Christmas Stalkings

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “She fainted,” whispered Mary accusingly. “You said no one ever fainted.” The school sang lustily, now onto “See Amid the Winter’s Snow,” covering the noise of two gym teachers and the school nurse swooping in on the trouble spot as rapidly as possible.

  Helen ignored her, and bent to help Deborah turn the middle angel over to get the mask off her face and let her breathe.

  It was then that the second departure from routine occurred. Mary was the first to notice the blood pouring out of the white-and-gold mask, soaking into her blue robe. Her screams brought down the house, drowning out all six hundred joyful voices.

  “She was shot?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “And nobody saw anybody firing at her. No one saw a weapon.”

  The larger man in the grey suit shook his head, with a what-did-you-expect shrug of his shoulders.

  “What have they done with the body?” asked Inspector John Sanders. He was standing in the chancel looking down at the blood-soaked carpet.

  “Apparently there were twenty doctors in the first two rows of the audience, all tripping over each other to make medical history by saving her life,” said his partner, Sergeant Ed Dubinsky. “She got whisked away to the hospital. But she’s dead all right He got her right between the eyes. Couldn’t have done it better myself.”

  “Who was she?”

  “That’s interesting,” said Dubinsky, dragging out his notebook. “She was supposed to be a girl called Ashley Wallace. But Ashley didn’t show up, and at the last minute they grabbed a teacher. They needed someone who could stand still, and had hair to match the other two.”

  “What in hell are you talking about?” Sanders stared at his partner in bafflement. “The other two what? Hair to match?”

  “The other two angels. She was an angel, in the pageant—you know. The Christmas pageant. Like Sunday school and all that.” Ed Dubinsky was moving into his mode of long-suffering patience. “And the angels all wear masks, so you can’t tell who they are. Like this.” He moved over to where the plastic-shrouded, bloodstained mask with its neat bullet hole in the center of the forehead lay waiting to be carried off to the lab. “But every year they have angels that match—”

  “Angels that match?”

  “Yes, Inspector,” said a clear voice from behind Dubinsky. “The angels always have long hair, by tradition, and we have cycles—black, brown, red, blond. When I first got here, they were always blond, and that seemed to me to be discriminatory. The girls consider it a great honor to be an angel-. My name is Helen Armstrong, by the way. I look after the angels, among other things. Not that I did a very good job today.”

  Sanders looked at her and then shook his head. “Beautiful. We have a maniac going around shooting angels in Christmas pageants. That was all I needed. It’ll be Santa’s next. Let me get this straight. The angel was supposed to be a girl named Ashley Wallace but she didn’t show—and?”

  “It was at the very last minute, literally, before we realized she wasn’t here. We had wasted a lot of time searching for her. She’s like that, though. Totally unreliable.”

  “Then why did you put her in it?”

  Helen Armstrong smiled grimly. “You haven’t heard of Wilfred Wallace, the Minister of Justice? The Wallaces felt that little Ashley hadn’t received the recognition she deserved from the school over the years.” Mrs. Armstrong’s voice was thick with sarcasm. “He spoke to his good friend the chairman of the board, who begged us on bended knee to let Ashley be an angel and get Wallace off his back. It’s no big thing—not like asking us to raise her marks or make her Head Girl—so we cast Ashley. Wallace was certainly rewarded for that piece of arm-twisting—he thought that was his darling going face-forward into the crèche. He almost had a heart attack.” She grinned wickedly and then shook her head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound quite so callous. Anyway, we were going to go on with just two angels, when—” Helen Armstrong’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. She shook her head angrily and continued in a low voice. “—when Cynthia Toomey finally turned up. She was supposed to be a floater, helping us do the pageant, going from one potential trouble spot to the next, but she was hiding in the choir loft talking to Jeff. Anyway, we took one look at that gorgeous red hair and bundled her into Ashley’s costume. With the mask, you couldn’t tell the difference.”

  “Who knew about the switch?”

  “Just the two of us. Annabel Cousins—she’s the drama teacher—and I. As far as anyone else was concerned, it was Ashley in that costume.”

