The Nightingale Before Christmas

by Donna Andrews

  Of course, Jessica had probably also stolen Sarah and Kate’s gun. And unlike the obsolete keys, that would be working just fine. So before parking in front of the house, I cruised past it so slowly my car almost stalled out, studying every pane of every window and every shadow on the lawn.

  Nothing suspicious.

  I parked my car right in front of the door. There were a few other cars up and down the street, but they looked like neighborhood cars.

  I kept a close eye around me as I strode up the walk, and kept looking over my shoulder as I unlocked the door. I held the banker’s lamp handy, ready to bash anyone who tried to sneak up on me. Sarah wouldn’t be happy if I had to use it, but my life was at least slightly more important than her room.

  The new key was a little stiff, but it worked. I was safely inside.

  Safely inside a house that had already had one murder in it. I stood in the hallway for a few moments, listening.

  Silence.

  Then I walked quickly and quietly through the house and checked to make sure every door and window was closed and locked, and every closet empty. Fifteen windows and seven doors downstairs, counting the two garage doors. Thirteen windows upstairs. Nobody in the four upstairs closets, the five downstairs closets, or the basement.

  Okay, now I could breathe more easily.

  I went back down to the hall, where I’d left the banker’s lamp, and took it into Sarah’s study. I even plugged it in close to where I thought the old one had been. Of course, the minute Sarah walked in, she’d frown and arrange it to an ever-so-slightly different angle, following some logic understandable only to designers and inexplicable to mere mortals like me.

  I turned the banker’s light on. I could see why Sarah had wanted it. The room was a symphony in red fabric, muted golden bronze, and brown wood. Even the books were mostly in tones of red, gold, and brown. The green shade of the banker’s lamp suddenly brought the room’s whole focus on the elegant cherry desk and the bronze desk accessories on top of it. All it needed was a vintage typewriter and you could imagine The Great Gatsby being written here, or maybe The Sound and the Fury. I wanted more than ever to browse through the books—the real, identifiable, imperfect yet ever-so-beautiful books—and then plop down for nice long wallow in one of the red velvet chairs.

  Maybe later. After the house had opened.

  I took a picture of the lamp and e-mailed that to Sarah. Then I turned it off and went to check the rest of the house.

  Mother’s room was breathtaking. I stood in the middle of the floor and surveyed it. The tall tree, trimmed with so many sparkling ornaments that you had to take it on faith that there was green underneath. The rich red-and-gold brocade covers of the chairs and the sofa. The four red velvet Christmas stockings hanging from brass hangers on the mantel. The lovely contrast between the walls—painted in “Red Obsession,” which didn’t look nearly as overwhelming as I thought it would be—and the woodwork—painted in an off-white, whose name I had forgotten, and picked out with little touches of gold. The rich red draperies with their red-and-gold cords. The subtle colors and intricate designs of the elegantly faded red oriental rug. The cool contrasting touch of the blue-and-white porcelain. Yes, Mother had outdone herself. If there was any justice, she had a good shot at the prize.

  I stopped long enough to take a few shots of the room. In fact, while I was at it, I took several dozen. In the morning, the Times-Dispatch photographer would probably get plenty of pictures—and better pictures. But I’d been in the habit of taking pictures every afternoon or evening, after the designers had finished for the day. I thought perhaps I’d do an album later. Or maybe an exhibit at the county museum. If we put my photos together with the ones Randall had taken of the repair work, we could show the whole history of the house, from wreck to palace. So I made sure to capture Mother’s completed room from all angles.

  Eustace’s breakfast room was painted in off-whites and faded pinks that either matched or blended nicely with the woodwork in Mother’s room. In spite of the room’s name, the round, glass-topped table wasn’t set for breakfast—a ruby-red punch bowl occupied the center, surrounded by ruby-red punch glasses, green-and-white Christmas napkins with a holly design, gold-plated flatware, a colorful fruit cake in a tall cut-glass cake stand, and several antique or vintage Christmas-themed cookie tins. I could imagine the guests attending a party in Mother’s room and then stepping into this elegant little nook to refill their punch cups or grab something to nibble.

