Lark! the Herald Angels Sing

by Donna Andrews

  I checked one of the side doors into the sanctuary—yes, that was filling up as well.

  Then I spotted a familiar face—familiar, but slightly out of place.

  “Chief,” I said. “Don’t tell me you’re defecting from New Life Baptist.”

  “Hardly,” he said. “But we don’t have any services until evening, and Adam wanted to see Josh and Jamie in their pageant.”

  He pointed through the side door to where his grandson was sitting, front and center in the first pew. Probably planning to see if he could break the twins’ concentration and make them giggle.

  “I’m glad you were able to get away from the station,” I said. “I trust that means things are going well.”

  “That’s one of the advantages of having crimes in adjacent counties instead of our own,” he said. “So much less red tape to deal with. In case you were wondering, the particular batch of red tape required to liberate your car from Clay County is pretty much taken care of. If it’s not in your driveway when you get home, then it will be before much longer.”

  “I’m glad you managed to rescue it before they had a chance to chop it up for parts.”

  “There wasn’t really as much danger of that as you’d think,” he said. “Cy Whicker may talk a good game, but his chop shop operation moves about as efficiently as everything else in Clay County, which means hardly at all. The state troopers found stolen cars from six or eight months back still languishing there.”

  “Oooh,” I said. “Please tell me he’s going to do time for that.”

  “One to five years per stolen vehicle, in theory,” the chief said. “And his operation is a big one, even though it is inefficient. If the judge makes those sentences consecutive instead of concurrent, we taxpayers could be footing the bill for his room and board for decades.”

  “I’d consider it money well spent,” I said. “And what about the Dingles?”

  “It will take a while to sort out who gets them first. The FBI wants them for the kidnapping charges and the public corruption, the ATF for the moonshine, the DEA for the marijuana farm, and the Virginia State Police has overlapping jurisdiction for most of it. But they’re doing all that wrangling over in Clayville at the moment, so all I have to do is look sympathetic when they drop by to vent about how unbelievable it all is and how annoying the other agencies are. Look sympathetic and bite my tongue, because it’s really a bad idea to say ‘I told you so’ to a Fed. Oh, and in case you were wondering what happened to that woman who was pretending to be Lark’s mother—”

  “Valerie Peters,” I said.

  “That’s her. The Suffolk police called to say that she’s safely in rehab and they send their thanks for the part you played in helping them apprehend her.”

  “I didn’t do much,” I said. “It was Horace’s uniform that chased her away.”

  “If you hadn’t had the brains to suspect her and the gumption to act on your suspicions, she’d have been gone before she had a chance to see Horace, taking poor little Lark with her. From where I sit, that’s a lot. And now, about the only case I have to deal with is the one involving Urisha Peebles and Tyler Whicker.”

  “The two thugs who tried to invade the Women’s Shelter, right?”

  “Right. They’re not going anywhere for the time being, and while the Feds haven’t actually come out and said so, I think they will be rather happy if I drag my feet on the shelter invasion case. They’re probably hoping to cut a deal—a break on sentencing if Peebles and Whicker testify against bigger fry.”

  “As in the Dingles?”

  He nodded.

  “The thug Josefina whacked with the frying pan is going to be okay, then?”

  “Peebles. Yes, thanks to your dad. He’ll live to stand trial. Or testify, if the Feds can convince him it’s in his best interest.”

  “What about Inman, the crooked Fed?”

  “In it up to his eyeballs with the Dingles. He was lying to his own agency, the FBI, and everyone else. Claiming he was in touch with Mark, and that Mark said it was too soon to send in agents. But apparently someone hacked his phone records and sent them to the right people. When the FBI saw all those calls from Inman to various Dingles, they couldn’t wait to go in.”

  “Please tell me they’ll be able to convict him of something.”

  “Oh, he’ll do time, all right.” The chief smiled grimly.

  “And did I get Brianna in very much trouble for borrowing the Dominion Energy truck?”

  He chuckled.

