Death, Snow, and Mistletoe

by Valerie S. Malmont

  As I stood up, dusting off my knees, I noticed a flight of rusted iron steps leading up to a doorway. And the door was slightly ajar. This was a siren call, urging me to climb the stairs and take a look inside the building. A NO TRESPASSING sign was tacked on the door, and beneath it someone had spray-painted a pentacle in a circle and written SATAN LIVES. I looked around to see if anybody was watching and pushed on the door. It creaked, rattled, and screeched as it opened just wide enough to allow me to slip inside.

  At first, I found it too dark to see anything and was about to give up in disappointment. But my eyes soon adjusted, and I discerned that I stood on a concrete landing overlooking the mysterious lake. A flight of stairs to my right led to the upper floors of the building.

  I soon wished I'd stayed home and minded my own business. The steps were of some kind of metal mesh that I could see through, straight down to the water below, and my vertigo kicked in. And even worse, the whole staircase was creaking and shaking, threatening to pull away from the wall. Realizing I was nearly at the top, I clutched the rail and kept going on wobbly legs until I stepped off the stairs and onto a blessedly solid concrete floor.

  How was I ever going to get back down? There had to be another flight of stairs—just had to be! Hoping to find another way out, I looked around the cavernous room, dimly lit by the small amount of light filtering through the cracks in the boarded-up windows. I didn't see another exit, although the room was so large and dark that I realized there could be one somewhere.

  What I did see, in the center of the room, was a long table, covered with black cloth. I walked over to take a closer look and saw on it several candles in a variety of colors, a brass bowl full of something smelling sweetly of dried orange peels and incense, a crystal goblet that looked like genuine Waterford, a ceramic statue of the Chinese goddess Kwan Yin, and a dagger with an ornately carved ebony handle. Without a doubt, this had to be where Cassie's coven met. Everything on the table was too expensive and too sophisticated to belong to a group of teenagers in a cult.

  I'd discounted as nonsense Weezie's frightened statement that wiccans drank “baby's blood,” but now, seeing the dagger on this makeshift altar, I wondered.

  “Hands up, you little shit, or I'll blow your frigging head off.” Although I'd heard nobody come up the creaky stairs, someone obviously had and was standing close behind me.

  My arms flew up in the air, reaching for the ceiling.

  “Don't shoot,” I cried. “Please. I'm a reporter.”

  From behind me came a strangled sound I recognized as laughter. “Some'uns would think that was reason enough to shoot you. Turn around.”

  I did as ordered and immediately recognized Stanley Roadcap's melancholy face.

  “I thought you were one of those teenagers that break in all the time. I should have known it'd be you.”

  Smiling innocently, I hoped, I said politely, “May I put my arms down, please?”

  He pointed the barrels of the double-barreled shotgun at the floor, and I dropped my hands to my sides.

  “What do you mean you should have known it was me?”

  “I heard you'uns been running around town asking questions about my wife and Oretta. It was only a matter of time till you showed up here.” He pointed with his chin to the altar, and a look of distaste crossed his face.

  “That's true, Mr. Roadcap. I've been attempting to find out who killed them. I'd think you'd be grateful for that … unless you have a reason for not wanting me to learn the truth.”

  The gun barrel jerked up—for a moment I thought Stanley really was going to shoot me—then dropped once more toward the floor.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “I'm talking about murder, and you know it.” I sounded brave, but my insides were quaking. If Stanley really was a murderer, he could shoot me inside this deserted building, drop me into the black water below, and nobody would ever know what had happened to me.

  “Why on earth would you'uns think I killed my wife?” He managed to sound astounded that such a thought could cross anybody's mind.

  “People say she wanted a divorce and you didn't.”

  “That's right. I loved Bernice enough to wait for her to come to her senses. This kind of thing's happened before with her.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “Rehab romance, they call it. Every couple of years, she decides to sober up, goes off to a place like Betty Ford, meets a young guy who's got more problems than her, decides she's in love, and asks me for a divorce. After a few months, a year once, she falls off the wagon and asks to come home. That's how she met this VeeKay character. He was into crack, heroin, meth, you name it. Bernice probably thought she was going to save him from himself. At Al-Anon, they say it's a mutual codependence that occurs fairly often with certain types of addiction. I think that's why she was into this kind of stuff, too.”

