Fran Rizer - Callie Parrish 06 - A Corpse Under the Christmas Tree

by Fran Rizer

  Obviously ready to get out of there, he asked, “Jane, can we get you anything?”

  “No, just buy a book for Callie. I’ll listen to the radio or television through her earphones. This is a great hospital room. The earphones reach to the chairs as well as the bed, and when you push the call button, it activates a signal at the nurses’ desk and they ask what you want through an intercom above the bed. That way, they can bring what you need when they come. Back when Mommy was in the hospital, the call button just turned on a light in the hall. The nurse had to see the light, come ask what Mommy wanted, and then go get it.” She slid off the bed and sat in the wooden straight-back chair where Miss Ellen had been.

  When Daddy and Miss Ellen left the room, Miss Lettie babbled on about her deceased son. She started loud and fast but soon reduced her words to mumbling as she opened the tote bag beside her. She pulled out a tiny, unfinished blue sweater, skeins of yarn, knitting needles, and a gigantic pair of scissors. It’s not unusual to see ladies knit or crochet in public around St. Mary, and I’ve read Maggie Sefton’s Kelly Flinn Knitting Mysteries, but I’m not into needlework of any kind.

  With my eyes closed, I wondered why Miss Lettie’s scissors were so big. My aching brain jumped to Little Red Riding Hood telling the wolf, “My, what big teeth you have,” and the wolf answering, “The better to eat you with.” That thought didn’t come from my years of teaching kindergarten. I’d edited the fairy tales I told my students. The bad people (or animals like the poor beleaguered wolf in so many stories) always died in such gruesome ways that I changed the endings for the boys and girls in my class. I mean, get real. Do five-year-olds need to hear about the wolf falling through the chimney into a fire at the third little pig’s house?

  I wanted to tell Miss Lettie, “My, what big scissors you have,” but I didn’t. I was afraid that she’d answer, “The better to cut you with.”

  Silly, silly, silly. Too many ridiculous thoughts. My head hurt, and I didn’t really care what Miss Lettie was doing.

  Jane started humming—not one of the Christmas songs she’d been singing since Halloween. This was an old Patsy Cline song—one of Jane’s favorites—“Crazy.”

  We used that trick in high school. When we wanted to tell each other something we didn’t want anyone else to know, we’d hum the melody to a song with words we wanted the other to think. It generally worked. Was Jane telling me that Miss Lettie acted crazy?

  Why not? The whole world seemed insane. My mother had six children and died before she raised them while Miss Ellen never had any kids and lived to old age. Amber Buchanan, a good woman who devoted her life to helping other females out of abusive situations, lost her life. Whoever killed Ms. Buchanan dumped her body on my front porch under the huge Christmas tree that celebrated the birth of Christ. Then someone attacked Jane and hurt me. Senseless, too, that anyone would steal an infant who was only a few days old and needed his mom and dad.

  Wayne says that police officers don’t believe in coincidences. It seemed way too coincidental that the home where someone dumped a dead body was the same house where a tall stranger tried to make a corpse out of me—unless the person was one and the same. Unreasonable that the man most likely to have killed Amber Buchanan was locked in jail when Jane and I were attacked. One person violating our home by leaving a corpse and later attacking Jane and me seemed possible. Was someone after me because of my involvement in solving previous murders? Could the corpse under our Christmas tree have been a warning, a threat? But separate, unrelated events? I didn’t think so. The whole thing was—yep, crazy.

  I lay back, agreeing with Jane that Miss Lettie seemed to be more and more irrational. I didn’t like her being here with Jane and me, and her constant talking was maddening. I wished Daddy and Miss Ellen would hurry back. If Miss Lettie kept mumbling and Jane didn’t stop humming, I’d soon be crazy myself.

  I looked over and saw Miss Lettie drop her yarn and needles on the floor beside the bag. I closed my eyes again and thought about pressing the call button for a nurse. I could ask for something for the throbbing pain in my head, but I was afraid Dr. Donald would want to keep me hospitalized longer if I complained. When would Daddy and Miss Ellen be back? Despite the noise, or maybe to escape it, I dozed off for a few minutes.

  “What are you doing?” Jane’s gasp woke me.

