Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying
“PRAXYTHEA, I'M HOME. AND I'VE FOUND Fred.” The echoes in the dark interior of the house signaled that I was alone. In addition, there were none of the usual signs that Praxythea had been there: no cookies baking, no coffeepot on the stove. I wondered what she'd found to occupy her in Lickin Creek on a quiet Sunday afternoon, but I wasn't really concerned. Women like Praxythea seem to have unlimited inner resources.
I put Fred on the floor and placed a bowl of Tasty Tabby Treats in front of him. No telling what he'd been eating during his ordeal. Noel approached him cautiously as he gobbled his food.
“Yes, Noel, it's Fred,” I told her.
She sniffed him from head to toe. After deciding it really was Fred, she knocked him on his back with one swipe of her front paw and began to lick his stomach. Fred just lay there with a goofy expression on his face, so I left them alone.
Coffee would be nice. I'd grown accustomed to Prax-ythea always having a fresh brew going. I filled the pot with water, found the coffee, then gave up when I couldn't find the filters and fixed a cup of instant. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.
I still couldn't get over being astonished at what I'd discovered at Raymond's. Why hadn't anyone in town mentioned Eddie Douglas's twin sister? A call to Cassie gave me my answer.
“I'd completely forgotten,” she said. “It happened a very long time ago. And the Douglases weren't local. The father moved here to work for the defense contractor. They'd only been here a year when the tragedy struck.”
“Still, it seems odd,” I persisted.
“Think back thirty-five years in your own life, Tori.”
“I wasn't even born.”
“Exactly. Neither were at least half the people in town. If they were around, they were involved with their own lives, their own families, and their own problems. A family who moved in and out of their world in one year wouldn't make much of an impact.”
I understood what she was getting at. “If the sister's still alive, she should be notified. Do you have any idea of how to go about looking for her?”
“I'll try the police in the Texas town where the parents died. If they can tell me something, I'll call you back.”
While I talked, Noel had rolled Fred over and begun a major attack on his ears. He didn't seem to mind.
I wondered about the mystery clown. He'd never shown up at Raymond's. Even out of costume, I was sure I'd have recognized him simply by his height. What had been his purpose in luring me there? As I looked down at my cats, I thought it was almost as if Fred had somehow sent him to me. Fred, seeing I was looking at him, narrowed his blank eyes to golden slits and said, Prrrp. He was a dear, there was no doubt about it, but not even Fred had the brains to do that. There had to be a more realistic answer.
The cats, having emptied the bowl of Tasty Tabby Treats, disappeared into the interior of the house for a well-deserved afternoon nap. I put some lettuce in Icky's container and changed the water in his bowl. I yearned for someone to talk to-other than a lizard-someone with whom I could share my happiness over finding Fred.
I shook off the gloom before it had a chance to overwhelm me. I'd ignore the things I couldn't change and concentrate on what I could do, which was finding the person or persons who had killed two women in the past week.
After a quick phone call, I went up to my room to see how bad I looked. Really bad, I noted. The bruise on my forehead had moved down during the day, and my eye was now swollen and an ugly purplish-blue. I tried to cover the area with makeup with little success. In the hope it would draw attention away from the disaster area, I put on some bright red lipstick. One last look in the mirror-I shuddered and tried not to think of myself as looking like the female equivalent of the parade clown.
Dr. Cletus Wilson lived about a half mile away, a distance I would normally have walked, but not with the snow coming down as hard as it now was. His house would have been an exact duplicate of mine, except it had been carefully and expensively restored to its original splendor, while mine was in danger of collapsing any second. New cedar shingles covered the exterior, windows with many panes reflected the sunset as though on fire, porches were freshly painted.
Before I could touch the lion's head door knocker, the door swung open and a smiling Dr. Wilson greeted me warmly. I felt like Little Red Riding Hood meeting the wolf and controlled the impulse to say, “My, what big teeth you have.” He didn't strike me as the type of person who would find that funny.
While he helped me out of my coat and hung it on a mahogany and marble hall tree, I gazed in awe at the huge display of guns, swords, and banners hanging on the walls of the entry hall.
“What do you think?” he asked, squeezing my shoulder.
I moved sideways, shaking off the offending hand. “It's like being in a museum.”
“Come into the living room. I've got lots more to show you.”
He wore a red brocade smoking jacket with a black velvet collar and had tied a white silk scarf around his neck like an ascot. Except for old black-and-white movies on American Movie Classics, I'd never seen anything quite like it. “Nice outfit,” I commented. “Did you pick it up at an antique store?”
Ronald Coleman beamed at me. “How nice of you to notice. I have a fondness for the elegance of days gone by.”
The living room was warm, unlike my own barn of a house, and a fire sparkled in the marble fireplace. Dr. Wilson handed me a stemmed martini glass. “With a twist,” he said. “So much more elegant than olives.”
I hate martinis, but I took the drink and sipped it with a murmur of appreciation for the twist.
He directed me to the Empire sofa. I realized immediately that I'd made a mistake when he sat next to me, way too close.
“So glad you called,” he said, blasting me straight in the face with his denture breath. “After we met at bingo the other night, I thought you would.”
