The Nightingale Before Christmas

by Donna Andrews

  In the bathroom, I washed my hands with a generous dollop of Martha’s imported geranium-scented liquid soap and dried them on the least stained of her white towels. Martha was muttering to herself as she stuffed the ruined towels and accessories into a black plastic garbage bag.

  “First the packages and now this,” she said. “He’ll do anything to sabotage the rest of us. You need to keep an eye on him.”

  “We don’t know that he’s the one taking the packages,” I said. “But yes, I’m keeping an eye on him.” And on all of them. Clay wasn’t the only one whose competitive instincts were working overtime.

  I tried for a moment to think of something I could say to cheer her up. Then, when Jessica appeared at my shoulder and began snapping pictures, I gave up the notion as impossible.

  “Come on,” I said to Jessica, and I led her back out into the hall.

  “Everyone seems to come to you with their problems,” she said. “So this on-site coordinator gig—you’re like the boss or something?”

  “Or something,” I said. “I’m the one responsible for making sure everything turns out okay. Settling any disputes. Enforcing the committee’s guidelines—for example, that the designers are not allowed by make any structural changes to the house without prior approval. And if—”

  “Oh, my God!”

  I recognized Sarah Byrne’s voice, coming from downstairs in the study, and turned to sprint down the stairs to see what new disaster had struck.

  Chapter 3

  I ran into the study and found Sarah frantically trying to push one of the beautiful red-velvet armchairs out from under a stream of water that was coming through the ceiling.

  “Help!” she shrieked. “That bastard’s trying to flood me out!”

  Jessica and I leaped to the rescue. The three of us managed to shove one of the chairs out into the hall. As we were turning to go back in for the second chair, Eustace appeared in the hallway. Instead of helping, he galloped up the stairway, shouting in rapid-fire Spanish along the way. Tomás and Mateo appeared at the top of the stairs. More machine-gun Spanish. Tomás disappeared back into the master bedroom. Mateo raced down the stairs after Eustace. The two of them dashed into the study and quickly rescued the second chair. Meanwhile, Martha, Violet, and even Mother showed up and helped carry out all the other smaller—and, I hoped, less valuable—objects.

  The water slowed and then stopped. Tomás called out something in Spanish from upstairs. Mateo answered.

  By this time we’d hauled everything out of the room that wasn’t nailed down. Sarah sat down in the hall, with her head between her hands, curled in an almost fetal position.

  “My beautiful room,” she muttered. “My beautiful room. It’s ruined.”

  Mother and Martha stood on either side of her, patting her on the back. Usually it was Mother or Eustace to whom the younger designers like Sarah and Violet turned for moral support. Was Martha just trying to look good in front of the reporter? Or was she feeling a sense of kinship with Sarah because Clay was responsible for both of their woes?

  Tomás had come downstairs, and he and Mateo and Eustace were discussing something in Spanish. Much pointing toward the ceiling. Now that the water had stopped, I could see, to my relief, that there was only a little damage visible, right around the ceiling light fixture. Still, there wouldn’t be any damage at all if Clay hadn’t done whatever he’d done.

  Speaking of Clay, what had he done? I hurried up the stairs and into the master suite. Clay was standing there, sopping wet and toweling himself off with some ratty paint-smeared rags.

  “I need a towel,” he said.

  “What the hell were you doing?” I asked.

  “Removing the wall between the bathroom and the closet,” he said. “I wanted to open up the space.”

  I stepped into the bathroom. The wall was half demolished, and I could see the broken end of a pipe. There were puddles all over, with chunks of wallboard soaking in them, and a sledgehammer leaning against the wall.

  For a moment, I contemplated picking up the sledgehammer and decking Clay with it. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths until the urge passed. Then I pulled out my phone and called Randall Shiffley.

  “Meg? I’m already on my way over there. What’s up?”

  “We need some help out here,” I said. “Clay Spottiswood was removing a wall—”

  “The load-bearing wall between the master bath and the big closet? The one I told him not to touch under any circumstances?”

