Duck the Halls

by Donna Andrews

  “And you’re worried someone in your family might have been mad enough to do this to Vess?”

  “Yes.” She shook her head in dismay. “Quincy and Vess have been sniping at each other for years. And a lot of the family blame Vess for Quincy’s coronary. Never mind the fact that Quincy has spent the past forty years eating, drinking, and smoking too much and ignoring all his doctors’ advice. Just because Quincy keeled over after their latest argument doesn’t mean it was Vess’s fault. And in case you were wondering, yes, Chief Burke knows about the bad blood. I made sure of that, when I told him I was going to recuse myself.”

  I wondered how the chief had felt about finding out an as-yet-unidentified Shiffley might be one of his prime suspects. The Shiffleys were a large and very close-knit family. Most of the ones I’d met were honest and law-abiding, and I couldn’t imagine them trying to protect a murderer, even if he was family.

  But I didn’t know all the Shiffleys. Every family had its black sheep. And while I wasn’t exactly city folk—an insult that fell somewhere between carpetbaggers and horse thieves in the minds of the locals—I wasn’t originally from around here, either. Maybe I wasn’t in the best position to judge what one Shiffley would do for another.

  “Chief’s got to get to the bottom of this one,” the judge said softly. “If he can’t figure out who killed Mr. Vess, those boys are going to have suspicion hanging over them the rest of their natural lives.”

  I nodded and sipped the last of my eggnog. Then after a diplomatic pause I got to my feet.

  “I’d love to stay—” I began.

  “But you have a million things to do and I’ve already taken too much of your time,” she said.

  “On the contrary, you’ve given me a very relaxing break,” I said. “And since you’re constrained by your office from asking too many people what’s going on, if I find out anything interesting, maybe I’ll drop by for a little more eggnog.”

  “It’s a deal,” she said. “And bring the boys next time. The dogs love playing with kids.”

  Halfway back to town my cell phone rang: Michael. I pulled over and answered it.

  “And where are you and the boys and Granny Waterston?” I asked. “Still skating?”

  “No, Mom stole all our wrapping paper and locked herself in her room to wrap things,” he said. “The boys are home, being looked after by all the sewing ladies. I asked your mother if I could leave them there while I went out looking for a Christmas present for you.”

  “I thoroughly approve.”

  “Yes, except I lied,” he said. “I’m not looking for a present for you—I’m out at the free-range organic turkey farm.”

  “It wasn’t a lie, then,” I said. “If you’re picking up that small turkey for tomorrow night, you’re definitely getting what could end up being my very favorite present.”

  “It’s not going to be that small a turkey,” he said. “Apparently they don’t come all that small these days. This bird would be plenty to feed a family of twelve.”

  “Even better,” I said. “Then it can feed our family a couple of times. As long as it’s fresh.”

  “Very fresh,” Michael said. “I just barely avoided being introduced to it. And they’re still off … um … preparing it. Which means unless I want to come all the way back into town and back out again later, I’ll be stuck out here a while. Could you do something for me?”

  “Sure.”

  “My friend Charlie—the one who owns the basement apartment—is waiting for me in his office,” he said. “As soon as he hands over his spare keys, he’s free to split, so if there’s any chance you could swing by the college—”

  “I’ll be going right by it soon,” I said. “Where’s his office?”

  “Peake Hall, room two twelve,” Michael said. “Thanks.”

  I started the car again, and as I drove the rest of the way back to town, I figured out the quickest route to Peake Hall. Wasn’t it an administration building rather than an academic one? Odd—Michael’s friends tended to come from the faculty rather than the administrators. Then again, since the current chair of the drama department was grooming Michael to be his successor, maybe I should be overjoyed if my husband was making friends in the bureaucracy.

  Although as I climbed the stairs to the second floor, I wondered if I should call back and ask Charlie’s last name.

  Chapter 28

  One mystery was solved when I reached room 212, which was a rather imposing office with a sign on the door that read CHARLES GARDNER. REGISTRAR. Aha. Michael’s friend Charlie was a moderately important bureaucrat.

  The secretary who would normally have been guarding his door against all comers had apparently already started her holidays. I knocked, peered inside, and instantly recognized the occupant as one of the actors in a production Michael had directed last spring.

  “Polonius!” I cried.

  The distinguished-looking fifty-something man with touches of gray at his temples and in his neatly trimmed goatee looked up with the unmistakable pleasure of the amateur actor whose role has been remembered.

  “Only Charlie, now that the play’s run is over.” He stood and held out his hand, glancing briefly at my sling. “How are you, Ms. Langslow? Not a broken arm, I hope.”

  “Meg,” I said, taking the outstretched hand. “And the sling’s only to help my semidislocated shoulder heal faster. Michael sent me to release you from your vigil.”

  “Ah! Thank you,” he said. “They’re predicting more bad weather. My plan is to put a few hundred miles between me and the closest snowflake by nightfall.”

  He fished into his pocket and handed over a key ring with an elegant bow that would have been fully in character for the courtier he’d played in Hamlet.

