A Holly, Jolly Murder

by JOAN HESSS

  Despite her slick presentation, I got the message. “MultiPack, as you call it, is going to pay off the Connolly family to keep them quiet?”

  “I should think that will be the ultimate decision. Our insurance carries a liability clause. North Hills Mall has a similar policy and will most likely choose to settle, too. They prefer a reputation as a place where children are safe from physical injury and emotional distress.”

  “What about you?” asked Caron.

  She flashed small white teeth. “As a MultiPack employee, the liability covers me from any lawsuit resulting from my assignment. I’ve been with them for fifteen years. I started out just as you did, then did a degree in business law, and went on to become an assistant regional season events director. We’ve used the same Mrs. Claus in Farberville for several years, but she was taken ill at the last moment and I stepped in as a replacement. Sacrifices must be made for the good of the corporation.”

  I gave her a cold look. “Caron was an employee at the time. Is she covered?”

  “I’m afraid she isn’t, since she was a part-time employee and therefore not entitled to any benefits. It’s made quite clear in the contract she signed. I believe it’s paragraph eleven, subsection four, item eight.” Ms. Portmeyer closed her briefcase and stood up. “I’m glad to have met you, Mrs. Malloy. Caron, I enjoyed working with you while it lasted. I hope you’ll remember us fondly.”

  “Wait a minute!” I said as I stood up. “Let me make sure I have this straight. You, MultiPack, and the mall are bailing out of the lawsuit, leaving Caron and me to face the possibility of a million-dollar judgment. Is that correct?”

  She held out a business card. “This has the telephone and fax numbers of our legal department should your attorneys wish to be in communication with them. If Caron has misplaced her copy of her contract, I have the original which can be placed in evidence. I can also provide the manual given to her; it contains very precise guidelines on the policy of handling difficult customers. Physical roughness is explicitly forbidden.”

  Caron moved in front of the door, blocking Ms. Portmeyer’s withdrawal. “What was I supposed to do, then? Let her go up on the stage and knock other kids off Santa’s lap?”

  Ms. Portmeyer blinked. “Oh, no, that would have resulted in a lawsuit, too. It’s unfortunate that you didn’t take time to study the manual, Caron. You would have made a fine senior reindeer in years to come. Because of what happened, MultiPack cannot continue any association that might taint our image as a family-focused organization.”

  Caron looked as though she was ready to punch her ex-boss in the nose, which no doubt would have resulted in yet another lawsuit. I hastily clutched her elbow and pulled her away from the door. “Good night, Ms. Portmeyer,” I said. “You’ll be hearing from my attorney within a matter of days.”

  “Good night,” she said, then went through the doorway and down the stairs.

  I released Caron’s arm and told her about the appointment in the morning with Franklin Adamson. “Why don’t you sleep in? I have a few things to do at the store, and then I’ll come by and pick you up at a quarter till ten.”

  “I feel like I’m on drugs. I mean, this has to be a hallucination, doesn’t it? One minute I’m a dorky reindeer, the next minute a defendant in a million-dollar lawsuit. Maybe we should just hop in the car like you said and take off—and never come back. Is there some kind of booksellers’ underground railroad?”

  “Good night, dear.”

  The session in the law office was more painful than an equivalent amount of time on a rack in a dungeon. Franklin emphasized the severity of the situation and the very real possibility of a judgment in favor of the plaintiffs. MultiPackaging and North Hills Mall were within their respective corporate rights to settle out of court for whatever amount was necessary to be detached from the complaint. What’s more, we’d never find out how much they’d paid.

  I’d brightened a bit when Franklin had said Caron was entitled—perhaps—to indemnification from MultiPackaging. The crumb having been offered, he’d then snatched it away by adding that our lawsuit against them could drag on into the next century.

  Caron was atypically subdued during the session, and was no more animated as we got into the car. “I’m sorry about this, Mother. Maybe I should have read the manual like she said.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said, squeezing her shoulder. “I would have done the same thing, as would anyone. The manual is apt to contain nothing more than vague policies so that MultiPack can claim to have provided sufficient training for new employees. When you point-blank asked Ms. Portmeyer what you should have done, she didn’t have an answer.” I started the car. “Do you want me to take you to the mall so you can pick up your check?”

  Caron sniffled rather endearingly. “No, Inez said she’d get it and come by tonight. Drop me off at Luanne’s store. I think I’d better get used to wearing secondhand clothes.”

  I did as she asked, then continued to the Book Depot and took the “closed” sign off the door. This did not result in a mad rush of customers, alas, but eventually a professor I knew from the English department ambled in and we spent a pleasant hour deconstructing Dickens’s A Christmas Carol over coffee. He bought a couple of sugary romance novels, claiming they were for his wife, but I knew her taste ran more to erotic time-travel fantasies.

  No man is a hero to his valet—or to his bookseller.

  Franklin had made it clear that there was nothing Caron and I could do except wait to see what developed. He would file our response (presumably, just legalese jargon for “did not!”) and request copies of reports from the child’s physician and whoever performed the psychological evaluation. Pacing and tearing out my hair were counterproductive.

