Valerie Malmont - Death, Snow, and Mistletoe

It took a while to check the entire house, but I could not see that anything had been stolen. Thankfully, none of Ethelind's antiques had been touched.

When I tried to call Luscious to tell him what had happened, the girl who answered the phone at Hoopen-gartner's told me he was “down to the state police barracks.” I figured Luscious had enough to worry about without my adding something else to his list. Since nothing was missing, I told the girl not to bother paging him.

My filthy clothes were lying on the bedroom floor, and hot water was running into the claw-footed tub, when I heard a voice from downstairs call out, “Yoo-hoo, it's me, are you ready to go?”

A glance at the Seth Thomas clock on the wall told me it was five-thirty. I'd forgotten all about Ginnie and our bingo date!

I wrapped my terry-cloth robe around me and ran down the stairs. She wouldn't listen to any of my reasons for not going to bingo with her.

“You need to get out,” she insisted. “You mustn't allow a home invasion to change your plans. That's what they want. You've got to show them you're not afraid. If you hurry, we'll only miss the early-bird games.”

“Okay,” I said reluctantly, “I'll go.” I limped upstairs, drained the steaming tub, and took a quick and unsatisfactory shower, wishing all the time that I could learn how to say no like I meant it.

See the blazing Yule before us

WHILE DRIVING TO THE WEST END LICKIN Creek Volunteer Fire Department, where the bingo game was to be held, Ginnie asked dozens of questions about my finding Kevin. Skipping over Peter's involvement, I told her I'd done it with Pearl's help. The notorious Lickin Creek Grapevine would spread the rest of the story soon enough.

Ginnie pulled her Subaru into the parking lot, where it looked out of place among the pickup trucks and SUVs. Just outside the entrance to the social hall, a dozen smokers, coat collars turned up against the cold, huddled in a small circle. Ginnie charged right into their midst and excitedly broke the news of Kevin's rescue. I was pounded on the back and swept through the door in a tobacco-scented cloud of congratulations.

My hand was shaken, my back thumped, and my body hugged by zillions of faceless people. We finally managed to break away from the throng and find two empty folding chairs, which Ginnie claimed by tipping them up against the side of the long table.

She slipped off her coat, revealing a T-shirt that said OUT OF MY WAY-I'M LATE FOR BINGO.

“Cute,” I said.

“I can order one for you. Mine always brings me luck.”

“Thanks anyway.”

She shrugged. “Let's buy our cards and get some dinner.”

We purchased bingo cards, three to a sheet, for the first game. Two sheets for me and four for Ginnie, then stood in line at the food counter.

Ginnie ordered the slippery potpie from a woman wearing a Santa Claus hat and Christmas-ball earrings. I chose French fries and an ox-roast sandwich that looked like barbecue to me. On Ginnie's recommendation I also selected a slice of Montgomery pie, which she assured me was “as near as you can get to heaven without dying.”

While our food was being slapped together, I admired the holiday decor: an aluminum Christmas tree in one corner, paper garlands thumbtacked to the dropped ceiling, and red paper tablecloths on the long tables. We carried our food on orange plastic trays and claimed our seats.

When I tried to eat my sandwich, the flimsy plastic fork I'd been given snapped in two, and shreds of barbecued ox dribbled down the front of my sweater. I wiped up what I could with a paper napkin and tackled the pie, which was sweet and lemony and really very good.

Ginnie placed two grinning plastic dolls with purple hair on the table in front of us. “Good-luck trolls,” she said.

The caller took his place on the platform at the front of the hall. “First game-fill the card. You'uns is playing for this here gathering basket.”

I looked questioningly at Ginnie, who'd just taken the colored markers from our bingo kits. “Gathering basket? What kind of bingo is this?”

“Basket bingo,” she answered happily.

I stared down at my cards. Baskets-with my luck I'd probably win one.

“First number is B-15,” the caller shouted into his microphone. “Repeat, B-15.” Above his head, B-15 lit up on a big wall chart.

Ginnie dabbed green spots on a couple of her cards and uttered a satisfied sigh.

Neither of us won the first few games. Ginnie purchased four more sheets of cards. I cut back to one. An evening of this could get expensive!

We used the time between games to get to know each other better. Ginnie shared with me several funny stories about her adventures as a substitute teacher at the high school, and I told her a few wild tales about my days as an investigative reporter.

We moved on to our reasons for living in Lickin Creek. She knew about Garnet, of course, everybody in town did. But she didn't know that I'd first visited Lickin Creek nearly ten years ago-to be in Alice-Ann's wedding.

“First time I saw Lickin Creek was five years ago,” Ginnie said. “My husband was at the Pentagon, and we'd taken a week's vacation to visit Pennsylvania. We stayed in Gettysburg and made some side trips, and one day we drove across a mountain and stumbled onto this town. We both found it charming and on an impulse stopped into a realtor's office to see what houses cost here.

“Turned out the prices of homes here were about a fifth what they were in the D.C. area. I saw a picture of the house we eventually bought-it was the kind of place I'd dreamed about during all the years we'd lived on one Army post after another-a real home. We went to see it. It needed tons of work. We thought about it for a month, then made an offer. We worked on it every weekend for three years, getting it ready for the day Lem retired.”

I knew there was no Lem in the picture now. She answered my unspoken question. “He had a heart attack at his retirement party. I moved into our dream home alone.”

She didn't give me time to murmur sympathies. “Great,” she said, “they've got a pantry basket coming up. With an eight-way divider! I've just got to win it.”

She didn't, but it didn't seem to bother her. After purchasing another stack of cards, she came back to the table as full of enthusiasm as ever. “I just love bingo!” she said with a contented smile. “Guess it's the feeling that I'm getting something for nothing.”

I mentally totaled up what she'd spent on cards. So far she'd got nothing for a whole lot of something-money.

She rubbed her troll's fuzzy head, “for luck.” Its purple nylon hair was about the same shade as Oretta's pageant costume. I mentioned that to Ginnie.

She grinned wickedly. “It looks better on the troll.” She unzipped the bingo kit and pulled out two brass pins that said I LOVE BINGO. “Nearly forgot these,” she said.

“What did you think of Oretta's play?” she asked, as she fastened one of the pins to my lapel.

“The pageant? It's about as awful as a play can get.”

“I meant the other play; the one she asked us to read.”

I'd forced it out of my mind. “I haven't seen it. Told her I was much too busy. Did you read it?”

“She brought a copy by my house. Hard to believe, but it's so bad it makes the pageant look good. If there's a Broadway play in the last fifty years that she hasn't stolen from, I don't know what it was.” As she spoke, she was oblivious of a man with a silver-white beard and moustache who was headed in our direction. “Oretta told me-Eeek!”