A Holly, Jolly Murder (13 page)

“Was he really going to sell everything?” I asked.

“Now that we do know. He'd listed his property with a real estate agency, and was corresponding with a company in Cardiff. One of our college-educated boys says that's in Wales. I wouldn't know, myself. The most exotic place my wife and I have ever been is New Orleans. She didn't like it because of all the topless bars and drunks urinating in alleys.”

“I don't blame her,” I said, disappointed that nothing startling had been uncovered. I went to the doorway of the living room and looked at the artificial winter wonderland. A few strands of tinsel had fallen, and the greenery was turning brittle and brown. Two pewter tankards had been left on a shelf near the fireplace. It looked like the aftermath of a party awaiting the attention of a hungover host.

Jorgeson joined me. “Depressing, isn't it?”

“This entire mess is depressing,” I said. “Roy's the same age as Caron. He's either psychotic or the most polished liar I've ever encountered. He must have done it, though. He's confessed twice now, and the weapon's damning.”

“There's no doubt it was the weapon, and his prints were on it. There were a couple of smudges, but they've been identified as belonging to his father, who's been gone for three months.”

“What about the brandy decanter?”

“We thought of that, too, Mrs. Malloy. It was in a cabinet over there, and covered with dust. No one, including your friends, moved it or wiped off prints or did anything with it before the murder. These people are giving me a helluvan ulcer. They're all lying, and I don't know why. We've got a perp, we've got a weapon, and we've got a confession, which is enough proof to dump on the district attorney's desk. The doctors and the prosecutors can determine if the boy's competent to stand trial.”

“What about Malthea?”

“The jury may have sympathy for the boy, but I don't think they'll feel anything but revulsion for her. Most people who serve on juries are parents or grandparents. They're not going to let her go free to find another messed-up teenager.”

“Particularly if she won't defend herself,” I said.

Jorgeson stepped into the hallway. “She may have something to say if and when she's charged with first-degree homicide, as well as impeding an investigation, perjury, contributing to the delinquency, and whatever else the DA can find. His hemorrhoids flare up during the winter.”

I asked Jorgeson for permission to go to the grove. He thought it over, shrugged, and told me to watch out for snakes. I assured him I would, then drove back to the main road and found the narrow lane that I'd taken the morning of the solstice. If only I'd missed it. in the dark, I thought as my car slid from rut to rut like an inept ice-skater. Or better yet, if I'd flatout told Malthea that I was unable to get her encyclopedia and other books. Aspirin, scotch, and gasoline would eat up the profits from that transaction.”

The pasture was no more appealing in the daylight than it had been previously, although it was easier to transverse. I found the tree where Gilda had waited for me, ducked under a branch, and headed into what appeared to be the primeval forest.

I took a few false turns, but eventually floundered through a line of firs and found myself at the edge of the grove. Much of the greenery had fallen off the stone altar or been dragged away by rabbits to decorate their burrows.

I sat down on a stump and tried to picture the scene Roy had described. Had Malthea really brought him here and convinced him that she possessed the power to summon a demon? That she belonged to a secret cult that performed human sacrifices? Twinkly Malthea?

If Roy stuck with his story, he was apt to be sent away to a mental hospital until the doctors found the right balance of therapy and drugs. Malthea would spend the rest of her life in a prison. Fern might, too, since she'd implicated herself when she lied to me about the brandy decanter. She, like Malthea, had been familiar with Roy's initial confession and done her part to substantiate it.

Could that have also been Gilda's motive when she foolishly tried to break into the house? Had she intended to dust off the decanter and contribute a smeared fingerprint or two?

A shadow fell across the altar, reminding me that it was getting late. I stood up and brushed off my derriere, took a last look at the somber circle of oak trees, and was about to leave when I heard a crackling noise from somewhere behind the firs. Not the rustling of a small animal, mind you, or the fluttering of dried leaves in the branches, or even the blazing of a satanic furnace as something slipped out for a field trip.