  Was the fruitcake fake or edible? I lifted the top and poked it. Real, and therefore presumably as edible as any other fruitcake. Not that I wanted to try.

  The kitchen itself, also done in carefully blended off-whites, was utterly impractical yet absolutely beautiful. Each cabinet contained half a dozen perfectly arranged bits of glass or china or pottery, mostly in soft shades of blue and turquoise. I only hoped all the people who fell in love with the look stopped to inventory the contents of their cabinets before investing in glass fronts. And as a nod to the Christmas theme, he’d placed a tray on the counter containing a large bowl of walnuts and an antique nutcracker. Although clearly the walnuts weren’t really meant to be eaten, since they’d all been painted gold.

  I took a token peek into Martha’s laundry room. It was clean, and sparkling white—evidently she and Eustace had agreed to disagree on the white/off-white issue. She’d hung pretty prints on the walls, pretty curtains at the window, pretty towels on the folding rack. But it was still just a laundry room. And not Christmassy at all—but then, who ever decorates a laundry room for Christmas?

  Well, who apart from Mother?

  Something startled me—a noise outside, like something being knocked over. It seemed to be coming from the back of the house—maybe on the terrace? I tiptoed across the hall and peered out through the glass panes in the terrace door. A little faint light spilled out through the dining room windows. Someone had shoveled the snow off the terrace. Maybe not such a good idea. It looked remarkably empty. Maybe we should put something out there. Or—

  A movement startled me, and then a fat raccoon waddled across the terrace, raised his masked head to stare at me, and disappeared into the yard.

  I had been holding my breath. I started breathing again, and continued my tour. I flicked the light on in the dining room.

  Which was certainly … festive. I realized that Linda was probably aiming for the kind of luxuriant yet tasteful excess that Mother was so good at achieving. But Linda only managed the excess. She’d found at least a dozen different Christmas-themed chintz prints and used them to make angels, stars, wreaths, and garlands that now festooned the already busy walls.

  Well, at least it was Christmassy.

  I flicked the light off again, and realized that the room looked a lot better in the dim ambient light from the hallway. Maybe if I convinced Linda to use only candles, the room would show better.

  I smiled again when I stepped out into the hall. Ivy had added a few bits of furniture—a chair here, a small side table there, just enough to justify the title of “designer” rather than “painter.” But even if she hadn’t, it wouldn’t matter. Her murals were going to be the hit of the show house. They were ornate, intricate, and curiously reminiscent of early-twentieth-century children’s book illustrations, like those by Kay Nielsen, Arthur Rackham, or Edmund Dulac. Was it disloyal of me to like them just a little bit more than even Mother’s room?

  “The Little Match Girl” and “Good King Wenceslas” flanked the front door—it rather looked as if the charitable monarch was about to rescue the shivering waif. On the long wall across from the stairs “I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In” merged seamlessly into the harbor of Copenhagen, where the Little Mermaid peeked above the waves to welcome the arriving fleet. At the back of the hall, “The Friendly Beasts” and “The Ugly Duckling” flanked the French doors to the terrace. “The Three Kings” marched up the wall beside the stairway.

  “The Twelve Days of Christmas”
took over the wall opposite the stairs in the upstairs hallway. On the other long wall, the Snow Queen in her elegant sleigh appeared to be heading for the manger, where a host of shepherds and animals surrounded a pensive Baby Jesus. “The Snow Queen” wasn’t quite finished, but we could steer the photographer away from that. Perhaps toward my favorite, “The Nightingale,” which filled the entire wall leading to Vermillion’s room and appeared through the opening so it was also visible from Mother’s room below.

