Valerie S. Malmont

by Snow;Mistletoe Death

  “Merry Christmas,” I said, pretending nothing was out of the ordinary. The four visitors all leaped forward to help pick up the mess.

  Raymond stared down at the cookie and plate shards with a horrified expression, but when he looked back to me he seemed to have regained his composure, for he was smiling warmly.

  “How delightful to see you,” he gushed. “I'll just bet you've come to do an article about my show for the Chronicle.”

  I didn't have a chance to correct him. He practically seized me by the arm and dragged me over to the card table in the corner. “Do have some punch. And some of my delicious homemade cookies.”

  The liquid in the bowl was red, and the melting sherbet floating on top was lime-green. Christmasy, maybe, but not very appetizing.

  “No, thanks,” I said. Since my clown hadn't showed up yet, I decided to take a look at the large, brightly colored canvases hanging on the walls.

  Raymond was still gushing. “I am so delighted you are here. Thrilled, actually. You are going to just love this.

  I'm showcasing my most talented students today. Aren't we all just thrilled, everybody?” The two couples exchanged perplexed glances, then shrugged and nodded that they too were “just thrilled.”

  The canvas I stood before was bright red splashed with white. Tacked to the wall below it was a piece of cardboard with the title “Cat-astrophe,” and next to that was a photo of a gray and white tabby. I looked again, and the little white splotches turned into paw prints.

  The next painting was called “Re-pusse.” The accompanying cat picture was a calico. More paw prints, this time on a very pretty blue background.

  Confused, I turned to see the two couples nudging each other as if sharing a good joke.

  “I don't understand,” I said. “These don't look like paintings. They look like a cat stepped in some paint and then walked on the …” Light dawned. “Your students are cats?”

  A rude noise burst from one of the two women. It sounded exactly like a snicker that she tried to cover up by finishing her punch.

  “These photos—these are your students?”

  “I have given a few artists the opportunity of a lifetime—the chance to nurture their God-given talents in a loving environment,” Raymond said seriously.

  “Cats!” I couldn't believe what I was seeing and hearing.

  “Certainly you've heard of them. My students have been hung in some of the finest galleries on the East Coast.”

  “I'm afraid I haven't kept up with who's hanging where.”

  “I am only a teacher,” he said piously. “I take no credit for my students’ accomplishments. They have all the talent.”

  A little bell over the door rang as the two couples made their escape. I was alone with Raymond, teacher of cats.

  “How about some more punch? Oh, silly me, you never had any to begin with. Well, so nice of you to come. I don't want to take up any more of your valuable time. Do stop back another day.” Raymond was tugging on my arm, gently pulling me toward the door. For a shopkeeper with only one possible customer, he was in an awful hurry to get rid of me.

  I pretended not to understand and shook off his arm. “As long as I'm here, I want to see everything.”

  “Oh, dear!”

  Next in line was “Puss in Boots,” footprints on a silhouette of Italy, painted by a gray Persian. The one after that was “Puss-cafe,” and the orange and white cat artist in the photo was most definitely my own Fred!

  “Where is he?” I asked, in a voice so low it frightened even me. “Where is my cat? What have you done with him?”

  “I don't know what you're talking about—”

  I grabbed Raymond by the collar of his bright red artist's smock and shook him. “Don't lie to me, or you'll regret it for the rest of your miserable life!”

  “In there,” he gasped, pointing to a curtained archway in the back of the room.

  He staggered when I released him and clutched at his heart. I didn't believe for a minute that he was having a heart attack. And I didn't care if he was. I rushed through the curtains, into a small sitting room/kitchen combination, where half a dozen cat carriers stood along the wall.

  Fred's plaintive wail was instantly recognizable.

  “Baby,” I cooed, pulling him out of the container.

  Maa-maa, he meowed.

  “Yes, sweetie, Mama's here.” There are times when he tries to talk, and this was one of them.

  “I thought I'd never see you again.” Tears flowed down my cheeks, as I hugged his warm, soft body.

