Lark! the Herald Angels Sing

by Donna Andrews

  “I certainly hope not,” he said. “After all, it’s not as if the entire county is populated with crooks and thugs.”

  “No,” I said. “Although they’re awfully good at finding the crooks and thugs they do have and electing them.”

  “True.” He chuckled slightly. “Although I’m not completely discounting Mrs. Caverly’s fears, I think a more likely scenario is that they’ll keep him locked up over Christmas without bail, then railroad him into prison on bogus charges.”

  “Can they do that? Wouldn’t the judge do something?”

  “Judge Dingle?”

  “Ah.”

  “It’s happened before in his court. And obviously if that happens, Mr. Caverly would stand an excellent chance of having his conviction reversed on appeal, but in the meantime he’d be spending months or even years of his life in prison.”

  “Where the Dingles almost certainly have friends or allies.”

  “And even if they didn’t, life in prison is neither safe nor pleasant for someone suspected of being a police informant. So my goal is to arrange for federal intervention before any of that happens. Maybe I should ask if you could put that coffee in a disposable cup. I should get back to the station to keep the pressure on.”

  “No problem.” I poured his coffee into one of the dozen or so Caerphilly College travel mugs we happened to have, thanks to Michael’s former dean, who considered them thoughtful Christmas gifts and used to give one annually to every member of his department, even if they had been on the faculty for thirty years and already had enough travel cups to caffeinate a small army.

  “Thanks.” He took the cup and stood up to leave. “Call if you notice anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Will do.”

  As we were heading for the front door, it flew open.

  Chapter 16

  I started, and even the chief looked momentarily concerned. Then we both relaxed as Josh and Jamie tumbled inside, shedding large amounts of both new and old snow.

  “Mommy! Turn your back!” Josh ordered.

  “Presents coming through!” Jamie elaborated.

  “I don’t think your mother has X-ray vision,” Michael said. “So she can’t very well see through the store bags.”

  “But she could guess from the size and shape of the bags!” Josh argued.

  “Or from what store the bags come from,” Jamie added, with greater logic.

  “I will stay here while you take the bags upstairs.” I ostentatiously turned my back. “Say goodnight to Chief Burke.”

  Michael and the boys exchanged greetings, Christmas wishes, and good-byes with the chief, accompanied with a few messages for Adam, his youngest grandson, who was one of the boys’ best friends. Michael came over to join me.

  “Any trouble here?” he asked softly.

  “Trouble, no. Excitement, yes. Lark’s mother has been found and is staying here tonight and leaving again with Robyn at dawn. I’ll fill you in later.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “At least I assume it’s good—is Rob off the hook?”

  “According to the mother,” I said.

  “Then it’s good.”

  “Assuming we can convince Delaney. Somehow I have to find the time tomorrow to track her down and get her in a room with Janet Caverly. On top of welcoming and feeding all our arriving house guests and running the Christmas pageant rehearsal.”

  “I have an idea,” he said. “How about if I take over the rehearsal? Not that I’m trying to steal your directorial gig—”

  “You’re welcome to steal it,” I said. “And I can use the time to hunt down Delaney.”

  “It’s a plan, then.” He yawned. “It’s been a long day, and if we’re getting up at dawn to see our guests off, we should probably hit the hay soon.”

  “We don’t all have to see her off,” I said.

  “You can sleep in if you like,” he said. “The boys and I are going to get in a bit of sledding before the rehearsal, so we’ll be up in time to see her off.”

  “I won’t be able to sleep.” And I wouldn’t. Michael was perfectly capable of getting breakfast for the boys, but I couldn’t ask him to do that and feed the animals. And I had the feeling Janet would be more comfortable with me helping her pack up.

  He went upstairs to supervise the boys’ bedtime rituals. I went downstairs to the laundry room.

