“How much longer is this nonsense going to take?” Haver’s crisp enunciation reassured me that he was, at least for the moment, reasonably sober. Though his grouchy tone warned that he was probably in the throes of a hangover and might at any minute go in search of the hair of the dog.
“A lot longer if you keep squirming,” Mother said.
“‘I will be the pattern of all patience,’” Haver proclaimed. “‘I will say nothing!’”
Probably a quote from Shakespeare, and it irked me that I didn’t know which play. But I resisted the temptation to pull out my phone and look it up. I had no time to play one-upmanship with Haver. I retreated to the far end of the hall, ducked into a storage room, and called Ekaterina Vorobyaninova, my contact at the Caerphilly Inn, where Haver was staying. Actually, Ekaterina preferred calling herself my mole. Ekaterina’s childhood had been indelibly shaped by her father’s claim to have been one of the CIA’s most important contacts in Soviet Russia. She’d started at the Inn as a maid to help pay her way through graduate school, and had now risen to assistant manager of the ritzy five-star hotel. But she still had a sentimental fondness for anything that smacked of secrecy and subterfuge, which was why I’d been able to talk her into aiding and abetting my efforts to keep Haver sober.
“I have completed my morning search of the subject’s room,” she reported. “No alcoholic beverages confiscated. Only an empty vodka bottle.”
“Damn,” I said.
“Swedish vodka.” Her normally faint accent deepened slightly, so the words came out more like “Svedish wodka,” and her tone clearly indicated by rejecting classic Stolichnaya in favor of Scandinavian swill, Haver had sunk his reputation to new depths in her eyes.
“However, we have an interesting new development,” she went on.
I braced myself. Ekaterina’s idea of an interesting development often coincided with my definition of a hideous disaster.
“He appears to have thrown the bottle away in the brown paper bag in which it was purchased,” she said. “There is a sales receipt.”
“That’s great! Maybe we can figure out where he bought it, or who bought it for him.”
“Where, certainly—the Clay County ABC store. But unfortunately, whoever bought it paid cash.”
Okay, not as helpful as it might have been. There was no love lost between Caerphilly and neighboring Clay County. Caerphilly might be small, quaint, rural, strapped for cash, and off the beaten path, but by comparison, Clay County made us seem like a teeming metropolis at the crossroads of culture and commerce. And the denizens of Clay County seemed fond of blaming their woes on us.
“Somehow I don’t think we’re going to have much luck talking whoever runs the Clay County ABC store into telling us who’s buying vodka for Haver,” I said. “And it might be well-nigh impossible for Stanley to stake out the place.”
“They know him in Clay County?”
“Even if they don’t, they all know each other. Any stranger who shows up will automatically be suspect, even before he starts asking nosy questions.”
“I still think the best tactic is to take away Haver’s rental car,” Ekaterina said. “I could arrange for a staff member to drive him to and from the theater. Or any other place you actually want to let him go.”
“It could come to that,” I said. “I’ll keep you posted. Merry Christmas to you.”
“And to you,” she said, following the words with a string of sibilant polysyllabic sounds that I deduced must be Russian for “Merry Christmas.”
As I ended the call, I glanced at my phone and saw that Stanley Denton had tried to reach me while I’d been talking to Ekaterina. I was about to call him back when I heard Haver shouting.
“What the hell is this? Are you trying to strangle me?”
Probably a good thing to see what was going on. So I hurried down the hall to the costume shop.
I found Haver striding up and down the middle of the room, half in and half out of a starched white Victorian shirt, uttering a stream of semi-coherent abuse liberally salted with unprintable words. Nadja, Mother’s chief costume acolyte, had flattened herself against one of the walls and was watching him wide-eyed. Mother was nowhere to be seen. Trust Haver to cause trouble the minute her back was turned.
“Never seen a more ridiculous piece of garbage,” Haver was snarling. He tugged at the shirt again and managed to get it over his head and off both arms, but the cuffs were still buttoned tight, so both hands were trapped in the bundle of white cloth. He pulled again, and both Nadja and I winced at the resulting ripping sound.
“Be careful, Mr. Haver.” Nadja took a timid step forward. “If you’d just let me unbutton the cuffs for you—”
“Leave me alone!” Haver flailed at her with his fabric-bound hands, and she jumped back with a small shriek, tripped over something, and fell. Fortunately she landed in a box of fabric scraps. Haver didn’t even seem to notice what he’d done.
“STOP THIS IMMEDIATELY!” I shouted.
Haver and Nadja both froze. Actually, so did I, because it was astonishing how much like Mother I sounded. And for that matter, how well I’d absorbed Michael’s lessons on using my diaphragm for greater volume.
“Mr. Haver.” I articulated each word as if it was made out of cut glass. He actually flinched slightly. “Please hold still and allow Ms. Curtis to unbutton your cuffs so you can remove your costume without causing any further damage.”