  “That’s the one,” I said. “Apparently, in addition to being load-bearing, it also contains some of the pipes for the bathroom. He’s flooded the study downstairs. We’re going to need some workmen to repair the damage. Tomás and Mateo can’t do it all themselves.”

  “I have work I need Tomás and Mateo to be doing,” Clay protested.

  “Too bad,” I said. “For the time being, Tomás and Mateo will be fixing all the damage you’ve done—here and downstairs in Sarah’s room.”

  “But—”

  My temper boiled over.

  “Get out of here right now!” I stamped my foot as I said it, for good measure.

  “I need to finish—”

  “You’re finished for the day!” I said. “And maybe for good. I’ll call later to tell you if you’ll be allowed to continue or if we’re kicking you out of the house completely.”

  Clay opened his mouth to argue, but looking at my face must have made him think better of it. He disappeared for a moment into the walk-in closet, then reappeared, putting on his coat as he stormed out.

  I was still taking my deep, calming breaths when I heard the front door slam downstairs.

  “Meg?” I’d almost forgotten that I had Randall on the phone. “You really kicking him out?”

  “I think I should let the committee make that decision,” I said. “Things would certainly be a lot more peaceful around here if he was gone. And Martha would kill for a chance to do this room. She already has a set of plans, you know—she really expected to get it.”

  “Then she should have applied before the deadline like everyone else, instead of assuming the rules didn’t apply to her and we’d come begging.”

  “No argument from me,” I said. “But right now I’d rather have her doing the master bedroom than Clay. Do you want to bring this up with the committee, or shall I?”

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said. “I’ll tell the rest of the committee we need to hold an emergency meeting this afternoon or this evening. You hold down the fort there at the house. I’ll send over some guys.”

  I was reassured. Not just that help was on the way, but also that Randall, who was on the committee, would support me if I decided we had to kick out Clay. I suspected without Randall’s influence the committee might have caved when Martha pitched her hissy fit. Of course, they probably wouldn’t have taken the master suite away from Clay—they’d have demoted one of the lesser designers. Princess Violet of the Many Ruffles. Or the designer Mother and I called Goth Girl, who was turning the third bedroom into a black-and-red pseudo-medieval lair. Or Our Lady of Chintz, who was running amok with too many different prints in the dining room, causing Mother, at regular intervals, to mutter thanks for the pocket doors separating it from her living room.

  Or maybe the Quilt Ladies, the cheerful pair of designers who were turning the bonus room over the garage into a quilt and craft room. We all forgot the Quilt Ladies were there half the time, since their room was a little apart from the main body of the house. You could reach it from the garage via the back stairway. Or you could go through the now-paint-smeared back bathroom. Not my favorite feature of the house, that bathroom. From the main part of the house, you couldn’t reach it from the hall, only from one or the other of the two smaller bedrooms. And yet it had a back door leading to the bonus room. If Michael and I had bought this house, the first thing I’d have changed would be to remove that back door. I wasn’t sure what would worry me the most about that door—that it
would let burglars sneak in through my sons’ rooms, or that it would give the boys such an easy way to sneak out when they got old enough to think of doing so.

  But however dysfunctional the house’s floor plan might seem to me, the two stairways were going to make traffic flow easier once we opened up the house to visitors. We could send people up one set of stairs and down and out through the other.

  I made a mental note to drop by to see the Quilt Ladies later in the day. Just because they weren’t squeaky wheels didn’t mean I should ignore them.

  I was still standing in the master bedroom, surveying the damage. Tomás and Mateo returned, followed by Eustace. The two workmen disappeared into the ruined bathroom.

  “The muchachos can fix everything Clay ruined,” Eustace said. “But it’s going to take time. And that’s not something we have a whole lot of.”