  I was sure “this kind of stuff” meant witchcraft. “Ber-nice had been drinking when I talked to her,” I said. “And the night she died.”

  He nodded. “All part of her pattern. The next step would have been to break off her relationship with that young punk.”

  Perhaps she already had, I thought. VeeKay might have already received the bad news—that he was out and Stanley was back in. Was his dependency on Bernice so strong that he'd kill her rather than give her up? Was there any truth in what Stanley Roadcap was telling me?

  “Were Bernice and Oretta Clopper particularly close?” I asked, still hoping to find the missing link—the one thing that would lead someone to murder both women.

  “Not really,” he said. “Bernice enjoyed working with the Little Lickin Creek Theatre and was in a couple of plays Oretta wrote. But she used to laugh with me about what a bad writer Oretta was. I don't think they saw each other much away from the theatre.”

  While we'd been talking, the afternoon light coming through the cracks between the boards on the windows had dimmed. “Come on,” he said. “Let's go while we can still see.”

  The thought of going down that rickety staircase petrified me. “I'm afraid of the stairs … the whole thing nearly pulled away from the wall as I was coming up.”

  “Geez! You didn't use the iron staircase? It's liable to collapse any minute.”

  “That's rather dangerous,” I said. “You could be sued if someone got hurt.”

  “Not with NO TRESPASSING signs pasted all over the building,” he pointed out. “There's another way. Solid concrete stairwell. Nothing to worry about.”

  Although it was still afternoon, the sky was dark by the time I pulled into the circular drive of my Moon Lake mansion. The porch light was on, welcoming me home after my strange afternoon. Thankfully, all the media trucks and vans were gone. Lickin Creek was no longer newsworthy, and I was glad of it.

  In the kitchen, Praxythea, who was stirring something in a mixing bowl, glanced up and asked, “Where have you been?”

  “I spent half the afternoon on a farm interviewing a religious bigot, and the rest of the time I was held at gunpoint in a deserted building somewhere in Lickin Creek.”

  “That's nice,” she said, obviously not listening. “Would you take the cookies out of the oven, please?”

  I put on two oven mitts and removed three trays of cookies, while Noel watched with curiosity. I was doing something she'd never seen me do before. “What's with the domesticity?”

  Praxythea was wearing a dainty white organdy apron. I wondered if she always traveled with one in her luggage, in case the urge to cook struck unexpectedly. “We agreed to have an old-fashioned Christmas,” she said. “That means lots of cookies. And my special fruitcake, of course.” Opening the refrigerator, she pointed at the huge ceramic bowl taking up an entire shelf.

  “What is it?” I asked, peering at an assortment of brightly colored lumps floating in something that smelled of alcohol.

  “It's the base for my fruitcake. All the candied fruit and nuts need to soak overnight in a syrup of
sugar, lemon juice, and port wine to absorb the flavors. It would be better to let it sit for at least a week, but this will have to do.

  “Your mail's on the table.”

  I flipped through the envelopes and catalogs. By this time I'd given up expecting to get a letter from Garnet, so I wasn't disappointed. Well, maybe just a little, but I hid it well.

  One of the envelopes, with a row of brightly colored foreign stamps, caught my eye because the handwriting was unfamiliar. Usually letters with that country's postmark came from my father.

  I ripped it open and looked at the signature. “Tyfani Miracle. It's from my father's new wife!”

  Praxythea said, “Yummy,” but I think it was because she was licking cookie dough from her fingers, and not because I received a letter from the bimbo my father had married.

  “She says she's going to be coming back to the States in the spring with the baby … can't wait to meet me … heard so much about me from my father … I can imagine! Wonder what he's told her about my mother?”

  “Don't be bitter, Tori. He deserves to be happy.”

