Bluegrass Christmas. Allie Pleiter

      

      “I’m supposed to be the cure for the town, and your cockatoo now?” Mary said as she ran her fingers along the row of CDs to find some new music for the bird.

      That was a pretty lousy way to look at it. “I don’t think of it like that,” said Mac.

      “That’s how they put it. Something to bring everyone together. A big, splendid Christmas pageant to remind us of peace on earth, goodwill to men and such.”

      “I’m sorry you got hired to fix whatever it is people think I broke.”

      “I’m not sorry,” she said, handing him a Mozart disc. “But if I get sorry, I’ll make sure you’re the first to know. I think it’s sort of sweet, actually, how much people care about getting along here.”

      “If people cared about getting along here, you could have fooled me,” Mac said. “There’s a town hall meeting tomorrow night—come see how much getting along we actually do.”

      ALLIE PLEITER

      Enthusiastic but slightly untidy mother of two, RITA^® Award finalist Allie Pleiter writes both fiction and nonfiction. An avid knitter and nonreformed chocoholic, she spends her days writing books, drinking coffee and finding new ways to avoid housework. Allie grew up in Connecticut, holds a BS in Speech from Northwestern University and spent fifteen years in the field of professional fundraising. She lives with her husband, children and a Havanese dog named Bella in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois.

       Bluegrass Christmas

      Allie Pleiter

      Better is one day in your courts

       than a thousand elsewhere;

       I would rather be a doorkeeper

       in the house of my God

       than dwell in the tents of the wicked.

      —Psalms 84:10

      For Christina

      For who she was, who she is,

      and who she will be

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Chapter Eighteen

      Epilogue

      Questions for Discussion

      Chapter One

      While “Mac” MacCarthy hadn’t counted on peace and quiet when he returned to his office, he hadn’t anticipated an opera-singing cockatoo, either.

      December might not go as well as he planned.

      Assuming the only logical explanation, Mac pushed his way through the connecting interior doors of the bakery adjacent to his engineering office. “All right, Dinah, what did you do to him?”

      Dinah Rollings, owner of the Taste and See Bakery, looked up from her cash register. “To whom?”

      Mac cocked his head toward the racket behind him. “I’ve got Luciano Pavarotti in feathers perched on my credenza. Very funny. Now tell me what you did to Curly so I can hush him up before cats start prowling the alley.”

      With both doors open, Dinah could evidently hear the bird. Her face was half surprised, half amused. “Not bad. That’s from The Marriage of Figaro, I think. Didn’t peg you for an opera fan.”

      Mac looked quizzically at his smirking neighbor. “You didn’t do this?”

      She raised an eyebrow. “No.”

      “Gil?” Mac named his best friend who, while no fan of opera, had been known to love a good joke.

      “Haven’t seen him.”

      “Cameron?” Dinah’s new husband didn’t seem the type, but as a former New York City native, Cameron might have opera in his background. And pranks.

      Dinah shot him an incredulous look. “Not a chance. Look, Mac, I don’t know who might have…”

      At that moment, Pavarotti—the real one—belted out the aria in question from the stairway between their businesses’ doors. And Curly, Mac’s yellow-crested-cockatoo-recently-turned-tenor, joined in.

      The second-floor apartment had been empty since Cameron and Dinah got married. Evidently, it wasn’t unoccupied anymore. Opera music flooded the hallway when Mac opened the door that led upstairs.

      Dinah came to the door. “Okay, maybe I do know who could be…”

      Curly chose that moment to chase his avian muse, leaving his perch in Mac’s office to bolt up the stairway in a squawking white streak of feathers and falsetto.

      Mac took the stairs three at a time, ruing the fact that repairmen at his house necessitated that Curly spend this week at the office with him. Curly almost never bolted, but when he did, he went full out. Nothing good could come from this. Mac was a few steps from the top when he heard the shriek.

      Taking the last risers in two strides, Mac looked in the apartment door to find a blond woman cowering behind a music stand, holding what looked like a conductor’s baton as if it were a broadsword. The operatic waltz blared from a set of speakers on either side of the room, and Curly stood ducking and bobbing in time with the music from atop a bookcase to Mac’s right.

      “What is that thing?” she said over the loud music. Actually, shouted might have been more accurate. Shouted with great annoyance. Curly wasn’t a small bird, and he looked like an invading white tornado when he flew anywhere. Mac could only imagine how frightening, at first sight, it was.

      “That’s Curly,” Mac introduced, feeling ridiculous as he yelled above the orchestration. “He won’t hurt you. He seems to get a kick out of your music.”

      Her eyes were wide. “It’s not mutual. Get him out of here.” She seemed to realize how harsh she sounded, for a split second later she nervously inched over to the stereo and turned down the volume before adding “Please.”

      “Aww,” Curly moaned as the music quieted down. That was pretty tame considering all the smart-aleck replies Mac had taught the bird over the years.

      Dinah burst through the doorway behind Mac. “Mary! Are you okay?” She went over to her, while Mac called Curly down off the furniture. “I’m sure that’s not the welcome you were expecting.”

      She had every right to be annoyed. Mac’s own ma could get spooked by Curly on occasion, and she knew what to expect from the feathered comedian. Curly had the good sense to look sorry for his actions, putting his head down and trying to hide under Mac’s arm. “I’m okay, I think,” Mary said shakily. She was a pale thing, with ice-blue eyes and hair only a shade sunnier than Curly’s snow-white coat. “No damage done, unless you count my nerves.”

      Dinah took her arm. “Mary…it’s Thorpe, isn’t it? Mary Thorpe, this great ferocious beast is Curly. And this is Mac MacCarthy. Sorry you had to meet under such goofy circumstances.”

      “I’m really sorry about this. Curly’s usually