“I’m not wearing this ridiculous thing,” Haver said. But he did stand still and hold out his hands toward Nadja.
Nadja shot me an imploring glance. I learned back against one of the cutting tables and crossed my arms to indicate that I wasn’t going anywhere. Nadja crept a little closer to Haver and began fumbling with the cuffs.
“Ridiculous piece of garbage,” Haver muttered.
“If you have a complaint about your costume, take it up with Mrs. Langslow,” I said.
He didn’t meet my eye, so I suspected he heard what I left unspoken: that if he didn’t have the guts to complain to Mother, he should at least refrain from taking his temper out on poor meek little Nadja.
He settled for glowering in my general direction and making Nadja’s job as hard as possible by letting his arms go absolutely limp.
“What seems to be the problem?” I glanced up to see Mother standing in the doorway.
“Mr. Haver seems to have taken a dislike to part of his costume,” I said.
“It’s monstrously uncomfortable,” Haver said. “You need to take off the horribly scratchy collar.” From the way he rubbed his neck—to say nothing of the tormented face he made while doing so—you’d think we’d tried to fit him out with a garrote.
“I’m sorry, but we can’t simply remove the horribly scratchy collar,” Mother said. “Scrooge was a gentleman.”
“And even if he wasn’t, you don’t want to lose that high collar,” I said. “Gives a much more youthful look.”
I watched that sink in. Haver was either sixty-four or sixty-seven—sources varied—and in decent shape for his age. But he was a senior citizen in a profession that valued youth over experience. He frowned slightly, his eyes sought one of the nearby mirrors, and I could see him flexing his neck slightly.
Mother and I exchanged a glance. And then, since she was back and had everything under control, I headed for the privacy of the storage room to call Stanley.
“Michael’s still in the meeting with the college Finance people,” I told Stanley when I’d reached him. “With any luck he’ll have approval to hire you by afternoon. But for right now we’re still on hold.”
“That’s great,” he said. “But meanwhile I thought of something you can do right now. He’s driving a rental car, right?”
“Until and unless one of the chief’s deputies catches him driving under the influence, yes.”
“One of Van Shiffley’s fleet of silver Hondas?”
“What else?”
None of the major car rental companies had a branch here in Caerphilly, so anyone who wanted to rent a car locally went to the Caerphilly Car Rental, owned by one of Randall’s cousins. Due to his obsessive-compulsive disorder, Van couldn’t stand it unless all his rental stock matched, so if a late model silver Honda Accord didn’t meet your needs, you were out of luck. On the plus side, also thanks to his OCD, every one of his cars was cleaner than the average operating room and ran perfectly, so for the most part people found they could live with the silver Accords.
“Good,” Stanley said. “Have Randall call Van and get his permission for us to put a GPS tracker in Haver’s rental car.”
“It that legal?”
“Wouldn’t be legal for us to bug Haver’s own car, but Van owns the rental car, so he has a right to know where it’s going.”
“Great idea.” I tried not to kick myself for not thinking of it before.
“I’ve got a couple of devices, so once Randall convinces Van it’s a good idea, I’ll take care of the paperwork and installation.”
“I’ll call him as soon as we hang up.”
“Then I’ll talk to you later.”
But I decided to text Randall rather than calling him. If I called, the conversation might take longer. He would ask if I’d found a third camel for this year’s holiday parade or if one of the wise men would have to ride in a llama cart like last year. He’d order me to make another call to our heavy equipment distributor to remind them that the county still hadn’t received the new snowplow we’d ordered from them in July. He’d remind me that I’d be representing Caerphilly at Temple Beth El’s Hanukkah celebration later this week because he had to make an overnight trip down to Richmond to see his grandmother through her cataract surgery. He’d remind me of a thousand things that were already on my list—in some cases, things I’d already done and told him about. December wasn’t Randall’s most organized season. Texting him would save both of us time.
I fired off an admirably succinct explanation of what Stanley had suggested. Then I headed back down the hall to see how Mother and Haver were getting along.
I was slightly alarmed to find the costume shop empty and silent. Well, not entirely silent—the radio was playing a soft instrumental rendition of “As with Gladness Men of Old.” And when I stepped inside, I spotted Mother, sitting in one corner, frowning over her sketchbook.
But no sign of Haver.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“In his dressing room,” she said. “His agent barged in and insisted on dragging him off for a conference.”
“So his agent has arrived,” I said. “That’s good.”
“Good?” Mother raised one eyebrow. “Clearly you haven’t met the agent yet.”
“No, and I’m fully prepared to dislike him intensely,” I said. “After all, he’s the one who suckered the college legal department into accepting those ridiculous provisions to Haver’s contract. But the fact that he’s here is good. We’re going to put pressure on him see if he can get his client to straighten himself out.”
