A Holly, Jolly Murder

by JOAN HESSS

  I abandoned my less-than-subtle subterfuge and drove toward the campus. “Okay, last night Nicholas was behaving strangely. You sat down as ordered—and then what?”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you,” he said in a voice that reminded me he was only sixteen years old. “You’ll probably think it was all my fault. It wasn’t like I was handcuffed to the table or anything. I could have gotten up and left. I wish I had.”

  “Why?” I asked softly.

  “He started putting moves on me. You know what I mean? He put his hand on my knee, and then, before I could figure out what the hell was going on, he—you know—he was saying things and grabbing at my crotch. This never happened to me before. Girls, maybe, but not some guy older than my father! A guy, fer chrissake!”

  All I could hope at that moment was Roy would not be so overwhelmed with raw memories that he inadvertently squeezed the trigger. I heard the anguish in his voice, the adolescent uncertainty that he might have dropped a hint, might have done or said something to suggest that his true sexual identity was being suppressed. Whether or not it was did not concern me, and I certainly had not spent enough time with Nicholas Chunder to have formed an opinion about his.

  I pulled into the football stadium parking lot, selected one of five hundred empty spaces, and turned off the engine. “What did you do?”

  “I hit him. He sat there for a minute, then took a gun out of his pocket. I told him that all I wanted to do was go back to my apartment and go to bed. He started making this grotesque noise, like he was laughing but not really. I was so scared, Mrs. Malloy. You’ve got to believe me.”

  “Why didn’t you run out the door at this point?” I asked.

  Roy’s fist bounced against the top of the front seat. “I should have, but I was petrified. He had a gun. It flashed across my mind that all he had to say was that I’d attacked him and he shot me in self-defense. I only hit him to make him leave me alone.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I went after the gun, and we sorta fell on the floor. The next thing I realized, the gun went off and he was breathing funny. I figured he could call himself an ambulance, so I went back to my apartment and tried to stay awake until somebody showed up. The brandy must have gotten to me, because I fell asleep on the couch. When my alarm went off at six, I walked across the pasture to the grove. I was praying like I’d never prayed before that Nicholas would come. You know the rest.”

  “I’ll do what I can to help you,” I said, easily imagining his version but not completely buying it. Nicholas Chunder had been an elderly single man, but I was not ready to stereotype him so neatly. Roy seemed distressed; however, he’d had time to rehearse. “If you’re telling the truth, Sergeant Jorgeson can steer you through the maze of legal problems. He’ll certainly sympathize with your reaction to Nicholas’s advances.”

  “I should have pushed him down and run,” he said glumly. “I know that.”

  “You’re young. No one will fault you for what you should have done. Why don’t we go to the police station now? I’ll stay with you and do whatever I can until your parents get back from Borneo.”

  He began to whimper. “Would you do that for me, Mrs. Malloy? Like, nobody’s ever done that before. My parents got divorced when I was ten, and my mother’s an alcoholic and hooked on prescription drugs. My father married that bitch with all her dysfunctional relatives, so he’s too busy to deal with me. Malthea’s about the only person who cares about me.”

  “I’m sure other people care about you, too,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t demand a list of names.

  “Look, why don’t you talk to the police and see what they say? Let Malthea know, and I’ll get in touch with her.”

  The car door opened and then slammed shut. Roy sprinted across the parking lot and vanished into the trees surrounding the admissions building at the top of the hill. As I sat, pondering his story, a campus cop pulled into the lot and stopped next to me.

  “The lot’s closed,” he said. “Is something wrong?”

  “I’m not sure,” I replied truthfully.

  I drove to my duplex, rerunning Roy’s story in my mind. I reminded myself that I didn’t know him well enough to judge his sincerity. I’d heard derogatory comments from Caron and Sullivan Sawyer, but for all I knew, Roy could have qualified for the title of patron saint of abused postpubescents—or at least those whose parents were on sabbatical in Borneo.

