Текст книги "The Nightingale Before Christmas"

Автор книги: Donna Andrews

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 1 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Also by Donna Andrews

About the Author

Copyright

Acknowledgments

Thanks, as always, to everyone at St. Martin’s/Minotaur, including (but not limited to) Matt Baldacci, Anne Brewer, Hector DeJean, Melissa Hastings, Paul Hoch, Andrew Martin, Sarah Melnyk, Talia Sherer, Mary Willems, and my editor, Pete Wolverton. And thanks again to David Rotstein, Stanley Martucci, and the art department for the glorious Christmas cover. One of these days I hope to give them a bird of paradise to work with.

More thanks to my agent, Ellen Geiger, and the staff at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency for handling the boring (to me) practical stuff so I can focus on writing.

Many thanks to the friends—writers and readers alike—who brainstorm and critique with me, give me good ideas, or help keep me sane while I’m writing: Stuart, Elke, Aidan, and Liam Andrews, Renee Brown, Erin Bush, Carla Coupe, Chris Cowan, Meriah Crawford, Ellen Crosby, Kathy Deligianis, Laura Durham, Suzanne Frisbee, John Gilstrap, Barb Goffman, Peggy Hansen, C. Ellett Logan, David Niemi, Alan Orloff, Valerie Patterson, Shelley Shearer, Art Taylor, Robin Templeton, Dina Willner, and Sandi Wilson. Thanks for all kinds of moral support and practical help to my blog sisters and brothers at the Femmes Fatales: Dana Cameron, Charlaine Harris, Dean James, Toni L.P. Kelner, Catriona McPherson, Kris Neri, Hank Phillipi Ryan, Mary Saums, Marcia Talley, and Elaine Viets. And thanks to all the TeaBuds for years of friendship.

Thanks to Sarah Byrne, who gave generously at the Bouchercon Albany charity auction to have a character named after her. I hope the Art Deco room pleases. Melissa Banks also donated generously to the Malice Domestic auction to enable her daughter Kate to appear as Sarah’s business partner. And, of course, thanks, as always, to Dina Willner for allowing me to name Dr. Blake’s frequent co-conspirator after her late mother.

Much gratitude to Regan Billingsley of Interiors and Sandra Beveridge for answering my questions about show houses and the design world. Any mistakes in the text are obviously ones I made in spite of their patient and generous assistance. Mark Stevens provided invaluable answers to my questions about Virginia’s criminal code. If this book contains any legal errors, they are obviously things I also should have asked him about.

And above all, thanks to the readers who continue to read Meg’s adventures.

Chapter 1

December 20

“Passementerie.”

Mother was standing in the evergreen-trimmed archway between the living room and the foyer, directly beneath the red-and-gold “Merry Christmas” banner, frowning at something she was holding.

Since I had no idea who or what “passementerie” was, I just sat there in the foyer of the Caerphilly Designer Show House with my pen poised over my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe, waiting for Mother to elaborate. For a few moments I heard nothing but the soothing strains of an orchestra playing “Silent Night” from a radio somewhere behind Mother.

Evidently Jessica, the reporter from the Caerphilly College student newspaper, wasn’t as patient as I was. After all, she was here to interview the dozen interior designers who were decorating rooms in the show house, not to play guessing games with them.

“What’s ‘passementerie’?” she asked.

“Elegant, elaborate edgings or trimmings”—Mother stepped closer and showed us the little bit of black-and-purple braid she held in her hand—“with braid, cord, embroidery, or beads. The right passementerie can absolutely make or break an upholstery project.”

“I see,” Jessica said, although I could tell she didn’t really. Nor was it clear to me why Mother had interrupted my interview with the reporter to display bits of upholstery trimming to us. But before answering, I glanced around and let the Christmas decorations surrounding me temper my mood. The holly and red velvet ribbons wrapping the stair rails. The gold mobile of stars and angels hanging from the ceiling light in the upper hallway. The fact that Mother had a few strands of gold tinsel snagged in her hair.

“Today’s new word, then,” I said aloud. “Passementerie. Do you want me to use it in a sentence?”

“That would be nice, dear,” Mother said. “Particularly if the sentence is something like, ‘Hello, Mother. The UPS man just delivered a package from the Braid Emporium containing the passementerie you ordered.’”

