Randall sighed.
“The only Shiffley I know of who raises ducks is Quincy, and he wasn’t hanging around the supermarket flogging them last night, that’s for damn sure. I saw him in the hospital this morning and he hadn’t been anywhere. But I think I can figure out who did this. You want a replacement duck or shall I just get Rob his money back?”
“Either would be fine,” I said. “Do you already have a suspicion who did it, or do you just plan to raise Cain with all the family black sheep until one of them confesses? If it helps, Rob thinks the seller was one of the men doing construction at Trinity.”
“I’m going to start with my cousin’s boy Duane, who’s been known to pull stuff like this before—and yes, he was on the crew over at Trinity. Consider the original duck my gift to the Caerphilly Zoo.”
“I’ll have Grandfather send you a receipt for your generous donation,” I said. “Thanks.”
“That works. Someone will drop by with the new ready-to-roast duck tonight.”
“After the boys’ bedtime?”
“You got it.”
“Good!” I said. “And thanks.”
We both hung up.
“We’re getting a new duck?” Rob asked.
“Make sure there’s someone here to receive it tonight,” I said. “And can someone figure out what’s French for ‘Peking duck’ and explain to Michael’s mother why we all have to call it that when the boys are around.”
Dad pulled out his iPhone.
“I’m going to check on the sewing bee,” Mother said.
“Lunch in a few minutes,” Michael said.
“Canard laqué de Pékin,” Dad said, looking up from his iPhone.
“I’ll come with you,” I told Mother.
We left the men to finish putting lunch on the table and went through the foyer to the long hallway that led back to the library. Some ancestor of the previous owner had added it on as a ballroom, back when that was a fairly normal thing to have around the house, and we’d finally finished converting it to the library of our dreams. The boys already loved curling up in the big sofa for story time, and in due course I was looking forward to sitting with them at one of the long oak tables, supervising their homework and helping them with their science projects.
I opened the big double doors to find the entire room had been decorated to the hilt and was filled with red velveteen in various stages of being made into seat covers and curtains. Mother and whoever she recruited to help must have stayed up half the night working in here. Ropes of evergreen framed every one of the tall windows and built-in bookshelves and looped along next to the double-height ceiling. Red and gold tinsel festooned the circular stairway leading up to the second level of shelves, where the tinsel-wrapped railings seemed barely adequate to hold back a small jungle of pointsettias, live spruces, and Norfolk pines. Trailing wicker baskets of red Christmas cactus hung down from the railings so far that I could see some of the sewing circle members having to duck as they bustled around the room, and the baskets were decorated with ribbons holding little silver bells that set up a constant tinkling with the breeze when anyone passed beneath them. Mother and her minions had even gussied up the books—on every shelf, two or three of the volumes had been wrapped with temporary dust jackets of red, gold, green, or purple foil paper. When you added in the soft instrumental carols playing—no doubt from wireless speakers hidden behind the books—and enough Christmas potpourri to send up an almost visible haze of evergreen, clove, cinnamon, and ginger fumes—well, I’d bet anything that the decor stopped everyone in their tracks for at least the first half hour after they arrived.
But now everyone was hard at work. A dozen portable sewing machines were set up in a line on the right-hand table, with a dozen women sewing away busily on them. The center table was covered with cloth on which other women were fitting white pattern pieces and then cutting out various shapes—mostly the red velveteen, along with a sturdy black cotton for curtain linings and parts of the cushions that didn’t need to be seen. One end of the left-hand table was piled high with bolts of red and black cloth, while at the other end Minerva Burke had set up her command center.
Mother was immediately drafted to give an opinion on some fine point of upholstering—not that she ever sewed much, apart from doing the odd bit of crewelwork, because she thought it an elegant thing to be seen doing. But she was a very expert consumer of upholstery services. I strolled over to talk to Minerva.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“I’m optimistic that we’ll have everything done by Christmas Eve,” she said. “It won’t be a problem if we stay up rather late finishing, will it?”