"Do something, dammit!" I called to Raz, managing to point the flashlight at him as if he could pull out a police manual and read the directions for a rescue mission. As if he could read.

"I tol' ya not to rile her. When she gets in a mood like this, the last thing ya want to do is rile her. I reckon she'll come to her senses here in a minute and let you be. She sh.o.r.e ain't been her sweet self lately."

I scrambled on top of a wobbly wardrobe, again b.u.mping my head, and peered down like a minor griffin on the side of a cathedral. It was not a dignified position, particularly since I'd misstepped as mentioned earlier and was now conveying miasmatic matter on the bottom of my shoe. However, it seemed to be a relatively safe position until Marjorie gave up her quest for fresh, juicy flesh. Raz seemed content to wait on the steps, bleating about his sow's delicate sensibilities.

There were other topics he and I needed to discuss.

Earl had fallen asleep on the sofa by the time Eilene was done with the dishes. She stood in the doorway, looking at him but wondering what to do about Dahlia and Kevin. It was awful to think they might not be celebrating their first Christmas as newlyweds. Dahlia'd been acting crazier and crazier every day, mumbling to herself while she drove the Matt-Mobile, lashing out at folks in the supermarket--and she'd been driven that way by the disgraceful behavior of one Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon. He wasn't the brightest thing to come down the pike, but he'd been raised to be honest and forthright, not to lapse into the sinful ways of someone like Begonietta Buchanon, who'd wept at the gravesides of five husbands and three gentleman callers (two of 'em funeral directors) before anyone tactfully inquired into her recipe for strawberry-rhubarb compote.

There was only one thing to do, Eilene decided. She put on her coat, took Earl's keys, and went out to his truck. She was going to their house. This whole business was going to be brought out into the open and resolved before the night was done. There might be tears. There might be angry words of accusation. There might even be pots and pans flying and dishes shattering. Half the town might hear the fracas from their porches, but Kevin and Dahlia would iron out their problems by dawn.

The Matt-Mobile was parked beside the house, but no cars were parked in the driveway. Eilene sat in the cab of the truck for a moment, her resolve weakening as she contemplated the dark house. She probably should have left a note for Earl in case he woke up.

It was too late for regrets. She would go inside and fix a pot of coffee and be sitting in the middle of the sofa when the kids came home. If the door was unlocked, of course, because it was one thing to mend a marriage and another altogether to break a window. That was an act of desperation.

The latter was not necessary. Eilene turned on the overhead light, started coffee in the kitchen, and returned to the living room just as Elvis pointed his short arm at the numeral eight on the clock. Dahlia wasn't much of a housekeeper, she thought as she took dirty dishes into the kitchen, then gathered up some of Kevin's shirts and shorts and went into the bedroom to put them in the hamper.

It took her a few attempts to find the light switch. As soon as the light went on, the clothes fell out of her arms and she staggered back through the doorway, unable to keep from gaping at the bed. She b.u.mped into the edge of the sofa and sat down hard enough to rattle her teeth. How could she have doubted Dahlia?

"This," I said, "is Raz Buchanon. Some of you saw him this morning when he threatened to fire his shotgun at those of us who were trespa.s.sing on his property."

We were in the high school gym rather than a Bethlehem barn, but I had a reasonable cast a.s.sembled. The role of the shepherds had gone to the boys in the band. If you've seen a pageant, you know they don't do anything more challenging than sit with the sheep, and they never have any lines. The angel was to be played by Katie. The three kings consisted of Harve, Les, and Tinker, who'd traveled afar from Farberville.

Two of the coveted leading roles were going to Lillian and Ripley. If they did not exactly regard themselves as Matt's parents, they behaved as if they were his keepers, and that was close enough for me. Which brought us right to the babe in the manger, little Moses Germander, now all grown up and blessed with a new name, pretty white clothes, and an award for best original song of the year. Now he awaited further acclaim when his alb.u.m of original Christmas songs. .h.i.t the market. Who would have dreamed that a boy from MagG.o.dy could grow up to be a renowned country songwriter? My, my.

Raz Buchanon had no place whatsoever in the script. None. I just needed him nearby as I tried to sort through the last twenty-four hours. Marjorie had been lured out of the attic with a jar of hooch and was locked safely in the chicken house. I could have used Dahlia, but she wasn't home. The Homecoming Committee members were not present. If any of them had walked into the gym, I might have borrowed Harve's gun and introduced a level of violence heretofore unseen in your standard Christmas pageant.