  “How could you?” I demanded of Raymond, who had padded into the room. “How dare you steal my cat?”

  “I was going to bring him back, really I was. Remember when you told me he had artistic talents? That's when I knew I had to check him out.”

  “I told you what?”

  “At the market, you told me he'd painted a design on your kitchen floor.”

  “Good grief! I was only trying to make conversation. You sneaked into my house while I was sleeping and stole him, didn't you?”

  He nodded, looking so sheepish I would have laughed if I hadn't been furious with him.

  “Why didn't you simply ask me if you could borrow him for a few days?”

  “Like you'd let me take your cat!” Raymond flung a pudgy hand up to his chest. “My heart …” he gasped.

  “Stop it, Raymond. You are not getting any sympathy from me.”

  When he suddenly turned a strange shade of grayish-blue and collapsed on the couch, I realized he wasn't kidding.

  “Shall I call an ambulance?”

  “Pills. Over there.” He waved a hand in the direction of a rolltop desk. By the time I got back to him, Fred was curled up on his lap.

  He took a pill and recovered quickly. Rather too quickly, I thought, but then I'm no expert on heart conditions. Fred was content to stay where he was.

  This was a good sign, I figured. It meant that Raymond had not mistreated him, for Fred was a good judge of character and would never have anything to do with someone who had hurt him.

  “Can I get you a cup of tea or something?” I asked.

  “My, yes. That would be lovely. There's a full kettle on the stove and some peppermint tea on the counter. Fix one for yourself, too, dear.”

  While I waited for the water to boil, I looked around the small room and realized the couch on which he was sitting was a sleep sofa. This was obviously where Raymond lived. There were no paintings in here, only framed photographs, dozens of them covering every inch of wall space and sitting on every flat surface.

  “Family and friends,” he said. “Mostly all gone now.” His voice was mournful.

  I picked up a photograph of a beautiful woman to take a closer look at her gorgeous beaded Victorian gown. “She's very lovely. Who was she?”

  “Grandma Zook. She was a great beauty. The toast of Lancaster.”

  I replaced it next to a smaller photo of a group of children that obviously dated from a more recent time, the sixties, I'd guess.

  He saw what I was looking at and said, “That's me on the left.” The chubby little boy who smiled at the camera long ago bore a close resemblance to the rotund gentleman on the couch.

  “I'd have recognized you anywhere. Who are the others?”

  “Just some of the kids I used to hang out with.” He came over and took the photo from my hands. “That's Oretta Clopper there.” He indicated a dainty blonde child with a shy smile.

  “Wow. Did she ever change.”

  “In many ways. She was such a sweet little girl, but she grew up to be one stubborn bitch—never would admit that the animals at the shelter had talents that needed to be nurtured.” He smiled, but it faded quickly. “That little boy kneeling on the ground in front of us was Eddie Douglas.”

  I took the photo and studied the dead child's face. So this was what Eddie had looked like. Sandy-haired. Freckle-faced. An ordinary kid, who should have had a chance to grow up to be an ordinary ma
n. From the age he appeared to be, I guessed the picture must have been taken only shortly before he disappeared.

  “He was younger than you, wasn't he?”

  “About five years.”

  “Kind of odd he hung out with you older kids, wasn't it?”

  Raymond shook his head. “All the neighborhood kids played together. It didn't matter how old they were.”

  “Who's the little girl on the end?” I asked. “She looks to be about Eddie's age.”

  “Well, of course she does,” Raymond said. “That was Eugenia Douglas, Eddie's twin sister.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying

  “PRAXYTHEA, I'M HOME. AND I'VE FOUND Fred.” The echoes in the dark interior of the house signaled that I was alone. In addition, there were none of the usual signs that Praxythea had been there: no cookies baking, no coffeepot on the stove. I wondered what she'd found to occupy her in Lickin Creek on a quiet Sunday afternoon, but I wasn't really concerned. Women like Praxythea seem to have unlimited inner resources.