  “Mi casa, su casa,” he said. “At least the subterranean part of it. And I told Michael to feel free to use the refrigerator upstairs or the dishes if you need to. Hope the private getaway is a success. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “No, I think— Wait. Yes,” I said. “Could I ask you a couple of questions? Quick ones,” I added. “I know you have a storm to miss.”

  He looked surprised, but gestured to the chair in front of his desk and sat down again himself.

  “Ask away,” he said.

  “You’re the registrar,” I said. “Is your office where someone would check to make sure a job applicant really had a degree from Caerphilly?”

  “Not anymore, thank goodness,” he said. “All the paperwork involved in sending transcripts used to be the bane of our existence, but these days we outsource it. There’s a central national clearinghouse for degree verification. We send them the data on all the degrees we award—and then every year when our hundreds of graduates send out thousands of resumes in their initial job searches, the clearinghouse answers all the queries from interested employers—for a modest fee.”

  “So if I suspect someone has lied about his degree, I should start by finding out if his employer bothered to check with this clearinghouse.”

  “Correct,” he said. “Most large employers do. Smaller ones…” He shook his head. “The most common mistake is to take everything a job applicant provides at face value. We had an applicant show up here once with a stellar résumé, complete with what looked like copies of completely authentic reports from the clearinghouse on both his undergraduate and graduate degrees. Fortunately, we ran a check anyway. And did not offer employment. Here”—he picked up a pen, jotted something on a notepad, then handed it to me—“if you really think someone is committing degree fraud, you could start by checking him out here.”

  “Or advising his employer to.” I took the paper, which contained a Web site’s URL. “Thanks.”

  I stood, and Charlie followed suit.

  “I hope your suspicions are unfounded,” he said, offering his hand.

  “Caerphilly would be a better place if they are,” I said as we shook hands.

  “Ah! Then I hope you get the sneaky degree for
ger dead to rights,” he said with a laugh. “I’ll ask Michael all about it when I’m back. Have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!”

  He bent down and picked up something from behind his desk. A small cage containing a rather large white duck.

  “A present for my nieces,” he said, seeing my startled look. “I’m told they make wonderful pets.”

  I tried to figure out a tactful way to ask him if he was sure it wasn’t a stolen duck, but inspiration failed me, so I just wished him a merry Christmas and watched him hurrying down to his car with his cage in hand.

  I hiked back to my own car in a thoughtful mood. Should I say something to someone at the New Life Baptist Church? I gathered from what Minerva had said that Lightfoot’s departure was already a settled thing. Would it make any difference whether or not he’d lied on his application?

  No, but he didn’t know he was already on an exit path. So if he had lied and then found someone checking up on him, it could be very material to the chief’s murder investigation.

  Of course, how could I tactfully ask anyone at the New Life Baptist Church if they’d failed to do an adequate job checking out their new choir director?

  I decided to talk to Minerva Burke.

  Who, as I recalled, was at my house now, supervising the sewing circle and helping keep an eye on Josh and Jamie.

  I got into my car and headed home. I made the mistake of taking a route that led me past some of the dorms where many of the high school and college students attending the debate and basketball tournaments were now packing up to go home. Buses, vans, and cars clogged the roads, and the departing students darted everywhere—laughing, shouting good-byes and holiday greetings, taking pictures of each other, holding impromptu snow battles. Obviously they hadn’t all won their games or competitions, but I didn’t see any discouraged faces. Only happy kids, excited at the prospect of going home for the holidays.

  Their enthusiasm lifted my mood, even while I was dodging them. And that was even before it occurred to me that the end of their events meant that any number of rooms at the college might now be available if any more pranks put any more churches out of commission. I should keep that in mind while working on my schedule.

  Back at the house I was relieved to find that except for the sewing circle, no one was around. Before going down to the library, I seized the opportunity to fill a few bags with things Michael and I would need for our Christmas Eve dinner, and managed to get the bags into my trunk without being seen.

  And then I made myself a cup of tea—the old-fashioned way, by boiling the water in a kettle and steeping loose tea in the pot instead of nuking a mug of water with a tea bag in it—and sat down in the living room with one of the baskets of Christmas cards.

  For a minute or so, I had to fight the urge to be doing something useful with them. Entering any new addresses or e-mails in my address book. Or checking the cards against my list of Christmas cards we’d sent so I could fire off belated greetings to anyone we’d forgotten.

  “Breathe,” I told myself. It took a minute or two, but I managed to relax and see the cards not as looming chores but as what they were supposed to be—expressions of love and friendship from people we might not be able to see this holiday season.

  I found myself just looking at the pictures. The Blankes—a retired colleague of Michael’s and his wife—posing at sunset on a beach in Bali. Eileen and Steven, whose wedding had been partially responsible for Michael’s and my meeting in the first place, on the porch of their North Carolina farm with their five kids, all in matching Christmas sweaters. Dr. Smoot, Caerphilly’s former medical examiner, standing in front of Bran Castle in Transylvania, smiling so broadly that you could easily see his fake fangs. A lovely action shot of the Mountain Morris Mallet Men, a troupe of friends who were croquet-loving Morris dancers. A picture of my friend Karen and her son Timmy—could he really be seven now?—in front of Neuschwanstein Castle. Pictures of other friends with children who seemed to shoot up faster than was possible from year to year.

