Текст книги "The Nightingale Before Christmas"

Автор книги: Donna Andrews

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Chapter 24

I could see Martha peering out of the archway at Jessica. I tried to shake my head, ever-so-slightly, to suggest that stepping into the room was a really bad idea.

After watching Jessica for a moment or so, she glanced down at me, nodded, and withdrew back into the kitchen.

Make sure you’re far enough away so she doesn’t hear you when you call 9-1-1, I wanted to tell her. And get some kind of a weapon! But she’s dangerous, so stay back and don’t try anything—unless, of course, you see her about to shoot me or dismember me, in which case you should do something quick!

Martha was a cool customer, I reminded myself. She could handle this.

At least I hoped she could.

“Where is it?” Jessica again. “It’s got to be here. It’s got to!”

She seemed to be losing it. More of it than she’d already lost. She began flailing out wildly with the ax, shrieking inarticulately. She shattered the mirror above the fireplace. Knocked the legs out from under a delicate secretary desk. Chopped a couple of nasty holes in the carpet. Bounced around between the sofas and armchairs, shredding up the brocade cushions. I flinched when she came near me, but she sailed past and began trying to dismember the Christmas tree. Between her shrieks, the hatchet blows, and the smashing sounds as hundreds of ornaments fell to the floor and shattered to bits I could barely hear myself think.

Martha, bless her heart, began stealing into the room under cover of the tree surgery. She was heading for the table with the gun.

She had it.

I breathed a sigh of relief and gave my poor bruised fingers a rest—I’d made progress on unraveling the passementerie, but not enough. Not a problem, though—Martha could hold Jessica at bay until the police arrived. Or, if Jessica was so hysterical that she tried to attack her in spite of the gun—well, I suspected Martha had enough nerve to use it.

She lifted the gun in her right hand and steadied it with her left. She’d either used a gun before or had paid attention when watching TV and movie cops use them. Go Martha!

Then she fired, twice.

Jessica collapsed on the floor and fell silent.

I was stunned into silence myself for a few moments.

Martha walked over to take a closer look at Jessica.

“Did you have to shoot her?” I asked.

“She’s not dead,” Martha said.

“That’s a relief,” I said. “Can you come over and untie me?”

“Which means I’ll just have to shoot her again,” Martha said. “After bashing your head in with her ax, of course. It’ll look as if you shot her just as she was hitting you with the ax. I’ll let the chief of police decide who he wants to blame Clay’s murder on.”

I started working again on unraveling the passementerie.

“You killed Clay,” I said. “Why?”

Not that I didn’t have a pretty good idea why, between their professional rivalry and their shattered romantic relationship. But it seemed a good idea to keep her talking.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, you know why,” she snapped. “You’ve heard how he took me in. Let me set him up in the design business and then turned on me and took all my clients. I lost my business and had to go to work as a furniture store design consultant. Took me two years to save enough to start up again here in Caerphilly—it would have taken a lot longer to get started again in Richmond. And a year later, he moves here and thinks he can do it all again. No way. I told him—back off, leave my clients alone. But did he listen?”

“So it was all professional?” I asked. “Or am I imagining that the two of you also had a relationship?”

“The bastard,” she muttered. “Turns out I imagined the relationship. He was just using me.”

“So you killed him,” I said.

“That wasn’t actually the plan,” she said. “I was just going to frame him.”

“For what?”

“Possession of a firearm,” she said. “In Virginia, a convicted felon who’s caught with a gun can go to prison. I knew that from serving on a jury once. And when we were all trying to rescue Sarah’s furniture, I dragged out this little end table, and suddenly the drawer pops open and a gun falls out. I kicked it under the sofa, and then picked it up later, with my cleaning gloves on. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but I figured it would be good for something. And then I came up with the idea of leaving it in Clay’s room and calling the cops to report it.”

“So you took Violet out and got her plastered, so she’d tell everyone how sweet you were to take away her keys and let her stay in your guest room,” I said.

“Yeah.” She seemed to be enjoying the chance to brag about her cleverness. “I slipped her a Mickey to make sure she stayed out. I’m only six blocks from here, so I figured it would be a cinch to slip over here, plant the gun, and get back in before she noticed I was gone.”

“All that trouble for an alibi for planting the gun?” I asked.

“I figured he’d blame me for planting it,” she said. “He knew I had it in for him. So I wanted to make sure I could prove I hadn’t done it. Lucky for me, isn’t it? And bad luck for Clay, barging in when he did.”

