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“Could I make a copy of that CD?” he said sheepishly.
“Music is copyrighted material, Mr. MacCarthy. I’m sure you wouldn’t take kindly to my Xeroxing your latest blueprints and passing them around, would you?”
“Okay,” Mac conceded slowly, feeling like this conversation had started off badly and was slipping further downhill fast.
She softened her tone as she handed him the CD. “But you may borrow this one for the moment. If Curly needs further…inspiration…I’m sure you can find your way to a copy. An original copy, bought and paid for.”
“Absolutely. You got it.” Mac took the slim plastic box from her, and Curly put his head up to it, rubbing against the corner in a disturbingly lovesick gesture. “And, well, I’m sorry you got hired to fix whatever it is people think I broke.”
“I’m not sorry,” she commented, opening the door for them to go, “but if I get sorry, I’ll make sure you’re the first to know. I think it’s sort of sweet, actually, how much people care about getting along here.”
“If people cared about getting along here, you could have fooled me,” Mac observed. “There’s a town hall meeting tomorrow night—come see how much getting along we actually do.”
“Pastor Anderson,” Mary began.
“Dave,” the older man corrected.
“Dave,” she said, still not entirely comfortable with the concept of calling a member of the clergy by his first name. Up until this summer, she’d seen people like Dave Anderson as almost a different species. High, lofty souls who didn’t bother with the likes of “sinners” like herself. Not that she thought of herself as a sinner. She was pretty proud of all her accomplishments then. Back before she’d realized “achievement” didn’t always translate into “happiness.”
It was, in fact, happiness she was speaking of—at least to Dave. “You know, Dave,” she continued carefully, “I’m worried about how much people are expecting out of this Christmas drama.”
He smiled. “You’ll do fine. Actually, when you think about it, you can’t help but do fine. You’re our first drama coordinator, so folks don’t have anyone to compare you to. You can’t help but improve us. And they like you already—I can tell.”
How to say this? “It’s not the drama I’m worried about. It’s the…well, the result you’re looking for. Don’t you think town unity’s kind of a high expectation for a little church drama?”
Pastor Dave sat back in his chair. “That’s because you’re expecting it to be a little church drama. It will be church, it will be drama, but I guarantee it won’t be little. Complications might be just what the doctor ordered in this case.” His eyebrows lowered in concern. “I want you to pour your creative energies into making this as all-consuming as possible.”
“Aren’t there more direct ways to resolve the town’s conflict?”
“I suppose there would be—if the town was willing to admit they had a conflict. Most of them want a big Christmas extravaganza to make them feel good. Just you and I and a few other wise folk realize they need something to agree on to take their minds off the many disagreements.”
“What about Mac and Howard?”
The pastor chuckled. “I think Mac knows he stirred up a hornet’s nest. He enjoys it—always has been one to whip things up a bit. I think Howard feels the conflict, but he’s likely to read it all wrong. He feels attacked because I think he’d much rather change on his own terms, not on those of someone like Mac.”
“But Howard was bound to retire someday.” Mary leaned one elbow on the corner of Dave’s desk. She was still sorting out the complexities of “simple little Middleburg.”
“I’m not so sure Howard’s caught on to that truth yet. He’s been mayor for so long he may not remember how to be anything else. We’ve got sixth-graders who’ve never known Howard as anything but mayor. You have to respect that.”
“All things considered, I’m not so sure a Christmas pageant is the way to cope. We’re sticking a tiny bandage on a great big wound here.”
“Miss Thorpe, you ever been a parent?” He got up from his chair and walked over to his office windows overlooking the preschool. “Ever given a toddler a bandage?”
“I’m sure I have at some point.” Mary didn’t really see where he was heading.
“They believe it makes things better. A child may get stitches for a nasty gash, but they won’t calm down until somebody puts on a bandage. It’s the stitches that do the real healing, but they still need the bandage. You and I know it’s an illusion, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.” He grinned and pointed at her. “Some of my best work is done with Band-Aids.”
Mary blinked. “I’m a diversionary tactic?”
He walked toward her. “Would it make it easier if I said you were a coping mechanism?”