  I decided to stick to looking at the pictures and read the printed Christmas letters and handwritten notes later. Plenty of time to figure out if Eileen and Steven and their tribe were planning to arrive the same week as the Morris men, who’d established a tradition of camping on Mother and Dad’s farm for a week or two every summer and challenging all comers to freewheeling games of Xtreme croquet. And to learn if this was the year single-mother Karen got transferred back to the States and announced her intention of once again leaving Timmy with us for an unspecified number of months until she got settled. To read the note from cousin Wesley, which would probably once again ask us to come and testify at his bail hearing. Or the Christmas letter from cousin Dolores, who made Job seem fortunate and Eeyore cheerful. For now, I decided, it was a time just to enjoy looking at the familiar faces and thinking of all those who were dear to us.

  “‘A good time,’” I found myself murmuring—by now I knew A Christmas Carol as well as Michael. Even the boys could quote bits of it. “‘A kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow travelers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.’”

  I finished up my tea, reluctantly replaced the card basket in the front hall, and headed down the long hallway to talk to Minerva and check on the boys.

  When I peeked into the library, the boys were nowhere to be seen. And Minerva seemed delighted to see me. She hurried over to the door, and I braced myself to remind her of my nearly nonexistent sewing skills.

  “There you are!”

  “Where are the boys?”

  “They’re fine,” she said. “They were getting a bit restless, so your father and grandfather took them out to the zoo.”

  I decided not to ask exactly what she meant by “restless.” Minerva would have used stronger words if either blood or broken valuable objects were involved. She shooed me back into the hall, followed me out, and closed the door behind her.

  “Good Lord, but your mother’s been on quite a tear,” she said.

  “She has? About what?”

  “Barliman Vess. If you’d asked me yesterday what your mother thought of him, I’d have said she couldn’t stand the man.”

  “And you’d have been right,” I said. “What makes you think she’s changed her mind now that he’s dead?”

  “She hasn’t really. But now she’s convinced he was onto something.”

  “‘Onto something’?” I echoed. “Like what?”

  “She doesn’t know,” Minerva said. “As she keeps saying to anyone who will listen, he was cut off in his prime because he knew something dangerous or was asking the wrong questions or some such thing.”

  “And she could be right,” I said. “Not about the cutting off in his prime—the man was eighty if he was a day. But he could very well have been killed because of something he knew.”

  “Seems that way to me, too,” Minerva said. “I’m not arguing with her on that. I just question how wise it is to go around saying so to every blessed person in creation. And promising she’s going to pick up Mr. Vess’s mantle and carry on his crusade, whatever the dickens it was.”

  “Oh, good grief.” I lowered my voice and took a step closer. “You do realize what she’s trying to do, don’t you?”

  “Of course.” Minerva followed suit, and looked around to see if anyone were eavesdropping. “Trying to flush out the killer by making herself a target. And a damn fool thing to do, if you ask me.”

  “I agree.” I suddenly felt enormously tired. “I’ll try to talk some sense into her. Where is she, anyway?”

  Minerva pursed her lips as if almost too exasperated to speak.

  “After carrying on like that here for near an hour, she suddenly announced to the whole world that poor Mr. Vess’s cat must be starving, and she
was going to go to the rescue. I called Henry the minute she left, but it’s not as if the department doesn’t have a few other things to do. And he can’t very well put out an APB on a law-abiding citizen. For what? Intent to commit feline nutrition?”

  “I’ll go after her,” I said.

  Chapter 29

  From the look on Minerva’s face, I could see she approved.

  “I doubt if your mother went straight to Mr. Vess’s house,” she said. “Because obviously there’s no guarantee that the killer’s here at the sewing bee.”

  “I’d be pretty surprised if the killer was here,” I said. “Of course, maybe she knows something we don’t.”

  “More than likely she’s carrying on the same way all over town. Back at your church, if they’ve opened it up again. Over at the Caerphilly Market. And the post office. And the garden store. And—”

  “Understood,” I said. “Which gives me time to get over to Mr. Vess’s house and intercept her. Where does he live, anyway?”

  Minerva handed me a sheet of paper on which, in her neat handwriting, she’d written not only Mr. Vess’s address but also detailed instructions, including the landmarks that would tell me I’d overshot my target.

  “Before I go,” I said. “May I ask you something?”

  “Of course, dearie,” she said. “Ask away.”

  “How carefully did the church vet Mr. Lightfoot’s credentials before hiring him?” I asked.

  She blinked and frowned slightly before answering.

  “Not carefully enough, by a long shot,” she said finally. “Although if you ask me the problem’s with the man, not the credentials. We should have paid a lot less attention to the fancy school he went to and a lot more to what a miserable human being he is. Why—do you know something we don’t?”

  “No,” I said. “But someone was suspicious enough of Lightfoot to start checking him out.” I explained what I’d seen on Riddick’s computer, and what I’d heard from Michael’s friend the college registrar.