He nodded.
“I completely understand,” Robyn said. “I know we should have done something about it weeks and weeks ago.”
“By ‘we’ don’t you mean Riddick?” I asked. “Wasn’t he the one who was supposed to arrange the estate sale?”
“Yes, but he was clearly in over his head,” Robyn said. “I’ve been trying for weeks to figure out a way to reassign the project without hurting his feelings.”
“Do you have someone willing to take it on?” I asked. Clearing out the basement was one thing, but arranging an auction and an estate sale? I had a premonition that the church-swapping schedule was suddenly going to need more work—at least it would if she was planning to enlist me.
“Your mother seems quite willing to take it on,” she said. “She’s already started planning—she thinks we’ll raise more money if we have an auction for the more valuable stuff. It all sounds fabulous to me. I’ve just been trying to bring Riddick around. But we can’t wait any longer, so even though he’s out sick—”
“Again?” I asked.
“Or still,” she said. “I never can tell. At any rate, since Chief Featherstone has only given us till New Year’s Day to get this done, we can’t afford to wait any longer.”
I had the feeling that far from being unwelcome, the chief’s ultimatum had given her the solution to one of her knottiest problems.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Chief Featherstone said. “Merry Christmas to both of you, and apologies again for delivering such unseasonably bad news.”
With that he left.
“So if Mother’s going to take on the project, have you told her about the deadline?” I asked.
“A few minutes ago,” she said. “She seemed to have a plan for where to put the stuff.”
“And did she say what her plan was?” I was willing to bet I already knew.
“She thought it would be nice to have the estate sale in a barn,” Robyn said. “Or possibly two barns—I gather the one on your parents’ farm is on the small side for all the stuff we’ve got, so we’d need either a second barn somewhere else, or possibly some tents for the yard—though that would mean waiting till it’s warmer, and I gather she’s as eager to hold the sale as I am to see all this stuff leave. She’s going to look around and see if she can find a barn large enough to hold it all.”
Just then my cell phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID. Mother. I answered the phone and put her on speaker so Robyn could hear.
“Yes, Mother,” I said, before she could say anything. “You can use our barn for the estate sale.”
“Thank you, dear,” she said. “Now all I have to do is figure out some way to get everything out there.”
“I have some ideas about that,” I said. “December twenty-sixth is Boxing Day, right? Let’s ask everyone who’s got a truck or a large trunk to come and move a few boxes. And you and the ladies of St. Clotilda can supervise.”
“Everyone in the congregation?” Robyn said. “What a great idea!”
“And anyone in any other congregation who wants to help out,” I said. “With any luck we’ve built some bridges over the last few days.”
“Lovely, dear,” Mother said. “And I can probably recruit a few cousins to help.”
The last time Mother had recruited a few cousins for a project, we’d ended up fixing sandwiches and finding beds for fifty people. But the project did get done, and in record time.
“I think we have a plan,” I said. “Talk to you later.”
“Good night, dear,” she said, and hung up.
“I hope that’s not too inconvenient for you,” Robyn said. “Having all that stuff in your barn.”
“It won’t be for long,” I said. “Mother’s been champing at the bit, waiting to get her chance to bid on some of Mrs. Thornefield’s stuff.”
“Then I will eagerly await Boxing Day and the opening of all those boxes,” Robyn said. “Goodness! This has certainly been the most unusual Christmas season. Do you suppose I should warn the bishop I’m a murder suspect?”
“Are you?” I asked.
“I quarreled with the victim,” she said.
“You’ll have to stand in line behind half the congregation on that one,” I said. “Most of us have been quarreling with him a lot longer than you have.”
“And I knew he was plotting to get me kicked out of Trinity,” she said. “He told me as much. My first parish as rector, after all those years as an assistant, and a mere six weeks after I arrive, one of the vestry is already plotting my downfall. That’s motive, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but nothing like the motive Mother has,” I said. “He called her proposed design for redecorating the parish hall ‘fussy and old-fashioned.’”
“Mercy!” Robyn said with a smile. “I wouldn’t blame her for killing him after that. I’d have helped! So you think I should wait a while before telling the bishop?”
“Probably. Then again, Mr. Vess was always complaining to the bishop about things, and for all I know he could have complained about our bishop to the presiding bishop. Maybe you should tell the bishop to make sure he has an alibi.”
Robyn giggled and shook her head. And then her face grew sad.
“Seriously—what a terrible thing, to leave behind such a legacy. I don’t think I’ve met a single person who is genuinely saddened by his death. I’m already fretting over what to say in his eulogy. I can honestly say that he worked hard for the vestry, and took seriously his responsibility of stewardship, but beyond that, I confess, I am stumped.”
“Have you seen his house?” I asked.
“I’ve dropped him off there a time or two, but no, I’ve never been inside.”
“I suspect it’s unchanged since his wife’s death,” I said. “Perhaps some of the oldtimers can tell you more about her—from her portrait, I suspect she was a kind person. And he bought expensive cat food for his cat, in spite of being disappointed in her mousing abilities.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I can use all that.”
