“The time of death’s not the important thing anyway,” Dr. Smoot was saying. “Clearly someone thought he was a vampire!” He sounded downright happy about it.
“Halloween’s over,” the chief said, with an involuntary glance at Horace’s gorilla suit. “And while I’ve heard half a dozen people just today call Mr. Doleson a bloodsucker, do you really think anyone takes that literally?”
“You see a whole lot of those college students running around wearing black,” Horace said. “Black clothes, black fingernails, black lipstick.”
“That just means that they think they’re cool, and goth,” I said. “Not that they literally think they’re vampires.”
“Perhaps the stake’s intended to be a symbolic gesture,” Michael said. “Suggesting that the killer considers Mr. Dole-son’s business practices no better than commercial vampirism.”
“That sounds more likely to me,” the chief said.
“I still think you should assign someone to infiltrate the local occult community,” Dr. Smoot said. He sounded as if he wanted to be recruited for the job.
“We have a local occult community?” the chief asked.
“Oh, yes,” Dr. Smoot said. “You’d be amazed at some of the things that go on in a seemingly quiet town like this.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” the chief muttered.
An idea struck me.
“Dad,” I said. “What kind of wood is the stake made of?”
“Now that’s an interesting question,” Dad said. He turned to the chief. “May I?”
The chief frowned slightly and tightened his lips. I had the feeling that the only reason he was putting up with what he would normally have called interference from civilians was that we’d all been moderately useful, especially in fending off the press. But this was pushing his limits. Finally he nodded.
“But don’t touch anything,” he snapped. “We haven’t fingerprinted that thing yet.”
“No, no,” Dad said. “Of course not!”
He placed his hands ostentatiously behind his back, stepped into the shed, and peered at the stake, both through and over his glasses. And then he pulled out a magnifying glass to reinspect the wood. He paid particularly close attention to the areas where the bark still clung.
“Probably holly,” he said, as he stood up. “Very light color, close-grained. I’d say Ilex opaca—the American holly. Is that significant?”
“ ‘Out upon merry Christmas!,’ ” I declaimed. “ ‘What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer.’ ”
The chief and most of the other bystanders were looking at me as if they thought I’d suddenly lost my mind, but Michael joined in on the rest of the quote.
“ ‘If I could work my will,’ said Scrooge indignantly, ‘every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas” upon his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.’ ”
“A Christmas Carol!” Dad exclaimed. “Of course!”
“Christmas Carol?” the chief echoed. “Like ‘The Holly and the Ivy’?”
“It’s a quote from Dickens’s book, A Christmas Carol,” I explained. “Something Scrooge says.”
“So you think the murderer was making a statement about Christmas, not about Mr. Doleson’s character?” the chief asked. He was scribbling frantically in his pocket notebook.
“No idea,” I said. “Maybe it just struck the killer as appropriate. After all, Scrooge was a miser, and Mr. Doleson was no philanthropist.”
“I still think you should look at the local occult community,” Dr. Smoot muttered.
“Or maybe the murderer just thought he was being clever,” Horace said. “Using a weapon that fit in with the theme of the Christmas parade.”
“Holiday parade,” I said, out of reflex. “You know what it does prove?”
Chief Burke frowned, but paused his scribbling and looked up at me warily.
“This was premeditated,” I said. “The killer had to cut that stake from a holly tree and sharpen it. Or at least deliberately bring it here.”
“It’s not something connected with the parade?” the chief asked.
“Most of these people can’t be relied on to march in the right direction,” I said. “Do you think I’d trust any of them with sharp sticks? No, sharpened holly stakes are not a part of the parade.”
“Didn’t think so,” the chief said. “But you never know. Dr. Smoot, perhaps you could—”
“Right,” Dr. Smoot said. “Get on with it. You need to work the scene.”
“If there’s anything I can do to help,” Dad said. He sounded so wistful.
“The more eyes the merrier,” Dr. Smoot said. He reinserted his fangs and ducked back into the shed.
“Excellent!” Dad said, following him.
Okay, Dr. Smoot was an absolute loon, but he’d just made Dad’s day—possibly his whole year—so he was all right in my book.
The chief didn’t even protest when I sidled up to stand beside him and peer through the open door of the shed. I almost wished I hadn’t. Thanks to the several powerful lights that Horace had rigged up to illuminate the scene, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. A long brown feather sticking out of the pool of blood that had collected on the floor.
I pointed it out to Chief Burke.
“Is that significant?” he asked, frowning over his glasses at the feather.
“We’ll collect it, in any case,” Horace said. “But you’d expect to see a few feathers in a chicken coop.”
“Yes, but this shed isn’t a chicken coop—never was,” I said. “It’s a pig shed. And I cleaned it pretty thoroughly before I dragged the sleigh in here to dry. I didn’t want any leaves or feathers or other stuff to land on the fresh paint. I think I’d have noticed an enormous feather like that floating around.”
The others looked at the feather with new interest.
“Dr. Langslow, you’re the birder,” the chief said. “Any thoughts on the feather?”