  “Did you see it happen?” -

  “My God,” interrupted Dubinsky, “everybody saw it. There were about six hundred girls up here and down there,” he said, pointing to the pews in front beyond the side aisles. “There were twenty-five hundred more spectators, and about forty teachers roaming around. Carstairs said he felt like he was in court—he recognized at least three judges, and about thirty lawyers. They all have kids here. Not only that, but the dead woman’s husband was up there taking pictures of it.” He pointed to the choir loft at the west end of the church.

  “Where are they all?”

  “We let the spectators go, except for the parents of kids still here. They’re at the back. We kept the kids in the pageant, Ashley’s friends, the teachers who were roaming around and the choir director. They’re sitting up here. We haven’t been able to get rid of the chairman of the board, two of his lawyer friends, the principal and the vice-principal. They’re down in the first two pews.” He peered down as he spoke. “With Miss Jeffries,” he added, his voice heavy with disapproval.

  “Don’t be so damned righteous,” muttered Sanders. “We were having lunch across the street when they tracked me down. She’s brought a book and I’ll take her home as soon as we’ve cleared up here.”

  Dubinsky paid no attention. “And the husband is in the vestry.”

  “The husband?”

  “Yes, the husband. Jeff Toomey. The one who was photographing it all.”

  “I’ll see him first.”

  “By the way, the rector wants us out before evensong, the Minister of Justice wants a province-wide search instituted for his daughter, and half the powers in the country are down there screaming for blood. So we’re supposed to do something and be quick about it.”

  Jeff Toomey was a startlingly good-looking man, in the square-jawed, blue-eyed style, with the face of a twenty-year-old, except for a sprinkling of lines around his eyes and a slight thinning of his blond hair. He stumbled to his feet, looking blankly exhausted, when they walked in. “I’m Jeff Toomey,” he said, holding out his hand. His voice was hoarse.

  “You were up in the balcony all the time?”

  “Yes, from about two-thirty until—until after Cynthia collapsed and someone came to tell me it was Cynthia, not one of the girls.”

  “Alone?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. Some girl came looking for someone and Cynthia was . . .” He swallowed hard and stopped. “Every year I photograph the whole thing. You know, for fund-raising. They sell prints to the kids’ parents. I’ve been doing it for ten years, ever since we got married. And I shot it,” he cried suddenly, causing Sanders’s wandering attention to snap back, “I shot someone killing Cynthia.” He dropped his head in his hands. “Just as she fell. What in hell was she doing up there? No one seems to know.”

  “The student who was supposed to play the center angel didn’t show.”

  “Why would someone want to shoot one of the students?” said Toomey, his face crumpled in bewilderment.

  Sanders thought of the Minister of Justice, sitting grim-faced in the back of the church, and of the number of enemies he had acquired in the last four years. He shook his head. “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary, Mr. Toomey? While you were taking pictures?”

  Toomey stared at him as if he hadn’t understood. “Notice anything? I didn’t have much chance. I had two cameras going—a wide-angle and a long lens— and a video camera. The vi
deo I left running, checking it now and again. Otherwise, I was setting up shots, going back and forth.”

  “And except for those two visitors, you were alone.”

  “Once the choir left. That was at the end of the first song.” He paused, as if for thought. “There was a man standing just below me in the center aisle. He was carrying something—I assumed at the time it was a camera. Now—I’m not so sure. And I may have heard a bang when I was taking that last picture. The music was so damned loud, I couldn’t tell.” A knock on the vestry door interrupted his reflections.

  A constable walked in, dragging behind him a tall, thin, redheaded girl dressed in wet jeans, running shoes, a sweatshirt and a jacket. She was shivering visibly and her cheeks were wet with tears. “The missing girl, Inspector. She just arrived. Her father would like to speak to her also.”

  Sanders could imagine the minister invoking the wrath of everyone from the Chief of Police to the Prime Minister on the constable’s stubborn head, without result “So you’re Ashley Wallace,” said Sanders, looking closely at her. “And where have you been?”