“Alas,” I said. “The UPS man only delivered two packages, and neither of them contained passementerie.” There. That was also a sentence.

“The Braid Emporium was supposed to overnight it,” Mother said. “The day before yesterday.”

I lifted my hands and eyebrows in a gesture meant to convey the utmost sympathy along with a complete refusal to take responsibility for the shortcomings of either the United Parcel Service or the Braid Emporium.

“Maybe it’s hidden under all the snow,” Jessica said. “The drifts are two feet high in some places.”

“I’ve checked the drifts,” I said. “And packages began disappearing long before the first snowstorm.”

“Perhaps one of the other decorators took it by mistake?” Mother gestured as if tucking a stray lock of her beautiful if implausible blond hair back into her chignon. I hadn’t actually seen any strands out of place, so I assumed she was trying to suggest that she had been working so hard that she was in danger of becoming disheveled.

“Always possible that someone else picked it up by mistake,” I said. “That’s why I asked everyone yesterday to please stop having stuff shipped here to the show house—to avoid such misunderstandings.” And to avoid the possibility that one of the more competitive decorators would try to sabotage the competition by diverting important packages. “But I assume your passa-whatzit had already been sent before then. I’ll ask them all.”

Mother closed her eyes and allowed one faint, long-suffering sigh to escape. The reporter didn’t sigh, but she was clearly impatient. Or maybe just hyperactive, from the manic way she was tapping her feet on the floor and drumming her fingers on her knees. And upstairs someone’s radio came on, tuned to a very different Christmas station. I liked both “Run, Run Rudolph” and “Silent Night,” but not simultaneously.

“I’ll be in my room when you find my package,” Mother said.

She sailed back through the archway, head held even higher than usual. Her head brushed the evergreens framing the doorway, making all the tiny little bells attached to the branches tinkle merrily. The bells lifted my mood, and I glanced over to see if Jessica was impressed. Most people were when they met Mother, who in her seventies still had the slender elegance and regal blond looks of someone decades younger.

Jessica didn’t look impressed. Just impatient.

“In her room?” Jessica asked. “I didn’t realize anyone lived here.”

“She doesn’t,” I said. “She’s decorating the great room. Which is decorator-speak for what we normal humans call the living room. Or maybe the family room.”

Jessica had stopped tapping, thank goodness, but now she was nervously twisting one lock of her copper-red hair around a finger.

“I thought the old guy with the beard and the Georgia accent was the decorator,” she said.

“That’s Eustace Goodwin,” I said. “He’s decorating the kitchen and the breakfast room.” And would probably have a fit if he heard himself described as “the old guy with the beard.” Eustace was a dapper if slightly plump fifty-something.

“You need a different decorator for each room?”

I managed to stop myself from responding with my own version of Mother’s long-suffering sigh. Clearly Jessica hadn’t read any of the material we’d sent over to the student paper before showing up here to do her story. I needed to start at the beginning, which meant the interview would probably take a lot more time. Not even ten o’clock, and I could already see my plan for the day going down the drain.

But instead of snapping at Jessica, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. At any other time of year, I’d have counted to ten, but this close to Christmas, all it took was the holiday scents to calm me: spruce, pine, cinnamon, and clove. And upstairs, someone had changed the “Run, Run, Rudolph” radio to the same channel Mother was on, so now I could hear “The First Noel,” in stereo. I reminded myself that I’d finished all my Christmas shopping and most of the wrapping. I could do anything.

“This is a decorator show house,” I said, opening my eyes and focusing back on Jessica.

She had pulled out a small digital camera and was craning her neck around, taking pictures of random things while she listened to me. At least I assumed she was listening.

“The house is sponsored by the Caerphilly Historical Society. In a show house, you get a different designer for each room, and they all show off their best possible work. When the show house opens—in three days, on Christmas Eve—people will pay to tour it, and the historical society gets half of the money.”

“If there’s any left after paying the decorators,” she said.

“No, the decorators don’t get paid,” I replied. “They’re doing this for free.”

“For free? All of it?” Jessica looked up at the holly-decked crystal chandelier over our heads, which would not have been out of place in a small palace, and snapped a few pictures of it.

“They do it for the exposure,” I said. “If you’re someone with a big house and enough money to hire a decorator, what better way to check out the local talent than to come to a show house, where a whole bunch of designers are demonstrating their talent?”