  Janet’s clothes wouldn’t make anywhere near a full load, so I fished out some of the more critical items from the mountain of family laundry that had piled up over the last few busy days. I was tempted just to throw everything in, but I reminded myself what a bad idea that was. I’d ruined one of my favorite blouses not long ago by not fishing a magic marker out of someone’s pockets. So I yawned my way through my usual laundry routine, making sure everything was right side out, zipping all the zippers, and emptying all the pockets. The boys’ pockets yielded several tissues, a crumpled dollar bill, a wrapped peppermint, several paper clips, five movie ticket stubs, and a half-chewed piece of gum in the foil wrapper.

  Janet’s jeans pockets yielded a tightly folded piece of paper with two phone numbers written on it. One was preceded with the letter R. The other had no identifying initial beside it—just a careless slash of the pencil. But whoever had written it down had then drawn a line around it three times to form a rectangle, as if to emphasize it.

  I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture of the phone numbers. I sent the picture to the chief, with a short email explaining what it was. Very short—I hate tapping out emails with my thumbs. And then, after studying the paper for a few more seconds, I folded it up again and inserted it back where I’d found it. It would probably stay put and survive the wash more or less intact.

  Why not just leave it out and give it to her? Didn’t I trust Janet?

  Not a hundred percent. I still had the nagging feeling that she was holding something back. And I also got the definite impression that it went both ways—she didn’t entirely trust us, either. I didn’t want her to think I was prying. Under normal circumstances, anyone who’d ever opened up a washer to find little bits of tissue all over everything would understand how I’d come to find the paper. But circumstances weren’t normal.

  So I tossed the jeans into the washer and pressed the start button. Then I trudged back upstairs.

  I paused outside our bedroom door. It occurred to me that I hadn’t tried calling Delaney in the last hour or two. For that matter, I hadn’t heard from Rob since I’d left Trinity.

  Moving as quietly as possible, I climbed up to the third floor, where Rob and Rose Noire had their rooms. They’d both been living in our house almost as long as Michael and I had. Caerphilly’s chronic housing shortage was partly to blame. But the arrangement seemed almost normal to Rob and me. We’d grown up in a household that nearly always contained a few relatives who helped out with childcare, housekeeping, cooking, or gardening in return for free room and board. Widowed aunts. Cousins negotiating difficult divorces. The occasional nieces or nephews taking time to find themselves, before or after college. Since Mother’s approach to homemaking was strictly supervisory and Dad had no practical skills whatsoever, I’m not sure how we would have managed without this revolving crew of extra hands.

  Michael and I were a lot more useful around the house, but I’d be the first to admit that we wouldn’t have survived the boys’ first few years without Rose Noire’s help. Not with our sanity intact, anyway. Shortly after arriving, she’d begun planting organic herbs on a pasture adjoining our farm that belonged to Mother and Dad, and it had grown into highly successful business, so I was guardedly optimistic that she’d stick around awhile longer. With any luck, until the boys were in college.

  Rob, on the other hand, could easily have afforded to buy any of the nice houses that occasionally went on sale in town, but then he’d either have had to do his own cooking, cleaning, and yard work or hire someone to do it for him. He found living with us much easier, and had arranged for his accountant to r
eimburse us generously for his share of the household expenses. I knew he’d probably want a place of his own when he got married, so I’d assumed once he had brought off his proposal to Delaney they would start house hunting.

  As long as Janet hadn’t torpedoed the whole thing.

  Normally I didn’t keep track of whether Rob came home or not. He had a day bed in his office at Mutant Wizards, and officially, at least as far as the boys were concerned, that’s where he’d slept any time he stayed out all night.

  But after what he’d been through today, I was worried about him.

  As I walked down the third floor hall I pulled out my phone and tried his number. It went to voice mail immediately. So did Delaney’s after four rings.

  I checked his door. Open, as usual. I peered in. No Rob.

  Although his spare laptop was sitting on the desk. Spare, because Rob liked traveling light; he usually left his work laptop at the office, but liked to have one to use at home. Mainly for games he couldn’t play on his phone, but it was a full-fledged laptop.

