Owl Be Home for Christmas

by Donna Andrews

  The assembled scientists burst into loud and raucous laughter. Mother stepped forward to stand by Dr. Craine’s side. What in the world?

  “We’re doing a Secret Santa,” Mother said. “Now remember, everyone—you’ve got twenty-four hours to come up with a present.”

  “You can make something, buy something, or create a decorative IOU for something,” Dr. Craine said. “The sky’s the limit—just do your best to figure out what will please the person whose name you drew. And no telling anyone who you drew! Now go forth and work up some Christmas spirit!”

  The scientists—at least ninety of them, which meant nearly half of the attendees—milled about, some of them heading for the door, others forming clumps to chat. Though not, presumably, about whose names they’d drawn.

  “Before you go,” I called. “The police want to interview everyone who was sitting at Dr. Frogmore’s table. Could Daniel Belasco, R. G. Smith, and Jeffrey Whitmore drop by the Command Post—that’s the office behind the registration desk—to see Deputy Hollingsworth and make an appointment for your interview.”

  Quite a few of the assembled crowd turned to stare at Jeff Whitmore and the other two men standing with him, so I deduced that my tentative identification of them as Smith and Belasco was accurate. The three of them looked unhappy but resigned.

  Mother favored me with a slightly disapproving frown. I’d spoiled the festive holiday mood she and Dr. Craine had succeeded in creating.

  “And don’t forget, we’ll be having church services by telephone in the ballroom tomorrow morning,” Mother called. “Baptist at nine, Episcopalian at eleven.”

  “And anyone who wants to come to the Hanukkah dinner tomorrow night, sign up at the front desk by noon so the kitchen will know how much food to make,” Dr. Craine called out.

  “We’ll be having brisket, salmon, latkes, matzoh ball soup, and who knows what other delicacies,” Mother added.

  “Plus Indian food in honor of Diwali,” Dr. Craine added.

  “Make that Pancha Ganapati,” someone called out. “Diwali was in October.”

  The menu preview had drawn scattered applause from the scientists, but now more of them were drifting out of the room.

  “Well, you guys have been busy,” I said as I joined Mother and Dr. Craine.

  “We thought we should do something for morale,” Mother said. “People were already demoralized at being snowbound, and then actually witnessing a murder has really shaken everyone.”

  “Of course, if we had to have a murder, at least the killer picked someone whose demise wouldn’t cause general depression,” Dr. Craine said.

  “And possibly a little quiet rejoicing,” I added.

  “The rumor’s been going around that the police won’t let anyone leave town until they figure out who killed Frogmore,” Dr. Craine added. “That doesn’t help morale.”

  “It may not come to that,” Mother said. “Are they even sure it was really murder?”

  “Dad seems to think so.”

  “Yes, but you know how he is.” Mother frowned slightly. Dr. Craine looked puzzled.

  “Dad reads a lot of mystery books,” I explained. “Some people think he’s just a little too ready to suspect murder.”

  “I wouldn’t want to spoil his fun,” Mother went on. “But in this case, he could be inconveniencing rather a lot of other people. I would hate to have it turn out to be a false alarm.”

  “Horace seems to think there’s something in it,” I said.

  “Oh, dear,” Mother said. “Well, then, it’s lucky he’s here.”

  “And by the way, Dr. Craine, Horace would like to interview you,” I said.

  “What stool pigeon sold me out?” Her Edward G. Robinson imitation was actually rather good.

  “Me,” I said. “I confess, I gave him all the names of people I knew had a reason to dislike Dr. Frogmore. I expect you and Dr. Green and Dr. Lindquist can fill him in on the motives the other hundred and ninety-odd people have for the murder. If it even turns out to be murder.”

  “Happy to, actually,” she said in her normal voice. “He was a horrible man, but that doesn’t give anyone the right to kill him. And I particularly resent that whoever did this didn’t seem to care about spoiling Monty’s conference.”

  “Not to mention our holiday season,” Mother added.

  “Yes.” Dr. Craine nodded. “But we’ll do what we can to put both right again. Good night. And Merry Christmas.”

