I returned to the house.

As Dad drove off, Randall pulled up in a truck.

“Where do you want me to put the furniture?” he asked.

“In the garage for now.”

Back in the kitchen, Mother, Sarah, Vermillion, and Eustace were nodding at each other over a large sheet of paper.

“Dear heart,” Eustace said. “It won’t be the room you wanted. But it’s a room you can be proud of.”

“Come here for a minute.” I led her out to the garage, where Randall was unloading the furniture we’d arranged to borrow.

“They don’t match,” Mother said. “Each other or the room.”

“We’ll make slipcovers for them,” I said.

“We?” Mother repeated. I could understand why—her sewing skills were even more rudimentary than mine. But before I could explain, the first of our worker bees came in through the garage door: Mrs. Tran, who along with Michael’s mother ran a dress shop in my hometown of Yorktown, and three of her best seamstresses. They were followed by two graduate drama students I recognized as longtime costume shop volunteers.

“I think it’s either the slipcovers or the curtains,” one of the students said. “I’m not sure we’ll have time for both.”

“The heck we won’t.” Minerva Burke had arrived at the head of a contingent of a dozen ladies from the New Life Baptist Church Ladies’ Auxiliary.

“Bring it on,” said the Reverend Robyn, as she led in nearly the entire membership of Grace Episcopal’s Guild of St. Clotilda, and even a couple of the ladies from the women’s shelter.

“Our room’s ready,” one of the Quilt Ladies said, sticking her head into the study. “We can help. We’ve brought in extra sewing machines. What needs doing?”

Michael had also recruited some drama students with set-building experience. They got to work building canvas frames to replace the ruined artwork—frames that would cover a large portion of the walls and disguise any shortcomings in the hasty paint job. A lot of the volunteers had brought their children or grandchildren, so we set the kids and anyone who wasn’t sewing to work painting holiday murals on the canvas. The Quilt Ladies, bless their hearts, borrowed several tarps from Randall, battened down or covered up everything in their room, and turned it into a children’s art studio. Even Violet and Linda postponed the last minute primping they’d been planning to do in their rooms to pitch in.

And not long after we started, someone struck up the first verse of “Deck the Halls,” and before long everyone, all through the house, was singing. Quite possibly the best caroling I’d heard outside the New Life Baptist Choir’s annual concerts.

Someone brought in a bunch of cots and sleeping bags, and we set up Clay’s room as a nap room for any kids—or grown-ups—who needed to take a break. Some of the Baptist women brought in supplies, took over Eustace’s kitchen, and began turning out delectable soups, sandwiches, casseroles, cookies, and pies.

“Aren’t you afraid they’ll mess up your kitchen?” I asked Eustace at one point.

“Darlin’, have you ever seen a church lady who didn’t feel compelled to leave someone else’s kitchen even cleaner than she found it?” Eustace said. “Those ladies just might be my secret weapon to winning the prize.”

As the day wore on, more and more friends dropped by to help, bringing their kids, armloads of craft supplies, and boxes of decorations for the new tree Randall’s cousins had gone off to find. Before long, Rose Noire showed up with a trunkload of dried flowers and other organic craft supplies, so when we had finished decorating all the canvas panels, we set the painting crew to work making homemade Christmas potpourri ornaments and stringing old-fashioned popcorn garlands. At first I was worried that we might be overboard with the ornaments, but when two of Randall’s cousins showed up with the new tree, we began to worry about filling it all.

“More garlands!” I shouted. “More tinsel! More snow! More stars! More holly! More angels! More wise men!”

The children fell to work.

In the middle of all this, Dad called to update me on the photographer.

“The good news is that he wasn’t actually having a heart attack,” Dad said. “The bad news is that he’s a heart attack waiting to happen. He’s a lucky man. I’m in the process of turning him over to a cardiologist here at VCU—”

“VCU?” I echoed. “You’re down in Richmond?”

“Yes, and I should be heading back in an hour or two.”

“Does the Times-Dispatch know he’s not up here taking pictures?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” Dad said. “But I don’t know if they’re going to send anyone to take his place.”

Probably just as well, I decided. We still had a lot to do.

The only halfway Christmassy fabric we’d found for making the slipcovers and curtains was a dull burgundy. It went nicely with the “Red Obsession” walls but it wasn’t exactly an exciting choice. When we set the first slipcovered chair in the middle of the room, everyone stood back and studied the effect.

“Color’s perfect with the walls,” Sarah said.

“Nice slipcovering job,” Randall said.

“But it needs a little something,” Mother, Eustace, and Sarah said in unison.

“Yes, it does.” Ivy appeared out of nowhere, as usual. “A little decoration. May I?”

Mother nodded. Ivy was holding several brushes and pots of paint. She quickly painted a little running decoration like a stylized vine along the back of the chair in gold paint with touches of green and black. It wasn’t as intricately detailed as her own murals, but it was still magical.

“I like it,” Mother said.

So as each table or chair emerged from the impromptu upholstery workshop, Ivy added in the vine. Tomás watched her for a few minutes, then said a few words to Mateo. The two of them grabbed pots of paint and tiny brushes and began working on the walls, adding in the same stylized vine here and there to the red-painted walls.

“Hiring those two just might turn out one of my smartest decisions ever,” Randall said in a tone of great satisfaction. “And this place is shaping up.”

“I thought we’d be working all night,” I said. “But with all the help we’ve got, I think we’re pretty close to done.”

The curtains were finished and hung, the slipcovers completed and decorated by Ivy, Tomás, and Mateo. In fact, we’d finished every bit of sewing we could think of, so Mother hugged Mrs. Tran and each of her seamstresses, and they headed home to Yorktown. We ran out of ornament-making supplies about the time we ran out of room on the tree, so we thanked all the children, and their parents took them home. The students had one last hearty meal and headed back for the dorms, armed with generous doggy bags. The Baptist and Episcopal ladies stayed long enough to make sure every room in which our volunteers had worked was spotless. Most of Randall’s workmen left. The Quilt Ladies thanked Randall for the tarps and began restoring their room to order.

Chief Burke stopped by to pick up his wife, and while Minerva was saying her good-byes to the rest of the Baptist and Episcopal ladies, he filled me in on what had been happening down at the police station.

“We’re holding Martha Blaine for murdering Clay and attempting to murder you,” he said.

“What about her so-called alibi?” I asked.

“Miss Violet is no longer quite so certain that Ms. Blaine was with her every minute of that night,” he said. “And we’ll be testing for the drug used to knock her out. Horace tells me that since it’s been less than seventy-two hours, there’s a chance the drug could still be in her system. Of course, disproving her alibi may not be quite as critical as it might have been. Ms. Blaine has been quite communicative since her arrest.”

“Her lawyer will be displeased with her.”

“Yes,” the chief said. “Of course, what she’d already said to you when she was planning to kill you had already limited her lawyer’s options to self-defense or insanity. And speaking of insanity, we’re doing what we can to see that Jessica Green will be making her pilgrimage through the mental health system rather than the Department of Corrections.”