  “Luckily, she managed to get it back to their work yard before anyone noticed it was gone,” he said. “And the trucks didn’t actually appear on camera, so if Dominion does hear a rumor that one of their trucks might have been involved in the Clayville concert, Ekaterina can probably convince them that she also did her logo forging on a Shiffley Construction bucket lift truck. Since I have no official knowledge of unauthorized use of a Dominion truck, that’s what I’ve chosen to assume.”

  “That’s a relief. I hate to hurry off—”

  “But you have a pageant to get on the road.” He smiled. “Good luck.”

  I turned to go. Then I stopped, and peered out into the sanctuary again.

  “Something wrong?” the chief asked.

  “That guy’s one of the FBI agents,” I said. “I saw him on television last night, in one of the news reports about the raid. The extremely buff guy with the short-back-and-sides haircut in the third pew from the back. He’s sort of hiding his face behind the order of service. Don’t stare!”

  “I see him.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “He appears to be perusing the order of service, if that’s what you call it. I’d have said the program, but what do I know? Maybe he’s an Episcopalian FBI agent.”

  Maybe. Still, I stood there for few moments, watching him. Yes, he did seem to be reading the order of service. Eventually he opened the hymnal. And when he grabbed a couple of offering envelopes from the rack on the back of the pew in front of him and used them to bookmark the hymns to be sung, I gave up watching. Either he was a genuine Episcopalian, or his impersonation was too good for me to find fault with it.

  I hurried off and began threading through the crowd in the vestibule, saying hello to friends and promising them I’d tell them all the news after the pageant.

  “Hello, Meg.”

  I turned to see Rachel standing nearby.

  “Greetings,” I said. “Come here to watch Lark—sorry, Andrea—in the Christmas pageant?”

  “Partly,” she said. “But there’s something else—could you introduce me to your minister?”

  “Of course.” I led her into Robyn’s office. For once, I didn’t see Noah. Since I couldn’t hear him, either, I wondered if she’d left him at home with a babysitter. No, probably not. Although he wasn’t in sight, he’d left his mark in the form of a tiny still-damp spot of milky spit-up on Robyn’s vestments.

  “Let me clean that up,” I said, reaching into my pocket for a tissue so I could dab at the spot. “And have you met Rachel Plunket, who helped us out with the raid on Clay County?”

  “Thank you,” Robyn said. “And delighted, Rachel.”

  “Actually, it’s Rachel Driver Plunket,” Rachel said as they shook hands. “Soon to be just Rachel Driver. I’m planning on dropping the Plunket bit as soon as I figure out how you do that. Driver’s my mother’s maiden name. I haven’t quite forgiven Mom for marrying a Plunket, but I still think her name’s an improvement.”

  “Judge Jane would know how to get that done, wouldn’t she?” I asked Robyn, who nodded. “Judge Jane Shiffley,” I added to Rachel. “Four of the guys you helped rescue are her kin, so I suspect she’d be more than happy to help you out in return.”

  “I think a name change has to be done in whatever jurisdiction you’re resident in,” Robyn said. “Are you staying around here?”

  “I am now,” Rachel said. “I was going to run away as fast and as far as I could—but you kno
w what? After yesterday, meeting all y’all, I figured out I don’t really want to leave this part of the country altogether and lose touch with all the friends I grew up with—I just want to get out of Clay County. So yesterday I went in and asked Muriel at the diner if she had any openings, and she took me on. And then Delaney put me in touch with her landlord, who has an efficiency apartment opening up any day now. So meet the newest resident of the beautiful county of Caerphilly.” She beamed at us.

  “We’re very glad to have you,” I said.

  “Welcome!” Robyn exclaimed.

  “And I have something I wanted to ask you,” Rachel said, turning to Robyn. “Could you do the funeral for my brother? I know he wasn’t a member of your congregation, but I don’t want Reverend Dingle to do his funeral and—”

  “Absolutely,” Robyn said. “We can start arranging it now if you’d like.”

  “After Christmas will do,” Rachel said. “Chief Burke tells me it will be at least a few days before they release the body, so there’s no big hurry.”