“Go out and look yourself,” I said. “You’ll get a better sense of the man. The key’s taped to the underside of the mat.”
“I will,” she said. “Thank you. I’m tempted to go over there right now.”
“Why not?” I said.
“Because first I’ve got to find Riddick and tell him I’m taking the rummage sale out of his hands.”
“Mother can’t possibly schedule anything till January,” I said. “Why not wait till after Christmas to tell him?”
I could tell from her face that she was tempted.
“No,” she said finally. “I think I’d rather not have it hanging over me. And your mother needs to be able to start planning and organizing without any secrecy. Besides—”
We both started slightly on hearing a door slam in the distance.
“Front door, I think,” Robyn said. “I suppose the crime scene tape is down. People will start coming for events.”
“We don’t have any scheduled here for tonight,” I said.
Just then Riddick came into view. He glanced into the doorway and nodded to us.
“I see you heard the news,” Robyn called out.
Riddick stopped and turned.
“I heard we finally got our church back to ourselves,” Riddick said. From the way he was glowering at us, I wondered if he was blaming me and Robyn for all the unfortunate events that had disturbed his normal routine. And then he put his hand up and massaged his temples, wincing, and I realized that maybe he was just still feeling his migraine.
“All the congregations have their churches back, and everyone’s Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services can go on as planned,” Robyn said. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
Riddick nodded glumly and turned to leave.
Robyn took a deep breath, gave me a brisk nod, and stepped out into the hallway.
“If you have a moment, there’s something I’d like to talk to you about,” I heard her say.
She and Riddick disappeared into her study. I silently wished her luck and turned to leave.
Chapter 35
I felt surprisingly cheerful on the way home. Or maybe it wasn’t so surprising. The chief had solved the murder, and Lightfoot was probably already in custody. Caleb and Ronnie had undoubtedly learned their lessons, which meant the pranks would almost certainly come to an end. I would probably see Randall at Michael’s performance tonight, and could apologize to him for casting any aspersions on his cousin Duane’s character.
My spirits fell a little when I arrived home and found Horace dashing out of our front door, chewing on a sandwich.
“I thought you’d be down at the station with Jerome Lightfoot,” I said.
“So did I,” Horace said. “He’s flown the coop. Probably sometime last night from what his neighbor said. We’re all doing double shifts until he’s caught. I just dropped by to grab a bite on my way out to search Caerphilly Creek.”
He dashed back to his cruiser.
Rose Noire was standing in the doorway, waving to him as he hurriedly took off.
“Poor thing,” she said, as I came in. “He’s going to miss Michael’s show.”
He was also going to be scouring the county for a dangerous killer in twenty-something weather at a time of year when most people would rather be indoors with their families preparing for the upcoming holiday. But I was glad to see she had her priorities straight.
“How is everybody?” I asked.
“Michael is in his office doing his vocal exercises,” she said. “The Baptist ladies have finished and taken all the new curtains and seat cushions over to the church. They’ll be back tomorrow to clean up and take away the sewing machines. Rob and the boys are in the playroom, watching cartoons. Michael’s mother is in the kitchen.”
“I should go and say hello,” I said. “To Michael’s mother, that is.”
Rose Noire winced, but I wasn’t bothered. These days I actually liked my mother-in-law. Before Michael and I were married, her habit of referring to me as “her” and my family as “the outlaws” had rubbed me the wrong way. She seemed to grow a lot fonder of me once Michael and I had gotten married—though I found myself wondering if she was just resigning herself to the inevitable. But eventually, after a conversation with Rose Noire, I made a resolution to consider everything Mrs. Waterston said to me in a positive light—even if it sounded like criticism.
So if she commented, “You’ve gained a few pounds, haven’t you?” I would say, “Why yes! Thank you!” as if pudging out was something I had been working frantically to achieve. If she mentioned that the boys were a grubby mess, I would beam and say “Yes, isn’t it nice that they’re so active!” If she mentioned how loud they were I would enthuse, “Yes, is there anything more delightful than hearing the happy voices of children at play?” If she commented on any shortcomings in the housekeeping, I would pretend to think she was complimenting me on achieving a comfortable, unstuffy, lived-in house.
I’d gotten to the point where playing the lemonade game, as I called it, was actually quite enjoyable, and these days, for whatever reason, she gave me far fewer opportunities to do so. I wasn’t sure if she was making fewer snide or critical remarks or if I was just less apt to misinterpret random remarks as intended slights, but either way, we got along better.
I strolled into the kitchen. Michael’s mother was standing on the stepping stool, rummaging through one of the cabinets. Was she looking for something in particular or just planning to rearrange them again?
“Hi, Mom,” I said.
“Hello, dear.” She stepped down off the stool and we exchanged kisses on the cheek. Then she held me at arm’s length, studied my face for a few moments, and nodded as if I’d passed some test.
“You’re looking well,” she said.
The old me would have wondered why she had to sound surprised. The new me just noted with pleasure that she sounded sincere.
“Thanks,” I said aloud.
“Where’s your colander?”
