Chapter 1
Monday, December 21
“Cow manure?”
I was talking into my cell phone, but my friend Caroline Willner, who’d just popped into the kitchen with an armload of brightly wrapped presents, must have thought I was talking to her.
“Is this part of the whole not-swearing-in-front-of-the-boys thing?” she asked. “And what did I do to deserve—oops!” Her voice sank to a whisper. “Sorry! Didn’t realize you were on the phone.”
Although I could see that her curiosity was aroused.
“We have access to a variety of manures—cow, horse, sheep, goat, and llama,” I said into the phone. “Much of it’s even organic. Is there a particular reason you want cow manure?”
“Well, any of those would be acceptable,” my caller said. “Especially the organic ones. I just don’t want chicken manure.”
“Of course not,” I said. “It’s so apt to be infected with salmonella. Give me your address and let me know when I can drop by—would sometime later today work? If you can show me the area you want fertilized, I can figure out how much manure is required and how many volunteers we’ll need to spread it.”
“I’ll be home all day putting up the tree.” She rattled off her address. When I’d jotted it down, we wished each other a Merry Christmas and signed off.
“And a Merry Christmas to you,” I said, turning to Caroline and accompanying the greeting with a hug.
“Likewise.” She set the presents down on the table and began to pry her small, round form out of a bright turquoise down jacket. “Your mother sent me in here to see how I could help out with this noble, heartwarming holiday endeavor you’re in charge of. And it turns out to be a manure-delivery service? I can see why she told me to ask you, instead of explaining it herself.”
I could see her point—I wasn’t sure Mother had ever actually uttered the word “manure” in her life—she preferred “natural fertilizer.”
“And it’s certainly not very Christmas-y, is it?” she added. “Not exactly festive.”
I sighed.
“Manure can be pretty festive if you’re a die-hard gardener,” I pointed out.
“Ooh—I have an idea,” she exclaimed. “How about some exotic manure? Much more festive. And I’ve got a lot of it down at the sanctuary. Zebra manure, wildebeest manure, yak manure—lots of options. I’m very careful about their feed, so it’s all completely organic. You’re welcome to as much of it as you’d like.”
“I’ll suggest that to Dad,” I said. “He’s the manure expert.” And I could let him explain that we probably had more than enough suitable manure right here in Caerphilly County, thanks to the growing number of local farmers who’d taken up organic farming. Although if too many of them had figured out that they could actually sell their organic manure, nice to know we could trek down to the Willner Wildlife Refuge for a supply—it was only an hour or so southwest of us. “Most of our projects aren’t that weird, and so far this is the only one involving manure. It’s called Helping Hands for the Holidays.”
“And just what does Helping Hands do when it’s not delivering manure?”
“Well, it all started out this fall, after the hurricane,” I said. “For a while everywhere you went you saw blue tarps, boarded-up windows, and piles of branches and other debris. The Ladies’ Interfaith Council figured out that some people couldn’t do the cleanup and repairs themselves and couldn’t afford to hire anyone. So they decided to help out.”
“If I try very hard, I can see the members of the Ladies’ Interfaith Council picking up fallen branches,” Caroline said. “Small, graceful ones. But shingling roofs? Do they wear white gloves, or is that just for the tea parties?”
“Clearly it’s been a while since you went to a Council meeting.” I had to laugh. “Robyn Smith started shaking things up when she took over as rector at Trinity, and ever since they let in the Wiccans and the atheists, things have been downright lively.”
“Is your mother okay with all of this?” Caroline looked anxious.
“Mother’s fine with it,” I said. “They haven’t done away with the tea parties and cucumber sandwiches—they’ve just added a whole lot of other things, most of which she approves of, as long as other people do the heavy lifting. Anyway, the Council decided to fix things up for a couple of the neediest cases—a few retired folks on limited income and a young woman who was recently widowed and is trying to work full time while raising three kids. They negotiated a deal with Randall Shiffley—his construction company provided the supplies at cost and he donated the services of a few skilled workers. The Council raised the money to pay for the supplies and recruited volunteers to perform the manual labor under the supervision of Randall’s workers. And stuff got done for people who couldn’t otherwise afford it. The ladies of the Council saw that it was good, so they got all excited and decided we should do a lot more of this helping our neighbors.”
“And that’s not a good thing?” She must have picked up on my tone.
“It’s a wonderful thing,” I said. “But this is absolutely the wrong time of year to be doing it. Everybody’s calendars are already bursting at the seams, and the weather hasn’t exactly been helpful.”
“Really?” She cocked her head in puzzlement, rather like a bird. “I thought you hadn’t had any snow? We haven’t down my way.”
“We haven’t,” I said. “Snow isn’t the only kind of weather that can complicate things. The last few months we’ve had unseasonably warm weather and torrential rain—Caerphilly Creek has flooded three times already this month. But whenever the thermometer plunges into the sub-freezing zone, the atmosphere’s dry as a bone. We’ve had nothing for weeks but warm wet days and bright sunny deep-freeze days. Everyone’s mourning the likelihood that we won’t have a white Christmas.”
“Maybe Rose Noire should do her snow-summoning dance,” Caroline suggested. “It could help—it was a lot of fun last year.”
“Oh, so that’s what happened?” I said. “No, thank you. Breaking the all-time snowfall record last year was interesting, but we don’t need to go for two Christmas blizzards in a row. And a snowfall could bring all the Helping Hands projects to a complete halt, instead of just making everyone who’s working on them miserable. At least the people working on the outdoors projects—fortunately we do have some indoor projects. In addition to roofs, furnaces, insulation, wiring, and plumbing we started getting other kinds of requests. Car repairs. Accounting woes. Medical issues. Helping Hands turned into a sort of Make-A-Wish program for grown-ups. And then—”
My phone rang. It was Randall Shiffley. I should probably answer. With luck he was wearing his mayor’s hat and calling me, his part-time special assistant, on some official business. But the odds were it would be Helping Hands business. I could at least hope he was calling with a progress report on an existing project, not enlisting me for a new one.
“Hey, Randall,” I said. “What’s up?”