“And you struggled, and the gun went off,” I said. “I’m sure you were devastated, but you were there to play a prank on him, not kill him. It was self-defense.” I tried to put a sympathetic, concerned expression on my face, as if I really did believe she was innocent. “Completely understandable. Anyone who knew Clay would call it justifiable homicide.”

“Nice try,” she said. “But I’m not buying it. Wish your little nut job had wrecked a few other rooms. Wonder if I have the time to—no, probably better not.”

“You won’t get away with it,” I said.

“I can sure try,” she said. “And you know what? I may not have time to wreck everyone else’s rooms, but I can hack Clay’s stupid paintings to shreds.”

“No,” I said. The thought of her slashing those three paintings was curiously disturbing.

“It’s going to be tough on your mother,” she said. “When she comes over and sees you lying dead in the ruins of her room. I feel almost sorry for her, even though I know she had a hand in trying to cut me out of the house.”

She didn’t sound sorry. And she was dead wrong. Mother had much preferred her to Clay. It was only thanks to Mother’s intervention that she’d gotten the rooms she had. But she’d never believe it.

“Nothing I can do about that,” Martha went on, as she headed for the archway that led to the hall. She stopped, looked back, and smiled at the devastation around us. “Before you know it—”

Something large, shiny, and metallic emerged from the shadows of the hallway and hit the top of her head. She stiffened and then slumped to the floor.

Ivy was standing in the doorway, holding the heavy bronze umbrella stand. She set the umbrella stand down, then bent over to take both the ax and the gun from Martha. Then she walked over, sat down on the floor beside me, and started untying my passementerie bonds.

“Thank God you stopped her,” I said. “But where did you come from? I had no idea you were even here!”

“No one ever does,” she said, with a faint smile, as she pulled away the last strands of passementerie.

Chapter 25

Ivy had quite sensibly called 9-1-1 before tackling Martha. By the time the police arrived, I had checked both Jessica and Martha and relayed their condition over the phone to Debbie Ann. Jessica was unconscious but breathing normally and I didn’t find much blood. Maybe her wound was only minor, and it had hit her hard because of her agitated or even drugged state. A problem for the medics, when they arrived. Martha’s head wasn’t bleeding, but then, head wounds don’t always, and she could easily have a concussion or even a subdural hematoma. I hoped the ambulance arrived soon. I wouldn’t mourn too much if Martha died, but I suspected that killing someone, even to save a life, would hit Ivy hard. Then again, maybe I was underestimating Ivy. If she really had been the timid soul we all thought she was, I’d be dead by now.

Ivy had found a roll of duct tape and trussed up their ankles. We decided maybe binding their wrists was overkill, since both of them were still unconscious, and it might interfere with whatever the EMTs would want to do. Though just to be safe, we also taped their ankles to heavy things—Jessica’s to what remained of the Christmas tree and Martha’s to the more-intact of the two sofas.

Martha came around enough to start yelling just as the first police officer, Aida Butler, strode in the door, gun in hand.

“You bitch!” Martha roared, clapping her hands to her head.

“Not a really smart thing to say to a lady armed with forty-five-caliber semiautomatic weapon,” Aida said.

“I think she means me,” Ivy said, with a shy smile.

“She tried to kill me!” Martha roared, and she followed it up with a string of expletives.

“Please be quiet, ma’am,” Aida said.

Martha continued her X-rated tirade.

“Ma’am,” Aida said, stepping into Martha’s field of vision. “Please be quiet, or I will be forced to arrest you for obstructing a police officer—”

Instead of shutting up, Martha increased her volume, and then she grabbed the umbrella stand Ivy had used to hit her and threw it at Aida. I winced, and mentally kicked myself for not moving it out of Martha’s reach. But who knew she’d regain consciousness so quickly? The umbrella stand hit Aida’s shin and then dropped down on her toe.

“Aiiieee!” Aida screamed. And then “Rainbows! Rainbows! Rainbows!”

For some reason, this seemed to unnerve Martha, and she finally shut up.

Just in time.

“What’s going on here?”

Chief Burke had arrived.

Things happened fast. More officers arrived—almost every officer on the force—and the paramedics along with them. Chief Burke hustled Ivy into the dining room and me into Sarah’s study, so I got to watch through the French doors while first Jessica and then Martha were hauled off to the ambulance.

Should I call Michael? I didn’t want to wake him if he’d dropped off to sleep. Or worry him by not calling if he was still waiting up. I pulled out my phone and texted him. “I’m OK. Coming home as soon as I can.”