  And in addition to the large murals, smaller illustrations danced over every other square inch that could be painted. Was that “Thumbelina” standing to the left of the back window? “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” on the other side? “The Little Drummer Boy” performing near the basement door? “The Red Shoes” dancing above the sill of Clay’s room?

  Clay’s room. I wanted to continue my tour of inspection to see what Vermillion, Violet, and the Quilt Ladies had done. But I doubted any of the decorators had spared a thought for the master bedroom. And even if the photographer really was coming to shoot the whole house, I suspected the room that was also a crime scene was a must-see on his list.

  I stepped inside and looked around.

  Not bad. Not bad at all. The glossy black furniture showed every speck of dust, so I grabbed a wad of tissue from the bathroom, dampened it, and gave all the wood surfaces a quick dusting. We’d have to make that a daily chore. I plumped the fat black pillows on the bed and made sure the curtains hung evenly.

  The room was curiously quiet—the soft black curtains and the thick red rug absorbed so much sound that the outside world felt curiously far away. I’d have hated sleeping in it, but I had to admit that if you liked the style, the room would probably be a soothing retreat.

  One of Clay’s paintings was not quite level. I was trying to straighten it when I heard a voice behind me.

  “Wow, you guys really cleaned this place up.”

  I whirled around and saw Jessica standing in the doorway.

  She was holding a gun.

  Chapter 23

  “Yes,” I said. “We cleaned it up. You’d hardly know a murder happened here.”

  Jessica looked ill-kempt and scruffy, as if she’d been sleeping in the clothes she was wearing and not remembering to comb her hair. And I wondered if she was on something. The hand holding the gun was shaking slightly. And was it just because of the dim light, or were her pupils unnaturally dilated?

  “How did you get in here, anyway?” I asked. “We changed the locks.”

  “Climbed a tree to get onto the roof,” she said. “And broke a window in my room. My old room. The one that creepy witch has painted all black and red.”

  She must have done it after my tour of inspection, perhaps while I’d been busy taking photos. And maybe the noise I’d heard was her, not the raccoon on the deck.

  “Downstairs,” she said. She inched into the room, backed away from the door, and then jerked the gun slightly toward it. “Move.”

  She was motioning me toward the door. Well, that was a good thing, wasn’t it? Here in the master suite there was only one way out, past her and the gun. Once I was out in the hall, there were the two stairways, which meant two escape routes. And downstairs would be even better.

  “I said move,” she snapped.

  “I’m moving,” I said. I made my way carefully to the door, not turning my back on her as I slid across the room and then backed out into the hall.

  “Turn around,” she said. “And walk downstairs. Slowly.”

  She was so wild-eyed and twitchy that I didn’t like turning my back on her, but I figured it was more dangerous to disobey.

  She followed me downstairs, far enough behind that there was no chance of turning around and jumping her.

  “Into the living room,” she said. “Far enough. Now kneel down.”

  I didn’t like it.

  “Look,” I said. “There’s no need to do this.”

  “Fat lot you know,” she muttered from behind me. “Kneel down.”

  I turned slightly so I could see what she was doing, and crouched a little bit, as if to suggest I was about to obey her.

  “Everyone knows Clay was a total jerk,” I said. “I figure he must have tried to attack you or something. You’d get off on self-defense. Every designer in the house would—”

  “I didn’t kill him!”

  She accompanied her shout with a hard punch to my stomach. I was frozen—only for a few seconds, but long enough for her to grab my arms and wrap something around them. By the time I could struggle again, my arms were tied behind me, and I was lying on my face on the living room rug.

  “Stupid people,” she muttered. “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Then did you see who did?” I twisted slightly so I could see her.

  “Of course not,” she said. “He was dead when I came in.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “Then let’s tell the police and everything will be okay.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said. I heard a small clatter.

  I wriggled a little more so I could see what she was doing. She had knocked the two middle stockings off the mantel, brass hooks and all, and was leaning into the fireplace and reaching up as if looking for something.

  I decided to take a chance that some of my hypotheses were correct.

