A Holly, Jolly Murder (17 page)

I looked up the Sawyers' telephone number and dialed it. When a child answered, I asked to speak to its mother.

“Who's this?”

“Someone who will sneak into your bedroom and shave your head if you don't put your mother on the line,” I said matter-of-factly. I don't think I meant it.

The receiver clattered as it hit the floor. Moments later Morning Rose said, “Hello?”

I identified myself, then said, “I was trying to get everything straight in my mind about the night Nicholas was killed. You went back there, didn't you?”

“Wait a moment,” she said, then yelled at her children to go to their rooms or face the specter of no rice cakes with peanut butter. When she came back on, she sounded fatigued. “I was there, but not at Nicholas's house. I was worried about Roy. He was positively gray when the party broke up. I didn't want him to take off, or start in on drugs and do something he might regret. I knocked on his door, but he wouldn't let me in. I guess I should have beaten down the door and stayed with him until he came to his senses.”

“This was when Sullivan thought you were in the backyard?”

“I guess so. He was in his office working on an article about contemporary paganism for some anthropology journal. Why are you asking me this?”

“Symmetry,” I murmured.

“Are you okay, Mrs. Malloy?”

I could tell she wanted to ask me if I shared Roy's fondness for Herbal Ecstasy or more potent hallucinogens. “I'm dandy, Morning Rose. Is your husband available?”

“No, he left about an hour ago to get some research material from his office. He's probably still there playing games on his computer. I've forbidden him to play any kind of militaristic games in the house; it gives the children the wrong ideas about global harmony and universal cooperation. Are you familiar with the writings of Marx and Engels, Mrs. Malloy?”

“Long before you donned your first environmentally correct diaper, Morning Rose.” I hung up and sat back, wondering if I should contact each and every member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to find out who else had returned to Primrose Hill on the night in question. The crew of the
SS Enterprise
. The cast of whatever constipated musical was currently reigning on Broadway.

Caron seemed to be having problems finding the Salvation Army shelter, or perhaps in disentangling herself from Santa Claus. I wasn't especially worried about her, except in a generic sense. No police officers had loomed at the door thus far. No ambulances had wailed in the distance. Ed may not have been a CEO or a part-time brain surgeon, but I was confident that he was basically benevolent. If I was wrong, he would be sorry if he made an attempt to intimidate Caron into forking over money. He'd have better luck trying to wheedle her into promising him her firstborn child.

I listened to classical music drifting through the vents along the floorboards as I wandered around the room. It was not yet ten o'clock, and I knew no visions of sugarplums would be dancing in my head anytime soon. The telephone sat in splendid silence, but I kept glancing at it as if it might leap across the carpet and attach itself to my neck like a vampire bat.

I finally decided to walk off my tension. I wrote a note for Caron, then put on my coat and headed across the campus lawn. For the record, I was not worried that any of the Druids would spring out of the shadows and wrestle me to the ground, salivating wildly and wielding a butcher knife. That only happens in fiction.

I walked along the sidewalk, my hands in my pockets and my face furrowed unattractively as I tried to make some sense of the muddle. The most obvious—and simplistic—solution was to accept Roy's confession and write him off as a deeply disturbed kid. But why hadn't Malthea protested? Why hadn't she responded with indignation instead of doing everything she could to bolster Roy's various stories?

Moving briskly, I veered around the dark student union and headed in the general direction of the law school. The cold wind stung my ears and chapped my cheeks, but the sheer sense of motion felt good, as if I were accomplishing some minor Herculean task. And, yes, I seemed to be closing in on the social sciences building, where I might find a certain person blipping evil invaders on his computer.

There were several lights on inside the building. I went inside, paused to rub my hands together until they tingled, and then found a placard listing office numbers. Sullivan had not warranted an office of his own, but I was familiar enough with the ways of academia to suspect he would have a cubicle in the vicinity of the department. I took the elevator to the third floor.

The floor was adequately lit but very quiet. After several moments of questioning my wisdom—and determining that it was, as always, impeccably correct—I tried a couple of corridors and finally found one emblazoned with multicolored flyers announcing glorious opportunities to sift sand in Turkey or study the richly diverse subcultures of Paris and Rome. Airfare not included.

