Lark! the Herald Angels Sing

by Donna Andrews

  Yes, Grandfather would be delighted at the prospect of turning mountain lions loose in the eastern woods. He was also strongly in favor of reintroducing wolves.

  “So why is he brooding about the cougars today?” I asked. “What set that off?”

  “He saw a headline that said ‘Cougars on the Rise’ and it got him all excited,” Dad said. “Turns out it was about some college football team. He’s been moping around and muttering ‘damned farmers’ all day.”

  “Why damned farmers?”

  “They played a big part in doing in the cougar. In the interest of protecting their livestock, of course.”

  “But Grandfather infinitely prefers predators to livestock,” I said. “I get it. Go feed him and cheer him up.”

  “Roger,” he said. “See you later.”

  “The satay’s particularly good today,” I called after him. I knew it was one of his favorites.

  I finished my food rather absentmindedly. Which was almost a sacrilege, given how good the food was.

  As I ate, I pulled out my phone and called up the picture I’d taken of the paper in Janet Caverly’s pocket. On a hunch, I borrowed Ekaterina’s computer and looked up the two numbers, using a reverse phone number lookup site.

  The phone number with R beside it was registered to an R. Plunket in Clayville. Probably Rachel.

  The other phone number didn’t produce any results. Which seemed weird. Then again, I didn’t have all that much experience with the reverse lookup site. Maybe a lot of numbers weren’t there.

  Ah, well.

  I finished off the last bite of mini-quiche and stuck the tray outside the door, where the staff would eventually collect it. I made sure I hadn’t left any grease spots or little bits of food on the sleek surface of Ekaterina’s desk. And after allowing myself a brief pang of envy over how elegant and uncluttered her office was, I let myself out and headed back to the loading dock.

  Time to tackle Delaney. Maybe even bring her out to the Inn to talk to Janet. Surely hearing Janet’s story would convince Delaney.

  I had a sense of déjà vu as I turned into the street where I was planning to park for my walk to the shelter. Of course, the first time I’d been here, I’d had no idea where Delaney was, and had been merely planning to ask Robyn for help finding her. Now at least I knew Delaney was—or had been—here. And I’d rescued Janet—and Sammy—in the meantime. So I was making some progress, wasn’t I?

  Before leaving my car I popped the trunk and fished out the small tool kit I always kept there. The house where the shelter was located was old, and had been in terrible repair when Robyn had first found it. In my notebook I kept a running list of things that needed fixing when I could find the time. If I walked in with my tools, maybe it wouldn’t look quite so much as if I was there just to tackle Delaney. And if she absolutely refused to talk to me, I could fix a few of the more urgent things on my list, and at least my time wouldn’t be completely wasted.

  I went through a small alley and emerged onto the street where the shelter’s entrance was. And then I saw something that made me pop back into the mouth of the alleyway and peer carefully out.

  Two men were standing a little farther down the block, a short ways from the shelter’s gate. This wasn’t a section of town where the tourists came, except by mistake, and these two certainly weren’t tourists. If they’d been dressed in Victorian costume, I’d have assumed they were two of Michael’s drama students rehearsing a new bit for the ongoing street theater: two inept burglars trying to be inconspicuous while scouting a potential target. Trying and failing miserably. But I didn’t recognize them, and they looked a little old for students.

  I hunkered down a little so there was a bit of shrubbery between me and the men. Probably a good thing. When I’d emerged from the alley, they’d both been looking away from me, craning their necks to stare down the street. Now they both turned and did the same thing in my direction.

  “There are two of you,” I muttered. “You could cover both directions at once.”

  But evidently subtleties like that were above their pay grade. If this day in my life had a cast of characters, they’d show up as First Dim Thug and Second Dim Thug.

  Given the cold weather, perhaps it wasn’t surprising that they wore knit caps drawn low over their eyes. But it was a little odd that their bulky coats were open at the front. Then one of them moved slightly, and I saw that he was holding a pistol, half-concealed beneath his coat. The other one had a sawed-off shotgun.