“That really works?” Jessica sounded dubious. “I mean, have you actually gotten any clients for your decorating business that way?”

“I’m not a decorator,” I said.

“You’re not? Then what are you doing here?”

A question I asked myself at least once a day. What was I doing here when I could be home with my family, enjoying the holiday season? Maybe even spending a little time at my anvil since Caerphilly College was on winter break and my husband Michael would be home to watch our five-year-old twins. Ever since the boys had arrived, my once-thriving blacksmithing career had taken a backseat to sippy cups, naps, and lately T-ball.

I glanced up to see that Jessica was still waiting for an answer. And frowning as if I’d been trying to pull a fast one on her by impersonating a decorator. Well, I probably could if I wanted to. I couldn’t tell a finial from a mullion, but after the last few weeks I could toss off the jargon like a real pro.

“I’m the on-site coordinator,” I said. “Here to keep everyone organized.”

“Sounds like a thankless job,” she said. “How’d they rope you into that?”

“They threatened to turn my house into the show house,” I said. “I agreed to organize it if they’d hold it somewhere else. Anywhere else.”

“Yeah, that’d be worth it. So, the people who come to see this are mostly rich people, right?”

“Or people who want to see what the pros do to help them get some ideas for their own do-it-yourself projects,” I said. I actually wanted to ask why she was taking so many pictures of the banister and the stair treads. “Some people come to get holiday inspiration—since this is a Christmas show house, after the designers finish doing their rooms, they get to decorate them for Christmas.” Should I remind them again about the holiday part of their marching orders? Some of them, like Mother, had gone overboard, but others had yet to hang a single strand of tinsel.

“And every room decorated in a different style?” she asked.

“By a different decorator,” I said. “And so probably in a different style. For example, as you can see, Ivy Vernier, the decorator in charge here in the foyer, is an expert in trompe l’oeil. Painting stuff so it looks real,” I added, seeing her blank look at the French phrase. A few weeks ago I might not have known it myself. I pointed downward. “That floor’s not really marble.”

“It’s not?” Jessica bent over, and then plopped down on the floor, the better to study it at close range. She began tapping on the floor, as if testing to see if it really was wood. “Wow. Can I talk to the painter?”

“She’s not here at the moment.” Ivy had gone home with another headache. She’d been doing that a lot lately. Was it, as she claimed, a combination of paint fumes and eyestrain from so much close work? Or was the pressure of our deadline getting to her? Or was she reacting to the stress of dealing with the other designers? Dealing with one in particular—

“She’ll be around a lot in the next two days,” I said aloud. “To finish up her work before our opening. She might even come back before you leave today, and if she doesn’t, I can give you her contact information.”

Jessica nodded, and took several pictures of the faux marble floor. And then several of the faux oriental carpet in the center of the marble.

“And on the walls she’s illustrating Christmas carols and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen,” I added. To one side of the door, the Little Match Girl already sat shivering in sparkling painted snow. The three kings processed majestically up the wall beside the stairs, bearing the richest, most bejeweled gifts I’d ever seen. But the seascape of “I Saw Three Ships A-Sailing In” was only three quarters finished, and the painting of “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” barely begun—how could Ivy possibly find time to finish?

I banished those thoughts and concentrated on the reporter, who was staring at the three kings. And reaching out to tap them.

“Careful,” I said, grabbing her arm. “Some of the paint might still be wet.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Wow. So what’s in here?”

She scrambled up and headed for the double French doors at the right side of the foyer.

“The study,” I said. “Done in a modern interpretation of the Art Deco style by Sarah Byrne from the decorating firm of Byrne, Banks, and Bailey.”

“Wow!” She was peering through the glass panes. And probably leaving a nose print. For a reporter, she hadn’t yet displayed a very impressive vocabulary. I hoped she’d find a few more varied expressions for her article. But I had to admit that, like Ivy’s painting, Sarah’s black, red-and-gold Deco-themed fantasy was worth a few wows. I coveted it, just a little. A good thing Michael and I were very happy with our Arts and Crafts style interior—decorated, naturally, by Mother.

Of course, if seeing Sarah’s room inspired Mother to do a little Art Deco experimentation, I could find a room in our oversized Victorian house for it. Michael’s office, perhaps? Or one of the guest rooms?

“This designer’s not around either?” Jessica stepped into the room and ran her finger over the dramatically curved arm of the closest of a pair of Art Deco armchairs upholstered in red velvet.