Relying on the prerogative of the director to seize center stage, I did so. "This may well go back to the birth of a baby, but we're going to skip ahead to when Pierce Keswick got the bright idea to send Matt back here to rescue his image as a hometown boy. No one could even remember him, but some of us spotted the potential to exploit the Nashville folks while they exploited us. A perfectly reasonable symbiotic relationship, born and fueled by greed." I waited until everyone nodded, even Raz, who wouldn't know a symbiotic relationship if it bit him on the b.u.t.t. "But, as I said, no one in town remembered Matt. Essential to the picture was Matt's white-haired great-aunt, who could tell lively stories of his summers here in MagG.o.dy and give credibility to the scenario. However' Adele's stories were not at all what the image makers wanted. She remembered what a h.e.l.l-raiser he was, drinking beer and going after--"

"Boys'll be boys," Matt interrupted, grinning as if I were about to present an award of an entirely different nature, "and girls'll be girls, 'specially in the moonlight down by Boone Creek."

I waited politely until he shut up. "Adele mostly remembered how he went up to the attic and pawed through his great-uncle's boxes and trunks and cartons. In them were letters that had been collected, notebooks from school days fifty or more years ago, books and hymnals, original poems of unpublishable quality, and some that could be converted into lyrics for country songs."

Matt laughed and said, "You're outta your mind. All that was up there was broken fishing poles, boxes of musty old clothes, and stuff like that. If there were any of these so-called lyrics, I sure as h.e.l.l never saw 'em."

"How about a poem concerning a sweet angel named Jaylee at the top of a tree?" I suggested helpfully.

Ripley and Lillian were watching without expression. I hadn't expected to surprise either of them with my revelation. Katie wasn't exactly bowled over, either. Les and Tinker poked each other and whispered, while Harve puffed contentedly like a Buddha. The boys in the band wandered away, perhaps to keep watch over their flock by night or to compare tattoos. Raz scratched his chin.

"Never heard of anyone named Jaylee," Matt said, having a little trouble with his grin. He was doing his best to imbue it with warmth and sincerity, though, and I was impressed. "Accusations like this are real common, you know," he continued. "You have a hit, then some a.s.shole claims he wrote the song and sent it to you the year before, Lawyers get to slinging letters at each other, and it turns out the a.s.shole really did write a song--it just happens to be completely different except for two words and three chords. Country music is about women and whiskey and love. I wrote Christmas material. Yeah, there's an angel and a Christmas tree. I couldn't seem to get the Easter Bunny to come hopping down the trail."

I shook my head. "You even came back two years ago to see if you could find some of those notebooks that you found so diverting as a teenager. One would almost suspect this 'Detour on the Highway to Heaven' song came as a result of that expedition, but if it did, surely the source has been destroyed."

"It had better have been!" yelped Ripley. Lillian whispered something to him and he smiled benignly at Matt.

"But there was this problem about Adele," I said, resuming my lecture to the cast. "She's not the sort who can be fed lines for a press conference or told what to remember and what to forget. So there was Pierce, all excited about reuniting Matt with his great-aunt, and there were others who realized the potential for disaster. The last thing any of them wanted was for Adele to make remarks to the press and ruin Matt's career, especially when it was possible that Country Connections could be sold for a tidy profit. The only solution was to remove Auntie Adele from MagG.o.dy--and I'd like to say it was in keeping with the Christmas spirit to do so without any undue physical discomfort or unpleasantness."

Katie looked as confused as Les and Tinker, who were redefining the term. "What are you talking about?" she asked. "I saw the old lady this morning. She was sitting in a rocking chair in the living room."

"That was a subst.i.tute," I said. "The real Adele Wockermann was whisked away to a motel and tended to by a sincere if overly imaginative nurse's aide. I was convinced this had something to do with Pierce Keswick's death, but it did so only indirectly. He came to MagG.o.dy because Katie called him yesterday afternoon and hinted darkly that Matt had been writing his lyrics in the Wockermann attic. Pierce was the honest one among you. He would have canceled the tour, killed the alb.u.m, and exposed Matt's plagiarism, even if it ruined the company."

"Plagiarism?" Matt began loudly and indignantly, then stopped as every last one of his companions glared at him. "Okay, okay, so maybe I got some ideas from a notebook or something. Inspiration, rhymes, stuff like that." It took him a moment to realize what else I'd dropped. "Katie, my sweet angel, did you really call Pierce and tell him that?"

"I wanted to make sure he kept his promise about my alb.u.m. I made it clear I wasn't going to tell anyone else, but he got awful upset and hung up on me." Licking her lips, she tried to smile at Ripley. "Pierce mentioned hunting for some new material right away. I do hope you're gonna honor his promise."

Ripley studied his cuticles.

