure both of them know Will. But see how they’re sitting, Marge. Both of them are shoved over. It’s as if they don’t want to touch him. And they’re talking across him, as if he isn’t there. And Will looks just furious about it. It’s that money. People resent it.”

  Marge gave her a cynical look. “You can think about it this way. At least they’re not trying to borrow money from him.”

  Quill bit her lip. Marge marked a page in the hymnal with a piece of tissue and settled back in the pew with an air of having something to say. She looked at the three men and raised her voice. “Ossie, you switch places with Will. I think he might want to hear what I have to say.” She waited until Will had resettled himself behind them. “Listen up, the both of you. I put in a few calls this afternoon. To a couple of friends of mine in Chicago.”

  Marge’s friends tended to be people in rarified financial circles.

  “You two ever hear anything about the Kingsfield corporation that issued those checks?”

  “Me? Of course not,” Quill said.

  Will shook his head.

  “It’s called Bigger Fields Direct, Inc. And I’ve got a five-dollar bet with a friend of mine in the SEC the thing’s owned by a series of other companies. I think the corporate veil’s so thick around that company you couldn’t pierce it in a hundred years.”

  Quill grasped about one word in three in this conversation. “You think there’s something dicey about it?”

  “He’s trying to cheat us out of our million buc
ks?” Will said. His eyes were wide with dismay.

  Marge snorted. “I sure do. But it’s a legal cheat. I think BFD’s a shell corporation and I think Kingsfield’s up to his usual tricks. He’s after the publicity. He’s made a huge splash with this thing. WSJ’s giving him a story above the fold tomorrow—and this, mind you, in the middle of a pile of articles claiming that he’s not as rich as he claims to be—so all of a sudden he’s looking pretty good to investors.”

  WSJ, Quill knew, was the Wall Street Journal. “I’m not sure I’m getting the whole picture here.”

  Marge gave Quill’s arm an impatient thump. “If this project of Kingsfield’s falls on its keister—which I’m betting it’s going to do—the Gorgeous Gorges trailer park people are going to be left with a ten-thousand-dollar check and a nice warm doorway to sleep in. That’s what I’m sayin’.”

  “He’s getting all those folks out of there so he can trash their trailers?” Will said. “He can’t do that.”

  “You just took his ten thousand bucks, didn’t you? Sure, he can do that.”

  “But they signed a contract to get a million dollars each from Zeke Kingsfield!” Quill said. “And he may not be a multibillionaire for real, Marge, but there’s no denying he’s worth a lot of money.”

  “Haven’t you been listening to me? Will Frazier, here, and his friends didn’t sign a contract for a million dollars’ worth each of Zeke Kingsfield’s money. They signed a contract with BFD. And from what my friends in Chicago tell me, BFD has a net worth of four hundred forty-six thousand dollars.”

  Will looked stunned. Then he looked mad.

  Marge turned to him. “So what you want to do, Will, is get yourself on back to that trailer park right now and tell Kingsfield he’s gotta wait thirty days before he starts haulin’ those trailers out. You got that? Then if things go bust, at least you all will have a roof over your heads through the winter.”

  Before Marge had concluded this speech, Will had struggled out of the pew and was on his way out. “Looks madder than a warthog with a thistle up his butt,” Marge said in satisfaction.

  Quill watched Will bang out the church door. A few moments later, she heard the roar of his pickup truck. “Good grief, Marge,” she said soberly. “Do you think you should have dropped it on him just like that?”

  “It was the fastest way I could think of to keep those poor suckers from running bills up all over town. Will’s the manager of the trailer park and the president of their board. Not, of course, that the board exists anymore. Kingsfield got more than two-thirds of the partnership signed over to him today. But he’ll put the brakes on the spending, as far as anyone can. And he’ll keep those trailers in the park for a spell.”

  “Do you really think Kingsfield’s that cruel?” Quill said indignantly.

  Marge shrugged. “You don’t make those kind of bucks by playing Mr. Nice Guy. It’s a fact. I’ll tell you what burns my behind. If I’m right about this, and it’s a scam, he’s got that five hundred acres on the river for less than half a million bucks.”

  “But if the residents aren’t paid the full amount, how can he?”

  Marge patted her arm. “Slides the land into another company before he goes belly-up, that’s how. Now, just relax, Quill. There’s nothing more to do right now.”

  “You saved those people, Marge,” Quill said. “That was a terrific thing to do.”

  “Maybe.” She smiled. “But I sure put a spoke in the Kingster’s wheel, didn’t I?”

  “I think, folks,” Harvey shouted, “that we’re finally ready to start. People? People? May I have your attention, please? Let’s not waste valuable rehearsal time here! We’re scheduled to give our first performance tomorrow. And I think,” he added with a twinkle, “that in view of the terrific news some of our friends at the Gorgeous Gorges trailer park received today, and in view of who will be the guest of honor at our debut tomorrow, we want to begin with ‘Good King Wenceslas.’ ”

  A ripple of appreciative laughter swept the choir.

  “Now, Marge? I want you to take the part of the Page. Elmer? You take the part of the King.” Adela, decked out in a red velvet pantsuit with a bunny fur collar, nodded approval. “Ready? And a one and a two and ah . . .”