  “Shows what you don't know,” I grumbled. Secretly, I was pleased to receive the letter. At least Tyfani had some of the right instincts. I folded it carefully, and put it in my purse, to reread later. The baby, she wrote, was due any day. Maybe even had been born by now. I couldn't wait to find out if I had a brother or sister.

  “Call them,” Praxythea said, as if reading my mind.

  “Maybe on Christmas,” I said. “My father gets mad if I don't wait for the holiday rates.”

  She smiled and resumed dropping dough onto the cookie sheets.

  “Has Fred come home?” I asked, hopeful but fearing the worst.

  She shook her head. “I've been all over the neighborhood, calling him.” Catching my downcast look, she added, “Don't worry too much, Tori. I have a strong feeling someone has taken him in. I called the local radio station and asked them to make some announcements. I'm sure we'll hear from someone soon.”

  “I didn't get much sleep last night,” I said. “I think I'll go lie down for a little while.” What I really wanted was to have a good cry over Fred—in private.

  “I'll wake you in plenty of time to get to the church,” Praxythea said.

  I looked at her blankly. “Church?” Then I remembered—tonight was the memorial service for Eddie Douglas, the little boy who'd drowned in the quarry so many years ago.

  CHAPTER 15

  Lullay, thou little tiny child

  “TORI, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FACE?” Maggie Roy's sly grin indicated she knew exactly what had caused the strange indentations on my cheeks.

  “I did battle with a chenille bedspread and lost,” I said. “Next time I'll remove it before taking an afternoon nap.”

  We were standing in the foyer of Trinity Evangelical Church, watching people arrive for Eddie Douglas's memorial service. Every stratum of Lickin Creek's society was represented, from farmers and shopkeepers to professionals. Many of them I recognized; some even came over to congratulate me for rescuing Kevin Poffenberger, and that made me feel really good—at last I was beginning to fit in. It didn't even bother me that Weezie Clopper, in dark glasses and accompanied by her husband, pretended she hadn't seen me.

  We attracted a lot of stares from the more conventionally dressed people who streamed in. I assumed that most of them found us to be a strange-looking trio. Praxythea wore a floor-length, skintight cheongsam of white satin, slit to the hip on both sides. She looked something like a redheaded swan, with the mandarin collar exaggerating the length of her neck. White was the Chinese color for mourning, she'd explained when I questioned her choice of funeral garb.

  Maggie and I had chosen to wear nearly identical navy-blue suits. Mine was left over from my working days in New York, where a tailored navy-blue suit had been a requirement for a reporter. When we were joined by Ginnie Welburn, we looked like a trio of uniformed security guards.

  By the time we entered the church, the back pews were already filled. Praxythea, with a serene smile on her face, stepped forward and led us down the center aisle to seats in the front row.

  A giggling middle-school girl handed us programs.

  “I've never felt so conspicuous,” Ginnie whispered to me.

  “You'll get used to it if you hang out with Praxythea for any length of time,” I told her, opening my program.

  “What's it say?” Ginnie asked. “I didn't bring my reading glasses.”

  “‘Memorial service for L. Edward Douglas, Jr., son of the late Lemuel E. Douglas, Sr., and Miriam Hopkiss Douglas,’” I read. “I wonder what happened to them.”

  Maggie, as usual, knew the answer. “Moved to a little town in Texas. A few months later, Lem shot his wife and himself. Friends down there said they never recovered from losing Eddie.”

  My eyes brimmed with tears, and to hide my emotion I returned to reading the program. “Here's a surprise: ‘Trinity Evangelical Church is grateful to Dr. Matavious Clopper for his generous sponsorship of this memorial service.’ My goodness, how thoughtful of him to do this—especially with the tragedy he's just suffered.”

  Maggie, sitting on my other side, between Praxythea and me, uttered a derisive “Humph.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “He didn't do anything. Oretta set all this up the day she died. Matavious couldn't exactly stop it. Not without looking like a real Scrooge.”

  Ginnie leaned across me to ask, “Do you know why she did it?”

