Duck the Halls(99)

“Hello?”

I looked up to see Rose Noire carefully coming down the narrow stairway with a huge covered bowl in her hands.

“Now I know you didn’t come for the turkey,” I said. Roast turkey was only one of many reasons I couldn’t imagine becoming a vegetarian, but Rose Noire never even seemed tempted.

“Heavens, no!” Rose Noire shuddered slightly. “But I am fond of mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. I brought a big salad.”

“How in the world did you find us?” I asked.

“That nice Mr. Gardner who lives upstairs bought half a dozen special gift baskets to take to his mother and aunt and sisters,” she said. “And when I delivered them yesterday morning, he was down here tidying up a bit, and he told me how sweet it was that his friend was borrowing his old bachelor apartment to have a quiet little Christmas dinner with his wife and twin sons. I knew it had to be you. He probably didn’t know we were related. And I wasn’t going to barge in until I realized from the hints he was dropping that your father knew and was planning to come.”

“He was dropping hints?” I winced. “We’ll have the whole family here before long.”

“I doubt if any of the others know about Mr. Gardner,” she said.

“Well, come in,” I said. “We’ll have to send Rob back upstairs for more chairs.”

We’d gotten everyone seated, Dad’s reading was keeping the boys entertained, the rolls were warming in the oven, and Michael was beginning to carve the turkey before the next knock came. This time I answered.

“Horace,” I said. “Welcome. Did you follow Dad or Rob or Rose Noire?”

“Actually, I figured from some hints your dad dropped that you guys were up to something,” Horace said. “So I put the word out over the department radio and one of the other deputies spotted all your cars here.”

“I was not dropping hints!” Dad protested.

“Did you bring anything?” Jamie asked.

“Jamie!” I said. “That’s no way to greet a guest.”

“Actually, I brought your grandfather and Caroline and Mrs. Waterston, if that’s okay,” Horace said. “Seems they all have a hankering for an old-fashioned Christmas dinner.”

The apartment seemed to get even smaller as they all trooped in.

“Lovely idea,” Michael’s mother said, handing me a bottle of red wine. “A nice quiet little immediate family event before tomorrow’s madhouse.”

“Merry Christmas!” Grandfather stepped into the room, holding a second bottle. “Are we in time for dinner?”

“Monty, you old goat!” As she entered, Caroline pretended to swat him with one of the bottles of white wine she was carrying. “You haven’t even been asked to stay yet.”

“Well, we will be, won’t we?” He frowned at me. “You are serving normal food, aren’t you? None of this fancy slop.”

“Shush!” Caroline hissed.

“Someone go bring the dogs in before they get cold,” Michael’s mother said. “And the ducks.”

“Ducks?” Michael and I spoke in unison, and not without alarm.

Dad and Rob went out and returned. Dad was leading Spike and Tinkerbell, while Rob was carrying a cage containing two ducks.

“Ducks are social animals,” Michael’s mother said. “Your grandfather thought Ducky Lucky could use a friend.”

“Don’t worry,” Grandfather said. “They’re both going back to the zoo with us tonight.”

“Now we just need hamsters,” Jamie said.

“Guinea pigs,” Josh contradicted.

“Okay,” Jamie said. “Hamsters and guinea pigs.”

“I suppose we should be glad they didn’t bring the llamas,” I muttered.

“Not yet, anyway,” Michael said.

“Have a seat, everyone, if you can find one,” I said aloud. “Rob, more chairs.”

“I’ll keep slicing,” Michael said.

“Put these on ice,” Caroline said, handing me her wine bottles. “Monty, Dahlia, give her the red wine. We should open one to let it breathe a little before dinner.”

We kept Rob busy ferrying chairs, dishes, glasses, and silverware down from Charlie’s kitchen. He even found a card table upstairs, and a tablecloth large enough to cover both it and the small parson’s table that had served Michael and me as both dining table and desk. At last we were all seated, a little tightly packed, but most of us had at least enough space to set down our glasses, if not our plates. The ducks were perched on the coffee table, where they could see the meal—I hoped they either didn’t notice we were eating turkey or weren’t sentimental about their distant cousins. We’d put food and water down for the dogs, but both preferred to curl up under the table, hoping for handouts. They probably wouldn’t be disappointed.