172513.fb2
Sing, O sing this blessed morn
OUTSIDE THE RESTAURANT, MAGGIE HUGGED me good-bye as if I were sailing on the Titanic and she knew about the iceberg.
“Don't worry about me,” I told her. “I really doubt there's a serial killer around with a grudge against sugar plum fairies.”
After she left, I pulled up my hood against the cold wind and considered my options for the afternoon. Now that the weekly paper was on its way to the printer, my time was free-at least for the rest of the day.
Maggie's remark about my being in danger because of my part in the play had struck me as rather silly, but now, as I thought about it, it didn't seem quite as preposterous. However, it also occurred to me that I'd only been a substitute for the real sugar plum fairy-Weezie Clopper.
I needed to talk to Weezie anyway about her letter to the editor, with misspellings in it similar to the ones in poor Bernice's “death threat.” I headed back to the Chronicle building to get Garnet's truck.
“What Cloppers is that?” asked the teenager at the gas station where I stopped for five gallons of overpriced gasoline and some free directions.
“Weezie and Jackson,” I said, hopeful he'd know whom I was talking about.
“Oh, sure, the Jackson what's the borough manager.” He painfully counted out my change and gave me directions in typical Lickin Creek style. “Take the Old Mill Road south for about three miles, look for the burnt maple tree. It'll either be on your left or your right. Turn there onto Orphanage Road, go about a mile to where the fruit stand used to be, then watch for the Hillside Mennonite Church. Hang a left at the cemetery, go past the Martin Farm-or maybe it's the Mellott Farm-till you get to the dirt lane. That's the Clopper place. You can't miss it.”
To my great surprise, I found it, with no trouble. I was beginning to understand the local lingo!
A small, faded sign nailed to a fence post said ALTERATIONS and KNIVES SHARPENED. The winding lane was muddy from melted snow. I gritted my teeth and drove slowly down it to the two-story brick farmhouse nestled at the bottom of a hill.
A flock of Canadian geese who had taken up residence beside a partly frozen pond flapped their wings but didn't seem to be concerned by my presence. There was a general air of seediness to the property, from the white paint flaking off the wood trim of the house to the leaning red barn. A wheelless tractor was suspended on cement blocks next to the house. A scruffy German shepherd sniffed at my tires, then slunk back into the barn.
I knocked on the front door before noticing a handwritten sign saying COME IN. Pushing open the door, I stuck my head in and called out, “Hello… anybody home?”
From somewhere in the back, I heard the whir of a sewing machine. There was no answer to my question, so I went in, closing the door behind me.
There was no entrance hall. I stepped directly into the living room, furnished with the heavy red-plush furniture I associate with the Depression era. An artificial Christmas tree stood in one corner, but it did nothing to brighten the room. A gloomy Jesus looked down at me from several picture frames.
I passed through a dining room, crowded with the kind of enormous, dark oak furniture one would expect to find in El Cid's castle, and followed the sewing machine sound into a large kitchen.
Weezie looked up and nodded. “Have a seat. I'll be finished with this in a jiffy.”
I moved a laundry basket full of clothes off a chair and sat down at the table. A hearty wail erupted from the basket.
“What the…?” I exclaimed.
“It's my granddaughter.” Weezie rose from her sewing and extracted a crying baby from the mound of clothes. “I sit her while my daughter works at the Giant Big-Mart.”
She held the baby and stroked its back until the crying stopped, then gently replaced her in the basket and covered her with a towel. While she was busy with her grandchild, I had plenty of time to look around the kitchen and notice that it was a cheery place, unlike the gloomy front rooms. I found the red and white checked curtains at the windows and the Blue Willow china on the plate rail charming. Less charming was the purple shiner Weezie sported around her left eye.
“What happened to your eye?” I asked.
“Walked into a door.” Her brazen stare dared me to argue with her.
“Sorry to hear that.” She made me think of Mrs. Pof-fenberger, another abused wife. Didn't anybody have decent marriages anymore?
“Let's have a cup a coffee.” Weezie filled two blue and white graniteware mugs from the coffeepot on the stove. “Sugar's on the table. Want milk?”
“Please,” I said.
She took a plastic milk container from the refrigerator, dropped it on the table, and sat down across from me to watch me doctor my coffee.
“I don't often use real milk and sugar. This is a real treat for me,” I said with a smile.
