The judge was climbing down off the bench, with the help of a nearby deputy. The dogs all rose, and the ones who had been reclining in the wagon bed poured over the side to join the others in a happily milling pack around her feet.

“I need a drink. And I don’t believe in drinking alone. Your brother can ride back to town with his clients. Come have an eggnog.”

With that she strode toward the exit.

Not the most gracious invitation I’d ever received, but I fell in at the tail end of the pack. Once we got outside the barn she waited for me and we walked side by side up to the farmhouse.

The front door opened into the great room, as she called it; a huge combination kitchen, dining room, and family room with a roaring fire in the oversized hearth. I sat down on a chair near the fire—a battered-looking armchair that probably only looked tweed because of the dog hair, but proved to be utterly comfortable.

The judge hadn’t gone overboard on decorating. A wreath on the door, and a big spruce Christmas tree in the corner covered with multicolored ornaments, most of them old-fashioned and a little chipped or tarnished. Mother would have described them as vintage and enthused over their patina. I just found it homey and comfortable.

But where she beat all Mother’s efforts was in the smell department. The whole house teemed with authentic Christmassy scents—the sharp evergreen odors of the tree and the wreath and the mouthwatering scents of gingerbread and cinnamon-spiced cider.

“What the hell is going on here, anyway?” Judge Jane asked. “Let me hang your coat up, and then I’ll get the eggnog. Did those two boys actually kill that poor old man?”

“I don’t think so.” I leaned back and put my feet up on a well-worn footstool. “But why ask me?”

“Because I can’t ask any of them.” She was standing at the stove, and gestured over her shoulder in the general direction of the barn. The smell of warming eggnog joined the other holiday scents. “It would be completely irregular. Ex parte communication. Hell, I couldn’t ask you if I hadn’t just recused myself. But I’m off the case now, and you’re a civilian. Does Henry Burke really think they did it?”

“He knows they did the first two pranks,” I said. “The skunks and the snake. He has a witness who overheard them discussing it.”

“A reliable witness?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Do you consider me reliable?”

She sighed. Then she handed me a glass of eggnog and sat down on another dog-tweed armchair with her own glass in hand.

“Tell me what you heard. Please,” she added, as if remembering that she wasn’t wearing her judge’s robes at the moment.