I lay back in the red-velvet armchair and worked on the deep breathing Rose Noire was always telling me I should do more of whenever I felt stressed. I really wanted to be somewhere else—anywhere else, thinking about anything other than crazy Jessica and murderous Martha. I’d have found it very comforting to pull out my notebook and start making lists, but I’d long ago figured out that most people looked at me oddly if they saw me busily making lists in the middle of a stressful situation—like almost being murdered. But still, it would be some comfort to work on a mental list of tasks I’d need to do to get the show house moving. Like calling to postpone the photographer. And finding out from the chief when we could have the house back. And coming up with a plan for Mother’s room.

Mother’s room.

I watched as Horace came in. He stood few minutes in the archway to the living room, obviously in shock, before plunging into the room to start his forensic work.

Part of me wanted to start dealing with Mother’s room, and part of me just wanted to go home, check on the boys, curl up in bed beside Michael, and sleep for the next twelve hours.

I was not looking forward to being interviewed by the chief.

“Don’t worry.” It was Aida, coming through the front door. “She’s fine.”

“I want to see for myself.” Michael followed Aida in.

I ran out into the hall and threw myself at him.

“Are you okay?” he whispered.

“I’m fine,” I said. “And I am definitely not doing the show house next year. If there even is a show house after this. Where are the boys?”

“Home with Mom,” he said. “They’ll be fine and—oh, my God. Your mother’s room. It’s a disaster.”

“We need to find Dad, and make sure he’s here when she sees it,” I said.

Michael nodded.

The chief stepped into the room.

“Meg, I know you’re pretty tired,” he said. “But if I could just ask you a few questions…”

“I’ll tell you all about it,” I said.

It took a while, of course. And the whole while I was talking to him I could see people coming and going. Aida. Sammy. All the other town law enforcement officers. Randall. All of them, when they saw the great room for the first time, stopped dead in their tracks and stared for a few moments before shaking their heads.

“I think that should do it,” the chief said finally, standing up.

Seeing that we were finishing, Randall Shiffley opened one French door and stepped in.

“Good news from the hospital,” he said. “Both nut jobs will live to stand trial.”

“That’s good,” the chief said.

“What now?” I asked.

“Now?” The chief looked startled. “Go home and get some sleep.”

“I need to start doing something about that room as soon as you release it,” I said.

“Meg,” Michael began.

“I can’t let Mother see it like that,” I said. “Chief, promise me you won’t let Mother in until we clean it up a little bit.”

“As soon as the chief releases it, I’ll be here with my crew,” Randall said. “I’ll bring in as many cousins as it takes, and she won’t see it like this.”

“I’ll send a deputy over to your parents’ at first light, to break the news to her,” the chief said. “And I won’t let your mother into the crime scene until you’re back to help her cope. But for now, you need to get some rest.”

“I won’t sleep a wink,” I muttered to Michael as we walked out to the Twinmobile.

“Just close your eyes and rest then,” he said.

I slept so soundly he almost couldn’t wake me up when we got home.

And woke up well before dawn, already worrying.

Chapter 26

December 23

“It’s not even seven,” Michael mumbled as he watched me pull on my clothes.

“I have to get over there before Mother sees her room.” I raced downstairs and into the kitchen to grab something to eat.

Michael followed me.

“And I need to figure out how to fix it,” I said over my shoulder as I stuck a cup of water with a tea bag in it into the microwave.

“You’ve got Randall and his workmen,” he said. “They can fix most of the damage.”

“They can fix the walls and the woodwork.” I rummaged through the fridge for a yogurt. “But I’m pretty sure they can’t sew or do upholstery.”

“You go over to the show house and help your mother through the shock of seeing the room,” he said. “I think I can find you a few people to do a bit of sewing. Leave it to me.”

“Thanks,” I said. And then the microwave dinged, so I snagged my tea and the yogurt and dashed out the door.

There weren’t quite as many police vehicles at the house when I got there. Only two patrol cars and the chief’s blue sedan. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? I also spotted three trucks from the Shiffley Construction Company parked in front and a Dumpster in the driveway. A dozen tall, lanky Shiffleys in boots, jeans, and heavy jackets leaned against the trucks with carryout coffee cups in their hands or stood in twos and threes on the sidewalk. Two shorter forms, heavily bundled, were barely recognizable as Tomás and Mateo. Eustace stood by them, blowing on his hands.

Randall ambled over to my car.

“Good,” he said. “I was just debating whether to call you. Chief’s going to release the house any minute now. And if it’s okay with you, we’ll start hauling off the trash and repairing the damage as soon as he does. Of course, all we can do is get the room back to where it was when your Mother started it. Decorating’s not something we can do.”

