The Christie Curse

by Victoria Abbott

  I locked the door behind me, then turned around to see that the Siamese had managed to get in first. I kept my distance as the last scratch was still throbbing. But now, apparently, all was forgiven and the sneaky creature just wanted to be friends. As I plunked myself on the bed to check the message, the cat jumped up to join me and rubbed its head against my arm.

  Karen Smith’s message was intriguing. “Hello, Jordan. I have some information that will interest you. I’m quite worried and I think you will be too. It will be of concern to your employer. Can you meet me at Saint Sebastian’s? I had to leave early to check something out. I’m here now finishing packing up my booth. The front door of the hall is locked, but if you come to the loading area on the far side of the building and ring the bell, I’ll let you in. I should be here until about nine thirty. Otherwise, call me and we’ll make it another time.”

  Wait for another time when I’d been without any leads whatsoever so far? Not a chance.

  Bring it, I thought. It was nearly nine and about a twenty-minute drive. Would she be gone already? I called her back to let her know I was on my way, but it went straight to message. Just to be on the safe side, I left a message saying that I hoped to be there soon. I had a mountain of reading to do, but I knew that Agatha and her mysterious story would still be waiting in my garret when I got back.

  * * *

  I WRAPPED MYSELF in a lightweight camel-colored cashmere cardigan, yet another flea market treasure, then topped it off with a punchy Pucci scarf from the sixties.

  Twenty minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot at Saint Sebastian’s and drove around to the back. The chain-link fence had been camouflaged by rows of lilacs, all in bloom. I loved this time of year.

  I hurried toward the door. A van with “The Cozy Corpse” painted on it and a cute waving skeleton was parked close by. I could see that it was half full of boxes of books. Karen had left the back door to the hall propped open with a strategically placed carton. I popped in rather than ring the bell. She was probably busy packing. I could give her a hand. She was a nice person, and I appreciated her getting back to me so quickly. I didn’t think it was just business on her part, but as the uncles like to point out, sometimes I can be a patsy.

  The hall was empty. The booths had all been dismantled except for the three tables forming the last unit at the end: the Cozy Corpse location. I noticed I didn’t make a sound moving forward on the soft, thick carpet. I didn’t want to give Karen a shock, so I called out to let her know I was coming.

  “Hi! It’s me. Jordan.”

  No answer.

  I figured she probably had her head in a box of books. I ambled in, amazed at how the room had lost its old-fashioned charm now that the dealers were gone.

  “Karen?”

  Again, no answer. But a little flutter in my gut set me on edge. The smell of lilacs clashed with the dank odor of the empty hall.

  She couldn’t be far. Her van was still here. Two boxes of books had been stacked on the small blue metal dolly, ready for the truck. Maybe I could do something to help while I waited. Next to the red cash box, the credit card receipts were neatly stacked in two piles, as though she’d been working on them. She couldn’t have gone far. She was probably in the ladies’ room. As I stepped around the far table, thinking it would be fun to check out some of the still-unpacked books, I tripped over an upturned chair and careened out of control. I was stopped by the farthest table and swore as I slammed into it. The cash box and credit card receipts went flying. What the hell? I’d never thought to look for overturned chairs. But nothing prepared me for what I saw next: a leg and foot sticking out from under the blue-skirted table.

  I screamed. At the top of my lungs.

  Of course, I was alone with the leg and foot.

  Get a grip, I told myself. It must be Karen. I snapped out of screaming gear and into Good Samaritan mode. What could have happened to her? Perhaps she’d hit her head and crawled under the table? That didn’t make sense, but this wasn’t the best situation for thinking clearly, or at all. I forced myself to bend down and flip the table skirt back so I could see.

  Please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead. It took a second for my brain to sort it out. It was indeed Karen Smith lying motionless. Her wild red curls had come loose and spilled behind her. The gold-rimmed glasses lay twisted near her hand. Her cheeks were gray, and her fair skin now seemed nearly transparent. I leaned forward and knelt. There was a red wound on her forehead. There was a slowly spreading pool of blood, soaking into the plush carpet under the table. I gasped. I was kneeling in it! I heard myself screaming again. I forced myself to stop and pull out my phone from my handbag. With shaking hands, I dialed 911.

