Duck the Halls(26)

As a result, I knew how to find the list of other pages this browser had recently visited. It was a moderately interesting list. Someone had searched for Lightfoot’s name, alone and in combination with the music school and with the name of a Baptist church in Detroit.

Someone was suddenly very interested in Mr. Lightfoot.

Of course, this fact would be a lot more useful if I knew who was doing the snooping. It could have been Riddick, before he left. Or any of the dozens of other people who had been coming and going from the church all day, including whoever had fled when I’d knocked over my chair.

I pulled out my phone and took a picture of the history, and then another of the page showing the wrong Lightfoot. Then I turned off the computer and shut and locked Riddick’s door.

I collected my purse and tote and locked up my office, too.

In the vestibule, I opened the door to peek into the sanctuary. Several dozen people were listening to the rehearsal. Including Mr. Vess, who did not appear to be enjoying himself. He was standing in the back, glaring at Lightfoot.

I closed the door and was about to leave when I heard a loud thud followed by some clanking noises to the left side of the vestibule, where another corridor led to the classrooms and the parish hall.

Two Shiffleys were each holding one end of a small stack of long boards and looking down at a small toolbox lying on the floor with some of its contents spilled out. Clearly the metal tools were the source of the clanking noises.

“What’s up?” I said.

They both jumped when I spoke, and then relaxed.

“We thought you were him for a minute,” one said.

“Let’s get the rest of this stuff loaded before he does come out again,” the other one said.

“Meg, could you put that toolbox on top of the boards?” the first asked.

“She’s injured,” the other said. “You can’t ask her to—”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I can do it one-handed.” I put down my stuff, dumped the tools back in the box, and set it as securely as possible on top of the boards.

“Thanks,” one of them said.

“Come on,” the other said, looking around nervously. “Let’s go before he comes out here again.”

I followed them out. They thanked me again as they threw the boards and then the kit roughly into the back of a Shiffley Construction Company truck. Then they roared off before I’d finished stowing my stuff in the car.

Had Lightfoot unnerved them so much? Or something else?

I shoved the thought aside, got into the car, and headed for home.





Chapter 12


It was snowing again, so I decided maybe it was a good thing I’d been distracted before I took another pill. The ride home promised to be a little slippery.

But I did enjoy the part of it that led through the town square of Caerphilly. Nearly every building was decorated, some with tasteful wreaths and natural evergreens, others with twinkling lights. The county’s annual holiday parade had already taken place, but many of the floats had been installed as decorations in the town square, at the foot of the county’s living Christmas tree, a specially planted Colorado blue spruce that, according to Randall, was “just a smidgen shorter than the national Christmas tree.”

I was pleased to see that the town square was still covered with snow. If the snow didn’t melt by Christmas Eve, Randall would set the plows to clearing out a space at the foot of the Christmas tree so the crowds could gather to watch the living Nativity pageant across the street at the Methodist church and then gather around the county tree for the community carol sing. But for now, the large expanse of snow, unbroken except for occasional footprints from birds or foxes, was magical.

A surprising number of people were trooping up and down the sidewalks and in and out of all the shops around the town square. Maybe Randall’s campaign to promote holiday tourism was working. I wasn’t sure why “Christmas in Caerphilly” had a Victorian theme—maybe Randall, like me, had seen A Christmas Carol too many times at an impressionable age—but I enjoyed it. Nearly every corner had a band of carolers in Victorian costume, entertaining passersby while collecting donations for local charities. The outdoor stalls, also for charity, were doing a brisk business in hot beverages—coffee, tea, chocolate, and cider mulled with spices—and hot snacks, including muffins, cookies, candied apples, and roasted chestnuts. There were long lines for the hay rides, in reproduction farm wagons pulled by teams of sleek draft horses, specially chosen because they weren’t spooked by the constant jingling of all the bells on their harnesses. And even longer lines to have pictures taken in borrowed Victorian costumes either in front of the town Christmas tree or in a genuine one-horse sleigh with a beautiful dappled gray horse harnessed to it.