How the Finch Stole Christmas! Read online

“I thought he’d be okay here,” he said. “It’s such a small town. I thought there wouldn’t be very many temptations.”

  “There aren’t that many,” I said. “But he’s awfully good at finding the ones there are.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “A pity this isn’t a dry county. I was really hoping it might be.”

  “Unfortunately, it isn’t.” I refrained from pointing out that he could have learned as much from a few minutes of online research. “But we are doing our best to dry up whatever part of it he happens to be in at any given moment.”

  “What do you mean by that?” O’Manion looked puzzled.

  “Mayor Shiffley has sent out the word that no one’s to sell or serve him any alcohol.”

  “Can he do that?”

  “Why not? There’s no law that says they have to serve him. In fact, the Code of Virginia specifically prohibits selling alcohol to someone if you have reason to believe he’s intoxicated, which lately has been pretty much Haver’s normal state.”

  “I mean, how can you expect people to just follow this Shiffley guy’s orders? He’s just the mayor, not the King of Caerphilly.”

  “He’s a Shiffley,” I said. “And not just any Shiffley, but the de facto head of the Shiffley clan. That may not mean much out in Los Angeles, but here in Caerphilly it matters.”

  “So what happens if he figures out who’s been selling booze to Malcolm? Can he toss him in jail?”

  “No. But whoever did the selling will suddenly start finding life very, very trying.”

  O’Manion shook his head as if he wasn’t very impressed with our efforts.

  “Look, it’s a small town,” I explained. “There aren’t a lot of businesses. And a lot of them are run by Shiffleys. Especially every kind of skilled blue-collar business. Your toilet breaks and you want a plumber? We’ve got four of them—three of them are Shiffleys and the fourth is married to one. Same with electricians or carpenters. You want gas? Need your car repaired? Want your driveway plowed? Need hardware? Most of the businesses you’d turn to for any of that are run by Shiffleys, either by birth or marriage. And it’s not just the Shiffleys—most of the rest of the town is also very committed to having the play succeed. You want to eat at Muriel’s Diner? Buy fodder for your livestock at the feed store? Have your Sunday suit dry-cleaned? Then don’t help Haver get drunk.”

  “I get the picture,” he said. “And people wonder why some of us flee small towns for the freedom of the big city. So if your mayor has the whole town sewed up so tight, how come my client’s still managing to get soused?”

  “We’ve made it hard for him, but we can’t possibly stop every leak,” I said. “We haven’t yet found the bootlegger.”

  “Bootlegger?” O’Manion sounded startled. “You mean he’s drinking some kind of hillbilly moonshine? Is that even safe?”

  “We’ve started using the term ‘bootlegger’ because it’s a lot quicker to say than ‘the low-down, sneaky, underhanded son-of-a-gun who’s helping Haver get drunk,’” I explained. “Caerphilly isn’t quite that backward.” Of course, neighboring Clay County certainly was, but I was optimistic that their moonshiners would be far too suspicious to sell to outsiders. “We confiscate any liquor he gets as soon as we find it—”

  “Confiscate it? He lets you do that?”

  “He can’t very well stop us,” I said. “Hotel staff members search his room while he’s out and confiscate whatever alcohol they find, and here at the theater the crew do the same with any that turns up in his dressing room. And when he takes a shower—”

  O’Manion suddenly slumped in Michael’s guest chair, put his hands over his eyes, and started laughing. I waited until he pulled himself together.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You people really have gone above and beyond. I don’t know what I can do that you haven’t already.”

  “Get him to agree to a minder,” I said. “Someone to stay with him twenty-four hours a day from now until the end of the run. He can start drinking himself into a coma five minutes after the last curtain call on closing night for all we care. But until then, he’ll have someone with him day and night to keep him sober.”

  O’Manion looked as if he was giving it serious consideration.