What a conceited ass! And you'd think a dentist could afford a decent set of choppers.
“I am so anxious to see your treasures, Dr. Wilson.” I fluffed up a throw pillow and wedged it between us.
He leered, misinterpreting my remark as a witty double entendre. “I'll be happy to show you what I've got. And please call me Cletus.”
“I meant Civil War treasures,” I said, with a giggle I hoped sounded girlish and flirty.
“Of course you did.” I expected the Monty Python troupe to jump out with a “nudge, nudge, wink, wink.”
Cletus led me into an adjoining room, where the walls were lined with glassed-in shelves. “No one, outside of the National Park Service, has a more extensive collection of Civil War artifacts,” he said proudly.
“I believe it!” I gasped at the enormous cannon in the center of the room.
“Had to reinforce the floor with steel beams to hold that little number.”
We circled the room, while he explained the significance of every item in every case, down to the last bullet. When I thought we were finally done, he announced, “And now, on to the jewels of my collection.” He slid open a pocket door to the next room.
My parents and I had once fled a country during a coup d'état, where the revolutionary army hadn't owned as many guns as Cletus had in this room.
“Does all of this date from the Civil War?”
“Sure does.” He pointed to a rifle hanging from the wall. “This one here's one of more than thirty-seven thousand muzzle-loaders discarded on the Gettysburg battlefield-nearly half of them jammed during the battle. That one's a Spencer, the first repeater to use metallic cartridges.”
As we moved down the line, Cletus described in great detail, and with a good deal of relish, the carnage caused by each type of weapon. “And even though this here Henry could fire twenty-five rounds a minute, it never got to be as popular as the Spencer.”
We'd come full circle. I longed for a drink. Even another martini would be welcome.
“I have a real treat for you,” he announced. “Follow me, my dear.”
Now what? I wondered. Flame throwers? Hand grenades? Land mines? Mummified soldiers? Against my better judgment, I followed him down a flight of stairs to the basement.
“My very own firing range.” He flung open the door and stepped aside to let me in. “And I've just had it soundproofed, so that bitchy Mrs. Kauffman next door won't have any more cause to complain. Here, put these on,” he said, handing me a set of earmuffs. “We'll take a shot or two.”
The target was a life-size depiction of a soldier in a Confederate uniform. “I don't really want to shoot at a person, even a make-believe one,” I protested.
“Have it your way.” He pressed a button. The soldier fell back and was replaced by Bambi, with a white circle drawn right over her heart.
“That's much nicer.” My sarcasm seemed to blow right over his head.
After carefully wiping his hands on a clean towel, he took a gun from a satin-lined box and held it up for me to admire. “This is a Colt 1860, the principal sidearm used during the war.”
“Model 1860? Is that the gun you reported stolen? The one found at the manger?”
“Same model. Different gun. Luscious picked up the other yesterday.”
“Did he say why?” I wondered if Luscious had told Cletus that we suspected his gun had been the one used to kill Oretta Clopper.
“Uh-uh. Guess he wanted to check it for fingerprints. See if he can catch the punks that broke in.” His face turned purple as he began a rant about the Lickin Creek crime wave. According to Cletus Wilson, all evil in the world stemmed from males between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. “It's a damn shame when a man's home is invaded like that. Some nights I can't even sleep for thinking about it. They all need lined up and shot.”
It struck me as funny that even an educated dentist dropped to be from his sentences, like most Lickin Creekers did.
“How did they get in?” I asked. “With all these guns, you must have pretty tight security.”
“Thought I did, but I forgot about the damn door here in the basement. It's so well hidden by shrubbery that only kids from this neighborhood who live in similar houses would know about it being there. They broke out one of the glass panes, then just slid the bolt open. I've taken care of that now. Got a steel door in. Nobody's going to break through that baby.” Ronald Coleman had been transformed into Charles Bronson.
The hidden basement door was the same way someone had invaded my house. I agreed with Cletus that it had to have been done by someone familiar with the way these old houses were built. What I didn't understand, though, was why nothing had been taken from my house. And very little of value was taken from his, and even that was all found in the manger. Maybe he was right about it being teenagers out for thrills. Cletus's Civil War artifacts were obviously valuable, and Ethe-lind's antiques were worth thousands. A professional burglar would have cleaned out both houses.
I still wondered if his story about the robbery was a cover-up. “Were you here when they broke in?” I asked.
“Uh-uh.” He smiled slyly. “I was at a friend's house, if you know what I mean.” Again, “nudge, nudge, wink wink.”
I smiled like a conspirator. “You naughty boy, you have a friend, and you're flirting with me.”
“We have an understanding, her and me.”
I restrained the impulse to scream, She and I, and asked, “Were you at her house the night of the fire when Oretta Clopper was killed?”
“No. My friend was staying here that night. Why are you asking?”
“You do know that Oretta was shot, don't you?”
He nodded.
“The police and the fire chief think the fire was set to cover up her murder. If you were home, I thought you might have seen or heard something that would help the police find her killer.”
“I see,” he said. “Sorry I can't help, but I was otherwise occupied, if you know what I mean.”