  Ashley looked Sanders woefully in the eye, and then her glance skewered sideways toward Jeff Toomey. “I’m sorry,” she began in a voice choked with tears. “It’s been the most awful day. I don’t think I can . . .”

  “Sit down, Miss Wallace,” said Sanders. “Start from the beginning.”

  “Okay,” she said, and he caught a glimpse of a wad of blue gum between her teeth. Jeff Toomey frowned. “I left home early because I had to get into my angel costume and everything and I didn’t want to wait for my dad, because sometimes he can’t get away, and he didn’t want me to take the car because of the snow and everything. So I went to catch the bus and I realized that I’d forgotten my wallet. I didn’t have any money and this guy was driving by and he offered me a lift right to the church.”

  “What kind of car was he driving?” asked Dubinsky, writing rapidly.

  “Uh—” Her eyes slipped around the room, as if the answer might be engraved on a wall somewhere. “A black car. A big black car, I think it was—maybe a Mercedes or something.”

  “A big black Mercedes,” said Dubinsky calmly, writing on still.

  “Uh—yeah. And the driver was this big black guy, really scary-looking.”

  “And you got into the car with him?” asked Sanders, allowing amazement to flood his voice.

  Red blotches sprang up on her pale cheeks. “Yeah—well, he looked really nice at first, and then when he didn’t drive me to the church, but went way out by the lake, I got scared, and I jumped out of the car when he had to slow down and I walked here. It was a long way, but I figured my dad would wait for me.” A tear spilled onto her cheek.

  “How old are you, Miss Wallace?” asked Sanders.

  “Nineteen.” There was suspicion in her voice. “What difference does it make how old I am?”

  “No difference. You seem a bit old for high school, that’s all,” said Sanders mildly.

  “I wanted more breadth in my education, so I took an extra year.” Suspicion gave way to hostility. “Is there something wrong with that?”

  The inspector smiled peaceably. “Why did you walk all the way up here instead of telephoning the police?”

  “I didn’t have any money. I told you that.”

  “You don’t need money for emergency calls,” he said. “You might want to remember that. We like to investigate incidents like abduction.”

  “Well—he never hurt me, just scared me. And anyway, if I’d caught my bus, I would have been shot. That’s what they told me. I’m really sorry, Mr. Toomey. About your wife. She was a great teacher.”

  Jeff Toomey turned away, an expression of agony on his face.

  “You can wait out in the church with your father, Miss Wallace,” said Sanders. “But please don’t leave just yet.” With a jerk of his head, Sanders walked out of the room. Dubinsky rose hastily and followed.

  “Lousy liar, isn’t she?” said Sanders as he walked back into the chancel. “If she’d said it was a green car, she’d have been abducted by little green men, I suppose.”

  “Yeah. But ten to one it doesn’t mean a thing—she was out with a boyfriend or something like that.”

  Sanders glanced speculatively at the girl as she walked toward the back of the church. “How old did you say Mrs. Toomey was?”

  “I didn’t,” said Dubinsky, flipping back through his notebook. “Thirty-five.”

  “And her husband?”

  “Thirty-two. Doesn’t look it, does he?”

  “Where do you have to be to shoot someone standing on this platform?” he asked, as he scrambled up to the position of the center angel.

  Dubinsky backed away between the choir stalls in the chancel, looking up at the grey-suited figure of the inspector. Then he turned and surveyed the church. “Where’s the edge of your line of sight?” he called up.

  “Just past that constable over there,” said Sanders, and jumped down. “It’s what I thought—to get a clear shot at the angel you had to be in the balcony or right under it, unless you wanted to be observed by a couple of thousand witnesses. And Toomey was up in the balcony, taking a picture just as the shot was fired, right? They’ve taken his film off to check that?”

  “And there were at least four teachers standing under the balcony,” said Dubinsky. “The drama teacher and three more floaters.”

  “The balcony,” said Sanders. “Could someone hide up there?”

  “Naw,” said Dubinsky. “It was the first thing we thought of. Nothing up there but camera equipment, chairs, and some old wooden—” He turned and moved with astonishing speed toward the back of the church.

