Death, Snow, and Mistletoe

by Valerie S. Malmont

  “I can't say I am.” Once again, my outsider status was being thrown in my face. Not only had I never heard of it, I couldn't even pronounce it.

  Maggie looked up with interest. “Kaltenbaugh Foundation? Doesn't that own half of Pittsburgh?”

  Vernell nodded. “It was established by my greatgrandfather.”

  “I guess you're telling me that Bernice didn't back you financially,” I said.

  “Hardly. As a matter-of-fact, the foundation was looking into buying her property and building the cultural center she wanted so badly.” He pushed up from his chair and glared down at Maggie. “You can tell your grapevine informants that they were way off this time.”

  When he was out of earshot, Maggie let out a little yip. “We sure were wrong about him.”

  “We don't know that he was telling the truth,” I pointed out.

  “I'll check out his story this afternoon,” she promised. “As well-known as the Kaltenbaugh Foundation is in Pennsylvania, I'm sure I'll have no trouble finding out if he's really part of it. I'll let you know what I uncover.”

  “Even if Bernice's money wasn't the motive, there still could have been other reasons why he'd want her out of the way,” I said. But my suspicions that Vernell had murdered Bernice were vanishing as fast as Maggie's cheesecake.

  “Got to get back to work,” Maggie said, looking around for Josh. “Where's a waiter when you need one? For goodness’ sake, there's Luscious Miller—coming our way. Wonder what he wants here?”

  As the deputy strode across the room, it was clear what Luscious wanted was me. Out of breath, he plopped down on the chair recently vacated by Vernell Kaltenbaugh and pulled off his hat.

  “What's up?” I asked.

  He tried to answer but only emitted a series of wheezes. “Sorry,” he said at last. “Riding that bike in cold weather always brings on my asthma.”

  I handed him my untouched water glass, and he slowly sipped from it until the worst of the wheezing stopped.

  “I wanted to tell you I just received the coroner's report on Oretta. She didn't die in the fire.”

  “Of course she did, Luscious. I saw her body.”

  “I know she's dead, Tori. What I meant is she didn't die from the fire.”

  “People often don't burn to death in a fire, Luscious. They suffocate.”

  “I'm not totally stupid, you know.”

  I was ashamed of myself for assuming he was always inept. “What was it, then?”

  “Henry says she was shot in the head. And, Tori, there was no gun on the scene. Me and the firemen have gone over every inch of the ruins.”

  “Of course there wasn't,” Maggie said. “Oretta was scared to death of guns. Wouldn't allow one in her house. Even made Matavious keep his hunting rifles at his office.”

  No matter what I thought of Henry Hoopengartner's lack of qualifications to be a coroner, I knew even he could recognize a bullet hole. “Was he able to say what kind of gun was used?”

  Luscious shook his head. “Body's been sent to Harris-burg for an autopsy. I'll let you'uns know soon as I get the report.”

  “Luscious, have you found out where Matavious was last night?” I asked.

  “He won't talk to me.”

  “That's terrible. Can't you make him?”

  “You can't make people talk to the police, Tori. Even if we charged him with murder, he still has the right to remain silent.”

  Maggie looked up from wiping the crumbs off her blouse. “And Bernice was murdered, too! Tori, you could be in danger!”

  “What are you getting at?” I asked.

  “Don't you see? Bernice and Oretta played sugar plum fairies in the Christmas pageant. And they were both murdered. Tori, you were the third sugar plum fairy. You could be the next victim!”

  CHAPTER 14

  Sing, O sing this blessed morn

  OUTSIDE THE RESTAURANT, MAGGIE HUGGED me good-bye as if I were sailing on the Titanic and she knew about the iceberg.

  “Don't worry about me,” I told her. “I really doubt there's a serial killer around with a grudge against sugar plum fairies.”

  After she left, I pulled up my hood against the cold wind and considered my options for the afternoon. Now that the weekly paper was on its way to the printer, my time was free—at least for the rest of the day.