  Mother and I returned the greeting and watched as she pushed through the door to the lobby, looking noticeably less energetic than she had during the Secret Santa drawing.

  “You should go to bed, too,” Mother said. “I’m going to see if I can find your father and convince him to get some rest. After all, it’s not as if whoever killed that poor man will be able to escape tonight. Come on.”

  We stopped at the front desk to check with Sami, who reported seeing Dad leaving the lobby by the door that led to the President’s Garden and the cottages beyond.

  “Thank goodness he’s being sensible,” Mother remarked.

  We put on our coats and braced ourselves for the cold—down to six degrees according to Sami’s lobby thermometer. Luckily the path from the main hotel to the cottage was short, and partly sheltered from the wind by the buildings around it. When we reached the door of Grandfather’s cottage, I was relieved to see that his light was out. Mother wished me good night and headed right toward the Washington Cottage.

  I turned left, and was pleased to see that there were still lights on to welcome me to the Madison Cottage.

  Of course, I’d been expecting that. Michael wouldn’t have forgotten. What I wasn’t expecting was to find Dad sitting on one of the sofas, with a pile of books around him.

  Immediately after her promotion to manager of the Inn, Ekaterina had hired Mother to improve its decor. The Inn’s previous decorator had been a devotee of the practice of filling shelves with fake books bought by the yard for their pretentious leather bindings. Mother thoroughly disapproved of this and had vowed to replace the elegant but empty tomes with real books, albeit attractive ones. She’d recruited Ms. Ellie, the town librarian, to chair the Inn’s book selection committee. Anything that went onto the shelves had to be attractive enough to please Mother, obviously. But it also had to be declared worth reading by Ms. Ellie and the committee—a loose conglomeration of library habitués who were willing to drop whatever they were doing and tag along whenever Ms. Ellie heard about a good used book sale going on. Dad was a stalwart, as were Michael, Josh, Jamie, and I, Chief Burke and his wife Minerva, Rose Noire, the Reverend Robyn Smith of Trinity Episcopal, and my grandmother Cordelia when she was in town.

  Dad seemed to be looking through a collection of medical reference books. About a dozen of them—part of his contribution to the Inn’s bookshelves. Ms. Ellie had been dubious about the need for quite so many, and Michael had wondered if it was really such a good idea to give hypochondriac guests such a lot of fuel for their imaginations. But Dad had promised to distribute them throughout the Inn, so no one bookshelf was overwhelmed, and since they were all beautiful thick tomes with handsome bindings, Mother—the final arbiter—had approved.

  I wondered, just for a moment, if he’d envisioned a scenario that anticipated this weekend’s events: that he’d be trapped at the Inn during a snowstorm—actually in Virginia a severe hurricane was much more likely—and trying to determine the cause of death for a murder victim. Even for Dad, that seemed a reach. More likely he just thought they’d come in handy somehow, someday. And I was betting he’d remembered just where he’d put each one and hadn’t had to spend much time searching.

  “Coming up with any new theories?” I asked.

  “Alas, no.” He stuck a bookmark into the book he’d been perusing—actually, a pale beige tissue folded into bookmark shape. “But I am getting more certain that my hypothesis is correct.”

  “Death by Viagra?” I asked.

  “Nitroglycer
in and possibly Viagra,” he said. “And the champagne didn’t help.”

  “Maybe you should leave the champagne out of it,” I suggested. “Ekaterina wouldn’t much like the Inn’s Krug being implicated in a homicide.”

  “I’ll just say alcohol, then. I seem to recall that he’d also had quite a lot of wine.”

  “And whiskey,” I said. “If memory serves, he brought a whiskey glass with him to dinner, and went through a lot of wine once he’d finished that.”

  “And alcohol’s also a vasodilator up to a certain level,” Dad said. “And the fact that he collapsed just after standing up is also indicative. Postural hypotension. That’s what happens sometimes when you stand up suddenly after sitting or lying down for a long time and feel slightly lightheaded or dizzy. Could happen to a healthy person who’s a little dehydrated, for example, but with no ill effects. For someone whose system is already trying to process an overload of vasodilators … well, it wouldn’t help. I think we’ve pinned down the cause of death.”