  The dispatcher was calm, reassuring. This was to his credit as it must have sounded strange to have someone yell, “A leg! I saw the leg under the table!” I did get myself under control enough to say that I thought the woman I was meeting had been hurt. “I’m sorry, I’m pretty rattled. You have to send help. There is a lot of blood. She’s badly injured.”

  “Keep calm, ma’am. We need your location, first of all.”

  “Saint Sebastian’s Hall in Grandville,” I yelled. “The rear door’s open!”

  “Help will be there soon.”

  I lifted the table skirt again. I was only vaguely conscious of the dispatcher’s disembodied voice. My heart was thundering. Was Karen dead? I managed to keep my eyes open and peer under the table. Instead of the 911 dispatcher’s calm and measured tones, I imagined my uncles’ voices, advising me to keep cool and get out of there before the cops came. I knew that wasn’t the best advice, except for the “keep cool” part.

  “Ma’am? What is happening?” I suppose dispatchers are trained to keep level heads. That was good. I needed that.

  I touched Karen’s arm. She was still warm and breathing.

  “Karen Smith has been injured, possibly attacked. She has a gash on her forehead, and she’s bleeding.”

  I bent closer to Karen and whispered, “Karen. I’m here. You’ll be okay. Help is coming.” I swept some curls off her face and did my best to be soothing.

  What had happened? She couldn’t have banged her head and then crawled under the table. What then? I patted her hand and stroked her arm. Was I just fooling myself? She was clammy but not cold. There was blood on her sleeve. I stared at my hands. They were streaked with red. The blood had come from me. I had marked her arm with it. For some reason, this seemed like the worst thing in the world. In the back of my mind, a rational voice said, if she’s alive and badly injured, she’ll be in shock. Stay calm. Try to staunch the bleeding. Keep her warm. It finally occurred to me that was the dispatcher. How did Tiff deal with this stuff on a daily basis? I was getting freaked out from the knowledge that Karen’s blood was getting all over me.

  For the only time in my life, I wanted to hear a siren. I slipped out of my vintage cashmere cardigan and placed it gently over her. I took my scarf and pressed it gently to her head wound with one hand. I held her limp white hand with the other. Was it too little too late?

  “Karen,” I whispered. “Please stay with me. Help is coming.”

  I sure hoped I was telling the truth.

  I found myself blinking back tears at the first sound of a siren. It seemed they’d gotten here very quick. Maybe Karen’s luck would hold, although she sure hadn’t been lucky that day. Let it be paramedics, I thought.

  I heard a voice calling.

  “Over here at the end,” I shouted. “Hurry.”

  But of course when I looked up, it wasn’t the paramedics. Officer Smiley’s round innocent face had shock written across it. He stared at me and knelt down beside me to check out Karen. He reached out for me and recoiled at the blood on my hands.

  I managed to say, “Her name is Karen Smith. She’s still breathing. I’ve already called 911.”

  He snapped into cop mode. “You’re going to be all right, Karen. The paramedics should be here any minute.” His usually br
ight face was deadly serious. His voice dropped and took on a tone that I might have melted for, under different circumstances. He spoke soothingly, reassuring us that everything was under control now. I don’t know if it was helping Karen, but it was really working on me.

  The welcome scream of the ambulance cut through our conversation. Officer Smiley jumped to his feet and raced to meet the paramedics at the door. I peered up over the table and watched the emergency team rumble toward us. Were they moving in slow motion? This was a life or death situation. “Hurry up!” I yelled. “She’s here.”

  At least Officer Smiley was hustling. He ran toward the table, bent down again and pried my hand from Karen’s. I protested as he pulled me to my feet. He put an arm around my shoulder and gently led me out of the way. “They have to be able to reach her,” he said.

