The Nightingale Before Christmas

“I am Henry Burke, chief of police here in Caerphilly. Ms. Langslow is assisting me in an investigation. You have already opened yourself to charges of assaulting a police officer in the performance of his duties.”

“Two police officers,” Sammy corrected.

The chief favored him with a withering glance.

“Kindly cease this ridiculous behavior and tell me who you are and what you’re doing here,” the chief went on.

“My name is Felicia Granger, and Clay is my … my friend.” She pulled herself up and stood still. Sammy and Horace let go of her, but stood ready in case she backslid.

Granger—she was probably the wife of the man who’d been following me the night before.

“And your purpose in coming here?” the chief asked.

Felicia seemed to wilt.

“We were supposed to see each other last night,” she said. “He never showed up, and never returned my calls, and—did something happen to him?”

“I’m afraid Mr. Spottiswood is dead,” the chief said, very gently.

Felicia uttered a shriek and fell in a small heap on the floor.

The chief and his officers seemed taken aback by the violence of her grief, and I ended up being the one to help her up, lead her back to the living room, plunk her down on the couch, and say “there, there” as she cried on my shoulder.

The chief had the presence of mind to send Sammy for a glass of water and Horace for a box of tissues, and then ordered them to get back to work searching Clay’s house.

After a while, when Felicia’s sobs finally subsided, she sat up, wiped her nose on the back of her hand, and looked over at the chief.

“How did he die?” she asked.

The chief paused, obviously weighing the effect of what he was about to say, before he answered.

“I’m afraid he was shot,” he said.

“Oh, my God!” Felicia turned pale and clapped both hands over her mouth. “He did it! He really did it!”

“Who did it?” The chief sounded irritated. I could tell Felicia was wearing on his nerves. He wasn’t the only one.

“My husband,” she said. “Ex-husband. Well, not quite ex yet, but we’ve been separated for two months. And he hates Clay. He said he’d kill him if he didn’t leave me alone. Lots of times.”

“That would be Mr. Gerald Granger?” the chief asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Jerry’s been threatening to—”

The door flew open, and Jerry himself burst in.

“Aha!” he exclaimed. “Caught you red-handed! I’m going to—what’s going on here?”

“That’s him,” Felicia said, pointing to the new arrival. “That’s Jerry.”

“I have already met Mr. Granger,” the chief said. “Sit down!” he snapped at the newcomer.

Mr. Granger flinched at the chief’s fierce tone and scuttled over to the chair with surprising meekness. The chief scowled at him for a few moments, as if making sure he was pla

“Meg,” he said. “Take Mrs. Granger to the garage and ask Sammy and Horace to keep an eye on her. I need to have a few words with Mr. Granger about his violation of the restraining order against him.”

“You’re going to arrest him, aren’t you?” Felicia said, as I pulled her to her feet and started steering her toward the kitchen. “Because he did it.”

“Somebody did the world a favor,” Jerry said. “But it wasn’t me.”

“You bastard!” she shrieked. She tried to launch herself at him, but unlike Sammy and Horace, I had considerable experience dealing with juvenile tantrums. She wasn’t a particularly large woman, so I slung her over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry and hauled her out to the garage, still kicking and shrieking. Sometimes it comes in handy being not only taller than average but, thanks to my blacksmithing work, a lot stronger than most women.

“The chief says keep an eye on her,” I said to Sammy and Horace, who looked alarmed at her return.

“Bitch,” she said to me, but she seemed to have calmed down.

“What happened?” Sammy asked.

“My husband happened.” Felicia grabbed Clay’s recycling bin, turned it upside down to dump the contents on the garage floor, and sat on it, with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. “He killed Clay Spottiswood.”

“He’s a suspect,” I said. “How did you and Clay meet, anyway?”

“He decorated our living room.” Felicia shook her head. “You want to know the ironic thing? I didn’t want to hire him in the first place. I actually preferred one of the other designers who gave us a proposal. But Jerry liked Clay’s designs. Said he wanted a masculine look in the living room, not a lot of female frippery.” She chuckled mirthlessly. “Bet now he wishes he’d picked Martha Blaine’s design.”

Interesting. Of course, I’d already figured out that in Caerphilly’s relatively small interior design community, the major players all knew each other, and had done battle over potential clients many times. But given the antagonism I’d already seen between Clay and Martha …

“She tried to poison me against him, you know,” Felicity said.

“Martha?”

“Yes. Tried to tell me all sorts of wild stories about him being a criminal or something. She’s a piece of work. If Jerry wants to hire her to redo the room Clay decorated—well, at least I won’t have to deal with her.”

“So now what happens?” I said aloud. “With you and Jerry.”

“Now that Clay’s dead, you mean?” She shrugged.

“You don’t think you’ll get back together?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Clay wasn’t my true love. Just my exit strategy. I’m not going back to Jerry. I’m tired of him knocking me around.”

But she looked so bleak that I wondered if she’d stick to that. I wouldn’t want to bet against the notion that by next Christmas, she and Jerry would be back together.

Assuming neither one of them turned out to be Clay’s killer.

“So where have you been staying?” I asked. “At the local women’s shelter?”

“I didn’t know we had a local women’s shelter,” she said. “And no, I’ve been staying with a friend in Westlake.”

Westlake was one of the posher local suburbs, the sort of place where people who could afford decorators were apt to live. Her tone implied that people with friends rich enough to live in Westlake had no need of a women’s shelter. I hoped she was right. Though I suspected the women I’d seen last night at the shelter were there out of fear, not economic need.

The chief stuck his head in.

“Mrs. Granger? We’d like you to come down with us to the station.”

“Great,” she said. “What did Jerry tell you?”

“Nothing yet,” he said. “I’d rather talk to both of you down at the station.”

She heaved herself off the recycling bin and headed toward the door. The chief stepped aside to allow room for her to pass. Sammy followed her.

“Horace is going to process those packages,” the chief said. “And then he’ll bring them back to the show house. We’d like to talk to each of the people whose packages were stolen.”

“Okay.” I nodded. “I gather Mr. Granger got out on bail this morning.”

“Yes,” the chief said. “But he won’t be for long. Last month Judge Shiffley granted his wife a protective order against him. He violated that by showing up here. And it’s his third violation, which means a mandatory six-months sentence.”

“And what are the odds Judge Shiffley will let him make bail twice in less then twenty-four hours?” I asked.

“Slim.” The chief smiled slightly. “We’ll also be charging him for everything he got up to last night. Should hold him for a while.”

“Long enough for you to figure out if he killed Clay?” I suggested.

The chief didn’t answer, but his face wore a look of satisfying anticipation, like a cat who had a mouse cornered and was looking forward to playing with it.

“So did you figure out why Mr. Granger was following me last night?” I asked.

The chief frowned.

“I’m afraid that’s partly our fault,” he said. “I had him in for questioning yesterday—Martha Blaine suggested him as one of Mr. Spottiswood’s clients who might have reason to dislike him.”