At this time of year, bears were in caves and cows were in barns. I'd noticed in the local paper that deer-hunting season had passed. Not at all pleased, I took refuge behind a somewhat inadequate tree trunk (I am svelte, but not so that I can be toppled in a light breeze).

Malthea stepped into the grove. In a heavy overcoat, gloves, and a scarf, she looked like an ordinary housewife on her way to the grocery store for frozen peas and a can of cat food. This, however, was not a grocery store, and she was far from ordinary.

“I must speak to you,” she said to whatever of my anatomy was visible.

I emerged, my face warm with embarrassment. “Have you been following me, Malthea?”

“Earlier this afternoon I parked across from your store, but each time I started to get out of the car, someone would go inside. I was ready to give up when you drove away. You've been as busy as a squirrel in autumn, haven't you? First to the Sawyers' house, then the police station, Nicholas's house, and now here. Was it the desire for solitude that brought you to the Sacred Grove?”

“Something like that,” I said.

She sat down on the stump I'd vacated and settled her satchel in her lap. “I'd like to hear exactly what Roy told you last night.”

“You've been told the gist of it, and I don't see any reason to go into detail.” I began to sidle around the perimeter of the grove, keeping an eye on her satchel. “If you want to discuss Roy's allegation, I'm sure Sergeant Jorgeson will be happy to oblige you. My daughter's waiting for me to get back to the bookstore so that she can have the car.”

“I cannot discuss this with the sergeant until you tell me what Roy told you,” she said. “I was under the assumption that you wanted to help. This is your opportunity, if I am correct.”

“I do, which is why I'm advising you to go to Sergeant Jorgeson.”

“I can't do that,” she said mulishly.

“Why not? Roy's told his side of the story, and you should be eager to tell yours. He wouldn't be undergoing a psychiatric evaluation if he were stable. Trust me when I say he's not. He may have started taking mind-altering drugs when he moved to Farberville, or he may have been experiencing schizophrenic episodes for years. How did he seem to you when you and Fern found him in the greenhouse?”

“Cold and hungry. He'd hoped he could sleep there for at least one night, but you ruined that when you returned with the police officers, didn't you? He barely had time to stuff a roll in his coat pocket before fleeing into the night.”

Or into the backseat of my car, anyway. “Did he call you from a pay phone the next morning?” I asked her, still concerned about the contents of her satchel. Ambesek could not have fit inside, but a handgun scarcely would have created a bulge.

“What makes you think he called me?”

“I know he called you, Malthea. He told you what he'd told me, and you spotted his mistakes immediately. You came to the bookstore to do damage control. Later, after Jorgeson mentioned the lack of alcohol in Nicholas's blood, you and Fern hatched up another fabrication to cover it. You and she ought to be writing screenplays in Hollywood. She could have a greenhouse with every species of plant known to science, and you could buy several thousand acres with a grove in the middle.”

Malthea picked up her satchel and rose to her feet. “All that is irrelevant. You must tell me what Roy said to you and the sergeant last night.”

“And if I refuse?” I said, easing backward until my back hit a tree trunk. Forests would be more hospitable with fewer trees. “Will you summon a demon to coerce me?”

“When I first met you, Claire, you seemed like a calm, agreeable person. Lately you've been doing and saying the strangest things. Does the holiday season always disturb you this way? Mumsy had the same problem, which is why she took to opium so fervently. She claimed it was medicinal. To her surprise, the gentlemen from Interpol felt differently.”

“I'm leaving, Malthea. We can walk back to the lane together, or you can stay here and meditate until you're blue in the face, which will be well before dawn.”

Without waiting for her reply, I plunged back through the firs.

When I got back to the Book Depot, Caron thrust out her hand and waited until I dropped the car key in it before saying, “Did you forget to mention that this errand of yours involved a trip to Another State? That's probably where the only empty parking place at the mall is by now. Is it in Montana or West Virginia? Is there a shuttle?”

“Did you have any customers?” I asked as I went in the office to hang up my coat.

