The Nightingale Before Christmas

by Donna Andrews

  “She was planning to use our house,” I said. “And it didn’t fall through at the last minute. When she told us what she was planning, months ago, Michael and I both put our feet down. It just took her till the last minute to believe we were serious. That’s the reason the show house didn’t open up so people could tour it in the weeks before Christmas, which would have made a lot more sense. By the time Mother got it that she couldn’t use our house, there wasn’t much time for Randall to get this house ready.”

  “I see.” The chief was trying to hide a smile and failing. “Would that have anything to do with your taking the job as coordinator?”

  “Everything to do with it,” I said. “I said I would do anything else she wanted, but if any decorators invaded our house, we’d set Spike on them.”

  “Very sensible,” he said. “Some of the things they’re doing to that house are mighty peculiar. Like gluing moss to the ceiling.”

  “Moss?” I repeated. “To the ceiling? Which room?”

  “The one that looks like Dracula’s lair,” Horace said. “She’s got Spanish moss hanging all around the edge of the room, and from the chandelier, and—”

  “Good grief,” I said. “Well, as long as she either takes it down when the house closes or reimburses us for doing it. But getting back to—”

  “Where is he?” a woman was shouting in the main part of the house. “Where’s Clay? I need to see him.”

  Chapter 18

  The woman’s words grew louder, and I could hear Sammy trying to calm her down and hold her back. With no success. She burst into the garage and looked around, puzzled at seeing us there. She was petite, buxom, redheaded, and probably attractive when she wasn’t hysterical. She focused on me and her face contorted with rage.

  “Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?” she shrieked, and launched herself at me, fingernails poised to attack. Horace and Sammy both grabbed her and held her back, taking damage in the process.

  “Madam!” the chief roared.

  The woman stopped struggling and fixed her gaze on him.

  “I am Henry Burke, chief of police here in Caerphilly. Ms. Langslow is assisting me in an investigation. You have already opened yourself to charges of assaulting a police officer in the performance of his duties.”

  “Two police officers,” Sammy corrected.

  The chief favored him with a withering glance.

  “Kindly cease this ridiculous behavior and tell me who you are and what you’re doing here,” the chief went on.

  “My name is Felicia Granger, and Clay is my … my friend.” She pulled herself up and stood still. Sammy and Horace let go of her, but stood ready in case she backslid.

  Granger—she was probably the wife of the man who’d been following me the night before.

  “And your purpose in coming here?” the chief asked.

  Felicia seemed to wilt.

  “We were supposed to see each other last night,” she said. “He never showed up, and never returned my calls, and—did something happen to him?”

  “I’m afraid Mr. Spottiswood is dead,” the chief said, very gently.

  Felicia uttered a shriek and fell in a small heap on the floor.

  The chief and his officers seemed taken aback by the violence of her grief, and I ended up being the one to help her up, lead her back to the living room, plunk her down on the couch, and say “there, there” as she cried on my shoulder.

  The chief had the presence of mind to send Sammy for a glass of water and Horace for a box of tissues, and then ordered them to get back to work searching Clay’s house.

  After a while, when Felicia’s sobs finally subsided, she sat up, wiped her nose on the back of her hand, and looked over at the chief.

  “How did he die?” she asked.

  The chief paused, obviously weighing the effect of what he was about to say, before he answered.

  “I’m afraid he was shot,” he said.

  “Oh, my God!” Felicia turned pale and clapped both hands over her mouth. “He did it! He really did it!”

  “Who did it?” The chief sounded irritated. I could tell Felicia was wearing on his nerves. He wasn’t the only one.

  “My husband,” she said. “Ex-husband. Well, not quite ex yet, but we’ve been separated for two months. And he hates Clay. He said he’d kill him if he didn’t leave me alone. Lots of times.”

  “That would be Mr. Gerald Granger?” the chief asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “Jerry’s been threatening to—”

  The door flew open, and Jerry himself burst in.

