A Holly, Jolly Murder (12 page)

“Hmmm,” I said eloquently, in that I was in complete agreement with Mrs. Thornton's assessment. If in some way Caron could make a profit from unplugging someone's respirator, she would at least consider it. Not necessarily do it, mind you, but weigh the possibilities. Making life easier for Mrs. Claus, aka Ms. Portmeyer, would not have merited even fleeting consideration. And Inez, for all her meekness, has a streak of stubbornness that runs as deep as a vein of coal.

“It was odd,” Mrs. Thornton continued, “and when they begin to behave oddly, they tend to end up in trouble. Inez will be applying for scholarships next year. She won't have much luck with a felony conviction on her transcript.”

I could only commiserate, which I did for a few minutes. Once Mrs. Thornton was somewhat pacified, I said, “So where are they?”

“Inez had me drop her off at the mall. Caron said she was going to walk home. It all seemed so innocent, Claire, and I truly wish I thought it was.”

We speculated aimlessly for a few minutes, then I replaced the receiver and sat down at the counter. I stayed there for most of an hour, making unattractive faces and finding myself unable to come up with a plausible explanation for Caron's behavior. I had little hope that she'd tell me the truth—unless she found it convenient. This rarely happened. She'd gone to Rhonda Maguire's house the previous evening, which in and of itself was worthy of a headline in the local newspaper. But why?

I was lost in thought when Jorgeson came into the store. He gave me a sour smile and said, “We interviewed Malthea Hendlerson. You ever seen a marble statue, Mrs. Malloy? She's a little less talkative than one of them.”

“I can't see her summoning a demon and commanding it to disembowel a boy,” I said. “You've met her, Jorgeson. I grant she's not your ordinary person, but she hasn't ever indicated she's that…well, wicked. Did you ask the doctors to check Roy's back and abdomen for scars?”

“He's got scars,” said Jorgeson as he went into the office and poured himself a cup of coffee. “But,” he added from the doorway, “that doesn't mean they were inflicted by some fiend from hell. Could be an indication of past abuse from one of his parents, or even self-mutilation. He's a sick one.”

“I won't argue with that. Is Malthea in custody?”

“She's been told to remain available until the shrinks evaluate the kid. I was expecting her to laugh at us, but she got real grim and said, ‘So he told you that, did he?' No denials, no nothing. If somebody accused me of that, I'd be cussing up a storm and swearing I was innocent. We couldn't get another sentence out of her.”

I shook my head. “It's impossible to figure her out, but that doesn't mean she's diabolic. She may be as sane as anyone else. Who's entitled to define what our senses take in and how we ought to process it? Look at this, Jorgeson.” I poked a publisher's catalog on the counter. “You see what you call red, and you assume I see the same shade. We'll never know if we see something entirely different because we have no way to compare our input. We both agree that what we see is red, but who can say if we're actually receiving the same response in our brains? My red may be your green. We simply use the same term for what may be entirely opposite.”

“What does this have to do with anything?” Jorgeson asked gently.

“Demons,” I said. “My bout of indigestion may be Roy's fiend from hell ripping at his bowels. It's a matter of interpretation, of translation between his mind and his own concept of reality. He's disturbed; neither of us can argue with that. Is he genuinely disturbed? Who knows?”

Jorgeson seemed to sense he was dealing with a madwoman. He patted my hand for a moment, his face puckered, and then said, “You talked to the lieutenant lately?”

I tried for a stiff upper lip and a glib response, then poured out everything. I did not allow a tear to escape, but my demeanor was at best quavery and I resorted, albeit briefly, to a tissue in order to blow my nose in a ladylike manner.

“Leslie, huh?” said Jorgeson. “The lieutenant's never said much about her.”

“What
has
he said?”

“Jeez, it's hard to remember.” He stared into space and scratched his stubbly gray scalp. “She's a stockbroker, I think, and she breeds some kind of fancy dogs that are worth a bundle and win ribbons at competitions. One night when we were drinking beer, he showed me a picture of her. Blond, all the equipment—but not nearly as nice looking as you, Mrs. Malloy. You shouldn't fret over the lieutenant. His only concern right now is his mother and this guy named Myron. As soon as he gets it resolved, he'll come home.”

“Unless the skiing is good,” I said, not at all comforted by Jorgeson's sad gaze.

After he left, I called home to speak to Caron, but she was either in the shower or elsewhere. I hesitated to call Rhonda and try to get information out of her; she had the ability to spread gossip as easily as the rest of us spread peanut butter on bread.

Or caviar on toast.