  I knew he was right, but I hated letting go and hated waiting while they worked on her. The paramedics radioed the hospital, assessing Karen’s condition.

  “Lost a lot of blood.”

  “Checking vitals.”

  “Let’s get that bleeding stemmed.”

  They seemed to work as a hive mind, completing each other’s tasks and sentences, buzzing over Karen as they prepped her to go to hospital. I knew they would do everything possible to save her.

  By the time she was loaded on the gurney and being wheeled toward the door, I found that I was shaking. Officer Smiley’s arm was still around me. He led me to the foyer where there was a comfortable sofa and a table. “You’d better sit down,” he said.

  I sat, stared at my knees and shuddered.

  Officer Smiley waited for me to gather myself a bit. I was even beginning to feel a bit grateful for his presence. “What happened?” he said in a low voice.

  I turned to stare at him. “I don’t know.”

  He nodded sympathetically. “But you were here.”

  “What? No, I wasn’t here.”

  He patted my hand. “Jordan, you might be in shock. We’ll get you seen to before they take your statement.” That took care of any misplaced warm fuzzies I was feeling.

  “Take my statement? Why?”

  “Because a woman has been seriously injured and you were here.”

  “I told you. I wasn’t here.”

  He nodded sadly. “We’ll get you seen to.”

  “Karen.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Her name is Karen. She’s not just ‘a woman.’ She’s Karen Smith. She runs the Cozy Corpse. I told you that. She was really nice to me. I like her.”

  “I’m sorry. You’re right. I didn’t intend to diminish her. My point was that you were here with Karen when she was critically injured, so we will need to know what happened.”

  He made it sound so reasonable. It was really hard to be mad at him and his cute little chipped incisor, but really, I could not give a statement. No way. I was pretty sure every cop in upstate New York had a file on my felonious family members. For all I knew they had one on me too. Maybe this smiling policeman was familiar with it. That would explain why he was always showing up. But why would they have a file on me? I hadn’t done anything. I was the law-abiding one. I’d gone to college. I had paying jobs. I filed my taxes.

  Oh right. I had just taken over the job of a man who’d died mysteriously. And now, I’d stumbled over a woman who looked to be critically injured. But I had no idea what had happened. Making that point wouldn’t do me much good. It was the Kelly family curse: even when we are doing the right thing, we exude guilt. I could see how it looked. I was in an empty hall after nine o’clock on a Sunday night for no reason that made much sense, and I’d been found holding Karen’s hand with both of us covered in blood. I glanced at his innocent pink-cheeked face. I decided I was better talking to him than some stranger who might have a history with my family.

  He said, “Look, I know you’re upset. But let’s get you some medical care and—

  “I’m all right. No need for medical care. I’ll tell you what happened.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. You’re with the Harrison Falls Police and I—”

  “Yes.” He nodded at me and waited.

  I said, “Does the jurisdiction of Harrison Falls Police Force extend to Grandville?”

  “Are you kidding? I’m pretty sure I’ll get my butt seriously kicked for being here in uniform.”

  “Well, um, why are you here in uniform?”

  “I got a call.”

  “A call about?”

  “That someone, who didn’t identify himself, wanted to meet me to give me information about a series of crimes in Harrison Falls.”

  “And he wanted you to meet in Grandville?”

  “Yes.”

  “At Saint Sebastian’s?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And that seemed like a good idea to you?”

  “At the time.”

  “Huh.”

  His flush got deeper. “When you think of it, it turned out to be a good idea. I was here to help you.”

  I bristled. “I had already called 911 by the time you got here.”

  How deep could a flush get? He didn’t say anything.

  I said, “I’m sorry. I’m being a jerk. I am really glad you showed up. You calmed me down.”

  Damn good thing my uncles weren’t around to hear that little speech. I’d be cut off Kraft Dinner for years. To my own surprise, I’d meant it.