  “Now we just need to figure out who did it.”

  He nodded. He looked down at his book, then lifted his head again, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes.

  “It’s late,” I said. “You should be asleep.”

  “So should Oliver Frogmore,” Dad said. “But someone prevented that.”

  “And Mother just went back to your cottage.” I played my ace. “She’ll be worried when she doesn’t find you there.”

  “If she calls, tell her I’m on my way.” He shut the medical books, tidied the scattered collection into two tall stacks, and headed for the door.

  “Good night,” I called. “And Merry Christmas.”

  I turned off the living room lights and tiptoed to bed by the light of my phone’s flashlight. No panels until ten, I reminded myself, but I should probably go over earlier to check on the continental breakfast and …

  Chapter 18

  Sunday, December 22

  Joy to the world, the Lord is come

  Let earth receive her King

  Let every heart prepare Him room

  And Heaven and nature sing

  And Heaven and nature sing

  And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing

  I liked Christmas carols. I really did. And “Joy to the World” was a particularly nice example of the species. But I didn’t much like being blasted out of sleep by it in the middle of the night. What time was it, anyway?

  I rolled over to peer at my alarm clock. Which wasn’t there. Then I remembered that I wasn’t at home. I was at the Inn, in the Madison Cottage. Here, the alarm clock was over on Michael’s side of the bed.

  And it read 9:00 A.M.

  And still dark?

  Well, no. Probably not still dark outside. The Inn had invested in truly top-notch blackout curtains. Not a ray of light made it past them. Odds were if I could see the light outside it would be dim and gray, assuming the storm was still raging. Still, there would be light, if not for the blackout curtains.

  But they couldn’t block the joyous strains of song and pipe organ happening outside the bedroom. Apparently in the living room. Why in the world would anyone come caroling at this hour? And how had they managed the organ? And there seemed to be such a lot of them—in fact, it sounded as if the entire New Life Baptist Choir were singing in the room next door.

  Of course. The 9:00 A.M. Baptist service by phone. Evidently someone had figured out how to connect a speaker to a satellite phone. Now that I realized what it was, I could detect a certain tinny sound to the music.

  I stumbled to the door that led into the living room and peered out. In the living room, the volume was almost deafening. And the room was full of people. Not just family. Along with Mother, Rose Noire, and the boys, I saw at least a dozen assorted ornithologists, all sitting around with cups of coffee and plates of food, basking in the waves of sound. Or maybe bracing against them.

  “The music is lovely,” I said, when the song was over, and the only thing coming over the speakers was the sound of people rustling their hymn books and coughing. “But wouldn’t it be almost as lovely a few hundred decibels lower?”

  “Sorry!” Josh leaped to one of the speakers perched on the mantel and dialed down the volume. “We forgot you were still sleeping.”

  I muttered something that I hoped sounded like “thanks” and stumbled back to bed.

  Unfortunately, now I was awake. And likely to stay that way.

  And I hadn’t seen Horace in the crowd around the speakers. That probably meant he was already up and working on the case.

  “Once more unto the breach,” I muttered as I crawled out of bed again. A shower might make me feel human enough to tackle whatever was waiting for me back at the conference. A shower and a whole lot of caffeine. I’d seen coffee cups being wielded out there in the living room, hadn’t I? And plates of food?

  Somewhat heartened, I motivated myself into the shower.

  When I emerged from the bedroom, the boys greeted me with cheers—although I quickly realized that the reason for their enthusiasm was that they’d been itching to get back to work on their tunneling project and needed to use the tub in the bathroom for snow disposal. Since the bathroom could only be reached through the bedroom, my sleeping late—by their definition—was holding up progress. The sink in the tiny half bath off the entry wouldn’t even hold a single bucket of snow, they informed me with considerable scorn as they donned their outdoor gear.

  “I’ll be keeping an eye on them,” Michael said once they had both disappeared into one of their tunnels. “Might even check out the diggings myself if things stay quiet.”