  “Aha!” he exclaimed. “Caught you red-handed! I’m going to—what’s going on here?”

  “That’s him,” Felicia said, pointing to the new arrival. “That’s Jerry.”

  “I have already met Mr. Granger,” the chief said. “Sit down!” he snapped at the newcomer.

  Mr. Granger flinched at the chief’s fierce tone and scuttled over to the chair with surprising meekness. The chief scowled at him for a few moments, as if making sure he was planning to stay put. Then he turned back to me.

  “Meg,” he said. “Take Mrs. Granger to the garage and ask Sammy and Horace to keep an eye on her. I need to have a few words with Mr. Granger about his violation of the restraining order against him.”

  “You’re going to arrest him, aren’t you?” Felicia said, as I pulled her to her feet and started steering her toward the kitchen. “Because he did it.”

  “Somebody did the world a favor,” Jerry said. “But it wasn’t me.”

  “You bastard!” she shrieked. She tried to launch herself at him, but unlike Sammy and Horace, I had considerable experience dealing with juvenile tantrums. She wasn’t a particularly large woman, so I slung her over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry and hauled her out to the garage, still kicking and shrieking. Sometimes it comes in handy being not only taller than average but, thanks to my blacksmithing work, a lot stronger than most women.

  “The chief says keep an eye on her,” I said to Sammy and Horace, who looked alarmed at her return.

  “Bitch,” she said to me, but she seemed to have calmed down.

  “What happened?” Sammy asked.

  “My husband happened.” Felicia grabbed Clay’s recycling bin, turned it upside down to dump the contents on the garage floor, and sat on it, with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. “He killed Clay Spottiswood.”

  “He’s a suspect,” I said. “How did you and Clay meet, anyway?”

  “He decorated our living room.” Felicia shook her head. “You want to know the ironic thing? I didn’t want to hire him in the first place. I actually preferred one of the other designers who gave us a proposal. But Jerry liked Clay’s designs. Said he wanted a masculine look in the living room, not a lot of female frippery.” She chuckled mirthlessly. “Bet now he wishes he’d picked Martha Blaine’s design.”

  Interesting. Of course, I’d already figured out that in Caerphilly’s relatively small interior design community, the major players all knew each other, and had done battle over potential clients many times. But given the antagonism I’d already seen between Clay and Martha …

  “She tried to poison me against him, you know,” Felicity said.

  “Martha?”

  “Yes. Tried to tell me all sorts of wild stories about him being a criminal or something. She’s a piece of work. If Jerry wants to hire her to redo the room Clay decorated—well, at least I won’t have to deal with her.”

  “So now what happens?” I said aloud. “With you and Jerry.”

  “Now that Clay’s dead, you mean?” She shrugged.

  “You don’t think you’ll get back together?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Clay wasn’t my true love. Just my exit strategy. I’m not going back to Jerry. I’m tired of him knocking me around.”

  But she looked so bleak that I wondered if she’d stick to that. I wouldn’t want to bet against the notion that by next Christmas, she and Jerr
y would be back together.

  Assuming neither one of them turned out to be Clay’s killer.

  “So where have you been staying?” I asked. “At the local women’s shelter?”

  “I didn’t know we had a local women’s shelter,” she said. “And no, I’ve been staying with a friend in Westlake.”

  Westlake was one of the posher local suburbs, the sort of place where people who could afford decorators were apt to live. Her tone implied that people with friends rich enough to live in Westlake had no need of a women’s shelter. I hoped she was right. Though I suspected the women I’d seen last night at the shelter were there out of fear, not economic need.

  The chief stuck his head in.

  “Mrs. Granger? We’d like you to come down with us to the station.”

  “Great,” she said. “What did Jerry tell you?”

  “Nothing yet,” he said. “I’d rather talk to both of you down at the station.”

