Lord of the Wings (2 page)

“I could let your costume out a little,” I suggested.

“No,” he said, and picked up his pace a little. “I need to get down to my proper weight. An actor's body is his instrument.”

“Okay,” I said. “Carry on tuning your instrument. I'll figure out something healthy and low calorie for dinner.”

“Thanks,” he said. “And keep all that damned Halloween candy away from me.”

“Roger,” I said. “By the way, can you take the boys to school and pick up the other two kids we're taking to the field trip? I can meet you at the zoo—I have an errand I should run on my way.”

“Goblin Patrol business?”

“Something like that.” As I explained about Dr. Smoot, I considered whether I should stop fighting this Goblin Patrol thing. It was certainly catchier than Visitor Relations and Police Liaison Patrol. “If I hurry,” I concluded, “I can deal with Smoot and still make the zoo tour.”

“I don't envy you,” he said. “And yes, I can take the boys.”

We'd done nearly a complete circuit of the pasture now, so I decided I'd jogged enough.

“I'm going to peel off now and get ready for my busy day,” I said.

“Not as busy as it would have been if Randall Shiffley hadn't hired Lydia,” Michael called over his shoulder.

I made a noncommittal noise and headed back to the kitchen.

Yes, if Randall hadn't hired Lydia Van Meter to the newly created post of Special Assistant to the Mayor, I would probably have been running the whole of Caerphilly's ten-day Halloween Festival instead of merely heading up the Goblin Patrol. I definitely preferred my more limited role.

But that didn't mean I had to like Lydia.

Just thinking about her soured my mood. And it wasn't because she was doing a terrible job at organizing the Halloween Festival. Considering that it was her first major project, she was doing okay. Not perfectly—certainly not the way I'd have done it—but things were lurching along, and she was learning. She'd probably have an easier time with the much bigger Christmas in Caerphilly event that would start right after Thanksgiving, because we'd been doing that for several years now, and Randall and I had done a pretty good job of setting up procedures and training the townspeople in them. By summer, when it was time for the Un-Fair, the statewide agricultural exposition Caerphilly hosted every year, she should be in fine shape—again, thanks to all the ground work Randall and I had done on past Un-Fairs.

Since, in the long run, she was going to make my life easier, it was probably ungracious of me to dislike her. Maybe I was the only one who minded her constant griping about how hard she was working and how impossible the job was. I couldn't count the times I'd had to bite my tongue to keep from saying, “You think you've got it bad—I used to do all that and more, as a volunteer.” And was it just my imagination, or was she developing an annoying tendency to ask me how I would handle something and then do exactly the opposite?

“Chill,” I muttered. After all, Lydia was making it possible for me to spend more time with Michael and the boys, doing things like today's field trip to the Caerphilly Zoo.

And accompanying the boys to the zoo was definitely important, and not just because I wanted to see their reaction to the brand new Creatures of the Night exhibit. As the zoo's proud owner, my grandfather was planning on conducting the tour himself, and I knew better than to expect common sense from him. What if he gave in to some first grader's pleas to be allowed to pet the arctic wolves? Or began explaining the curious mating habits of the greater short-nosed fruit bat, as he had a few weeks ago when giving a preview tour to the Baptist Ladies' Altar Guild?

I ran upstairs to throw on the last few bits of my costume—a modified version of the red satin and black leather swordswoman's outfit I wore whenever I exhibited my blacksmithing work at a Renaissance festival. I added the festive black-and-orange armband that marked me as a member of the Goblin Patrol and headed for town.

The first few miles of my journey lay through farmlands—pastures dotted with grazing cows or sheep, fields filled with late crops or post-harvest stubble, and orchards picked clean of all but the latest fruits. Closer to town, I began to see Halloween and harvest decorations on the gates and fences. I particularly admired the farmer who'd used a collection of scarecrows to simulate a zombie attack on his cow pasture. The contrast between the bloodstained shambling figures clawing at the outside of the fence and the Guernsey cows calmly chewing their cuds inside never failed to amuse me.

