“Or advising his employer to.” I took the paper, which contained a Web site’s URL. “Thanks.”
I stood, and Charlie followed suit.
“I hope your suspicions are unfounded,” he said, offering his hand.
“Caerphilly would be a better place if they are,” I said as we shook hands.
“Ah! Then I hope you get the sneaky degree forger dead to rights,” he said with a laugh. “I’ll ask Michael all about it when I’m back. Have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!”
He bent down and picked up something from behind his desk. A small cage containing a rather large white duck.
“A present for my nieces,” he said, seeing my startled look. “I’m told they make wonderful pets.”
I tried to figure out a tactful way to ask him if he was sure it wasn’t a stolen duck, but inspiration failed me, so I just wished him a merry Christmas and watched him hurrying down to his car with his cage in hand.
I hiked back to my own car in a thoughtful mood. Should I say something to someone at the New Life Baptist Church? I gathered from what Minerva had said that Lightfoot’s departure was already a settled thing. Would it make any difference whether or not he’d lied on his application?
No, but he didn’t know he was already on an exit path. So if he had lied and then found someone checking up on him, it could be very material to the chief’s murder investigation.
Of course, how could I tactfully ask anyone at the New Life Baptist Church if they’d failed to do an adequate job checking out their new choir director?
I decided to talk to Minerva Burke.
Who, as I recalled, was at my house now, supervising the sewing circle and helping keep an eye on Josh and Jamie.
I got into my car and headed home. I made the mistake of taking a route that led me past some of the dorms where many of the high school and college students attending the debate and basketball tournaments were now packing up to go home. Buses, vans, and cars clogged the roads, and the departing students darted everywhere—laughing, shouting good-byes and holiday greetings, taking pictures of each other, holding impromptu snow battles. Obviously they hadn’t all won their games or competitions, but I didn’t see any discouraged faces. Only happy kids, excited at the prospect of going home for the holidays.
Their enthusiasm lifted my mood, even while I was dodging them. And that was even before it occurred to me that the end of their events meant that any number of rooms at the college might now be available if any more pranks put any more churches out of commission. I should keep that in mind while working on my schedule.
Back at the house I was relieved to find that except for the sewing circle, no one was around. Before going down to the library, I seized the opportunity to fill a few bags with things Michael and I would need for our Christmas Eve dinner, and managed to get the bags into my trunk without being seen.
And then I made myself a cup of tea—the old-fashioned way, by boiling the water in a kettle and steeping loose tea in the pot instead of nuking a mug of water with a tea bag in it—and sat down in the living room with one of the baskets of Christmas cards.
For a minute or so, I had to fight the urge to be doing something useful with them. Entering any new addresses or e-mails in my address book. Or checking the cards against my list of Christmas cards we’d sent so I could fire off belated greetings to anyone we’d forgotten.
“Breathe,” I told myself. It took a minute or two, but I managed to relax and see the cards not as looming chores but as what they were supposed to be—expressions of love and friendship from people we might not be able to see this holiday season.
I found myself just looking at the pictures. The Blankes—a retired colleague of Michael’s and his wife—posing at sunset on a beach in Bali. Eileen and Steven, whose wedding had been partially responsible for Michael’s and my meeting in the first place, on the porch of their North Carolina farm with their five kids, all in matching Christmas sweaters. Dr. Smoot, Caerphilly’s former medical examiner, standing in front of Bran Castle in Transylvania, smiling so broadly that you could easily see his fake fangs. A lovely action shot of the Mountain Morris Mallet Men, a troupe of friends who were croquet-loving Morris dancers. A picture of my friend Karen and her son Timmy—could he really be seven now?—in front of Neuschwanstein Castle. Pictures of other friends with children who seemed to shoot up faster than was possible from year to year.
I decided to stick to looking at the pictures and read the printed Christmas letters and handwritten notes later. Plenty of time to figure out if Eileen and Steven and their tribe were planning to arrive the same week as the Morris men, who’d established a tradition of camping on Mother and Dad’s farm for a week or two every summer and challenging all comers to freewheeling games of Xtreme croquet. And to learn if this was the year single-mother Karen got transferred back to the States and announced her intention of once again leaving Timmy with us for an unspecified number of months until she got settled. To read the note from cousin Wesley, which would probably once again ask us to come and testify at his bail hearing. Or the Christmas letter from cousin Dolores, who made Job seem fortunate and Eeyore cheerful. For now, I decided, it was a time just to enjoy looking at the familiar faces and thinking of all those who were dear to us.