This had started out as a simple job. A calmer life serving an undiluted purpose, a chance for Mary to get away from the agenda-laden world of professional music and advertising. Suddenly she had more agendas than a diplomat and a goal so complex and obscure she could no longer say what it truly was. “I’ve got a headache just trying to make sense of this.” She looked up at him. “Can I have a Band-Aid?” It was supposed to be a joke, but Mary couldn’t quite muster the confidence to pull it off.
“Take two rehearsals and call me in the morning,” Pastor Dave joked.
Mary sat in her living room that afternoon, trying to make sense of it all. How many people thought of the drama as just a nice holiday event? How many of them were aware of its secondary goal of unifying the community? How to balance the two? Lord, I prayed for hours over this job. I asked You to take me someplace where I could figure out all this faith stuff. Someplace easier than Chicago. This isn’t looking easier.
Mary smiled as the faint strains of Pavarotti’s tenor voice singing “Ave Maria” reached her ears. She wondered if Mac found it an improvement over the Mozart aria. It was hard to think of that bird crooning a ballad. Too bad it wasn’t summertime; she’d have been able to hear Curly through the open window.
Then again, maybe it was better all the windows were shut. She wasn’t entirely sure Curly the cockatoo was up to the high note at the end of the song.
Laughing at the thought of the bird straining to hit the note, his creamy neck extended and his feathers fluttering, Mary reached for the mail that had been forwarded from her old Chicago apartment. She sorted through the envelopes until she spotted the familiar gray stationery of Maxwell Advertising. She’d forgotten, until now, that she had one more bonus coming. She opened the envelope and slid out a substantial check. How ironic that her “swan song” had been her most lucrative project ever. God had given her enough resources to take whatever job she wanted, wherever she wanted. And He had brought her here. Maybe, for now, she could trust that, despite the growing complexities.
Mac shut the door to his office with a fierce thunk and walked briskly toward Deacon’s Grill. A piece of pie couldn’t really do anything about the storm of aggravation he carried around, but it couldn’t hurt, either. At least a warm cup of coffee might soothe his annoyance. “Peace on earth, goodwill toward men?” Today felt more like “profits on earth, bad will toward any consumer.” No wonder Ma had asked him to handle the procurement of one of those idiotic Bippo Bears for his nephew, Robby. Finding the fuzzy blue singing bear proved to be more like warfare than Christmas shopping. Not counting the two trips to two separate malls yesterday, Mac had just spent three hours on the phone and Internet in search of a Bippo Bear. He sat down on his counter stool at the Grill with such force that the thing rocked under his weight.
Gina, no stranger to diner psychology, read his body language and immediately swapped out the ordinary sized stoneware mug at the island for a much larger one she produced from under the counter. Gina was smart. “Regulars” who obviously had a bad day were quickly given what she called a “comfort cup.” That was Gina’s entirely-too-female term for “the really big mug of coffee.” He accepted it gladly, needing the hot beverage too much to care that it announced his disgruntled mood to the rest of the diner. He was pretty sure his entrance had already done that, anyway.
“And a Merry Christmas to you, too, sugar,” Gina said as she slid the sugar container in front of Mac withholding the cream pitcher. Apart from baking the best pies around, Gina also had a great memory for customer preferences. “Rough going on the campaign trail?”
Campaign? Who had time for a campaign when Christmas shopping was sucking half his day into the trash can?
Gina’s reference to the mayoral campaign halted Howard Epson in his conversation. Mac hadn’t even noticed Howard as he came in, he was so annoyed. Epson and his wife were sitting in their favorite corner booth with Mary Thorpe of all people, probably advising her on the mayor’s expected role in all holiday ceremonies. Divine drama aside, he was sure Howard took pains to stay a highly visible mayor during the MCC’s Christmas season.
Mac swallowed a gulp of coffee, telling himself to back down off his soapbox. Howard could get to him so easily these days. They’d chalked up a lot of reasons to dislike each other over the years, some of which everyone knew—Mac had a long, checkered history of behavior Howard disapproved of—and some that were more private.