“Hmm. . . .” Dad said. He whipped out his magnifying glass again and began studying the feather. Horace turned his flashlight so Dad would have more light, and I stuck my head inside the door, so I could watch. I winced when I realized what I was seeing.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you too much,” Dad said. “It’s not a native species, I can tell you that. Some kind of commercial feather, I suspect.”
“I know what it is,” I said, closing my eyes with exasperation. “It’s a goose’s tail feather.”
Chapter 9
Horace held up the tail feather and peered at it.
“No, no,” Dad said. “I don’t see how this could come from a goose. It’s—”
“Not a real goose,” I said. “One of the six geese a-laying. The SPOOR members. They’re all dressed up in Canada goose costumes, complete with tail feathers that look a lot like that.”
“Oh, dear,” Dad said, shaking his head. “You’re right—it could be part of their costumes. But I’m sure no one in SPOOR would commit murder.”
“I’m not,” I said. “Some of them are total loons.”
“They’re very passionate about birds and the environment,” Dad said. “But I can’t imagine . . . oh, dear.”
As president of SPOOR, he clearly wasn’t happy about the fact that his fellow environmental activists had just become prime suspects.
The chief, on the other hand, brightened.
“So this tail feather belongs to one of the six people dressed up as geese?” he asked. Clearly he thought his life had just gotten a lot easier.
“Not exactly. Only six of them are marching in the parade in costume. But a few more than that showed up in costume and had to be dissuaded from joining in.”
“How many more?” the chief asked, with something closer to his usual mid-case scowl.
“Thirty-seven in all,” I said.
“Thirty-eight, counting Mrs. Mar
kland,” Dad put in.
“Yes, but Mrs. Markland was here in spirit only, last time I heard. She wasn’t here in costume, shaking her tail feathers all over the yard.”
“In other words,” the chief said, “there are thirty-odd people running around in costumes that could have shed this feather.”
“Odd’s definitely the word for them,” I said. “And they’ve been running around, practicing their high kicks and line dancing all morning. And shedding feathers like crazy, I imagine. So if someone wanted to cast suspicion on SPOOR . . .”
“Oh, good point!” Dad exclaimed.
The chief didn’t seem as charmed by my analysis.
“So as evidence, it might be pretty darn useless,” he said, scowling down as if it was the poor feather’s fault.
“I’m sure many people have it in for SPOOR!” Dad proclaimed. “In our quest to preserve the natural habitat we have no doubt angered many vested interests.”
The chief made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a growl and stepped back out of the shed,
Horace bagged the offending feather and whisked it out of sight.
“You don’t really think one of the SPOOR members could possibly have done it, do you?” Dad asked.
He sounded so forlorn that I hesitated to say what I really thought—that yes, it was not only possible but probable that the killer was a SPOOR member—or if not, SPOOR could easily collect a quorum to elect the killer to honorary membership.
Dad must have read my answer on my face.
“Well, if it was someone from SPOOR who did it, I’m sure they meant well,” he said.
“Where’s Meg?” I heard someone outside say. I reluctantly pulled my head out of the shed.
“Right here,” I said.
Minerva Burke was standing beside her husband, which meant that either the chief’s officers hadn’t completely secured the perimeter of the crime scene yet or they weren’t suicidal enough to try and keep Minerva out.
“People are starting to ask what’s wrong. And quite a few of them have questions for you.”
I glanced at my watch, and flinched when I saw how close to parade time we were.
“Chief?” I asked.
He looked up with a slight frown of preoccupation.
“I hate to bother you when I know you’re swamped but—well, you’re swamped. Would I be correct in assuming that I should start looking for another wise man to take your place in the parade?”
For a second, his face lit up with relief and utter joy. Then he quickly rearranged it into an expression of apologetic regret.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I know it puts you in a bind, and I really was very flattered to be asked, but under the circum-stances—”
“Henry!” Minerva Burke exclaimed. “You don’t mean you’re going to leave her high and dry without a wise man?”
“No, I’m not going to leave her high and dry,” the chief snapped back. “I’m going to give her back the costume, and she’s going to recruit a new wise man from the hundreds of suspects milling around here trying to mess up my crime scene.”
“She can’t get just any old person to play a wise man!” Minerva exclaimed. “For one thing, ninety percent of the people here are scared witless of those fool camels. Much too scared to even get up on one,” she added, which meant she’d figured out that her husband wasn’t deliriously happy about climbing back in the camel saddle.
From the look on the chief’s face, I could tell he thought scared witless was a sensible attitude toward dromedaries.
“And it needs to be a person of substance,” she went on. “Someone with standing in the community. Someone . . .”
“Preferably someone black,” I said. “Sorry if that sounds blunt, but in spite of that medieval tradition I mentioned to the reporter, I did some research and found out that Caerphilly’s never had a black wise man in the parade before. And some of the Town Council members put up a surprising number of objections. Of course, they pretended it was because you’ve only been in town seven years but . . .”
I shrugged and let the sentence trail off. The chief’s eyes narrowed, and he gave me a tight nod, as if to say he wasn’t all that surprised and he knew exactly which council members I was talking about.