  Maggie's remark about my being in danger because of my part in the play had struck me as rather silly, but now, as I thought about it, it didn't seem quite as preposterous. However, it also occurred to me that I'd only been a substitute for the real sugar plum fairy—Weezie Clopper.

  I needed to talk to Weezie anyway about her letter to the editor, with misspellings in it similar to the ones in poor Bernice's “death threat.” I headed back to the Chronicle building to get Garnet's truck.

  “What Cloppers is that?” asked the teenager at the gas station where I stopped for five gallons of overpriced gasoline and some free directions.

  “Weezie and Jackson,” I said, hopeful he'd know whom I was talking about.

  “Oh, sure, the Jackson what's the borough manager.” He painfully counted out my change and gave me directions in typical Lickin Creek style. “Take the Old Mill Road south for about three miles, look for the burnt maple tree. It'll either be on your left or your right. Turn there onto Orphanage Road, go about a mile to where the fruit stand used to be, then watch for the Hillside Mennonite Church. Hang a left at the cemetery, go past the Martin Farm—or maybe it's the Mellott Farm—till you get to the dirt lane. That's the Clopper place. You can't miss it.”

  To my great surprise, I found it, with no trouble. I was beginning to understand the local lingo!

  A small, faded sign nailed to a fence post said ALTERATIONS and KNIVES SHARPENED. The winding lane was muddy from melted snow. I gritted my teeth and drove slowly down it to the two-story brick farmhouse nestled at the bottom of a hill.

  A flock of Canadian geese who had taken up residence beside a partly frozen pond flapped their wings but didn't seem to be concerned by my presence. There was a general air of seediness to the property, from the white paint flaking off the wood trim of the house to the leaning red barn. A wheelless tractor was suspended on cement blocks next to the house. A scruffy German shepherd sniffed at my tires, then slunk back into the barn.

  I knocked on the front door before noticing a handwritten sign saying COME IN. Pushing open the door, I stuck my head in and called out, “Hello … anybody home?”

  From somewhere in the back, I heard the whir of a sewing machine. There was no answer to my question, so I went in, closing the door behind me.

  There was no entrance hall. I stepped directly into the living room, furnished with the heavy red-plush furniture I associate with the Depression era. An artificial Christmas tree stood in one corner, but it did nothing to brighten the room. A gloomy Jesus looked down at me from several picture frames.

  I passed through a dining room, crowded with the kind of enormous, dark oak furniture one would expect to find in El Cid's castle, and followed the sewing machine sound into a large kitchen.

  Weezie looked up and nodded. “Have a seat. I'll be finished with this in a jiffy.”

  I moved a laundry basket full of clothes off a chair and sat down at the table. A hearty wail erupted from the basket.

  “What the … ?” I exclaimed.

  “It's my granddaughter.” Weezie rose from her sewing and extracted a crying baby from the mound of clothes. “I sit her while my daughter works at the Giant Big-Mart.”

  She held the baby and stroked its back until the crying stopped, then gently replaced her in the basket and covered her with a towel. While she was busy with her grandchild, I had plenty of time to look around the kitchen and notice that it was a cheery place, unlike the gloomy front rooms. I found the red and white checked curtains at the windows and the Blue Willow china on the plate rail charming. Less charming was the purple shiner Weezie sported around her left eye.

  “What happened to your eye?
” I asked.

  “Walked into a door.” Her brazen stare dared me to argue with her.

  “Sorry to hear that.” She made me think of Mrs. Pof-fenberger, another abused wife. Didn't anybody have decent marriages anymore?

  “Let's have a cup a coffee.” Weezie filled two blue and white graniteware mugs from the coffeepot on the stove. “Sugar's on the table. Want milk?”

  “Please,” I said.

  She took a plastic milk container from the refrigerator, dropped it on the table, and sat down across from me to watch me doctor my coffee.

  “I don't often use real milk and sugar. This is a real treat for me,” I said with a smile.

  “Don't hold with that artificial stuff. It all causes cancer, you know. You like Christian music?”