“Yeah, a few. Is there any gas in the car?”

“Not enough to cross state lines, but ample to get to the mall and back. That
is
where you're going, isn't it?”

“That's what I said,” she said, suddenly finding the need to align the pens and pencils on the counter like neatly toppled (and nutritionally challenged) toy soldiers. “We'll shop until nine when the mall closes, and then maybe get a pizza.”

“I would have thought you and Inez were sick of the mall by now, particularly after what happened the other day.”

She shrugged ever so innocently. “I'm not going to invite Mrs. Claus to share a pizza with us, if that's what you're implying. I don't ever want to set eyes on her or her manual again. Inez is going to meet me a little after eight by the fountain at the opposite end of the mall.”

“Be home by eleven,” I said, then stood by the window and watched her get into the car, twist the rearview mirror to inspect her makeup, and drive away. I was convinced she was up to something more insidious than wandering around the mall, but I couldn't begin to think what it might be.

I had a partial answer when an unfamiliar teenage girl with frizzy blond hair and unfortunately tight jeans came into the store an hour later. After a brief bout of stammering, she asked to speak to Caron.

“She's at the mall,” I said.

“Drat! Even if I knew what she looked like, there's no way I could find her in that madhouse and we're leaving at five-thirty.”

“You and Caron?”

“No,” the girl said, wringing her hands like a heroine steeling herself to go up the dark, creaky staircase to the attic where things did not bode well for her. “I told her she could come over after supper, but now my mother's decided she wants to leave for my grandma's house as soon as she gets off work instead of waiting until tomorrow. I can ask my grandma's permission to make a long-distance call, but she'll most likely say no. She's so cheap that she unplugs all the lamps and appliances at night so they can't leak electricity.”

“Would you like to leave Caron a note?” I said, pushing a piece of paper and a pencil across the counter and hoping I didn't seem overly eager.

Or rabid.

“It's kinda complicated for that. Can I just tell you?” I nodded with commendable restraint. “Darla Jean and I didn't up and quit, although we sure wanted to after Miz Portmeyer started nagging us all the time and bawling us out over nothing. I mean, it wasn't easy to keep the line moving, collect the money, and jam the photographs in the cardboard frames—all with mothers squawking because they didn't like the stiff smiles on their kids' faces and Santa getting lost every time he went to the rest room. Darla Jean said she'd work on her uncle's hog farm afore she'd put up with that again.”

“You were fired?” I asked before she could launch into a discourse on the merits of a career in porcine husbandry.

“Miz Portmeyer said we took money from the cash-box when her back was turned. How could we have done that? It's not like the costumes have pockets, and our purses were in our lockers. She just frowned and said that we must have passed the money to someone outside the fence. I was so mad I wanted to tell her to put one of those elves in a place where the sun don't shine, but Darla Jean started crying and I had to take her to the lounge before she made fools out of both of us.”

“Was there money missing?”

“If there was, Miz Portmeyer took it herself. I don't see why she would, though. She always wore real expensive clothes and jewelry, and once she sent me to get something out of the trunk of her fancy sports car. Thirty dollars is nothing but lunch money to her. Anyway, that's what Caron wanted to talk about. Tell her I'm sorry, but I won't be back home until three or four days after Christmas, depending on how long my mother can put up with my grandma. It's usually not very long.”

“Wait a minute,” I said as the girl headed for the door. “How did Caron find you?”

“I don't know, and even if she'd found out our names, Darla Jean and I live in a little town about twenty miles from here called Maggody.”

“I've never heard of it,” I said apologetically.

“Nobody has,” she said with a lugubrious sigh. “We had to write down our addresses and telephone numbers when we applied for the job, but I can't see Miz Portmeyer letting Caron copy down the information.”

“Will Darla Jean be home tonight?”

“No, her family left yesterday to spend Christmas in St. Louis. I'll bet her grandma doesn't have a five-pound ball of rubber bands.”