  “It could be worse,” I said out loud, testing the level of conviction I could achieve without sounding completely deranged. Not much, I concluded, and I had a feeling I was going to be spouting that particular cliché many times over the next thirty days.

  I needed a distraction. Although I’d lost all interest in the Druids, including Roy’s current whereabouts and Malthea’s motive for lying about the brandy decanter, I decided I might as well come to Jorgeson’s aid and find out what Gilda wanted.

  I dialed the station, and when put through to Jorgeson, said, “Do you still want me to talk to Gilda?”

  “No, that’s all right,” he said. “She’s not gonna be talking to anybody today.”

  “You said she specifically mentioned me.”

  “I went ahead and had her in a cell overnight. She got hold of a sharp object, maybe a piece of glass or something, and carved up her wrists. We took her to the hospital for a brief stop in the emergency room and at least twenty-four hours in the psych ward.”

  “Good grief,” I said, stunned.

  “There was another prisoner in there with her—just a woman who’d had too much to drink and broke a beer bottle over her boyfriend’s head. The woman was still woozy, but she said Gilda was acting really weird and weaving around the cell, calling out long foreign-sounding names. It scared the woman so badly that she put the blanket over her head.”

  “Not an unreasonable response,” I said. “Has anybody heard from Roy Tate?”

  “Not yet, and I’m catching some hell from the captain. We’ve got around-the-clock surveillance at the victim’s place, and patrolmen cruising past the Druids’ houses every half hour or so. He’s probably holed up at a friend’s house.”

  “What about Gilda’s trailer?”

  “We’ve been there, and the manager promised to keep an eye on it. You know, Mrs. Malloy, I liked it better when you had other things on your mind. Why don’t you go shopping or make a fruitcake?”

  I didn’t need to make a fruitcake; I was acquainted with several of them, and in the middle of the afternoon, one entered the store, accompanied by her two well-bundled offspring.

  “What’s going on with Roy?” Morning Rose demanded as she came to the counter. “The police came
to our house last night looking for him, and they’ve been driving by all day. Do they have evidence he had something to do with Nicholas’s death?”

  “They seem to think they do,” I said. “Have you heard from him since yesterday morning?”

  She shoved her children toward a display of cookbooks. “Go look at all the yummy food,” she said, then turned back to me. “I called him yesterday afternoon to make sure he was all right. He’s much more sensitive than anyone suspects, and prone to depression. It’s a result of his studies in the realm of evil forces that are capable of toying with our individual destinies. He’s seen things most of us have never imagined could exist, and is periodically overwhelmed with an agonizing sense of impotence and—”

  “What did he say when you called?”

  She took off her gloves and aligned them on the counter. “Not much, really. He wasn’t especially fond of Nicholas, and in fact, a month ago he told me that there was something about Nicholas that made him uneasy. Nicholas affected others of us the same way. He was very private about his business and personal affairs. We saw him only on major holidays.”

  “He was your landlord, wasn’t he?” I asked, straining to hear noises from behind the rack. “Didn’t he come by to collect the rent every month?”

  “Sullivan mailed him the check. No, Nicholas had a side of him that was every bit as sinister as Roy’s demons. Who knows what might have gone on inside his house? He chose it for its isolation, he once told me. I intuitively realized that he didn’t want anyone to see who visited him at night.”

  “Don’t you think you ought to see what your children are doing?”

  “They always like to explore a new environment on their own terms. Do you have any idea where Roy is?”

  “No more than I do of what”—I braced myself to say the names—” Cosmos and Rainbow have found so fascinating. Please make sure they aren’t damaging any books.”

  “They would never do anything like that. When I talked to Roy, he was terribly worried that he wouldn’t be allowed to stay in the carriage house. He knew Sullivan wouldn’t let him move back in with us. Because of his mother’s substance problems, he was placed in foster homes several times, and he hated them.”

  “Where’s his mother now?” I asked, increasingly concerned about the future salability of the cookbooks.

  Morning Rose shrugged. “Roy doesn’t know. When he first moved in with his father, he talked to her on the phone every week. Then, without warning, the phone was disconnected. Roy called a neighbor, who said his mother had packed her belongings and left town with a man she met at a nightclub.”

  “A tragic story,” I said. “Will you please check on your children?”

  “Oh, all right,” she said sulkily, “although you seem to have an unhealthy obsession with their behavior.” She disappeared around the rack, then returned with a smug smile. “They’re sitting quietly, looking at photographs in cookbooks. A perfectly innocent activity, wouldn’t you say?”

  I was growing rather tired of being accused of substandard attributes. What’s more, her children were quite capable of licking photographs instead of looking at them. I waited a moment to allow my irritation to subside, then said, “Has Roy ever mentioned any friends or fellow satanists in Farberville?”

  “He doesn’t make friends easily. His mother moved so often over the last six years that I doubt he has friends anywhere. I’ve never heard him mention any names.”

  “How did he become a member of the grove?”