“Don't hold with that artificial stuff. It all causes cancer, you know. You like Christian music?”
“I… guess so. A long time ago when we lived in Okinawa, I sang with a Sunday school chorus. We did The Messiah at an Easter sunrise service on a cliff overlooking the China Sea.” I stopped, because Weezie was staring at me as if I were speaking an unfamiliar language.
“Lived in Oklahoma, huh? Had a cousin went there once. But I didn't mean classical stuff. I'm talking about Christian music.”
She jumped up and left the room for a minute. When she returned she was carrying a small electronic keyboard. She plugged it into the wall, hit a loud chord that provoked a fresh round of screams from the basket baby, and began to sing in a loud voice, “Neeeee-rer mah God, tuh thee, Neeeee-rer tuh thee…”
With a smile pasted on my face, I listened to what seemed like hundreds of hymns. The baby, thankfully, stopped screaming somewhere in the middle of “What uh fuh-rend we hey-vuh in Jeeee-sus.” The wall clock must have stopped, I decided, or else it was running very slowly because that big hand only showed ten minutes had gone by when I knew several hours must have passed.
When she finally stopped, I applauded. Not too enthusiastically. I didn't want to encourage an encore.
“I get real pleasure out of my God-given talent,” she said.
“And so must your family,” I remarked.
“Jackson don't care much for music.” She unplugged the keyboard and wiped the keys with a towel. “You want something altered?”
“Actually, that's not why I'm here.”
She looked at me suspiciously.
“I've come regarding a letter you wrote to the paper. About the cultural center and shopping mall Bernice wanted to build downtown.”
“What about it?”
“Before we print any letter to the editor, we always verify that the letter actually came from the person who signed it.” That was the truth, but usually a quick phone call took care of the matter.
“I done wrote it. You gonna print it?”
“I'd like to,” I said, “but I have to make sure you aren't trying to profit from it in some way.”
She squirmed in her seat. “I don't catch your drift.”
I took a chance and said, “Everybody knows you and Jackson want to sell your farm to a mall developer. Did you want to stop Bernice because she was a business rival?”
Weezie spluttered. “No way! Besides, our deal's off.”
Sometimes the best way to get information out of people is to say nothing, so I waited.
“It's 'cause of Matavious. He went and sold his farming rights to the Conservation Bank. Now nobody can ever use his place for nothing but farming. The builder backed out of our deal, then… said he had to have both Clopper farms.”
“Why would he have done that? Surely, selling the farm would have been lucrative for him.” She looked blank, so I added, “Would have made him lots of money.”
“They don't need it. He's real rich, you know. Doctors always are. He did it out of spite… he hates my husband.”
“Any particular reason? Boundary disputes or something?”
She shook her head. “Jackson's great-granddaddy fought on the wrong side in the War. Nobody round here lets us forget it. Especially them other Cloppers… they say our side of the family disgraced the family name.”
“The Civil War was a long time ago,” I said. “Do you really think people still hold a grudge over something that happened nearly a hundred and forty years ago?”
“I don't think… I know!”
“Perhaps he did it to preserve the land for future generations,” I pointed out. “Farms around here are getting scarce, with all the new suburbs going in.”
“That's what Oretta said… damn bleeding heart! Excuse my language. She cared more for them animals at the shelter than she did for people.”
Her outburst against Oretta prompted me to ask, “Where were you last night… around one in the morning?”
“Home in bed with my husband, where a decent woman should be.” Her eyes opened wide as she began to grasp what I was hinting. “Are you hinting I burned down her house? If anybody said so, then they're a damn liar. Excuse my language.”
“I haven't heard any such thing, Weezie. But the authorities may be asking questions later, of anyone with a grudge against Oretta. You did know she was murdered, didn't you?”
Weezie's hands fluttered to her face, stifling a shocked whimper.
I moved quickly back to discussing Bernice. “If you weren't going to be involved with a rival mall, why were you so opposed to the downtown development?” I asked.
“I'm a good Christian woman,” she sniffed. “I don't hold with that kind of stuff Bernice was into.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Satanism.”
“Satanism? Could you explain?”
“I found out Bernice was into that witchcraft stuff,” she said. “And I done read all about it… they have nekked sex, you know, and drink the blood of babies!” She touched the basket as if to reassure herself that her granddaughter was still there-safe from all things that go bump in the night.