The girl, whose name I'd never ascertained, left the bookstore under her personal cloud of melancholy. No customers appeared after that, and at six o'clock I hung the “closed” sign on the door, locked up, and walked home to an empty apartment, an increasingly mangy Christmas tree, and a newscast that underscored the hazards of public transportation in under-developed countries. Vermont was not mentioned.

The following evening would be Christmas Eve. I'd promised the downstairs tenant, a retired professor who'd found himself divorced only recently and for reasons he'd not yet assimilated, that I would drop by his party, but I doubted I would any more than I would drag myself to Luanne's for an evening of cocktail-party chatter and squares of cheese on toothpicks.

The only thing that had any appeal was hearing what Caron had to say when she came home at eleven. It would require a healthy amount of inventiveness on her part to explain—without admitting to any misdemeanors, that is—how she'd found the names and telephone numbers of the previous two assistants at Santa's Workshop.

I wasn't sure what to make of the girl's story of being wrongly accused of theft. She'd sounded sincere (and didn't everybody these days?), but Ms. Portmeyer must have been aware of the risk when she fired them a week before Christmas. Without jingling reindeer to facilitate the operation, profits would plummet and the home office might reexamine her position on the heretofore ascending corporate escalator.

I was trying to decide on the best approach to persuade Caron to tell me what she was up to when the telephone rang. I picked up the receiver with the same eagerness I would a dollop of raw meat and said, “Hello.”

“Claire, this is Fern Lewis. I'm so upset I don't know what to do. A woman from the hospital called to tell me that Malthea's in the emergency room. I don't trust myself to drive. Can you please take me there?”

I told her I'd pick her up in ten minutes, then grabbed my coat and was halfway down the steps when I realized the garage was empty. My half, anyway. I went back through the apartment and down the interior front stairs to knock on the door of my nearest, and at the moment, dearest neighbor.

He answered the door in his bathrobe and slippers. “What a surprise, Claire, but I'm afraid you're early. My little get-together is tomorrow. However, if you'd like to come inside, I can offer you a tasty concoction of cranberry juice, vodka, and crème de menthe. I like to call it a ‘Jingle Bell Bazooka.'”

“I need to borrow your car,” I said. “Caron has mine, and I don't know how to get in touch with her. A friend is at the emergency room.” When he hesitated, I added, “The poor thing's quite elderly and frail, and she's never mentioned having any relatives in the area.”

I may have been piling it on when I described her as frail, but he must have already had a Jingle Bell Bazooka or two because he blinked tearily, left the doorway, and returned a moment later with a key ring. I thanked him and hurried around the yard to the garage.

When I pulled up in front of the duplex, Fern was waiting on the porch. She wrinkled her nose as she climbed into the passenger's side of the VW Beetle. “Is it cigarette smoke I smell? I do hope you haven't picked up that filthy habit. My late husband used to sneak outside for an occasional cigar, and I always told him afterward that he reeked like an incinerator.”

“I had to borrow the car,” I said. “What happened to Malthea?”

“I wish I knew. The woman called me because my name and address are on a next-of-kin card in Malthea's wallet. It was just a precaution, and I never expected to be careening through dark streets like this.”

I glanced at the speedometer. “I'm going twenty-three miles an hour, Fern. That does not qualify as ‘careening.'”

“Perhaps you should step on it. Malthea may die before we get there.”

I clenched my teeth and concentrated on shifting rather than stripping gears. As I parked in front of the emergency room, I saw two police cars at the end of the curb. A car that resembled Jorgeson's was in the shadows beyond them.

A succinct expletive entered my mind, in that it did not seem likely that Malthea had fallen off a curb or been stricken with a heart attack. I let Fern out of the car, parked, and joined her at the door. “It's going to be fine,” I said, squeezing her shoulder.

“I've been fretting all day. Malthea refused to answer the door or her telephone. The curtains were drawn. I called over and over again. I was beside myself.”

