Poinsettias and Peril

The holiday season in Port Danby is never complete without a little peril!

Lacey is excited to spend her first Christmas with James as a married couple, but she’s missing her best friends Lola and Ryder. They’re across the globe on a scientific excursion, and this will be Lacey’s first Christmas in Port Danby without them. She’s determined to make the best of it.

In the meantime, there’s a Christmas tree feud brewing between two local farmers, and Lacey finds herself caught up in the middle of it. When one of the farmers ends up dead, there is no shortage of suspects. An accident with a skateboard and a surprise video chat add to the excitement, and Lacey soon finds herself on a holiday rollercoaster ride.

"The box is marked Christmas, James," I called up into the square opening in the ceiling. I'd had no problem shoving all my holiday decorations and unnecessary knick-knacks into the dark, dusty and presumably spider-rich attic when I first moved into my house on Loveland Terrace, but I'd never worked up the courage to retrieve any of the items. It was easier to push the boxes in than to pull them down. This holiday season I was determined to decorate the house. It was our first Christmas as a married couple. I now had a husband to send up into the very unwelcoming attic. My mom once told me, "Lacey, you've got to get a husband. They're very handy when it comes to things like opening pickle jars and mowing the lawn." I now understood that pearl of wisdom.

The flashlight beam swooped down from above, and Briggs' face followed. He turned red as he hung his head down from the attic hatch. "I don't see anything marked Christmas."
"Unless the spiders had a yard sale, it has to be there, James."

He pulled his head back up with a frustrated sigh.

"Are you looking for the word Christmas, C-h-r—"

His head hung down again. "You aren't seriously spelling it out for me."

I pressed my fingers to my lips. "Guess the spelling is universally known."

Our pet crow, Kingston, was never one to sit out excitement. He jumped from the top of his cage, where he'd been perched for the last few minutes watching the human shenanigans, and landed solidly on my shoulder. He pointed his long, black beak upward, and we both stared into the square hole.

Briggs appeared again, this time with a layer of cobwebs plastered to his thick hair. "Did you know there's a box marked Kingston's stuff?"

Kingston's whole body bobbed up with interest.

I reached up to my head to let Briggs know he had a little something in his hair. It was more than a little something, which he found out when he reached up, touched the mirror image spot on his head and came away with a handful of dusty cobwebs.

His face, still red from hanging upside down, scrunched up as he tried to shake the cobwebs free from his hand. "I'm going to have to be hosed down in the yard when I'm through here."

Bear, our big, wonderful and perpetually silly dog, and Nevermore, our never silly but still mostly wonderful cat, joined me beneath the hole in the ceiling. I laughed at the audience. "Wouldn't you love to know what these guys are thinking right now?" I asked.

"I know what Kingston's thinking," Briggs said. "He wants me to pull down his box of stuff." He disappeared a second, then his face reappeared, mostly free of the cobwebs. "What kind of stuff could a bird possibly have in storage? He already has the most luxurious setup any crow could ever want."

I clapped once. "That's right. You're right. He does have everything he could want. That was a moving box, and I just remembered that the box I had marked Christmas somehow got grease on it. It might have been sitting in the garage while I was packing up. So, when I got here, I pulled out Kingston's stuff and put the—"

Briggs shook his head. "So, I should have been looking for a box marked Kingston's stuff instead of Christmas."

I smiled sweetly up at him. "Oops."

He disappeared. The ceiling above us creaked as he crawled through the attic.
Dust cascaded down as the box was pushed to the edge of the opening.

"Put the ladder beneath the opening, and I'll set the box on top of it," Briggs said.

"Right." I shooed Kingston off my shoulder. He took the gesture as an insult and flew back to the top of his cage. I moved the ladder beneath the square opening, and Briggs lowered the box.

"It's pretty light," Briggs noted.

"Well, through the years, I've lost some of the decorations due to pet catastrophes." I climbed up a rung and grabbed the box.

Briggs lowered first one foot then the other and found the top rung. His jeans were gray from dust.

I instantly sneezed.

"Gesundheit," he said and then proceeded with his own sneeze.

"I think you might have to be hosed off, after all. Please leave all the spiders in the attic."

"Yeah, I already told them they weren't coming down for the ride." Briggs maneuvered the hatch door into place and descended the ladder. He held up his arms and stared down at his clothes. "Right to the laundry and shower. How long has it been since you've been up in that attic?" he asked.

"Oh, I've never been up there. I just pushed the boxes into the abyss and shut the hatch. Far too many crawly things up there."