by JOAN HESSS
“Wait a minute,” I said as the girl headed for the door. “How did Caron find you?”
“I don’t know, and even if she’d found out our names, Darla Jean and I live in a little town about twenty miles from here called Maggody.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” I said apologetically.
“Nobody has,” she said with a lugubrious sigh. “We had to write down our addresses and telephone numbers when we applied for the job, but I can’t see Miz Portmeyer letting Caron copy down the information.”
“Will Darla Jean be home tonight?”
“No, her family left yesterday to spend Christmas in St. Louis. I’ll bet her grandma doesn’t have a five-pound ball of rubber bands.”
The girl, whose name I’d never ascertained, left the bookstore under her personal cloud of melancholy. No customers appeared after that, and at six o’clock I hung the “closed” sign on the door, locked up, and walked home to an empty apartment, an increasingly mangy Christmas tree, and a newscast that underscored the hazards of public transportation in under-developed countries. Vermont was not mentioned.
The following evening would be Christmas Eve. I’d promised the downstairs tenant, a retired professor who’d found himself divorced only recently and for reasons he’d not yet assimilated, that I would drop by his party, but I doubted I would any more than I would drag myself to Luanne’s for an evening of cocktail-party chatter and squares of cheese on toothpicks.
The only thing that had any appeal was hearing what Caron had to say when she came home at eleven. It would require a healthy amount of inventiveness on her part to explain—without admitting to any misdemeanors, that is—how she’d found the names and telephone numbers of the previous two assistants at Santa’s Workshop.
I wasn’t sure what to make of the girl’s story of being wrongly accused of theft. She’d sounded sincere (and didn’t everybody these days?), but Ms. Portmeyer must have been aware of the risk when she fired them a week before Christmas. Without jingling reindeer to facilitate the operation, profits would plummet and the home office might reexamine her position on the heretofore ascending corporate escalator.
I was trying to decide on the best approach to persuade Caron to tell me what she was up to when the telephone rang. I picked up the receiver with the same eagerness I would a dollop of raw meat and said, “Hello.”
“Claire, this is Fern Lewis. I’m so upset I don’t know what to do. A woman from the hospital called to tell me that Malthea’s in the emergency room. I don’t trust myself to drive. Can you please take me there?”
I told her I’d pick her up in ten minutes, then grabbed my coat and was halfway down the steps when I realized the garage was empty. My half, anyway. I went back through the apartment and down the interior front stairs to knock on the door of my nearest, and at the moment, dearest neighbor.
He answered the door in his bathrobe and slippers. “What a surprise, Claire, but I’m afraid you’re early. My little get-together is tomorrow. However, if you’d like to come inside, I can offer you a tasty concoction of cranberry juice, vodka, and crème de menthe. I like to call it a ‘Jingle Bell Bazooka.’”
“I need to borrow your car,” I said. “Caron has mine, and I don’t know how to get in touch with her. A friend is at the emergency room.” When he hesitated, I added, “The poor thing’s quite elderly and frail, and she’s never mentioned having any relatives in the area.”
I may have been piling it on when I described her as frail, but he must have already had a Jingle Bell Bazooka or two because he blinked tearily, left the doorway, and returned a moment later with a key ring. I thanked him and hurried around the yard to the garage.
When I pulled up in front of the duplex, Fern was waiting on the porch. She wrinkled her nose as she climbed into the passenger’s side of the VW Beetle. “Is it cigarette smoke I smell? I do hope you haven’t picked up that filthy habit. My late husband used to sneak outside for an occasional cigar, and I always told him afterward that he reeked like an incinerator.”
“I had to borrow the car,” I said. “What happened to Malthea?”
“I wish I knew. The woman called me because my name and address are on a next-of-kin card in Malthea’s wallet. It was just a precaution, and I never expected to be careening through dark streets like this.”
I glanced at the speedometer. “I’m going twenty-three miles an hour, Fern. That does not qualify as ‘careening.’”
