“Uh-uh. Guess he wanted to check it for fingerprints. See if he can catch the punks that broke in.” His face turned purple as he began a rant about the Lickin Creek crime wave. According to Cletus Wilson, all evil in the world stemmed from males between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. “It's a damn shame when a man's home is invaded like that. Some nights I can't even sleep for thinking about it. They all need lined up and shot.”
It struck me as funny that even an educated dentist dropped to be from his sentences, like most Lickin Creekers did.
“How did they get in?” I asked. “With all these guns, you must have pretty tight security.”
“Thought I did, but I forgot about the damn door here in the basement. It's so well hidden by shrubbery that only kids from this neighborhood who live in similar houses would know about it being there. They broke out one of the glass panes, then just slid the bolt open. I've taken care of that now. Got a steel door in. Nobody's going to break through that baby.” Ronald Coleman had been transformed into Charles Bronson.
The hidden basement door was the same way someone had invaded my house. I agreed with Cletus that it had to have been done by someone familiar with the way these old houses were built. What I didn't understand, though, was why nothing had been taken from my house. And very little of value was taken from his, and even that was all found in the manger. Maybe he was right about it being teenagers out for thrills. Cletus's Civil War artifacts were obviously valuable, and Ethe-lind's antiques were worth thousands. A professional burglar would have cleaned out both houses.
I still wondered if his story about the robbery was a cover-up. “Were you here when they broke in?” I asked.
“Uh-uh.” He smiled slyly. “I was at a friend's house, if you know what I mean.” Again, “nudge, nudge, wink wink.”
I smiled like a conspirator. “You naughty boy, you have a friend, and you're flirting with me.”
“We have an understanding, her and me.”
I restrained the impulse to scream, She and I, and asked, “Were you at her house the night of the fire when Oretta Clopper was killed?”
“No. My friend was staying here that night. Why are you asking?”
“You do know that Oretta was shot, don't you?”
He nodded.
“The police and the fire chief think the fire was set to cover up her murder. If you were home, I thought you might have seen or heard something that would help the police find her killer.”
“I see,” he said. “Sorry I can't help, but I was otherwise occupied, if you know what I mean.”
“Would you be willing to give me your friend's name and address? Perhaps she noticed something you didn't.”
“I don't suppose she'd mind,” he said. “We have nothing to be ashamed of.” He wrote something on a scrap of paper and handed it to me. I glanced at it, didn't recognize the name, and stuck it in my pocket. If the woman backed up his story, it was a classic alibi.
He placed the gun in my hand and stood close behind me. “Now, Tori. Let's try a few shots.” His breath was hot in my ear, as he said, “I always bring my girlfriends down here for some target practice. You can tell a lot about a gal by the way she handles a weapon.”
I placed the gun on the ledge and said firmly, “Dr. Wilson, I am not one of your girlfriends. And I am not going to shoot at Bambi or any other target you put up. I was a reporter on the police beat in New York for too many years, and I've had the misfortune to see firsthand the kind of havoc guns can cause.”
Unabashed, he adjusted his ascot and smiled at me. “Can I offer you another martini, my dear?”
For some reason, the second martini went down a lot smoother than the first. Before I left, I was feeling quite warm and content. Even Cletus didn't seem as noxious as I'd first found him.
When I entered my house, Praxythea was sitting at the kitchen table with Fred on her lap. In one excited burst, I told her the story of Fred's adventures and amazing rescue. My voice trailed off as I realized she wasn't giving me her total attention.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“Not at all.”
I could tell by the glint in her emerald-green eyes that something was very wrong. I waited for her to say more.
“I'm sorry, Tori, but I have to leave,” she said.
“You mean right after Christmas? I didn't expect you could stay for much longer.”
She studiously avoided looking at me. “Now, Tori. I have to go now. My friend sent his plane. It's at the Lickin Creek airport, now. I've been waiting for you to come home so I could say good-bye.”
Her suitcases were next to the door.
Stunned, I sat down and stared at her. “What about our old-fashioned Christmas? All our plans? I was really looking forward to it.”
“But you have so much, Tori. I didn't think he cared, but it turns out he needs me more than you do. I'm sorry.”
I have so much? What could she possibly mean? Wasn't I the loneliest person on earth? I thought of all the people in the world who were so much worse off, and my despair slowly vanished. It was time to climb off my pity-pot. “I understand. Really.”
“There's one thing I'd like to ask of you,” Praxythea said.
“Ask away.”
“I wonder if you'd mind if I took Icky with me? He and I have bonded over the past few days, and I know he'll miss me.”
She wanted to take the lizard! Hallelujah. God works in mysterious ways.
“He's really not mine to give away,” I reluctantly pointed out.
“But he's homeless. Now that Oretta's gone, who's going to find a home for him?”
“Good point. He's yours.” I walked over to the terrar-ium and chanted, “Adios, sayonara, adieu, dzaijyan, lakon, aloha, auf Wiedersehen, ciao.” I could think of no more ways to say good-bye.
“Have you been drinking, Tori?” Praxythea stood at my side with a disapproving look on her face.
“Two martinis,” I admitted.
“I'd stay away from them in the future if I were you.”