“And if that doesn’t work?” From her facial expression, I suspected she’d almost said “when” rather than “if.”
“Then Michael will be playing Scrooge before the run is out,” I said. “Because at the rate Haver’s going, Dad thinks he might well end up in the hospital before too long.”
In the hospital or dead had been Dad’s complete diagnosis, but I was superstitious about mentioning the latter possibility. Or maybe just sensibly wary of mentioning it out loud in a room to which Haver might be returning at any minute.
“That reminds me, Meg—you may need to help me steer your father’s conversation into suitable channels for a day or so.”
“Why? What’s he up to now?” Dad’s hobbies and obsessions were almost never suitable for polite company—you’d think Mother would have resigned herself by now.
“You know he and your cousin Horace went over to Clay County yesterday to help them identify that unfortunate soul they found in the woods.”
“I still can’t believe Clay County asked for our help on something,” I said. “We’re talking about the John Doe, the hunter who died of exposure, right?”
“Yes. Apparently the deceased gentleman was not an optimal candidate for fingerprinting,” Mother said, with her usual delicacy. “He’d been out in the woods for several days. Lying in a stream, I believe.”
Yes, fingerprinting dead bodies was exactly the sort of thing Dad was likely to bring up at the dinner table. And exactly the sort of thing Mother would want to squelch—especially if visiting relatives were present.
“And of course, even in Clay County they’ve heard what wonderful results Horace has achieved with difficult fingerprinting subjects.” Mother sounded torn. On the one hand, she was always delighted at the opportunity to boast about her family’s accomplishments. But she wasn’t entirely sure what to make of Horace’s growing reputation for being able to fingerprint corpses thought to be too far gone for identification.
“And of course they’re both so proud of themselves,” she added.
“Both of them? So Horace got some fingerprints? Is Dad taking partial credit?”
“Horace only got a couple, but that might be enough to identify the poor soul,” Mother said. “And your father was able to tell them that he hadn’t died of exposure at all—he’d suffered a head wound. Probably in the fall—the stream they found him in was at the bottom of a deep ravine.”
“I’m not sure how useful Dad’s discovery is,” I said. “The poor man’s still dead.”
“Yes, dear, but it was probably quicker than death by exposure. It might be of some comfort to the family, to know he hadn’t suffered. Still, if they do find out who he is, I really think they ought to wait until after Christmas to notify his family.”
“Given the way they usually do things in Clay County, they probably won’t get around to notifying them until after Fourth of July,” I said. “I’m surprised Dad doesn’t suspect foul play.”
“Actually, he does, of course,” Mother said. “But then he almost always does if there’s even the slightest possibility. And even the Clay County Sheriff knows that, so I’m afraid they didn’t really pay him much mind. Goodness!” She shook her head slightly, as if clearing out cobwebs. “What a gloomy subject. Let’s talk about something more cheerful. More festive!”
“Like how lucky we are that, unlike Clay County, we don’t have any unidentified bodies here in Caerphilly, spoiling the Christmas festival?”
“Like how well the play is shaping up,” Mother suggested instead. “And—oh dear; I need to be over at the church in a few minutes. I’ll leave our wayward charge to you for the time being.”
“Have fun. And don’t worry. If necessary, I’ll let Dad tell me all about his latest body, so he can get it out of his system before the relatives arrive.” Or maybe I’d just tell him not to talk about it. Leave Clay County’s problems to them.
Mother stayed long enough to survey the costume shop—her temporary domain—and nod with satisfaction. Over the past few weeks, under her supervision, the costume shop had undergone a dramatic change, from utter chaos to a degree of neatness and organization that almost amounted to décor. She’d even brought in a tiny Christmas tree and drafted some of the set crew to festoon the costume shop with fir garlands, giving rise to retaliatory decorating in many of the other backstage areas. Anyone allergic to evergreen would find no haven anywhere in the theater, and I was getting tired of ordering the sound and light crew to take down the mistletoe they kept hanging in unexpected places.
I was under no illusions that the shop would stay the same once the show was over, but it would probably take several years to sink to its previous wretched state. And as Michael and I had already discussed, we could always invite Mother to costume another show whenever we saw that the shop was beginning to get out of hand.
“Although maybe I should have her design a set sometime soon,” Michael had suggested. “I’d love to see her work her magic on the scenery and prop shops.”
As Mother left, I pulled out my phone and called Michael.
“Guess who showed up,” I said.
“Haver?”
“Even better, I think—his agent. You want me to give him the opening salvo and let you come in and bandage his wounds when you get here?”
We’d already discussed how to handle Vince O’Manion, the agent. Our strategy was for me to play bad cop to Michael’s good cop. Our only disagreement was on whether or not this was typecasting. I said yes; Michael, gallantly, insisted it was not.
“Go for it,” he said.