  I put Fred on the floor and placed a bowl of Tasty Tabby Treats in front of him. No telling what he'd been eating during his ordeal. Noel approached him cautiously as he gobbled his food.

  “Yes, Noel, it's Fred,” I told her.

  She sniffed him from head to toe. After deciding it really was Fred, she knocked him on his back with one swipe of her front paw and began to lick his stomach. Fred just lay there with a goofy expression on his face, so I left them alone.

  Coffee would be nice. I'd grown accustomed to Prax-ythea always having a fresh brew going. I filled the pot with water, found the coffee, then gave up when I couldn't find the filters and fixed a cup of instant. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.

  I still couldn't get over being astonished at what I'd discovered at Raymond's. Why hadn't anyone in town mentioned Eddie Douglas's twin sister? A call to Cassie gave me my answer.

  “I'd completely forgotten,” she said. “It happened a very long time ago. And the Douglases weren't local. The father moved here to work for the defense contractor. They'd only been here a year when the tragedy struck.”

  “Still, it seems odd,” I persisted.

  “Think back thirty-five years in your own life, Tori.”

  “I wasn't even born.”

  “Exactly. Neither were at least half the people in town. If they were around, they were involved with their own lives, their own families, and their own problems. A family who moved in and out of their world in one year wouldn't make much of an impact.”

  I understood what she was getting at. “If the sister's still alive, she should be notified. Do you have any idea of how to go about looking for her?”

  “I'll try the police in the Texas town where the parents died. If they can tell me something, I'll call you back.”

  While I talked, Noel had rolled Fred over and begun a major attack on his ears. He didn't seem to mind.

  I wondered about the mystery clown. He'd never shown up at Raymond's. Even out of costume, I was sure I'd have recognized him simply by his height. What had been his purpose in luring me there? As I looked down at my cats, I thought it was almost as if Fred had somehow sent him to me. Fred, seeing I was looking at him, narrowed his blank eyes to golden slits and said, Prrrp. He was a dear, there was no doubt about it, but not even Fred had the brains to do that. There had to be a more realistic answer.

  The cats, having emptied the bowl of Tasty Tabby Treats, disappeared into the interior of the house for a well-deserved afternoon nap. I put some lettuce in Icky's container and changed the water in his bowl. I yearned for someone to talk to—other than a lizard—someone with whom I could share my happiness over finding Fred.

  I shook off the gloom before it had a chance to overwhelm me. I'd ignore the things I couldn't change and concentrate on what I could do, which was finding the person or persons who had killed two women in the past week.

  After a quick phone call, I went up to my room to see how bad I looked. Really bad, I noted. The bruise on my forehead had moved down during the day, and my eye was now swollen and an ugly purplish-blue. I tried to cover the area with makeup with little success. In the hope it would draw attention away from the disaster area, I put on some bright red lipstick. One last look in the mirror—I shuddered and tried not to think of myself as looking like the female equivalent of the parade clown.

  Dr. Cletus Wilson lived about a half mile away, a distance I would normally have walked, but not with the snow coming down as hard as it now was. His house would have been an exact duplicate of mine, except it had been carefully and expensively restored to its original splendor, while mine was in danger of collapsing any second. New cedar shingles covered the exterior, windows with many panes reflected the sunset as though on fire, porches were freshly painted.

  Before I could touch the lion's head door knocker, the door swung open and a smiling Dr. Wilson greeted me warmly. I felt like Little Red Riding Hood meeting the wolf and controlled the impulse to say, “My, what big teeth you have.” He didn't strike me as the type of person who would find that funny.

  While he helped me out of my coat and hung it on a mahogany and marble hall tree, I gazed in awe at the huge display of guns, swords, and banners hanging on the walls of the entry hall.

  “What do you think?” he asked, squeezing my shoulder.

  I moved sideways, shaking off the offending hand. “It's like being in a museum.”

  “Come into the living room. I've got lots more to show you.”