  She heaved herself off the recycling bin and headed toward the door. The chief stepped aside to allow room for her to pass. Sammy followed her.

  “Horace is going to process those packages,” the chief said. “And then he’ll bring them back to the show house. We’d like to talk to each of the people whose packages were stolen.”

  “Okay.” I nodded. “I gather Mr. Granger got out on bail this morning.”

  “Yes,” the chief said. “But he won’t be for long. Last month Judge Shiffley granted his wife a protective order against him. He violated that by showing up here. And it’s his third violation, which means a mandatory six-months sentence.”

  “And what are the odds Judge Shiffley will let him make bail twice in less then twenty-four hours?” I asked.

  “Slim.” The chief smiled slightly. “We’ll also be charging him for everything he got up to last night. Should hold him for a while.”

  “Long enough for you to figure out if he killed Clay?” I suggested.

  The chief didn’t answer, but his face wore a look of satisfying anticipation, like a cat who had a mouse cornered and was looking forward to playing with it.

  “So did you figure out why Mr. Granger was following me last night?” I asked.

  The chief frowned.

  “I’m afraid that’s partly our fault,” he said. “I had him in for questioning yesterday—Martha Blaine suggested him as one of Mr. Spottiswood’s clients who might have reason to dislike him.”

  “That’s the understatement of the year,” I muttered. And I suspected Martha had enjoyed having a chance to get back at the Grangers for choosing Clay over her.

  “And while he was down at the station,” the chief went on, “it appears he overheard several of my officers discussing their inability to locate Mrs. Granger for questioning. One of them suggested going over to the show house to ask someone with a connection to the Caerphilly women’s shelter if Mrs. Granger had taken up residence there. Apparently, after spending some time observing the comings and goings at the show house, Mr. Granger decided that you were the connection.”

  “Based on what?”

  “He was unable to articulate his reasons,” the chief said. “He’d ingested a considerable quantity of alcohol. He was well past the legal limit when we administered the Breathalyzer.”

  “I should get back to the house,” I said. I followed the chief back into the living room. Which was empty of feuding Grangers; I could see Sammy escorting Felicia to his cruiser. Another cruiser was pulling away, presumably with another deputy escorting Jerry.

  “Now that he’s safely locked up, I’m rather glad Mr. Granger showed up,” I said. “After all, it’s starting to look as if everyone in the house is alibied, and if none of the designers did it—”

  Oops. Probably not the smartest thing in the world to let the chief know I’d been poking around behind his back. He was frowning.

  “Sorry,” I said. “But we’re all there together all day. The designers talk to each other—and to me. Everyone who has an alibi is thrilled, and wants everyone to know all about it.”

  “Mr. Granger is only a suspect at this point,” he said. “And the designers are not all completely alibied. Unless you know differently.”

  That sounded like an invitation to share.

  “Well,” I said. “Mother was with family, and Martha was serving as designated driver and chief nurse for Violet, who was soused, and the Quilt Ladies were at Caerphilly Assisted Living, and Eustace was with his AA sponsee—”

  “Ah,” the chief said. “That explains why he said he’d have to get back to me with his alibi.”

  “Oh, dear,” I said. “I hope I wasn’t supposed to keep that part a secret. Don’t tell him I spilled it. And he didn’t tell me the name. And Sarah was neutering cats—”

  “Doing what?”

  “Neutering cats. Feral cats. With Clarence.”

  “I think I could have lived without that image,” he said, shaking his head. “She only told me she was working at the animal shelter.”

  “Who does that leave? Oh. Ivy. I don’t know about Ivy.”

  “Home alone with a migraine, which doesn’t prove much,” he said. “But it’s possible the snow will alibi her.”

  “The snow?” I had a brief image of the chief with his pen poised over his notebook, attempting to interrogate a falling flake.

