3 Requiem at Christmas

by Melanie Jackson

  “Or to get something that you hid before? Like when you found the body? They might be thinking that.” Esteban was entering into the spirit of things.

  Juliet shook her head and pulled her cap back on.

  “We will leave aside the implication that I am a thief and that I was able to recognize whatever the hell I am supposed to have stolen as something valuable, and move right on to the hid it where? In a snowdrift that looks like all the other snowdrifts and is now even more buried? In my car which the murderer could and probably did search? ’Cause that’s all that’s out there. If they think that then we aren’t dealing with a criminal mastermind.”

  “No, more like the village idiot. Doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous though. In fact, stupid people are the worst when they get desperate. A thinking man will consider carefully before doing something rash. The idiots rush right in.”

  They both saw the movement in the trees at the same time and a hump of dark blue and green stood up and began skiing away. Their stalker, perhaps hearing their conversation, had decided not to wait for them since obviously they wouldn’t be doing anything interesting when they knew they were watched. Juliet figured it was too much to hope that they had abandoned all interest in her.

  Anger put strength in her sinews and she forgot that she was feeling sore and cold. They followed as soon as they found a way through the rocks to the tree line, but the stalker had a head start and his trail led back to the regular ski runs and joined hundreds of other tracks and milling bodies.

  Juliet gestured at the ski lift. Two men in navy and dark green were in a chair about a hundred yards away. One was very thin. The other might have been one of the satellites but he had on a knitted mask so it was hard to tell.

  “Do we make a futile gesture and perhaps break a leg on the slopes chasing them, or do we go for coffee?” she asked. “Because I am not letting you go off alone. Especially if you are unarmed.”

  Esteban studied her. She was wearing skinny skis that had only a front binding which were great for cross-country skiing but which would be dangerous on any kind of a serious slope.

  Juliet was also feeling cold. Mostly from the snow, but also because danger was again close by. The shouts of Marco! Polo! were very loud in her brain. Still, she meant what she said. She had seen Esteban shot once and didn’t plan on letting it happen again.

  “I wasn’t going to mention that you were looking a little cold and forlorn—that is a word, yes?”

  “Yes, and that’s nice—not mentioning my forlornness. But I am cold and feeling very alone. Maybe even a little frightened that someone thinks I’m involved in this mess.”

  Esteban put a hand on her shoulder which she could barely feel through her down jacket, but she appreciated the gesture.

  “We’ll never find him on the slopes—and if we did, how would we know for sure who it was? Lots of people are wearing green and navy. Let’s get out of these skis. I’ve been wanting to try peppermint chocolate with snowman poop, and they have some at the booth over there.”

  “You have not. No one wants to eat snowman poop,” she said, glad they wouldn’t be playing bloodhound. “You know, a thoughtful stalker would wear hot pink and fall down a lot because they are from the city and don’t know how to ski.”

  “But that’s how it is with stalkers,” he said lightly as he loosened his bindings. “They never think about anyone else.”

  * * *

  “I could be crazy,” Juliet began as she finished her hot chocolate without marshmallows. It was too sweet for enjoyment but it had stopped her shaking and given her some much needed energy.

  “I wasn’t going to say anything, but since you brought it up, I’d say that fact pretty much shines through with every recent word and deed. What the hell were you doing out there alone?”

  “Oh shut up. You’re as bad as Raphael—and not nearly as handsome.”

  “I was only agreeing with you,” Esteban answered, pretending to be hurt. “Besides, it’s me you want to paint nude.”

  “I’ll kill Raphael,” she said. Then looked at her watch. “Later.”

  “It wasn’t Rafe who told me. You convicted yourself. I have very good hearing. And it’s in your eyes. A man knows these things.”

  “You would have to be extraordinary to have heard us above the bagpipes. So that leaves Elizabeth. I’ll kill her instead for ratting me out.”

  “We can’t have that. Okay, I just guessed all on my own.”

  “I say again—shut up. Why can’t you hear this?” She threw her cup into a trash can that was painted to look like a tubular snowman.