  Quill stood up. Melissa was at the Inn with Meg. She would have to know what Marge had just told her. She really ought to get back. And it wasn’t, she told herself, that she was afraid she would croak like a frog in front of everybody. “Harvey? I’m sorry. I just remembered that . . . I told Meg I’d give her a hand with the elf costumes.”

  “The elf costumes?” Harvey looked both puzzled and curious.

  “The bells, you know,” Quill said vaguely. “I’m sorry. I’ll be back as soon as I can. You guys go on without me.”

  Quill was halfway down the aisle before she remembered that she hadn’t brought her car. She stood on the steps of the church and debated; she could call Meg, or she could walk all the way back to the Inn. The snow was still falling in lazy, halfhearted swirls. The heavy sky was breaking up and a handful of stars shone through the thinning clouds. It was just cold enough for the snow to pile up without melting, but not so cold that she was in danger of freezing to death. Not if she kept moving. The twinkling Christmas lights, the fresh stillness of the air, and the occasional glimpse of the moon decided her. She’d walk. The past week had been filled with too many people and too many events for her peace of mind. She had a penlight attached to the car keys in her purse in case the moon disappeared altogether. And she would be blissfully, totally alone for the twenty minutes or so it would take to walk home.

  There was a shortcut to the Inn through Peterson Park. In the summer, when she had errands in the village, she almost always walked the half mile, and the terrain was totally familiar. She entered the park gates and crunched past the statue of General C. C. Hemlock on his horse, making up a mental list of things to do right now and things to do in the morning.

  The very first thing was to sit down with Melissa Smith and talk to her about the supposed windfall from Zeke “the Hammer” Kingsfield. Marge had seemed pretty certain cash backed the ten-thousand-dollar checks he’d handed out like so much Halloween candy. If Melissa hadn’t deposited it in the bank, she needed to do it right now. And if Kingsfield continued the dramatic removal of the house trailers, the residents of Gorgeous Gorges could end up homeless. On the other hand, if he was the owner of the property, Marge seemed to think he could kick them out anyway. So the second thing she needed to do was talk to Howie Murchison to see if there was any way an injunction could stall things.

  She reached the perimeter of the little park and the narrow trail that led up the side of the hill to the Inn. It was slippery here, and she paid attention to where she put her feet. Her boots slipped on the icy patches so she stopped and directed her penlight to the brush. It’d help if she could find a branch to use as a walking stick.

  Something large moved in the brush beyond her.

  Quill swept the light breast-high and shone it into the thickets. There were deer in Peterson Park—too many of them, as a matter of fact. She made a soft, chirruping sound.

  The rustling movement stopped.

  Quill shone the light into the depths of the trees. Nothing. And paradoxically, the light made it harder to see in the dark. She switched it off entirely and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dim moonlight. A twig snapped. Uneasy now, she abandoned the search for the walking stick and began to hurry up the incline. She slipped and fell forward into complete and painful blackness.

  CHAPTER 8

  Quill dreamed it was summer. She was washing her face in a warm pool of water in a forest glade. The washcloth kept moving out of her hands. It was rubbery and a little rough. She made a grab for it.

  She woke up.

  She was flat on her back and Max was licking her face. And her bedroom was dark. Max’s breath smelled like Alpo. And there was something wrong with the furnace because her feet were so cold they hurt. Her hea
d hurt, too.

  She put her hands up and pushed at the furry chest. “Stop,” she said.

  Max whimpered and settled himself flat on her chest.

  “Max, darn it. Get off. I can’t breathe!”

  Quill struggled upright. Max weighed close to eighty pounds. And he was stubborn. She rolled the dog over and pushed him off into the snow.

  And she realized, with a jolt of absolute panic, that she was lying in the middle of a woods in the dark and it was snowing hard.

  Max jumped to his feet, shook his coat free of snow, and shoved his solid body against her shoulder. Quill steadied herself with one hand on his back and pulled herself to her feet. “Aren’t you a good boy,” she said breathlessly.

  Her memory crept back to her in fits and starts, like floats bumping into her in a river. She’d left the church to walk home. She’d slipped on the ice on the path up the hill. She’d knocked the brains out of her skull when she’d fallen.

  Except that she’d fallen forward; she was certain of it. And she’d wakened on her back.

  She felt her forehead gingerly with one gloved hand. There was a terrific lump. And it was scraped raw. It stung in the frigid air. She must have hit a rock or a tree trunk the size of Alaska when she’d tripped. She was still clutching her key chain. She switched the flashlight on, and the beam pointed straight down. Shakily, she directed the beam to the ground in front of her.

  The path was free of debris, except for a thin carpet of snow and a swirl of paw prints, footprints, and boot prints. The prints were filling up rapidly as the snow came down. But there was no boulder, no tree trunk the size of Alaska or otherwise.

  She crouched down and nearly fell over from dizziness. She steadied herself with one hand and ran the flashlight over the roiled-up snow with the other. The paw prints were Max’s. The boot prints were hers. The footprints belonged to somebody with a pair of smooth-bottomed shoes.

  “Somebody’s been here,” Quill said aloud.

  Max pushed himself against her knees and she nearly fell over again.