  “So what happened before I got here?” he said. I guessed he didn’t hold a grudge, not like my family. His flush was subsiding, and he seemed to have forgotten my outburst.

  I’m sure police officers have people blowing up at them all the time, and probably far worse than myself. All this caught me off guard, though, and I found I was willing and able to spill every detail, especially as I had a choice. “If I tell you what happened, then may I check up on Karen and go home after?”

  “Right. Of course.” If he’d nodded any faster, his smiling blond bobble-head might have fallen off. “So do you mind filling me in?”

  Why not? I really didn’t have anything to hide. “I got a call from Karen to meet her here.”

  “What time was that?”

  “During dinner. We dine at eight.” I was surprised at how naturally that very Vera Van Alst phrase slipped out of my mouth.

  “Oh, we do, do we?” Was he smirking now?

  “We can check my phone for the time.” My hand was now rifling through my satchel where I’d dropped the phone.

  “Did she, Karen, say why?”

  “Just that she had interesting information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “She didn’t give any details, but I assumed it had to do with a collectible that I might buy.”

  “You didn’t ask her?”

  “I didn’t take the call. I was at dinner and my employer refuses to have any modern electronic devices in the dining room. I checked the message just before nine and drove over.”

  He blinked. Perhaps it was because of the “dining with my employer” thing.

  “She asked you to meet her at that time?”

  I stopped to think about what exactly she had said. “She said she’d be here packing until around nine thirty. I’d left her a reply saying I was on my way.”

  “Were you worried?”

  “What? No. I was excited. I was really hoping to find out what she’d learned. And it’s a beautiful Sunday night. This is the fun part of my job.” I shivered. “I can’t believe I said that.”

  “You didn’t mean it that way.”

  “No, I meant finding leads and tracking down books is the fun part of my job. I had no idea that I’d find…” I trailed off, picturing poor Karen barely alive.

  “What did you find, Miss Bingham?”

  I thought back. “The parking lot had only the Cozy Corpse van. I didn’t see any other cars anywhere around the building. So whoever it was must have attacked Karen and then driven off quickly, or if they
were on foot, disappeared into the neighborhood as quickly as possible.

  He blinked again. What was he thinking? I wanted him to nod in agreement or say yes or something else reassuring. I reminded myself that the police are—if not the enemy—at the very least, a force to be wary of. “We need to consider both possibilities,” I added. “There’s no way to know for sure.”

  He blinked again. I decided that he blinked whenever he was keeping something from me. Good to know. I said, “Is there any way to find out? Surveillance cameras? Witnesses?”

  “No working cameras here, believe it or not. And we shouldn’t be considering anything. You leave me to worry about that.”

  Like I wasn’t going to worry. Normally it would be all I could do not to laugh at that comment. Just like a cop to pretend it’s run-of-the-mill to stumble upon a victim of a violent attack. As if. But I didn’t laugh, because there was nothing funny about tonight.

  “I think I will worry, if you don’t mind.”

  He said, “The police will look into all this.” Before I could protest, he said, “Weren’t you nervous meeting her here? Alone?”

  “Nervous? Why would I have been nervous? It’s a bright night. You could still see well enough. It was a church hall in a lovely residential area. I was meeting a friend after a book fair. This is Grandville, for Pete’s sake. It’s hardly the mean streets.”

  “People have been killed.”

  “Killed? What people?”

  “Well, Alex Fine. You were going to see his fiancée earlier.”

  “That’s one person. And he was killed by falling in front of a subway train in New York City. Why would that make me nervous here?” I realized that my voice was pretty high-pitched for someone who wasn’t nervous. “Anyway, I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t nervous. It hadn’t occurred to me that I should be. I went in and—”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “No. Just the—

  He said, “How did you get in?”

  “Didn’t I say that? The door was open. It had been propped open by a box of books. I assumed she’d done that because she was loading the van. I just went in. I didn’t want her to come out and get me. I saw”—I closed my eyes to recall the scene exactly—“the room was empty except for her table and some boxes of books, stacked.”