A Holly, Jolly Murder

by JOAN HESSS

  At least I had a better picture of what had taken place between seven and nine o’clock on the evening of the murder, I thought as I tried to make myself comfortable on the plastic upholstery. Gilda’s threat to turn up wearing nothing but an amulet may have triggered Nicholas’s outburst, but he’d already listed his property with a real estate agency and contacted a similar agency in Wales. It seemed likely that he’d planned to delay his announcement until after the solstice celebration for the same reason one doesn’t tell children about an imminent divorce on Christmas Eve.

  But according to Fern, the Druids were already upset when she and Malthea arrived. Roy and Morning Rose had been brooding in the living room, and Gilda had heard something not to her liking in the study. Sullivan had argued with his wife. The host himself had been less than genial.

  And why hadn’t Malthea denied Roy’s ridiculous accusation? She could have been so taken aback that she was momentarily speechless, but I’d practically begged her in the grove hours later. Morning Rose had seemed convinced that Roy had blindly obeyed Malthea’s command to kill Nicholas. I wasn’t.

  I was not likely to find a listing for Sisters of Illumination in the telephone directory so that I could inquire into their membership role and annual observances. Surely law-enforcement agencies would have heard rumors if sacrifices, human or otherwise, were being performed in the area. There had been one such case concerning cattle mutilations in the county, attributed to almond-eyed alien vivisectionists, but the ensuing investigation had determined that a pack of feral dogs had been responsible.

  I was still juggling ideas when a woman in baggy blue scrubs and plastic slippers came into the waiting room. Her hair was hidden under the sort of cap favored by surgical teams, but her sallow complexion could not be so easily disguised.

  “Gilda?” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s as good a place as any. I’m waiting for someone I know to get off duty so he can give me a ride out to the trailer park. I’d be conspicuous dressed like this if I was walking down the road, but here I’m invisible. I was hanging around the emergency room when Malthea was wheeled in. What happened to her?”

  I tried not to stare at the discreet bandages on her wrists. “She was attacked in Nicholas’s study. Patrolmen noticed a light and investigated. Otherwise, she might have lain there for several days.”

  “What was she doing there?”

  “The same thing you were,” I said, “although you and she may have been looking for different things. What were you hoping to find?”

  “Money,” she said quickly. “He was a real miser, so I figured he’d have a lockbox in a desk drawer. If I’d known they had the house staked out because of Roy, I wouldn’t have tried it.”

  “And that’s why you wanted to talk to me the other evening? You wanted to ask me if I could suggest the most likely places to find a hypothetical lockbox? Then, after you’d been arrested, you thought my nonexistent license to practice law would facilitate your release? When I failed to bail you out, you attempted suicide? At the worst you would have been charged with criminal trespass, since you never made it into the house. I don’t buy this, Gilda.”

  She sat down on the couch vacated by the teenagers, pulled off the cloth cap, and placed it carefully on the armrest. “You seemed like such good buddies with the cops that I thought you could tell me what was going on. It’s only been three hundred years since the Salem witch trials. Wicca is something entirely different, but we’re still lumped in with medieval practitioners with their black cats and evil eyes.”

  “Three hundred years is not the same as last summer,” I said. “The Puritans are no longer monopolizing the city council and the school board, and no one except a lifeguard cares if you float or sink. You’re not stupid enough to break into Nicholas’s house for money. What did he have?”

  She went to the doorway and stuck her head out, then sat down next to me. “Will you promise not to tell anyone?”

  “I can’t do that, Gilda. It’s against the law to withhold evidence, and in any case, I’m not going to do anything that will muddy the waters. Did Roy tell you that he confessed?”

  “Twice, he said,” she said with a momentary smile. “Yes, we talked in the dayroom tins morning. He killed Nicholas, Mrs. Malloy. He’s ashamed of it, but he did it and he’s willing to accept his punishment.”

  “Not so eager that he didn’t escape this afternoon,” I pointed out.

  “There are things he must do before he turns himself in again,” she said somberly. “He must conduct a final ritual in an attempt to protect himself from Ambesek. If it doesn’t work, his body will never be found.”