  Morning Rose made a vague gesture. “That was Malthea’s doing, and I don’t remember the details. She struck up a conversation with him and he attended our Samhain celebration at Halloween. No, that wasn’t the first. He was with us for the autumnal equinox, which was about the time his father was informed that the grant was approved. They wanted him to accompany them to Borneo, but he refused.” She picked up her gloves and twisted them. “I wish Sullivan hadn’t made Roy move out of our house. None of this would have happened.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “Wouldn’t Nicholas still have been upset by the intrusion of Wiccan and satanic practices?”

  She gave me a cross look. “Oh, I suppose, but Roy would have been asleep in the upper bunk in Cosmos’s room and therefore have had an alibi. Do the police suspect him just because he was conveniently nearby—or are they being prejudiced against him because of his religious beliefs?”

  “You’ll have to ask them. Look, Morning Rose, I think it would be better if you collected your children and left before one of them starts ripping out pages for souvenirs.”

  She leaned forward. “Do you swear you don’t know where Roy is?”

  As I stared at her, the rack of paperback fiction came crashing down on her back. I was amazed at the number of books that went flying through the air.

  Simply amazed.

  Chapter 9

  It took the remainder of the afternoon to replace the paperbacks in a semblance of order. Morning Rose had hustled away her children without offering to help undo their damage. It was just as well, since I might have said something that would stifle the cognitive development of her ignoble little savages.

  I was locking up when Luanne came into the store. “Caron told me what happened,” she said in the breathy gush of a forties’ actress. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m not worried. All I have to do is make it out to the mall and ask Santa to bring me a million dollars for Christmas. Maybe I’d better ask for an extra couple of thousand to cover legal fees. Franklin dropped his rate to seventy-five dollars an hour, but he warned me it could add up, especially if we go to court. Start thinking about what you’ll wear on the witness stand.”

  “Something modest, I suppose, with a high neckline and white cuffs. I’ve always fancied myself in a hat with a veil. Is that too British?”

  I grinned at her, but it must not have been convincing because she gave me a hug and said, “Don’t worry about it, Claire.”

  “Don’t worry about it?” I laughed, perhaps a bit maniacally. I moved away from her and stared at the racks and shelves of books, all begging to be bought, savored, lovingly tucked on a shelf, and brought out again on occasion to be reread. “What if I lose the store?”

  “You can marry Peter for his money and lead a life of self-indulgence. Breakfasts in bed, lunches at trendy cafés, candlelight dinners at romantic country inns. I got in a consignment last week that included a floorlength beaded dress. It’s red, but you can still borrow it for the wedding. I know—we’ll go for a theme! Peter can rent a Santa Claus suit and hire three-foot-tall groomsmen. I don’t think we can persuade Caron to don a reindeer outfit, though. She’s inordinately hostile toward the species.”

  I tried to hide the sudden pain that seemed to char my internal organs like a flamethrower. “No mistletoe in the bridal bouquet, okay?”

  “Do you want to have a beer across the street?” asked Luanne. “Better yet, we can pick up tacos and a bottle of cheap wine, then go to my place to start working on the guest list. I’ve always regretted paying my daughter to elope and thus depriving myself of the opportunity to play bridal consultant. I adore bossing people around.”

  “Not tonight,” I said, struggling to hold back tears. Like Fern, I have an aversion to being caught in a public display of emotion, and the last thing I needed was puffy eyelids in the morning. Puffy eyelids do not become me. “Where’s Caron?”

  “I offered her a ride, but she said she had some last-minute shopping to do.”

  “I hope she buys me the biggest bottle of aspirin in the drugstore,” I said with a grimace.

  After Luanne left, I took a last look at the paperbacks to make sure that lusty barbarian princesses had not crept among teapots and cats, then went home. Caron had come and gone; a note on the kitchen table announced that she was stopping by Rhonda Maguire’s and then spending the night at Inez’s house.

  I had no appetite, but I forced down a few bites of moo goo gai pan while I watched the local
news. A woman with stiff hair and capped teeth appeared on the screen, with the Primrose Hill house in the background. I was relieved when she said only that a local doctor had been brutally slain in his home and the police were investigating possible leads. The next segment featured kindergarten children belting out an adenoidal version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

  Fearing an encore, I switched off the television. The complaint lay on the coffee table in all its accusatory glory, but I ordered myself to ignore it. Perhaps I should have had dinner with Luanne, I thought as I roamed around the apartment, picking up books and then putting them down, taking a load of fuzz-encrusted dishes from Caron’s room to the kitchen sink, rearranging tinsel on the Christmas tree, and basically doing everything I could in order not to imagine Peter and Leslie in an intimate setting. They were much more likely to be seated in his mother’s formal living room, chaperoning the couple. Unless, of course, Myron had whisked away his beloved to a restaurant, and Peter and Leslie were in a less formal room.

  With no chaperons.

  A major distraction was needed. In that I had no background in economics, balancing the federal budget was out of the question. It was too late to dash out for a dozen rolls of wallpaper and a bucket of paste. I’d promised Franklin that I wouldn’t so much as drive by the residence of Morgan, Suzanne, and Eric L., much less deposit a gaily wrapped box of manure on their porch. If I relented and went to Luanne’s, eventually I’d tell her about Peter and Leslie, and then embarrass both of us with an unattractive bout of wailing and gnashing of teeth.