  “Selective hearing. I’ve had it all my life. So, out with it. What do you want to do that I won’t like?”

  “The first one you probably won’t mind. I want to visit a candy store.”

  “Okay, why?”

  “I don’t know. I just think I should.”

  “Fine. And the other?”

  “I’m thinking of going back to the scene of the murder. If the bad guys are worried about me finding something there, maybe there is something there for me to find. Perhaps near the cabin that burned down.”

  “I don’t like it. But I think you have a point. Let’s stock up with candy and then go look at crime scenes.”

  So, he had planned on doing it anyway.

  The candy shop was crowded, but with Esteban’s help, Juliet managed to fight her way to the counter. She asked to speak to the manager, or whoever handled large orders. An older man, thin and leathery but exquisitely polite, came out of a back room to speak to Juliet.

  “I’m Albert Newscombe. How can I help you?”

  “Mr. Newscombe, I’m Juliet Henry. We are here for the Requiem Mass to be performed at Saint Clair Church?”

  “Ah, yes. We are looking forward to it very much. Mr. Peters has been kind enough to give us tickets.”

  Juliet beamed.

  “Harrison is just wonderful,” she gushed. “I wanted to send some gifts to friends who are here for the performance, but don’t want to duplicate either what Harrison—or maybe his friend, Darby O’Hara—has ordered for the party. Or what Jeremiah Holtz gave the singers earlier this week. Is there any way to check these orders so I can choose something different?”

  There was no reaction to Holtz’s name, so obviously the police hadn’t been in to question anyone. That was a little strange. But then there had been nothing in the newspapers either. Maybe someone was once again hushing things up, making unpleasant facts disappear.

  “Certainly. I know that Mr. Peters selected caramel sea-salt and lavender-mint wafers for the reception and Mr. Holtz….” He went to a computer and began typing. “Mr. Holtz did five boxes of lemon drops, a one-pound box of mocha truffles, and two one-pound boxes of our sea-salt wafers.”

  “Wonderful. Thank you so much for looking that up.”

  “Not a problem. So what can I do for you?”

  Juliet looked in the case at the prices and tried not to gulp. She did need to bring a thank-you gift back to Garret and decided to start there. White peach, golden peach, persimmon rind, white tea, black tea…. The list seemed endless.

  “What do you have that is less sweet? Perhaps just dark chocolate?”

  “We have some dark chocolate wafers that have been stenciled with various designs. They are part of our beaux arts collection. Our chipotle chocolate is delicious and an excellent choice for someone with more sophisticated tastes.”

  “Oh!” Juliet said in surprise. “You have cats! Can you do a small gift box—maybe one of those pretty gold ones—with a variety of the cat wafers? Those will be perfect for Garret,” she said, smiling at Esteban who had been silent. “I need a thank-you gift for him.”

  “Mrs. Johnson will be happy to help you,” Mr. Newscombe said and then turned toward his office. He was abandoning the heathen who was choosing chocolate by design and not by flavor.

  “Thank you.” Juliet was relieved that the manager had departed. She wouldn’t have to p
lace any gigantic orders to make her story believable. She smiled at Mrs. Johnson and began pointing out chocolate cats.

  * * *

  Juliet chose to let Esteban drive to the bypass. She wanted to be able to pay attention to their surroundings and not have to concentrate on the weather and the car.

  They came at the GPS’s proposed workaround from the opposite direction and Juliet found it a little disconcerting. It looked quite different—for one thing, the cabin was gone. Only blackened snow and part of the foundation remained. It was also noon and not blowing a gale. There were boot prints everywhere, crisscrossing and overlaying each other until making sense of the tracks was impossible.

  Esteban drove slowly and Juliet studied everything with what, on another day, would be agonizing slowness. Finally she had him stop and they got out of the car. The view didn’t improve.

  The cold was tightening its grip on the mountain, squeezing the feeling out of them, as though it wanted what had happened to stay buried in its drifts and for all the humans to leave it alone.