Outside, a car horn tooted. “That must be the taxi,” she said. “Can you help me carry Icky's stuff out?”
As we picked up his home, some papers that had been under the terrarium fell to the floor. “Let them lie,” I said. “I'll get them later.”
“They could be instructions for his care and feeding. We'd better look at them.”
I gathered the pages into an inch-high stack. “For Pete's sake,” I said as I looked through them. “Death in the Afternoon by Oretta Clopper. It's a copy of Oretta's play! I see she continued with the tradition of stealing other people's titles.”
“She must have dropped it when she brought Icky in,” Praxythea said.
“Accidentally on purpose. When she asked me if I wanted to read it, I made some sort of excuse about being too busy. My guess is she left it here knowing my natural curiosity would get the better of me.”
I tossed it on top of the Christmas catalogs stacked on the counter and took hold of one end of Icky's abode. “We'd better get you on your way before the weather turns really bad.”
After she left, in a flurry of promises to come back as soon as possible, I sat down at the table and drank the last cup of freshly-brewed coffee I'd probably have this year. Things could be worse, I thought. After all, I've got a nice place to live, a job, some new friends, and a baby brother due any minute. I don't need Praxythea to have a nice Christmas.
To break the extraordinary silence, I turned on the radio. Public Broadcasting was offering Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. “The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” painfully reminded me that Oretta's adaptation of the ballet had ended up being “The Death of the Sugar Plum Fairies.”
Even the cats looked dejected. Fred probably wished he was back at the art studio where he was a star. We were all startled when the phone rang with a call from Luscious.
“I don't believe this,” I shouted, after he was finished talking. “We can't just quit!”
“I don't have any choice, Tori. Marvin Bumbaugh and the mayor just left my office. They said there have been too many complaints about you, and they want it to stop. Now!”
“But what about your job?” I stammered. “We've got to find the killer or you'll be fired.”
He sounded as low as a man could possibly be when he said, “You don't get it, do you? They gave me two weeks’ notice.”
“But they can't do that.”
“They can, and they have. It's over, Tori. All over.”
CHAPTER 22
Dashing through the snow
ON MONDAY MORNING, I MOPED. NOT BE cause I was still feeling sorry for myself—I'd gotten over that; I didn't need to depend on other people to make me happy—but because I felt terrible about what I'd done to Luscious. Instead of helping him, my investigative efforts had cost him his job.
I spent the afternoon reading Cassie's book on witchcraft. Although I'd never belonged to a church, I always felt I was a spiritual person, and her depiction of the Wiccan religion touched a spot deep inside me where something had always seemed to be lacking. I was determined to find out more.
On Tuesday morning, Greta called and guessed immediately that something was bothering me. “What's wrong, Tori? You sound like you've lost your best friend.”
“I made the mistake of weighing myself this morning,” I said. “It's ruined my whole day.”
Greta laughed. “Christmas is no time to worry about your diet. And speaking of not dieting, what are you planning to bring tonight?”
“Tonight?”
“Tori, you haven't forgotten the Gochenauer family Christmas Eve celebration, have you?”
“Of course not!” I hadn't forgotten; it was just that Christmas Eve had snuck up on me. “What would you like me to bring?”
“A couple of pumpkin pies would be nice.”
I agreed, knowing the Farmers’ Market had extended its hours for the holiday. If I hurried I could get there before it closed at noon.
“And do bring your houseguest,” Greta said.
“She's gone.”
“I thought you two were going to have an old-fashioned Christmas.”
“We are—just not together.”
The silence on the other end of the line told me what Greta thought about Praxythea's sudden flight.
I found myself apologizing for Praxythea. “She's a busy woman …” I began.
“Aren't we all?” Greta said with a sniff.
She made a good point.
I practically flew to the market, arriving just as the last of the vendors was draping sheets over her display case. Luckily for me, she had a few pies left, and I bought them for half price, relieved I wouldn't have to learn to bake today.
“Bad storm's on the way,” the pie woman said. “Better stock up on bread and milk.”
I did as she suggested and was halfway home before I realized I never drank milk!
The storm had been pummeling the Carolinas for two days and was now affecting Lickin Creek. An icy wind cut right through my jacket as I left the market, and fine sleet burned my face. The roads would be “slippy” tonight, the term Lickin Creekers used to describe icy driving conditions.
Depending on which news station you listened to, the storm could blow out to sea, or it could overwhelm the valley. But they all described it as the “storm of the century,” and urged listeners to prepare for the worst.
I spent the afternoon readying the house for the coming storm. There was little I could do about the flapping shutters, the rotting front porch, or the slate shingles peeling off the roof. I did round up all the candles and flashlights I could find, and placed them and a box of matches on the kitchen table.
I brought in wood for the fireplace, and I filled the bathtubs with water, so I'd have drinking water and be able to flush toilets.
The radio station, now calling itself Storm Watch Central, broadcast a minute-by-minute description of the blizzard as it rushed up the Atlantic seaboard.
Feeling as if I were back on a Pacific island battening down for an oncoming typhoon, I locked all the doors, including the one in the basement, and placed rolled-up towels on the windowsills to cut down on drafts.