“We’re working on some plans,” I said. At least Michael was.

The front door opened. Chief Burke stepped out.

“All yours,” he said.

Things started happening. Tomás and Mateo and the Shiffleys swarmed into the house. I followed, a little more slowly.

“Okay, boys,” Randall said. “First thing we do is haul all this trash out. Meg, you want to take charge of rescuing stuff that can be reused?”

They were just getting started when one of the Shiffleys came running in.

“Meg? Your parents are here.”

Mother followed close on his heels. She burst into the hallway, and when she saw me, she rushed over and gave me a fierce hug.

“I’m okay,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “And as long as you’re okay, everything else will be fine.”

“Good,” I said. “Because I’m afraid we’re going to have a bit of work to do in your room.”

“My room?” She turned and took a few steps toward the archway. We all froze. She didn’t react for several long moments, and then she burst into tears.

“My room,” she keened. “My beautiful room.”

I must have heard every designer in the show house say the same thing at some time over the last few days, but never with so much cause.

Jessica had knocked over the giant Christmas tree. At least three quarters of the delicate glass ornaments had been broken, either in the fall or when she hacked the tree into dozens of pieces. Giant gouges marred the walls, where there were still walls—in some places Jessica had ripped away great stretches of wallboard. She had knocked over and broken lamps, end tables, and vases. She’d attacked chairs and sofas so fiercely that every one of them was missing at least one leg and cotton stuffing spilled out through gaping slashes in the upholstery. She’d smashed the mirror over the fireplace and several panes of glass. She’d even hacked great holes and tears in the beautiful oriental carpet.

“It’s ruined,” Mother said.

“We can fix it,” I said.

“Not by tomorrow morning,” Mother said. “It’s taken me weeks.”

“Darlin’ you need to sit down.” Eustace gently took Mother’s arm and began steering her into the kitchen. “You come in here and have a cup of tea. Your family’s going to fix your room up for you.”

He was looking straight at me.

Why me? Didn’t getting tied up and almost murdered entitle me to a little time off?

“It’s beyond fixing,” Mother moaned.

“No it’s not,” I said.

Mother stopped in the doorway and looked back at me. And suddenly I had the answer to “why me?” Because I might not be the only person who could get Mother’s room fixed, but I was the only person she’d trust to do it. And also because every year I agonized over what to get her for Christmas, and always watched her face when she unwrapped her present, worrying that she was merely a consummate actress when she beamed and told me “I love it.” If I could pull this off, I wouldn’t have the slightest doubt when she proclaimed this “the best Christmas ever.”

“We’ll fix it,” I said. “The best we can. We can’t put it back the way it was. But we’ll make it beautiful.”

She smiled wanly and followed Eustace into the kitchen. I heard him fussing over her like a mother hen with a wayward chick.

“So, what do we do?” Dad asked.

He was also looking at me.

They all were.

Thank goodness Michael strode in just then. Rose Noire, Sarah, and Vermillion were on his heels.

“Okay, folks,” I said. “We’ve got till ten a.m. tomorrow.”

“And a lot of help is on the way,” Michael added.

“Okay,” I said. “Here goes. Unbroken stuff into the study—if that’s okay with you, Sarah? There can’t be that much.”

She nodded.

“Broken stuff that might be repairable to the garage. All the other trash goes into the Dumpster. Someone find a box and collect the Christmas ornaments that aren’t broken. More instructions later, but for now, let’s clean up this room. Dad, hang on—I have a special mission for you.”

“What is it?” He looked a little more cheerful, as I suspected he would at the thought of a special mission.

“There’s a photographer coming at ten. Keep your eyes peeled; he might show up early. Your mission is to keep him from coming in. Send him back to Richmond if possible. Lie to him and tell him the show house has been relocated to the zoo if you like. Just keep him away from here until I tell you it’s okay.”

“You’ve got it!”

Sarah and Vermillion approached me.

“My room’s in good shape,” Sarah said. “I can help.”

“Me, too,” Vermillion said.

“Thanks,” I said. “It would be nice if someone with some kind of decorating skill was involved in this.”

The three of us retired to the kitchen to confer with Mother and Eustace while an ever-increasing crew of worker bees dismantled the damaged décor in the great room.

“We don’t have the time to buy new furniture and have it delivered,” Mother said. “Maybe we should do a theme room. Christmas in the bowling alley.”