  I was thinking all these muddled thoughts when I arrived at home and found a uniformed officer waiting for me on the doorstep. He was yet another member of the Farberville Police Department; I seemed to be going through the roster at an alarming rate.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Where’s Roy Tate?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s applying for admission to the college. That’s where he was going when I last saw him.”

  “This isn’t a joke,” said the officer. “There’s a warrant for his arrest.”

  I gave the officer a sketchy account of what had taken place at the duplex and in my car, omitting any mention of the gun Roy’d claimed he had. I would have to bear full responsibility if he used it on a rookie campus cop, but I didn’t want that same cop to be so jittery that he shot Roy on sight. The phrase “armed and dangerous” can lead to such a result.

  “I doubt he’ll go back to Malthea’s,” I added, “but you might send someone to the Sawyers’ house and Gilda D’Orcher’s trailer. He doesn’t seem to know any other people. Please let Sergeant Jorgeson know that I’ll come by the station tomorrow morning.”

  The officer wrote down the names and left. I went inside, kicked off my shoes, and punched buttons on the microwave to reheat that which had had nearly two hours to congeal into gelatinous glop. Caron’s door was closed and her lights were off. I eased open the door to make sure that she was under the covers (as opposed to having gone undercover—an entirely different concept), then returned to the kitchen and retrieved the entrée.

  At least, I thought as I mindlessly shoveled food into my mouth, my day had been anything but dull.

  So there, Peter Rosen.

  Jorgeson put down the stubby pencil and looked at me. “Do you believe his story?”

  “Hard to say.” I took a sip of coffee, shuddered, and set the Styrofoam cup on the corner of his desk. “That sort of thing does happen. Roy put on quite a show, but he’s still just a kid and he certainly could have panicked when Nicholas molested him. Teenagers can be painfully self-conscious about their bodies. Every time Caron gets a pimple, she plunges into despair and spends hours staring at it in the mirror. That isn’t to say she doesn’t spend hours in front of the mirror when her skin is clear. If I’d let her, she’d put a mirror on the ceiling of her bedroom.”

  “Forensics didn’t turn up anything useful,” Jorgeson said, apparently inured to the toxic sludge that passed for coffee at the PD. “There were fingerprints all over the house, but that’s usually the case. We’ll match what we can to persons known to have been there that evening. The rest of them will be sent to the FBI, but I don’t think they’re going to come back with a serial killer. I can’t see asking for prints from the membership of the genealogical society.”

  “I suppose not,” I said, sighing. “I feel sorry for Roy. He’s clearly unhappy and seems to go out of his way to be a misfit and a loner. Problems with both of his parents, a stepmother, a new school—those things can corrode any teenager’s sense of worth. What’ll happen to him, Jorgeson?”

  “Nothing at the moment, since we don’t have him in custody. It’s a shame you didn’t deliver him to us, Mrs. Malloy. He’d be talking to a lawyer instead of hiding in the basement of almost any building on campus.”

  “He said he had a gun; I wasn’t inclined to find out if he did by daring him to put a bullet in my back. None of the other Druids have seen him?”

  “They say not, but who knows? I can’t figure out any of them. My wife and I go to church where there are pews and stained-glass windows, not
bushes and squirrels.” Jorgeson shuffled through a pile of reports, snuffling and wheezing like a bulldog. “Here’s what we’ve got on the victim. Nicholas Chunder was sixty-eight, a retired doctor, an upstanding member of a couple of civic clubs. He was born and raised in Indianapolis, went to medical school in Chicago, and opened a private practice here after twenty-five years in a group practice back in Indianapolis. Not so much as a hint of scandal back there. His wife, an heiress with a considerable trust fund, died of cancer when she was in her early thirties. There were no children.”

  “Did he have family in this area?”

  “We didn’t come across anything in his files to suggest it. I spoke to his lawyer on the phone. He said the heir is a nephew in Terre Haute. Don’t start wiggling your nose like that, Mrs. Malloy—the nephew was wounded in Vietnam and is a paraplegic. Besides, I thought we’d just agreed that Roy confessed to the homicide. Why would he do that if it wasn’t the truth?”

