A Holly, Jolly Murder

by JOAN HESSS

  The mall was jammed with shoppers. The organized ones clutched lists and darted between those with slack-jawed faces. Children were dragged along by grim parents bent on bargains. Strollers competed in an informal version of the Indy 500. The odor of sweat competed with perfume, popcorn, cedar, and recycled air. The worst of it, however, was the clash of carols from inside stores; the Little Drummer Boy was banging away over the warning that Santa was making a list and Rudolph was being denied participation in reindeer frivolities taking place away in a manger. Cash registers jangled in kiosks in the middle of the promenade.

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” I said to Luanne as we elbowed our way through the teeming masses, at least one of whom was yearning to go home and spend a quiet, uneventful evening with a novel.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  She scooted around a line of swaggering adolescents, forcing me to trot after her. The crowd coagulated as we neared the food court, and our progress slowed to a maddening crawl. New odors assaulted us. I was amazed that anyone could eat in such a raucous environment and not succumb to terminal indigestion.

  Luanne grabbed my wrist. “It’s down this way.”

  After a few more minutes of weaving through a maze of humanity, we found Santa’s Workshop in a pavilion in front of a department store. It was delineated by a two-foot-high picket fence and festooned with twinkling lights, faux icicles, and blankets of cotton strewn with glitter. Plastic elves grinned maniacally from strategic points. On a stage partially surrounded by lattice sat the man himself; below him was a camera on a tripod and the invincible Mrs. Claus. There must have been forty or even fifty children in line, each held in place by a parent. A few of the children were smiling, but most of them were pouting or whining. Their parents reminded me of soldiers being briefed on the eve of a critical campaign.

  Luanne and I wormed our way closer to the gazebo, and finally caught a glimpse of the two reindeer in their tunics and antlers. Both appeared to be exhausted but determined to keep the line moving (and the bonus money flowing). While Inez consulted Mrs. Claus, Caron took a sobbing child by the hand, hauled him up the two steps, and deftly deposited him on Santa’s lap. Thirty seconds later, she removed the child and Inez fetched the next victim.

  “I can’t make out his age,” said Luanne, gazing thoughtfully at Santa. “Do you think he’s padded or really that pudgy?”

  “You’ll have to fork over fifteen dollars for the answer to that,” I said. “Furthermore, I don’t suggest you try to cut in line. Those mothers are probably packing designer pistols in those imported leather handbags.”

  “I’ll ask Caron about him. She and Inez look cute in a goofy way, don’t they?”

  “Don’t tell her that,” I said, watching as yet another child was positioned on Santa’s lap. Mrs. Claus remained hunched over the camera, raising her head only to announce she was ready to take a photograph. All I could tell about her was that she had white hair (possibly a wig) and an ample rump (probably her own). As Luanne had said, it was impossible to make out Santa’s features under the bushy beard, equally bushy white eyebrows, and fur-trimmed hat.

  A girl of five or six, dressed in a red velvet party dress, ran up to the head of the line. “I’m next!” she screeched in a voice that imperiled the vases in a nearby jewelry store.

  Caron rolled her eyes and said something to the girl, who in response shoved the boy next to her with enough force to send him sprawling onto the cotton. Mrs. Claus straightened up and gave Caron a stern look.

  “I want to go now!” the girl repeated, stamping her foot with each word. It sounded as if this were a familiar assertion in her home, whether the issue was a glass of milk, a cartoon show, or a basic demand of nature.

  “Wait your turn,” said a mother in the middle of the line.

  The girl’s face was pink and her chin trembling. “I don’t want to wait! I hate to wait!”

  Luanne nudged me. “Guess who’ll be getting coal and switches in her stocking.”

  Caron seemed nonplussed as angry mutters from those in line grew louder. Santa and the child on his lap stared at the crowd as if it were a mob in the making. The little boy who’d been pushed began to wail as his mother yanked him to his feet and brushed glitter off his knees. Shoppers formed a loose circle around the fence, no doubt intrigued by the diversion of violence.

  The girl took advantage of Caron’s momentary paralysis and darted through the gate. Inez started to reach for her, then timidly lowered her hand and stepped back.

