“… be a lot easier if these damned creeps hadn’t come in and messed up everything…”
She seemed to have forgotten I was there. Which was a good thing. But what if she glanced over, saw me, and remembered that I was one of the creeps who’d messed up everything?
Just then I spotted movement in the archway separating the living room from the breakfast room. Someone was standing there in the shadows.
I glanced over at Jessica, and then back at the figure. I shook my head, and then jerked it toward Jessica.
The figure took a step forward. It was Martha.
I couldn’t remember when I’d been so glad to see a friendly face.
Chapter 24
I could see Martha peering out of the archway at Jessica. I tried to shake my head, ever-so-slightly, to suggest that stepping into the room was a really bad idea.
After watching Jessica for a moment or so, she glanced down at me, nodded, and withdrew back into the kitchen.
Make sure you’re far enough away so she doesn’t hear you when you call 9-1-1, I wanted to tell her. And get some kind of a weapon! But she’s dangerous, so stay back and don’t try anything—unless, of course, you see her about to shoot me or dismember me, in which case you should do something quick!
Martha was a cool customer, I reminded myself. She could handle this.
At least I hoped she could.
“Where is it?” Jessica again. “It’s got to be here. It’s got to!”
She seemed to be losing it. More of it than she’d already lost. She began flailing out wildly with the ax, shrieking inarticulately. She shattered the mirror above the fireplace. Knocked the legs out from under a delicate secretary desk. Chopped a couple of nasty holes in the carpet. Bounced around between the sofas and armchairs, shredding up the brocade cushions. I flinched when she came near me, but she sailed past and began trying to dismember the Christmas tree. Between her shrieks, the hatchet blows, and the smashing sounds as hundreds of ornaments fell to the floor and shattered to bits I could barely hear myself think.
Martha, bless her heart, began stealing into the room under cover of the tree surgery. She was heading for the table with the gun.
She had it.
I breathed a sigh of relief and gave my poor bruised fingers a rest—I’d made progress on unraveling the passementerie, but not enough. Not a problem, though—Martha could hold Jessica at bay until the police arrived. Or, if Jessica was so hysterical that she tried to attack her in spite of the gun—well, I suspected Martha had enough nerve to use it.
She lifted the gun in her right hand and steadied it with her left. She’d either used a gun before or had paid attention when watching TV and movie cops use them. Go Martha!
Then she fired, twice.
Jessica collapsed on the floor and fell silent.
I was stunned into silence myself for a few moments.
Martha walked over to take a closer look at Jessica.
“Did you have to shoot her?” I asked.
“She’s not dead,” Martha said.
“That’s a relief,” I said. “Can you come over and untie me?”
“Which means I’ll just have to shoot her again,” Martha said. “After bashing your head in with her ax, of course. It’ll look as if you shot her just as she was hitting you with the ax. I’ll let the chief of police decide who he wants to blame Clay’s murder on.”
I started working again on unraveling the passementerie.
“You killed Clay,” I said. “Why?”
Not that I didn’t have a pretty good idea why, between their professional rivalry and their shattered romantic relationship. But it seemed a good idea to keep her talking.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, you know why,” she snapped. “You’ve heard how he took me in. Let me set him up in the design business and then turned on me and took all my clients. I lost my business and had to go to work as a furniture store design consultant. Took me two years to save enough to start up again here in Caerphilly—it would have taken a lot longer to get started again in Richmond. And a year later, he moves here and thinks he can do it all again. No way. I told him—back off, leave my clients alone. But did he listen?”
“So it was all professional?” I asked. “Or am I imagining that the two of you also had a relationship?”
“The bastard,” she muttered. “Turns out I imagined the relationship. He was just using me.”
“So you killed him,” I said.
“That wasn’t actually the plan,” she said. “I was just going to frame him.”
“For what?”