  Something I recalled made me answer. “Right after Eddie's body was found, Oretta said to me that ‘Lickin Creek takes care of its own.’ This must have been her way of showing how much she cared.” Weezie Clopper had told me she believed Oretta liked animals better than people. This proved she was very wrong about the woman. The flowers alone had to have cost a fortune.

  Reverend Flack entered the sanctuary from a side door, took a position behind the teddy-bear-covered altar, and held up his arms. His robe was splendid, a far cry from what I would have expected a Lickin Creek minister to wear.

  The congregation hushed, and then, from the back of the church came the sound of bagpipes. I turned to Maggie with a questioning look.

  “Reverend Flack's cousin,” she whispered. “Lots of Scotch-Irish here. Plays at most of their funerals.”

  All heads turned as the piper, in formal Scottish garb, slowly walked down the aisle playing “Skye Boat Song.” Behind him came pallbearers, carrying a tiny white coffin containing Eddie Douglas's remains. I had to press that special spot on my upper lip to keep tears from flowing.

  “Carry the lad that's born to be king, over the sea to Skye.” The music ended, and the piper stepped to one side of the altar and stood at attention as the coffin was placed on a stand before it.

  The service was touching, even though no one there seemed to have actually known the child. One after another, members of the church came to the front to read prayers, and several added their personal thoughts about childhood in general.

  As it went on, I thought about the world as it had been when Eddie died. The sixties: the Age of Aquarius and Vietnam, turmoil and violence on college campuses, flower power and drugs, Dylan and Baez, psychedelic clothing and love beads, children who “left their hearts in San Francisco” and, in many cases, their minds. It really had been the age of innocence, when young people still believed they could make a difference. Another time, another world.

  Eddie would have been too young to participate in any of that, of course. A child's view of the sixties would be pretty much that of any child at any time. If he'd lived, Eddie would be in his forties now, I realized. Perhaps balding, a little overweight, in need of reading glasses, maybe even a grandfather. But Eddie had missed all the joys and sorrows that life could bring and would be forever five years old. My nose tingled, and I had to pinch my upper lip again.

  Maggie nudged me, bringing me back to the present. “Wake up,” she whispered.

  “I'm
not sleeping, just thinking.”

  The Reverend Flack gave the signal for us to stand, and the piper stepped forward. I was sure of what was coming next and rooted fruitlessly in my bag for a Kleenex. Maggie handed me one of hers. I was right—as the pallbearers carried the coffin out, “Amazing Grace” filled the church. Nothing in the world could keep me from crying when I hear that beautiful hymn played on the bagpipes.

  In the foyer, everybody was sniffing and blowing noses. A red-eyed Primrose Flack came over to get a tissue from Maggie, who seemed to have an endless supply.

  “How I wish someone from his family could have been here to know he's finally been found,” Primrose said.

  “I'm sure they're watching from heaven,” Ginnie said.

  This was so unlike her usual sarcastic remarks that I looked at her to see if she was kidding. She appeared to be serious.

  “How awful to think of him lying there all those years in that cold, dark water.” Maggie had a catch in her voice.

  “But at least he was at peace,” Ginnie pointed out.

  “Is he going to be buried here?” I asked.

  Primrose shook her head. “My husband found out his parents are buried in Jasper, Texas. The body's being shipped there tomorrow.”

  “It's nice they're going to be reunited, even if they are all dead,” Ginnie said.

  “This is getting too gloomy,” Praxythea said. “I have an idea. We all need to be cheered up. Let's go back to Tori's house and trim her tree. We can make it a sort of old-fashioned all-girl party, late-night snacks and all. It will be fun.”

  “Praxythea,” I whispered. “There's nothing in the house to feed them.”

  “Don't worry about it. I baked cookies all day, and I bought gallons of eggnog. We're all set.”

  So Praxythea's party invitation was not quite as extemporaneous as she expected us to believe. I didn't have any Christmas ornaments, either, but I was sure Praxythea had already taken care of that little matter.