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Or was the card talking about someone else’s plans, maybe the person who had taken the figurine? Maybe it was signaling that they really did intend to return baby Jesus to his cradle in the very near future.
Which might also pivot back to the Seven of Pentacles.
Hmm.
It wasn’t as much of a jumble as some other three-card spreads I’d done in the past, but neither did it offer me any particular illumination.
Well, it had been worth a try.
I scooped up the cards and put them away in their green velvet bag, then stopped in the kitchen to check on the water in Archie’s bowl before heading downstairs to the shop. The cat himself was nowhere to be seen, and so I guessed he was probably napping on the rug in the laundry room, safe in the knowledge that I’d be back up at noon to feed him.
This close to Christmas, there were already people waiting on the sidewalk by the shop’s front window, peeking inside. I hurried over to unlock the door, then stepped aside to let in the small crowd, some five or six individuals I didn’t recognize, meaning they were probably tourists who’d come to Globe a day early to soak up some of the sights before the main event on Saturday evening.
I was glad to see them, not only because this December had already out-earned every single month so far and didn’t show much sign of stopping, but also because if I had people I needed to help out, then I wouldn’t be sitting behind the counter, twiddling my thumbs and driving myself crazy with trying to figure out who could possibly be behind the theft of baby Jesus.
One woman who looked as though she was probably in her early sixties, with expertly highlighted hair and wearing an impressive amount of gold jewelry, even asked about the missing figure.
“That’s such a lovely nativity scene on the front lawn of the Catholic church,” she said as I rang up her acquisitions — a pair of agate bookends and one of my more expensive necklaces, all druzy quartz and blue topaz and deep, shimmering amethysts. That one purchase alone would have been enough to make a banner day in the store, but other people were already beginning to queue up behind her, clutching crystals and books and packs of incense. “But I noticed the little figure of Jesus is missing. What happened to it?”
Oh, great. And here I’d been hoping that no one would look closely enough to notice. Since Josie had already forbidden me to tell people the figure was being safely locked up until Christmas Eve, that didn’t give me a lot of options when it came to answering inquiries such as my customer’s.
“Um,” I said, thinking furiously. Then inspiration struck. I blessed my glib Gemini sun and went on, “When the volunteers from the Chamber of Commerce were setting up the crèche earlier this month, they noticed that the carving had begun to crack in a few places. I guess that’s not too unusual, considering how dry it is here and how the nativity scene sits out for weeks during December. Anyway, because those pieces were carved by a local artisan more than sixty years ago, we had to hunt around to find someone who could repair it. We found someone up in Flagstaff and it’s being fixed, but we probably won’t have it back in time for the Festival of Lights this weekend.”
The woman blinked at me. Probably she was a little startled to have gotten such a detailed explanation to her simple question. However, she only replied, “Oh, that makes sense. It’s such a lovely nativity scene, and so I was sort of surprised to see that baby Jesus wasn’t there.”
I offered her a smile and said, “Well, you’ll just have to come back next year and see him then.”
She nodded as she handed over her platinum Visa card. “I will.”
But after that, no one asked any further questions, to my great relief. And by the time I closed up that day, I had about a week’s worth of receipts in the till from just that day’s sales. My feet might have been aching a little from not getting much of a chance to sit down, and yet I knew it had been a good day. Even Archie seemed mellow — for him, at least — but that was probably because Calvin wouldn’t be coming over for dinner, since his shift didn’t end until nine.
That was all right, though. I could use the peace and quiet after such a busy day at work, and besides, I’d be seeing Calvin the next evening at the Festival of Lights.
With any luck, I’d have some good news about baby Jesus by then.
* * *
Unfortunately, the universe didn’t seem as though it planned to go easy on me. I tried another Tarot spread before starting work, just as I had the day before, but this one was definitely “minor arcana mishmash,” letting me know that the cards thought they’d told me everything I needed to hear already, and so they weren’t planning to cooperate on this go-’round.
While I definitely didn’t have time to go wandering the streets of Globe with my pendulum, I still lifted it from where it rested on a bed of velvet in a drawer, held it for a moment or so in order to attune it to my energies, and then dangled it over the divination board I had sitting on my altar.
I asked it a very simple question.
Does the person who took baby Jesus go to school in Globe?
At least if I got an answer in the affirmative, that meant I could narrow my search a bit.
The pendulum swung back and forth for a few seconds, tracing an arc over the pretty board with its butterfly design. I waited, holding the question in my mind. Then it came to a stop over a single word:
No.
Okay, so much for that. While I guessed I could now rule out any of the students at the elementary school or at Globe High School, that left pretty much the entire adult population of the town…none of whom would seem to have much reason to take the little carved Jesus from his cradle.
Unless, as I’d mentioned to Josie, someone local was trying to give her grief, for whatever reason.
But as I pondered the problem, that theory didn’t seem to make much sense to me. As far as I’d been able to tell, my real estate agent friend was pretty much universally liked, despite her busybody nature. The only person she’d never gotten along with was Miriam Jacobsen, and since the former Chamber of Commerce president was now locked up in a maximum-security prison in Florence, I doubted she could be involved in my current conundrum.
No, something else had to be going on here, something I’d just have to ferret out with time. I remembered the Seven of Pentacles from my card spread the day before.