“I'm sure you were.” I led her into the blindingly antiseptic environment of the emergency room. A multigenerational Hispanic family was grouped on two sofas; even the youngest child watched me solemnly. Beyond them was a woman holding a baby wrapped in a thin blanket. The only other person in sight was a young nurse with a clipboard and a harried expression.

“Malthea Hendlerson?” I said to her.

“She's been taken upstairs,” the nurse said, flinching as an elevator opened behind us. “Are you relatives? We need some information about her insurance coverage.”

“What happened to her?”

“I can't say. She suffered injuries, and once they stabilized her, she was transferred to ICU. We have her Medicare card, but we must know if she has a private insurer.”

“Or what?” I demanded in what even I realized was an unnecessarily high voice. “Are you going to turn off the life-support system if she doesn't have insurance?”

Jorgeson appeared at my side, discreetly hustled me over to a soda machine, and hunted through his pockets for change. “Calm down, Mrs. Malloy,” he murmured. “None of us needs to deal with hospital security just now. Why don't you sit and we'll talk?”

I sat. Jorgeson handed me a can and sat down beside me. “Here's all we know so far. Malthea went to Nicholas Chunder's house sometime after we left at five o'clock. We haven't had anybody on duty out there since we took the boy into custody last night, but I did arrange for a patrol car to cruise by on a regular basis. The officers saw a light, went inside, and found her unconscious on the floor. Blow to the head. She's still out.”

Fern, who'd given up badgering the nurse and was hovering nearby, made a gurgly noise. “Is she in a coma?”

“At the moment, she's merely unconscious,” said Jorgeson. “We haven't ruled out the possibility that one of our local degenerates heard about the murder and showed up; thinking the house would be unoccupied. The light should have warned him off, though. These weasels are more scared of their shadows than your average groundhog.”

I lowered my voice. “Then you think that it has to do with Nicholas's murder?”

“Hold on.” He beckoned to a uniformed officer and asked him to escort Fern to the ICU waiting room. Once she was gone, he said, “Nothing was taken, and there're expensive objects everywhere you look. Anyone who'd gone there with the explicit intent to commit theft would have at least stuffed a piece of silver or crystal in his pocket”

I gazed at a greenish expanse of linoleum that brought to mind a stagnant pond. “Look on the bright side, Jorgeson—at least two suspects have been eliminated. Gilda and Roy are somewhere upstairs.”

“If only they were. It seems that on this very afternoon, a Brownie troop came to sing Christmas carols and pass out cookies. The nurses and aides on the sixth floor decided that all their patients should be included in the festivities. A very kind-hearted gesture on everyone's part, to be sure. The door was left unlocked, certain patients became overtly emotional, two dozen Brownies started screaming, and Roy and Gilda managed to disappear. Nobody noticed their absence until supper trays were being distributed.”

“I'd have thought security on that particular ward would be tight.”

“Not as tight as it should be, obviously. Patients walk off the psych ward move often than the public's aware of, since the hospital administrators don't want negative publicity. Gilda and Roy aren't the only ones who slipped away this afternoon. We have APBs out on a convicted rapist and a guy who wears an aluminum-foil skullcap. Gilda works here, so she may have had help. Or maybe the Brownies were in on it.”

I told him about my conversation with Malthea in the grove. “She must have lingered in the vicinity until you left, then entered the house to look for something. Could Gilda have gone back, too?”

“Yeah, or Malthea conjured up that demon with the foreign name and bad attitude.”

“Have you located the weapon?”

He nodded. “Chunder had a marble replica of Stonehenge in his study. One of the chunks was found near her body. It'd been wiped off, but there was a trace of blood in a crack. Ironic, huh?”

“Very,” I said dryly. “So Malthea was in the study when she was attacked? Was she searching the desk?”

“There's a cabinet in the corner. We'd already been through it and found nothing of interest, but she wouldn't have known that. Evidence suggests that she was kneeling in front of it and working on the lock with a hairpin, which would explain why she didn't hear this other person come into the room. Picking a lock requires a lot of concentration.”