I grabbed Raz's gnarly arm and dragged him in front of the bleachers. "What happened next is this old fool's fault. He drove down to his temporary warehouse, a load of moonshine in the back of his truck and his demented sow in the cab, and found a body. Rather than inform the authorities like any law-abiding citizen would do"--I stared at the conspirators in front of me in case they missed the irony--"he got the brilliant idea to move it to another location so no one would link it to his property."

Harve came out of his stupor to ask, "Are we getting to that body Dahlia was talking about? I thought he called from Little Rock this morning."

"I don't know where he is right now," I said, still clutching Raz. "Tell them what happened."

"Well," he said, yanking on his whiskers and pretending to be a prime example of American Gothic, all gla.s.sy-eyed with virtue and about to take root in the amber waves of grain, "it seemed to me all this bother about the ol' Wockermann place was the cause of the troubles. G.o.dd.a.m.n cars and trucks on the road all the time, folks wanting to take my picture like I come off a flying saucer, making Marjorie fractious. So there's this feller in the chicken house and I decide I'm jest gonna take him up the road apiece and let somebody figger out who it is. I git him on the porch swing, and then all of a sudden I hear gla.s.s break in the backyard. Marjorie comes tearing outta the house like greased lightning, we toss the feller back in the truck, and git outta there."

To Harve, I said, "Raz finally admitted that he kept the body in his barn all day and took it back to Dahlia and Kevin's house earlier this evening. I have no idea who it is, but perhaps one of your deputies could check this out. There's liable to be a wallet in the body's pocket. If you call McBeen, please don't mention my name." I waited until Tinker left, then related my experience in the attic, omitting only the detail about where I'd stepped. I kept everyone's attention to the end, then gave them a while to a.s.similate it.

Lillian was the first to try. "Are you saying that this pig frightened Pierce so badly that he fell out a window?"

"She's a pedigreed sow," Raz said churlishly, then scuttled away and sat down near the door, his eyes shifting from me to the empty hall as he considered his chances.

I told him I expected to find a whole lot of chickens in the chicken house by morning, and let him leave. I sat down next to Harve and waved away some of the smoke. "I don't seem to have the proper equipment to take the pig into custody, nor do I intend to have my leg chewed off while trying to do it. You want to arrest Marjorie, it's okay with me. If she gets the electric chair, Ruby Bee makes a tasty barbecue sauce."

"Seems to me these folks stirred her up," Harve said.

"That's not all they did," I said as I stood up and confronted Ripley. "Jim Bob recognized some of his lyrics when the bus arrived yesterday, and he told you his notebook was likely to be in the Wockermann attic. You went over there to make sure there was no evidence, and found Pierce's body on the patio, didn't you? I kept asking myself why someone wanted to draw attention to the souvenir shoppe or send some sort of metaphorical message about Matt. Your reaction was as simple as Raz's: move the body to draw attention away from the scene. The souvenir shoppe was the closest place, and the switch with the mannequin would only confuse things further."

Matt turned around to stare at him. "You put Pierce in the window dressed like that? How's that supposed to make me look?"

Ripley gleefully considered his response, but Lillian dug her fingers into his arm until he shrugged and said, "Perhaps just a tiny metaphorical message, as Arly so nicely put it."

"That's creepy," Katie said.

Matt scooted across the metal seat and patted her knee. "Yeah, it is. Thinking a dead person could take the place of a mannequin dressed like me." He realized what he'd said and slumped forward, his head propped in his hands. He may not have been thinking deep thoughts, but he appeared to be trying.

I looked at Lillian, who was shaking her head as she looked at her husband on the seat below her. "I can't see Ripley doing this on his own," I said to her. "Let's hear what you did after the bus was parked at the motel."

"I told you that I took a walk and ended up at the bar," she said.

"Did you go past the PD?"

"Is that the funny-looking red brick building? I walked by it, but I didn't pay it any mind."

"You did laundry," Katie contributed. "I saw you while I was talking to Pierce. You had a magazine and were sitting by one of the dryers."

"Oh, yeah," Harve said, rising to his feet and taking an interest now that I'd done all the hard work. "Les here says you saw Carlos Tunnato in the launderette, Miss Hawk. Could you tell us what happened?"

"Back in Nashville he called me a bunch of times before we left. I mean, the messages on my answering machine were always that Charlie called, but he came up to me in the launderette and told me that was his nickname. Charlie the Tunnato. I told him that was as cute as a butchered hawg."

"Charlie?" Matt echoed. "Where've I ...?"

"What else did he tell you?" I prompted her.

"He said he had some information that would interest me. I told him I'd meet him later. He had this silly map, so I pointed to some place on the creek and said for him to meet me at midnight."