  I went over and started it up. I knew his screen lock password—he’d long ago given it to me, the better to enable me to perform small useful chores like finding a file he’d left on the home laptop and emailing it to him at work.

  Or helping him find his iPhone. Rob misplaced his phone at least once a day. If he was near one or the other of his laptops, he’d use the “find my iPhone” feature to locate it. If he was anywhere else, he’d call and ask me to do it for him.

  Feeling little guilty, I logged into the site that let me do it. I watched as a compass icon swung back and forth for a while. Then the screen resolved into a map of downtown Caerphilly. The little green dot representing his phone sat blinking at a location that I knew was the Mutant Wizards office.

  Damn. I was half hoping to find that green dot on the other side of town, where Delaney lived.

  I pulled out my own phone and called the Mutant Wizards security desk. The guard who answered was one I knew—a Caerphilly College student working the night shift.

  “Hey, Paton,” I said. “It’s Meg. I was a little worried about Rob. Is he there?”

  “Fast asleep in his office,” Paton said. “No idea why—for once, there’s no one here working on anything. He’s been here all evening—shared a pizza with me a few hours ago. You need to talk to him?”

  “No, it can wait till morning,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure he hadn’t got stuck in a snowdrift or anything.”

  “He’s fine,” Paton said. “I threw a blanket over him when I made my rounds an hour ago. And I can make sure the diner sends over a good hot breakfast in the morning.”

  “Thanks.” I’d long ago decided that Paton would eventually make someone a wonderful father. “You haven’t seen Delaney, have you?”

  “Yeah, she stormed in here earlier.”

  “Stormed?”

  “She didn’t exactly say ‘bah, humbug,’ but I could tell she wasn’t feeling much holiday cheer. Barely even looked at me when she stomped out again a few minutes later.”

  “Oh, dear. Do you know if she talked to Rob?”

  “This was before he got here. She did seem kind of put out at not finding him.”

  “Thanks. And Merry Christmas.”

  Okay, maybe this was good news. Apparently Delaney had calmed down enough to try to contact Rob. I could help that out tomorrow. And at least Rob was safe and sound. And maybe it was a good thing he hadn’t come home. Running into Janet wouldn’t have improved his mood, given the complications she’d brought into his life.

  I turned the laptop off and made my way quietly downstairs again, past Rose Noire’s room and the several guest rooms awaiting the family members who’d be arriving later tomorrow. Or was it tomorrow already?

  Michael was already not-quite-snoring, and I knew I’d follow his example as soon as my head hit the pillow, falling into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 17

  “I don’t care if it is six-thirty,” I muttered as I grabbed the latest two slices of toast from the toaster. “It feels like the middle of the night.”

  The snow had stopped for the time being, after depositing a mere two additional inches. Still, I was glad Michael and the boys were feeding the llamas, the cow, the chickens, the ducks, the barn cat, the wounded squirrel we were helping Grandfather rehabilitate, and—of course—the dogs. Probably wise of Rose Noire to take a short trip a few times a year, to remind us how much easier life was when we had a dedicated morning person around who enjoyed feeding both the two-legged and four-legged residents of our household.

  According to the college radio station, the large and complicated weather system that had produced last night’s snow was still moving through the area at a snail’s pace, so more bands of snow could add to the precipitation total at intervals throughout the day.

  Well, all the better for the tourists here for Christmas in Caerphilly. A light snow wouldn’t slow them down—in fact, it would enhance the Dickensian ambiance we were aiming for, to say nothing of boosting business for all the shops selling hot food and warm beverages. And it would be interesting to see how much snow it took before the boys finally stopped asking if it would still be around on Christmas Day.

  I’d thrown Janet’s clothes into the dryer as soon as I came downstairs, and a few minutes ago I’d ferried them upstairs and assured her that yes, she could take any and all of the baby gear with her.

  The doorbell rang. Probably Robyn arriving to collect Janet and Lark.