The sound of clicking keys indicated that at least one creature was stirring. I went through the main office and into a large room with tables lining the walls, a hodgepodge of chairs, stacks of papers and folders, a grid of overflowing mailboxes, and a graduate student hunched in front of a computer. On the screen entities resembling Ping-Pong balls drifted downward. One exploded.

Sullivan chortled. “Gotcha, you bastard.”

“I hope I'm not interrupting,” I said.

He spun around and gaped at me. “I—I didn't hear you come in. What are you doing here?”

“Morning Rose thought you might be here. Do you mind if we talk?”

“I've already told you that I don't care what happens to Roy. He confessed, didn't he? Why isn't that enough? Are the authorities waiting until he kills someone else before they arrest him?”

“They'd very much like to arrest him at this point,” I said, “but he's unavailable. Why did you go to Nicholas's house after the disastrous party?”

My abrupt change of topic proved effective; he stared at me for a long moment, seemingly doing his best to ascertain what I knew—and what I didn't. I waited with the appraising stare of a distaff Perry Mason.

“Who says I did?” he said carefully.

“That doesn't matter, does it? Nicholas called you around seven o'clock. The conversation ended abruptly. You went there later to confront him.”

“No, I didn't.”

Perry Mason's witnesses always broke down on the stand and confessed seconds before the commercial. Sullivan must not have been a fan of the show. “Yes, you did,” I said chidingly. “A little after eleven o'clock, wouldn't you say? You came across the pasture on foot.”

“So that was Gilda,” he said, putting his elbow on the table and massaging his forehead with his fingertips. “I didn't think she saw me.”

“Well, she did. What happened after that?”

“I don't have to answer your questions, Mrs. Malloy, but I will say that I did not set foot in Nicholas's house.” He leaned forward and punched a button to shut down the computer, then stood up. “I'm going home. If the police want to talk to me, that's where I'll be. If you want to talk to me, too damn bad.”

“Did Nicholas find out some dirty little secret about you?” I persevered as I followed him back into the corridor. “Did you falsify your résumé or forget to mention a felony conviction?”

“You are more than welcome to verify every name, date, and letter of recommendation included in my résumé. In the meantime, will you please just leave us alone? The children are already upset as it is. Nicholas allowed Cosmos to play on his computer. He gave Rainbow a robe that was supposedly an exact replica of those worn by Druid priestesses two thousand years ago. Morning Rose is worried sick about Roy. I'm more worried about what Dr. Tate will say when he gets back from Borneo and hears that I threw his son out of my house.” He locked the office door, put the key in his pocket, and walked rapidly toward the elevator. “I have nothing else to say.”

Amateur sleuths cannot be bashful. “If you didn't go there to speak to Nicholas, why did you? Certainly not to make sure Roy was not unduly disturbed, since you've made it clear you're not concerned about him. Morning Rose was, though. Were you following her?”

“
Nothing else
, Mrs. Malloy. Which word is causing you problems?”

I glanced at the lighted numeral above the elevator doors, trying to assess how much time I had. There were other people on the move in the building, but with only five floors, time was of the essence. “Morning Rose said she went to Roy's apartment but he wouldn't let her in.”

“My wife was in the backyard, capering around stark naked and chanting. I was in my office at home.”

“You just admitted Gilda saw you.”

“Isn't she currently confined in the psychiatric ward? Not much of a witness, is she? Your only other witness claims to have been ripped apart by an Egyptian demon and admitted that he killed a man in cold blood.”

I was casting about for an adequately scathing response when the elevator doors opened. Sullivan stepped just inside, blocking my entrance, and stood there glaring at the until the doors closed.

The elevator descended to the first floor, then came back up to fetch me. By the time I arrived outside, Sullivan had disappeared either down one of numerous dark sidewalks or around the building to the parking lot. The sound of a car starting suggested the latter.

“Jorgeson has the weapon,” I said out loud as I headed home. “It belongs to Roy's father and has Roy's fingerprints on it. Roy confessed. Just because there was need of a pagan traffic controller before the murder doesn't mean that Roy didn't do it. A shoplifter in a grocery store doesn't negate an armed robbery an hour later.”