I gazed evenly at her. "A stranger in a launderette says he has some interesting information, so you arrange to meet him in the woods at midnight? Doesn't that seem overly trusting?"

She glanced nervously at Lillian, then pushed her hair back and gave me a defiant smile. "I had no intention of going, of course, and you already heard that I stayed in my room the rest of the night. I figured he'd freeze his b.u.t.t off out there and maybe stop calling me in the future. I never dreamed he'd fall in the water the way he did."

"Did you hear any of their conversation?" I asked Lillian.

"It was too noisy, and I was busy reading."

"Why were you there?"

"Why does anyone go to a launderette?"

I was not in the mood for sarcasm. "You'd left Nashville less than a day earlier. It's hard to imagine that you already needed to do laundry. Did you follow Katie--or Charlie?"

Matt made a face. "I jest know I heard that name before. Was it at your office, Lillian?"

"No," she said coldly. "You might as well tell us who this Carlos Tunnato is," I said when she failed to continue. "The Tennessee authorities will go to his house, question whoever else lives at the address, and find the connection, although it may take a week or two. Do you all want to wait in MagG.o.dy until they call us?"

"He was my second husband," Lillian admitted. "We were divorced eighteen years ago. He's been trying to borrow money from me, and I guess he heard we were coming here and followed me. I didn't see him in the launderette. I didn't even know he was in MagG.o.dy until I heard about his death."

"That's right," Katie said with that same terribly sincere smile I'd seen earlier. "Lillian was way off in the corner, reading a magazine. She didn't talk to him, and there's no way she could have overheard what I said to this Charlie man. n.o.body could have known about our meeting."

"Divorced eighteen years ago ..." I said, sitting down on the bottom row of the bleacher and thinking about what she'd said about making sure everything was done property. I could almost smell Marjorie's majestic offering as I thought how I'd feel if I learned my divorce had not been finalized. I'd raise h.e.l.l with the lawyer, threaten malpractice, hand-carry the doc.u.ments to Manhattan, and if I had to, drag the judge out of bed. But I hadn't remarried. If Lillian's divorce wasn't legal, neither was her marriage to Matt. He was free to marry Katie Hawk.

I looked up, ready to say as much, and faltered. Lillian and Katie looked as if they were listening to each other breathe. There was enough bonding going on to bring Wall Street to its knees. As a corporate ent.i.ty, they turned and sent the same message to Ripley. He positively rippled in response.

"Lillian did not hear the conversation in the launderette," Katie said abruptly. "Couldn't have. No way. And I was in my room singing right up until midnight. Those folks what own the house heard me."

I shook my head. "They heard something, and you couldn't have climbed back up the drainpipe until after midnight. Matt said he was sitting below your window. He didn't see you."

"Was he drunk?"

The accused gave her a mournful look. "Not the whole time, Katie. It takes a couple hours to get warmed up, and besides, I would've noticed if you put your foot on my head."

"That'd be a first," she shot back. A more perceptive person might have taken it in the heart, but Matt grinned and ruffled his hair.

"And Lillian was helping me with Pierce's body at midnight," Ripley said. "I found her at the bar and we went to the house together."

"It took well over an hour," Lillian said. "Breaking into the store, undressing the mannequin, dressing poor Pierce, trying to get that guitar set just right."

Harve threw up his hands and stomped off to yell at Les, who hadn't done anything worthy of a tirade but might well in a day or two. "Charlie was your ex-husband?" said Matt. "Didn't I meet a guy named Charlie at your office?"

"Oh, shut up!"

It was impossible to attribute this final statement to one particular speaker, since it came from all three of them.

"Grab me! I'm fixin' to fall!" screeched Ruby Bee, hanging onto the branch above her head. The one she'd been standing on continued to bend under her weight until it snapped like a firecracker.

"Gimme your hand," Estelle said from a higher roost. She caught Ruby Bee's hand and helped her relocate to a branch st.u.r.dy enough to hold her.

Ruby Bee tried to find a spot that felt secure, comfortable being out of the question. It was a spindly tree, chosen out of necessity. She was still amazed at how quickly she and Estelle had arrived up in its branches. Terror could do that. "I cain't believe this," she grumbled. "Women our age sitting in a tree, and most likely stuck here all night. I ain't climbed a tree since I was ten years old, and I only did it then to get down my cousin's kite on account of his bawling. It's not dignified."

"Then shinny on down."

There was a moment of silence while they pondered their predicament. Sleet pattered on the pasture and rustled the few leaves on the branches around them, and up on the main road a car door slammed and an engine came to life. Water gurgled across the low water bridge. Way across the field, Christmas tree lights sparkled in a window.

