Valerie Malmont - Death, Snow, and Mistletoe

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.”