  “One of her neighbors is an avid amateur photographer,” the chief said. “And particularly fond of snowy landscapes without a single footprint in them. Apparently, due to her headache, Ivy did not emerge to shovel until sometime in the afternoon, and the neighbor took a great many pictures of the virginal snow in her front and backyard. Horace is analyzing them, and thinks it likely that she’ll be alibied.”

  “Oh, good,” I said. “And did Our Lady—did Linda talk to you about her alibi?”

  “Also home alone,” he said.

  “Home alone, but online,” I said. “You got my e-mail about that, right? Because while I don’t understand it myself, I gather if she really was online, it might be provable.”

  “I’ve already spoken to our department’s computer forensic consultants,” he said.

  “And Vermillion was with the Reverend Robyn, at the women’s shelter. The location of which I’m busily trying to forget.”

  “I don’t actually know it myself,” the chief said. “I suppose they let you in on the secret because of your gender.”

  “They didn’t let me in on the secret,” I said. “Vermillion has absolutely no idea how to be discreet and furtive. She might as well be driving around with a neon sign on her car saying ‘Please don’t follow me! I’m going someplace I don’t want anyone to know about.’”

  “I’ll speak to the Reverend Smith,” the chief said, with a smile. “Offer to give her couriers some lessons on defensive driving. I used to be pretty good at it, back in my undercover days in Baltimore. I don’t think I’ve quite forgotten everything I used to know. And I feel I owe them something, after my department inadvertently alerted Mr. Granger to their existence.”

  “That would be great,” I said. “But anyway, with so many of the designers alibied, it must be very satisfying to find some fresh, juicy suspects.”

  “I’d rather just find the killer,” he said. “But yes, Mrs. Granger and her jealous husband bear looking into. As does the disgruntled client Stanley told me about, the one who was suing Mr. Spottiswood. Meanwhile, there’s another small matter you can help me with.”

  “Glad to,” I said.

  “That student reporter you mentioned—the one who was visiting the house the day Mr. Spottiswood was killed.”

  “And was wandering around for quite a while, taking photos. Yes.”

  “I wanted to follow up on your suggestion that I look at her photos. What was her name again?”

  “Jessica,” I said. “Sorry—I can’t remember her last name. You can probably find her through the paper.”

  “But you’re sure it was Jessica?”

  “Yes—why?”


  “I dropped by the student paper office today,” he said. “Only one person there holding down the fort, since the college is on Christmas break. But she didn’t remember anyone sending a reporter over to do a story on the show house. And they don’t have a Jessica on staff. She looked through all their files.”

  He let me ponder that for a while.

  “Maybe Jessica’s trying to wangle a spot on their staff by coming up with a good story,” I suggested at last. “Maybe she’s off writing up her exciting account of the show house where one of the designers was murdered. The paper’s on hiatus until classes start up again, so she’d have no reason to turn it in yet.”

  “Maybe.” He didn’t sound as if he found the idea too plausible.

  “Damn! I didn’t ask her for any credentials.” I was getting angry now. “I sent a press release over to the student paper, and a week later, someone shows up saying she’s here to write a story. I fell for it.”

  “It’s a natural mistake.”

  “She played me.”

  “So let’s find her. Ask her what she was up to.”

  “How?”

  “I’ve called the student records office,” he said. “They have photos of all the students in their files. Go down there and they’ll show you all the Jessicas.”

  “All the Jessicas? You think they’ll have a lot of them?”

  “Did you know that between 1981 and 1997, Jessica was either the number one or number two most popular name in this country? And it hasn’t been out of the top two hundred since 1965.”

  I closed my eyes and sighed.

  “So yes, there are quite a lot of them. And if none of the Jessicas look familiar, they’re going to let you thumb through the whole student photo file. Women students, anyway.”

  “If she’s there, I’ll find her,” I said.

  “And meanwhile, in case she’s not there. I’m arranging to bring in a sketch artist,” he said. “So call me as soon as you identify her … or when you’ve looked through all the records.”

  So much for having a productive day.

  Chapter 19