  “Would you people stop this!” I waited until I’d simmered down, but whiffs of steam may have still been drifting out of my ears. “This is nothing but self-indulgent nonsense. Oh, I’m sure everyone who works here has heard rumors of your Wiccan practices, and therefore thinks you’re terribly romantic. Salem witch trials? Ambesek? Demon-repellant rituals? Buy him a can of Raid and give me a break!”

  “You’re a skeptic,” she said, pronouncing judgment from her plastic-covered bench.

  “You can bet the farm on it. Now either tell me why you insisted on speaking to me, or see how far you can get after I call hospital security. Odds are not good that you can make it to an exit, but you may know of a door in the basement. Cast a spell and make yourself invisible. I don’t care. A week ago I was minding my own business, and now I’m embroiled with a gang of delusional pagans. The man I care about is snuggled up in front of a fire with his ex–significant other. I’m being sued for a million dollars. My daughter’s off committing a felony. Malthea’s in ICU, Nicholas is in the morgue, Roy’s in battle with a demon, and the best you can do is label me a skeptic?”

  “Gracious, Mrs. Malloy,” Gilda said, again checking the doorway for lurkers, “I’d no idea you were this upset. Shall I cast a spell to envelope you in a protective glow of love and warmth from the Mother Goddess?”

  “That’s it.” I stood up and grabbed my purse. “I’m alerting security that you’re in the building. Good-bye and good luck.”

  She caught my arm. “Okay, I’ll tell the truth.”

  Not only would the archbishop and the princess elope, the pope would conduct the ceremony.

  Chapter 13

  “Then tell me the truth,” I said as I allowed myself to be led back to the couch. This is not to say that I wasn’t keenly aware of the distance to a bright red telephone in the hallway. No more than a whoop and a holler, so to speak.

  Gilda’s face puckered like a bulldog’s. “Can this stay between us, Mrs. Malloy?”

  “I’ve already said that I won’t keep secrets from the police. If what you tell me is relevant, then I will certainly tell them.”

  “It’s not relevant,” she said. “It’s nothing more than a rumor and it’s not true. All the same, if it got out, it would cause problems. You can’t believe the amount of gossiping that goes on in hospitals. The only person who’ll keep a confidence is in a drawer in the morgue. Nurses, doctors, orderlies, secretaries, aides, cafeteria workers—everybody gossips.”

  “What’s the rumor?”

  “Oh, all right. A few years back, I was working at a hospital in Kansas City. I’m a pediatric nurse, so I deal with a lot of neonatal patients. Most of them are healthy and pink, but some are in bad shape and…well, not destined to lead happy lives. They’re born with AIDS, or they’re addicted to crack, or they have deformities to their spinal columns and brains.” She moved away from me, her hands clenched and her sallow skin now almost colorless. When she finally spoke, her voice was tight. “Some of these babies die, Mrs. Malloy. We keep them on respirators, we feed them intravenously, we drain fluids from their cranial cavities, we do everything we can to keep them alive.” She spun around and looked down at me with strobelike intensity. “But sometimes they die—and sometimes it’s for the best. Can you understand that?”

  I held up my palms. �
��Sit down, Gilda. No one’s accused you of anything.”

  “Nicholas did,” she said bitterly. “He persuaded someone in personnel to let him read my application, and then used his computer to start a dialogue with his colleagues at the hospital in Kansas City. They were happy to pass along rumors about why I resigned. That’s all I did. I wasn’t fired, and there were no charges brought against me. All he heard were lies. If there had been any proof that I’d done something wrong, I would have been charged.”

  I tried to keep my voice even. “If you were never charged, then how could these rumors affect you?”

  “That night in his study Nicholas told me that he’d decided to ‘clean off his desk,’ as he called it, before he left for Wales. He was not only going to inform the head of nursing that I’d made no mention of the reason for my resignation on my application, he was also going to put the word out all over the Internet that I was…well, you know. A premature baby, not even three pounds at birth, died last month. I wasn’t assigned to that patient, but Nicholas said he was going to retrieve the records and make sure I hadn’t been alone in the nursery on that night.”