  Okay, so they were not here to provide a charming comic interlude between two dramatic scenes. The odds were they were Dingles, or Dingle minions, and up to no good.

  One of them—I mentally dubbed him Shotgun Dude—pulled out a cell phone and began talking on it. The other—Pistol Guy—was trying to look nonchalant, as if standing around doing nothing on a snowy back street in sub-freezing weather was something he did all the time.

  I pulled out my own phone and dialed 911.

  Chapter 22

  “What’s up, Meg?” Debbie Ann said.

  “Two armed men are eyeing the women’s shelter,” I said. “I think they’re about to barge in there. Dingles, probably, or some of their Clay County allies. No one I know, anyway, and certainly not tourists.”

  “Roger,” she said. “Sit tight; help is on the way.”

  But as I watched, the men seemed to come to a decision. Pistol Guy picked up something that had been lying on the ground beside his right foot. A sledgehammer. They both started walking toward the shelter. No, they were actually tiptoeing, which would have struck me as hilarious if I hadn’t seen the guns. Shotgun Dude had stuck his weapon under his coat, which didn’t do a whole lot to hide it. Pistol Guy’s attempts to conceal the sledgehammer beneath his coat were even less successful.

  I ended my call with Debbie Ann and silenced the ringer. Then I threw open my tool kit and rummaged in it for weapons. About the only weapon-like objects I had were the hammers. Nothing as big as Pistol Guy’s sledgehammer, alas. I stuck a ball peen hammer in my coat pocket and took a good grip on my largest claw hammer.

  The men reached the gate to the shelter. They were on camera now, although there was no way they could know it. In whatever remote location the security system monitors were located, I hoped alarms were now going off. Wouldn’t the security staff be surprised to find the Caerphilly PD already knew about the intrusion?

  The men seemed surprised to encounter a locked gate. They rattled it a couple of times, and seemed to confer for an unnecessarily long time over what to do about it. Then Pistol Guy seemed to remember he was also Sledgehammer Guy. He tucked his gun in his pocket, hefted the sledgehammer, and used it to break the latch.

  As the men strode through the gate, I thought of calling Debbie Ann to say that the men had escalated from lurking to trespassing. Or did this count as breaking and entering? Either way, by now the security company would have seen it, too. I decided to let them share the news.

  As soon as the men tiptoed through the gate I took off toward the gate in a half walk, half run, hoping they wouldn’t hear my footsteps.

  In my pocket, my phone vibrated. Debbie Ann calling back, no doubt. I looked around, hoping to see a police car racing up the street.

  Nothing. Not even a tourist. And no sirens in the distance.

  This was stupid. What was I thinking of? Running in after a couple of armed men waving my little claw hammer? I wasn’t the Lone Ranger. I should find a good observation post and wait for the people who were trained and equipped to deal with this.

  I heard a crashing noise—the shelter door being broken in? Screaming erupted from inside the shelter—though no shots, thank goodness. Suddenly waiting for help didn’t seem that feasible.

  I peered through the gate. The house’s front door was hanging from one hinge. The men had gone inside.

  “Where is she?” one of them was shouting, over the screaming. “Janet Caverly—we know she’s here. Bring her out or you’ll be sorr
y.”

  Definitely Dingle foot soldiers. When I had crept a little closer, I could see that the one with the pistol was standing just inside in the open doorway. Evidently it was Shotgun Dude doing the shouting. Pistol Guy was just holding his gun pointed into the room.

  “Stop all the yapping!” Shotgun Dude sounded exasperated, as if the women’s screams were a total overreaction. “We’re not going to hurt anyone. Just bring out Janet Caverly.”

  I figured the screaming would cover the sounds of my approach, so I snuck up behind Pistol Guy and raised my hammer. But what target? The head? What if he had a hard skull and the blow had no effect? Or worse, what if I killed him? There was probably some pressure point on his neck that would drop him like an ox if I hit it, but I didn’t have Dad’s expertise in anatomy.

