How the Finch Stole Christmas!

by Donna Andrews

  The road was deserted, so it was easy to back out onto it, point my car away from town and drive a few hundred yards until I was out of sight of the lane. Then I parked my car along the side of the road and prepared to hike back to the lane.

  But first I rummaged in the back seat. Yes, my binoculars were still there. Last week I’d taken Dad and Grandmother Cordelia out to some remote location in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains so they could participate in their beloved Christmas bird count. It had been snowing that day, too.

  It occurred to me that if someone came along and spotted my car, they might wonder why I was parked in the middle of nowhere. So I opened my copy of the Audubon guide to a plausible species—pages 638–639, the red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis)—and left it lying open on the passenger seat. The idea was to suggest that I’d spotted a large bird soaring overhead, looked it up in my guide, and then impulsively leaped out of the car, binoculars in hand, to stalk the wily raptor to its nest. That would also be my cover story if anyone accosted me as I hiked in to spy on Haver. “Do you know if you have red-tailed hawks nesting in your woods?” I could exclaim. “I think I saw one flying across the road just now!”

  As I trudged down the road and turned into the lane, it occurred to me to wonder if Dad’s obsession with mysteries and his love of dramatizing things were beginning to rub off on me just a little too much.

  I traveled down the lane as quickly as possible, though I kept a wary eye—and ear—open for anyone coming or going. As I neared the point where the lane emerged from the woods, I left it and slipped through the trees on the right side until I reached a point at the edge of the woods, around a hundred yards from the lane.

  I found a spot where two dead trees had fallen, one across the other, making a slight shelter—the trunks and branches overhead kept off the worst of the snow, and the overlapping trunks cast a shadow that should make me less visible if anyone from the farmhouse looked my way. I sat on a stump, pulled out my binoculars, and focused in on the house.

  A very ordinary farmhouse, with an even more ordinary barn beside it. Both a little rundown, but not in danger of falling down anytime soon. Neither had been painted recently, so the house was a graying white and the barn a graying red. No farm animals in the field—which was a relief, because if there had been in this weather, I’d have had to make a quick call to animal welfare.

  An enormous woodpile flanked the house, and smoke rose from the chimney. I also spotted a propane tank near the back door. An old but serviceable-looking pickup truck was parked under a rough plank carport between the barn and the back door. Apart from Haver’s silver Accord, still parked in front of the farmhouse, there didn’t seem to be any other vehicles. And no rusted hulks or bits of obsolete farm equipment lying about, so either the occupant was an unusually tidy farmer by local standards or he hadn’t been here long.

  And just who was Haver visiting? I pulled out my phone and opened my GPS app. It took a while to find a signal, thanks to the cloud cover, but eventually the app showed the little arrow representing me blinking in the middle of a big blank area. I could just barely see the line representing the road I’d parked on off to one side of the screen.

  I clicked around until I found the place where the app showed me my latitude and longitude. I copied it down, then texted it off to Randall Shiffley, asking him if he could figure out who lived there.

  “I can,” he replied. “Why?”

  “Could be Haver’s bootlegger,” I texted back.

  “Grr. I’m on it.”

  I shoved my phone back into my pocket and returned to surveying the house with the binoculars. Haver’s visit seemed to be taking rather a long time. I’d more than half expected to have to dive into the woods on my way down the lane—why would Haver stay here much longer than it took to hand over money and receive a bottle?

  Unless—we’d jokingly referred to the unknown miscreant who’d been supplying Haver as his bootlegger. What if whoever lived here really was a bootlegger? And what if Haver had to wait until his latest batch of moonshine was ready? Or—

  The front door of the farmhouse opened, and Haver stepped out. He was cradling something in his left arm. Something wrapped in brown paper, but the shape was unmistakable. A bottle.

  He was followed by a tall, angular man carrying a box covered with a quilted blanket, the kind movers used to wrap furniture.

  “Blast,” I muttered. “Is that a whole case of booze?”