“She was here a minute ago,” I said. “Probably had to fetch something.” I was disappointed not to find Sarah around. If Jessica was going to interview some of the decorators, Sarah was one of the ones I wanted to steer her toward, and not just because I found her congenial. She was also articulate, upbeat, and funny. She usually wore a streak of some bright color in her blond hair—green, purple, red; whatever fit her mood—and dressed in odd but interesting clothes.

I was hoping Jessica would illustrate her article not only with pictures of the rooms but also a few of the more presentable designers. Mother’s cool blond elegance. Eustace’s dapper charm. Sarah’s puckish grin and funky retro style.

Yes, definitely a good idea to keep Jessica here till Sarah came back. I nodded with approval as the reporter drifted around the room, taking pictures.

“Try out the chair,” I suggested. “You’d be amazed how comfortable it is.”

She perched tentatively on the edge of the red-velvet seat and then smiled and relaxed back into it.

“Wonderful,” she said. “I would love to have a chair this comfy for studying back at my dorm room. Why do I suspect it might cost a little more than I want to pay?”

“It probably costs as much as your annual tuition,” I said. “And my husband’s on the faculty at Caerphilly College, so yes, I know how high tuition is. Those chairs are Sarah’s pride and joy. Authentic something-or-others.”

“If I ever get filthy rich, I’ll buy one,” she said, wriggling a little deeper into the chair. “But what happens to the chairs when the show is over? The owner of the house doesn’t get to keep them, surely?”

“The owner of the house is the First Bank of Caerphilly,” I said, “which has been trying to sell it ever since they foreclosed on it six years ago. They very graciously agreed to let us use it for the Christmas show house. They’re putting it up for sale as soon as the show is over, so of course they’re hoping that someone will fall in love with it and want to buy it.”

“Weird that it wouldn’t sell before,” she said. “It’s a nice house. Or did it need a lot of fixing up after being empty for six years?”

“The Shiffley Construction Company did a little fixing up, as their donation to the project.”

“That’s the company Mayor Shiffley owns?”

“Yes. Randall Shiffley’s a big supporter of the historical society.” And luckily, not here to hear me call thousands of dollars in major repairs “a little fixing up.”

“So if all the decorators—” Jessica began.

“I am going to kill that man,” came a voice from the doorway.

Chapter 2

Jessica and I looked up to see a tall ash-blond woman standing in the doorway. Martha Blaine, another designer. The one Mother and I called “the other Martha”—though not, of course, to her face, because we’d figured out she wasn’t a big Martha Stewart fan. Like Mother, she was tall enough that her head brushed the trailing evergreens, and she whacked them aside with a vicious swipe.

A loud hammering began upstairs.

“I said—” Martha began, raising her voice to be heard over the hammering.

“You’re going to kill him,” I said. “I get it. You’ll have to take a number, though. What’s he done now?”

I didn’t have to ask who she wanted to kill. There were only two male decorators in the house, and everyone loved Eustace Goodwin.

“What hasn’t he done?” She paused as if briefly overcome by the weight of Clay Spottiswood’s transgressions. I heard the whir of Jessica’s camera as she took a few pictures of Martha in the doorway.

I wondered, not for the first time, if Martha had stage experience. Not only did she carry herself with a certain dramatic flair, she also had the trick of speaking from the diaphragm so her voice could easily be heard in the last row of the theater. Or, in this case, in the farthest corners of the house. Outside the study the hammering stopped, and everything suddenly seemed very still, as if all the other designers on the premises were pausing to eavesdrop.

“What’s he done today?” I asked.

“He’s been rinsing paintbrushes and rollers in my bathroom again,” Martha said. “And bloody carelessly. Oh, and he’s dripped paint all over Violet’s room on his way to mine.”

Inhaling the evergreen scent wouldn’t help with this. I closed my eyes to count to ten. Martha, who’d had several occasions to watch me perform this temper-calming ritual over the last few weeks, waited patiently. I hadn’t even made it to five before Jessica piped up.

“Who’s this you’re going to kill?” she asked.

I frowned at Martha and shook my head to suggest that perhaps we should not be having this conversation in front of a reporter. Either she didn’t get my signals or she ignored them.

“Claiborne Spottiswood,” she said. “If he doesn’t stop messing up other people’s rooms– I don’t know why Clay was allowed to participate in the show house to begin with.”