I ordered myself to put aside self-pity and do something useful. If Caron spent the morning holding up banks, I'd hear about it eventually. I couldn't bring myself to confront Malthea until the images Roy had implanted in my mind faded to black and white. If I went to Fern's duplex, Malthea would spot me. It might be enlightening to talk to Morning Rose, but I didn't want her children doing further exploration and I couldn't close the store two days before Christmas.

My circumspection was rewarded when a few shoppers came in and browsed. One woman wanted a paperback for her daughter. Since she knew neither the title nor the author, but only that it featured a woman archeologist in Victorian times, we studied covers and discussed possibilities until I found one that met her criteria. A man needed a handyman's guide to replacing circuit boxes, having put up one too many strings of Christmas lights. Another wanted “anything a middle-aged woman like yourself would like.” Three giggly junior high girls found a romance novel and paid me in dimes and quarters. They reminded me of Caron and Inez when they'd been in their Azalea Twilight phase, and this, of course, reminded me that an unknown game was afoot.

During lulls, and there were many of them, I pondered Roy's bizarre story. Was there any way at all that ditzy, kind-hearted Malthea could have ordered Roy to kill someone? She seemed to be genuinely concerned about him, but she was the one who'd introduced him into the Sacred Grove. It seemed logical that she'd feel some responsibility in loco parentis, with an emphasis on the
loco
.

I was calling home when my science-fiction hippie came into the store. He eyed me cautiously, then satisfied himself that I was unarmed. Despite his scruffy, crumb-encrusted beard, discolored bandanna around his forehead, and glazed eyes, he had a certain charm. As had, I supposed, Rasputin.

“Last-minute Christmas shopping?” I said.

“Yeah, I met this chick in a chat room and I want to get her something. From what she said, she sounds like a dead ringer for the woman on the cover of
Galactica Galore: Transvestite Empress of Andromeda
.”

“You met her, but you don't know what she looks like?” I said, perplexed. “Were you blindfolded at the time.”

“I don't think I was, but I may have missed something.” He went behind the rack, and a subsequent thud informed me that he'd opted to sit on the floor. As long as a prissy matron didn't come in for an updated edition of Emily Post, it didn't matter all that much.

“Did you find a copy?” I called.

“Yeah, I'm just trying to decide if I want to lay out five dollars. For all I know, she could be a twelve-year-old boy. They do that kind of thing for kicks.”

“What kind of thing?”

“It's hard to describe,” he said vaguely.

I went to the end of the rack and looked down at him. He was, as I'd expected, sitting cross-legged on the floor with paperbacks fanned around him. “Do you have a name?”

“Yeah, do you?”

“Yeah, I guess I do. May I ask you about a drug?”

He looked up at me. “I never thought you'd want to score. You're always so…well, I dunno…centered, like an earth mother. Things swirl around you, but you don't like even flinch. You ever read
Sidhartha
?”

So now I was reduced to a reincarnation of Buddha; I really needed to work on my image. “What do you know about a drug called Herbal Ecstasy?”

“It's legal, which is good. Twenty years ago I got picked up with less than a quarter of an ounce of pot, and you'd have thought I had bullion from Fort Knox the way everybody got fired up. All I was doing was—”

“Herbal Ecstasy?” I said.

“The main ingredient is mahuang. It's this organic stimulant that's supposed to work like ephedrine, but all it did was make me itch. I thought I was going to scratch off my skin.”

“Does it cause hallucinations or psychoses?”

“Not that I've ever heard. It mainly fires up your central nervous system. The problem with the stuff is that you don't know what's in it besides the mahuang or how much you can take. A kid died of an overdose at a rock concert in Florida or one of those places, but the FDA still hasn't banned it. Makes you wonder what the world's coming to, doesn't it?”

“It surely does,” I said dryly. “The book's my Christmas present to you. May it cement this relationship with the dead ringer.”

He thanked me amidst a profusion of flying crumbs, then left before I could change my mind. He may have had another paperback or two in his army surplus jacket pockets, but 'twas the season. I might not have been blessed with lords a-leaping and swans a-swimming, but at least I had a hippie in a fuzzy fog.

Ho, ho.

Caron showed up in the middle of the afternoon. I was glad to see her, in that it indicated she was not in custody. She studied me appraisingly, then said, “Can I have the car?”

“To do what?”

“Nothing, really. I told Inez I'd pick her up after she gets off work at eight.”

“Which will be in approximately six hours.”

“Well,” she said, studying the floor for inspiration, “I haven't bought a present for Peter, so I thought I'd go out to the mall and look around for something. Do you think he'd like a tie?”

