Six Geese A-Slaying

by Donna Andrews

  “But I can’t cover the rest of the parade without a camera!”

  “See that guy over there with the antlers on his head,” I said, pointing to Jorge. Why was Jorge wearing antlers and a sweatshirt with “Blitzen” stenciled on it? Had the programmers from Mutant Wizards organized some kind of reindeer-themed float they’d forgotten to tell me about? I pushed the questions out of my mind.

  “You think he’s got my camera?”

  “No, but if anyone can round up a digital camera for you to borrow, he can.”

  “But I need my own camera!”

  “Fine,” I said. “If I find it, I’ll let you know.”

  “But—”

  I turned away to deal with some of the other problems. Suddenly, rebel bagpipers and elephant manure didn’t seem so bad.

  But time was moving on, so I tried to deal as efficiently as possible with the several dozen participants who surrounded me, all shouting their questions, problems, requests, and complaints. I’d have been more sympathetic if most of them weren’t asking questions I’d already answered, reporting problems someone had already solved, complaining about things I couldn’t do anything about, or making requests they should have thought of six weeks ago.

  “No, you can’t use your loudspeakers to play ‘Let It Snow’ the whole time you’re marching,” I told the people from the Ski Club float. “The Caerphilly High School Band is marching right behind you, and you’ll drown them out. But I’ll ask them to go heavy on the snow-themed songs.”

  “Meg, can’t we be closer to Santa Claus?” one of the Caer-philly Morris Dancers asked. “We’ve worked out this great routine to ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town.’ It’s so perfect—the bells make it really sound like a sleigh!”

  “It’s a great idea, but we really need you toward the front of the parade,” I said. “We’re a little weak on pizzazz up there and—would you excuse me?”

  “But—”

  “Bathroom,” I said. “Right back!”

  I turned and ran toward the house, growling, “Bathroom!” at anyone who tried to waylay me. Once I got to the house, I ran into the bathroom off the kitchen—not to use it, but because even my family don’t usually follow people into the bathroom. I took a few deep breaths. Then I took out my notebook and flipped to the section on the parade. Just looking at it made me feel a little better. I crossed off a few items that I’d done or that had taken care of themselves, took a deep breath, and was just writing another item when I heard a knock on the door.

  “Meg?” It was Michael. “You okay?”

  I stuck the notebook and pen back in my pocket, opened the door, and walked out. He, Rob, and Dad were standing in a circle around the bathroom door, worried looks on their faces.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “The parade isn’t. We don’t have a Santa.”

  “We can find someone,” Michael said.

  “Someone who fits the costume?” Rob countered. “Not too many people around here who can fit into a costume that short—where did they get it, anyway, the kid’s section of the Costume Shack?”

  “Irrelevant,” I said. “Since the costume has a great bloody hole in the center of the chest—no one would want to wear it even if Horace hadn’t already packed it up in an evidence bag.”

  “Meg,” Dad said. “I could do it. I already have my own Santa suit, remember?”

  I remembered very well. When we were children, Rob and I had been firm believers in Santa Claus long after most kids our age had become cynical Santagnostics, in part because we had such dramatic proof of Santa’s existence. I still cherished the Polaroid Cousin Alice had taken, showing a blurred figure in a red and white suit, standing in the middle of our familiar living room, placing a present beneath the tree I’d helped decorate. Later on, I’d helped to create blurred Polaroids myself, or more recently blurred digital shots, to thrill my nieces and nephews.

  Between the Polaroids and Dad’s practice of getting up in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve to stomp around on the roof, shaking a string of sleigh bells—wearing the suit, of course, in case any of the grandkids woke up in time to peek—Dad had a lot of practice at Santa.

  He was certainly a lot closer to my idea of what the jolly old elf should look like than Mr. Doleson had been.

  “Okay, Dad’s Santa,” I said. “But we don’t have a sleigh for him to ride in—the sleigh’s part of the crime scene, remember?”