Estelle risked life and limb to lean forward so she could see the ground underneath the tree, then sighed and wrapped her arm back around the trunk. "You got us into this, Rubella Belinda Hanks, you with your bright idea of spying on Raz Buchanon. I hope you'll be proud of yourself if and when they find our frozen bodies in this tree like two turtledoves."

"I told you not to open the door," Ruby Bee said promptly, not willing to take the blame alone. "I clearly said that I heard Marjorie inside there, snuffling and snorting, and you said that no one over the age of six was afraid of pigs."

"And who said she'd take a stick and smack the pig on the nose if she bothered us? Whose idea was that?"

"I had to say something when you insisted on opening the door."

They carried on like this for a while longer, but then branches creaked as they settled in and took to listening to the restful sounds in the blanket of darkness.

Loud music blared from inside the house. Lights shone from the living room windows, and the Christmas tree in the window glittered in tiny explosions of colored lights and tinsel. A plastic Santa posed on the roof, his arm raised to encourage eight plastic reindeer to dash away, dash away into the sky.

Miss Vetchling observed the scene from inside her car, the windows windows rolled down far enough to allow smoke to escape as she finished a cigarette and made sure she was at the correct address. It was far too late to drop by someone's home without an invitation, but there were at least two dozen women inside who'd received theirs. They carried c.o.c.ktail and winegla.s.ses and plates of food, and they milled about with a great deal of laughter.

To drive away would be craven, Miss Vetchling told herself as she got out of her car. No dogs came howling out of the darkness, but she took her brolly along as she went up to the front door and knocked firmly enough to be heard over the music.

The door swung open and a woman with wildly crimped blond hair and scarlet lipstick grabbed Miss Vetchling's arm. "Glad you could make it, darling! You haven't missed a thing, but we're getting ready to start. Come on in and let me take your coat and umbrella."

Before she could demur and present her spiel, Miss Vetchling was pulled inside, stripped of her coat and only weapon, and handed a cup of what she was told killer eggnog. The first sip was enough to cause her to shudder, but the second was really quite tasty. Miss Vetchling allowed herself to be presented with a plate of canapes and placed on the sofa between a hardfaced woman with black hair and a young woman with an anxious expression.

She put a meatball in her mouth to forestall attempts at conversation while she a.s.sessed the group. All women, all dressed casually but not cheaply, all seemingly having a delightful time in what Miss Vetchling knew was the home of Miss Cherri Lucinda Crate. Miss Crate seemed to have abandoned her guests for the moment. None of them allowed this to adversely affect their spirits; all were indeed consuming spirits with enthusiasm.

After finishing her eggnog, Miss Vetchling decided she could not remain at the party under false pretenses and went into the kitchen to seek out Miss Crate. There were cookie sheets of food awaiting their turns in the oven, plates of cookies, bowls of red and green candies, and bottles jammed on a counter that served as a bar. Gla.s.ses were lined up nearby.

Miss Vetchling made herself a martini (eggnog was high in both calories and cholesterol) and continued her search for Miss Crate. The carpet was in need of a good shampooing, she noticed with disapproval as she went down a hallway. Miss Crate should be presented with the opportunity to see how effective a Vacu-Pro could be.

"No peeking," said Miss Crate, popping out of a room and closing the door behind her. "Let's refresh your drink and then we'll get started right away. Have you ever been to one of these before, darling? I can tell you're going to love it. It's so much easier to shop like this than to battle those crowded malls. Free gift wrapping and delivery up until Christmas Eve."

Miss Vetchling could make no sense out of Miss Crate's babbling, nor could she get in a word edgewise. Once her martini had been enhanced with a hearty dollop of gin, she obediently followed her hostess to the living room and resumed her seat on the sofa. Accepting the reality that her investigation was temporarily halted, she lit a cigarette and sat back to await developments and contemplate a career in private detection. It really was more scintillating than phone sales, she thought with a tiny hiccup. One met so many congenial people.

The other guests found seats or sat on the floor, and the music stopped. Miss Crate's head appeared around a comer. "You ready, ladies?"

Everyone a.s.sured Miss Crate that they were, including Miss Vetchling, who did so with a merry flick of her finger. The lights dimmed and sultry music filled the room like mysterious and exotic perfume. Miss Vetchling watched the doorway with a sense of antic.i.p.ation that was not unpleasant.

Miss Crate stepped into the room. She wore a shimmery white nightgown gathered demurely at her neck with a red velvet ribbon and falling inches short of panties made only of a wisp of lace. "Picture yourself as a Christmas present," she cooed at her audience. "What would the man in your life do if he found you under the tree like this?"

"Climb up the chimney," said a stout woman with a hint of a mustache.