  “And had you?” I asked softly.

  “I was working the ward, but so were other staff. It’s not uncommon for babies born with those kinds of complications to stop breathing. It happens, Mrs. Malloy. I had nothing to do with it. Nicholas said he was going to prevent me from ever again finding work as a registered nurse in any accredited hospital in the country. It’s what I’m trained to do. It’s all that matters to me.”

  Saliva was bubbling on her lips and her eyes were overly bright. I glanced at the doorway, hoping Fern would come to the rescue. I would have even welcomed the aberrant teenagers. As it was, I cast about for a soothing comment, and finally said, albeit with monumental inanity, “I understand, Gilda.”

  “No, you don’t, and neither did Nicholas. I did everything I could to dissuade him, but he said that he would contact every state licensing board in the country. Boards administer a slap on the wrist to nurses who steal drugs. They issue a three-month suspension to nurses who expedite terminal cancer patients. But nurses who are rumored to have…”

  To my astonishment, she collapsed across my lap and began to sob like a heartbroken toddler, her gulps and snorts loud enough to be heard on every floor in the hospital. I was torn between patting her on the back and rolling her onto the floor. I was not unsympathetic, but I’d learned by this time that if one of the members of the Sacred Grove of Keltria announced that the sun would rise in the east, I’d do better to be looking west at dawn.

  I was still vacillating when Fern came into the room and stared disapprovingly at me.

  “What ever is going on?” she demanded. “Have you entered into an intimate relationship with an orderly, Claire? It is most inappropriate.”

  Gilda sat up and wiped her drippy nose on her wrist. “It’s me, Fern.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “I simply saw your…buttocks, and leapt to…oh, dear.”

  I stood up, effectively sending Gilda into an ungraceful tangle on the linoleum. “How’s Malthea?” I asked Fern, ignoring the mutters from the region of my feet.

  “She awoke some minutes ago, and although she was unable to speak, she was heartened by my presence. She’ll be moved to a standard room in the morning, presuming she continues to show improvement. Why is Gilda rolling about like that?”

  “She’s upset,” I said.

  “We are all upset,” Fern said sternly. “That is no excuse.”

  Gilda extricated herself up and crawled onto the couch like an intoxicated crab. “Malthea’s vitals are stable?”

  “A good deal more stable than yours,” Fern retorted, then turned to me. “I should like to go home, if you don’t mind. It’s really quite late. I won’t be surprised to find Malthea’s cat on my doorstep, mewing piteously for her supper. She can make do with milk until I have a chance to pick up some cat food at the grocery store. This is all so inconvenient. Behavior like this does not become you, Gilda. I do hope this is not the consequence of some Wiccan spell.”

  Gilda and I looked at each other. When it became clear that she wasn’t going to leap in, I said, “We were worried about Malthea, and now we know she’s going to be all right. Our problem is what Gilda’s going to do in the immediate future. I strongly suggest that she contact Sergeant Jorgeson.”

  She glanced at Fern, then whispered to me, “Does he know?”

  “Know what?” said Fern.

  “Not yet,” I answered, “but it’s a matter of time before his computer boys determine Nicholas’s passwords and gain access to the files. It’ll be better for you if you’ve already admitted all this.”

  “Admitted what?” Fern squawked, beginning to sound like a high-strung parrot with exceptionally acute hearing.

  Gilda tried unsuccessfully to push her bangs out of her eyes. “There’s more, Mrs. Malloy. I went back out there to talk to Nicholas.”

  “You people should have carpooled,” I said irritably. “So were you there before Fern’s purported arrival, after Malthea’s purported departure, or sometime in between while Roy purportedly was shooting Nicholas?”

  She ignored Fern’s gasp and said, “The only person I saw was Sullivan walking across the pasture toward the house. He must have seen me, because he dropped to the ground like a sniper had nailed him.”

  “Sullivan Sawyer?” I said. “Are you sure?”

