Free A Carol for a Corpse by Claudia Bishop Page B

getting a lot of offers you wouldn’t have gotten before.”
    “Time-shares,” Quill agreed glumly. “Hot tips on surefire stocks. Yuck.”
    “Quill?” Elmer’s tone was unusually polite. “We were wondering what your thoughts were on the matter.”
    “I’m sorry.” Quill stopped herself and made a fierce internal vow to never say she was sorry again. At least not in the next twenty minutes. “What . . . ?”
    “My choral group,” Harvey said proudly. He set the A-frame upright. “I have to say, with all due modesty, that bringing a fresh approach to this product would be a challenge to Saatchi himself.”
    “You mean a fresh approach to Christmas?” Quill said.
    “Christmas,” Harvey agreed. “But I don’t think there’s anywhere in these great United States of ours that you’ll find an idea like this!” He flipped the A-frame open with a flourish.
    “ ‘The Big Guy and the Angel-ettes,’ ” Elmer read out slowly.
    “You got it,” Harvey said. “The classic Christmas choir, with a modern twist! We take your basic chorus, sopranos, altos, tenors, what have you. And we take your basic Christmas carols, like, say, the ‘Hallelujah Chorus . . . ’ ”
    “Actually,” Miriam said, “the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ is more of an Easter piece. And I wouldn’t call it a carol, Harvey. It’s a choral piece from one of the greatest oratorios ever written.”
    “You bet,” Harvey said. “But has anyone brought Handel into the twentieth century? I think not!”
    “What do you mean, bring Handel into the twentieth century!” Miriam exploded. “Handel’s perfectly fine in the eighteenth!”
    Harvey snapped his fingers in a one-and-ah-two-ah kind of way. “Rhythm, guys, rhythm. You want to syncopate that old warhorse. Jazz it up. Get the Angel-ettes moving!”
    “And who,” Dookie asked in a bewildered way, “is this Big Guy?”
    Harvey beamed. “That’s the hook! You don’t get a product without a hook! We never actually see the Big Guy. A big bass voice offstage would give just the effect I’m looking for.”
    “You mean, God?” Nadine asked with a confused air.
    Several of the members of the Chamber of Commerce looked skyward.
    Miriam grabbed her hair with both hands and put her forehead on the table. Quill bit her lip, but it didn’t help. She pinched her knee hard, but that didn’t help, either. She kept her head down, waved in an abstracted way to the assembled group, and escaped to the corridor, closing the door behind her.
    “And what’s so funny, missy?” Doreen Muxworthy-Stoker stumped down the hall toward her, pushing a utility cart stacked with brooms, buckets, and bottles of cleaner.
    “Harvey’s taken on Christmas.” Quill groped in her skirt pocket for a tissue and blew her nose. “It’s the most supremely awful idea he’s ever had.”
    “Christmas’s survived worse, I bet.” Doreen scowled. With her aureole of frizzy gray hair and beaky nose, she looked like an angry chicken. “I’m not so sure we will. You got to get yourself down to reception.” She pushed the cart forward with a rattle, and Quill fell in step beside her. “Is Mr. McWhirter making himself a nuisance?”
    “It was not my intention,” said a dry voice behind her.
    Quill bit back a shriek. “Mr. McWhirter. My goodness. I hadn’t noticed that you left the meeting. Surely it’s not over?”
    “From the sound of it, the meeting will go on for some considerable time.”
    “It usually does when an idea of Harvey’s is involved,” Quill admitted. “Is there something I can do for you? Are you getting all the information you need?”
    “Rome,” he said testily, “was not built in a day. Which is to say I have made a fairly productive start. There are a few situations that require immediate redress, however. We need to discuss them.”
    “Of course,” Quill said anxiously. “We could talk about them now. If it’s about Dina, for example, I know she may not be quite the ideal