The Nightingale Before Christmas

by Donna Andrews

  “It’s ruined,” Mother said.

  “We can fix it,” I said.

  “Not by tomorrow morning,” Mother said. “It’s taken me weeks.”

  “Darlin’ you need to sit down.” Eustace gently took Mother’s arm and began steering her into the kitchen. “You come in here and have a cup of tea. Your family’s going to fix your room up for you.”

  He was looking straight at me.

  Why me? Didn’t getting tied up and almost murdered entitle me to a little time off?

  “It’s beyond fixing,” Mother moaned.

  “No it’s not,” I said.

  Mother stopped in the doorway and looked back at me. And suddenly I had the answer to “why me?” Because I might not be the only person who could get Mother’s room fixed, but I was the only person she’d trust to do it. And also because every year I agonized over what to get her for Christmas, and always watched her face when she unwrapped her present, worrying that she was merely a consummate actress when she beamed and told me “I love it.” If I could pull this off, I wouldn’t have the slightest doubt when she proclaimed this “the best Christmas ever.”

  “We’ll fix it,” I said. “The best we can. We can’t put it back the way it was. But we’ll make it beautiful.”

  She smiled wanly and followed Eustace into the kitchen. I heard him fussing over her like a mother hen with a wayward chick.

  “So, what do we do?” Dad asked.

  He was also looking at me.

  They all were.

  Thank goodness Michael strode in just then. Rose Noire, Sarah, and Vermillion were on his heels.

  “Okay, folks,” I said. “We’ve got till ten a.m. tomorrow.”

  “And a lot of help is on the way,” Michael added.

  “Okay,” I said. “Here goes. Unbroken stuff into the study—if that’s okay with you, Sarah? There can’t be that much.”

  She nodded.

  “Broken stuff that might be repairable to the garage. All the other trash goes into the Dumpster. Someone find a box and collect the Christmas ornaments that aren’t broken. More instructions later, but for now, let’s clean up this room. Dad, hang on—I have a special mission for you.”

  “What is it?” He looked a little more cheerful, as I suspected he would at the thought of a special mission.

  “There’s a photographer coming at ten. Keep your eyes peeled; he might show up early. Your mission is to keep him from coming in. Send him back to Richmond if possible. Lie to him and tell him the show house has been relocated to the zoo if you like. Just keep him away from here until I tell you it’s okay.”

  “You’ve got it!”

  Sarah and Vermillion approached me.

  “My room’s in good shape,” Sarah said. “I can help.”

  “Me, too,” Vermillion said.

  “Thanks,” I said. “It would be nice if someone with some kind of decorating skill was involved in this.”

  The three of us retired to the kitchen to confer with Mother and Eustace while an ever-increasing crew of worker bees dismantled the damaged décor in the great room.

  “We don’t have the time to buy new furniture and have it delivered,” Mother said. “Maybe we should do a theme room. Christmas in the bowling alley.”

  “Forget new furniture,” I said. “What furniture can you think of in your house or ours that would work?”

  “Now that’s an idea,” she said. “The chairs in your father’s study might do in a pinch.”

  “What about those ratty sofas in the Trinity parish hall?” I said. “The ones you said have good bones and should be recovered? Let’s call Robyn and see if we can borrow them and do it.”

  “Remember that pair of end tables I outbid you for at that estate sale last year?” Eustace said. “I could be persuaded to lend them.”

  I left them to it and went off to see how the cleanup was coming. And how Michael was coming on his phone calls.

  By nine-thirty, the room was an empty shell. Tomás and Mateo were starting to replace the broken windowpanes. One crew of Shiffleys was going around the room installing new drywall while another crew followed behind, painting it in “Red Obsession.”

  “Meg, that photographer’s here,” Rose Noire stuck her head in the kitchen to say. “But don’t worry—your dad seems to be coping.”

  “Coping how?” I asked.

  “Well, last time I looked, he was taking the guy’s blood pressure, and looking worried.”

