Shepherds Abiding in Dry Creek. Janet Tronstad

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СКАЧАТЬ talked. Too much talking was giving them some pretty wild ideas. He couldn’t think of one good reason anyone would steal a plastic shepherd, not even one that lit up like a big neon sign at night.

      Charley shook his head. “Naw, that can’t be it. All of the wise men are on the other side. The pastor wouldn’t think there are too many figures on the left. Not even with the angel on the left—and she’s a good-sized angel.”

      “Besides, we know it’s not the pastor moving things around, because we found this,” Elmer said as he thrust a piece of paper toward Les. “Wait until you see this.”

      Les’s heart sank when he saw the sheet of paper. He had a feeling he knew what kind of note it was. It had a ragged edge where it had been torn from what was probably a school tablet. There must be a dozen school tablets in Dry Creek. The note was written in pencil, and he didn’t even want to think about how many pencils there were around. Anyone could have written a note like this.

      Les bent to read it.

      Dear Church People,

      I took your dumb shepherd.

      If you want to see him again, leave a Suzy bake set on the back steps of your church. It needs to be the deluxe kind—the one with the cupcakes on the box.

      P.S. Don’t call the cops.

      P.P.S. The angel wire is loose. She’s going to fall if somebody doesn’t do something.

      XIX

      Well, there was one good thing, Les told himself as he looked up from the paper. There weren’t that many people in Dry Creek who would want a Suzy bake set. That narrowed down the field of suspects considerably. He assumed the XIX at the bottom was some reference to a biblical text on charity. Or maybe a promise to heap burning coals on someone who didn’t do what they were told.

      “So it looks like the shepherd is really gone,” Les said, more to give himself time to think than because there seemed to be any question about that fact, at least.

      Elmer nodded. “The angel is just standing there with her wings unfurled looking a little lost now that she’s proclaiming all that good news to a couple of sheep. You don’t see anything standing where that shepherd should be.”

      The door to the café opened briskly and an older woman stepped inside. She had a wool jacket wrapped around her shoulders and boots on her feet. Les thought she still had to be cold, though, in that gingham dress she was wearing. Cotton didn’t do much to protect a person from a Montana winter chill.

      “Mrs. Hargrove, you shouldn’t be walking around these streets. They’re slippery,” Les said to the woman. The older people in Dry Creek just didn’t seem to realize how hazardous it was outside after it snowed. And they’d lived here their whole lives, so if anyone should know, they should.

      “Charley told me some little girl was in trouble.” Mrs. Hargrove glared at Les as she unwound the scarf from around her neck and set down the bag she was carrying. “Something about kidnapping and theft. I hope you’re not planning to arrest a little girl.”

      Les stepped over to help Mrs. Hargrove out of her jacket. “Someone stole the shepherd from the Nativity set. I don’t even know who did it yet. But if it is a little girl, she’ll have to be dealt with just like anyone else.”

      Les turned to hang Mrs. Hargrove’s jacket on the coatrack by the door.

      “Well, a little girl wouldn’t have done that,” Mrs. Hargrove said as she smoothed down the long sleeves on her dress. “Mark my words.”

      “Little girls can get into just as much mischief as boys.”

      One thing Les had learned in his reserve deputy sheriff training was that a lawman shouldn’t make assumptions based on stereotypes about people. There were all kinds of stories about mob men who loved their cats and sweet-looking grandmothers who robbed banks in their spare time.

      “Still, I say no little girl took that shepherd,” Mrs. Hargrove said as she walked over to a chair next to Charley and sat down. “If she couldn’t get the angel unhooked, she’d take the baby Jesus. What would she want with a smelly old shepherd?”

      Les frowned. “Just because a man works with animals and lives alone, it doesn’t mean he smells bad.”

      Les had a few sheep on his ranch, but the only full-time shepherd he knew was Mr. Morales, who lived in the foothills of the Big Sheep Mountains north of Dry Creek. Les figured bachelor ranchers needed to stick together. Once in a while he invited Mr. Morales down for breakfast. Les decided he needed to do that again soon. Smelly, indeed!

      “Well, no, of course not,” Mrs. Hargrove agreed and had the grace to blush slightly. “But still, I can’t see that a little girl would—”

      “Whoever took the shepherd wants to trade him for a Suzy bake set—the deluxe edition.” Les walked over and gave the note to Mrs. Hargrove. “That sounds like a little girl to me. You recognize the writing?”

      Mrs. Hargrove taught Sunday school and she knew all the kids in and around Dry Creek. When she finished reading the note, she looked up and shook her head. “I don’t recognize it, but whoever wrote the note probably tried to disguise their writing, anyway.”

      Everyone was quiet for a minute.

      “Are any of the classes in Sunday school memorizing the nineteenth verse of some book?”

      Mrs. Hargrove shook her head. “Not that I know of. They wouldn’t write it that way, anyway, would they? XIX? That’s roman numerals.”

      “I wonder about the Curtis twins,” Elmer said as he reached for his cup of coffee. “I don’t think they’d mess around with numbers, but they like cupcakes.”

      “They like to eat cupcakes. Those boys don’t want to bake cupcakes,” Linda said. “Besides, they’re too busy with their new sleds to think up a scheme like this.”

      Les shrugged. “I don’t know. Those boys live close to the church. I can’t see any of the ranch kids coming into Dry Creek on a night like last night. For one thing, we would have seen tire tracks over by the church.”

      Les lifted his eyebrow in a question to Elmer and the man shook his head.

      “Since there were no tracks, it means it had to be someone who was already in town last night.” Les let his words sink in for everyone. Somebody in the center of Dry Creek had taken that shepherd. If there were no tracks, they couldn’t blame it on a stranger passing through.

      “Pastor Matthew won’t like it if his sons stole the shepherd,” Charley finally said, and then glanced over at Mrs. Hargrove. He must have seen the frown on her face. “Of course, I don’t believe it was the Curtis twins. Not for a minute. They don’t even know about Roman numerals. They can barely add up regular numbers.”

      “Nobody added the numbers,” Les muttered before Charley could get himself in a spin. “They just put them out there.”

      “Well, the only other kids in town are those two new kids.” Elmer stared down at his cup. “And what would they want with a shepherd? They’ve never even been to church.”

      There was another moment’s silence.

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