  Did he have to remind me? Today was Saturday, December 20. The show house’s main run would be from December 26 through January 5, but we’d given in to the historical society’s request to have a special preview day—with wine and cheese to justify higher prices—on December 24. And just to make sure all the rooms were ready for the sneak preview, we’d arranged for the judges for the best room contest to make their tour of inspection at 9:00 P.M. on December 23. So we had today, tomorrow, Monday, and most of Tuesday to get everything done. I hoped Clay hadn’t just ruined our chances of making our deadline.

  Of course, our secret weapon was Randall Shiffley. As the town mayor, he had the strongest possible motive for making the show house successful. And as a leading member of the family that had a virtual monopoly on the building trades in Caerphilly County, he could draft an almost unlimited supply of skilled labor to get projects like this done.

  “Randall’s sending over some workers,” I said aloud. “It would help if you and the guys can figure out what materials we’ll need and call him.”

  “Will do.”

  I was turning to go. I had the feeling I should make sure Sarah was okay.

  “One more thing,” Eustace said. “Tomás and Mateo understood enough of what happened just now to figure out that Clay might not be coming back.”

  “I’m leaving that up to the committee,” I said.

  “Fair enough,” Eustace said. “But they’re a little worried, because he hasn’t paid them.”

  “You mean for today?”

  “At all.”

  “But they’ve been working here for weeks.”

  Eustace raised one eyebrow as if to say “what do you expect?”

  “What a jerk,” I said. “I’ll mention it to Randall. Maybe the committee can work something out. Put pressure on him.”

  “Or the committee could pay them and force Clay to reimburse them as a condition of being in the house.”

  “And if he refuses?”

  Eustace leaned back, put his hands on his hips, and made a slow, deliberate survey of the décor in Clay’s room. The enormous four-poster mahogany bed, with its black sheets and red curtains. The oversized matching bureau and dresser. The black leather recliner. He wrinkled his nose slightly, as if detecting a faint but foul odor.

  “We’ve got his stuff,” he said. “Not to my taste, but it should be worth something.”

  He had a point.

  “I’ll mention it to Randall,” I said. “Right now I need to go down and check on Sarah.”

  I found her standing in her room, looking shell-shocked. The red-and-gold oriental rug was gone, and Tomás was using handfuls of rags to dry off the floor. The brass ceiling fixture was sitting in one of the red-velvet chairs, and Mateo was atop a ladder doing something to the damaged section of ceiling.

  “How are you holding up?” I asked Sarah.

  “I’m lucky, I guess.” She didn’t sound as if she felt lucky. “They stopped the water before it ruined everything.”

  The streak in her hair was bright blue today, and from the way she was anxiously twisting the strands around her finger, I was afraid she’d pull out all the blue before too long.

  “Stop that,” I said, pretending to slap her hand gently. “Bald would not be a good look for you. Where’s the rug, anyway?”

  “In the garage, with fans drying it out,” she said. “Is that okay?”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “If you need a nicer space, you can always spread it out in the master bedroom. Clay’s not around to complain.”

  “Is he out for good, or just for the day?” she asked.

  “Up to the committee,” I said. “I know how I’d vote, and if they ask me I’ll tell them.”

  She smiled a little at that.

  “You’re sure it’s okay for Tomás and Mateo to work on my room?” she asked. “I know there must be a lot to do in Clay’s room.”

  “Yours comes first,” I said. “And Randall’s sending reinforcements. If you need anything, just ask.”

  “Just keep the reporter away for a while,” she said. “Neither I nor my room are ready for our close-ups.”

  “Oh, my God,” I said. “The reporter. Where has she gone?”

  Sarah shook her head and went back to work—inspecting every inch of the red-velvet chairs to make sure they’d taken no damage. I went in search of Jessica.

  I found her in the third bedroom, the one being decorated by Goth Girl. Whose real name was Vermillion, although come to think of it, I wasn’t sure that actually counted as a real name. I was pretty sure she hadn’t been born with it, and heaven knows where she’d left her last name.