  “I’m not sure even I could get him to agree to that,” he said. “And even if I did, it might not work. You have no idea how … how…”

  “How sneaky he is? How determined? How abrasive and combative? Yeah, we have a good idea. But this is the best plan we’ve come up with. Do you have any better ideas?”

  He shook his head.

  “So talk him into it. Because if you don’t, we’ll stop all our own efforts to keep him sober and let the chips fall where they may.”

  “You can’t do that.” His voice had a note of panic in it.

  “We can and will,” I said. “He’d have crashed and burned long ago if we hadn’t been doing everything we could to keep him going. But if he won’t accept a minder, it stops now.”

  He sat there looking at me for several long minutes. Did he need quite this much time to think about it? Or was he trying to play that game of making the other person break and speak first? If that was his angle, he was going to lose. I stared coolly back at him while contemplating the contents of my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe, mentally crossing off a few completed items, adding a few others, and deciding what to tackle next, an occupation that always calmed me and improved my mood. And would help me win a staring contest, if that’s what we were doing. I was in the middle of a mental inventory of what the boys’ Christmas stockings would contain when O’Manion finally spoke.

  “I’ll try,” he said at last. “But it’s up to you people to find the minder.”

  “I can take care of that.” Actually, I was sure Mother could, which for practical purposes amounted to the same thing.

  “I need some time to work myself up to this,” he said.

  “We don’t have a lot of time to spare,” I pointed out.

  “Maybe I could collect him at the end of rehearsal tonight and tackle him then. That will give me a few hours to figure out how I’m going to position it.”

  I was tempted to suggest positioning it as “do this, or find another agent.”

  “It would help if you gave him a little encouragement now,” I suggested. “Do whatever you can do to keep him on his best behavior for rehearsal.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” He didn’t look happy. “Show me the way back through this maze to his dressing room, will you?”

  I followed him out of Michael’s office, locking the door behind me, and we walked in silence back to the elevator. From the look on his face, O’Manion was bracing himself for the promised talk with his client. I was busy strategizing our next step. When Mother came back from her meeting at the church, I’d task her with finding someone to serve as minder. Some burly but good-natured cousin who owed her a favor, perhaps.

  And even if O’Manion couldn’t talk Haver into the minder, we could pretend he’d said yes and sic one on him anyway.

  The thought made me smile. O’Manion seemed to find my smile unnerving.

  When the elevator reached the lobby level, we parted without speaking. Haver was no longer crooning verse to the birds. O’Manion trudged toward his dressing room with an expression of stoic determination on his face.

  I counted the finches. Still thirty-three, so neither Grandfather nor Haver had pulled a fast one while I’d been talking to O’Manion. I took out my notebook, crossed off “talk to O’Manion,” and glanced at the other theater-related tasks. The prop shop was probably the most urgent.

  But when I turned into the hallway that would take me to the prop shop, I spotted Haver sneaking away.

  Chapter 6

  “What the Dickens is he up to?” I murmured as I stepped back behind a rolling costume rack so Haver wouldn’t see me. He scanned up and down the hallway one more time before disappearing into the back stairwell—the one that led down to the loading dock and
the parking lot beyond.

  “Not again,” I muttered. I could think of no good reason why Haver might be sneaking out of the theater less than an hour before rehearsal began. No good reason, only a lot of bad ones.

  And yes, he was sneaking. Very obviously sneaking. He might not be Olivier, but I had to admit he was a decent actor. So you’d think he’d have figured out how to sneak around without looking quite so obvious. He could amble down the hall, staring at his script and pretending to run lines under his breath. Or saunter, looking around as if interested to see what progress had been made on the set. Or hurry as if he’d left something important behind.

  But no. He’d been creeping along, almost tiptoeing, looking furtively around him every step or two. He couldn’t have been more obvious if he’d held up a sign saying “Watch me! I’m up to something!”

  I could never have held my own with him onstage, but I could definitely best him at sneaking. In spite of all his paranoid peering around, I reached the loading dock practically on his heels and yet apparently undetected.

