After lunch, Michael curled up to have a nap with the boys. I checked my e-mail and voice mail and found that a few small schedule kinks had to be ironed out. Normally I’d have worked on it in Michael’s office, where I could use the printer, but I was wary of getting sucked into the sewing frenzy. So I packed up my laptop and headed to town. After all, I could do some shopping while I was there. We were running low on a lot of things, particularly coffee, tea, juice, and sodas, thanks to the enthusiasm with which Rose Noire was keeping the sewing circle refreshed.

While I was at the market, I spent a little time hanging around the poultry section, frowning at everything, but no lurking Shiffleys offered to sell me illicit poultry. Evidently Randall had reined in Duane.

I dropped by the New Life Baptist Church and St. Byblig’s so I could check on the progress both sets of cleaners were making. And then I went over to Trinity and settled down into my little office to sort out the schedule once more.

I’d been there for fifteen minutes or so when Barliman Vess walked in. He started when he saw me, so I deduced I wasn’t the object of his visit.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

I was tempted to ask, “Then why are you standing here, hovering over me?” But I decided it would be more effective to ignore him.

I was wrong. He just stood there. After what seemed like an eternity but was really only five minutes according to the clock on my laptop, I looked up again. He was staring at the junk. Or possibly at the window at the far end of the room, behind all the junk.

“It’ll be nice when all that junk’s gone, won’t it?” I said.

“Junk?” He looked over as if startled that I was still there, and frowned thunderously. “Nonsense. Perfectly good furniture. Plenty of use left in it. Complete waste of money, replacing all of it.”

He glared at me. I shrugged, because it was less likely to make him angry than saying what I thought—that he was a pigheaded old skinflint to begrudge Robyn a nice office. It wasn’t as if the church was broke.

He eventually stopped scowling at me and ran his eyes across the junk filling the room one last time. Then he turned and left without saying another word.

“And a merry Christmas to you, too, Mr. Scrooge,” I muttered.

I had barely turned back to my laptop screen when Riddick scurried into my office.

“What did he want?” he asked.

“Vess? I have no idea,” I said. “Just shedding a little yuletide warmth in my direction, I suppose.”

“Didn’t he say anything?”

Riddick was clearly overwrought. I turned reluctantly away from my computer again to face him.