  “I have no idea,” I admitted.

  Jorgeson said he’d assure Malthea that Roy would be treated gently if he turned himself in. I drove to the Book Depot, made sure Roy wasn’t hiding behind the boiler, and then started a pot of coffee and sat down at my desk while the Mr. Coffee machine groaned in what sounded like terminal agony. It was slightly after nine, which meant Peter would be drinking coffee, reading a newspaper, and no doubt keeping an eye on the time so he wouldn’t be late picking up Leslie at the airport. I battled back an irrational urge to break into his house and search for a photograph of the blissful couple on their wedding day.

  When the coffee was ready, I filled a mug and went up front to read the newspaper. A short article about Nicholas Chunder’s murder had made the second page, but there was no mention of the Druid connection. It was only a matter of time before reporters heard rumors and started nosing around. Malthea might decide it would be diverting to be interviewed on the local news so she could proselytize to the non-tree-huggers. My name would surface. Despite my efforts to downplay my involvement in previous cases, I’d had a bit of publicity in the past. I could anticipate a good deal more than fifteen minutes in the limelight this time.

  I spent the remainder of the morning wishing that Jorgeson would call to say they’d taken Roy into custody and arranged for a lawyer. At eleven o’clock (aka noon EST), I snatched up the feather duster and attacked the racks with heretofore unseen diligence. When my science-fiction hippie came into the store, I went for the dandruff on his shoulders. He retreated out the door and scurried up the sidewalk.

  I was inking out pearly white teeth on the bridal page of the newspaper when the bell jingled and Malthea came into the store. “Claire,” she said, “may I speak to you for a moment?”

  I added a mole to a brunette’s nose, then put the page and the pen in a drawer. “Have you heard from Roy?”

  She shook her head. “No, and I’m terribly worried. That police officer who called this morning said only that Roy confessed to you. I’m at a loss to understand why he would do such a thing, and I was hoping you might tell me more about what he said.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t go into detail,” I said. “They were in the kitchen and got into an argument. The gun went off accidentally. Roy was too panicked to call an ambulance, so he…” I faltered as I realized what I’d just said. For starters, Roy hadn’t been too panicked to break the window in Nicholas’s study in order to make it look as though a burglary had taken place. Furthermore, the brandy bottle and glasses had been removed before our arrival. As had the gun. I doubted I would have been so coolheaded in a situation of that nature. Caron would have been on the roof in a matter of seconds, screaming for an ambulance.

  “You’re looking pale,” Malthea murmured. “Why don’t we sit down in the back?”

  I followed her into the office and cleared off a chair for her. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “That would be nice. It’s rather chilly back here. Could you turn up the thermostat?”

  “Certainly,” I said mendaciously, since I’d yet to find a way to influence the boiler. I made decisive motions with a gizmo on the wall, then poured two cups of coffee and sank back down behind my desk, still puzzling over the discrepancies in Roy’s story.

  Malthea gave me a concerned frown. “Is something vexing you, Claire?”

  “A couple of the things Roy said don’t support his version of what happened. I guess I’d better call Sergeant Jorgeson and make sure he’s aware of them.” I reached for the telephone, then noticed her birdlike expression and said, “After we’ve finished our conversation, of course.”

  “Well, there is one little thing I believe I should tell you. If you think it’s important, you can pass it on to your friend on the police force. I failed to mention in my statement that I returned to Nicholas’s house shortly after midnight.”

  I choked on a mouthful of coffee, nearly spewing it across the desk. “You did what?”

  “After Fern and I arrived at the duplex, we said good-night and went into our respective sides. I made tea and was trying to distract myself with my tarot cards when I heard her back door open. I peeked out my kitchen window. Fern was inside her greenhouse, sobbing uncontrollably. I wanted to rush to her side to offer comfort, but I knew she would be appalled to be discovered in such an emotional display. Oh, if only Nicholas had been there to see her misery.”

  “Because she was going to lose her greenhouse,” I said.