Years ago, when Mac was a senior in high school, he’d pulled a prank of sorts that ended up with Howard in the crosshairs. Actually, to call it a prank was making it too deliberate—it was more of an impulsive reaction. A stupid, angry gesture that ended up damaging church property and Howard’s car one night. The whole town had seen the wreckage, but no one had ever discovered Mac was behind it. When God and the passing years finally granted Mac some maturity, he’d still never found it in himself to fess up to the deed. Howard would surely blow it way out of proportion, and Mac had convinced himself it was one of those secrets best left buried. Not that it hadn’t nagged at him over time, but lots of stuff about Howard bothered Mac—civic and personal. It was one of the reasons he felt God had asked him to run for mayor; to prove he was better than the angry kid he once was.
Mac caught sight of one of Howard’s campaign brochures on the place setting next to Mary. She was surely getting a suggestion or two about the proper way to vote. At Gina’s mention of the campaign, Howard inclined his balding head slightly toward Mac and stopped his words midsentence. Even the French fry on the way to his mouth had been stilled halfway. Mary Thorpe caught Mac’s glance for a split second before looking down into her pie.
“No,” Mac answered Gina’s earlier question clearly enough for Howard to hear. “The campaign’s going fine.” He tried not to emphasize the word too much. “As a matter of fact, it’s a pathetic stuffed animal that has me riled up. I’ve just wasted half the morning trying to find something called a Bippo Bear for my nephew. Evidently even the secret service couldn’t get their hands on one of these if they wanted to—and don’t you know, it’s the one and only thing Robby wants for Christmas.”
“A what?” Gina asked, flipping open her order pad and pulling a pen out of from behind her ear.
“A Bippo Bear. It’s blue and sings to you and can’t be found for love or money. Already. And it’s still early December. What is it with these toy people? Don’t they realize they have to make enough of these things to go around? Do they enjoy disappointing kids and making parents crazy?”
Drew Downing looked up from his sandwich a few seats to Mac’s left. “Bippo Bear? I saw something on the news last night about those.” Drew used to host a church renovation television show until an episode had brought him to Middleburg and introduced him to the love of his life, hardware store owner Janet Bishop. The man knew a thing or two about the power of advertising. “I saw one go for a hundred dollars yesterday on an Internet auction site. This year’s must-have toy, it seems.”
“Why does there have to be a ‘must-have’ toy, anyway?” Mac complained in a cranky voice. “My nephew doesn’t even like stuffed animals. I’ll spend two weeks tracking down one of those things and he’ll play with it for two hours before he tires of it.”
“Oh, yeah,” remembered Gina, “it’s that commercial that’s on eleven hundred times a day. How could I forget?” She began to hum a few bars of the annoying little Bippo Bear song.
The one Mac had been forced to listen to for forty minutes while on hold with the toy company in a misguided attempt to locate a Canadian retailer. While he thought going foreign to be a smart alternative, the cheerful customer service representative at the Bakley Toy Factory informed him that he was her sixtieth such call of the day.
“Mary,” came Howard’s voice over his angry thoughts, “are you all right? Your pie okay? You look like you swallowed your fork all of a sudden.”
Mac glanced over and Gina raised her head from her order pad. Middleburg’s newest resident did indeed appear a bit ill, but Mac doubted it was anything Gina fed her. Howard had probably just said something insensitive, as he was known to do when he became overly focused on impressing someone new.
“Oh, no,” Mary protested loudly. “It’s wonderful pie.” Mac recognized the forced cheerfulness she’d used when telling him it was “okay” that a maniac bird attacked her in her living room.
“Hi, Mary.” Mac waved and she waved back, but it was a weak, wobbly gesture. “Hello, Howard,” Mac said more formally.
Howard had become extremely formal with Mac since he’d announced his candidacy. “Good afternoon, MacCarthy.” Howard had begun calling him Mr. MacCarthy or just MacCarthy whenever they met now. He didn’t even turn around, just twisted his head half a turn in Mac’s direction and puffed up as though they were on podiums debating issues instead of just eating in the same diner.
“Apple as usual, Mac?” Gina interjected. Her tone of voice seemed to imply that all conflicts could easily be solved with the right slice of pie. “I’ll even heat it up for you, how’s that?”
“Perfect.” He settled more peaceably onto his stool and inhaled the rich aroma rising out of his wonderfully enormous coffee mug. “I refuse to let a stuffed blue bear steal my holiday.”