“We have several that live in that cabinet.” I pointed to the proper one. “But Rose Noire’s been doing rather a lot of soap and potpourri making lately. She may have borrowed them.”
And one had gone out to my car in the bag of things we needed to cook our contraband Christmas dinner, but I wasn’t about to tell her that.
“I don’t need it right now,” she said. “Just making sure you have everything I need for my dinner. I’ll put it on my list. When I’m finished, you and Rose Noire can take a look. There may be things you have that I’m not finding, and anything else we can buy.”
“Good plan.” This was the side of Michael’s mother I liked. She always checked to see that she had everything she needed before leaving the house. She never started a project without making sure she had all the tools and supplies she required. Most people thought I was a good organizer, but I had to admit, Dahlia Waterston had me beat.
Of course, she’d only had Michael to raise. Perhaps if she’d had to cope with twins—
“What did you do to your arm?” she asked.
“A rude person barged into me and dislocated my shoulder on Saturday,” I said. “It’s still a little bruised.”
“Ah,” she said. “You might want to get a new sling for the performance. This one has red stains on it.”
She turned her attention back to her list and then darted over to the spice cabinet.
She was right. The sling had red stains. Red wine or marinara sauce? In either case, not suitable for wearing on Michael’s big night.
I went out to the library and hunted around until I found a scrap of the black lining fabric that was the right size for a replacement sling. Might as well look a little elegant for tonight’s performance, and I was sure the sewing circle wouldn’t mind. Then I took a deep breath and went upstairs to face the task of getting the boys ready for A Christmas Carol.
At least I didn’t have to stuff them into little suits and ties again.
We’d left the boys home last year, and probably should have this year, but hearing Michael practice had stirred them up, and the prospect of being left behind provoked tempests of misery.
So we’d agreed to bring them. After the last two late nights, we’d come up with a new plan. Tonight they would wear pajamas under their snowsuits. And we’d cautioned them that if they got tired of listening to Daddy, they should tell me quietly so I could take them home to bed. Rose Noire and I were driving separately, so if the boys faded at different times we could each ferry one home.
To my delight, the idea of dressing up in pajamas and then going outside in them had just enough flavor of forbidden fruit to delight the boys, so they cooperated unusually well. Then I left them and Rob to continue watching It’s a SpongeBob Christmas and went upstairs to get cleaned up and dressed myself.
I was wearing a long black dress, and the black sling was almost invisible against the fabric. Was that a bad thing? Should I perhaps go back and borrow a scrap of red velvet, so people could see the sling and perhaps avoid jostling me? No, I decided on elegance. If I got jostled a bit—well, we all have to suffer for beauty.
We all had a quick supper—ham-and-cheese sandwiches and Rose Noire’s potato-leek soup. Well, all of us but Michael, who preferred not to eat too close to a performance. But Rob, Grandfather, Caroline, and the boys more than made up for any self-restraint on Michael’s part.
“So you do this Christmas Carol thing every year?” Caroline asked.
“Every year for five years now,” Michael said.
He’d started doing it because he wanted to help to raise money for the local food bank whose supplies usually ran particularly low at the holiday season, and had come up with the idea of doing a dramatic reading of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Not the whole book of course, but luckily Dickens himself had created a condensed version that he could perform on his frequent tours of America.
The first year, a brave fifty or sixty of us filled the first
few rows in one of the college’s smaller auditoriums. Last year it had been standing-room only in the drama department’s main theater. I hoped they didn’t have to turn too many people away tonight. Next year we might need to schedule two performances, unless the new drama department building, now under construction on the north side of the campus, was finished slightly ahead of time. The J. Montgomery Blake Center for the Dramatic Arts—Grandfather had donated a good chunk of its cost and browbeat a number of friends and foundations for the rest—would have several performance spaces, including an enormous state-of-the-art theater that could hold twice as many people as the hall we were in tonight. But since it wasn’t scheduled to open for another year …
We could worry about having two performances—complete with two sets of preperformance jitters—next Christmas.
“And this is the first year the boys are old enough to go!” Michael added, beaming at his sons.
Actually, I wasn’t all that optimistic about their chances of staying the course, but they were so eager that I thought we’d at least give them a chance. And if I had to leave early with one or both of them—well, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen the performance before. Thanks to all that rehearsing, I could have recited it along with him.
“And it’s time we all took off,” I said. “Daddy needs to get there early,” I added to the boys.
I drove, since in his preperformance state Michael tended to forget about boring, practical things like turn signals and stoplights. The boys chattered happily about SpongeBob and Frosty the Snowman, which I hoped was enough of a distraction to keep his nerves from starting to fray.
We dropped him off at the stage door of what people were already calling the Old Drama Building. It was built in the overly ornate Gothic-revival style that made the Caerphilly campus so popular for film crews looking for locations for music videos and low-budget vampire films. Fortunately the snow and the addition of wreaths on the doors and candles in the windows created more of a festive Victorian Christmas atmosphere.
“Bweak a leg, Daddy,” Jamie said. I’d been coaching him on the fact that it was bad luck to wish an actor good luck.
Duck the Halls Page 21
