up the back wall of his shop, his stance had changed from studied indifference to rapt attention.
“If we call Saturday the first day of Christmas, then the twelfth day will fall on Christmas Eve.” Liss frowned. “That’s wrong, of course. Twelfth Night is actually after Christmas, but since celebrations in the U.S. center on the twenty-fifth of December, we’ll just have to take a little poetic license. I—”
“Christmas Eve is too late,” Thorne cut in. “You need to schedule things so that the final pageant falls on the weekend before Christmas.”
Liss’s face fell as she mentally subtracted days. “That would mean we’d have to have to hold the first day’s ceremony tomorrow!”
“Partridge in a pear tree, right?” Marcia asked.
At Liss’s nod, Marcia gave a dismissive shrug.
“No big deal if people miss that one. Or the next six, either.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Two doves, three hens, four calling birds, five gold rings, six swans, and seven geese. All poultry except for the rings, Liss—and boring! Until you start counting people, there won’t be anything interesting to see.”
“Okay. Okay, you’re right. But on the twelfth day we can make a terrific spectacle out of all of them.” Her enthusiasm only momentarily dimmed, she rummaged in another pocket for a pencil and started making notes on the back of one of her lists. “We’ll put a pear tree up in the town square next to the municipal Christmas tree. I know a taxidermist who can supply a stuffed partridge. Jump ahead to—”
“Jump ahead to customers arriving in droves to spend money,” Thorne interrupted, “and to the prices we’re going to charge. People will pay a heck of a lot more than ten bucks for these babies now.”
Liss looked as if she wanted to object, but held her tongue when she saw Marcia’s eyes light up.
After Thorne and Marcia had agreed to attend the selectmen’s meeting that evening with Liss, Liss and Sherri left the two of them engrossed in a discussion of the best wording for their ads.
“Time to get back to the P.D.,” Sherri said. “You won’t need my help dealing with the MSBA. You’ve already got an in with the top man.” Dan Ruskin, newly elected as president by the other small businesspeople in town, was one of the two men Liss had been dating since she’d returned to Moosetookalook seventeen months earlier.
Sherri started to cross the square, then paused to look back over her shoulder. “By the way—thanks, Liss.”
“For?”
“Salvaging my morning. I was bored to tears.” She grinned. “And if this plan of yours actually works, it will also be thanks for all the overtime I’m going to earn working crowd control.”
Chapter Two
Liss’s mouth kept moving but Dan Ruskin couldn’t hear a single word she said. So much for squeezing in an hour or two of woodworking between helping out at The Spruces, the hotel his father owned, and his regular job with Ruskin Construction. Resigned, he turned off the scroll saw and removed his safety glasses and ear protectors.
“Say again,” he instructed.
As the story tumbled out, Dan collected the blanks he’d just cut in various shapes and sizes and carried them to his worktable. Everything was a “blank” until it was finished. With a little work these would become small boxes, each one unique. They sold reasonably well at Angie’s Books, as did his small battery operated clocks. Like the boxes, no two were exactly the same. Sometimes he also supplied Angie Hogencamp with cherrywood walking sticks and wooden back-scratchers to sell in her shop.
He didn’t usually have so much trouble finding time to turn out these small projects. He used scrap lumber, so they didn’t cost him anything to make. If he figured by the time involved—a couple of hours for each box—he wasn’t making much profit, but every little bit helped. Besides, it all went to building his reputation as a custom woodworker. One day, with luck before he was too old and gray to appreciate it, he’d be able to strike out on his own and make things from wood full time.
Liss was still talking. As some of what she had already said sank in, Dan sent an incredulous look in her direction. That single glance was enough to tell him she was completely serious.
He went back to loosening the clamps on a box he’d glued together the day before. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say. Liss appeared to have everything worked out already. As usual. He wondered when he’d started to resent that quality.
“They call them the Daft Days in Scotland,” Liss concluded, “instead of the twelve days of Christmas, but I think we’d better stick with what most Americans will find familiar.”
“Whatever works,” he mumbled, and crossed back to the scroll saw. His workshop was almost the way he wanted it. He’d acquired a table saw, a miter saw, and a band saw. Next time he had a little extra saved, it was going for a drill press. “Liss, I’m sorry to give you the bum’s rush, but I need to finish cutting these before my lunch break is over.”
He flipped a switch. Immediately, the workshop was filled with a loud hum that drowned out every other sound. He’d just dropped his ear protectors back into place when Liss jabbed him in the ribs. She kept her fingernails cut short but put enough force behind the poke to make it hurt like blazes.
“Not while I’m cutting!” he yelled.
“You’re not cutting yet!” she shouted back. “Turn off the saw! This is important!”
Swallowing his irritation, he obeyed. “Okay. You’ve got my attention.” He turned to her with arms folded across his chest and a look of annoyance on his face. He’d give her five more minutes.
“Did you hear a single word I said?” He heard frustration in her voice, but what he saw in her expressive blue-green eyes was disappointment.
Dan suddenly felt ashamed of himself. So they hadn’t progressed to the point he’d thought they would in their personal relationship. They were still friends. They had been since they were kids. It was a given that if Liss needed him, he would be there for her.
With a sigh, he raked his fingers through his hair. Sending her a sheepish, apologetic look, he asked her to explain the situation to him again.
The second time around it still didn’t make a lot of sense, but Dan was willing to take Liss’s word for it that a rare opportunity had just fallen into their laps. She had a better head for business than he did.
“So, can we tap into funds from the Moosetookalook Small Business Association for this?” she asked.
“Not without calling an MSBA meeting and taking a vote, but I think they’ll go for it.”
His father was certainly desperate enough.
Five months earlier, on Fourth of July weekend, Moosetookalook’s venerable old grand hotel, The Spruces, had reopened. Joe Ruskin had poured heart, soul, and every penny he had to spare—and some he didn’t—into renovating the place. He was convinced getting the hotel up and running was the key to putting Moosetookalook back on the map.
Dan had to admit that things had started off well. Most of the rooms