  Haver opened the rear door of his rented Honda and the man carefully deposited the blanket-covered box inside. Then they turned to face each other. They stood for a few moments, looking uncomfortable, as if not sure whether a handshake was required. Then the unknown man nodded, turned on his heel, and went back inside.

  Haver stowed the brown-paper-wrapped bottle in his passenger seat with meticulous care before getting into the driver’s seat and starting the car. He turned around slowly in the snowy farmyard and headed back down the lane.

  No way to get back to my car in time to follow him, but I was pretty sure I knew where he was going. I pulled out my phone again and texted Ekaterina, my contact at the Caerphilly Inn.

  “Haver has found another bottle,” I said. “Possibly headed your way. See if you can intercept.”

  “Affirmative,” she texted back. “Over and out.”

  Apparently I’d managed to approximate the CIA-approved way for one operative to talk to another.

  I glanced at my phone. It was one forty-five. Haver had fifteen minutes to get to the afternoon rehearsal. Clearly he wasn’t going to make it. I couldn’t make it, and I knew every possible shortcut.

  So I called Michael.

  “Do you want the good news or the bad news?” I asked.

  “There’s good news? That’ll be a first for the day. Start with that.”

  “I think I just managed to tail Haver to his bootlegger’s house.”

  “If that’s the good news, I’m not sure I want to hear the bad. Although I bet I can guess—he’s getting smashed.”

  “He wasn’t the last time I saw him, but who knows what he’ll get up to on the way back to town. The bad news is that he’s definitely acquired a bottle, and may even have a case, and even if he has decided to save it for tonight, he’s going to be at least fifteen minutes late for rehearsal.”

  “Blast. Well, I’ll alert the chief that his officers might have a crack at that long-awaited DUI arrest and then see what we can get done without the one actor who’s in every damned scene in the play. Are you coming back now?”

  “Not till I get as much info as possible on the bootlegger,” I said.

  “Good idea.”

  “Oh, and I convinced O’Manion that it’s to his advantage as well as ours to force Haver to accept a minder.”

  “I’m not sure we have the budget for a minder.”

  “Mother’s finding someone,” I said. “So whoever it is will work free or cheap.”

  “Free or cheap is good.”

  “Also, since I’ve found the bootlegger, we won’t need to hire Stanley to do it,” I added. “And maybe we can sell all the booze Ekaterina has confiscated and use the proceeds to pay the minder.”

  “I like the way you think.”

  We said our good-byes, and it wasn’t till after we hung up that I realized I hadn’t asked how his meeting with the Dean of Finance had gone. But given his mood when I’d called, perhaps I didn’t need to ask.

  I continued to study the farmhouse for a few more minutes to give Haver plenty of time to get clear before I headed for my car. But just as I was about to stow my binoculars in their case, the door opened again and the tall man strode out.

  Tall and gaunt. He ambled across the farmyard and disappeared into the barn. I studied his face as he did. From a distance, when all you could see was his general build, he could easily be mistaken for Randall Shiffley, or any of his enormous extended family. But the more I watched, the more the resemblance vanished. He didn’t move like a S
hiffley—he had an awkward, abrupt pace instead of a Shiffley’s loose-limbed grace. And with the binoculars I could see that his thin, almost skeletal face didn’t look a bit like a Shiffley. I breathed a sigh of relief. If Randall caught one of his cousins undermining the festival by getting Haver drunk, there would be hell to pay. Of course, out in the more rural parts of the counties, it seemed as if every fourth mailbox was a Shiffley. The bootlegger could still be a Shiffley by marriage. Or one who had gotten shortchanged in the genetic pool.

  I wondered if it was safe to leave now.

  The gaunt man emerged from the barn, pulling keys out of his pocket, and got into the truck. I hunkered down again. I pulled out my phone again, texted Randall the pickup’s license plate number, and asked, “Also, who is this?”

  The pickup roared into life and rattled across the farmyard and down the lane to disappear into the woods.

  I checked my phone. I figured I’d give Mr. Bootlegger another ten minutes before I hit the lane.