  “I … guess so. A long time ago when we lived in Okinawa, I sang with a Sunday school chorus. We did The Messiah at an Easter sunrise service on a cliff overlooking the China Sea.” I stopped, because Weezie was staring at me as if I were speaking an unfamiliar language.

  “Lived in Oklahoma, huh? Had a cousin went there once. But I didn't mean classical stuff. I'm talking about Christian music.”

  She jumped up and left the room for a minute. When she returned she was carrying a small electronic keyboard. She plugged it into the wall, hit a loud chord that provoked a fresh round of screams from the basket baby, and began to sing in a loud voice, “Neeeee-rer mah God, tuh thee, Neeeee-rer tuh thee …”

  With a smile pasted on my face, I listened to what seemed like hundreds of hymns. The baby, thankfully, stopped screaming somewhere in the middle of “What uh fuh-rend we hey-vuh in Jeeee-sus.” The wall clock must have stopped, I decided, or else it was running very slowly because that big hand only showed ten minutes had gone by when I knew several hours must have passed.

  When she finally stopped, I applauded. Not too enthusiastically. I didn't want to encourage an encore.

  “I get real pleasure out of my God-given talent,” she said.

  “And so must your family,” I remarked.

  “Jackson don't care much for music.” She unplugged the keyboard and wiped the keys with a towel. “You want something altered?”

  “Actually, that's not why I'm here.”

  She looked at me suspiciously.

  “I've come regarding a letter you wrote to the paper. About the cultural center and shopping mall Bernice wanted to build downtown.”

  “What about it?”

  “Before we print any letter to the editor, we always verify that the letter actually came from the person who signed it.” That was the truth, but usually a quick phone call took care of the matter.

  “I done wrote it. You gonna print it?”

  “I'd like to,” I said, “but I have to make sure you aren't trying to profit from it in some way.”

  She squirmed in her seat. “I don't catch your drift.”

  I took a chance and said, “Everybody knows you and Jackson want to sell your farm to a mall developer. Did you want to stop Bernice because she was a business rival?”

  Weezie spluttered. “No way! Besides, our deal's off.”

  Sometimes the best way to get information out of people is to say nothing, so I waited.

  “It's 'cause of Matavious. He went and sold his farming rights to the Conservation Bank. Now nobody can ever use his place for nothing but farming. The builder backed out of our deal, then … said he had to have both Clopper farms.”

  “Why would he have done that? Surely, selling the farm would have been lucrative for him.” She looked blank, so I added, “Would have made him lots of money.”

  “They don't need it. He's real rich, you know. Doctors always are. He did it out of spite … he hates my husband.”

  “Any particular reason? Boundary disputes or something?”

  She shook her head. “Jackson's great-granddaddy fought on the wrong side in the War. Nobody round here lets us forget it. Especially them other Cloppers … they say our side of the family disgraced the family name.”

  “The Civil War was a long time ago,” I said. “Do you really think people still hold a grudge over something that happened nearly a hundred and forty years ago?”

  “I don't think … I know!”

  “Perhaps he did it to preserve the land for future generations,” I pointed out. “Farms around here are getting scarce, with all the new suburbs going in.”

  “That's what Oretta said … damn bleeding heart! Excuse my language. She cared more for them animals at the shelter than she did for people.”

  Her outburst against Oretta prompted me to ask, “Where were you last night … around one in the morning?”

  “Home in bed with my husband, where a decent woman should be.” Her eyes opened wide as she began to grasp what I was hinting. “Are you hinting I burned down her house? If anybody said so, then they're a damn liar. Excuse my language.”

  “I haven't heard any such thing, Weezie. But the authorities may be asking questions later, of anyone with a grudge against Oretta. You did know she was murdered, didn't you?”

  Weezie's hands fluttered to her face, stifling a shocked whimper.

  I moved quickly back to discussing Bernice. “If you weren't going to be involved with a rival mall, why were you so opposed to the downtown development?” I asked.

  “I'm a good Christian woman,” she sniffed. “I don't hold with that kind of stuff Bernice was into.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Satanism.”

  “Satanism? Could you explain?”