  “Look,” I said. “I know you used to live in this house. And you’re looking for something you left behind. If I knew what it was, maybe I could help you.”

  She stopped and turned to look at me.

  “I’m looking for the money,” she said.

  “You left money here?” I asked. “How much?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But it’s a lot. It was my parents’ money.”

  “Well, where did they leave it?”

  “If I knew that I’d have it by now,” she said. “I thought it was in one of the secret compartments.”

  She sounded younger than eighteen. Did Emily, the neighbor, overestimate her age? No, she didn’t just sound younger than eighteen. She sounded like a cranky child. I had a bad feeling about this.

  “Have you looked in all of the secret compartments?” I asked.

  “All I could find. My dad must have made some I didn’t know about. He liked to do that—make secret compartments, and then he’d hide candy in them for me to find.”

  “Sounds nice,” I said.

  “But maybe he made some extra secret compartments for the money.”

  She was knocking on the mantelpiece, as if trying to find a hollow spot. I had managed to pull my arms far enough to the side that I could crane my head and look over my shoulder to see what she’d tied me up with.

  It looked like a leftover bit of the black-and-red braided cord Mother had used to trim the couch and the chairs. I started picking at it with my nails, and casting my eyes around for something sharp I could rub it against. I vowed I was not going to die tied up with these little bits of string.

  “Damned passementerie,” I muttered.

  “What?” Jessica said.

  “I said, did your parents leave behind a lot of money?”

  “Yes,” she said. “We were rich. I had a pony, and I had ballet and piano lessons, and Daddy was building me a pool so I could practice a lot and make the swim team. And then the stupid bank took our house away.”

  Probably not a good idea to point out that people who really had a lot of money didn’t usually have their houses foreclosed on.

  Jessica had started knocking on the walls by the fireplace. She must have found something she liked the sound of. She walked out into the hall, putting the gun down on one of the end tables as she went.

  I felt a little better now that she wasn’t holding the gun.

  Until she walked back into the room holding a large ax.

  I redoubled my efforts to unravel the passementerie.

  “The stupid bank cheated us.” Jessica took a vicious hack at one of Mother’s freshly painted walls. “They took away my pony.”
Another hack. “And then they took away our house. One day Mommy picked me up at school and told me we were leaving. And they wouldn’t let my parents come back in to get their money.”

  “Are you sure they left it in the house?” I said. “And not somewhere else? Because you’ve done a really good job of searching the house over the last six months.”

  “I know it’s in the house,” she said. “My mother must have said it a million times. ‘You can’t have a pony. You can’t have dance lessons. We don’t have any money. All our money’s in the house.’”

  I winced, and not because she’d just reduced fifteen or twenty square feet of Mother’s “Red Obsession”–painted wall to wreckage. “All our money’s in the house.” I could remember saying those very words in those first few years after Michael and I had bought our house. The size of the mortgage payments had made us nervous in those early days, even before you factored in all the money we’d paid to the Shiffley Construction Company to make the house habitable. We’d had to economize a bit. All our money was in the house.

  But not literally. We hadn’t had Randall Shiffley’s workmen build little hiding places in between the walls and under the floorboards to stash our meager post-down-payment savings in.

  Maybe Jessica’s parents had. But even if they had, what were the odds they’d left behind tons of cash when they moved away? However abrupt their departure might have seemed to eleven- or twelve-year-old Jessica, her parents would have had time to clean our their hiding places.

  And did she really think the left-behind treasure would still be there after the house had been empty for six years, despoiled by vandals and squatters, and completely rebuilt by Randall and his workmen?

  Yes, apparently she did. She was working on another wall now, alternately hacking out chunks and stopping to sift through the rubble she’d created. And she was getting more and more jittery and agitated. Was she on something? Or suffering from some kind of mental illness? Either way, I needed to get untied and away from her, because she seemed to be spiraling down into some kind of frenzy.

  She’d started muttering to herself. I caught a few words.