“I have something I want you to look at.” From my purse, I retrieved the letter Bernice had thought of as a death threat. “You wrote this, didn't you? You sent Bernice an anonymous letter threatening her,” I said as I unfolded it.
“What makes you think so?” she said, glaring at me defiantly.
“You misspelled San Antonio the same way in the letter you wrote to the paper.”
Her face turned guilt-red.
“You called Bernice ‘which one.’ You misspelled witch, too. With all the reading you say you've done about witchcraft, I'd think you'd at least have learned how to spell the word.”
Weezie snatched the letter from my hand and tore it into tiny pieces.
“It's a photocopy,” I said.
“She didn't have no right to make all that money. Her and her evil ways.”
“That was enough of a reason to threaten to kill her?”
“I didn't say nothing about killing her. I only meant I was going to tell on her. I figured if decent folk knew what kind of person she was, they'd run her out of town-at least stop her from getting richer off the good people what lives here-and she wouldn't drink no more baby blood.”
I was getting nauseous, and it wasn't from thinking about baby blood. If there were other “good” people like Weezie in Lickin Creek, I could understand why Cassie thought it wise to keep quiet about her wiccan activities. And thinking of Cassie, I asked, “You're the one who tried to scare Cassie Kriner, aren't you? By leaving the broomsticks on our door.”
Her flushed face told me I was right. Religion and superstition are close cousins.
I picked up my purse and stood, preparing to leave. “I hope you realize you might be in danger,” I said.
A look of panic spread across Weezie's flat face.
“Two Lickin Creek women who were playing sugar plum fairies have been murdered. You were the third fairy. There's a pretty good chance you could be the next victim.” Scaring her wasn't very nice, I knew, but I felt some moral satisfaction at shaking up her narrow, self-righteous world.
Outside, ignoring the pungent odor of fertilizer in the air, I took a deep breath then headed for my truck. Weezie stood in the doorway and watched me back up. I couldn't help noticing her shabby cotton dress, so inappropriate for the winter. And the black eye, of course. And suddenly I felt sad… for her… for Mrs. Pof-fenberger… and for all the women like them living hopeless lives. Weezie needed to be hugged, not rebuked, but before I could make a move, she went back into the house and closed the door.
All the way back to town, I thought about Weezie and Jackson and their relationship. She could have been telling the truth about walking into a door, but I doubted it. During our conversation, Weezie had let me know she intensely disliked both Oretta and Bernice. Matavious, too. Was the mousy little seamstress fanatic enough to murder two people?
Back in the borough, the streets were once again torn up for repairs. This time the detour took me through the old section of town, where many deserted commercial buildings spoke of more prosperous times. Ahead of me was the enormous redbrick building that Bernice and Vernell Kaltenbaugh had hoped to turn into an oasis of art and culture. I stopped the truck to take a look at it.
Size was one of the only two things going for it. The place was definitely large enough to contain a lot of stores and art studios, and even the theatre Bernice had hoped would bring music and drama to Lickin Creek.
What really made the site special was the Lickin Creek itself. The sparkling little river tumbled in a waterfall over a small dam, meandered through some underbrush and under a crumbling stone bridge, then disappeared into an archway in the side of the old cold-storage building.
Curious about where it went, I got out of the truck to take a look. Along the base of the building were several arches, about three feet high, covered with wire mesh. To look through one, I knelt on the cracked macadam parking lot and saw that beneath the building the creek spread out into a huge tar-black lake. There was no way to tell how deep it was, but the water was so still and dark it gave the appearance of being bottomless.
My favorite childhood poem by Coleridge came to mind, and I recited, “‘Where Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea.’” It was here that Bernice had dreamed of building her “stately pleasure dome.” Could this deserted part of town really be brought to life again, as San Antonio had done with its River Walk?
As I stood up, dusting off my knees, I noticed a flight of rusted iron steps leading up to a doorway. And the door was slightly ajar. This was a siren call, urging me to climb the stairs and take a look inside the building. A NO TRESPASSING sign was tacked on the door, and beneath it someone had spray-painted a pentacle in a circle and written SATAN LIVES. I looked around to see if anybody was watching and pushed on the door. It creaked, rattled, and screeched as it opened just wide enough to allow me to slip inside.