“Forget new furniture,” I said. “What furniture can you think of in your house or ours that would work?”

“Now that’s an idea,” she said. “The chairs in your father’s study might do in a pinch.”

“What about those ratty sofas in the Trinity parish hall?” I said. “The ones you said have good bones and should be recovered? Let’s call Robyn and see if we can borrow them and do it.”

“Remember that pair of end tables I outbid you for at that estate sale last year?” Eustace said. “I could be persuaded to lend them.”

I left them to it and went off to see how the cleanup was coming. And how Michael was coming on his phone calls.

By nine-thirty, the room was an empty shell. Tomás and Mateo were starting to replace the broken windowpanes. One crew of Shiffleys was going around the room installing new drywall while another crew followed behind, painting it in “Red Obsession.”

“Meg, that photographer’s here,” Rose Noire stuck her head in the kitchen to say. “But don’t worry—your dad seems to be coping.”

“Coping how?” I asked.

“Well, last time I looked, he was taking the guy’s blood pressure, and looking worried.”

I strolled out to check on things.

“Oh, good,” Dad said, seeing me. “Meg, this is Mr. Timmerman from the Richmond Times-Dispatch. I know you’re expecting him to take some pictures, but I’m taking him down to the hospital. Don’t worry,” he said, turning back to Mr. Timmerman. “The heartburn could just be heartburn, and the shoulder pain could just be from hauling that heavy camera bag about. But even the possibility of a cardiac problem should be taken seriously. Let’s just make sure, shall we? My car’s over there. Just leave your equipment here; I’ll bring you back when we’re finished.”

“Thanks,” Timmerman said. He trudged back to his car and popped the trunk to put a suitcase-sized equipment bag in it.

“Dad,” I said in an undertone. “I don’t want to you commit malpractice for the show house.”

“It’s not for the show house, it’s for your mother,” he said. “And I’m not making up his symptoms. I was going to try that ‘relocating to the zoo’ idea, but then I saw him popping antiacids and rubbing his shoulder—that’s how a cardiac problem presents sometimes. And his blood pressure’s through the roof. I’d be astonished if a full cardiac workup doesn’t show some symptoms, and I can keep him under observation as long as you need me to.”

With that, he scampered off to his car, where Mr. Timmerman was waiting, looking a bit impatient.

I returned to the house.

As Dad drove off, Randall pulled up in a truck.

“Where do you want me to put the furniture?” he asked.

“In the garage for now.”

Back in the kitchen, Mother, Sarah, Vermillion, and Eustace were nodding at each other over a large sheet of paper.

“Dear heart,” Eustace said. “It won’t be the room you wanted. But it’s a room you can be proud of.”

“Come here for a minute.” I led her out to the garage, where Randall was unloading the furniture we’d arranged to borrow.

“They don’t match,” Mother said. “Each other or the room.”

“We’ll make slipcovers for them,” I said.

“We?” Mother repeated. I could understand why—her sewing skills were even more rudimentary than mine. But before I could explain, the first of our worker bees came in through the garage door: Mrs. Tran, who along with Michael’s mother ran a dress shop in my hometown of Yorktown, and three of her best seamstresses. They were followed by two graduate drama students I recognized as longtime costume shop volunteers.

“I think it’s either the slipcovers or the curtains,” one of the students said. “I’m not sure we’ll have time for both.”

“The heck we won’t.” Minerva Burke had arrived at the head of a contingent of a dozen ladies from the New Life Baptist Church Ladies’ Auxiliary.

“Bring it on,” said the Reverend Robyn, as she led in nearly the entire membership of Grace Episcopal’s Guild of St. Clotilda, and even a couple of the ladies from the women’s shelter.

“Our room’s ready,” one of the Quilt Ladies said, sticking her head into the study. “We can help. We’ve brought in extra sewing machines. What needs doing?”

Michael had also recruited some drama students with set-building experience. They got to work building canvas frames to replace the ruined artwork—frames that would cover a large portion of the walls and disguise any shortcomings in the hasty paint job. A lot of the volunteers had brought their children or grandchildren, so we set the kids and anyone who wasn’t sewing to work painting holiday murals on the canvas. The Quilt Ladies, bless their hearts, borrowed several tarps from Randall, battened down or covered up everything in their room, and turned it into a children’s art studio. Even Violet and Linda postponed the last minute primping they’d been planning to do in their rooms to pitch in.

And not long after we started, someone struck up the first verse of “Deck the Halls,” and before long everyone, all through the house, was singing. Quite possibly the best caroling I’d heard outside the New Life Baptist Choir’s annual concerts.