  “Come in Wednesday, then,” Robyn said. “We won’t be able to set the date until we know when they’re releasing him, but we can work out all the other details. And if you’d like, I can go over to the funeral home with you and see that they take care of everything properly.”

  Which meant, I knew, that Robyn would talk Maudie Morton at the funeral home into giving Rachel very good service at a rock-bottom price. Not that Maudie wouldn’t be a soft touch anyway for someone in Rachel’s situation.

  “Thanks—I’ll do that.”

  “Tell me,” Robyn said. “Janet says you sometimes look after her daughter. You wouldn’t happen to be interested in earning a little extra money by babysitting for my son, would you?”

  Rachel’s eyes lit up.

  “I’d be very interested,” she said. “I need to save up all the money I can for college.”

  I made a mental note to ask Michael if he’d had a chance to speak to the Caerphilly College financial aid office about Rachel. If there wasn’t already a scholarship she was eligible for, I knew plenty of people in town who’d be happy to help create one.

  But that was a project for later. Right now I had a pageant to manage.

  “I hate to interrupt,” I said. “But where are Lark—sorry, Andrea—and Noah? Time for me to collect whichever one’s in a good mood to play his or her part in the pageant.”

  “Janet and Mark are watching them both,” Robyn said. “In the overflow room.”

  I left Robyn and Rachel to plan an introduction to Noah.

  In the overflow room someone had set up a playpen. Andrea/Lark was lying in it, fast asleep, with her parents standing over her, arms around each other’s waists, gazing down as if they couldn’t get enough of seeing her. They looked up and murmured soft hellos.

  Nearby, in an old easy chair, Josefina was holding Noah on her lap, cooing nonsense syllables at him. And while Noah wasn’t exactly silent, his fussing wasn’t very loud, and had a perfunctory air, as if he was only doing it because he had his reputation to think of.

  “The ladies at the shelter asked me to say hello,” Josefina said. “And to thank you for talking your grandmother into letting us all stay at her house.”

  “I didn’t have to talk her into it,” I said. “She offered before I could even ask. And I think she’s hoping they’ll still be there when she goes home after Christmas.”

  “Lilly also says hello,” Josefina added. “The little one who was so suspicious of Santa Claus. When she heard I might see you, she asked me to bring you this.”

  She handed me a picture. A pretty good drawing for a child of maybe eight or nine years old. Two large and rather scary monsters occupied the left side of the page, hulking and bearded, with long teeth, both holding oversized guns. On the right side were a cluster of women and children, huddled together, with terrified eyes and mouths opened wide as if screaming. And in the middle, and larger than all the others, were a short, squat figure wielding a frying pan and a tall, wild-haired figure holding an enormous claw hammer.

  “She used to draw only monsters,” Josefina said. “But for the last few days, more and more she also draws people defeating the monsters. I think it is progress.”

  “I think so, too,” I said. “Tell her thank you. I’ll hang it in my office.”

  She smiled, and went back to playing with Noah. I turned to Mark and Janet.

  “So it looks as if La—as if Andrea is the better choice for playing baby Jesus—if that’s still all right with you.”

  “Fine with us,” Mark said.

  “And you can call her Lark if you like,” Janet added. “I have to admit—the name’s kind of growing on me.”

  “I like it,” Mark said. “I think we should use it.”

  “A special nickname from the first big adventure of her life,” Janet said, nodding.

  “That’s good,” I said. “Because it could be hard for people around here to get used to calling her Andrea. Of course, maybe that’s not a big worry—have you decided where you’re going to go?”

  “Not really.” Janet was picking up Lark, who to my relief only sighed slightly and didn’t awaken.

  “Your brother has offered me a job in his financial department, if I want it,” Mark said. “And I’m tempted.”

  Was he serious? Or was he saying that as part of his cover? Because while I couldn’t prove it, I had a theory that Mark Caverly wasn’t actually an accountant but an undercover ATF agent who’d deliberately taken the job in Clay County to bring down the Dingles’ moonshine enterprise. I didn’t have any hard evidence to back up the theory—just the memory of how calm he’d been during our escape from Clay County and the sneaking feeling that some of the ATF and FBI agents were only pretending to not know him. And my nagging feeling that Janet had been holding something back.

