Valerie Malmont - Death, Snow, and Mistletoe

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.