I told her that Peter wouldn't be back until after New Year's Day, but did not elaborate on his present whereabouts and companions. “I'll make a deal with you,” I added. “If you take over here for an hour while I run an errand, then you can have the car for the rest of the day.”

“Are you going to pay me?”

“Only with the use of the car. Feel free to walk home and call the Department of Labor if you prefer. There's bound to be a toll-free number to report violations of this heinous nature.”

“Oh, all right,” she said with a sigh, “as long as nobody bothers me. We have to read some utterly suffocating book next semester for English. I might as well get started on it instead of watching the cockroach races in the back room.”

“Good idea.” I carried a pile of paperwork to said racetrack, got my purse and coat, and came back to the front room. Caron was standing in front of the classics rack, looking as though she were on a scaffold awaiting the arrival of a hooded man. “By the way,” I said ever so casually, “I was a little surprised that you went to Rhonda's last night. I thought you'd still be seething over her reindeer remark.”

“I got over it.”

“Was she having a party?”

Caron glanced at me. “If you must know, I needed to borrow something from her.”

“Oh, really?”

“I wish you'd go run your errand so I can get to the mall before the parking lot is full. It's bad enough during the day, but after five everybody in the county descends like turkey vultures. You can almost hear the flapping of wings.”

Having made no progress in unraveling this latest scheme, I went out to the car and drove toward the south part of town.

Morning Rose must have seen me coming up the sidewalk, because she flung open the door before I reached the top step of the porch. “Has something happened to Roy?”

“Several things,” I said. “May I come inside?”

“I guess so, but only for a few minutes. Sullivan went to the co-op to pick up mung bean sprouts and cheese. Do you know that the cheese sold in regular grocery stores contains animal by-products? Most of the yogurt does, too. Isn't that disgusting?”

Unable to respond with any sincerity, I nodded and went into the living room. No Druid touches were evident in the decor, which could be described as later-American thrift shop. Graduate assistantships appeared to be no more remunerative than they'd been in my day, when scavenged lumber, concrete blocks, and beanbag chairs had been our rejoinder to Martha Stewart.

“Sit down.” Morning Rose gestured at a sofa with lumpy cushions and stained plaid upholstery. “I need to send Cosmos and Rainbow outside before we talk. They saw an old spy movie on television, and they've been eavesdropping like CIA agents ever since.”

She left the room. I removed a headless Barbie doll and several potentially lethal slivers of plastic from the sofa, then sat down and listened to the muted sounds of her voice, interspersed with whining. Eavesdropping was not required.

“They always act as if they're being exiled to Siberia,” she said as she came back and sat down on a wooden chair. “I insist they have at least two hours a day of fresh air and sunshine.”

If I was obliged to stay home with Dennis and Menace all day, I would have opted for eight, maybe ten. “Roy turned himself in to the police last night,” I began. “While he was being questioned, he became so upset that he was taken to the hospital.”

Morning Rose stared at me. “I don't understand, Mrs. Malloy. Was he beaten?”

“I was there, and I can assure you that he was treated with kindness and concern. No rubber hoses or thumbscrews, just bad coffee and stale doughnuts. All Sergeant Jorgeson did was try to get a coherent story that explained why Roy shot Nicholas Chunder.”

“Are you saying that Roy has confessed?”

“He claims that Malthea forced him to do it. It's hard to believe, though.”

She was still staring at me as if I'd materialized from one of the numerous dust balls under the furniture and introduced myself as Farberville's resident Eater of Intestines and Disagreeable Children. “Malthea denies it, of course?”

“She refused to admit or deny the allegation. Sergeant Jorgeson is waiting for the psychiatric evaluation before he decides how to proceed. The allegation has some grotesque elements, but if she has that degree of influence on his behavior, she's in serious trouble.”

Her gaze shifted away from me. “I've been afraid something like this would happen ever since Sullivan and I joined the grove two years ago.”

“How did that come about?” I asked, desperately hoping that Sullivan was mesmerized by an array of fresh, frozen, and for all I knew, pickled bean sprouts.

“Sullivan had a teaching position at a college run by a conservative religious denomination. We had no friends because we knew that one slip about our personal beliefs would lead to his dismissal. Cosmos and Rainbow weren't allowed to play with other children for the same reason. Everybody in the town was a potential enemy. Sullivan finally decided to get a doctorate so he could try for a job at a larger college where we might find a more enlightened community. When Nicholas came by with our copy of the lease, he noticed the titles on the bookshelves and invited us to attend a ritual. We were not pleased with the bickering and rigidity within the grove, but we ended up joining.”