  I strolled out to check on things.

  “Oh, good,” Dad said, seeing me. “Meg, this is Mr. Timmerman from the Richmond Times-Dispatch. I know you’re expecting him to take some pictures, but I’m taking him down to the hospital. Don’t worry,” he said, turning back to Mr. Timmerman. “The heartburn could just be heartburn, and the shoulder pain could just be from hauling that heavy camera bag about. But even the possibility of a cardiac problem should be taken seriously. Let’s just make sure, shall we? My car’s over there. Just leave your equipment here; I’ll bring you back when we’re finished.”

  “Thanks,” Timmerman said. He trudged back to his car and popped the trunk to put a suitcase-sized equipment bag in it.

  “Dad,” I said in an undertone. “I don’t want to you commit malpractice for the show house.”

  “It’s not for the show house, it’s for your mother,” he said. “And I’m not making up his symptoms. I was going to try that ‘relocating to the zoo’ idea, but then I saw him popping antiacids and rubbing his shoulder—that’s how a cardiac problem presents sometimes. And his blood pressure’s through the roof. I’d be astonished if a full cardiac workup doesn’t show some symptoms, and I can keep him under observation as long as you need me to.”

  With that, he scampered off to his car, where Mr. Timmerman was waiting, looking a bit impatient.

  I returned to the house.

  As Dad drove off, Randall pulled up in a truck.

  “Where do you want me to put the furniture?” he asked.

  “In the garage for now.”

  Back in the kitchen, Mother, Sarah, Vermillion, and Eustace were nodding at each other over a large sheet of paper.

  “Dear heart,” Eustace said. “It won’t be the room you wanted. But it’s a room you can be proud of.”

  “Come here for a minute.” I led her out to the garage, where Randall was unloading the furniture we’d arranged to borrow.

  “They don’t match,” Mother said. “Each other or the room.”

  “We’ll make slipcovers for them,” I said.

  “We?” Mother repeated. I could understand why—her sewing skills were even more rudimentary than mine. But before I could explain, the first of our worker bees came in through the garage door: Mrs. Tran, who along with Michael’s mother ran a dress shop in my hometown of Yorktown, and three of her best seamstresses. They were followed by two graduate drama students I recognized as longtime costume shop volunteers.

  “I think it’s either the slipcovers or the curtains,” one of the students said. “I’m not sure we’ll have time for both.”

  “The heck we won’t.” Minerva Burke had arrived at the head of a contingent of a dozen ladies from the New Life Baptist Church Ladies’ Auxiliary.

  “Bring it on,” said the Reverend Robyn, as she led in nearly the entire membership of Grace Episcopal’s Guild of St. Clotilda, and even a couple of the ladies from the women’s shelter.

  “Our room’s ready,” one of the Quilt Ladies said, sticking her head into the study. “We can help. We’ve brought in extra sewing machines. What needs doing?”

  Michael had also recruited some drama students with set-building experience. They got to work building canvas frames to replace the ruined artwork—frames that would cover a large portion of the walls and disguise any shortcomings in the hasty paint job. A lot of the volunteers had brought their children or grandchildren, so we set the kids and anyone who wasn’t sewing to work painting holiday murals on the canvas. The Quilt Ladies, bless their h
earts, borrowed several tarps from Randall, battened down or covered up everything in their room, and turned it into a children’s art studio. Even Violet and Linda postponed the last minute primping they’d been planning to do in their rooms to pitch in.

  And not long after we started, someone struck up the first verse of “Deck the Halls,” and before long everyone, all through the house, was singing. Quite possibly the best caroling I’d heard outside the New Life Baptist Choir’s annual concerts.

  Someone brought in a bunch of cots and sleeping bags, and we set up Clay’s room as a nap room for any kids—or grown-ups—who needed to take a break. Some of the Baptist women brought in supplies, took over Eustace’s kitchen, and began turning out delectable soups, sandwiches, casseroles, cookies, and pies.