  A cutthroat wind straight from the pole picked up the loose snow and made it dance over the edge of the ravine. Juliet stayed away from the brink of the cliff where the car had spun out, but Esteban bravely peered over the side at the vertiginous view after he had wiggled out to the drop, one cautious, sliding step at a time. It wasn’t the Grand Canyon down there but it was far enough and rough enough to make him shudder.

  “Madre de Dios. Not for any amount of money would I climb down there,” he muttered. “If anything is down that ravine, it can stay there.”

  Juliet was frustrated and tired of the alternating shivering and brow mopping she had done all day. There was nothing to learn here. Either the thing everyone was after had been destroyed or was lost, or it was back at the inn or, perhaps, the clan tent. Maybe she could find someone who liked to gossip.

  “Do you want to talk to Ranger Nyland for any reason?” she asked. “Supposing that he’s even here.”

  “No, and I have no wish to linger either. It’s a cursed climate. Even the trees look unhappy. Why would anyone come here?”

  “Lumber. And that was a long time ago.” Juliet thought that the trees were unhappy because they had been damaged by fire when the car and cabin burned, but she didn’t argue the point. They were not in the heart of some winter wonderland. “I’ve got to admit that I feel like we’ve scraped the bottom of the barrel this time. I just don’t know why anyone—especially after the police—came out here. What the heck did they hope to find? And what the devil did they think I would find? It would have to be something massive—and I just can’t think what that would be. A heisted armored car carrying the gold of Fort Knox? A downed airplane full of stolen securities?”

  The wind gusted, flinging ice in her face, and Juliet turned back for the car.

  “You’re right. Let’s go. I’ve had enough of the great outdoors. It’s time for a hot bath and a brandy—and maybe not in that order. If there’s something here, the North Wind can have it.”

  Chapter 8

  Juliet was not an expert on the Requiem Mass, but she had listened enough to Harrison and Darby that she knew that it was a Mass to honor the dead that dated back to the second century, though its current form as a mainly orchestral piece with liturgical text set to music was only a few hundred years old and frowned on by certain churches.

  Black vestments were worn by all the singers and the orchestra since it was the color of deepest mourning and reflected what would have been worn by the officiating priest or bishop had this been a true Catholic exequial Mass. Nor would the body be present, of course, which would have been the case centuries ago. That seemed best to Juliet who couldn’t get enthused about singing madrigals to a corpse.

  The crowd was swathed in velvet and satin—little of it in black. A few were men in fine, muted wool from England and finer, more muted wool from Italy. The jewels in the crowd were mostly fake but sparkled enchantingly in the candlelight. Banners had been added to the beams overhead and there was so much greenery on the overburdened altar that if it ever lost its moorings and toppled onto the choir, the singers would be smothered before anyone could dig them out.

  The artists from Bartholomew’s Woods sat together, except for Darby who was up front. Elizabeth and Raphael were seated at the ends of the pews near the back so their wheelchairs didn’t block the aisle. Asher was next to his mother with Carrie Simmons, Hans and Rose in the same pew. Juliet was next to Raphael with Esteban on her other side. Mickey, Robbie, Jerry, and Thomas finished out their pew. Except for Rose, the penguin among peacocks, they were not wearing black—probably didn’t own anything in such a somber color, but they were all—including Carrie—dressed with dignity, though her brown and peach ruffled dress looked a little like peaches floating in a bouillabaisse.

  The biggest surprise was Mickey, since with him it was always couture potluck, but he had managed to put himself together for the event he thought of as a musical funeral. This meant slacks, shoes, and a navy turtleneck sweater, and a sport coat with suede elbow patches instead of a message t-shirt.

  Rose came out of her seat to hug Juliet. Once standing, she looked a bit like she was wearing a tent that had pulled up its stakes and rolled through some moss, but it was a chic cashmere tent in basic black and anyway she was short enough for her strange green fringed hem to go unnoticed.