“How many were there of you two years ago?”

“About the same number, I suppose. Fern, Malthea, Gilda, Nicholas, and a middle-aged couple from California who moved to a commune in Oregon last summer. A newspaper reporter tried to infiltrate the grove, but Nicholas did a background check and we refused to allow her to participate. He was very adept at using his computer for that sort of thing. I prefer divination.”

“You mentioned yesterday that Roy had joined the grove in September of this year,” I said.

“Initially, Sullivan and I had reservations about Roy. He seemed to be so very ill at ease. I spoke to Malthea about it, and she assured me that he was merely intimidated by his lack of knowledge. She planned to instruct him herself so that he could be formally initiated when the time was right. Our celebrations are open to everyone, but admission into the higher ranks takes study and dedication.”

Higher ranks—or lower circles?

“I gather that Roy got along better with you than with your husband,” I said.

She went to a front window and pulled aside a curtain. “It usually takes him only half an hour to go by the co-op. Maybe he went by his office to pick up something.” She let the curtain fall back. “Sullivan can be as prudish as Nicholas was. He is well suited for Druidism, the patriarchal bastion of rationalism. Wicca is intuitive and more feminist. He wants the sterility of sunlight; I prefer the caress of moonlight.”

“But you and he reached a compromise?”

“In regards to the children, we have. I do many of my rituals in the backyard while he baby-sits. It's worked out thus far.”

“Is that what you were doing on the eve of the solstice?” I glanced at my watch. How many varieties of sprouts could there be?

Morning Rose sat back down and smiled at me. “I gather you want alibis rather than a description of the Wiccan ritual. We arrived home a little after nine. I put the children to bed, then went into the backyard for a private welcoming of the birth of Horned God. He will mate with the Goddess in spring, be sacrificed and die in the autumn, and be reborn in the form of himself at the next winter solstice. The Mother Goddess receives her strength from this, her power over all that exists in both the physical and mystical realities. Union and reunion are divine.”

“Of course,” I said lamely. “Why did you say that you'd been worried that something like this might happen? Did you have a reason to think Malthea might have…”

“Gained control of Roy? Manipulated him into doing something dreadful? I encouraged him to confide in me. He wasn't very forthcoming, but I could tell that he was in the grips of a tremendous internal struggle. Terror doesn't begin to describe what I sensed. I don't know whose demons he was facing—but he was haunted by images so horrific that he was being driven crazy. From what little he said, I suspected Malthea was behind it.” She took a shuddery breath, then stood up and began to pace across from me, her chin quivering as she struggled to maintain her composure. “I'm frightened, too. Sullivan refuses to acknowledge the possibility of demons, but I saw Roy's wound. I
saw
it, Mrs. Malloy, mopped away the blood, and put bandages on it. The physical scars are gone, but the spiritual ones will never go away. He needs help. I'm just not sure that doctors and shrinks can battle forces from the bowels of hell.”

Stephen King, please pick up the white courtesy phone.

I tightened my grip on my purse and asked myself—not for the first time—why I'd voluntarily embroiled myself in these people's problems, when what they needed were soft-spoken therapists and mind-dulling drugs. In industrial strength doses.

“But what about Malthea?” I persisted. “Do you honestly believe she has control over Roy?”

Morning Rose let her curled fingers relax, and to my relief, sat down, saving me from a pinched nerve in my neck. She pushed her hair out of her face and leaned forward to peer earnestly at me. “Roy
believes
it, and that's all that matters. I've never met a demon, but he has. My time may come, and so may yours. Is reality what you accept—or what you deny because of your own primal fear?”

Having never had this conversation before, I was at a loss for a reply, glib or otherwise. I was reduced to looking at the floor when the door opened and Sullivan came into the room.

“What's going on?” he demanded.

Morning Rose clamped down on her lower lip, making it clear that she wasn't going to respond. I said, “Roy has confessed to killing Nicholas. He's in custody.”

Sullivan dropped a grocery sack, presumably made from recycled paper, and leaned against the wall. “Roy confessed? I thought it was a burglar.”

“The authorities have the weapon,” I said. “It was registered to Roy's father. Did he ever mention owning a handgun?”

Sullivan's complexion was beginning to take on the cast of the dull beige sack on the floor, and he was reacting as though Roy were his firstborn son and successor to the throne. “Dr. Tate said he bought a gun when he did a stint on a reservation in Arizona back in the eighties. He wasn't into artifacts, but treasure hunters kept digging up sacred sites to get things to sell to tourists. It's often a battlefield to preserve certain cultures from so-called progress. Then again, maybe the only reason we preserve them is so that academics like Dr. Tate can write papers about them. Publish or piss off, as the saying goes.”