“Perhaps you should step on it. Malthea may die before we get there.”
I clenched my teeth and concentrated on shifting rather than stripping gears. As I parked in front of the emergency room, I saw two police cars at the end of the curb. A car that resembled Jorgeson’s was in the shadows beyond them.
A succinct expletive entered my mind, in that it did not seem likely that Malthea had fallen off a curb or been stricken with a heart attack. I let Fern out of the car, parked, and joined her at the door. “It’s going to be fine,” I said, squeezing her shoulder.
“I’ve been fretting all day. Malthea refused to answer the door or her telephone. The curtains were drawn. I called over and over again. I was beside myself.”
“I’m sure you were.” I led her into the blindingly antiseptic environment of the emergency room. A multigenerational Hispanic family was grouped on two sofas; even the youngest child watched me solemnly. Beyond them was a woman holding a baby wrapped in a thin blanket. The only other person in sight was a young nurse with a clipboard and a harried expression.
“Malthea Hendlerson?” I said to her.
“She’s been taken upstairs,” the nurse said, flinching as an elevator opened behind us. “Are you relatives? We need some information about her insurance coverage.”
“What happened to her?”
“I can’t say. She suffered injuries, and once they stabilized her, she was transferred to ICU. We have her Medicare card, but we must know if she has a private insurer.”
“Or what?” I demanded in what even I realized was an unnecessarily high voice. “Are you going to turn off the life-support system if she doesn’t have insurance?”
Jorgeson appeared at my side, discreetly hustled me over to a soda machine, and hunted through his pockets for change. “Calm down, Mrs. Malloy,” he murmured. “None of us needs to deal with hospital security just now. Why don’t you sit and we’ll talk?”
I sat. Jorgeson handed me a can and sat down beside me. “Here’s all we know so far. Malthea went to Nicholas Chunder’s house sometime after we left at five o’clock. We haven’t had anybody on duty out there since we took the boy into custody last night, but I did arrange for a patrol car to cruise by on a regular basis. The officers saw a light, went inside, and found her unconscious on the floor. Blow to the head. She’s still out.”
Fern, who’d given up badgering the nurse and was hovering nearby, made a gurgly noise. “Is she in a coma?”
“At the moment, she’s merely unconscious,” said Jorgeson. “We haven’t ruled out the possibility that one of our local degenerates heard about the murder and showed up; thinking the house would be unoccupied. The light should have warned him off, though. These weasels are more scared of their shadows than your average groundhog.”
I lowered my voice. “Then you think that it has to do with Nicholas’s murder?”
“Hold on.” He beckoned to a uniformed officer and asked him to escort Fern to the ICU waiting room. Once she was gone, he said, “Nothing was taken, and there’re expensive objects everywhere you look. Anyone who’d gone there with the explicit intent to commit theft would have at least stuffed a piece of silver or crystal in his pocket”
I gazed at a greenish expanse of linoleum that brought to mind a stagnant pond. “Look on the bright side, Jorgeson—at least two suspects have been eliminated. Gilda and Roy are somewhere upstairs.”
“If only they were. It seems that on this very afternoon, a Brownie troop came to sing Christmas carols and pass out cookies. The nurses and aides
on the sixth floor decided that all their patients should be included in the festivities. A very kind-hearted gesture on everyone’s part, to be sure. The door was left unlocked, certain patients became overtly emotional, two dozen Brownies started screaming, and Roy and Gilda managed to disappear. Nobody noticed their absence until supper trays were being distributed.”
“I’d have thought security on that particular ward would be tight.”
“Not as tight as it should be, obviously. Patients walk off the psych ward move often than the public’s aware of, since the hospital administrators don’t want negative publicity. Gilda and Roy aren’t the only ones who slipped away this afternoon. We have APBs out on a convicted rapist and a guy who wears an aluminum-foil skullcap. Gilda works here, so she may have had help. Or maybe the Brownies were in on it.”