  “Aren’t you afraid they’ll mess up your kitchen?” I asked Eustace at one point.

  “Darlin’, have you ever seen a church lady who didn’t feel compelled to leave someone else’s kitchen even cleaner than she found it?” Eustace said. “Those ladies just might be my secret weapon to winning the prize.”

  As the day wore on, more and more friends dropped by to help, bringing their kids, armloads of craft supplies, and boxes of decorations for the new tree Randall’s cousins had gone off to find. Before long, Rose Noire showed up with a trunkload of dried flowers and other organic craft supplies, so when we had finished decorating all the canvas panels, we set the painting crew to work making homemade Christmas potpourri ornaments and stringing old-fashioned popcorn garlands. At first I was worried that we might be overboard with the ornaments, but when two of Randall’s cousins showed up with the new tree, we began to worry about filling it all.

  “More garlands!” I shouted. “More tinsel! More snow! More stars! More holly! More angels! More wise men!”

  The children fell to work.

  In the middle of all this, Dad called to update me on the photographer.

  “The good news is that he wasn’t actually having a heart attack,” Dad said. “The bad news is that he’s a heart attack waiting to happen. He’s a lucky man. I’m in the process of turning him over to a cardiologist here at VCU—”

  “VCU?” I echoed. “You’re down in Richmond?”

  “Yes, and I should be heading back in an hour or two.”

  “Does the Times-Dispatch know he’s not up here taking pictures?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Dad said. “But I don’t know if they’re going to send anyone to take his place.”

  Probably just as well, I decided. We still had a lot to do.

  The only halfway Christmassy fabric we’d found for making the slipcovers and curtains was a dull burgundy. It went nicely with the “Red Obsession” walls but it wasn’t exactly an exciting choice. When we set the first slipcovered chair in the middle of the room, everyone stood back and studied the effect.

  “Color’s perfect with the walls,” Sarah said.

  “Nice slipcovering job,” Randall said.

  “But it needs a little something,” Mother, Eustace, and Sarah said in unison.

  “Yes, it does.” Ivy appeared out of nowhere, as usual. “A little decoration. May I?”

  Mother nodded. Ivy was holding several brushes and pots of paint. She quickly painted a little running decoration like a stylized vine along the back of the chair in gold paint with touches of green and black. It wasn’t as intricately detailed as her own murals, but it was still magical.

  “I like it,” Mother said.

  So as each table or chair emerged from the impromptu upholstery workshop, Ivy added in the vine. Tomás watched her for a few minutes, then said a few words to Mateo. The two of them grabbed pots of paint and tiny brushes and began working on the walls, adding in the same stylized vine here and there to the red-painted walls.

  “Hiring those two just might turn out one of my smartest decisions ever,” Randall said in a tone of great satisfaction. “And this place is shaping up.”

  “I thought we’d be working all night,” I said. “But with all the help we’ve got, I think we’re pretty close to done.”

  The curtains were finished and hung, the slipcovers completed and decorated by Ivy, Tomás, and Mateo. In fact, we’d finished every bit of sewing we could think of, so Mother hugged Mrs. Tran and each of her seamstresses, and they headed home to Yorktown. We ran out of ornament-making supplies about the time we ran out of room on the tree, so we thanked all the children, and their parents took them home. The students had one last hearty meal and headed back for the dorms, armed with generous doggy bags. The Baptist and Episcopal ladies stayed long enough to make sure every room in which our volunteers had worked was spotless. Most of Randall’s workmen left. The Quilt Ladies thanked Randall for the tarps and began restoring their room to order.

  Chief Burke stopped by to pick up his wife, and while Minerva was saying her good-byes to the rest of the Baptist and Episcopal ladies, he filled me in on what had been happening down at the police station.

  “We’re holding Martha Blaine for murdering Clay and attempting to murder you,” he said.