  Before opening the door I peered outside. I was a little surprised to see the van from the Caerphilly Cleaners parked in the street. But it was Robyn standing at the door.

  I was even more surprised to find that Mother had accompanied Robyn. Normally it would be another few hours before Mother deigned to start the day with her customary hot jasmine tea and lightly buttered toast.

  “We’ve come to collect those bits of furniture that need cleaning,” Mother said as she stamped the snow off her boots before coming in. She said so rather loudly, so I assumed her words were for the benefit of any hostile lurking ears.

  “I didn’t realize we had furniture in need of cleaning,” I said, once the door was closed, as I was helping her and Robyn shed their coats.

  “Between the boys and the dogs, you almost always do,” Mother said. “Of course everyone does,” she added quickly.

  In other words, we weren’t the only utter slobs in the world. Just her pet utter slobs.

  “We’re going to take away a sofa, and a couple of smaller pieces,” Robyn said. “We’ll cover them with tarps. Janet can lie on the sofa, holding Lark, under the tarp, just until we get them into the truck. And we’ll put the baby gear in a box and cover it with a tarp, and it will look like just another piece of furniture.”

  “And after we drop Janet and Lark off at the shelter, we really will take the furniture to be cleaned,” Mother added. “You should have it back by Monday.”

  “Should?” I echoed.

  Mother, I soon realized, was determined to remove not just a sofa but every upholstered piece in the living room, plus the rug. I vetoed all of this.

  “We have house guests arriving later today, remember,” I said. “I’m not going to have them sitting around the fire singing carols on folding lawn chairs.”

  We finally reached an acceptable compromise. She took a sofa and two armchairs from the library, all pieces that had taken more than a few hits from after-school beverages and homework-fueling snacks. Mother wasn’t happy, but I pointed out to her that the purpose of the expedition was to smuggle Janet and Robyn out unseen, not to clean up every item of furniture in the house—no matter how badly she felt we needed it.

  “After our holiday guests leave you can empty the living room if you like,” I told Mother. “The whole house, for that matter.”

  Possibly a mistake. I could see the look in her eye—the one suggesting that along with a thorough pre-spring cleaning she might do just
a wee smidgen of redecorating.

  Not a problem. I’d long since conceded the battle to keep her from redecorating the ground floor of our house whenever the mood struck her. I gave her free rein, as long as she followed two rules: She had to show us what she was planning before she ordered it, so we could veto anything we actually hated, and anything she did had to survive whatever the boys and dogs could do to it, because we weren’t shooing them away from any part of their own house.

  “Let’s get this show on the road, then,” Robyn said. “Any chance you and Michael could help us with the furniture?”

  We could indeed, and so could Josh and Jamie. I swore them to secrecy, and wasn’t too worried about their ability to keep their mouths shut. Unlike Dad—or, for that matter, Rob—they seemed to understand that if you managed to alert the immediate world that you were sitting on an important secret you’d already blown it.

  Although I could see they really, really wanted to tell someone about this morning’s adventure. First we covered one of the armchairs with a tarp, and Michael carried it out to the truck, allowing the tarp to slip off while he was waiting for me to open the truck doors, so the whole world could see that it was just an armchair.

  Then we made Janet lie down on the couch, placed Lark in her arms, and hauled that out, with Michael and Josh on one end and Jamie and me on the other.

  “Stay hidden until we take off,” I murmured as we set the sofa down in the truck.

  Josh and Jamie carried the second armchair out and managed, with my help to load it. Michael brought up the rear with an approximately armchair-sized object that was actually the portable crib, and the boys followed with a tarp-covered box in which we’d packed the diapers, onesies, bottles, and other useful baby gear.

  While Michael and the boys were in the back of the truck securing the furniture so it wouldn’t shift around and smash Janet or Lark, I pulled Mother aside.

  “Any chance you could stay behind or come back and help with something?” I asked. “I have to hunt down Delaney and see if I can patch things together between her and Rob—and we have all those relatives arriving. If you could greet the relatives—”