“Good plan,” Drew Downing offered. “But I know what you mean. My sister e-mailed me yesterday, and she wasn’t too subtle about asking me what strings I could pull to get my hands on one of those for her daughter. The old ‘Can’t you do this ’cause you’re famous?’ ploy.”
Mac smiled. While Drew still made occasional appearances for his former Missionnovation television show, Mac had taken to ribbing him about his “has been” status. And really, Downing had just walked head-on into another teasing with that remark. “You’re just not famous enough anymore, sport,” he taunted, digging into the pie Gina had just placed in front of him.
Drew caught onto the game and cracked a wide grin. “Hey, I still rate. I still have fans. My Web site got six hits last week.”
“Wow. Maybe I should ask you to endorse my candidacy.” Mac thought he’d said it quietly enough to escape Howard’s hearing, but the man seemed to have radar for that sort of thing, and Mac saw his head incline slightly in his direction again.
Drew caught the exchange. “I’ve stayed a star as long as I have because I know which battles not to get into.”
“You’re a Middleburg resident now, you’ll have to vote soon enough.”
“A gratefully private matter, Mr. MacCarthy.” Drew poured more cream into his own coffee. “God bless democracy.”
Mac leaned in on one elbow. “Why do I get the feeling if Howard wins, you’ll tell him you voted for him, but if I win you’ll say I had your vote?”
Howard wasn’t even pretending not to listen now. He’d turned halfway around to face Mac and Drew, his attention openly on the conversation.
“Eat your pie, gentlemen,” Gina cut in, brandishing the pie-cutter knife she was holding. She tilted the spatula in Howard’s direction. “All of you.”
Drew straightened in his chair. “Don’t anger the pie lady,” he declared as if he and Mac had been caught passing notes in class.
“Good policy,” Mac whispered back loudly, glad to have enough humor to still make a joke. Honestly, his short fuse was way too short lately. He needed to remember to get out more. The combination of year-end workload and campaign tasks on top of his new commission as Bippo Bear procurement agent had gotten to him fast. I’m going to need an easy nature and a mile-long fuse to be mayor, he told himself. That’s a tall order for the likes of me. Are You listening, Lord?
Chapter Four
It couldn’t be. I mean, yes, it was Kentucky, and it wasn’t like they didn’t have snakes in Illinois, but they didn’t take up residence under the kitchen sink. That was the beauty of living five stories up in a city. The wildlife stayed in the wild. Mary stood very still, both hands vise-locked onto the broomstick she now pushed against the cabinet door. Nothing, no one could get her to stop holding that cabinet door shut and keeping that lethal creature inside. Mary heard something shuffle behind the door and swallowed a scream.
Think. You’re a smart girl, think.
No coherent thought came to mind.
If she screamed, surely someone in the building would hear her. Did birds have good hearing? Would Curly be able to hear her even if Dinah or Mac couldn’t? The scene of Curly getting Mac’s attention, “Lassie, what do you mean Timmy’s stuck down the well?”-style, flashed absurdly through her head. Town newcomer saved by vigilant cockatoo. It’d be out over the Internet in seconds, along with a photo of herself being loaded, pale and shaking, into a Woodford County ambulance. Sunflower seed reward for snake-killing bird.
Not helpful, Mary. Think. Think rationally.
I can’t think rationally, there’s a python under my sink.
You don’t even know if it’s venomous. There are perfectly harmless snakes, her rational side argued.
It will eat you in one gulp, her terrified side rebutted, very successfully.
“Mac!” she yelled, trying for some ridiculous reason to sound calm. When no reply came, she tried “Dinah!” After half a minute and another sinister sub-sink shuffle, Mary cried, “Curly!”
Nothing.
Well of course he can’t hear you, it’s winter and the windows are shut. A building as old as this must have thick walls. Lord Jesus! I haven’t even had a year as a Christian, I can’t be ready for Heaven yet! Save me!
The floor. She could use the floor. Forcing in a deep breath, Mary tried to mentally compare the floor plan of her apartment with Mac’s office below. She’d only seen it once, but it was enough to be reasonably sure that his office was directly below where she was standing. If she just thumped, it would only sound like she was moving things. It had to sound deliberate. Somewhere, out of the dark trivia-hoarding recesses of her brain, Mary retrieved the Morse code for SOS. Three short beeps, followed by three long beeps, followed by three short ones again. While the concept of long beeps didn’t directly translate into foot-stomping, Mary guessed she could come close enough. If that didn’t work, she could still reach the toaster and begin throwing it on the ground until Mac was convinced the walls were caving in up here.