  “What about her so-called alibi?” I asked.

  “Miss Violet is no longer quite so certain that Ms. Blaine was with her every minute of that night,” he said. “And we’ll be testing for the drug used to knock her out. Horace tells me that since it’s been less than seventy-two hours, there’s a chance the drug could still be in her system. Of course, disproving her alibi may not be quite as critical as it might have been. Ms. Blaine has been quite communicative since her arrest.”

  “Her lawyer will be displeased with her.”

  “Yes,” the chief said. “Of course, what she’d already said to you when she was planning to kill you had already limited her lawyer’s options to self-defense or insanity. And speaking of insanity, we’re doing what we can to see that Jessica Green will be making her pilgrimage through the mental health system rather than the Department of Corrections.”

  “That’s good,” I said.

  “Yes.” He frowned and shook his head. “I don’t think that poor girl has had many breaks in her life. Let’s hope they can do something for her.”

  We fell silent for a few moments.

  “And what about the Grangers?” I asked.

  “Ah, yes. The Grangers.” He grimaced. “Whose shenanigans proved such a dangerous distraction from the trail of the real culprit. Mrs. Granger has filed for divorce. And now that she’s merely leaving him, and not leaving him for Mr. Spottiswood, Mr. Granger seems willing to accept the situation.”

  “Not exactly a happy ending,” I said. “But probably for the best.”

  “And they do seem to be in agreement about one thing,” he added. “Neither one of them wants their house—they both want to sell it and split up the proceeds. But the entire downstairs is only partially decorated, so they’re looking for a designer who’s neither dead nor in jail. Do you think any of the crew here would be interested?”

  “I’ll put the word out,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “So will we see you at the Living Nativity tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I said. “Or the caroling in the town square.”

  “Till then,” he said. “Merry Christmas!”

  And he and Minerva hurried off—no doubt to buy a few more presents for their grandchildren.

  Alice the Quilt Lady bustled up as they were leaving.

  “By the way, Meg,” she said. “I asked Randall this, and he said okay as long as it was okay with you. We’re going to put prices on all our quilts. If anyone wants to buy one, they have to wait till the show house is over to take it home, of course.”

  “Sounds fine to me,” I said. “And before we let any strangers in here, may I claim that tumbling block quilt?”

  “Oh.” She frowned. “I’m afraid that one’s already spoken for.”

  I’m sure my face showed how disappointed I was.

  “Don’t worry,” she said in a reassuring tone. She looke
d around to see if anyone else was listening, and then went on, in a lower tone. “Two young gentlemen who were here helping with the decorating saw it, and both thought it would be perfect to give their mother for Christmas. By an odd coincidence, the price we’d put on it was just a little bit less than what they had in their piggy banks. Seems they’ve been looking all over Caerphilly for days, searching for just the right present, and they think she’ll like it almost as well as the pair of winter-white hamsters their daddy won’t let them give her.”

  “Wonderful!” I exclaimed.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you,” she said. “But you looked so disappointed.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m very good at pretending to be surprised.”

  She headed back to her room. In fact, all the designers were returning to their rooms to do a few bits of last-minute primping. Most of them were spinning their wheels, though, having raced to get everything ready and now finding nothing to do with themselves.

  “Probably a good idea to leave now,” Sarah said finally. “At this point, I’m more apt to mess things up than improve them. And they’ll kick us out when the judges get here, right?”

  One by one, the others made the same decision. Eventually, Mother and Ivy were the only designers left in the house. Ivy was upstairs, finishing her Snow Queen mural, and Mother was watching Tomás and Mateo doing something with strings of lights.

  “Half an hour till the judges get here,” I called out.

  “I’ll be ready,” Ivy called back.

  I strolled into the living room. Tomás and Mateo were dashing madly up and down their tall ladders. Whatever they were doing with the lights—more like a mesh of lights than a string—they had started on either side of the Christmas tree and were about to meet over the fireplace.