  But there was no reason not to start picking my way through the woods. I eased myself out of my shelter—

  Just then a loud roaring echoed over the fields. I froze. It sounded just like—

  “Caligula,” I murmured. Caligula had been the largest and nastiest of the tigers at Grandfather’s zoo, until common sense had prevailed and Grandfather had given him to the Doorley Zoo in Omaha, where there were plenty of keepers to handle him and his disposition wouldn’t prevent him from playing a valuable role in the zoo’s breeding program for endangered species. Tiberius, the remaining male tiger, was too old to cause much trouble, and the tigresses, Livia and Vipsania, were sly and sneaky rather than overtly violent. But Caligula had given me nightmares.

  And what I’d heard sounded incredibly like the sullen, angry way Caligula would roar when he was profoundly not in a good mood.

  Chapter 8

  The tiger roared again. Definitely a tiger.

  Could there be a tiger loose in the woods? Not impossible. Only last year, Grandfather had helped rescue a tiger that someone had turned loose in the woods outside Waynesboro when it grew too large for its backyard cage.

  If a tiger was loose, I should definitely head back to my car immediately. Or should I forget about stealth and seek refuge in the farmhouse?

  Perhaps it wasn’t a tiger. Were there any native big cats that could be roaming the woods? Something the cold weather had driven out of the Blue Ridge Mountains in search of food? Bobcats possibly. I seemed to recall hearing about a mountain lion attack along the Appalachian Trail, but hadn’t that turned out to be only a bobcat? But there was no way a bobcat could have made that deep, primeval roar. Bobcats were closer in size to a house cat than a tiger. Not that I’d want to meet one in the middle of the woods, of course.

  I found myself wishing Grandfather were here, just for a moment. He would know exactly what kind of animal had emitted that roar. Or if he didn’t, he could make an educated guess. He’d know what kinds of native big cats might be wandering around the woods of Caerphilly. He’d probably even have some helpful thoughts on how to avoid getting eaten by them. And—

  The roar came again, and I realized it wasn’t coming from the woods around me.

  It was coming from the farmstead. Probably from the barn.

  I waited for yet another roar. It took a while—maybe whatever had riled the tiger was over with. But the noise was definitely coming from either the house or the barn.

  On the one hand, a relief. On the other hand, I needed to get a peek into that barn.

  I eyed the layout. Probably not a good idea to make tracks directly from here to the barn, across a long stretch of snowy open field, where I’d be as obvious as a crow in a flock of swans. But if I went along the edge of the woods until I had the barn between me and the house, I could probably cross the open fields unseen. I even could follow the line of the fence that divided two sections of pasture, which would give me a little bit of cover. The side of the barn I could see had several windows that were high, but not entirely out of reach. Odds were the back would have a window or two.

  I began picking my way through the underbrush.

  The tiger roared only once more before I reached a point where I couldn’t see the house for the barn. Keeping my fingers crossed that either the bootlegger was the farm’s only occupant or that any other members of the household were holed up in the house rather than the barn, I began trudging through the field, keeping as close to the fence as possible without stumbling into the drifts that had piled up against it.

  As I walked, I kept scanning the barn ahead and the fields on either side of me as I rehearsed the story I’d tell if anyone challenged me: “Thank goodness I’ve found you! Where am I? I followed a red-tailed hawk into the woods, and got completely turned around. Can you show me the way back to the highway?”

  But no one popped up to bar my way. The barn windows remained blank and staring. Over the top of the barn roof I could see the thin thread of smoke coming from the house beyond.

  I reached the barn and flattened myself against its weathered boards. This side of the barn had three windows. The ground sloped sharply, so there was one window I could easily peer into, one that I might be able to manage, and one would be out of reach unless I stumbled over a stepladder. I was panting slightly, less from exertion than tension, so I breathed for a few moments.

  The tiger—or whatever—uttered a throaty growl so low I almost felt rather than heard it. This close to the barn, I could also hear other noises. A small chorus of whining and whimpering, like small dogs. Or maybe not-so-small dogs trying to sound small and inedible. A chorus of barks burst out, and then the tiger roared again, and I heard a sound like a truck hitting a chain-link fence and the dogs shut up.

