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She nodded, but then Raymond said, “Well, it was nice to see you two. We want to make sure we don’t miss Tom Redhorse’s next storytelling session at eight.”
The words were plainly dismissive, but I told myself not to get my hackles up. At least he hadn’t told me to go to hell. From the overly even way Calvin replied, “Enjoy yourselves,” I could tell he was angry on my behalf, although he would never make a scene.
“It was nice seeing you again, Selena,” Delia put in, as if to make up for her husband’s gruffness, but she didn’t say anything else, only nodded at me as they made their way to the front of the ruins where their fellow tribe member was holding court.
And then they were gone.
I tightened my fingers on Calvin’s, and made myself smile up at him. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s see the rest of these ruins.”
3
Return to Sender
Even though thestore wasn’t technically open on Sunday, I still wandered downstairs around eleven after a leisurely morning of sleeping in and making eggs and bacon, bits of which I’d dutifully handed off to Archie. Maybe some of the scraps I gave him weren’t technically the healthiest stuff to be feeding a cat, but he did seem to have an amazingly strong stomach. Nothing seemed to disagree with him, and he’d never once coughed up a hairball. That could have been part of the enchantment which had kept him a cat for the greater part of seventy years, or possibly he was just really lucky.
At any rate, he didn’t seem too irritated by my announcement that I planned to go down to the shop and put in a few hours getting things straightened up and adding some items to the store’s inventory that had been delivered by UPS the previous afternoon. Things had been so crazy on Saturday that I hadn’t gotten the chance to unpack everything and put it out, and since I guessed these last few days before Christmas would be extra busy, I knew I needed to take the time now to get everything handled.
Besides, with Calvin at work all day, there wasn’t much else I could have done with myself. I still needed to do some housework, since I was going to have Hazel and Chuck and Calvin over for dinner on Tuesday for my own Yule celebration, but cleaning the apartment would only take me an hour or so.
I took care to make sure the “Closed” sign was still prominently displayed in the front window, and I only turned on half the lights in the store to make sure it didn’t look as though the place was open for business, but that didn’t prevent Josie from tapping on the window at a little before noon.
Although I permitted myself a sigh, I went ahead and unlocked the door to let her in. I knew better than to pretend I hadn’t seen her.
“Amazing news!” she announced as she strode into the shop. That morning, she wore a scarlet suit that clashed with her bright orange-red pixie cut, and another of what seemed to be an unending parade of Christmas pins sparkled from her lapel. This one was of enamel holly leaves with a couple of gold-toned bells hanging below.
“Oh?” I replied, trying not to sound too dubious. I loved Josie, but when she made an announcement like that, it usually meant she was about to rope me into one of her innumerable schemes. Also, I had a feeling she was about to get on my case about my inability to locate the missing figure of baby Jesus.
In this particular instance, however, my intuition turned out to be dead wrong.
“He’s back!” she exclaimed, and I stared at her.
“Who’s back?”
“Baby Jesus,” she said with a slight lift of one brow, as though my psychic powers should have allowed me to guess the answer to her question. “Father Estevez called me this morning and told me when he arrived at the church this morning to get things ready for Sunday mass, the figure was back in the cradle as though nothing had happened!”
While this turn of events relieved me to no end — now I wouldn’t have to worry about Josie nagging me to consult my crystal ball as to where baby Jesus could have gone — something about it still didn’t feel right. My intuition might have failed me a moment earlier, but now it seemed to be telling me there was more to the situation than met the eye.
“That’s great news!” I replied, knowing I didn’t want to mention my misgivings before I had more evidence to go on than a simple gut reaction. “Is it okay?”
Now her expression dimmed a little, but she still sounded cheery enough as she said, “Well, Father Estevez said the figure had a few new scratches on its back, but otherwise, it seems to be fine. And honestly, since baby Jesus lies on his back in the cradle anyway, it’s not as though anyone would notice a couple of scratches.”
Probably not. Something inside spurred me to ask, “Do you mind if I go take a look at the figure after I’m done with inventory here?”
“Certainly,” Josie responded right away, although a little twitch of worry pulled at the corner of her mouth. “Do you think something’s wrong?”
“No,” I said hastily. “But it would still be nice to find out who took it, don’t you think? Sometimes when I touch things, I can get impressions from them.”
“Ah, psychometry,” she said, with the air of someone who’d done their research and wanted to make sure I knew about it. “And yes, of course you can go take a look. Both sessions of Mass will be over by two o’clock, I think.”
Which seemed to be her subtle way of letting me know that it was probably better for the town’s only visibly practicing witch not to be seen handling baby Jesus. Just as well — I definitely didn’t want to answer any questions that might arise if someone was around to witness what I was up to, so waiting only seemed prudent.
“And we won’t have to worry about this happening again, because my nephew Brett will be going by the church after lunch to install security cameras on the front of the building,” Josie went on. “The Chamber is paying for them, since we’re the ones who store the nativity during the off-season and handle the installation. It’s a sorry pass that it’s come to this, but I suppose these are the times we live in now.”
To hear her talk, you’d think she was some old-timer sitting on a front porch and grumbling about the loss of the good old days, rather than a vigorous woman in her late fifties, but I thought I understood. Globe wasn’t the sort of place that tended to be a hotbed of crime.
Well, not until I’d showed up, at any rate, even though none of those murders could possibly be viewed as my fault.
“Better safe than sorry,” I agreed, and her troubled expression immediately lifted.