  “Where on earth is that child’s mother?” I asked Luanne. “Surely she’s not here on her own.”

  “Maybe the chauffeur’s out in the limousine, waiting on her royal highness. As we know, her royal highness does not like to be denied the privileges of rank.”

  The girl was halfway up the steps when Caron spun around and went after her. She caught the girl around the waist, and to the crowd’s enthusiastic approval, carried her to the fence and set her down outside it.

  The girl froze for a moment, her eyes rounded, then took a deep breath and ran toward a woman in a fur coat that was in no way tatty. “Inappropriate touching, Mommy!” she screamed. “Inappropriate touching!”

  Chapter 6

  “I don’t believe it,” Caron said as we drove away from the mall. “There must have been two hundred people who saw what happened. All I did was pick her up, for pity’s sake. From the way everybody reacted, you’d have thought I flung her across the mall like a red velvet bowling ball. Which, for the record, I considered doing.”

  I looked at her in the rearview mirror. “You didn’t get fired, and that’s the important thing.”

  “I’m not so sure I won’t get fired in the morning. Mrs. Claus really bawled me out in the locker room. She’ll stay up all night trying to find something in the manual.”

  Luanne turned around and leaned over the seat to pat Caron’s knee. “She’s not going to fire you this close to Christmas. She can’t risk not being able to find a replacement.”

  “That’s right,” Inez said. “I mean, who else would agree to wear costumes like that and deal with an endless line of drooling babies and bratty kids? The pay’s good, but I’ll sure be relieved when we’re done on Christmas Eve.”

  Caron flopped back in the seat and closed her eyes. “No kidding.”

  The ambiance was so oppressive that none of us spoke for the remainder of the trip. I dropped off Luanne and Inez at their respective residences, and a few minutes later parked in the garage beneath the duplex.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said to Caron, treading a fine line between sage and cheerleader. “The girl was just parroting something she’d been taught to say. She sounded like a robot from some science-fiction movie. There were plenty of witnesses who saw exactly what you did.”

  “Mrs. Claus said I should call the girl’s parents to apologize. I told her I hadn’t done anything wrong and I wasn’t that much of a hypocrite. I expected to get fired, but she shrugged and left the locker room. I can almost hear her on the hot line to the home office asking for the approved procedure for dealing with rebellious reindeer. I’ll probably be transferred to a strip mall in some podunk town where all the shoppers are first cousins.”

  I offered to fix her something to eat, but she said she wasn’t hungry and limped down the hall to her room. Her lack of defiance unsettled me; she’s always preferred a vigorous offense, no matter how illogical, and she’s never held a smoking gun that couldn’t be rationalized away in a nanosecond.

  I was pouring a drink when the telephone rang. Its sound reminded me of the earlier call from Gilda D’Orcher and my promise to go to her trailer, and I was not enthusiastic when I picked up the receiver.

  “How’s it going?” asked Peter in a suspiciously jovial tone. “Have you been out Christmas shopping?”

  “Luanne and I went to the mall.”

  “Anything else going on?”

  All systems went on red alert, but I managed a car
eless chuckle and said, “This and that. Any developments with your mother and the diabolic suitor?”

  “No, she keeps babbling about his virtues and he keeps taking her to expensive restaurants. He’s been dropping hints about giving her an engagement ring for Christmas, but I made her swear not to do anything rash until…”

  “Hell freezes over?” I suggested.

  There was a profound pause during which I could hear only the rush of his breath on the mouthpiece. Finally he said, “Until Leslie gets here tomorrow and she and my mother can have a long talk about Myron.”

  “Leslie? Is she an old friend of your mother’s? A college roommate or sorority sister?”

  “Leslie’s my ex-wife.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. Leslie and my mother became close friends, and since the divorce they’ve continued to call and visit each other several times a year. When I told Leslie about Myron, she offered to come as soon as she could. I’m picking her up at the airport at noon.”

  My hand was trembling as I grabbed the glass and took an unladylike swallow of scotch. “Did your mother call her or did you?”