“Possession of a firearm,” she said. “In Virginia, a convicted felon who’s caught with a gun can go to prison. I knew that from serving on a jury once. And when we were all trying to rescue Sarah’s furniture, I dragged out this little end table, and suddenly the drawer pops open and a gun falls out. I kicked it under the sofa, and then picked it up later, with my cleaning gloves on. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but I figured it would be good for something. And then I came up with the idea of leaving it in Clay’s room and calling the cops to report it.”
“So you took Violet out and got her plastered, so she’d tell everyone how sweet you were to take away her keys and let her stay in your guest room,” I said.
“Yeah.” She seemed to be enjoying the chance to brag about her cleverness. “I slipped her a Mickey to make sure she stayed out. I’m only six blocks from here, so I figured it would be a cinch to slip over here, plant the gun, and get back in before she noticed I was gone.”
“All that trouble for an alibi for planting the gun?” I asked.
“I figured he’d blame me for planting it,” she said. “He knew I had it in for him. So I wanted to make sure I could prove I hadn’t done it. Lucky for me, isn’t it? And bad luck for Clay, barging in when he did.”
“And you struggled, and the gun went off,” I said. “I’m sure you were devastated, but you were there to play a prank on him, not kill him. It was self-defense.” I tried to put a sympathetic, concerned expression on my face, as if I really did believe she was innocent. “Completely understandable. Anyone who knew Clay would call it justifiable homicide.”
“Nice try,” she said. “But I’m not buying it. Wish your little nut job had wrecked a few other rooms. Wonder if I have the time to—no, probably better not.”
“You won’t get away with it,” I said.
“I can sure try,” she said. “And you know what? I may not have time to wreck everyone else’s rooms, but I can hack Clay’s stupid paintings to shreds.”
“No,” I said. The thought of her slashing those three paintings was curiously disturbing.
“It’s going to be tough on your mother,” she said. “When she comes over and sees you lying dead in the ruins of her room. I feel almost sorry for her, even though I know she had a hand in trying to cut me out of the house.”
She didn’t sound sorry. And she was dead wrong. Mother had much preferred her to Clay. It was only thanks to Mother’s intervention that she’d gotten the rooms she had. But she’d never believe it.
“Nothing I can do about that,” Martha went on, as she headed for the archway that led to the hall. She stopped, looked back, and smiled at the devastation around us. “Before you know it—”
Something large, shiny, and metallic emerged from the shadows of the hallway and hit the top of her head. She stiffened and then slumped to the floor.
Ivy was standing in the doorway, holding the heavy bronze umbrella stand. She set the umbrella stand down, then bent over to take both the ax and the gun from Martha. Then she walked over, sat down on the floor beside me, and started untying my passementerie bonds.
“Thank God you stopped her,” I said. “But where did you come from? I had no idea you were even here!”
“No one ever does,” she said, with a faint smile, as she pulled away the last strands of passementerie.
Chapter 25
Ivy had quite sensibly cal
led 9-1-1 before tackling Martha. By the time the police arrived, I had checked both Jessica and Martha and relayed their condition over the phone to Debbie Ann. Jessica was unconscious but breathing normally and I didn’t find much blood. Maybe her wound was only minor, and it had hit her hard because of her agitated or even drugged state. A problem for the medics, when they arrived. Martha’s head wasn’t bleeding, but then, head wounds don’t always, and she could easily have a concussion or even a subdural hematoma. I hoped the ambulance arrived soon. I wouldn’t mourn too much if Martha died, but I suspected that killing someone, even to save a life, would hit Ivy hard. Then again, maybe I was underestimating Ivy. If she really had been the timid soul we all thought she was, I’d be dead by now.
Ivy had found a roll of duct tape and trussed up their ankles. We decided maybe binding their wrists was overkill, since both of them were still unconscious, and it might interfere with whatever the EMTs would want to do. Though just to be safe, we also taped their ankles to heavy things—Jessica’s to what remained of the Christmas tree and Martha’s to the more-intact of the two sofas.
Martha came around enough to start yelling just as the first police officer, Aida Butler, strode in the door, gun in hand.