A flutter of motion in my peripheral vision indicated my grousing had roused a couple who thought the lonely campus provided a safe place to advance their relationship. I did not apologize or make sure they planned to engage in safe sex, but instead continued along the sidewalk.

I stopped on the porch to collect my mail, the usual collection of bills and flyers, and opened the door.

A hand caught the door before I could close it.

“Mrs. Malloy,” Morning Rose said with enough ill-contained urgency to awaken drunks dozing on barstools across the street from the Book Depot. “Thank God you're here! I didn't know what else to do. I'm so frightened.”

I'd put the poor retired professor through quite a bit already, so I motioned her inside. “Let's go upstairs,” I said in a low voice. “Then we'll talk.”

“There's no time for that,” she said.

“Ah, but there is. I have no desire to go dashing into the night on some foolish mission, so I have all the time in the world.”

“It's Roy. He's going to kill himself if we don't find him.” She pulled a folded paper out of her pocket and offered it to me. When I didn't accept it, she said, “I found this under our front door. The minute that Sullivan got home, I hurried here. You have to read it. He's serious—”

“Call the police.”

“I don't dare,” she said as she sank to her knees and covered her face with her hands like a seduced maiden in a Greek tragedy who'd just realized the baby might be born with feathers. “The minute he sees them, he'll put the gun to his head and pull the trigger. He's sick, Mrs. Malloy. We have to find him and get him back to the psychiatric ward where he can be restrained. How did he get out of there? Don't they realize he's suicidal?”

I plucked the letter out of her hand and read it under the glow of the forty-watt bulb the miserly landlord favored. Most of it was written in an illegible scrawl that would have exasperated Fern, but I could decipher the phrases “can't face the torment” and “better off dead.”

“Just what are you planning to do?” I asked Morning Rose. “Roy left the hospital hours ago. He could be anywhere.”

She looked up at me. “I think I know where he stayed after he left the carriage house.”

“So alert the police. They're trained to deal with emotionally disturbed people. They'll walk softly and carry big butterfly nets.”

“I'm the only person who can talk him into going back to the hospital. If anyone else approaches him, he'll snap like a twig. You have to help me save his life!”

“No, I don't,” I said, shaking my head. “He's a confessed murderer and quite possibly a dangerous schizophrenic. I'm not about to go track him down in a dark alley and suggest he turn himself in. I've done that several times, and I'm tired of it.”

“He's not in an alley,” she said as she stood up and caught my hands. “I think Roy broke into one of Nicholas's rental properties. He's done repair work in many of them, and he knows which are likely to be empty over the Christmas break. You can stay in the van, Mrs. Malloy. If there's a light, I'll get out and ring the doorbell. As soon as you see Roy at the door, you can drive to a telephone and call the police. That'll give me time to convince him to come quietly.” She squeezed my hands so tightly that I winced. “He won't hurt me. I can get the gun away from him and calm him down so that he won't—do something foolish.”

“Jorgeson can arrange for an unmarked police car to take you around the properties.”

“No,” she said with a frustrated groan. “What if Roy looks at the car and sees an unfamiliar driver? He'll panic and blow out his brains. If he sees you, he might not be so impulsive. He's trusted you in the past. You don't have to set one foot outside the van. You'll be at least twenty feet away with the engine running. I wouldn't ask you to do this if I thought you'd be in any danger. What's more, the odds that we'll find him are infinitesimal. Nicholas owned houses and apartment buildings all over Farberville. I only know the few that Roy mentioned.”

“Have Sullivan go with you.”

“Roy knows how much Sullivan despises him,” she said, lapsing back into urgency and doing so much damage to my hands that I could never become a renowned concert pianist (it was on my midlife-crisis list). “An hour is all I ask. If I haven't found Roy by then, I'll go home and light candles for him. He'll need all the help he can get.”

“Let's not get overly dramatic,” I said as I jerked my hands free before she completely mangled them.