  Peter took his time responding to my extraordinarily reasonable question. “Yes, Claire, I called her. To answer your next question, I didn’t know her telephone number off the top of my head. I found it in my mother’s address book.”

  “Did you?” I managed to say with only the slightest trace of frost. “How convenient that she could drop everything and come dashing to your aid. She must be very fond of your mother.”

  He either missed the edge in my voice—or opted to ignore it. “It wasn’t convenient. She had to make all kinds of arrangements and wheedle her boss into letting her take some days off. She called a few minutes ago to say her travel agent had scrambled around and found a seat on a flight tomorrow. I offered to pay for it, but she wouldn’t hear of it. A ticket at the last moment costs a bundle.”

  I decided not to point out that Leslie may have believed that martyrdom was the first step to canonization. My knowledge of saints was limited to Saint John of God (booksellers) and Saint Patrick (green beer), but I figured no one had laid claim to the title of patron saint of ex-daughters-in-law. “It must have been difficult for her to find a baby-sitter on such short notice, too,” I said, feigning sympathy for the woman who’d been married to Peter for twelve years and had remained intimate with his mother. I’d never even met his mother.

  “Baby-sitter? Who said anything about a baby-sitter? The biggest problem was trying to find a kennel for Boris Godunov and Prince Igor, her Russian wolfhounds. Leslie’s crazy about Russian opera and goes to St. Petersburg for the season every year.”

  “Isn’t that fascinating?” I said. “I hope this impromptu visit doesn’t interfere with her consumption of vodka and caviar.”

  “I’m sure it won’t,” he said blandly. “What else have you been up to besides the mall?”

  Standing around a gloomy forest while water dripped down my neck lacked the glamour of the St. Petersburg opera season. “Selling books, that sort of thing,” I said with matching blandness. “Do you have any idea how much longer you’ll be in Newport?”

  “It depends on Leslie’s plans. Since she’s making the effort to come and be supportive, I can’t just toss her the car keys at the airport and take the next flight home. I’ll be here for at least a few more days.”

  “No, I don’t see how you can leave while Leslie’s there,” I said, hoping he hadn’t caught the slight hiss in my voice when I said her name. Someone with Russian wolfhounds, no doubt pedigreed to the nth degree, would never be so vulgar as to hiss. “You must have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “The only reason she’s coming is to talk to my mother,” said Peter. “There’s nothing more to it than that.”

  “Oops, someone’s at the front door,” I said. “I know you’ll be busy over the next few days, so I won’t expect a call. ‘Bye.”

  I carefully replaced the receiver, freshened my drink, and made it to the sofa without any disasters. Leslie was likely to be a spontaneous woman, I thought as I pulled off my scuffed loafers and propped my feet on the coffee table. I tried to remember if Peter had ever mentioned where she lived or if she’d remarried. Anyone who jetted to St. Petersburg every year was not likely to have a menial, minimum-wage sort of job. She was apt to be a stockbroker or a network news anchor or an editor at a prestigious literary house that publishes the sort of books that everybody buys and nobody actually reads. That, or Anastasia incarnate.

  When the telephone rang, I stayed where I was, my fingers crossed that I was not going to be regaled with an addendum to the litany of Leslie’s selfless, magnanimous sacrifices, such as donating a kidney to an orphan or single-handedly funding a Kurdish refugee camp. I heard Caron answer it in her room, her initial enthusiasm almost immediately replaced with ill-disguised resentment. Seconds later she came down the hall and said, “It’s for you. Would you please keep it short? Inez thinks she saw Marissa at the mall when—well, you know when. I may need her to testify when I’m tried for assault and battery. Is that a felony?”

  “I don’t know.” I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “This is Malthea, Claire. You must come over here and explain what’s happening. I’d put on the front porch light for you, but I think it’s better that you arrive under the cloak of darkness. Park around the corner and watch out for rough spots on the sidewalk. We can’t have any scraped knees, can we?”

  “Absolutely not!”

  “I’m glad you agree with me. I’ll see you shortly.”