  The hand holding the gun. He wasn’t all that big—absent the gun, I figured I could probably take him. Of course, there was also his friend with the shotgun. One problem at a time.

  So I brought the hammer down on his gun hand with all my strength. It hit with a satisfying crunch, and he shrieked bloody murder and dropped the pistol. He also half-turned toward me, so I grabbed him, brought my knee up hard between his legs, and then dragged him outside and tried to keep his now-limp body between me and the door, in case Shotgun Dude came out to retaliate. Which I could tell almost immediately wasn’t going to work—Pistol Guy wasn’t tall but he was beefy. I let him fall, looked around for the pistol, and kicked it out of his reach.

  “What the hell!” Shotgun Dude shouted inside. And then I heard a loud clang! Followed by the sound of something falling.

  The screaming continued, but I heard nothing from Shotgun Dude, so I stepped into the doorway, hammer at the ready.

  Josefina, who would have been maybe five feet tall in heels—if she ever wore them—was standing over Shotgun Dude, holding a cast-iron frying pan. Delaney was standing behind her with what I thought at first was a baseball bat, given the way she was holding it. Then I recognized it as the leg that had been nearly falling off the dining room table. Maybe a good thing I hadn’t put fixing the table high on my chore list. Our eyes met. She nodded, smiled slightly, and lowered the table leg.

  I shifted the hammer to my left hand, pulled out my phone, and called 911.

  “Meg! What’s going on there?”

  “Send an ambulance along with the deputies.” I strolled outside as I spoke. “We’ve neutralized the threat to the shelter.”

  “Neutralized? What do you mean neutralized? And who’s ‘we’?”

  Just then help arrived, in the form of Horace and Aida, who ran into the yard, service weapons at the ready.

  “They’re all yours,” I said. “One’s over there by the door, and Josefina’s got the other one inside.”

  Chapter 23

  What I really wanted to do was go home. No, first I wanted to go wherever Michael and the boys were and collect them, and then go home. Instead, I was standing in the living room of the women’s shelter, waiting my turn to be interviewed by the chief.

  A lot had been happening here. Aida had handcuffed the conscious intruder while Horace checked the vitals of the one Josefina had felled. Vern Shiffley arrived and recognized the two thugs as both denizens of Clay County and frequent occupants of the Caerphilly jail’s drunk tank.

  “Tyler Whicker and Urisha Peebles, as I live and breathe,” he said. “Fancy seeing you again.”

  Aida read the conscious prisoner his rights and then, about the time she’d finished, the other one came to and she had to do it all over again. Horace fetched his forensic bag. Robyn showed up, with Noah adding his shrieks to the sirens that had suddenly erupted in the area. I deduced from the sirens that word had gone out that the bad guys were in custody—Horace and Aida had arrived in silence. Dad showed up, medical bag in hand, and checked out both prisoners. Shotgun Dude didn’t seem to have taken any damage from Josefina’s frying pan, but Dad sent him off to the hospital anyway, so he could be observed for signs of concussion. To be followed when the ambulance returned by Pistol Guy, who’d need an X-ray to see how many bones my hammer had broken.

  “Do you have any idea how many bones there are in the human hand?” Dad exclaimed.

  “Twenty-seven.” Not that I had any practical use for this information, but I’d heard him quote it often enough. And twenty-six bones in the human foot, which seemed rather odd—what did the hand have that the foot didn’t?

  “Very good,” he said. “And you may have broken quite a few of them.”

  Robyn was already making plans to move the shelter’s occupants to another location.

  “We’ll have to decide later if this location is completely ruined,” she said. “But for the short term, I think the ladies will all feel safer elsewhere. There could be press coverage.”

  Or more intruders, I thought, but I decided I didn’t need to remind her of that.

  “Of course, I still have to think of a place to take them,” she went on. “Or places—it’s not easy to find someplace that can take in twenty people on such short notice—”

  “And this close to the holidays, and in the middle of a snowstorm,” I finished for her. Then a thought hit me. “Ask Cordelia.” I knew my grandmother Cordelia’s house sometimes served as a stop on the modern day Underground Railway that had sprung up to help get abused women and children to safety. “She’s very big on supporting the shelter—maybe she could take some of them.”