  “I found out Bernice was into that witchcraft stuff,” she said. “And I done read all about it … they have nekked sex, you know, and drink the blood of babies!” She touched the basket as if to reassure herself that her granddaughter was still there—safe from all things that go bump in the night.

  “I have something I want you to look at.” From my purse, I retrieved the letter Bernice had thought of as a death threat. “You wrote this, didn't you? You sent Bernice an anonymous letter threatening her,” I said as I unfolded it.

  “What makes you think so?” she said, glaring at me defiantly.

  “You misspelled San Antonio the same way in the letter you wrote to the paper.”

  Her face turned guilt-red.

  “You called Bernice ‘which one.’ You misspelled witch, too. With all the reading you say you've done about witchcraft, I'd think you'd at least have learned how to spell the word.”

  Weezie snatched the letter from my hand and tore it into tiny pieces.

  “It's a photocopy,” I said.

  “She didn't have no right to make all that money. Her and her evil ways.”

  “That was enough of a reason to threaten to kill her?”

  “I didn't say nothing about killing her. I only meant I was going to tell on her. I figured if decent folk knew what kind of person she was, they'd run her out of town—at least stop her from getting richer off the good people what lives here—and she wouldn't drink no more baby blood.”

  I was getting nauseous, and it wasn't from thinking about baby blood. If there were other “good” people like Weezie in Lickin Creek, I could understand why Cassie thought it wise to keep quiet about her wiccan activities. And thinking of Cassie, I asked, “You're the one who tried to scare Cassie Kriner, aren't you? By leaving the broomsticks on our door.”

  Her flushed face told me I was right. Religion and superstition are close cousins.

  I picked up my purse and stood, preparing to leave. “I hope you realize you might be in danger,” I said.

  A look of panic spread across Weezie's flat face.

  “Two Lickin Creek women who were playing sugar plum fairies have been murdered. You were the third fairy. There's a pretty good chance you could be the next victim.” Scaring her wasn't very nice, I knew, but I felt some moral satisfaction at shaking up her narrow, self-righteous world.

  Outside, ignoring the pungent odor of fertilizer in the air, I took a deep breath then headed f
or my truck. Weezie stood in the doorway and watched me back up. I couldn't help noticing her shabby cotton dress, so inappropriate for the winter. And the black eye, of course. And suddenly I felt sad … for her … for Mrs. Pof-fenberger … and for all the women like them living hopeless lives. Weezie needed to be hugged, not rebuked, but before I could make a move, she went back into the house and closed the door.

  All the way back to town, I thought about Weezie and Jackson and their relationship. She could have been telling the truth about walking into a door, but I doubted it. During our conversation, Weezie had let me know she intensely disliked both Oretta and Bernice. Matavious, too. Was the mousy little seamstress fanatic enough to murder two people?

  Back in the borough, the streets were once again torn up for repairs. This time the detour took me through the old section of town, where many deserted commercial buildings spoke of more prosperous times. Ahead of me was the enormous redbrick building that Bernice and Vernell Kaltenbaugh had hoped to turn into an oasis of art and culture. I stopped the truck to take a look at it.

  Size was one of the only two things going for it. The place was definitely large enough to contain a lot of stores and art studios, and even the theatre Bernice had hoped would bring music and drama to Lickin Creek.

  What really made the site special was the Lickin Creek itself. The sparkling little river tumbled in a waterfall over a small dam, meandered through some underbrush and under a crumbling stone bridge, then disappeared into an archway in the side of the old cold-storage building.

  Curious about where it went, I got out of the truck to take a look. Along the base of the building were several arches, about three feet high, covered with wire mesh. To look through one, I knelt on the cracked macadam parking lot and saw that beneath the building the creek spread out into a huge tar-black lake. There was no way to tell how deep it was, but the water was so still and dark it gave the appearance of being bottomless.

  My favorite childhood poem by Coleridge came to mind, and I recited, “‘Where Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea.’” It was here that Bernice had dreamed of building her “stately pleasure dome.” Could this deserted part of town really be brought to life again, as San Antonio had done with its River Walk?