“Of course, I pointed out that I’d been in town even less time than you had,” I added. “And I told them since they’d made me Mistress of the Revels in spite of being such a newcomer, I didn’t see the problem in the chief being a wise man.”
“I heard you’d threatened to resign if they didn’t approve Henry,” Minerva said. “We appreciate that.”
I shrugged. I’d threatened to resign at least a dozen times, usually over far more trivial matters, and wouldn’t have been all that broken up if the council had accepted any of my resignations.
“So, about that replacement wise man,” the chief said. “How about Lucas Hawes?”
“No way you’re going to take away our only half-decent baritone who’s not down sick with the flu,” Minerva countered. “What about your cousin John?”
“He’s all involved in the Kwanzaa float,” the chief said. “What about Reverend Pratt?”
I left the two of them to argue it out. I had no doubt that Minerva Burke would find an acceptable substitute wise man for me.
I saw a bigger problem headed my way. Eric and Cal Burke were peering around the corner of a nearby shed. I hurried over to head them off.
Chapter 10
“You guys shouldn’t be here,” I said. “It’s a crime scene. And you know how stern Cal’s grandfather is about letting anyone near his crime scenes.”
“Yeah, I know,” Eric said.
“Eric, dear,” my mother said. She appeared behind the boys, trailed by one of Chief Burke’s officers. The crime scene perimeter was starting to resemble a sieve.
“Sorry, Grandma,” Eric said. “I know we were supposed to wait by the float. It’s just that Cal was worried. About Santa.”
I glanced down to see that Cal was gazing up at me with huge brown eyes that looked perilously close to brimming over with tears. Mother put one hand on Eric’s shoulder and one on Cal’s. Cal just kept staring up at me.
“I heard on Deputy Shiffley’s radio that someone killed Santa,” Cal asked. “Is it true?”
“Well,” I began. I wished Chief Burke or Minerva were in sight. I didn’t know the official Burke family party line on Santa Claus. And I couldn’t count on Mother for help. When kids asked the difficult questions, like where babies came from and was there really a Santa, Mother usually managed to have someone else answer.
Cal assumed my hesitation meant the worst.
“It’s true, then,” he said. His lip was quivering slightly, and a tear started rolling down his left cheek. “Someone killed Santa Claus!”
“No, of course not!” I exclaimed. “Someone killed Mr. Dole-son. He was just pretending to be Santa, for the parade.”
“Why?” Cal asked.
Was he asking, like his grandfather, why someone had killed Mr. Doleson? Or only why Santa had picked such an unpleasant deputy?
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m sure your grandfather will. You can ask him, later, when he’s not so busy working on the case.”
“My grandpa’s helping, too,” Eric put in.
“Yes, isn’t it nice that Cal’s grandfather is letting your grandfather help with the murder,” Mother said. “I’m sure this will be the most exciting Christmas Grandpa’s ever had.”
“How remiss of us not to have arranged a Yuletide homicide long before now,” I said.
Mother pretended not to hear.
“Now come along, both of you,” she said.
Before turning to go, she gave me an approving smile, so I deduced I’d handled the Santa issue to her satisfaction. But that reminded me that I had another Santa problem.
I turned to see Chief Burke striding toward me, still dressed in his wise man’s robes and turban, and with one side of his flowing he
adcovering pulled over his mouth, as if he were fighting his way through a desert sandstorm. All I could see was a small patch of brown skin and a pair of dark eyes.
“Very dashing, ch—Minerva?”
Minerva Burke pulled the cloth away from her face and chuckled.
“If I fooled you at ten yards, odds are I can carry it off on top of a camel,” she said.
“But aren’t you needed in the choir?” I asked. “Not that I object to you being a wise man—person—but I don’t want to sabotage the music.”
“Lord, child, we’ve got four other altos in the choir as good as me, and we’re a little short on menfolk with enough gumption to tackle the camel.”
“The camel doesn’t bother you, I take it?”
“I’ve survived Henry for thirty years, and raised those two mule-headed sons of his,” she said. “I don’t see that the camel will be that much of a problem.”
With that, she headed for the camel pasture.
Moe wouldn’t know what hit him. For that matter, neither would Dr. Blake.
Before I had time to savor the notion, Ainsley Werzel reappeared.
“Have you seen my camera?” he asked.
“Not recently,” I said. “Where did you leave it?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be asking you, would I?”
I took a breath, discarded the first half dozen things I wanted to say as being too rude, and tried again.
“Sorry, what I should have said was where do you last remember having it? Do you recall the last thing you took a picture of?”
“No! If I—”
“Meg, where’s the cleanup crew?” someone called. “We need them over by the elephant pen.”
“Meg, the bagpipers have been playing ‘Away in a Manger’ for half an hour. Can you make them play something else?”
“Meg, we need—”
“Sorry,” I said to Werzel. “Things are a little chaotic right now. I’m sure your camera will turn up sooner or later. Why don’t you tell me what make and model it is and—”
Six Geese A-Slaying Page 7