Tap-tap-tap. STOMP. STOMP. STOMP. Tap-tap-tap.Mary dug her heel into the floor to produce the loudest possible staccato taps. Lord Jesus, please let Mac know Morse code and not let him think I’m an amateur flamenco dancer. She repeated the sequence again.
Curly noticed first. Mac looked up from his papers, only barely noticing an unusual noise. Mary sure was doing a lot of banging around up there. Rhythmic, too. Exercise?
Tap-tap-tap. BANG-BANG-BANG. Tap-tap-tap. Curly came down off his perch in the window to stand on Mac’s desk lamp. “Your new friend is a bit odd,” Mac remarked, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “Even for city folk.”
The succession of noises repeated again, louder. Folk dancing? Some jumpy new Chicago fitness fad? Morse code? Mac reached for his calculator, chuckling.
Until the bangs repeated.
Morse code? He knew Morse code. He knew the signal she was banging out, or knew it once. Mac stared at Curly, trying to pull the information out of the back recesses of his memory until…
Tap-tap-tap. BANG-BANG-BANG. Tap-tap-tap. SOS. That was Morse code for SOS.
No way. That was absurd.
The series of bangs came faster and louder now. Quite clearly three short taps followed by three more big bangs followed by three more short taps. SOS. Or something too close to it to ignore. But really, how many people knew Morse code, much less stomped it on their floors? Still, he’d never forgive himself if something really had been wrong and he’d dismissed it. Dashing up there would make him look like a complete idiot—if she was fine. “You think?” Mac said to Curly, pushing back his desk chair.
Curly was already flying toward the door. “Yep!”
He stood at the door, hands poised to knock, and listened for another set of stomps. He’d almost talked himself out of knocking, sure she would find his visit an example of overdone small-town meddling, when he heard the moan. It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a calm sound. At that point, knocking was no longer needed. Mac flung Curly off his forearm and twisted Mary’s door handle, pushing the door wide open and sprinting inside.
“Oh, Lord Jesus, save me from that thing! Who’s there?”
Mac followed her voice into the kitchen to find Mary Thorpe impaling her cabinet with a broomstick. Throwing all her slight weight against that door as if an 800-pound gorilla were hiding under her sink. It was comic—in an alarming kind of way—until whatever it was behind there made a considerable racket. Then it wasn’t so funny.
Mary shifted her weight, pressing harder against the broom handle, and squeaked “Mac! It’s in there!”
“What’s in there?” Mac said as calmly as he could while scanning her kitchen for heavy objects. He strode to her and took the broomstick, keeping pressure against the door.
She bolted away from him the minute he had a grip, backing into a corner on the other side of the kitchen, her chest heaving. “I don’t know. I only heard it. I sure wasn’t going to open the door and introduce myself.”
Mac worked himself closer to the cabinet, hand-overhand down the broom handle until he held the door shut with his boot. Nothing pushed back against him, but things were definitely moving around in there. A constant, steady rustle rather than an irregular scurrying. Mary Thorpe had a snake in her kitchen. Not exactly the warmest of Kentucky welcomes. “It sounds like you’ve got a snake in there,” he confirmed, trying to keep his tone conversational, as if kitchen snake visits were commonplace. They weren’t rare, but it was unusual to get one on the second floor in December.
“Ooo,” she winced, hunching up her shoulders and squinting her eyes shut. “I knew it. Snakes. I hate snakes. I mean I really hate snakes.”
Mac started searching for something forklike to trap the head. Somehow he didn’t think Mary Thorpe would take kindly to having her carving fork used to skewer a snake. “It’s probably a harmless milk snake. They like buildings.”
“Probably harmless?” Unconvinced didn’t do her tone of voice justice.
“There just aren’t that many that can hurt you around here. Be thankful it’s not a skunk in there.” Mac looked at the cabinet again. Don’t let it be a skunk in there. “Is your phone hooked up?”