“He’s a local decorator, and he turned in his application before the deadline, and the committee approved him,” I responded.

Martha scowled at that, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to remind her that she had waited until two weeks after the deadline to apply, and wouldn’t have gotten in, despite her impressive reputation, if the committee hadn’t been short on applicants and eager not to offend her. I thought she should be happy with what the committee had given her—two bathrooms and the laundry room. Not the most glamorous rooms in the house, but still, rooms that could be fabulous when done by a designer with her talent. In the five years since she’d moved from Richmond to set up shop here in Caerphilly, she’d quickly become one of the town’s leading decorators.

But even though she was well on her way to making her rooms fabulous, I knew she was still angry that the committee had accepted Clay. Not just because they’d given him the master suite, which she thought should have been hers. There was bad blood between the two of them. I’d figured out that much. Maybe I should find someone who could tell me why.

But not right now, with Jessica drinking in every word and occasionally snapping off a few shots with the little camera, whose whirring and clicking was starting to get on my nerves.

“You can’t let Clay keep ruining our work like this,” Martha said. “Unless you want a half-finished, paint-spattered mess on opening day.”

“Agreed,” I said. “I’ll go inspect the damage, and then I’ll talk to him.”

I strode out into the foyer and started up the stairs, walking as calmly and deliberately as I could. Martha and Jessica followed. Upstairs, to my relief, the hammering had stopped.

At the top of the stairs, to my right, I could see the open double doors to the master suite. When I was a few steps from the top, Clay Spottiswood stuck his head out.

“Where’s my package?” he asked. “I’m expecting a package.”

“Not happy with all the packages you’ve stolen from the rest of us?” Martha snapped.

“Stop blaming me for the packages,” Clay said. “I’ve lost packages just like the rest of you.”

He had—or at least claimed he had—and he’d probably spent more time complaining to me than all the rest of the designers put together.

I ignored both Martha and Clay and turned left. I could see spots of blood-red paint on the tarp covering the hall floor. And a few spots on the walls, where Ivy, the trompe l’oeil artist, was painting an elaborate mural of the Twelve Days of Christmas.

Had this, rather than paint fumes, stress, and eyestrain, caused the headache Ivy had gone home with?

I heard the whirring and clicking of Jessica’s camera. Well, okay. Document the damage.

I entered Violet’s room, which she was decorating in what Mother called “Early Disney Princess.” Her room was so over-the-top that Mother and I sometimes called her “Princess Violet,” though the name was a bit incongruous for a small and rather mousy-looking woman of around thirty. Everything in her room was in pink, white, and lavender. White-painted furniture. Wallpaper with pink and lavender floral garlands on a white background. Matching fabric on the twin bed and the half canopy over it. Pink and lavender decorations on the white-painted built-in bookshelves. A cluster of pink, white, and lavender stuffed animals and pillows on the bed.

The drops of red paint stood out like a trail of blood on the pink, white, and lavender petit-point rug.

I carefully avoided stepping on the drops, in case they were still wet, and entered the bathroom.

A good thing I knew it was only red paint. The room looked like a crime scene from a slasher movie, with not just drops but splashes, sprays, and even a few puddles of red. They stood out dramatically against the white-on-white spa look Martha had chosen for her design. The tile could probably be scrubbed clean and the walls repainted, but many of the towels and accessories would have to be replaced.

Behind me, in the Princess Room, I heard a shriek. I winced. Apparently Violet had come back and discovered the damage. I stuck my head back into the room and saw the hem of her frilly ruffled dress disappearing through the doorway to the hall. The wailing faded into the distance, and I suspected she had fled downstairs to seek comfort from Mother.

I grabbed one of the hand towels, its soft white terry cloth surface smeared with red. Then I turned, almost bumping into Martha and the reporter. Martha smiled, no doubt because she was pleased with the frown on my face. Jessica was clicking away with her camera.

I strode through the Princess Room and the hall and stopped in the double doorway of the master bedroom suite. The hammering had started up again and seemed to be coming from somewhere nearby—either the master bath or the huge walk-in closet.

“Clay!” I shouted.

Two heads popped up in the far corner of the room. Clay’s workmen, Tomás and Mateo. Neither of them spoke more than a few words of English. They looked alarmed.