  “Can’t we just have him ride in a car?” Michael suggested. “We could use my convertible, so he could wave and smile at everyone.”

  “Yeah, but it lacks that certain something,” Rob said. “No offense, Michael—love your new car, but convertibles are pretty humdrum in a parade.”

  For once I agreed with Rob.

  “I have it,” Dad said. “I have an inspiration! One that will make this Santa’s most dramatic arrival in the history of the parade.”

  “This doesn’t involve the boom lift, does it?” I asked.

  “The boom lift? I hadn’t thought of that,” Dad said.

  “Then don’t start.”

  “If we could rig up something that looked like a chimney that would ride along beneath the boom lift,” he said. “And I could tie a rope to myself and—”

  “Don’t even think of it,” I said. “We already lost one Santa. We’re not going for a double header. Can you imagine how traumatic it would be to the children of Caerphilly, seeing Santa take a forty-foot fall from a boom lift? Go back to whatever idea you were having when I made the mistake of mentioning the boom lift. What was that, anyway?”

  “Have you seen Clarence’s new motorcycle?” Dad asked.

  Maybe I’d been too quick to reject the boom lift.

  “It’s not a bad idea,” Michael said. “If we try to rig up a makeshift sleigh, it’s bound to look just that—makeshift. But this—well, once they find out what happened, everyone will understand that we had to do something, and meanwhile, it’s bold, it’s new, it’s in keeping with your goal of not having a boring, old-fashioned Christmas parade. Holiday parade,” he corrected himself.

  Yes, and was he forgetting how much certain members of the town council hated some of my non-traditional ideas for the parade? If I sent Santa down the road on a motorcycle, they’d freak. They’d never let me hear the end of it. They’d—

  They’d never, ever put me in charge of the parade again, not if Michael and I lived here in Caerphilly for the next fifty years.

  “You’re on,” I said. “Biker Santa it is. Rebel with a Claus.”

  “I’ll run over to the farmhouse to get my suit,” Dad said.

  “I’ll find Clarence,” Michael said.

  “I’m going to find my camera,” Rob announced. “This is going to be awesome.”

  They all scattered. I pulled out my notebook and flipped it open to the page where, a few minutes before, in the bathroom, I had written. “Find Santa.” I pulled out my pen to cross it off, and instead of relief, I felt a wave of anger.

  Someone had deliberately knocked off Santa at my parade. Someone who hadn’t cared that the dead body could be—and was—found by two innocent children. Someone who hadn’t cared that Ralph Doleson was about to do the one genuinely worthwhile thing he did all year. Someone who couldn’t just wait until the parade was over and Mr. Doleson had gone back to his daily routine. Okay, the murderer hadn’t done it to inconvenience me, but he—or she—did it on my watch. I had to do something.

  Instead of crossing off “Find Santa,” I changed it to “Find Santa’s killer.”

  Chapter 11

  As I strode outdoors again, I flinched slightly as the cold air hit me, and then forgot abut it as I dived back into parade preparations. I felt more like my usual self again. Better than usual. As I stalked through the yard, I dispatched problems, answered questions, settled arguments, and calmed attacks of stage fright, almost without thinking. I was looking for a particular person. I headed toward the barn, where I’d last seen the six geese a-laying and all the s
urplus geese.

  There were at least two dozen SPOOR members still wearing forbidden goose suits, which meant I had to keep my eye on them. It occurred to me that if they organized themselves in groups of six and each group slipped into the parade at a different point, it would take me a while before I could tell for sure that I wasn’t seeing the same six geese bumbling into the wrong part of the parade by mistake.

  Then I realized that Chief Burke would solve that particular problem for me. He’d undoubtedly confiscate all the goose costumes so he could figure out which one had shed the tail feather found at the crime scene. If he didn’t, I’d do it myself, and tell SPOOR I was doing it on his orders.