  He spent a while lurking behind a Dumpster and peering out to see if anyone was on to him before slinking across the asphalt to where he’d parked his shiny little silver rental Honda.

  Luckily my own car was parked nearby. I made my unobtrusive way to it, watching Haver’s car out of the corner of my eye and noting which way he turned when he finally stopped scanning the street in both directions and pulled out of the parking lot. I let him have a decent lead. He was heading toward town, where I was reasonably sure the tourist traffic would both slow him down and provide me with enough cover to catch up with him unobserved.

  “I don’t have time for this,” I muttered as I went. “We should have Stanley doing it.” And perhaps by tomorrow, or even this afternoon, we would have him doing it. But I didn’t want to waste what could be the perfect opportunity to find Haver’s bootlegger.

  Still, it was annoying, so I deliberately tried to lift my own spirits by appreciating the holiday bustle around me.

  The town Christmas tree looked fabulous. I didn’t know offhand whether Randall had followed his usual tactful policy of getting one ever-so-slightly shorter than the National Christmas Tree or whether he’d decided to go for broke and aim for the record. Either way, its impressive size made it a favorite background for selfies and group photos. And the multicolored lights and ornaments were definitely more appropriate than last year’s rather severe blue-and-silver color scheme.

  The streets and sidewalks were teeming, in spite of the threatening weather forecast. Or maybe because of it—people might be trying to squeeze in a last hour or two of shopping and sightseeing before retreating to their hotels or bed-and-breakfasts, or maybe just climbing into their cars for the drive home. I lost count of the number of red, green, and gold CHRISTMAS IN CAERPHILLY shopping bags I was seeing—nearly every tourist had one, and most had half a dozen or more.

  Clearly Haver wasn’t in a holiday mood. Within a few blocks, I’d caught up enough to have only one car between us. Close enough for me to see him pounding the wheel when other drivers dawdled and shaking his fist at pedestrians who impeded his progress.

  During a moment when traffic completely ground to a halt. I pulled out my phone and texted Michael. “Haver left theater. Tailing him.”

  Then I dialed Mother.

  “Where is that man?” she said. “I’m sorry—hello, dear. What can I do for you, and do you have any idea where that wretched actor can possibly be?”

  “At the moment, two cars ahead of me on Church Street, near the town square, having a conniption fit and shouting obscenities through his rolled-down window at the poor FedEx driver who’s double parked and blocking the street to deliver a large shipment of boxes to the toy store.”

  A pause

  “Is there some special reason why he’s driving through town instead of being here to try on the new waistcoat I made for him?”

  “You made the waistcoat? I’m sure he will be sorry to miss that.” Mother’s talents were many, but actual sewing wasn’t among them.

  “The new waistcoat the costume crew made last night, under my direction.” Mother’s tone had become ever-so-slightly testy.

  “I look forward to seeing it,” I said. “I’ll do what I can to bring Haver back as soon as possible to try it on, but right now I’m tailing him to see if he’ll lead me to his bootlegger.”

  “His bootlegger? Is that how he’s been getting his … er … supply?”

  “By bootlegger I meant whoever’s sabotaging the show by selling or giving booze to Haver.”

  “I hope you catch the bootlegger then, dear. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

  “Actually, there is,” I said. “Can you find someone we can hire to shadow Haver twenty-four hours a day and do whatever it takes to keep him from drinking?”

  “I’m sure I can,” she said. “Starting immediately, I assume. Your cousin Maximilian has some experience along that line. Or if he’s not available, there’s always Elspeth’s youngest. Let me make a few calls. One way or another, I’ll have someone here tomorrow.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and signed off.

  The FedEx man finally returned to his vehicle and drove off, and Haver jerkily put his car into motion again. Only slow motion, of course, given how crowded the streets were. And the pending snow had begun sifting gently down.

  Obviously wherever he was going must be near the heart of downtown—why else would someone brave the tourist hordes this way?