“Que nada,” I said, giving them as much of a smile as I could manage. I thought que nada meant something like “it’s nothing to worry about.” They didn’t look reassured. I wished my Spanish was good enough to say, “Don’t worry, I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at your pig of a boss, and by the way, I could find you better jobs in about five minutes if you’d like to stop working for him.”

Clay didn’t answer. Tomás and Mateo went back to whatever they were doing behind the giant four-poster bed. Whirring and clicking noises at my elbow warned me that Jessica was here.

If one of the other designers had been causing a problem, I’d have postponed dealing with it until after Jessica left. But Clay had already used up his last chance and then some.

“Claiborne Spottiswood!” I yelled. “Get out here before—”

“Where’s that package I asked you for?” The hammering stopped, and Clay reappeared from the master bath, evidently attempting to deflect me with a counterattack.

“I don’t know and I don’t care.” In fact, I didn’t even believe he was missing a package. More likely he was pretending to have lost one. He’d probably overheard some of the designers speculating that he was behind the disappearances. “You’ve splashed red paint all over Ivy’s hallway, Violet’s rug, and Martha’s bathroom.”

“How do you know it’s my paint?” he said. “There are eleven other decorators in this house—”

“But only one of them is using this particular shade of red.” I held the hand towel up against the wall. The blood-red stains on it matched the walls perfectly. “All paintbrushes are supposed to be cleaned downstairs in the garage. And if you couldn’t be bothered with going downstairs, why not mess up your own bathroom?”

“Wasn’t me,” Clay said. “I’ll speak to my painters.”

“You can’t blame Tomás and Mateo,” Martha said. “I was still here last night when they left. And my bathroom was fine then. You were here, doing some touch-up painting.”

Clay scowled at her. He was probably considered tall, dark, and handsome by those who’d only seen him in a good mood, but it had been a while since I’d been able to see past his personality. And when he scowled, his thick black eyebrows and neatly trimmed goatee made him look almost diabolical.

Jessica was staring around the room in openmouthed surprise, even forgetting to use her camera.

“Martha’s right,” I said. “The bathroom was fine when I left last night, and the only ones here were her, Clay, and Eustace.”

I felt a pang of guilt—usually I was the last one to leave the house, and made sure everything was locked up and in good condition. But the closer we got to opening day, the longer the designers seemed to work, and I had a family to think of and Christmas preparations of my own. I wouldn’t have left workmen unsupervised, but I thought—silly me—that the designers could be trusted.

“Martha, Violet, and Ivy will be giving me invoices this afternoon for the time and materials required to repair the damage to their rooms,” I said aloud. “Clay, I’ll expect reimbursement from you by tomorrow morning, or you’re out of the show house.”

I heard a gasp from behind me. I glanced over to see Mother, Violet, and Eustace standing in the doorway, peering over the reporter’s shoulders. Violet was the one who had gasped. She was looking shocked, wrapping her fluffy pink embroidered cardigan around her as if to protect herself from my wrath. Mother and Eustace were beaming with delight.

“Oh, so you’re going to have a show house with no master suite?” Clay leaned against one of the garish red walls and folded his arms. He made a dramatic picture, and Jessica obligingly captured it with her camera.

“I imagine several of the other designers would be happy to pitch in and help out,” I replied.

“I’ve already got a design for the space,” Martha volunteered.

“And I’d be happy to help out,” Mother said.

“Same here,” Eustace added.

“If you think you can use my stuff—” Clay began.

“Of course, not, Claiborne,” Mother said. “I’m sure Randall Shiffley can get a crew over here anytime to haul all your materials back to your shop.”

She gave him what Clay probably thought was a sweet smile if he didn’t know Mother very well. Eustace’s expression was a lot more noncommittal, and Martha looked like a leopard about to pounce. The clicking from Jessica’s camera had started up again, so I assumed she was enjoying the scene. Of course, the photos she was getting right now weren’t very flattering. Perhaps I should start planning a way to mug her for her camera and delete any photos I didn’t want to see on the front page of the student paper.

“I’m losing money on this gig as it is,” Clay grumbled.

I decided to accept this as a capitulation.

“Then be careful how—and where—you clean your equipment from now on,” I said. “Okay, everybody. Back to work.”

“Yes, dear,” Mother said. “Oh, Claiborne—as long as I’m here, I’ll take my vase back.”