  I smiled slightly as I scanned the geese, who were happily milling around, unaware of how close they were to being plucked. From a distance, they all looked alike, but when you got a little closer, you could see subtle differences in their forms. Some were taller or shorter, fatter or thinner, neatly groomed or covered with haphazard, flyaway tufts of feathers. Slightly apart from the rest I spotted a goose that was taller and more angular than most. Its costume seemed more professional—the feathers all lying neatly and elegantly as they should. Including, I couldn’t help noticing, a seemingly complete set of tail feathers.

  When I got a couple of steps closer, I could see that this particular goose was reading a paperback book.

  “Ms. Ellie?” I called. “Is that you?”

  The goose turned, and took its head off. I was right. It was Ms. Ellie Draper, the town librarian.

  “Good guess,” she said, tucking the headpiece under her arm. I tilted my own head, almost instinctively, to see what she was reading. I was startled to see that the book’s cover art was of a skeleton wearing a Santa suit.

  “Rest You Merry,” she said. “Charlotte MacLeod. It’s a lot of fun—I must remember to thank your father for recommending it.”

  I nodded. I hoped the chief wouldn’t find out that Dad was recommending Christmas-themed murder mysteries. In the chief’s current frame of mind, he’d find it highly suspicious, forgetting that Dad was always recommending seasonally, geographically, or professionally appropriate mysteries to anyone who would listen.

  “Anything wrong?” Ms. Ellie asked.

  “That depends,” I said. “What can you tell me about SPOOR and Ralph Doleson?”

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “They’re not threatening to boycott the parade again, are they?”

  Again? I’d heard threats of protests, but this was the first I’d heard of a SPOOR boycott.

  “Not that I’ve heard,” I said aloud. “But it’s important anyway.”

  “Or is Ralph Doleson complaining about us again?”

  “Not that I’ve heard,” I repeated. “But why would he? Spill. Please.”

  “Why do I think someone’s been making trouble?” she said. “Okay, this happened while you and Michael were in—where was it you went this summer?”

  “Nice try,” I said. “But Michael and I still aren’t telling anyone where we went on our honeymoon. Something happened in June, then.”

  “We heard that a pair of bald eagles had built a nest in a large oak tree down by Caerphilly Creek. You can imagine how excited we were!”

  I didn’t have to imagine—when Pam, Rob, and I were children, Dad dragged us to view any number of nests belonging to rare or interesting birds. To us, of course, this usually meant spending an hour or so gazing at lumpsof twigs at the top of trees, in the forlorn hope that the nest’s elusive maker would put in an appearance.

  “Down by Caerphilly Creek,” I said. “Let me guess: the oak tree was on Ralph Doleson’s property. By the Whispering Pines.”

  “Near there,” she said. “But much closer to the Spare Attic. That off-site storage facility—did you know he owns that, too?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Michael and I still have a bin there.”

  “Why in the world would you need off-site storage with this place?” she asked, glancing up at our three-story house.

  “We don’t,” I said. “We needed it before we moved, though, and Doleson wouldn’t rent month-to-month. Our final yearlong lease doesn’t run out till March.”

  “That man is greed personified,” she said, shaking her head.

  “ ‘Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone,’ ” I quoted. “ ‘A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!’ ”

  “A Christmas Carol?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “I’ve been helping Michael rehearse.”

  “Very apt,” she said. “I can’t help but think Ralph Doleson would be better cast as Scrooge than as Santa. Can you suggest that for next year?”

  “Get back to the bald eagles,” I said. “They were nesting near the Spare Attic and . . .”

  “We were going to put up an eagle cam,” she said. “You know—a web-based camera so people could watch the parent birds incubate the eggs, and then eventually observe the hatchlings. We had the camera, and some of those nice young men at your brother’s company did all the technical work to connect it to our Web site. But when we asked Ralph Doleson for permission to mount the camera on the roof of his building, he refused.”

  “Did he give any reason?” I asked.

  “No. It was just pure meanness,” she said. “It’s not that it was the only possible place to put it, but it was the only place we could get it installed without special equipment.”