  “Because he doesn’t know any better,” I muttered to myself when Haver, after saluting a party of jaywalking tourists with a flourish of impatient horn-blowing and an extended middle finger, eased away from the crowded downtown area and headed toward the opposite edge of town from the theater. I’d have taken a couple of side streets and made the trip in two minutes.

  “Of course, it makes sense that his bootlegger wouldn’t be downtown,” I told myself as we put more and more distance between us and the town square. Downtown was teeming not only with tourists but also with locals who would know about our Haverwatch. He might be savvy enough to avoid the citizens dressed for the duration in Victorian garb—the shopkeepers, the roving bands of carolers, and the ten-piece brass ensemble from the high school marching band. But we also had locals roaming the crowds dressed like tourists, to keep an eye out for pickpockets and troublemakers, not to mention locals going about their normal errands to and from nearby stores, restaurants, offices, churches, and friends’ houses.

  Away from the center of town, the decorations became a little less over the top, but still, you had to work to spot an undecorated house. I thought I’d found one on Hawthorne Street, but a closer look revealed a small but tasteful wreath on the front door, reminding me that perhaps it was time for my annual rereading of Charlotte MacLeod’s Rest You Merry, one of my favorite Christmas books of all time.

  “Where the blazes is he going?” I muttered as Haver passed the town limits and headed out into the countryside. The snow was falling in earnest now, light but steady, and a quick glance at the weather forecast on my phone confirmed that they still didn’t expect it to stop anytime soon.

  Should I turn back? I had no desire to spend the night stuck in a snowdrift, with or without Haver nearby.

  “If the going starts to get bad, I’m turning back,” I announced to no one in particular, with a baleful glance at the clouds overhead.

  But the road continued to be easy going, and at least the snow gave me some cover. It also helped that I knew this particular road reasonably well, so I could drop back and give Haver plenty of space except when he approached the two or three places where he’d be coming to a possible turnoff.

  We were nearly at the county line. I was just deciding that if he left the county, I should use that as an excuse to give up my pursuit, when Haver slowed, and then turned—not into a road, but a private lane.

  I gave him a minute or so before following.

&nb
sp; Chapter 7

  I drove down the lane very slowly—not only to avoid overtaking Haver, but also because I quickly realized that the inch or two of unplowed snow covering it camouflaged quite a lot of nasty bumps and ruts. Only a dirt lane, I suspected, and probably one that followed an old game trail as it wound gently through the woods. Then I saw that the trees ended a little way ahead.

  I slowed my car and crept ahead even more slowly until I reached the point where the lane emerged from the woods. I spotted a small, rundown farmhouse with a thin thread of smoke emerging from the chimney. To the right of the house was a disheveled barn. The dirt lane split in two as it neared the buildings, with the right fork dead-ending at the barn while the left fork petered out a little beyond the front door of the farmhouse. Haver’s silver rental Honda was parked on the left side.

  Just for a moment I contemplated how satisfying it would be to drive up to the farmhouse, march inside, and confront Haver and his bootlegger.

  Then I put the car into reverse and backed up until I was out of sight. I was about to make a three-point turn when it occurred to me that Haver might spot my tracks and realize someone had followed him partway down the lane.

  Of course, there was always the question of whether he’d even care. If I were sneaking around—and he definitely had been sneaking when he left the theater—I’d have noticed the tracks. But I’d also have been keeping a close eye on my rearview mirror. Haver hadn’t seemed particularly wary during our drive—hadn’t made any evasive maneuvers. But still.

  I carefully backed out, so the only tracks visible were straight down the center of the lane, the way he’d expect to see them. The snow wasn’t falling all that heavily, but a few more minutes of it would erase all traces of my passage. Well, not all traces—I willing to bet that almost any Shiffley in the county would have known that two cars had gone in and one had backed out—and probably even determined the make and model of both vehicles. But a city slicker like Haver probably wouldn’t be able to tell my tracks from the tracks he’d made going in.