  Miss Lettie stood behind my friend, holding Jane’s waist-length red pigtail in one hand and those huge scissors in the other. She forced Jane into a headlock and chop! The scissors hacked off ten years’ growth of Jane’s hair—prized locks that had seldom been cut and never artificially colored.

  Jane swatted her hand at Miss Lettie and hit the point of the scissors. Blood dripped. I jammed my finger against the call button for the nurse over and over. No one answered on the intercom. I bounded off the bed, bringing my IV pole crashing down to the floor and pulling the needle from my arm. I yanked the tape away, releasing the tubing that held me to the pole. This time, blood didn’t drip, it flowed.

  Miss Lettie rushed toward me, holding the scissors over her head and cackling as she swung the pointed end at me. I sidestepped her and knocked her off balance onto the floor. As I tried to move away, Miss Lettie locked her teeth into my ankle. I howled in pain. She unclenched her jaws, dropped the scissors, jumped up, and seized me.

  She tossed me across the room—literally hurled me through the air like those wrestlers Daddy likes to watch on television. I landed on the recliner. Jane’s pillow softened the blow, but my head blurred—dizzy and dazed.

  Miss Lettie caught Jane and headlocked her again. She lifted the red braid from the floor and grasped each end of it. She wrapped it around Jane’s neck like a garrote, and then twisted, pulling the ends so hard that the muscles stood out in her sinewy arms. Jane thrashed in every direction, trying to pull away. The crazy lady was strong, but Jane’s adrenaline must have been sky-high because she snapped her arm straight up and pried one of Miss Lettie’s hands off the noose just as I reached them. Jane’s elbow hit the old woman’s face, and blood gushed from her nose all the way down to her wrinkled chin and throat. Weird thoughts popped into my mind. All three of us were bleeding. Would we create a DNA puzzle for forensics if Miss Lettie succeeded in killing Jane and me?

  No time for such ridiculous thoughts. I’d like to say I jumped from the recliner. The truth is that I got up as quickly as possible, but I certainly didn’t leap. My head felt like it was turning round and round like that possessed girl in that old movie, The Exorcist. Excruciating pain across the back of my skull didn’t stop my weird thoughts. Was I going crazy? Or was the concussion causing these ideas?

  Miss Lettie’s voice dropped to a whispered growl. “I gotta bone to pick with you, Amber Clark, an axe to grind. My boy would never have left St. Mary if it hadn’t been for you. He wouldn’t have wrecked his car. He’s lying in a box in a cold graveyard, and it’s your fault.”

  She reached for Jane, but Jane had positioned herself as far as possible from the sound of the old woman’s voice.

  “No! No!” Jane wept as she quickly circled the bed, finding her way by clutching the edge of the mattress like an infant holding onto the sides of a playpen.

  I managed to get from the recliner to the bed and reach the call button—smacked it as hard as I could.

  Miss Lettie walked methodically behind Jane like a wild animal stalking its prey. Her words became slower and more precise.

  “You lied to me on your porch and told me it was his idea to break up.” Miss Lettie lifted the scissors over her head, ready to stab. Jane turned around and struck out wildly at Miss Lettie. She knocked the scissors to the floor.

  “What porch?” Jane sobbed. “I didn’t talk to you on the porch, and I never even knew your son.”

  Miss Lettie seized Jane by the shoulders and spit in her face. She squeezed her arms around Jane as I struggled to pull them apart.

  Hate spilled from Miss Lettie’s mouth—still slow and particular. “I’m going
to kill you, Amber Clark. You couldn’t hide from me when you came out your door with that Santa Claus disguise. I knew who you were even before I snatched off your beard and hat. You’re the slut who made my Jeffrey Junior so unhappy that he moved away from me.”

  She managed to hold Jane with one arm while she reached for the braid. “You thought you’d get me when you snatched that string of lights loose from over your door, threatening to tie me up and call the cops, but I fooled you when I took that cord from you. I might be old, but farm work all those years made me strong. You’ve come back after I choked you with those Christmas lights around your neck, but now I’m going to strangle you to death forever.”

  I struggled with Miss Lettie, but I couldn’t pull her away from Jane. Hair! I grasped a handful of gray hair and yanked as hard as I could. Miss Lettie released her hold on Jane and shoved me across the room like a rag doll. I thrust my arms out and cushioned myself with my hands. No telling what might have happened if my head had hit the wall. Breathless—I couldn’t move.