“He's the same age as your daughter, isn't he? You wouldn't hesitate to save her, but Roy's mother isn't as compassionate. She got drunk every day and slept with anyone who'd have her. Roy came home from school one afternoon and found her in bed with the preacher from—”

“You've made your point All right, Morning Rose, well drive by the rental properties and look for lights. Not all the tenants are students, however, and not all the students leave town for the holidays, so you're likely to find yourself apologizing to people for disturbing them at this hour. I will remain in the driver's seat. We will do this for no more than an hour.”

“Oh, thank you,” she gushed, looking as if she might give me a warm Wiccan hug.

I stepped back so abruptly I almost fell off the edge of the porch. “Where's the van?”

“Just around the corner. Please, let's hurry.”

I followed her through the yard, debating if I should congratulate myself on this spontaneous enterprise or drive to the hospital and inquire into vacancies on the sixth floor. The van reeked of patchouli oil and dried peanut butter. It had a stick shift, but I'd mastered that earlier. “Where do we start?”

“Nicholas owned all the houses in our development,” Morning Rose said.

“And the duplexes and houses on Malthea's street,” I countered. “Let's go there, and work our way toward your end of town.”

“Okay,” she muttered, apparently having lost her missionary zeal between the porch and the passenger's seat.

I drove slowly down the pertinent street, noting that Fern's lights were on and Malthea's off. Almost all the other houses were dark, and there were only two cars parked along the curb in the four-block stretch.

“Roy could be inside any of these houses,” I said. “What he's really interested in is somewhere warm to sleep. Maybe he realized that it wouldn't be wise to turn on the lights and advertise his presence.”

“He's not thinking clearly.”

“I agree with that,” I said as I turned toward the south part of town. “Any other properties between here and your area?”

“Nicholas bought Malthea's house next to the cemetery. Roy mentioned that when he went there to rake leaves, the two girls renting it tried to get him to drink wine with them. Undergraduates, likely to go home for Christmas.”

“Where's the house?”

She directed me to a narrow street that ran along the back side of the cemetery. “That's it, I think,” she said, pointing at a shabby little house set well away from the streetlights. “Stop here and I'll check it out. Keep your door locked, Mrs. Malloy, and if anything strange happens, don't come after me. Get away and call the police.”

I watched her creep across the yard, peer into a darkened window, and then vanish behind an unruly barrier of bushes. Five minutes later she had not reappeared. Nothing whatsoever, strange or mundane, had happened.

I turned off the car's engine and rolled down the window. In a more congenial season I would have heard crickets, birds, tree frogs, raucous music from the beer garden, and the mating calls of students in the apartment complexes on the next block. The only thing I could hear now was the rumble of traffic several blocks away.

I rolled up the window and looked at the cemetery beyond a crumbling rock wall. Moonlight glinted off marble and granite monuments as if they were chiseled blocks of ice. Wind riffled branches of trees that had been there longer than the current tenants.

Morning Rose did not return.

I hummed my way through the theme songs of
Gilligan's Island
and
The Brady Bunch
. I attempted the graduation processional but gave up after a few bars. I had a paperback in my purse (dedicated mystery fans always do), but I didn't have a flashlight and it was too dark to see the print, much less read it.

She did not return.

I contemplated how I'd explain her absence to her children on Christmas Eve. “Your mommy,” I'd say, blinking back tears, “was a compassionate woman who sacrificed herself to save a young boy. She was an angel of mercy.”

Still no Morning Rose.

Something was wrong, but I wasn't willing to leave the van to investigate. I finally decided to wait five more minutes, then go to the bookstore and call the police. They'd most likely find Morning Rose on the ground with a sprained ankle or wandering like a wraith through backyards at the end of the block, plaintively bleating Roy's name. I'd feel silly, but not stupid.

I was rehearsing my remarks to the 911 dispatcher when two clinging figures came slowly across the yard. As they reached the street, I could see that Morning Rose had her arms around Roy and appeared to be supporting him. He was hunched over as though he were in the throes of a violent gastric attack, his face masked by his hair, his arms limp at his sides.

“I found him,” she called, “and he's agreed to be taken to the hospital.”

The back door of the van slid open. She helped Roy inside, closed the door, and climbed into the seat next to me. “Everything will be fine,” she said, twisting around to look at him. “You'll be safe. If they let me, I'll sit in your room the rest of the night, just in case you have…a nightmare.”