I told him about my conversation with Malthea in the grove. “She must have lingered in the vicinity until you left, then entered the house to look for something. Could Gilda have gone back, too?”
“Yeah, or Malthea conjured up that demon with the foreign name and bad attitude.”
“Have you located the weapon?”
He nodded. “Chunder had a marble replica of Stonehenge in his study. One of the chunks was found near her body. It’d been wiped off, but there was a trace of blood in a crack. Ironic, huh?”
“Very,” I said dryly. “So Malthea was in the study when she was attacked? Was she searching the desk?”
“There’s a cabinet in the corner. We’d already been through it and found nothing of interest, but she wouldn’t have known that. Evidence suggests that she was kneeling in front of it and working on the lock with a hairpin, which would explain why she didn’t hear this other person come into the room. Picking a lock requires a lot of concentration.”
“So I’ve heard,” I murmured, “What were they looking for, Jorgeson? No one could expect to find clues scattered about after your team went over the scene.”
“No one in his or her right mind, anyway. The guy with the shiny cap would fit right in with this group.”
“Thanks for the soda,” I said as I stood up. “I guess I’d better find Fern and make sure she’s not driving the ICU staff crazy.” I took the elevator to the appropriate floor and followed stenciled arrows to the glass doors of the unit. A sign sternly forbade unauthorized visitors.
That being precisely what I was, I went into the waiting room across the hall. Fern was perched on the edge of a chair, her face grim with either concern or disapproval of the two androgynous teenagers sprawled across a couch in a corner. The latter was more likely, since they had nose rings and creatively styled purple hair.
I touched Fern’s arm. “Have you spoken to anyone?”
“Only long enough to be told I’m not allowed to see Malthea. I’m of a mind to report that woman to her supervisor. Impertinence should not be tolerated.”
“Give ’em hell, granny,” said one of the teenagers. The other brayed in appreciation.
I stepped in front of Fern before she could launch an attack, verbal or otherwise. “Is she still unconscious?”
“They said that I would be informed of any changes in her condition. I couldn’t tell which cubicle she’s in or what sort of attention she’s receiving. I really should be permitted to sit by her bed. She’ll be frightened if she wakes up in a strange room and finds herself clad only in a flimsy gown. There are moments I wish I could cast an effective spell—or a curse that would teach that nurse a thing or two.”
I sensed the stirring interest of the pair of eggplant heads in the corner. “There’s a coffee machine by the elevator,” I said. “I think you’ll find a hot drink comforting.”
“I only drink decaf after ten o’clock in the morning.”
“There will be decaf,” I said, tugging at her arm. “Afterward, I’ll try to get information from the nurse.”
Fern allowed me to guide her to the vending machines. I punched a button, waited while a stream of brown liquid dribbled into the cup, and then thrust it at Fern’s trembling hand.
She stared at it. “I can’t drink this. It’s liable to upset my stomach.”
I put the cup on top of the machine. “I can see how worried you are. Have you and Malthea been friends for a long time?”
“We met while we were in college. We both planned to teach secondary English, but my fiancé returned from Germany and wanted to get married immediately. He stayed in the army for the next fifteen years, and was stationed everywhere from Omaha to Manila. It was hard to remain in touch, but Malthea and I did our best with greeting cards and letters.”
“What did she do?”
“Taught, of course. How else could she have supported herself?”
“She never married?”
“At one time, she was engaged, but the wedding did not take place. That’s all I shall say concerning the matter.”
I noted the rigidity of her expression and abandoned the intriguing topic. “How long has she lived in Farberville?”
“Twelve, perhaps thirteen years. She bought a small house and did volunteer work to keep herself busy. We rarely saw each other while my husband was alive. He was a deacon in the Baptist church and disapproved of her eccentricities. When he passed away, Malthea urged me to consider Druidism as an alternative to the orthodox traditions I’d followed since childhood. I attended a ritual and met Nicholas, who offered me economical housing and loaned me money from time to time until I straightened out my financial affairs. He went so far as to help with the paperwork that was required for me to receive a widow’s pension from the military. How could he have been so compassionate back then, and so cruel the evening before the solstice?”