Someone brought in a bunch of cots and sleeping bags, and we set up Clay’s room as a nap room for any kids—or grown-ups—who needed to take a break. Some of the Baptist women brought in supplies, took over Eustace’s kitchen, and began turning out delectable soups, sandwiches, casseroles, cookies, and pies.

“Aren’t you afraid they’ll mess up your kitchen?” I asked Eustace at one point.

“Darlin’, have you ever seen a church lady who didn’t feel compelled to leave someone else’s kitchen even cleaner than she found it?” Eustace said. “Those ladies just might be my secret weapon to winning the prize.”

As the day wore on, more and more friends dropped by to help, bringing their kids, armloads of craft supplies, and boxes of decorations for the new tree Randall’s cousins had gone off to find. Before long, Rose Noire showed up with a trunkload of dried flowers and other organic craft supplies, so when we had finished decorating all the canvas panels, we set the painting crew to work making homemade Christmas potpourri ornaments and stringing old-fashioned popcorn garlands. At first I was worried that we might be overboard with the ornaments, but when two of Randall’s cousins showed up with the new tree, we began to worry about filling it all.

“More garlands!” I shouted. “More tinsel! More snow! More stars! More holly! More angels! More wise men!”

The children fell to work.

In the middle of all this, Dad called to update me on the photographer.

“The good news is that he wasn’t actually having a heart attack,” Dad said. “The bad news is that he’s a heart attack waiting to happen. He’s a lucky man. I’m in the process of turning him over to a cardiologist here at VCU—”

“VCU?” I echoed. “You’re down in Richmond?”

“Yes, and I should be heading back in an hour or two.”

“Does the Times-Dispatch know he’s not up here taking pictures?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” Dad said. “But I don’t know if they’re going to send anyone to take his place.”

Probably just as well, I decided. We still had a lot to do.

The only halfway Christmassy fabric we’d found for making the slipcovers and curtains was a dull burgundy. It went nicely with the “Red Obsession” walls but it wasn’t exactly an exciting choice. When we set the first slipcovered chair in the middle of the room, everyone stood back and studied the effect.

“Color’s perfect with the walls,” Sarah said.

“Nice slipcovering job,” Randall said.

“But it needs a little something,” Mother, Eustace, and Sarah said in unison.

“Yes, it does.” Ivy appeared out of nowhere, as usual. “A little decoration. May I?”

Mother nodded. Ivy was holding several brushes and pots of paint. She quickly painted a little running decoration like a stylized vine along the back of the chair in gold paint with touches of green and black. It wasn’t as intricately detailed as her own murals, but it was still magical.

“I like it,” Mother said.

So as each table or chair emerged from the impromptu upholstery workshop, Ivy added in the vine. Tomás watched her for a few minutes, then said a few words to Mateo. The two of them grabbed pots of paint and tiny brushes and began working on the walls, adding in the same stylized vine here and there to the red-painted walls.

“Hiring those two just might turn out one of my smartest decisions ever,” Randall said in a tone of great satisfaction. “And this place is shaping up.”

“I thought we’d be working all night,” I said. “But with all the help we’ve got, I think we’re pretty close to done.”

The curtains were finished and hung, the slipcovers completed and decorated by Ivy, Tomás, and Mateo. In fact, we’d finished every bit of sewing we could think of, so Mother hugged Mrs. Tran and each of her seamstresses, and they headed home to Yorktown. We ran out of ornament-making supplies about the time we ran out of room on the tree, so we thanked all the children, and their parents took them home. The students had one last hearty meal and headed back for the dorms, armed with generous doggy bags. The Baptist and Episcopal ladies stayed long enough to make sure every room in which our volunteers had worked was spotless. Most of Randall’s workmen left. The Quilt Ladies thanked Randall for the tarps and began restoring their room to order.

Chief Burke stopped by to pick up his wife, and while Minerva was saying her good-byes to the rest of the Baptist and Episcopal ladies, he filled me in on what had been happening down at the police station.

“We’re holding Martha Blaine for murdering Clay and attempting to murder you,” he said.

“What about her so-called alibi?” I asked.

“Miss Violet is no longer quite so certain that Ms. Blaine was with her every minute of that night,” he said. “And we’ll be testing for the drug used to knock her out. Horace tells me that since it’s been less than seventy-two hours, there’s a chance the drug could still be in her system. Of course, disproving her alibi may not be quite as critical as it might have been. Ms. Blaine has been quite communicative since her arrest.”