  “Caerphilly is exactly the sort of place we thought we were going to when Mark took the job with Clay County.” Janet carefully handed Lark to me.

  “But we need to decide whether we’d feel safer putting a little distance between us and the Dingles,” Mark said. “And see how the Dingles’ trial goes. If there is a trial—with any luck they’ll plead out and save the taxpayers a lot of money. I get the feeling that’s what the FBI guys are hoping,” he added, perhaps realizing that he was starting to sound more like a Fed than a witness.

  “Understood,” I said. “I’m sure Rob will understand if you take a little time to decide.” And given the generous salaries Rob tended to offer his staff, if Mark did turn down the job, I’d be almost positive he was a Fed.

  “Are things okay between Rob and Delaney?” Janet asked.

  “Better than okay,” I said. “If you come into the sanctuary to watch Lark’s stage debut—”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for anything,” Mark said.

  “Then you will have a hard time missing the honking big diamond ring Delaney is wearing on her left hand,” I said. “I’m giving serious thought to borrowing it to represent the Star of the East in the pageant.”

  They both chuckled.

  “See you in the pageant.” I lifted Lark’s chubby, limp hand and waved it at them.

  Then I hurried out into the vestibule with her fast asleep on my shoulder.

  And speak of the devil, Rob and Delaney were there, with Mother and Dad and Caroline and Cordelia and Rose Noire and Grandfather gathered around them, all beaming.

  I waved and hurried on.

  As I passed the side door to the sanctuary, I glanced in and saw Chief Burke standing just inside, talking to the FBI agent. When the chief saw me, he waved for me to come over.

  “Meg, this is Special Agent Durham. He was expressing his appreciation for your diversionary tactics.”

  “I admit, I got a little hot under the collar when I first saw the video feed,” Durham said. “Not a big fan of vigilantism or civilian interference or whatever you’d call that stunt you pulled. But I have to admit, the raid went a whole lot more smo
othly than I’d been expecting. Took us half an hour to convince them that we really were law enforcement instead of another batch of nosy parkers from Caerphilly bent on making them look like idiots. And the video’s going to prove useful—pretty hard for an arrestee to prove excessive force when you’ve got him down on video throwing sheep—um, sheep manure at the arresting officers. So all’s well that ends well this time.”

  “Happy to be of service,” I said. “I should go—we can’t start the pageant without a baby for the manger.”

  “Looking forward to it,” Durham said.

  I ducked back into the parish hall. Michael was sitting in a folding chair facing a delta of sheep, shepherds, wise persons, angels, camel parts, and members of the Holy Family. They were sitting cross-legged on the floor with their eyes closed and were taking deep breaths. And they all looked calm and eager—even the smallest and most excitable of the sheep.

  Michael opened his eyes when he heard me come in.

  “And here’s our final cast member,” he said. “Okay, it’s show time, folks! Let’s do our huddle!”

  As I placed the still-sleeping Lark in the manger, ready for the trustworthy Josh to wheel into the sanctuary, I saw Michael and the rest of the cast clumped together in a tight knot—it looked rather like the team-spirit-building ritual with which the boys’ baseball team always began its games.

  “On three,” he said. “Ready?”

  “One! Two! Three!” they all chanted. “MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

  ALSO BY DONNA ANDREWS

  Toucan Keep a Secret

  How the Finch Stole Christmas!

  Gone Gull

  Die Like an Eagle

  The Lord of the Wings

  The Nightingale Before Christmas

  The Good, the Bad, and the Emus

  Duck the Halls

  The Hen of the Baskervilles

  Some Like it Hawk

  The Real Macaw

  Stork Raving Mad

  Swan for the Money

  Six Geese A-Slaying

  Cockatiels at Seven

  The Penguin Who Knew Too Much

  No Nest for the Wicket

  Owls Well That Ends Well