  Before I could get in a word, she hung up. I considered throwing the telephone through the nearest window, but the apartment was chilly enough without inviting in the December wind. I could have hurled my glass at the wall, but someone would be obliged to sweep up the broken glass—and odds were not good that it would be Caron. The obvious option was to turn off the light and go to bed; I’d been up since an absurdly early hour.

  Wishing I’d never heard of The Encyclopedia of Pagan Rituals and Initiations or any of the other oddball titles, I put on my shoes, set the glass in the kitchen sink, and went to Caron’s door. She was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, gloomily keeping watch over the telephone in case it attempted to scuttle away.

  “I’m going out for a few minutes,” I said.

  “That’s fine. I’ll just sit here in the dark while my future gurgles down the drain.”

  “I truly don’t think you have any reason to worry, dear. Luanne was right when she said Mrs. Claus wouldn’t dare fire you so close to Christmas. You’ll be able to retrieve everything on layaway and humiliate Rhonda on the first day of school.”

  “The only person who’ll ask me to the prom is Mr. Mortician. I can see myself in the front seat of the hearse, dressed in black with a calla lily corsage. I might as well ask him to drop me off at the cemetery, since my life is over anyway.”

  I could think of nothing else to say, so I left the apartment and drove to Malthea’s. I parked in front of the duplex, sat for a moment while I reminded myself how annoyed I was at her, then marched up to the dark porch and rapped on the door.

  “It’s cold out here!” I called. “If you don’t open the door in the next ten seconds, I’m—”

  The door opened. Malthea eyed me for a moment, then stepped back and waited until I was inside before saying, “I thought we’d agreed you would arrive under a cloak of darkness, Claire.”

  “It’s plenty dark out there,” I said. “What’s more, it’s getting late and I still haven’t had dinner. Here I am. What do you want this time?”

  “Goodness,” she murmured, “you sound as if you’ve had a difficult day. Let’s do sit down and have some tea while we talk.”

  I stared at her. “A difficult day? I think that sums it up nicely, although I might have chosen a more forceful adjective—like nightmarish. What do you want, Malthea? If you’ve decided I should adopt Roy Tate, you can
forget it. I went out there to help, and it backfired. Now I quit.”

  “Some of us have forgotten our manners, haven’t we?” She sat down on the sofa, crossed her arms, and waited until I’d reluctantly joined her. “I thought it might be better if I tell you what took place last night while we were decorating Nicholas’s front room. Then, if you feel strongly that I ought to tell the police, I will do so—although I cannot see why it should have any bearing on the tragic accident that befell Nicholas.”

  “Okay,” I said neutrally.

  The telephone began to ring, but as she’d done previously, Malthea ignored it. “As of late there has been growing dissension in our grove. Each of us brings an individual philosophy, and eclecticism and tolerance are important tenets of contemporary Druidism. There are Orthodox Jewish Druids, Catholic Druids—”

  “Malthea,” I said. “It’s eight o’clock. I’m tired and I’m hungry—and I’m not predisposed to listen to a lecture. My daughter is at home preplanning her funeral. The significant man in my life is picking up his ex-wife at an airport tomorrow.” I bit down on my lip, took a calming breath, and added, “Just tell me what happened last night.”

  “All I was trying to do was present the situation so that you can grasp the—”

  “What happened?” I growled.

  “Nicholas owned many of the residences along this street, as well as apartment buildings and houses in other neighborhoods. He was so very kind about helping his fellow Druids find affordable, if not luxurious, housing. Fern has been paying the same rent for ten years, and the Sawyers pay almost nothing. That’s why they were upset.”

  “Well, of course. I myself would be heartbroken if my landlord threatened to reduce the rent.” I paused so that she could hear my stomach rumble. “Who wouldn’t be?”

  “Sarcasm does not become you,” she said with a sniff. “To return to the point, Nicholas was vehemently opposed to any practices that fell outside his interpretation of unadulterated meso-Druidic tradition. He was forever grumbling about our two Wiccans and their somewhat quaint notions about matters of ritual. He observed Roy’s drift into satanism with horror. He went so far as to object to the little herbal remedies that Fern concocts when someone is feeling unwell.” She stood up. “This is all so difficult. I must have a cup of tea to give me the strength to continue.”