“I assume the basement is also in your sights,” I said.

He nodded.

“I completely understand,” Robyn said. “I know we should have done something about it weeks and weeks ago.”

“By ‘we’ don’t you mean Riddick?” I asked. “Wasn’t he the one who was supposed to arrange the estate sale?”

“Yes, but he was clearly in over his head,” Robyn said. “I’ve been trying for weeks to figure out a way to reassign the project without hurting his feelings.”

“Do you have someone willing to take it on?” I asked. Clearing out the basement was one thing, but arranging an auction and an estate sale? I had a premonition that the church-swapping schedule was suddenly going to need more work—at least it would if she was planning to enlist me.

“Your mother seems quite willing to take it on,” she said. “She’s already started planning—she thinks we’ll raise more money if we have an auction for the more valuable stuff. It all sounds fabulous to me. I’ve just been trying to bring Riddick around. But we can’t wait any longer, so even though he’s out sick—”

“Again?” I asked.

“Or still,” she said. “I never can tell. At any rate, since Chief Featherstone has only given us till New Year’s Day to get this done, we can’t afford to wait any longer.”

I had the feeling that far from being unwelcome, the chief’s ultimatum had given her the solution to one of her knottiest problems.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Chief Featherstone said. “Merry Christmas to both of you, and apologies again for delivering such unseasonably bad news.”

With that he left.

“So if Mother’s going to take on the project, have you told her about the deadline?” I asked.

“A few minutes ago,” she said. “She seemed to have a plan for where to put the stuff.”

“And did she say what her plan was?” I was willing to bet I already knew.

“She thought it would be nice to have the estate sale in a barn,” Robyn said. “Or possibly two barns—I gather the one on your parents’ farm is on the small side for all the stuff we’ve got, so we’d need either a second barn somewhere else, or possibly some tents for the yard—though that would mean waiting till it’s warmer, and I gather she’s as eager to hold the sale as I am to see all this stuff leave. She’s going to look around and see if she can find a barn large enough to hold it all.”

Just then my cell phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID. Mother. I answered the phone and put her on speaker so Robyn could hear.

“Yes, Mother,” I said, before she could say anything. “You can use our barn for the estate sale.”