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“Maybe you could get a replacement Jesus?” I suggested, and once again she sent me one of those looks that told me I still had a whole heck of a lot to learn about her hometown.
“That crèche,” she said grandly, “was hand-carved by Malcolm Carlisle sixty years ago. It’s not the sort of thing where we can just order a replacement baby Jesus from Amazon.”
I didn’t know who Malcolm Carlisle was — if he’d carved the nativity figures sixty years earlier, I figured there was a very good chance he’d departed this mortal coil long before I ever moved to Globe — but clearly, we were talking about something well-nigh irreplaceable here.
No wonder Josie was so upset.
“Well, if anyone asks, you can just say that baby Jesus was put away for safekeeping until Christmas Eve,” I suggested. “I mean, this sort of thing does happen, so taking preventive measures shouldn’t sound too strange.”
She was silent for a moment. It seemed clear enough to me that this very thing probably had occurred before, or the notion that baby Jesus had been stolen wouldn’t have been the first idea to cross her mind. On the other hand, I could tell she didn’t want to admit that anyone in her town — even a couple of rebellious teenagers — would do something that might negatively impact her as Globe’s newly minted president of the Chamber of Commerce.
“I think that would give a terrible impression,” she said. “It would make all those tourists think that Globe is positively rife with crime!”
Well, considering we’d dealt with no less than four murders over the past nine months, I had to admit that wouldn’t exactly be an inaccurate perception of the little town.
And okay, to be fair, one of those murders really hadn’t been a murder at all, but only a terrible accident, the result of a love potion gone horribly wrong. Luckily, Kimberly Parker, the former school nurse who had harbored a secret crush on Danny Ortega, the high school’s principal, had only gotten a negligent homicide conviction and probation for administering the fateful concoction. She’d even managed to keep her job at a local doctor’s office, although she was seeing a therapist in Mesa every week, trying to work through her guilt over Danny’s accidental death, and had told me she was considering leaving Globe and starting over someplace where no one knew her. This felt to me like it might be the best solution for her, even if everyone in the community seemed to view her more with pity than with anger.
Except for Danny’s immediate family, of course, which I suppose was to be expected.
“I have a feeling most people would think it was a small-town prank and nothing more,” I told Josie as I sent her a reassuring smile. “Kind of charming, actually.”
Those words didn’t appear to mollify her, however, because she only replied, “Everything was supposed to be perfect — and it was looking as though it would be — and nowthishad to happen!”
She paused there, and a certain glint appeared in her pale blue eyes.
Uh-oh. I’d come to recognize that glint.
“But I know it won’t be a problem,” she went on, fixing me with a determined stare. “Because you, Selena, will find baby Jesus for me!”
Oh, boy. I tried not to grimace as I responded, “I don’t have a lot of experience tracking down missing objects.”
“This isn’t anobject,” she returned. “It’s baby Jesus. But surely your crystal ball or your pendulum or one of your other gadgets will help you track him down for me.”
I tried not to wince at the word “gadgets.” All those magical items were pretty much the exact opposite of a gadget — they were mystical objects imbued with my own energy, items that assisted me in manifesting and reading the signs the universe had chosen to send me. It wasn’t as though we were talking about a bunch of can openers here.
And I could only image how my Grandma Ellen, who communicated with me through the crystal ball, would react if I got in touch with her to ask if she could pretty please help me find the missing baby Jesus from Globe’s nativity display.
“That’s not really how they work — ” I began, but Josie lifted a hand.
“I know you can do it. I have utmost faith in you, Selena. But now I need to meet with Louise.”
Louise Tiburon was the director of the Globe High School choir. With the choir’s performance at the Festival of Lights now only two days away, I could see why she might be meeting with Josie.
Before I could utter any further protests, she’d sailed out of the store, and I was left staring at the door as it banged shut behind her, letting the bells that hung from the handle jangle loudly. They clashed with the rendition of the Wexford Carol that was currently playing on the shop’s sound system, something from my huge collection ofA Winter’s SolsticeCDs from Wyndham Hill.
I did my best not to sigh. Like it or not, it appeared I’d been assigned baby Jesus–hunting duties.
* * *
Because it was so close to Christmas, the shop had visitors filing in and out all afternoon. Although I generally enjoyed being busy — lots of shoppers meant a successful business, and they kept me from getting bored to boot — I couldn’t help thinking about the conundrum of the Christmas crèche.
If it wasn’t kids pulling a prank, who would have taken the carved figure from its cradle? In and of itself, the little figure wouldn’t have any intrinsic value. It was just an artfully rendered version of the Christ child.
Luckily, I was having Calvin over for dinner that night, and so I figured I could pick his brain and see if he had any suggestions to offer. And even before that, I knew I could ask a few questions of someone who’d lived in Globe a lot longer than Calvin had.
“Do you know if anyone’s ever stolen the baby Jesus out of the crèche at St. Ignatius?” I asked Archie, the cursed cat who’d been my roommate ever since I moved to town.
He’d been sitting on the couch, licking a paw, and looked up at me. His ears swiveled slightly.