  Miss Lettie gripped Jane and wrapped the braid around her throat again. She pulled it tighter and tighter. Jane’s face went from bright red to bluish. Miss Lettie released the pigtail and let it drop. Jane collapsed into a limp pile on the floor beside it.

  “I howled with laughter when I saw that giant Christmas tree.” Miss Lettie’s speech changed again—now fast and loud. “I was taking you to Jeffrey Junior at the cemetery, but I couldn’t resist leaving you at that house. Nobody was around, so I carried you to the porch. Under the Christmas tree—the perfect place to leave a dead Santa Claus.”

  She broke into a long peal of maniacal laughter.

  “You were just pretending then,” she persisted, “but I’ve killed you for good this time, and now I’m going to stab your friend.”

  She grabbed the scissors once more and charged me.

  The door opened.

  Nurses rushed in.

  But they weren’t at the front of the line.

  Daddy was.

  “Have a holly, jolly Christmas.” Daddy’s voice rang out so loud I could hear him before I went inside and headed toward the delicious smells of the kitchen.

  He stood at the table, sounding like Burl Ives and looking like a gray-haired Larry the Cable Guy wearing his bright red “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” apron over jeans and a flannel shirt. Years ago, when John gave him the apron, Rudolph’s nose lit up, but no one had replaced the battery since it burned out a few years ago.

  “Christmas is over,” I said as I pulled off my jacket and draped it on the coat rack by the back door.

  “It doesn’t have to be,” Daddy answered. He’d arranged a carton of jumbo brown eggs, a bag of granulated sugar, a quart of whole milk, one of heavy cream, a little bottle of genuine vanilla extract, and a small brown nut in a line beside the large punch bowl that had always been at our house. As a little girl, I’d wondered if that bowl had belonged to my mother.

  I simply stood and watched him as silent as that proverbial creature, the mouse who wasn’t stirring in “The Night Before Christmas.” He placed two medium mixing bowls beside the egg carton and carefully cracked one egg at a time. He visually examined each of them and held it up to his nose, sniffed, then separated the white from the yolk into the two dishes.

  “What’cha making?” I asked.

  Daddy looked up with a puzzled expression. “What does it look like I’m making? Eggnog, of course.”

  “Where’s the rum? I’ve never known you to make eggnog without rum.”

  “I sent Mike to the red dot store to get a liter of spiced rum.” He put the bowl of egg whites on the mixer stand, flipped the switch, and beat them to stiff peaks.

  “You don’t usually make eggnog except at Christmas. What happened? You just didn’t get enough of it then?” I looked around for the bowl of peanuts he usually has in the kitchen, but it was gone. There was, however, a dish of Christmas hard candy.

  “No, the truth is that the last dozen days have been terrible. I’m gonna start over—have a new twelve days of Christmas—and I’m beginning with today, which is my new Christmas Day.”

  He measured one and a half cups of sugar into the punch bowl, then stopped and looked me over, head to toe. “Aside from those black eyes and that hairdo, you look pretty good, considering all things.” My new hairstyle could have been called whacked off. I’d tried to trim it, but I hadn’t improved it much.

  Daddy poured the egg yolks into the sugar and beat them together with a wire whisk. “Where’s Frankie? Didn’t he come in with you?” he asked.

  “He and Jane are outside, talking on the porch. He’s so relieved that Jane had fainted and wasn’t dead like you thought when you came in the hospital room that he’s making all kinds of promises to get a job and rent his own place. I was surprised you sent Frankie to pick us up, knowing how he and Jane have been lately, but he says he’s going to prove himself to her.” Words poured out of me, but I wasn’t thinking about anything except the holly-shaped bowl of hard Christmas candy on the counter. It looked mighty tempting.

  “Frankie was out of his mind when he learned what happened yesterday,” Daddy said. “He insisted on picking you girls up from the hospital when you called while ago and said you’d been dismissed.”

  “You could have sent Mike for us.”

  “I told you. I sent him for rum, and he’s gone to get Ellen. She’s mighty upset over Miss Lettie’s meltdown.” He added the milk and heavy cream to the punch bowl, then slowly stirred it into the yolk and sugar mixture with a whisk.