  “He must have been going there for the same reason I was. When I knocked on the door of the study on the eve of the solstice, Nicholas was on the telephone. As I went inside, he said, ‘As you wish, Sullivan,’ and then hung up. He looked so angry that I pretended I hadn’t heard anything.”

  “Eavesdropping is vulgar,” inserted Fern. “I know you live in a trailer park these days. Did you grow up in one as well?”

  “What if I did?” countered Gilda.

  I clamped my hand on Gilda’s shoulder to keep her on the couch. “Not everyone spends her childhood making daisy chains in the meadow, Fern. Are you ready to leave?”

  “Poison ivy garlands seem more likely,” Fern said as she buttoned her coat. “Yes, I am more than ready to leave.”

  “Then please wait by the elevator. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, then thought better of it and stalked out of the room. I listened as her footsteps diminished, then tightened my grip on Gilda’s shoulder and said, “Did you speak to Nicholas?”

  “I lost my nerve when I saw Sullivan. I pedaled home and stayed up half the night trying to find a spell that would prevent him from mentioning it at the celebration the next morning. It would have made Nicholas all the more determined to destroy me.”

  “What time did you arrive at his house?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I headed out there at eleven, but whenever I saw a car coming, I dragged my bicycle into the ditch and squatted next to it.”

  “Did you recognize any of the cars?” I asked.

  “I thought I saw hers,” she said, pointing her thumb in the direction of the elevators. “There wasn’t much moonlight, though, and I told myself I was mistaken. Was it really Fern? Had Nicholas threatened her, too?”

  I briefly thought of Fern’s deceased husband, then shook my head and picked up my purse. “You’ll have to get a Ouija board and ask him yourself. Do you know where Roy is hiding?”

  “Get your own Ouija board,” she said, clearly offended by my remark. “Better yet, call a psychic at one of those one-nine-hundred numbers. You might get a real surprise.”

  “Roy needs to be in the psychiatric ward, Gilda. You said you talked to him earlier today. Aren’t you worried that he might harm himself?”

  She stood up and collected her green cap. “Group therapy three times a week isn’t going to exorcise his demon.”

  I considering blocking the doorway, but to be honest, it was late and I was sick of them. “Will you go back to the sixth floor?”

&nb
sp; “Like a good little girl?” Smirking, she pulled on the cap and tucked her hair under it. The result was lumpy but seemed to satisfy her. “No, I think I’ll go out to the grounds, peel off these clothes, and recite the words of the Goddess. ‘I who am the beauty of the green Earth, and the white Moon amongst the stars—’” She broke off as the doors of the ICU opened and a cart squeaked down the hall. “See you around, Mrs. Malloy,” she said as she whipped past me.

  “Not if I can help it,” I retorted to an empty room. After a small debate whether I should straighten magazines and switch off the light, I went to the elevator and stood mutely next to Fern. We rode to the ground floor. The Hispanic family was no longer in the emergency room, but the woman with the baby was in the same place, partially covered with a blanket and snoring loudly.

  I stopped at the reception desk and told a nurse about my encounter with Gilda D’Orcher in the ICU wing, then asked her to call security and the Farberville Police Department.

  “I’d heard she was a patient on the sixth floor,” the woman said with a malicious smile. “I’m not the only one who thought she should have been sent there a long time ago. The stories about her are enough to chill your blood. One of the orderlies swore he caught a glimpse of her in the basement with a black cat. Once she and her supervisor had an argument, and the very next day the supervisor slipped on a wet spot on the floor and broke her ankle.”

  I was hoping she would elaborate, but she picked up the telephone and punched a button. I pushed open the door for Fern and glowered at her back as she scurried toward the VW. Once we were buckled in and driving toward her neighborhood, I said, “Why did you go back to Nicholas’s that night?”

  Her nose rose imperiously. “I believe I’ve already explained it.”

  “No, you haven’t,” I said as I braked in anticipation of a red light. “The brandy decanter wasn’t touched. The story you told me was at Malthea’s behest, wasn’t it? You and she were trying to help Roy. Why does she care so much about him?”