The wisest thing to do was to get him to the hospital as quickly as possible. Rather than questioning Morning Rose about such minor issues as the whereabouts of his purported gun, I started the engine. “We should be there in fifteen minutes.”

“I won't be safe at the hospital,” Roy said dully. “Malthea's there, so she can tell Ambesek where to find me. I'm going to die. Why didn't you let me go without the agony?”

I pushed down on the accelerator. “Ten minutes, maybe less if we don't hit any red lights.”

Morning Rose tried to smile. “You'll be fine, Roy.”

I was about to reiterate the sentiment when I felt the barrel of a gun pressed against my neck. My foot slipped off the pedal, inadvertently hit the brakes, and brought the van to a shuddery stop in the middle of Thurber Street.

“Start the car,” Roy said in a crisp, cold voice. “If that happens again, you can stand under the mistletoe and kiss your ass good-bye.”

“Roy!” yelped Morning Rose. “You said you were unarmed.”

“Yeah, but everybody knows I'm crazy.” He increased the pressure on my neck. “Drive to the grove. I've got things to do that aren't permitted in the psych ward.”

I did as ordered. Morning Rose sat silently, her hands writhing in her lap and her eyes lowered. I was as angry at her as I was at Roy, but there was no point in scolding her for falling for his ploy. Wiccans could be as obtuse as the rest of us.

“What things?” I asked Roy as I drove through town.

“I'll tell you when we get there. Now shut up and don't do anything impulsive, like run into a parked car. I don't want to hurt you, Mrs. Malloy, but I will.”

“Haven't we been through this before?”

“Someone must have rewound the tape,” he said. “Just drive—okay?”

We arrived without further conversation. I couldn't tell what was going through Morning Rose's mind, but I doubted she would be useful in a confrontation. Spells weren't likely to deflect bullets.

“Here we are,” I said brightly as I pulled over to the fence. “Shall I pick you up later?”

“Get out of the car,” Roy said, unamused. “Morning Rose, take the key. We're all going for a stroll.”

It was not an appealing idea. I climbed down from the seat, went around the front of the van, and waited as Morning Rose pretty much slithered out of her seat. Roy caught her before she fell to the ground.

“Get a grip,” he snarled. “I'm not going to sling you over my shoulder and carry you.”

She touched his face. “You swore you'd go to the hospital, Roy. It's not too late. Why don't we all get back in the van and—”

She gasped as he lightly slapped her.

He waved the gun at the trees in the distance. “Let's go.”

We stumbled across the pasture and into the woods. Roy prodded me with the gun whenever I faltered, and we eventually found the clearing. The altar reminded me of the gravestones in the cemetery, white and cold, eternally lifeless.

“What are you going to do?” Morning Rose asked Roy in a timid squeak.

“I hate to put it this bluntly, but I'm going to shoot Mrs. Malloy.”

“What?” I said, staring at him. “What's your beef with me? I've been trying to help you ever since all this started, for pity's sake. I've listened to your confessions, held your hand while you were interrogated, and pleaded your cause with Sergeant Jorgeson. This is not the best way to express your gratitude, Roy. I don't expect flowers and candy, but a card might be in order.”

“You know too much.”

“All I know is what people have told me, and most of that has been untrue. I may not believe in demons, and I may have my doubts that Malthea's a priestess in some screwy cult, but…” I broke off and sat down on the stump, which was getting as familiar as my living-room sofa (although not as comfortable). “How do you know Malthea's in the hospital?”

For the first time since I'd met him, he smiled. “Maybe a little messenger from hell told me. Now move over there next to the altar. It's time someone put it to good use.”

“I can think of no reason why I should cooperate,” I said, staying where I was and crossing my arms. “You can kill Morning Rose and me, but you know perfectly well that you won't get away with it. If you're found guilty by reason of insanity, they'll lock you up in a hospital until you've quit foaming—then lock you up in a prison for the rest of your life. There won't be any ‘sick little boy' defense.”

Morning Rose moved toward my side, her eyes enormous in the shadowy light. “But that's what he is, Mrs. Malloy. Once he's had proper treatment, he'll be able to make a plea for leniency and serve only a small sentence. He's not a hardened criminal.”