Wreck the Halls Read Online Free PDF Page B

too—had been good for him.
    The rest of the boats lit up all at once, their colored lights spreading out on the waves like spilled paint. A sigh of pleasure went through the crowd as the parade left the dock in a rumble of diesel engines, each boat doing its jauntily nautical bit for Christmas tradition: there was a sled with eight lobsters pulling it, a Nativity scene with actors costumedto resemble sardines, and a Christmoose with buoys, mackerel jigs, and safety reflectors dangling from its antlers.
    Sam looked around, scanning the gathering, probably hoping to see old high school buddies. “Hey, who’re those guys?”
    A pair of strangers in dark overcoats, polished wingtips, and fresh haircuts stood at the edge of the crowd by one of the bonfire barrels, now dying down. I spotted Ellie across the street; she’d seen them, too.
    “Two of our dinner guests,” I told Sam, more lightly than I felt. Out on the fish pier, an impromptu local band—fiddles, guitar, two accordions, and a banjo—swung into a rousing rendition of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” which was not particularly Christmasy but got a lot of toes tapping on the breakwater, nonetheless.
    So between the candy canes tossed to the children from the town fire truck, the raffle for the battery-operated table-top tree that played one of half a dozen tinny-sounding Christmas carols when you pressed a button, and the small brown bottles whose contents vastly augmented the firepower of those hot cider drinks, it was another successful Eastport winter festival.
    Finally the boat with the iffy bilge pump snapped its lights out and reversed course; the guys at the dock got the lines ready and a generator fired up, its gas engine roaring. This signaled the end of the festivities; the other boats puttered cheerily a bit longer, then came around, too, toward the finger piers inside the boat basin.
    Leaving Sam, I made my way through a crowd headed eagerly for the Waco Diner, its neon Coors sign reflected in the thick tinsel garland around its windows. Ellie's cheeks were pink with cold and with the pleasure of the event; she’d been on the decorating committee, helped make the cider, and gone to school with many of the men who were out on the boats.
    But her gaze was still following the two overcoats. They’d reached their car, a late-model GM product with official state plates.
    “Ellie. Are you sure this is a good idea?” The car pulled slowly away from the curb in front of the Eastport Gallery, whose big gold-sprayed wreath of pomegranates and bay leaves gleamed under a garland of balsam tied with maroon ribbon.
    It had been Ellie's idea to get the pomegranates and spray them. “I don’t care if it's a good idea or not,” she told me. “Faye Anne is my friend and I’m going to do whatever I need to do to help her. And I don’t care what Victor has to say about it, either,” she added firmly.
    Which would be plenty, because the second thing Victor did on arriving in Eastport (after hiring the housekeeper and putting her in an apron, I mean) was to get involved in a fairly nasty case of murder, himself. Now just the sight of a pair of state guys was guaranteed to send his blood pressure rocketing and his rhetoric sputtering.
    But Ellie had put her idea to Bob Arnold that morning before we’d even left the Carmody house, reminding him that with the festival going on tonight, the few eating places in town would be jammed. The next thing I knew it was decided: the state guys here to wrap up the paperwork on Merle's murder would be dining at my table.
    It was, Ellie maintained, the only possible hospitable arrangement, her own house being under repair. The recent snowstorm had brought down an old fir tree and part of her kitchen with it. But I knew the real reason behind her plan, and it wasn’t hospitality.
    “I just want to know,” she said now, “which tack they’ll follow. Are they going to be reasonable, or not?”
    Not, was my best take on the