  No one had come to nab me or accost me, so I got up, approached the lowest of the windows, and stood on my tiptoes so I could peer in.

  And I saw the tiger. Only half grown, at a guess, since it was smaller than either Livia or Vipsania at the zoo. And a lot skinnier than either of them, for that matter. Though it still looked cramped and uncomfortable in the chain-link cage that filled that section of the barn. It was lying on its stomach in the cage with all four paws under it, tucked but ready for action, head close to the ground—almost precisely the pose a cat might adopt while guarding a likely mousehole. It appeared to be staring at something on the other side of the barn.

  I shifted my position so I could follow the tiger’s line of sight. Another chain-link cage, this one containing half a dozen lean reddish-brown dogs. Hunting dogs by the look of them. They were lying in a loose bunch. One or two of them were watching the tiger with expressions that seemed to express wariness and dislike more than fear. The rest were watching me through the window with the sort of focused attention that made me hope both the chain-link pen and the barn door were securely locked. One of the ones watching me curled his lip and began a low, menacing snarl, only to be silenced by a brusque growl from the tiger.

  Then the tiger glanced over at my window, twitched his tail, and put his head down on his front paws, as if announcing his intention to fall fast asleep.

  I didn’t buy it.

  The faint whimpering noises began again, and I moved to the second window. The ground sloped slightly downward, so I couldn’t quite see through this window, even on tiptoes. I reached up, grabbed the windowsill, hoisted myself up, and peered in to see—

  Puppies. Beautiful, silky, golden-furred puppies. About a million of them. Well, maybe only a hundred or so I realized, after a moment, but even that was a large number of puppies. And all of them the same. Golden retrievers, I deduced from the appearance of the half-dozen adult dogs almost buried beneath the squirming mass of puppies that filled this chain-link cage. The puppies were cute, but the mother dogs had a lean, anxious look that made me wonder how well fed and treated they were. The bootlegger was also running a puppy mill.

  And beyond the puppies—

  Suddenly a horrible grinning fac
e appeared in the window and shrieked at me. I choked back a scream of my own and lost my grip on the windowsill.

  I landed on the ground with a thud and crouched there for a few moments. The ghastly shrieking continued, and I realized it wasn’t human.

  It was a chimpanzee.

  I hoisted myself up to the window again, ignoring the chimp, which continued to caper and grimace just inside the window, making faces at me and chittering until the tiger uttered another of his curt snarls. I also saw several smaller primates in the background—at a guess, some species of capuchin monkey. Grandfather could figure exactly which one when he saw them—and that was when, not if, because when I got back to town I was definitely going to report this outfit to animal welfare, who would undoubtedly enlist Grandfather to help them figure out if the bootlegger should be allowed to keep any of these poor animals.

  Animals and birds, I amended. In between the chimp’s antics—he was alternately making faces at me and pressing his bubblegum-pink backside against the window—I spotted yet another cage, this one containing a small cluster of brightly colored birds. I recognized them: more Gouldian finches. Had Haver filched some of them before I’d begun counting them and locking them up? Or had these come from the same source as the ones Grandfather’s Fish and Wildlife friend had dumped on him? I even wondered if this could be the headquarters of the smuggling ring, but with only four or five finches, that seemed unlikely, thank goodness. From the way they were huddled together, I suspected the barn was none too warm. I didn’t see any signs of a heating system, only a portable space heater that wasn’t even plugged in.

  Time to head back to town and sic Animal Welfare on this place. Animal Welfare, and maybe Grandfather’s friend from the Fish and Wildlife Service. I let go of the windowsill and dropped back to the ground.

  But before I went back, I wanted to check out the house.

  I slid around the edge of the barn. The snow was falling more briskly now, which gave me at least a little cover. A little cover and a lot of reasons for getting back to town before the roads got too bad. I crept up to one of the lighted windows—near the front of the house, so I suspected it would be the living room—and peered in.