Six Geese A-Slaying(3)

“I mean, what’s so special about yet another Christmas parade?” he asked, when he could make himself heard again.

“Holiday parade,” I corrected. It was a reflex by now. “We’ve decided to make this year’s parade as diverse and multicultural as possible.”

“That’s nice,” he said. “Of course, in a place like this, I guess multicultural means you’ve asked both the Baptists and the Episcopalians.”

He doubled over laughing at his own joke.

“Not exactly,” I said.

Just then a large, mud-spattered truck eased to a stop near me and an elderly woman wearing a large, jewel-trimmed turban stuck her head out of the passenger side window.

“So where do the elephants go?” she asked.

“Anywhere they want to,” I said. “But see if you can convince them they’d like to wait in the sheep pasture across the street.”

“No problem,” she said, as the driver eased the truck over in the direction I’d indicated.

“Elephants?” Werzel asked, looking slightly wide-eyed.

“For the Diwali part of the parade.”

“Diwali?”

“The Hindu festival of lights,” I said. “It’s their major winter holiday. Elephants are customary, I understand. Why don’t you go watch them unload?”

Werzel nodded and stumbled after the truck. I smiled. Maybe the elephants would save us from the quaint stereotype. And if not—well, we could live with quaint.

“Nothing like elephants for human interest, is there?” Clarence said.

“For some kind of interest,” I said. “I wouldn’t necessarily call it human, with just the elephants and this Werzel fellow involved. But with any luck, he’ll have so much fun photographing the elephants that he’ll be in too good a mood to be snide.”

“I should go over and check out the pachyderms,” he said. He sounded quite matter-of-fact—but in addition to being one of the town veterinarians, Clarence was the official veterinarian for the Caerphilly Zoo, so he had treated elephants before. “That reminds me—sorry about the camel dung, but one of them was limping, and I was taking him for a walk to check it out.”

“Please don’t tell me we have an injured camel,” I said, clutching my clipboard anxiously. “The zoo’s only got the three camels. It just won’t have the right effect at all if the wise men come riding in on two camels and a ten-speed bike.”

“Oh, don’t worry—” Clarence began.

“Meg, dear,” I heard my mother say.





Chapter 2

I tensed and reminded myself that Mother wasn’t necessarily reporting a problem or making a complaint. Still, I took a deep breath as I turned to see what she wanted. She was standing behind me, dressed in an elegant cobalt blue velvet Victorian party dress, complete with a matching parasol.

“You look lovely,” I said. Which was true. Rob had inherited his aristocratic blond looks from Mother, whose hair, in her sixties, was still a rich if implausible shade of gold. As usual, I felt dowdy by comparison. Years of practice helped me refrain from patting at my own wayward brunette mane whenever I saw Mother’s sleek coif. And was it fair that well short of forty, I already had to fight to keep my figure from turning matronly, while Mother was still as slender as she had been in high school?

I could tell she was eyeing my costume with dismay. I’d dressed for warmth and comfort, and then thrown on one of the county-issue shepherd’s robes—cheap, one-size-fits-all garments that some past parade organizer had had made several decades ago so volunteers who didn’t have their own costumes could throw on a robe and blend in. Since no one had bothered to launder the robes for years—if ever—the only people who ever wore them were those like me, who didn’t remember till the last moment that they needed a costume. I suspected that once the parade was over, Mother would have a few words to say about my appearance.

Of course, I had no idea what her own stunning costume had to do with Christmas, but at this point, I didn’t much care.

“I’m glad you like the costume, dear,” Mother said, beaming a gracious smile at me and smoothing a bit of the dress’s black lace trim.

“By the way,” Clarence said, “the house looks lovely.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But it’s all Mother’s doing.”

Mother beamed widely.

“Really?” Clarence said. “It’s fantastic!”

Of course, Clarence already knew Mother had done the decorations. But he’d come to know our family well enough to guess that nothing was more guaranteed to put her in a good mood than a compliment to her decorating skills.