“Would you be willing to give me your friend's name and address? Perhaps she noticed something you didn't.”
“I don't suppose she'd mind,” he said. “We have nothing to be ashamed of.” He wrote something on a scrap of paper and handed it to me. I glanced at it, didn't recognize the name, and stuck it in my pocket. If the woman backed up his story, it was a classic alibi.
He placed the gun in my hand and stood close behind me. “Now, Tori. Let's try a few shots.” His breath was hot in my ear, as he said, “I always bring my girlfriends down here for some target practice. You can tell a lot about a gal by the way she handles a weapon.”
I placed the gun on the ledge and said firmly, “Dr. Wilson, I am not one of your girlfriends. And I am not going to shoot at Bambi or any other target you put up. I was a reporter on the police beat in New York for too many years, and I've had the misfortune to see firsthand the kind of havoc guns can cause.”
Unabashed, he adjusted his ascot and smiled at me. “Can I offer you another martini, my dear?”
For some reason, the second martini went down a lot smoother than the first. Before I left, I was feeling quite warm and content. Even Cletus didn't seem as noxious as I'd first found him.
When I entered my house, Praxythea was sitting at the kitchen table with Fred on her lap. In one excited burst, I told her the story of Fred's adventures and amazing rescue. My voice trailed off as I realized she wasn't giving me her total attention.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“Not at all.”
I could tell by the glint in her emerald-green eyes that something was very wrong. I waited for her to say more.
“I'm sorry, Tori, but I have to leave,” she said.
“You mean right after Christmas? I didn't expect you could stay for much longer.”
She studiously avoided looking at me. “Now, Tori. I have to go now. My friend sent his plane. It's at the Lickin Creek airport, now. I've been waiting for you to come home so I could say good-bye.”
Her suitcases were next to the door.
Stunned, I sat down and stared at her. “What about our old-fashioned Christmas? All our plans? I was really looking forward to it.”
“But you have so much, Tori. I didn't think he cared, but it turns out he needs me more than you do. I'm sorry.”
I have so much? What could she possibly mean? Wasn't I the loneliest person on earth? I thought of all the people in the world who were so much worse off, and my despair slowly vanished. It was time to climb off my pity-pot. “I understand. Really.”
“There's one thing I'd like to ask of you,” Praxythea said.
“Ask away.”
“I wonder if you'd mind if I took Icky with me? He and I have bonded over the past few days, and I know he'll miss me.”
She wanted to take the lizard! Hallelujah. God works in mysterious ways.
“He's really not mine to give away,” I reluctantly pointed out.
“But he's homeless. Now that Oretta's gone, who's going to find a home for him?”
“Good point. He's yours.” I walked over to the terrar-ium and chanted, “Adios, sayonara, adieu, dzaijyan, lakon, aloha, auf Wiedersehen, ciao.” I could think of no more ways to say good-bye.
“Have you been drinking, Tori?” Praxythea stood at my side with a disapproving look on her face.
“Two martinis,” I admitted.
“I'd stay away from them in the future if I were you.”
Outside, a car horn tooted. “That must be the taxi,” she said. “Can you help me carry Icky's stuff out?”
As we picked up his home, some papers that had been under the terrarium fell to the floor. “Let them lie,” I said. “I'll get them later.”
“They could be instructions for his care and feeding. We'd better look at them.”
I gathered the pages into an inch-high stack. “For Pete's sake,” I said as I looked through them. “Death in the Afternoon by Oretta Clopper. It's a copy of Oretta's play! I see she continued with the tradition of stealing other people's titles.”
“She must have dropped it when she brought Icky in,” Praxythea said.
“Accidentally on purpose. When she asked me if I wanted to read it, I made some sort of excuse about being too busy. My guess is she left it here knowing my natural curiosity would get the better of me.”
I tossed it on top of the Christmas catalogs stacked on the counter and took hold of one end of Icky's abode. “We'd better get you on your way before the weather turns really bad.”
After she left, in a flurry of promises to come back as soon as possible, I sat down at the table and drank the last cup of freshly-brewed coffee I'd probably have this year. Things could be worse, I thought. After all, I've got a nice place to live, a job, some new friends, and a baby brother due any minute. I don't need Praxythea to have a nice Christmas.
To break the extraordinary silence, I turned on the radio. Public Broadcasting was offering Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. “The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” painfully reminded me that Oretta's adaptation of the ballet had ended up being “The Death of the Sugar Plum Fairies.”
Even the cats looked dejected. Fred probably wished he was back at the art studio where he was a star. We were all startled when the phone rang with a call from Luscious.
“I don't believe this,” I shouted, after he was finished talking. “We can't just quit!”
“I don't have any choice, Tori. Marvin Bumbaugh and the mayor just left my office. They said there have been too many complaints about you, and they want it to stop. Now!”
“But what about your job?” I stammered. “We've got to find the killer or you'll be fired.”
He sounded as low as a man could possibly be when he said, “You don't get it, do you? They gave me two weeks’ notice.”
“But they can't do that.”
“They can, and they have. It's over, Tori. All over.”