  They found the lightweight assault rifle in a large wooden box that looked as if it had once contained a speaker for the grandfather of all sound systems. It was standing upright, its open side pushed back against the wall, another small wooden box perched inside it. “A stool,” said Dubinsky, giving the small box a kick. “All the time Toomey was fiddling with his equipment, this guy just sat here, waiting for the pageant to start. When Toomey was focusing on the pageant scene, he stood up, and picked her off. Only he got Toomey’s wife, instead of Wallace’s daughter.”

  “Why didn’t Toomey hear the shot?”

  “No one did. These things aren’t that noisy and he waited until the music was loud before he fired. And then in the confusion, he slipped down the stairs and out the side door. He was pretty safe, really. Toomey was too busy to poke around.”

  “Wait there,” said Sanders. “I’ll be right back.”

  Dubinsky leaned on the railing of the balcony with a growing sense of irritation. So far, he had been the one to field the flak from the furious Minister of Justice, not to say the equally enraged minister of the church, the chairman of the board, the principal of the school, and everyone else in the building. And what was Sanders doing? Murmuring sweet nothings into the ear of the green-eyed woman sitting in the front pew. It wasn’t that he had any objection to Harriet Jeffries as a human being; so far, she had passed his two tests: she drank beer and she was said to be an expert photographer. He admired expertise, in any field. It was his sense of the fitness of things that was offended. What would Sanders say if he turned up for work with his wife Sally draped over his arm? Not that she’d be fool enough to be here. Sally, thank God, had too much sense.

  Now Miss Jeffries was putting down her book and walking back with Sanders. Dubinsky sighed and sat down. Shootings in churches made him very uncomfortable. Especially political ones.

  “Hi, Ed,” said Harriet Jeffries, looking slightly embarrassed. “Sorry to barge in, but John wanted me to check for something . . .” She was opening Jeff Toomey’s camera case as she talked, carefully picking up pieces of equipment and putting them to one side. “Here it is,” she said. She pulled out a long grey cord neatly rolled and fastened with a garbage-bag tie, undid it, and brought it over to the camera closest to the center line of the church. She snap
ped one end into place and began to unroll the cord. “That box?” she asked.

  Sanders nodded.

  She continued unrolling it until it reached the box with about five inches to spare. There was a grey bulb on the end, lying on the floor. “It’s a cable release. You’ve seen them. Okay—you stand back here— you’ve already focused on the spot in front of the altar where the angels will be—and at the right moment you fire your gun and then just step on the bulb. Voila—you have a picture of the woman collapsing, apparently taken while you were standing behind your camera. I’m surprised that you two didn’t think of it earlier. It’s the most obvious thing in the world.”

  “So why does Toomey want to shoot Wallace’s daughter?” said Dubinsky, his mind still firmly fixed on politics.

  “He doesn’t. He wants to shoot his wife, of course,” said Harriet. “Who else do men shoot? You know that. And since the girl must have been in on it, I would guess you don’t have to look very far for a reason.”

  “And the lying little bitch was sitting somewhere drinking coffee until it was time to show up. He knew she wouldn’t be there. But how could they be sure that Cynthia Toomey would take her place?”

  Harriet shrugged. “I don’t know, but you might ask how many people there are in the school with long red hair who are over five foot nine. It seemed awfully important to everyone that all the angels look the same.”

  “So Toomey keeps her in the balcony chatting until he knows they’ll be panicking, and then reminds her she’s supposed to be helping with the pageant. Down she goes, red hair and all. Ninety percent chance they’ll use her,” said Sanders reflectively. “And if a third redheaded angel turns up onstage, he knows it has to be his wife and he has ten minutes to set up his stunt. Looks good to me. Let’s get him.”

  “Do you think they’ll let us cancel the pageant next year, Helen?”

  Helen Armstrong shook her head as she finished packing the last of the costumes into their boxes. “No. But I think this is the last year they’re going to expect us to find three girls in the graduating class with long hair all the same colour.”