  “I can see how that would annoy SPOOR,” I said. “But isn’t all this talk of a boycott a little extreme?”

  “If it had been just his refusal, yes,” she said. “We tried to explain the importance to him, and he refused again, so we made other arrangements.”

  “What other arrangements?”

  “It was your father’s idea,” she said.

  I winced. I could picture Dad leading a contingent of SPOOR members on a daring midnight raid to install the webcam by stealth.

  “He arranged to borrow Mr. Shiffley’s boom lift,” she said. “So we could put the camera in another nearby tree. But when we went out to do the installation, we found that someone had destroyed the nest.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Including the two eggs.”

  “Oh, dear,” I murmured. “That’s a pity.”

  “It’s also a crime,” she said.

  “I thought bald eagles were off the endangered species list?”

  “They went from endangered to threatened in 1995, and were delisted entirely in 2007,” she said. “But they’re still covered by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.”

  “Did you report him?” I asked.

  “Unfortunately, we couldn’t prove it was Doleson,” she said. “We all knew it had to be, but we didn’t have any witnesses. So he’s going to get off scot free. There’s a lot of bad feeling about it among the membership. And then to hear he’d been chosen as Santa!”

  “He wasn’t chosen, he was a legacy,” I said. “If I’d known about the eagles, I’d have vetoed him, but since no one told me anything about this before today . . .”

  “I’ll tell everyone,” she said. “I think it will make a difference. I don’t think you have to worry about a boycott—I’ve pointed out that you weren’t around when the eagle slaying occurred and might not have known how unsuitable Ralph Dole-son was. But next year—”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about next year,” I said. I saw Chief Burke standing nearby, frowning at the large number of costumed geese cavorting in the area. Since Minerva had taken his costume, he was back in his usual suit.

  Ms. Ellie followed my eyes.

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it?” I nodded.

  “Was there a reason you were asking about Ralph Doleson? Is he—?

  “Dead.”

  “Oh, dear,” she repeated. “That’s terrible.”

  “I thought you didn’t like him,” I said. I got the patented librarian stern look.

  “I did
n’t like him, but I didn’t wish him dead,” she said. “Just elsewhere. Is there some reason the chief’s paying particular attention to SPOOR? Apart from the fact that he knows very well how hard we tried to get Doleson arrested and how mad we were that we couldn’t?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And he’d never forgive me if I jumped the gun and told you.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said, shaking her head. “I do hope none of them do anything tasteless when they hear the news. Feelings have been running rather high all summer.”

  “I’m sure the chief will remember that,” I said.

  “Yes, and I hope he also remembers that the SPOOR members weren’t the only ones at odds with Mr. Doleson. I think the Shif-fleys were rather worked up, too.”

  “The Shiffleys?” I asked. “I didn’t realize any of the Shiffleys had become bird-watchers.”

  “They’re not,” she said. “But they do—”

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” the chief said. He had his battery powered megaphone. “May I have your attention please!”

  The crowd gradually settled down. It consisted by this time not only of the costumed SPOOR members but also an ever-increasing number of spectators who’d figured out this was where the best pre-parade entertainment could be found.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the chief began again.

  “Geese and ganders!” one goose exclaimed. A wave of laughter rolled through the crowd, and the chief waited it out.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he repeated. “I regret to inform you that we’ve had a crime here at the parade. And I’d like to ask your help in solving it. Will all the SPOOR members please accompany me to the barn?”

  A buzz of conversation erupted, and not all of it sounded happy.

  “Oh, dear,” Ms. Ellie murmured. “Some of our members don’t look as if they feel like cooperating. I’ll have to see if I can help.”

  She strolled over to where the chief was standing and said a few quiet words to him. The chief bowed slightly and gestured toward the barn. Seeing Ms. Ellie and the chief strolling along, chatting amiably, most of the SPOOR members fell into step behind them. The few would-be rebels made a big show of dragging their heels and making it clear with their body language that they were only going to the barn out of curiosity, not because anyone had the right to order them around.