“You bitch!” Martha roared, clapping her hands to her head.
“Not a really smart thing to say to a lady armed with forty-five-caliber semiautomatic weapon,” Aida said.
“I think she means me,” Ivy said, with a shy smile.
“She tried to kill me!” Martha roared, and she followed it up with a string of expletives.
“Please be quiet, ma’am,” Aida said.
Martha continued her X-rated tirade.
“Ma’am,” Aida said, stepping into Martha’s field of vision. “Please be quiet, or I will be forced to arrest you for obstructing a police officer—”
Instead of shutting up, Martha increased her volume, and then she grabbed the umbrella stand Ivy had used to hit her and threw it at Aida. I winced, and mentally kicked myself for not moving it out of Martha’s reach. But who knew she’d regain consciousness so quickly? The umbrella stand hit Aida’s shin and then dropped down on her toe.
“Aiiieee!” Aida screamed. And then “Rainbows! Rainbows! Rainbows!”
For some reason, this seemed to unnerve Martha, and she finally shut up.
Just in time.
“What’s going on here?”
Chief Burke had arrived.
Things happened fast. More officers arrived—almost every officer on the force—and the paramedics along with them. Chief Burke hustled Ivy into the dining room and me into Sarah’s study, so I got to watch through the French doors while first Jessica and then Martha were hauled off to the ambulance.
Should I call Michael? I didn’t want to wake him if he’d dropped off to sleep. Or worry him by not calling if he was still waiting up. I pulled out my phone and texted him. “I’m OK. Coming home as soon as I can.”
I lay back in the red-velvet armchair and worked on the deep breathing Rose Noire was always telling me I should do more of whenever I felt stressed. I really wanted to be somewhere else—anywhere else, thinking about anything other than crazy Jessica and murderous Martha. I’d have found it very comforting to pull out my notebook and start making lists, but I’d long ago figured out that most people looked at me oddly if they saw me busily making lists in the middle of a stressful situation—like almost being murdered. But still, it would be some comfort to work on a mental list of tasks I’d need to do to get the show house moving. Like calling to postpone the photographer. And finding out from the chief when we could have the house back. And coming up with a plan for Mother’s room.
Mother’s room.
I watched as Horace came in. He stood few minutes in the archway to the living room, obviously in shock, before plunging into the room to start his forensic work.
Part of me wanted to start dealing with Mother’s room, and part of me just wanted to go home, check on the boys, curl up in bed beside Michael, and sleep for the next twelve hours.
I was not looking forward to being interviewed by the chief.
“Don’t worry.” It was Aida, coming through the front door. “She’s fine.”
“I want to see for myself.” Michael followed Aida in.
I ran out into the hall and threw myself at him.
“Are you okay?” he whispered.
“I’m fine,” I said. “And I am definitely not doing the show house next year. If there even is a show house after this. Where are the boys?”
“Home with Mom,” he said. “They’ll be fine and—oh, my God. Your mother’s room. It’s a disaster.”
“We need to find Dad, and make sure he’s here when she sees it,” I said.
Michael nodded.
The chief stepped into the room.
“Meg, I know you’re pretty tired,” he said. “But if I could just ask you a few questions…”
“I’ll tell you all about it,” I said.
It took a while, of course. And the whole while I was talking to him I could see people coming and going. Aida. Sammy. All the other town law enforcement officers. Randall. All of them, when they saw the great room for the first time, stopped dead in their tracks and stared for a few moments before shaking their heads.
“I think that should do it,” the chief said finally, standing up.
Seeing that we were finishing, Randall Shiffley opened one French door and stepped in.
“Good news from the hospital,” he said. “Both nut jobs will live to stand trial.”
“That’s good,” the chief said.
“What now?” I asked.
“Now?” The chief looked startled. “Go home and get some sleep.”
“I need to start doing something about that room as soon as you release it,” I said.
“Meg,” Michael began.