“Sullivan!” said Morning Rose. “Have you been drinking?”

“Me?”

She glared at him, then made a quasi-successful attempt to soften her expression as she turned to me “Mrs. Malloy, if you don't mind, I think I need to have a word in private with my husband.”

“Don't mind me,” I said with my customary grace and charm. “I was once married to someone who was known to detour by a bar on occasion. Go right ahead.”

“Dada is blotto,” sang a high-pitched voice from around the corner. “Dada is blotto.”

“Can I have a pet demon?” asked another, somewhat deeper voice.

Morning Rose grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. “Thank you for coming by. Please let me know if there's anything we can do to help. Now, if you don't mind…?”

I was on the porch by this time, and the grip she had on me made it clear I wasn't going back inside the house unless I was versed in sumo wrestling. I pulled myself free and said, “If there's anything else you want to tell me, call or drop by the bookstore.”

She pulled the door closed behind her. “I would like an update on Roy. He's been through so much, and I don't believe that he realized what he was doing when he shot Nicholas. He doesn't need to go to prison, where he'll be abused by hardened inmates and tormented by his guilt. He's only sixteen. He can be saved, turned around, aimed in the right direction. At the moment, he's into drugs and some unhealthy philosophies, but he and I used to talk about poetry and light and goodness. Is there anything you can do for him?”

“I'll certainly try.” I heard Sullivan bellowing at the children. “I guess I'd better go.”

Morning Rose looked at me for an uncomfortably long moment, and then went back inside and shut the door.

As I drove toward Thurber Street, it occurred to me that by now Roy had proffered three versions of what had taken place on the eve of the winter solstice. The burglary version had held up only until Corporal Billsby had said there'd been no forcible entry into Nicholas's house. That evening, Roy had come up with the purported sexual-advances version. Malthea and Fern had conveniently stuck wadding in the cracks, and Morning Rose had dropped dark hints about Nicholas's secretive personal life.

The current version was a real doozy. I didn't know whether it would play in Peoria, but I doubted it would in Farberyille, USA.

Caron would still have time to beat the crowd to the mall if I made a small detour, I decided as I turned onto a side street and made my way to the police station for the third time in less than a week. At this rate, I'd merit my own parking space in the lot next to the innocuous brick building. Lieutenant Rosen had one; the stenciled lettering on the sign was faded, but still legible. I considered yanking it up and tossing it in a Dumpster, then hurried inside before I gave way to the impulse.

“Is Sergeant Jorgeson here?” I asked the shiny-faced rookie at the reception desk.

“No, he's out at a crime scene right now. You want to leave a message?”

“Is he at Nicholas Chunder's house?”

“I'm not allowed to say, ma'am,” the rookie murmured, his ears turning as red as geraniums.

“Please let him know that I'll be there shortly.” I went back out to my car before I could be detained on some fictitious violation.

Fifteen minutes later I parked next to a patrol car and a rather dismal car that was likely to belong to Jorgeson. After a brief argument, the uniformed officer at the door went inside to consult his superior, returned with a chagrined expression, and gestured for me to go inside. I found Jorgeson in the hallway, gazing pensively at an oil painting of one of Nicholas's long-departed ancestors. If the artist had accurately captured his subject, this ancestor had died of bad hair.

“Jorgeson,” I said in the resolute tone of a brollywielding spinster, “I've had a thought.”

“I'm sure you have, Mrs. Malloy. Oddly enough, so have I.”

I overlooked this less-than-warm reception. “If Gilda D'Orcher was willing to risk breaking in, she must have been looking for something. It could be a pentagram drawn in chalk on Nicholas's bedroom floor, or proof that she's his illegitimate daughter and therefore entitled to inherit Primrose Hill and all the rental properties.”

“Could be,” Jorgeson said. “But I think we'd have noticed a pentagram the first time we searched. At the moment, we're going through all the papers in the desk. I'm more inclined to expect to find a bunch of boring letters to county courthouses and genealogical libraries than a birth certificate, but what do I know? I'm just a cop.”

I glanced at the door of the study. “What about computer files?”

“We're not having much luck. Apparently, there's a way to put secret passwords on files, and no easy way to determine what they are. Maybe Chunder was an agent for a foreign power and was sending classified documents about military breakthroughs, or maybe he was into pornography and weird sex, or maybe he just liked to play games. Hard to know until my guy gets into the files. It could take days, even weeks.”