I was nearing town when my phone rang. Lydia. I considered letting it go to voice mail. Then I sighed, and pulled over to answer it. She was probably calling about something she considered important. Her definition of important rarely coincided with mine, but I'd already figured out that the best way to keep her calm and off my back was to talk to her. She seemed to resent having to leave a voice mail.

“Thank goodness I caught you!” she exclaimed as soon as I answered. “Can you drop by to see me as soon as possible? Something important's come up. Festival business! Thanks!”

“I'm already on my way to take care of festival business,” I began. But before I could make the case for discussing whatever had come up over the phone instead of face to face, I realized she'd hung up.

“Damn the woman,” I muttered as I punched the button to call her back. But her phone line was already busy.

So I muttered a few words I didn't usually let myself say (for fear the boys would pick them up) and pulled out onto the road again. Dr. Smoot's burglar would have to wait while I tackled whatever crisis Lydia had to offer.

 

Chapter 2

Even Lydia couldn't spoil my enjoyment of the Halloween scenery. Closer to town the farmlands gave way to houses whose yards almost universally contained some kind of decoration. Strings of orange pumpkin- or skeleton-shaped lights festooned at least half of the fences. Most of the steps bore jack-o'-lanterns. Some yards contained miniature graveyards, with or without skeletons or vampires digging their way out of the earth, and I lost count of the number of witches that appeared to have slammed into trees.

In the outskirts of town I passed by the left turn onto the Clay County road that would have taken me to Dr. Smoot's Haunted House and then on to the zoo. Instead I continued on toward the town square.

The official town decorations, though attractive, were somewhat more sedate, reflecting a harvest theme rather than a Halloween one. The streetlights had been enclosed in plastic covers to make them look like pumpkins—just pumpkins, not jack-o'-lanterns. Graceful black, brown, and orange garlands hung between the lampposts, and all the trash cans and benches and other public fixtures were festooned with gourds and sheaves of dried grass and flowers. “It's the Caerphilly Garden Club,” Randall Shiffley had said in a slightly apologetic tone when he showed me the design. “They always like to err on the side of good taste, and I don't think most of them really like Halloween all that much.”

They probably didn't—but they were clearly in the minority. Most of the shops and houses contained enough jack-o'-lanterns, faux skeletons, black cat window decals, bat garlands, and rubber rats to make up for any excess of good taste on the part of the Garden Club.

It was early enough that I had no trouble finding a parking spot near the courthouse. As I climbed the long marble steps up to the front portico, I could see that the two small groups of protesters were already on duty. I turned to study them for a moment. To the right were a small group of people who objected to our Halloween Festival on the grounds that it was a godless pagan holiday that a respectable town shouldn't be celebrating. To the left was a group of about the same number of devout pagans who were protesting our commercialization of what was for them an important religious holiday and our use of decorations that perpetuated society's negative stereotype of witches.

Neither group had started picketing yet, only milling around as if waiting for something. The arrival of the first tourists, perhaps.

If I'd been in charge, I'd have long ago sent a couple of local ministers out to placate the Halloween haters and tasked Rose Noire with figuring out what we could do to calm down the pagans.

Then I saw them all perk up as two figures approached. It was Muriel, owner of the local diner, and one of her waitresses, both carrying trays laden with doughnuts and carryout cups of coffee. Muriel began serving the pagans while the waitress continued on toward the Halloween haters.

“You were right,” said a voice from over my shoulder.

I looked up to see Randall standing at the top of the steps, gazing down at the protesters. His buckskin costume already looked wrinkled, and his Davy Crockett-style coonskin hat was askew.

“I usually am right,” I said, as I made my way up the rest of the steps. “What in particular am I right about today?”

“We never should have tried to chase them off,” he said, nodding at the protesters. “Should have killed them with kindness from the start.”

