“That’s right, and you also receive a free Yule candle.” She opened the box next to the cash register. “The Yule candle is a symbol of good will, given to you along with our wish for a fire to warm you by and a light to guide you.”
The woman looked suspicious of this largesse, but dug a credit card out of an oversized shoulder bag and handed it over. The name embossed on it was Lovey FitzPatrick.
“Here you go, Ms. FitzPatrick,” Liss said a few minutes later, handing over one of the bright red bags with Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium emblazoned on the side. “I hope you’ll be staying for the festivities this evening. We’ll have carolers out singing. Santa Claus will visit the gazebo in the town square. And since this is the fourth day of Christmas, according to the old song, we will be introducing our four calling birds.”
“Unless you have more of these bears, I’ve got what I came for.”
“You’ve already been to The Toy Box, I take it?”
She snorted. “Oh, yes. Talk about overpriced!”
“But he does have a dozen different bears, and—”
Lovey FitzPatrick’s face turned bright red. “A dozen! That rotten liar!” Clutching the bag with the kilted bear and the candle, she stormed out of the Emporium.
Through the plate glass of the display window, Liss watched her sail back across the street and into Gavin Thorne’s store. “Good luck to you both,” she murmured.
This time when Liss locked up, she also turned out the lights. She wasn’t done for the day. Not by a long shot. She still had the next stage of the pageant to run. But she was through dealing with crazed customers until tomorrow.
A raucous shout of “Bring me my tea!” from the stockroom made her jump. Her hand to her heart, she fought the urge to reply. Yelling “Get your own damn tea!” would have no effect, not when the one demanding service was a parrot.
Liss entered the stockroom, her nose wrinkling at the smell of chicken manure. If she’d realized before she started this that she’d have to clean crates and cages, she’d have…done the same thing. With a sigh, she set to work cleaning, feeding, and watering. Chicken mash, she’d discovered, also had its own distinctive odor. It wasn’t unpleasant exactly, but she wouldn’t forget what it smelled like anytime soon.
The doves came with their own individual carrying cages. The chickens were in an oversized wooden crate that took up the rest of the space on top of the Emporium’s worktable. The cages of the four “calling birds”—played by pet parrots borrowed from all over the county—hung from every convenient hook.
“Okay, boys and girls,” Liss told them when she’d finished with the chickens. “Your turn.”
Parrots seemed to be somewhat cleaner in their habits, and they were certainly prettier to look at. Still, they came with their own set of problems. For one thing, they had to be kept warm, a tricky proposition with a pageant that was being held outdoors.
They also talked.
It had been the blue and yellow parrot who’d wanted tea. Winston. She gave old Winston some seeds and refilled his water dish. The mostly yellow one—Claudine—appeared to be sleeping. Liss hoped she was sleeping. Visions of reliving parts of the dead parrot sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus danced in her head. The third parrot, Augustus, was mostly red. He gave her an evil leer as he sidled back and forth on his perch.
The fourth parrot was named Polly. She was green. She watched with ill-disguised mistrust as Liss put out food and water. Liss latched the door to Polly’s cage when she’d finished, but didn’t cover it. She planned to leave the lights on for the birds, too. She’d come back to collect them in an hour or so for the ceremony, after which they’d go back to their owners until the pageant a week from Sunday.
“Polly want a cracker,” Polly said in decidedly cranky tone of voice.
“That is so clichéd!” About to leave the stockroom, Liss turned to look back at the bird. “Besides, I don’t have any crackers.”
“Polly hungry,” the parrot screeched, sounding even more irritable than before. “Gimme the f_ _ _ing cracker!”
Chapter Four
Be careful what you wish for, Sherri Willett thought on Sunday evening as she directed yet another out-of-state car toward the parking lot behind the grocery store. Shoppers had come to Moosetookalook, all right, and they’d brought their bad manners with them.
The town selectmen, Jason Graye in particular, were up in arms. The invaders were so desperate to lay hands on the one toy every child must find under the tree this year, or to score collectibles for themselves, that they had wrecked lawns by parking on them, created traffic jams, and even engaged in fistfights.
Things became quieter once darkness fell—thankfully early at this time of year—but the need for a visible police presence had everyone in the department working overtime. Sherri had barely seen her son all weekend. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the extra income, but she was not looking forward to working twelve-hour shifts from now until Christmas. According to the newly posted schedule, she’d get off at midnight, have a whole twenty-four hours to catch up on sleep and play with Adam, and then work midnight to noon for the next week. Both her feet and her head ached just thinking about it.
During a break in traffic, a team from one of the Portland television stations approached Sherri. A microphone was thrust into her face and she could see the red light indicating that the camera was running.
“Any trouble with the crowds, officer?”
Sherri had no great desire to see her own image on the small screen, bigger than life and in high definition that showed every wrinkle and blemish, but it didn’t look as if she had a choice. Repressing a shudder, she managed a stilted smile. “Everything’s going very smoothly. We have plenty of parking available for anyone who wants to come to Moosetookalook.”
She wasn’t about to reveal the selectmen’s gripes or describe the disgruntled customer who’d stomped down the porch steps of The Toy Box empty-handed and cussing a blue streak because Thorne’s markup was too steep for his wallet. Nor was she going to mention the shouting match she’d witnessed earlier that day between Stu Burroughs and Gavin Thorne.
In Sherri’s opinion, Stu was beating a dead horse. No way was Thorne going to share the goodies. Stu would do better to think of some novel way of his own to attract passing customers into his shop. A sale, maybe, though she could understand why cutting his prices might not appeal to him when Thorne kept raising his.
Sherri was vaguely aware of the reporter blathering on for the camera while she continued to direct traffic, but she was startled when the woman suddenly thrust the microphone in front of her again.
“Is that true, officer?”
“I couldn’t say.” Sherri kept smiling and hoped she hadn’t just made a fool of herself. She couldn’t say because she had no idea what the question had been.
A spattering of applause heralded Liss’s introduction of the symbol of the fifth day of Christmas—five huge, interlocking rings made of cardboard and covered with sparkly gilt paint.
Sherri jerked her head toward the town square behind her. “You might want to head over there before you miss this evening’s ceremony.”
“Five golden rings,” the reporter murmured.
“Looks like a poor man’s version of the Olympic symbol,” her cameraman muttered, but he dutifully aimed his equipment away from Sherri and toward the gazebo-style bandstand.
A small crowd of locals and tourists had gathered around it. The children playing