  Esteban was gorgeous in a coat of some strange woolen brocade that looked almost baroque, though he was too scarred and tanned to pass as a nobleman. Raphael was the noble lord, Esteban the battle-scarred knight.

  Harrison, dressed entirely in unrelieved black, approached the podium and made a brief announcement about Holtz’s death. He handled the matter with dispatch and dignity. Juliet looked to the brother sitting in the front row by Darby. He was heavier than the dead man, but the resemblance was there and she realized that she had seen him in the lobby of the hotel amongst the other Buchanans and also in the restaurant the night before.

  An organ thundered to life, and incense filled the air though there were discreet fans to keep the smoke away from the singers and musicians. The state’s smoking law obviously didn’t apply to holy smoke let loose in churches.

  The crowd hushed. The tenor stepped forward. He looked confident. No one would guess that he had assumed the lead only days before.

  “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,” he sang. Grant them eternal rest, O Lord.

  His was not a stand-and-deliver kind of voice, but a nuanced and gentle performance. Juliet wondered how much better the dead man could have been for Harrison to have chosen him over this boy and, for the first time, felt a moment of mourning for the man who died that was specific to Jeremiah Holtz—his gifts and his life—and not just a John Donne no man is an island and every death diminishes me kind of a thing.

  Juliet tried for more pious thoughts but found herself scanning the audience, wondering if the killer was there. And if so, why? Did he expect to pass off his prize to someone—assuming he had found it? This wouldn’t be a bad place for an exchange.

  There was a block of Buchanans, looking for once very sober even in their bright kilts. Ranger Nyland was in the audience along with Captain Denver. Both men were in suits, though not from England or Italy. The detective was seated right behind Christopher Columbus and two of his satellites, one of whom had been near the concierge’s desk when she was asking directions to the trail, and the other the man who had taken a long hard look at her and Esteban the night before.

  Orbiter three was probably off guarding the car, making sure no one with a sgian dubh or a nuclear device slipped inside it during the performance. She doubted very much that Columbus had killed anyone himself, but it was not beyond the realm of the possible that one of the satellites had gotten overzealous and ended up killing the tenor before he revealed the whereabouts of … whatever.

  And it was for a something. For a physical thing, she was sure, not an intangible reason or emotion or esoteric kno
wledge. Not for vengeance or love gone wrong or any of the messy passions that could lead to murder—though of course sticking a knife in someone had to lead to all kinds of feelings. Someone in the audience had to be feeling how macabre it all was, to be at this funeral, even if it wasn’t for the man they had killed. If they were religious, they might even be fearing for their soul.

  “… ad te omnis caro veniet.” To You all flesh shall come.

  The brother, Joshua, was weeping, his head bent, a handkerchief to his eyes. Columbus and his satellites watched him. Juliet could only see them in partial profile, but they didn’t look overcome with compassion for his loss and she was sure Denver was also making note of this.

  “Kyrie, eleison; Christe, eleison; Kyrie, eleison.” God, have mercy; Christ, have mercy; God, have mercy.

  Juliet wasn’t alone in her scrutiny of the assembled. Esteban and Raphael were also less attentive to the singers than the rest of the audience who were beginning to tear up at the soprano’s Pie Jesu.

  Or perhaps it was partially the incense. Juliet was suddenly feeling a bit dizzy and wanted out of the smoke and used air. She wasn’t used to being in crowds that large.

  “Quantus tremor est futurus,” the bass sang. Oh, what fear man’s bosom rendeth.

  Did the killer feel fear? If he did, Juliet did not see it in any face. Only the brother was overcome, and that was natural, wasn’t it?

  “Fac eas, Domine, de morte transire ad vitam.” Let them, O Lord, pass over from death to life.

  The Requiem was winding up.

  “Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona eis requiem.…” Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, let them rest.

  But Juliet didn’t think that sin could be taken away so easily, not from the earthly plane. And cold-blooded killers deserved no rest until they atoned.

  “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another.” Raphael muttered, making it obvious that he also spoke Latin.