I refrained from saying that it was Lydia who tried to order the protesters away, and demanded that the police step in when her efforts failed. Fortunately Chief Burke had a cool head and a strong respect for the First Amendment.

“I see you're taking my idea about the refreshments,” I said.

“Yup.” Randall smiled with satisfaction. “Coffee and doughnuts every morning from Muriel, and tea and cookies every afternoon from one of the churches. If the forecast calls for rain, we put up those little canvas shelters for them, and they know they're always welcome to use the courthouse bathroom.”

“You're spoiling them,” I said.

“And we're down to about a third of the number we had last week this time,” he said. “Clearly it's no fun protesting people who seem perfectly happy to have you stay around. What brings you downtown? I'd have thought you'd be out at the zoo with the first graders today.”

“I will be,” I said. “As soon as I talk to Lydia and find out what's so important that she had to drag me all the way downtown.”

Randall winced, and I felt slightly guilty for venting at him.

“Sorry,” he said. “She means well, and she's learning.”

Not learning fast enough to suit me, but I refrained from saying so aloud. I just nodded, went inside the courthouse, and took the elevator up to the third floor where Lydia had her office, a few doors down from Randall's office.

As usual, Lydia was on the phone. Not just on the phone, but switching back and forth between the two lines on her desk phone while texting something on her cell phone with her right hand and clicking something on her computer keyboard with the left. She nodded and smiled when she saw me, and held up two fingers, like the peace sign. Her intent, of course, was to say that she'd be with me in two minutes. I knew better by now.

I sat down in one of her desk chairs and resigned myself to wait. If I were a snarkier person, I'd have brought along a thick book—
War and Peace,
perhaps—and made a show of settling down to read it while she talked. Instead, I pulled out my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe, as I call my giant to-do list, and made productive use of my time.

Other people rarely understood how comforting I found it to spend time with my notebook. Knowing that everything on my plate was captured between its covers cleared my brain to concentrate on whatever I was doing. Since the boys' arrival, life had grown even more complicated than before, and I'd traded in my original spiral notebooks for a small three-ring binder, but apart from that my system was the same. My notebook gave me peace of mind, and all it asked in return was that I tend it for a few minutes here and there. I marked a few tasks as done and added a few new ones.

“Yeah, yeah,” Lydia was saying. “I'll take care of it.”

I glanced up to see that she was scribbling something on a yellow sticky note.

She stuck the sticky on the left side of her computer monitor, where it was largely indistinguishable from the hundred other yellow sticky notes that clung to the monitor, gradually encroaching on the viewing space. Her calendar and the wall it hung on were similarly encrusted. As I watched, one lonely yellow square gave up hope of ever being read and let itself fall to the floor.

By contrast, her desk contained only a few sticky notes, hidden here and there among the books, folders, paper stacks, and yellow legal pads that covered every inch of horizontal space and in some places had begun to slide off onto the floor.

Every time I walked into her office, my fingers itched to start organizing it all.

Not for the first time I wondered where Randall had found her, and how in the world she had convinced him that she was good at organizing.

“Chill,” I murmured under my breath. Lydia's organizing skills might be overrated, the festival might not be running the way I'd like to have seen it run, but it was limping along adequately without me doing anything other than organizing and running the volunteer security force. I reminded myself to be grateful for that.

“Sorry.” She hung up and turned to me with a perky little smile that didn't really reach her eyes. “There's just so much going on.”

“Understandable,” I said. “What did you need to see me about?”

“Oh!” She began scanning the sticky notes on the left side of her monitor and plucked one off. “Here it is. Dr. Smoot called. He seems to think someone broke into the museum very early this morning. Could you check to see if it's something the police should handle or if he's just being hyper again?”

“You could have told me about it over the phone,” I said. “As it happens, one of my volunteers already told me about the break-in, and I was on my way over there when you called. If you'd told me that was why you were calling, I'd be there by now, dealing with it.”