A Holly, Jolly Murder

by JOAN HESSS

  It was tempting to unwrap the book and return it to its rightful rack, but that would be an admission of abject defeat by lovely, capricious, athletic, wealthy Leslie.

  “Stop this!” I said loudly. “You are being more immature than Nicholas and Peter combined.”

  I dropped the book on my desk and went outside. I stood for a moment to let the wind batter me, hoping its frigidity would bring me to my senses.

  When all it did was sting my face, I got in the car and reached for the ignition switch.

  “Good evening,” said a voice from the backseat.

  This was getting old.

  Chapter 10

  “Where do you want to go tonight, Roy?” I said without bothering to return his greeting. “The lot by the stadium is closed, so we can’t go back there. How about the police station?”

  “What did the guy say when you told him?”

  “He said that you ought to turn yourself in.”

  Roy grabbed my shoulder. “So he believes me? I mean, he understands that it wasn’t my fault because Nicholas said he was going to kill me. All I was doing was protecting myself. You told him that, didn’t you, Mrs. Malloy?”

  “I repeated exactly what you told me. Why didn’t you mention all the traffic in front of the house that night? It must have rivaled the parking lot at the mall.”

  I could hear him sucking on his lip as he thought about it. “I guess I had the music pretty loud. Once I thought I saw headlights, but I didn’t bother to look out the window.”

  “Why would you?” I said comfortingly, if inanely. “Let’s go to the station. Sergeant Jorgeson’s off duty at the moment, but I can call him at home and ask him to join us. He’ll want to question you tonight, and tomorrow he’ll arrange for a lawyer from legal services. Everything will be okay, Roy, and you’ll have a place to sleep and hot meals.”

  “I don’t need a lawyer. I already told you why it was self-defense. Any guy my age would have done the same thing. The kids at the high school may think I’m weird, but they sure as hell don’t think I’m gay. I had a girlfriend while I was living with my mother. We had sex every weekend—and nothing kinky, either. You want her name and phone number? As long as her parents aren’t in the room she’ll tell you the same thing.”

  He was more agitated man I would have preferred. The whereabouts of the handgun used on Nicholas was known, but Jorgeson had made a point of mentioning the possibility of a second one. Roy’s jacket had deep pockets.

  “What’s the matter, Mrs. Malloy?” he continued, thumping the seat. “I’ll bet you don’t believe me! Is that it? What’s wrong with what I told you last night? You got problems with it?”

  “Nothing major,” I said, wishing I sounded more sincere. I am not adept at lying; normally, it’s a praiseworthy attribute, but under the current circumstances, it was a distinct disadvantage. “I’m sure you can easily explain a couple of things that are a teensy bit confusing. You just now said why you didn’t hear the cars drive up, and I believe you. The autopsy report said that there was no alcohol in Nicholas’s blood, but one of your fellow Druids admitted that she was there before midnight and saw him take a mouthful of brandy.” I realized I was babbling, but I couldn’t seem to stop—even though I knew the most credible fabrications are unadorned. “We know who broke the window in Nicholas’s study, and who put away the decanter and glasses. Most of the inconsistencies have been dealt with, Roy. You shouldn’t worry about talking to the police. It’ll be nothing more than a formality. You’ll be released on your own recognizance tomorrow or the next day.”

  And the archbishop of Canterbury would elope with Princess Margaret.

  This time his fingers dug into my shoulder and I could feel hot breath on my neck. “Who broke the window and put away the decanter?” he growled.

  “Malthea. Fern was there earlier, when Nicholas got out the brandy and glasses. That was when he took a drink of brandy and then spat it out.”

  “They told you that?”

  “Yes, they did. Do you mind if I start the car so we can get some heat?”

  He released my shoulder and fell back against the seat. “Don’t so much as move a finger, Mrs. Malloy. I’ve got to think here for a minute. I don’t like this.”

  Neither did I, but I refrained from saying so and waited passively as the wind found ways to sneak in through the floorboard. I could see him in the rearview mirror, but it was too dark to discern his expression. His hisses and muttered curses indicated he was not in the best of moods.

  I was on the verge of repeating my suggestion about heat when he said, “After I went out the bathroom window, they searched my place, didn’t they?”

  “They might have looked for some tips about where they could find you. If they did, it was because they were concerned about your welfare.”

  “Did they find the gun?”

  “I couldn’t say,” I said, struggling to sound casual. Alas, even I heard a faint tremor in my voice.

