Let There Be Suspects by Emilie Richards Page A

have made huge successes of your lives.”
    “Girls,” I said quickly, “you’ve been so quiet.”
    “You told us to be quiet.” Teddy frowned. “You said that—”
    “Well, it’s your turn now.” My smile was as bright as a Christmas star. “I was thinking our guests don’t know about the big Christmas Eve pageant on the Oval.” I looked away from my daughter to include everyone. “That’s what we call the park across from the church. This is quite a deal here. It’s been a tradition for twenty years. Deena will tell you all about it.”
    “I will?” Deena looked disappointed. I wondered if she’d been hoping there would be another dustup at the table.
    “You will.” I aimed the smile at her.
    Deena shook her head, as if to point out what she was forced to put up with. Luckily it’s Christmas, and there’s enough little girl inside her to hope for the best.
    “Every year one of the churches near the Oval puts up a nativity scene. You know, the kind with real animals? Sheep and donkeys. People play shepherds and Wise Men and Mary and Joseph.”
    “Nobody plays Jesus.” Teddy gnawed her lip and looked straight at her father. “Was Jesus real?”
    “No question about it,” Ed said.
    “Was he born in a manger?”
    “Teddy, let Deena finish,” I said, before Ed started a lengthy overview of the scholarly debate about Jesus’s birth. Teddy will tackle these questions in seminary in oh, twenty years or so. Why spoil the fun?
    “So, as I was saying”—Deena narrowed her eyes at her sister—“It’s a tradition. And each church gets to do something special, as part of it. The stable’s behind the Catholic church this year. And the Baptists get to choose Mary and Joseph. I think the Methodists get to choose the shepherds. Somebody else gets the Wise Men, and last year one person got to lead a camel there on Christmas Eve, but nobody got to ride it. That’s pretty lame. I offered to ride a horse, but they said there weren’t any horses at the manger. Like they’d know for sure.”
    “What does your church get to do?” Junie asked. “Costumes? Lights? Music?”
    “Nothing fun.” Deena looked at her father.
    “All the churches meet on the Oval as the sun goes down,” Ed said. “Together, we process to the nativity and sing carols. The Lutherans lead the songs this year. Afterwards we all leave and go to our separate services. And while we’re inside our churches, somebody puts the baby in the manger. It’s just a doll, of course, but this year I choose the person who gets to do it.”
    Junie wiped her eyes. Junie gets weepy whenever something touches her. “Why, that’s so beautiful. What a lovely, lovely thing. Who did you choose?”
    “It’s always a secret,” Ed said. “A person who might need spiritual recharging. Supposedly nobody is left outside to see.”
    Teddy finished. “And then we come out with lighted candles, only the little kids have to use electric ones which isn’t fair, and we march back to see the baby in the manger.”
    “We sing ‘Silent Night,’ then everybody goes home,” I finished. This particular nativity pageant may be a wee bit corny, but I’m already outrageously fond of it.
    “Choosing somebody to put the baby in the manger is a lot better than having to clean up sheep poop every day,” Deena said.
    I squelched her with a look, but Junie laughed. “From what I hear somebody in this family wants her own little animal to clean up after.”
    “Me!” Teddy said. “I want guinea pigs for Christmas, two of them. So they can have babies.”
    “No guinea pigs.” I was sorry I hadn’t gotten to Junie first. “We have a cat. A cat who hunts.”
    “But that’s the only thing I want for Christmas.”
    “I don’t want animals,” Deena said. “I want tickets to the Botoxins concert in Columbus on New Year’s Day. But apparently that’s not going to happen, either.”
    “Aggie, I can’t believe you aren’t giving the girls what they