At first, I found it too dark to see anything and was about to give up in disappointment. But my eyes soon adjusted, and I discerned that I stood on a concrete landing overlooking the mysterious lake. A flight of stairs to my right led to the upper floors of the building.
I soon wished I'd stayed home and minded my own business. The steps were of some kind of metal mesh that I could see through, straight down to the water below, and my vertigo kicked in. And even worse, the whole staircase was creaking and shaking, threatening to pull away from the wall. Realizing I was nearly at the top, I clutched the rail and kept going on wobbly legs until I stepped off the stairs and onto a blessedly solid concrete floor.
How was I ever going to get back down? There had to be another flight of stairs-just had to be! Hoping to find another way out, I looked around the cavernous room, dimly lit by the small amount of light filtering through the cracks in the boarded-up windows. I didn't see another exit, although the room was so large and dark that I realized there could be one somewhere.
What I did see, in the center of the room, was a long table, covered with black cloth. I walked over to take a closer look and saw on it several candles in a variety of colors, a brass bowl full of something smelling sweetly of dried orange peels and incense, a crystal goblet that looked like genuine Waterford, a ceramic statue of the Chinese goddess Kwan Yin, and a dagger with an ornately carved ebony handle. Without a doubt, this had to be where Cassie's coven met. Everything on the table was too expensive and too sophisticated to belong to a group of teenagers in a cult.
I'd discounted as nonsense Weezie's frightened statement that wiccans drank “baby's blood,” but now, seeing the dagger on this makeshift altar, I wondered.
“Hands up, you little shit, or I'll blow your frigging head off.” Although I'd heard nobody come up the creaky stairs, someone obviously had and was standing close behind me.
My arms flew up in the air, reaching for the ceiling.
“Don't shoot,” I cried. “Please. I'm a reporter.”
From behind me came a strangled sound I recognized as laughter. “Some'uns would think that was reason enough to shoot you. Turn around.”
I did as ordered and immediately recognized Stanley Roadcap's melancholy face.
“I thought you were one of those teenagers that break in all the time. I should have known it'd be you.”
Smiling innocently, I hoped, I said politely, “May I put my arms down, please?”
He pointed the barrels of the double-barreled shotgun at the floor, and I dropped my hands to my sides.
“What do you mean you should have known it was me?”
“I heard you'uns been running around town asking questions about my wife and Oretta. It was only a matter of time till you showed up here.” He pointed with his chin to the altar, and a look of distaste crossed his face.
“That's true, Mr. Roadcap. I've been attempting to find out who killed them. I'd think you'd be grateful for that… unless you have a reason for not wanting me to learn the truth.”
The gun barrel jerked up-for a moment I thought Stanley really was going to shoot me-then dropped once more toward the floor.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“I'm talking about murder, and you know it.” I sounded brave, but my insides were quaking. If Stanley really was a murderer, he could shoot me inside this deserted building, drop me into the black water below, and nobody would ever know what had happened to me.
“Why on earth would you'uns think I killed my wife?” He managed to sound astounded that such a thought could cross anybody's mind.
“People say she wanted a divorce and you didn't.”
“That's right. I loved Bernice enough to wait for her to come to her senses. This kind of thing's happened before with her.”
“What kind of thing?”
“Rehab romance, they call it. Every couple of years, she decides to sober up, goes off to a place like Betty Ford, meets a young guy who's got more problems than her, decides she's in love, and asks me for a divorce. After a few months, a year once, she falls off the wagon and asks to come home. That's how she met this VeeKay character. He was into crack, heroin, meth, you name it. Bernice probably thought she was going to save him from himself. At Al-Anon, they say it's a mutual codependence that occurs fairly often with certain types of addiction. I think that's why she was into this kind of stuff, too.”
I was sure “this kind of stuff” meant witchcraft. “Ber-nice had been drinking when I talked to her,” I said. “And the night she died.”
He nodded. “All part of her pattern. The next step would have been to break off her relationship with that young punk.”
Perhaps she already had, I thought. VeeKay might have already received the bad news-that he was out and Stanley was back in. Was his dependency on Bernice so strong that he'd kill her rather than give her up? Was there any truth in what Stanley Roadcap was telling me?
“Were Bernice and Oretta Clopper particularly close?” I asked, still hoping to find the missing link-the one thing that would lead someone to murder both women.