I wasn’t sure how much further I could go without reducing her to tears, but anxiety had made her garrulous and I was not above taking advantage of it. Amateur sleuths cannot be slaves to scrupulosity. “Can you tell me exactly what happened that evening? Were you and Malthea among the first or the last to arrive?”
“Let me think,” she said. “I do my best to be prompt, but we were a bit late because Malthea was so dithery. First, she forgot her sweater and had to go back inside. Nicholas’s house can be drafty this time of year. We were all set to start off, and then she remembered a sack of holly she’d left in her kitchen. I was so annoyed that I refused to speak to her until we got there.”
“The others were already there, then?”
“Roy and Morning Rose were in the living room, acting as though they were at a funeral. While we were hanging up our coats, Nicholas and Gilda came out of the study. When I later asked her what they’d been discussing that had so distressed her, she mumbled something about needing to find another place to live. In my day, we were taught to speak clearly.”
I did a mental review of the roster. “What about Sullivan?”
“He was a full half hour late. Apparently there’d been a problem with the children, and Morning Rose insisted that he put them to bed by himself. I believe she walked to Primrose Hill. She must have regretted her decision, because she seemed very unhappy.”
“It must have been a tense evening,” I prompted her.
“Oh, it was that. My annoyance with Malthea soon spread to all the members of the grove. Everyone seemed sullen and disinclined to participate. I had to speak sharply to Roy when he failed to fetch a step-ladder at my request. Morning Rose and Sullivan had a whispered argument in the kitchen, and when they came back into the room, her eyes were red. Nicholas spent most of the evening in a chair by the fireplace, watching us as though we had designs on his knickknacks. I was deeply offended by his implicit accusation.”
I spotted the teenagers sauntering down the hall toward us and nudged her around the corner and into a storage room filled with odoriferous cleaning supplies. “Did something specific happen that caused him to make his unexpected announcement?”
Fern clutched her purse on the off chance I was about to mug her with an ammonia bottle. “We’d finished putting up the decor
ations, and were seated around the fire, drinking that dreadful beverage Nicholas insisted on serving. Malthea did her best to lead us in song, but even I was infected with their gloom. I was about to suggest we leave when Gilda stood up and said that she intended to perform the solstice ritual as she pleased. As she damn well pleased is what she actually said. Nicholas came close to spilling his tankard. He began sputtering, but she told him that it didn’t matter if she was kicked out of the grove since this would be her final celebration. Morning Rose laughed bitterly and said she might as well join Gilda. Sullivan grabbed her arm, and then Roy grabbed his arm, and the two began to grapple. That was when Nicholas exploded with rage. It was quite terrible.”
“Why did Gilda say it would be her final celebration?” I demanded, my fingers crossed that the teenagers would not find us and make remarks that would send Fern off on a tangential tirade.
“I don’t know. Shouldn’t you find out about Malthea?”
“I’ll try,” I said. We went back to the doors of the ICU and waited until we were noticed.
The nurse who opened the door did not seem pleased to see Fern behind me. “I’ve already told you that I cannot discuss the patient’s condition. That is the attending physician’s prerogative.”
“Not even with the patient’s sister?” I said, hoping Fern was paying attention.
“She didn’t say that earlier.”
I tried to sound moderately smug. “Did you ask her?”
“She should have said so.”
Fern cleared her throat, and in a voice well suited to a displeased schoolteacher, said, “You should have asked me. I was too distraught to respond to your coldhearted refusal to allow me to sit beside my only sister. If she should the before I have an opportunity to hold her hand and reminisce about how we used to make daisy chains in the meadow on summer afternoons, I may contact our youngest brother. He’s an attorney.”
The nurse paled, then invited Fern to accompany her into a curtained cubicle. I considered tagging along, then decided not to complicate the ruse and returned to the waiting room. I was relieved to have it to myself.