“I can’t let Mother see it like that,” I said. “Chief, promise me you won’t let Mother in until we clean it up a little bit.”
“As soon as the chief releases it, I’ll be here with my crew,” Randall said. “I’ll bring in as many cousins as it takes, and she won’t see it like this.”
“I’ll send a deputy over to your parents’ at first light, to break the news to her,” the chief said. “And I won’t let your mother into the crime scene until you’re back to help her cope. But for now, you need to get some rest.”
“I won’t sleep a wink,” I muttered to Michael as we walked out to the Twinmobile.
“Just close your eyes and rest then,” he said.
I slept so soundly he almost couldn’t wake me up when we got home.
And woke up well before dawn, already worrying.
Chapter 26
December 23
“It’s not even seven,” Michael mumbled as he watched me pull on my clothes.
“I have to get over there before Mother sees her room.” I raced downstairs and into the kitchen to grab something to eat.
Michael followed me.
“And I need to figure out how to fix it,” I said over my shoulder as I stuck a cup of water with a tea bag in it into the microwave.
“You’ve got Randall and his workmen,” he said. “They can fix most of the damage.”
“They can fix the walls and the woodwork.” I rummaged through the fridge for a yogurt. “But I’m pretty sure they can’t sew or do upholstery.”
“You go over to the show house and help your mother through the shock of seeing the room,” he said. “I think I can find you a few people to do a bit of sewing. Leave it to me.”
“Thanks,” I said. And then the microwave dinged, so I snagged my tea and the yogurt and dashed out the door.
There weren’t quite as many police vehicles at the house when I got there. Only two patrol cars and the chief’s blue sedan. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? I also spotted three trucks from the Shiffley Construction Company parked in front and a Dumpster in the driveway. A dozen tall, lanky Shiffleys in boots, jean
s, and heavy jackets leaned against the trucks with carryout coffee cups in their hands or stood in twos and threes on the sidewalk. Two shorter forms, heavily bundled, were barely recognizable as Tomás and Mateo. Eustace stood by them, blowing on his hands.
Randall ambled over to my car.
“Good,” he said. “I was just debating whether to call you. Chief’s going to release the house any minute now. And if it’s okay with you, we’ll start hauling off the trash and repairing the damage as soon as he does. Of course, all we can do is get the room back to where it was when your Mother started it. Decorating’s not something we can do.”
“We’re working on some plans,” I said. At least Michael was.
The front door opened. Chief Burke stepped out.
“All yours,” he said.
Things started happening. Tomás and Mateo and the Shiffleys swarmed into the house. I followed, a little more slowly.
“Okay, boys,” Randall said. “First thing we do is haul all this trash out. Meg, you want to take charge of rescuing stuff that can be reused?”
They were just getting started when one of the Shiffleys came running in.
“Meg? Your parents are here.”
Mother followed close on his heels. She burst into the hallway, and when she saw me, she rushed over and gave me a fierce hug.
“I’m okay,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “And as long as you’re okay, everything else will be fine.”
“Good,” I said. “Because I’m afraid we’re going to have a bit of work to do in your room.”
“My room?” She turned and took a few steps toward the archway. We all froze. She didn’t react for several long moments, and then she burst into tears.
“My room,” she keened. “My beautiful room.”
I must have heard every designer in the show house say the same thing at some time over the last few days, but never with so much cause.
Jessica had knocked over the giant Christmas tree. At least three quarters of the delicate glass ornaments had been broken, either in the fall or when she hacked the tree into dozens of pieces. Giant gouges marred the walls, where there were still walls—in some places Jessica had ripped away great stretches of wallboard. She had knocked over and broken lamps, end tables, and vases. She’d attacked chairs and sofas so fiercely that every one of them was missing at least one leg and cotton stuffing spilled out through gaping slashes in the upholstery. She’d smashed the mirror over the fireplace and several panes of glass. She’d even hacked great holes and tears in the beautiful oriental carpet.
The Nightingale Before Christmas Page 23