  “Her plants and the Sacred Grove of Keltria are all she has,” Malthea said, taking a tissue out of her satchel to wipe the corner of her eye. “She’s tried other hobbies, but nothing fascinates her more than puttering around the greenhouse, misting and repotting and pinching off dead blossoms. She’d sleep out there if it were feasible.”

  “There’s no way she could have it moved?”

  “She has very limited financial resources, and will most likely have to settle for a subsidized apartment complex for senior citizens. She can take a few of her leafy friends with her, but not the special ones that require a carefully regulated climate.” She took another swipe at her eyes. “Nicholas did a terrible thing when he told her she had to move within thirty days. What’s more, he was overreacting to the disagreement between himself and the Wiccan faction. The ultimate decision as to what’s allowed during our rituals is up to the Arch Druid, and I assured him that I would not vacillate from my stated position.”

  I jumped in before she could lapse into a discourse on the variations in pagan practices. “So you went back to Nicholas’s house to talk to him, right?”

  “I knocked, then repeatedly rang the bell. Nicholas enjoyed doing things on his computer. I never quite understood what he did, but he always said what satisfaction it gave him. I assumed he was too immersed to hear me, so I went around to the back of the house, planning to tap on his study window. To my surprise, the kitchen door was wide open. When I saw his body, I almost swooned, but I pulled myself together at the last second and took a more careful look at the scene. I felt exactly like Sherlock Holmes as I deduced what had taken place.”

  “And what did you deduce?”

  Malthea stared grimly at me. “I knew no burglar had been responsible for Nicholas’s death, since neither of them would have sat down and enjoyed a bit of brandy. Mumsy did that once and came close to being arrested.” She waggled her finger at me to prevent me from interrupting. “Therefore, whoever had been there was someone Nicholas knew well enough to offer hospitality. A chair was overturned, indicating there’d been a scuffle. It was obvious that the police and paramedics had not been alerted or it would have been very crowded in the kitchen.” Her eyes shifted away from me and her hand fell to her lap. “Roy came to mind.”

  I was beginning to suspect where this was going. “Malthea, did you decide to make it look like a burglary in order to protect him?”

  “How clever of you, Claire. I washed the glasses and put them away, wiped fingerprints off the brandy bottle and returned it to its cabinet, and broke
the window in the study. After a final inspection to make sure I’d missed nothing, I locked the door behind me and went home. It was rather late by then, and I wanted as much rest as possible before our celebration at dawn.”

  “And said nothing to the police, of course,” I said wearily. “Don’t you know it’s wrong to remove evidence from a crime scene?”

  “I have a duty to protect Roy, and I was convinced that whatever had taken place was not his fault. He’s a good boy at heart. When he matures, he’ll forget about this satanic nonsense and become a productive member of society. I did what was necessary for him to have that opportunity. It was the least I could do.”

  I had a flash of insight into Peter’s reaction whenever I made assertions of a similar nature. I was always proved correct, of course, which made it all the worse. Perhaps after Leslie counseled his mother, she could counsel him, too.

  “I think we’re finished,” Malthea said as she stood up and headed for the door. “You might want to clean your coffeepot on a more regular basis. It will decrease the bitterness.”

  I trotted after her. “You absolutely must go straight to the police department and tell all this to Sergeant Jorgeson. He’s not going to be happy, but he may handle it better if it comes from you instead of me.”

  “Do you think so?” she asked. “I was under the impression you and he are good friends.”

  “Not that good,” I said coldly. “Will you promise to go there now?”

  “I’d planned to go out to the grove and meditate. It’s very peaceful out there, with the wind rustling the leaves and the shadows creating a lovely quilt.”

  “It won’t be peaceful when the cops arrive to drag you to the police department.”

  “My, you are in a cantankerous mood, aren’t you? Do take my advice about cleaning the coffeepot. It might improve your disposition.”

  She gave me a bright little smile and left. I considered chasing after her with the feather duster, then took a couple of breaths and refilled my cup with perfectly decent coffee. I decided to wait fifteen minutes before calling Jorgeson in order to give Malthea a chance to do the honorable thing. I would not have bet on it.