  He slammed his fist on the seat. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s the detail that’s ‘a teensy bit confusing,’ as you put it. Damn! I knew I should have buried it in the woods! How could I have been so friggin’ stupid!” He hit the seat again. I did not interpret it as a request for consensus with the assessment of his mental faculties.

  “All of us make mistakes,” I said. “I can think of several I’ve made lately.”

  “Shut up.”

  I shut up as he resumed hissing and cursing. Having never spent a significant amount of time in my car behind the Book Depot at night, I had no idea if patrol cars ever ventured into the parking lot. If I’d believed for one second that my forty-year-old reflexes were at all quicker than his sixteen-year-old ones, I would have attempted to scramble out of the car and run down the railroad tracks. However, I had no desire to be shot in the back or even tackled in the gravel.

  “Okay,” he said abruptly, startling me to the point I nearly yelped. “I’m gonna tell you the truth about what happened. I stole my father’s gun back in the fall because some guys at school were giving me grief, and I used it to shoot Nicholas Chunder. First I hit him a couple of times, then I stepped back, aimed, and pulled the trigger. I would have shot him more than once if I hadn’t freaked when I saw the blood. I rolled him over, thinking I’d take his wallet so the cops would jump on the burglary story, but I guess he’d left it in his bedroom.”

  “Why did you do it, Roy? He overlooked his personal dislike of your…ah, religious practices and allowed you to live on his estate. If you were short on cash, I’d think he or someone else would have loaned you enough to get by until your parents returned.”

  “I didn’t kill him for spending money, fer chrissake! I killed him because of her. She made me do it, and there wasn’t any way I could refuse. She’s had this power over me since the moment we met. She took me out to the grove, just the two of us, and she drew a pentagram on my forehead with her finger. It burned so fiercely that I thought I was gonna pass out. You can’t see it, but I can every damn time I look in the mirror. When I do something that she doesn’t like, it turns bright red and begins to smolder. The pain’s unbearable, like someone’s pressing an ember against my skin.”

  I felt as though he’d knocked me on the head with a rock. “Who are you talking about,” I asked.

  “Malthea, of course. I know nobody will believe me, but I swear it’s the truth. I’ll swear on a bible if you want me to, or a whole stack of them. Malthea ordered me to kill Nicholas, so I did.”

  He began to whimper, and when I looked back at him, I saw him wiping away what I presumed were tears. I waited until he’d calmed down, then said, “Why would Malthea have done that, Roy? I haven’t heard her say anything that implied she hated Nicholas so vehemently that she wanted him dead.”

  “You haven’t been around her that much. Sure, she can come off like somebody’s grandmother when it suits her, and she puts on a really good pretense of being scatterbrained and helpless. She’s not, though. She
may be the Arch Druid, but she’s also a member of a secret cult called the Sisters of Illumination that goes all the way back to ancient Egypt and Babylon. Once a year they have a Black Sabbath and perform a human sacrifice.”

  “Malthea Hendlerson?” I said. “That’s…hard to believe.”

  “I know it is,” he said dispiritedly. “What happened was, when I first moved to Farberville, I spent a lot of time in that used bookstore up the street, just poking around for funky old stuff. I saw her there a couple of times, then one afternoon she came up to me and said we had to talk. She looked pretty harmless and I didn’t have anything better to do, so I said okay. We drove out to the grove in her car. That’s where she told me she worshiped Satan and could sense that I would make a perfect servant after she finished training me.”

  “Were you wearing a black T-shirt in the bookstore?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I buy them at rock concerts because they’re cool.”

  “What about the hearse? How long have you owned it?”

  “The guy who lived down the street ran a funeral home. When he died last summer, I talked his wife into selling it to me real cheap. I get a buzz when people on the street stare at me. It wasn’t like I was into satanism.”

  “Why don’t you tell me more about what happened at the grove?” I suggested politely, as if we were discussing the merits of a movie.

  “She pulled out a little pair of scissors and cut off a lock of my hair. She said she could use it to send this demon called Ambesek whenever I needed to be disciplined. I didn’t believe her, but one night at the carriage house I was awakened by the stench of sulfur. I sat up and saw this—this eight-foot-tall creature with a hideous face, fiery red eyes, and huge hands. Its skin was covered with black scales that glinted like armor. It dragged me out of bed, ripped off my shirt, and raked my back with its claws. I passed out on the floor. The next morning I thought maybe it had just been a really bad nightmare. I changed my mind when I saw the bloody marks on my back.”