  He wore a red brocade smoking jacket with a black velvet collar and had tied a white silk scarf around his neck like an ascot. Except for old black-and-white movies on American Movie Classics, I'd never seen anything quite like it. “Nice outfit,” I commented. “Did you pick it up at an antique store?”

  Ronald Coleman beamed at me. “How nice of you to notice. I have a fondness for the elegance of days gone by.”

  The living room was warm, unlike my own barn of a house, and a fire sparkled in the marble fireplace. Dr. Wilson handed me a stemmed martini glass. “With a twist,” he said. “So much more elegant than olives.”

  I hate martinis, but I took the drink and sipped it with a murmur of appreciation for the twist.

  He directed me to the Empire sofa. I realized immediately that I'd made a mistake when he sat next to me, way too close.

  “So glad you called,” he said, blasting me straight in the face with his denture breath. “After we met at bingo the other night, I thought you would.”

  What a conceited ass! And you'd think a dentist could afford a decent set of choppers.

  “I am so anxious to see your treasures, Dr. Wilson.” I fluffed up a throw pillow and wedged it between us.

  He leered, misinterpreting my remark as a witty double entendre. “I'll be happy to show you what I've got. And please call me Cletus.”

  “I meant Civil War treasures,” I said, with a giggle I hoped sounded girlish and flirty.

  “Of course you did.” I expected the Monty Python troupe to jump out with a “nudge, nudge, wink, wink.”

  Cletus led me into an adjoining room, where the walls were lined with glassed-in shelves. “No one, outside of the National Park Service, has a more extensive collection of Civil War artifacts,” he said proudly.

  “I believe it!” I gasped at the enormous cannon in the center of the room.

  “Had to reinforce the floor with steel beams to hold that little number.”

  We circled the room, while he explained the significance of every item in every case, down to the last bullet. When I thought we were finally done, he announced, “And now, on to the jewels of my collection.” He slid open a pocket door to the next room.

  My parents and I had once fled a country during a coup d'état, where the revolutionary army hadn't owned as many guns as Cletus had in this room.

  “Does all of this date from the Civil War?”

  “Sure does.” He pointed to a rifle hangin
g from the wall. “This one here's one of more than thirty-seven thousand muzzle-loaders discarded on the Gettysburg battlefield—nearly half of them jammed during the battle. That one's a Spencer, the first repeater to use metallic cartridges.”

  As we moved down the line, Cletus described in great detail, and with a good deal of relish, the carnage caused by each type of weapon. “And even though this here Henry could fire twenty-five rounds a minute, it never got to be as popular as the Spencer.”

  We'd come full circle. I longed for a drink. Even another martini would be welcome.

  “I have a real treat for you,” he announced. “Follow me, my dear.”

  Now what? I wondered. Flame throwers? Hand grenades? Land mines? Mummified soldiers? Against my better judgment, I followed him down a flight of stairs to the basement.

  “My very own firing range.” He flung open the door and stepped aside to let me in. “And I've just had it soundproofed, so that bitchy Mrs. Kauffman next door won't have any more cause to complain. Here, put these on,” he said, handing me a set of earmuffs. “We'll take a shot or two.”

  The target was a life-size depiction of a soldier in a Confederate uniform. “I don't really want to shoot at a person, even a make-believe one,” I protested.

  “Have it your way.” He pressed a button. The soldier fell back and was replaced by Bambi, with a white circle drawn right over her heart.

  “That's much nicer.” My sarcasm seemed to blow right over his head.

  After carefully wiping his hands on a clean towel, he took a gun from a satin-lined box and held it up for me to admire. “This is a Colt 1860, the principal sidearm used during the war.”

  “Model 1860? Is that the gun you reported stolen? The one found at the manger?”

  “Same model. Different gun. Luscious picked up the other yesterday.”

  “Did he say why?” I wondered if Luscious had told Cletus that we suspected his gun had been the one used to kill Oretta Clopper.