  Just then the New Life Baptist Choir launched into a hearty rendition of “Glory to the Lamb,” which was a relief, since it meant I didn’t have to talk to anyone else before I was awake enough to make sense. I waved at friends, family, and familiar faces, then grabbed a croissant and a cup of coffee before heading over to the main building to see what was happening.

  The weather hadn’t improved overnight. Snow was still falling and Sami’s thermometer registered a balmy seven degrees.

  I found Horace in the Command Post, surrounded by paper and looking, as Mother would say, like something the cat wouldn’t even bother dragging in.

  “Please tell me you didn’t stay up all night,” I said.

  “I knocked off about one,” he said. “Couldn’t sleep well, though. This is the first time I’ve ever had this much responsibility for an investigation. And it’s not going well.”

  “It’s going as well as you could expect, given the circumstances.” I pointed to the vast collection of paper in front of him. “What’s all this?”

  “Audit records from every key card reader in the hotel. I’m trying to analyze them to see if I can get any useful information about whether anyone used the missing key card.” He lifted his coffee cup, found it empty, and set it down with a sigh and looked back at papers in front of him.

  I was eager to learn what he’d found, but that could wait.

  “You need more coffee,” I said. “And have you had breakfast?”

  “I had a croissant.”

  “That’s not breakfast, it’s an appetizer,” I said. “Stay here.”

  I hurried across the lobby to the Mount Vernon Grill, which was predictably quiet at this time of the morning, given that a continental breakfast was included in Grandfather’s conference and there were only a handful of non-attendees in the hotel. Eduardo, back on duty, greeted me, and I put in an order for a full breakfast to be delivered to Horace at the Command Post.

  Then I noticed that Dr. Lindquist was in the restaurant, eating a hearty bacon-and-egg breakfast and trying not to get any grease on the book he was reading. He still puzzled me a bit, so I decided to seize the chance to talk to him. I strolled over to his table.

  “Not a fan of the continental breakfast buffet, I see.”

  “Nope.” He tore off a piece of toast and began swabbing up the yolk of his over-easy e
gg with it. “I’m a carnivore. Got to start the day with protein. And I like my breakfast hot.”

  “I’m with you,” I said. “Next time Grandfather throws a conference, I’m going to try to talk him into a full breakfast buffet.”

  Dr. Lindquist had stuffed the toast chunk in his mouth and was chewing, but he gave me a thumbs-up with the hand that wasn’t busy tearing off another chunk.

  “Mind if I ask you something?”

  “Fire away,” he said, after swallowing.

  “Is it fair to say that Dr. Frogmore’s demise won’t be all that devastating to the campaign for removing the barred owls from the Pacific Northwest?”

  Dr. Lindquist burst out laughing and then stopped himself suddenly and looked around as if worried people might be staring. Since the only other people in the restaurant were the depressed-looking Ackleys, who almost certainly hadn’t heard of Frogmore and might not even know about his death yet, he didn’t really need to worry.

  “Sorry,” Dr. Lindquist said. “Not funny that the old coot’s dead, obviously. It was the way you put it. Yes, fair to say that Frogmore’s death won’t have any ill effects for our side. Quite the contrary. Without him running around like a jackass, making deliberately inflammatory statements, people might take our side a little more seriously. In fact—” He broke off, stuck another small egg-dipped chunk of toast in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Hindsight’s twenty-twenty,” he went on, eventually. “And I admit that I’m not a Frogmore fan. Never have been. But—you know that movie they always show this time of year? It’s a Wonderful Life?”

  “Love it,” I said. “I watch it with the family every Christmas.”

  “That whole thing about seeing what the world would be like if someone had never been in it. Be interesting if you could do that with Frogmore. You ask me, the whole battle over the spotted owl’s habitat back in the eighties would have been a lot less … toxic if he hadn’t been in it. Frogmore had a positive genius for riling people up and getting them to dig in their feet on issues where it should have been possible to reach a compromise. I can think of two, maybe three examples that I witnessed myself in West Coast ornithology and conservation circles, and I’ve done my best over the years to stay away from anything he’s involved in.”