  “Come on, Roy,” I said, “you fell out of bed and somehow scratched yourself on the bedside table.”

  “I wish that was true, but she sends the demon whenever she’s angry at me. Once she ordered me to steal a dog and bring it to the grove so she could slaughter it and drink its blood. I refused. That night the demon came and practically disemboweled me. She told me later that its formal title was Ambesek the Eater of Intestines.”

  It didn’t matter whether or not he believed what he was saying; I was getting nauseated—and nervous. “Did you go to the hospital?”

  “She said the demon could find me no matter where I was and not to get medical help. I bandaged myself as best I could. I was scared the wound would get infected, but she gave me this salve and it worked so well you can barely see a scar.”

  “When did Malthea order you to kill Nicholas?” I asked.

  “She’s been saying nasty things about him ever since the Samhain celebration at Halloween.. He wanted everything to be done his way, and he and Malthea had an argument. I wasn’t there, but she said he was hateful You should have seen the look on her face the night before the solstice when he said he was selling his properties and moving to Wales. While the others were pleading with him; she took me out to the patio and told me what to do. I didn’t want to, Mrs. Malloy, but she gave me a gruesome description of what Ambesek would do if I disobeyed her. You want to hear what she said?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “If Malthea has this demon at her beck and call, why didn’t she sic him on Nicholas instead of getting you involved?”

  “She said I had to kill someone so I could participate in the next Black Sabbath. I knew I wouldn’t live that long if I didn’t do it. I went to my apartment, popped some pills to give myself the guts to go through with it, then went to the house and knocked on the door till Nicholas let me inside. You know the rest.”

  I still couldn’t see Malthea as an evil dominatrix, and Roy had already proved himself to be a much more adept liar than I. “If you’re so terrified of another visit from the demon, why are you telling me now?”

  “I deserve to suffer for what I did. I’ve been trying to find spells that can protect me. If they work, they work. If they don’t, then I’ll be tortured until I beg to die. Let’s go to the police station and get it over with.”

  I wasted no time starting the car. Although his story of demonic retribution was preposterous, I was not about to sit there in the dark and wait for an eight-foot-tall creature with fiery eyes to come ambling down the railroad tracks, swooping down from the sky, or popping up from the sewer drain in front of the Book Depot.

  I was exhausted the next morning, having not been able to fall asleep until almost dawn. Jorgeson had permitted me to be present at the interrogation, but it hadn’t lasted long. Roy’s descriptions became increasingly graphic and filled with repugnant details; he’d shouted and cried and stormed around the room until Jorgeson gave up and packed him off to the psych ward for sedation and a seventy-two-hour evaluation. Gilda was already there in a padded room. I rather longed for one, myself.

  After Roy’d been taken away, Jorgeson had asked me what I thought, and I’d told him that for the first time I could remember, I was out of opinions. He’d almost smiled.

  Now, at nine in the morning, the sun was shining, but this was not enough to lure in the occasional pedestrian. I was hunting through the racks in hopes of finding a book about satanism when the telephone rang. The sound was not as harsh as a fiendish screech, but it had a comparable effect on me. There were a few people I was willing to talk to, but the converse list was very long and multiplying steadily.

  Then again, it could have been Franklin with good news. I numbly picked up the receiver.

  “Claire, this is Inez’s mother.”

  Goose bumps rose on my flesh, but I managed a calm, “Is anything wrong?”

  “I think the girls are up to something. They were acting odd last night, and her father and I agreed you ought to know about it.”

  This was a very forceful decision on Mrs. Thornton’s part. She’s as mousy as Inez and usually only faintly bewildered by the girls’ escapades, but I never knew quite how much of the truth she heard from Inez. At this moment, I could almost hear her twisting her hands, which was alarming. I waited for a moment, then said, “What did they do?”

  “Nothing, and that’s what worries me. Last night when I picked up Inez at the mall, she told me about this ridiculous lawsuit and said she was going to quit her job, no matter how desperate Mrs. Claus was. I told her that she’d made the right decision. Well, Caron came over and the two locked themselves in Inez’s bedroom for a long while. I could hear them talking and arguing. Then Inez came out and said she’d changed her mind about quitting. I was flabbergasted that Caron would want her to continue at Santa’s Workshop, but it’s obvious that she does.”

  “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.”