“Not really,” he said. “Bernice enjoyed working with the Little Lickin Creek Theatre and was in a couple of plays Oretta wrote. But she used to laugh with me about what a bad writer Oretta was. I don't think they saw each other much away from the theatre.”
While we'd been talking, the afternoon light coming through the cracks between the boards on the windows had dimmed. “Come on,” he said. “Let's go while we can still see.”
The thought of going down that rickety staircase petrified me. “I'm afraid of the stairs… the whole thing nearly pulled away from the wall as I was coming up.”
“Geez! You didn't use the iron staircase? It's liable to collapse any minute.”
“That's rather dangerous,” I said. “You could be sued if someone got hurt.”
“Not with NO TRESPASSING signs pasted all over the building,” he pointed out. “There's another way. Solid concrete stairwell. Nothing to worry about.”
Although it was still afternoon, the sky was dark by the time I pulled into the circular drive of my Moon Lake mansion. The porch light was on, welcoming me home after my strange afternoon. Thankfully, all the media trucks and vans were gone. Lickin Creek was no longer newsworthy, and I was glad of it.
In the kitchen, Praxythea, who was stirring something in a mixing bowl, glanced up and asked, “Where have you been?”
“I spent half the afternoon on a farm interviewing a religious bigot, and the rest of the time I was held at gunpoint in a deserted building somewhere in Lickin Creek.”
“That's nice,” she said, obviously not listening. “Would you take the cookies out of the oven, please?”
I put on two oven mitts and removed three trays of cookies, while Noel watched with curiosity. I was doing something she'd never seen me do before. “What's with the domesticity?”
Praxythea was wearing a dainty white organdy apron. I wondered if she always traveled with one in her luggage, in case the urge to cook struck unexpectedly. “We agreed to have an old-fashioned Christmas,” she said. “That means lots of cookies. And my special fruitcake, of course.” Opening the refrigerator, she pointed at the huge ceramic bowl taking up an entire shelf.
“What is it?” I asked, peering at an assortment of brightly colored lumps floating in something that smelled of alcohol.
“It's the base for my fruitcake. All the candied fruit and nuts need to soak overnight in a syrup of sugar, lemon juice, and port wine to absorb the flavors. It would be better to let it sit for at least a week, but this will have to do.
“Your mail's on the table.”
I flipped through the envelopes and catalogs. By this time I'd given up expecting to get a letter from Garnet, so I wasn't disappointed. Well, maybe just a little, but I hid it well.
One of the envelopes, with a row of brightly colored foreign stamps, caught my eye because the handwriting was unfamiliar. Usually letters with that country's postmark came from my father.
I ripped it open and looked at the signature. “Tyfani Miracle. It's from my father's new wife!”
Praxythea said, “Yummy,” but I think it was because she was licking cookie dough from her fingers, and not because I received a letter from the bimbo my father had married.
“She says she's going to be coming back to the States in the spring with the baby… can't wait to meet me… heard so much about me from my father… I can imagine! Wonder what he's told her about my mother?”
“Don't be bitter, Tori. He deserves to be happy.”
“Shows what you don't know,” I grumbled. Secretly, I was pleased to receive the letter. At least Tyfani had some of the right instincts. I folded it carefully, and put it in my purse, to reread later. The baby, she wrote, was due any day. Maybe even had been born by now. I couldn't wait to find out if I had a brother or sister.
“Call them,” Praxythea said, as if reading my mind.
“Maybe on Christmas,” I said. “My father gets mad if I don't wait for the holiday rates.”
She smiled and resumed dropping dough onto the cookie sheets.
“Has Fred come home?” I asked, hopeful but fearing the worst.
She shook her head. “I've been all over the neighborhood, calling him.” Catching my downcast look, she added, “Don't worry too much, Tori. I have a strong feeling someone has taken him in. I called the local radio station and asked them to make some announcements. I'm sure we'll hear from someone soon.”
“I didn't get much sleep last night,” I said. “I think I'll go lie down for a little while.” What I really wanted was to have a good cry over Fred-in private.
“I'll wake you in plenty of time to get to the church,” Praxythea said.
I looked at her blankly. “Church?” Then I remembered-tonight was the memorial service for Eddie Douglas, the little boy who'd drowned in the quarry so many years ago.