  “Meltdown? It’s a whole lot more than that. I keep thinking what a waste it is for Amber Buchanan to be dead. She worked so hard to help lots of women, and from what I understand, she didn’t dump Jeff Morgan in high school. He dropped her for someone else.” I popped a piece of hard candy into my mouth. “Last night I lay in bed thinking about everything and wondering if maybe Patsy Corley was Amber’s replacement, but I don’t guess we’ll ever know that.”

  “Finding out is as easy as calling your brother John or even asking Wayne. Those three knew everything about each other back then.” Daddy measured a tablespoon of vanilla into the bowl, stirred again, and then reached below the cabinet for a tiny metal grater. The nut that had been lying beside the ingredients was exactly what I’d thought it was—nutmeg. The scent of it wafted over the other appetizing aromas as he grated a tiny bit directly into the punch bowl and stirred again. He folded the beaten egg whites into the concoction gently with a spatula.

  “Did you know the sheriff learned the rings you found in Amber Buchanan’s house were fake? Not even high-quality imitations. They were what we used to call dime store jewelry, but she valued them because they’d belonged to her mother. Amber must have been afraid someone might steal them.”

  “Wayne hadn’t told me that. Amber was probably afraid her husband would take them,” I said before adding, “Are you going to add cinnamon?”

  “No, I’ll put some beside the bowl. Ellen doesn’t care for cinnamon.”

  He dipped a ladle into the punch bowl, spooned some eggnog into a cup, and handed it to me. I took a sip.

  “Delicious,” I said, “and it will be even better when you add the rum.”

  “You know I don’t like you drinking alcohol. That stuff’s smooth and creamy just as it is.” I didn’t argue with him. I knew, and he probably did too, that I’d sneak more of it after Mike came back.

  “I owe you a great big thank-you, Daddy.” I stepped forward and hugged him. My daddy isn’t very demonstrative and sometimes kind of shrugs out of hugs, but he hugged me back. A big, tight hug.

  “You don’t owe me anything, Calamine. When I heard you scream, I just about knocked the nurses down rushing to your room. My heart almost stopped when I saw what was happening. I don’t know what I would do if I lost you. I might even turn out as crazy as Miss Lettie did.”

  He poured himself a small cup of eggnog and drank it down like a shooter. “I kno
w I was more frightened than you were.” He smiled.

  “What makes you think that?” I asked. “I was terrified.” I held my cup out for more.

  “You didn’t throw up like you’ve always done when you’re scared.” He filled both of our cups. Good thing it didn’t have the rum in it yet.

  I took another sip and explained, “I was about to upchuck all over when you came through the door, and then I knew I’d be safe.”

  “I always swore I’d never hit a female,” he said after he swallowed, “and that’s the first and only time in my life I ever struck a woman, but I’d a’ killed her to save you.”

  “I know it was hard on you, Daddy. You were kind of sweet on Miss Lettie, weren’t you? It seemed like that to me when you were so disappointed she didn’t come for New Year’s dinner.”

  “Miss Lettie? You thought I was interested in Miss Lettie?” He guffawed. “It’s not Miss Lettie that attracts me. It’s her friend, Ellen. That sweet little woman is kind and thoughtful and everything I like in a female. Besides, she’s about the only woman I’ve talked to since your mama died who didn’t seem jealous. I told her I’d be making my first wife’s Sunday cake today. Know what she said? She smiled and said she’d look forward to it.”

  “Did you say first wife?” I asked.

  “Oh, you know what I mean. You never can tell, but I’ve invited Ellen over for dinner tonight because she’s so distraught about her friend. She agreed to stay for music, too. She likes both country and bluegrass.”

  That’s about all Daddy plays, though he’ll throw in a folk tune once in a while, and sometimes he shuts himself up in his room and listens to old jazz records on his turntable.

  “At least Miss Lettie’s not in jail. Maybe they really can help her in that mental hospital.” I couldn’t resist another piece of candy. This one tasted strawberry.

  “Let’s hope so. Meanwhile, I’ve got to get busy cooking up some treats to go with this eggnog tonight and finishing up dinner.”