With the bread and milk I'd bought at the market, three bags of Tasty Tabby Treats in the pantry, and plenty of kitty litter, we were prepared for anything short of nuclear war.
Although the house creaked and groaned under each blast of wind, I felt fairly safe, reassured by the fact that the old mansion had survived many storms in its lifetime.
“… storm of the century,” the radio repeated.
Could this really be the worst storm in a hundred years? I wondered. Somehow, I felt that “Storm Watch Central” was exaggerating the seriousness of the situation, but whatever might happen, I was ready for it.
Over the course of the afternoon, the phone rang a few times. One poor soul was trying to sell his quota of credit cards before closing up for the holiday. I wished him a merry Christmas and told him my credit rating would never allow me to have a Visa card.
Another caller was Murray Rosenbaum, actor/Italian waiter and my best friend and neighbor in New York. He was calling from Dayton where he was spending Hanuk-kah with his parents. He promised to send me a can of caramel popcorn from his father's factory and wished me a happy holiday.
After hanging up, I felt lonelier than ever. I missed Garnet, even though I was now sure our relationship was over. And I missed Alice-Ann. We'd always exchanged gifts and called each other on Christmas, even when we lived far apart. This year, in hopes of a reconciliation, I'd bought a small Amish quilt for her. It waited under the tree, but I'd had no word from her.
“… winds of up to eighty-five miles per hour,” the radio said.
I kept hoping Greta would call to say dinner was canceled, but the Gochenauers are a hardy clan, and Greta would hardly let a small thing like the “storm of the century” stop her from celebrating Christmas in her traditional way.
With the house battened down to the best of my ability, I settled on a couch, with the cats on my lap, to reread a favorite Christie mystery. Ethelind's library had a wonderful collection of mysteries by British authors. Not surprising, considering she was a flaming Anglophile.
“… small-craft advisory for the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay.” Storm Watch Central was right on top of the situation.
In the late afternoon, I reluctantly put the book down and went upstairs to dress, choosing what I hoped would be an appropriate outfit for Greta's dinner party. A long green velvet skirt and a white satin blouse, both with designer labels, and both from my favorite shop, a place in New York that sold “nearly new” or “previously owned” clothes for next to nothing.
I added three gold chains, studied myself in the mirror, then removed two. Greta was a flamboyant dresser, but the rest of Garnet's family was quite conservative, and I didn't want to look too “New Yorkish,” as one elderly aunt had suggested when she first met me.
It was too early to go, so I set the kitchen timer to let me know when it was time to leave and sat at the kitchen table to finish my book.
When the bell rang, I thought at first it was the timer. But the cats jumped down, leaving globs of hair on my green velvet skirt, and ran toward the front of the house. Sometimes they were a lot smarter than I—at least they recognized a doorbell when they heard it.
I made a futile attempt to brush off the cat hair as I followed Fred and Noel to the front door. Unlike New York, there was no peephole. Most people in Lickin Creek felt there was little reason to worry about who might be at their door. I thought for a moment about the two dead women, Oretta and Bernice, who probably had gone blithely about their business until the moment they were murdered. Most likely neither of them had a peephole.
The door was ripped out of my hand as I opened it. Along with a blast of snow that covered the carpet in the foyer came Mrs. Poffenberger with her baby in her arms.
“Come in! Quick,” I said, although s
he was already inside. I leaned against the door to shut out the howling gale.
“Can I take your coat?” I asked, wondering what on earth she was doing here.
She shook her head. “Can't stay. The kids is in the back of the truck.”
“Good grief.” I looked out the window and saw a whole bunch of snow-covered blanket-wrapped lumps in the open truck bed.
“That's not safe,” I said.
“I don't got no choice, miss. I thought a lot about what you said to me—about doing what's best for the kids—so I'm moving to West Virginia. My sister'll help out till I can get a job.”
I was surprised but tried not to show it. “What does your husband think of this?” I asked. I couldn't imagine him taking it calmly.
“He don't know nothing about it. I been sneaking things out a little at a time—diapers for the baby, the blankets. I ain't taking much—we don't got much. The furniture and TV is rented.”
“Aren't you afraid he's coming after you right now?” I glanced nervously at the door, fearing that the outraged Mr. Poffenberger might burst through it any minute.
She allowed herself a glimmer of a smile—the first I'd ever seen. “He ain't going nowhere. He done dressed up in a Santy Claus suit and got stuck in the chimney.”
“Chimney? You have a fireplace in a mobile home?”
“He was going to climb down the chimney of the barbecue grill in the backyard. He got stuck tight and fell asleep. Probably have to smash it apart to get him out.” This time she smiled broadly. “Funny what a man thinks is clever when he's drunk.”
“But the weather. It's snowing. He could freeze to death.”
She shook her head. “I throwed some blankets over top of him. He'll be warm enough till he comes to.”
The mental picture of a sleeping drunk in a Santa Claus suit stuck in a barbecue grill was funny in a grotesque sort of way, but I still was worried about his safety. What if he didn't “come to” in time? What if he was stuck there all night? The situation was potentially dangerous.
Valerie S. Malmont Page 23