  Jessica was sitting on the very edge of a black-and-red sofa shaped like an open coffin, and she and Vermillion were sipping tea out of black Wedgwood cups. At least I hoped it was tea. A black Wedgwood plate containing black cookies with red sprinkles on them sat on the coffee table, which had been formed by placing a thick rectangle of black glass on the wing tips of two black-painted faux stone gargoyles. Vermillion had added a few small touches to meet the requirement that the designers decorate their rooms for Christmas—but the sprigs of holly around the windows had been painted glossy black, to match the walls, and her Christmas wreath was made of thorns.

  Jessica and Vermillion weren’t actually having much of a conversation. Vermillion was staring over her teacup at Jessica, who was gazing around the room with a deep frown on her face, as if daring the various bats, spiders, and gargoyles to come alive and attack her.

  “There you are,” I said. “Ready to continue the tour?”

  Jessica leaped up without a word, slammed her teacup down on the coffee table, and ran out of the room.

  I winced at the clink of delicate china on glass.

  “Sorry,” I said to Vermillion. “She didn’t break anything, did she?”

  “No.” Vermillion was holding the teacup close to her eyes to inspect it. “But I don’t think she likes my room much.”

  Obviously the proper response was to reassure her that Jessica was nuts and the room was beautiful, but I didn’t think I could sell that one. And I wasn’t sure if she’d be pleased with Michael’s comment that if he ever directed a production of Dracula at the college he’d ask her to design the set.

  “I think people are either going to love it or hate it,” I said finally. “I guess we know where Jessica stands.”

  Vermillion smiled slightly at that, so I guess it must have been the right thing to say. And come to think of it, maybe shocking non-Goths was partly what she was after. She was only in her twenties. Ten or fifteen years ago I’d done much the same thing. Not turning Goth, of course, but doing things just to shock my more conservative relatives and neighbors. Some of my choices in wardrobe and boyfriends still came back to haunt me when we pulled out the family photo albums at reunions, but at least one of my rebellious decisions had turned out pretty well if you asked me: the decision to apprentice myself to a blacksmith instead of going to grad school as expected.

  I went back into the hall and found Jessica gripping the railing that divided the upper hallway from Mother’s great room below
.

  “Horrible,” she was muttering. “My—oh, my God. That room. That poor room. Look what she’s doing to it.”

  She was almost in tears.

  “What’s wrong with it?” I glanced down at Mother’s room as if pretending to think Jessica was talking about that. Mother had gone in for a cozy, homey Victorian style, with overstuffed tufted red-velvet sofas and chairs, a lot of dark carved wood, and blue-and-white china. It wasn’t my taste, but it was handsome.

  “Not the living room,” she said. “That’s okay. Rather nice really. But the bedroom—Morticia or Elvira or whoever she is has painted the walls glossy black. It’s hideous.”

  “We’ll be painting them a normal color when the show’s over,” I said. “Along with the blood-red walls in the master bedroom.”

  “It was a perfectly nice, normal bedroom,” she said. “And now it’s like something out of a horror movie.”

  “Not my taste, I have to admit,” I said. “But apparently some people are very keen on her work.”

  Although the only person I’d ever heard of hiring her was an aging heavy metal drummer who’d bought a farm outside town and built a honking big mansion whose thirty or forty rooms were all decorated by Vermillion.

  “Sorry,” Jessica said, shaking herself as if to throw off some residual effects of being in the Goth bedroom. “But that room just creeps me out.”

  “You’re probably not alone,” I said. “I don’t think Vermillion’s room will be a front-runner for the prize.”

  “Prize? I thought you said the designers were donating all this.”

  “They are,” I said. “Half the profits go to the Caerphilly Historical Society. And each decorator has designated a charity. On the twenty-third, the members of the County Board will go through the house and decide which room they like the best. The winning designer’s charity gets the other half of the proceeds.”

  “I guess that’s why they’re all so keyed up and snapping at each other,” Jessica said.