  “Do you think she would?”

  Instead of answering, I pulled out my phone and called my grandmother.

  “Merry Christmas, Meg,” she said when she answered. “I should be at your house in an hour or two.”

  “I might not be there till later,” I said. “We’ve had a major security breach here at the women’s shelter. Robyn needs to move everyone someplace else until we’re sure the danger is past.”

  “Have her take them up to my place,” she said. “There’s room enough. You still have your key, don’t you?”

  “Yes. You’re sure you don’t mind us using your house?”

  Robyn breathed a visible sigh of relief.

  “Happy to have them,” she said. “You can tell me all about it when we get there.”

  “See you soon.”

  “Your grandmother is an angel,” Robyn said. “One of these days I’ll find a way to repay her. By the way, is—” She stopped and looked around to see if anyone was near enough to overhear. “Is you-know-who safe?” she went on, in a softer tone.

  “Our car thief? Yes, she’s fine. I may wring her neck if she ever tries anything like that again, but for the time being, she’s safe and sound.”

  “And where?”

  “Ekaterina has hidden her. Which reminds me—where is Lark?”

  “Josefina is looking after her. But Janet must be worried sick about her—or she will be when she hears what happened here.”

  “Any chance you could find a subtle way to deliver her to Ekaterina?” I asked.

  “Can do.” Robyn smiled. “And maybe I can enlist Delaney to help me. Might do a world of good to put those two in a room together and get them talking.”

  “I like the way you think,” I said. “I suspect I’ll be tied up for a while, making statements to the chief, so I’ll leave it in your hands.”

  “Right. So much to do. I’ve got a couple of people coming over to ferry the residents to the police station, and then when the chief’s finished with them, over to Trinity—they can stay there till I round up a bus to take them to your grandmother’s. Must go make a few calls.” Robyn took the copy of Cordelia’s key that I’d teased off my key ring, and dashed off.

  “I want to talk to you at much greater length,” the chief said. “But I think I should deal with the shelter residents first. Get them ready to move as soon as possible to wherever Robyn is taking them.”

  “No problem.” I could use some time to process what had happened. Regain my composure before I rejoined Michael and the boys.

>   “Meg?” I turned to see Delaney standing behind me. “Can we talk?”

  “Sure.” Processing could wait.

  I followed Delaney to the other end of the living room, where it was quiet. Most of the shelter residents were upstairs packing. A few were walking out, suitcases in hand, presumably to be transported over to Trinity.

  “I’m an idiot sometimes,” she began.

  If she expected me to contradict her, she was doomed to disappointment.

  “Of course, Rob can be, too,” she went on.

  Also a good point.

  “Why the hell is he dodging me?”

  “Dodging you?” I said. “He spent most of yesterday wandering around looking for you, when he wasn’t begging me to talk to you. You weren’t answering his phone calls—or mine either, for that matter.”

  “I wasn’t answering anyone’s calls yesterday,” she said. “I turned my phone off for the rest of the day. But then this morning—well, I’d had time to think it over and realize maybe I was overreacting.”

  “Maybe?”

  “It’s just that I thought things were going really well and we were getting pretty serious, and I actually thought he was kind of creeping up on saying the M word, and then he started acting weird and furtive.”

  “Yes, he probably has.” I sighed. “He’s been trying to come up with some really brilliant, original, impressive way of surprising you with a proposal. And I’ve been shooting down his ideas because I thought they were all pretty hideous. Maybe I’m wrong; maybe you’d like to be proposed to by a troop of clowns, or with an animated cartoon involving Bart Simpson and SpongeBob SquarePants, or by Rob leading a mariachi band or—”

  “Oh, God,” she said. “Thank you. I was hoping maybe he’d just pop the question over dinner at Luigi’s—it’s where we had our first date. I was even wondering if maybe I should reverse the roles and propose to him. But then he started acting weird, and when that Desiree person jumped out of the box—”