Valerie Malmont: Death, Snow, and Mistletoe

In a minute and a half, he was back. Since the phone lines were down, the only way we could round up a search-and-rescue team was to physically go after them. We started at the Lickin Creek volunteer fire department, where we interrupted a poker game. The officer in charge sent one of his men to get the dive team. The EMTs were ready to go immediately. Not one person complained about having to go out in the “storm of the century.”

Luscious led the procession to the quarry in his own four-wheel-drive vehicle. Bringing up the rear was Henry Hoopengartner, the coroner. It took the divers only a few minutes to find Ginnie's body.

It was daylight when Luscious drove me home. The storm had passed, leaving massive devastation in its wake. Barns had collapsed, trees were down, and roofs were ripped off. The manger scene in the square had been completely destroyed, but instead of looking upset the people cleaning up the mess looked as cheerful as if they were at a block party. There's nothing like a natural disaster to pull people together!

I was relieved to find my house still standing, minus the front porch, of course. “Come in and have some coffee,” I suggested.

“I'd like that,” he said.

The house was like an ice box. “My cats! I hope they're all right.”

“They've got fur coats on.” Luscious laughed.

They came running in to greet us when they heard our voices. Luscious endeared himself to me forever by picking up Fred and saying, “What a nice big boy he is.”

I found an old-fashioned coffee pot and managed to get it working. While I was occupied with that task, Luscious disappeared.

“Luscious, where are you?” I called.

“In the living room.”

He was on his knees before the fireplace. “Thought I'd take the chill off for you,” he said. “Good thing you thought to bring in all this wood.”

His knobby spine strained against his shirt. I hadn't realized he was so skinny. “I'll fix us something to eat,” I said.

“Thanks. I could use something.”

In New York I would have run down to the deli on the corner, but that was impossible in Lickin Creek. With what I'd learned from watching Praxythea in the kitchen, I managed to put together a rather good-looking breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast. I even sliced some of the “world's best fruitcake,” laid it on a plate, and added some of Praxythea's crescent cookies.

I piled everything on an enormous silver tray commemorating Queen Elizabeth's coronation and carried it out to the living room. We pulled chairs in front of the fire and ate ravenously.

When I came back with fresh coffee, I found Luscious holding the package Ginnie had left for me. “It says ‘To My Best Friend, Tori, from Ginnie.’”

“Go ahead and open it.”

He stripped off the plastic wrapper and opened the box. “It looks like a manuscript. And there's an envelope on top with your name on it.”

“It's a copy of Oretta's play.” I took it from Luscious. “Hard to believe this innocuous pile of paper caused three deaths.” I opened the envelope and through tears that nearly blinded me read Ginnie's letter out loud.

Dear Tori,

By the time you read this, I will have joined Eddie. I should never have let him go off by himself that day. At least now he won't be alone anymore. I am glad, glad, glad that Oretta's dead. She deserved whatever she got. But Bernice didn't, and I'm sorry about that. I was afraid to try poison again after that horrible mix-up. That's why I “borrowed” a gun from that old lech Cletus. When it nearly blew her head off, I knew I couldn't go on with my plan to kill Raymond Zook. He'll never know how lucky he was.

You have been a good friend, Tori, and I would never hurt you. Please remember me with kindness.

Eugenia (Ginnie) Welburn.

The knot on my head throbbed, evidence that she would have and did hurt me. But I still wanted to believe she struck me in desperation, to give her time to get to the quarry, and not because she meant to harm me.

Luscious handed me his handkerchief, which I used without even checking to see if it was clean.

“It looks like she intended to drown herself in the quarry from the beginning,” he said.

I nodded.

“When did you realize she was the killer?” he asked.

“Last night, at Greta's Christmas Eve party when Uncle Zeke drank out of Greta's glass by mistake, it reminded me that at the first rehearsal Oretta had absent-mindedly drunk from the goblet. Bernice complained to Oretta, and they agreed Bernice would drink from the Goblet of Life at the next rehearsal, just as she was supposed to. As I thought about everything that went on, I recalled Ginnie had been passing out cookies and cider at both rehearsals. It would have been easy for her to place a cup of poisoned cider on the pedestal without anyone noticing. But I still didn't suspect her because she didn't seem to have any reason to kill Bernice. She hardly even knew her.

“But as I came to realize that Bernice wasn't the intended victim, I knew the answer had to lie with Oretta. When I read Death in the Afternoon , I discovered the motive. The names of the children who had been involved in Eddie's death were changed ever so slightly, but still recognizable. Oretta became Loretta Klinger.”

Luscious said, “Her maiden name was Singer.”

“And Raymond Zook was Richard Shook. What she didn't bother to change was the name of the victim, Eddie Douglas, or the name of his twin sister, Eugenia, better known to the other kids as Ginnie. I remembered Ginnie commiserating with me when I said I got upset about people calling me Victoria because that isn't my name. She said she hated it when people called her Virginia. That was because Ginnie's nickname wasn't short for Virginia, but Eugenia.”

Luscious interrupted. “I thought your name was Victoria.”

“It's Tori. I was named for the gateway to a Shinto shrine on Okinawa where my mother went to pray for a baby. It should have ended with a double i , but Mother was never any good at spelling.”

“Interesting. Sorry. Go on.”

“After reading the play, I realized Ginnie had a motive-and it was revenge for the death of her twin brother, or retribution, if you want to call it that, on the woman who was responsible. It must have come as a terrible shock when she read that play. She'd been made to feel such guilt by her mother. When she learned the circumstances of his death-that the children could have saved him, or at least told where he was so his body could have been recovered-she snapped.”

“I don't understand why she burned Oretta's house down. She must have known it wouldn't cover her crime.”

“The fire wasn't meant to cover anything. She wanted to destroy Oretta's computer and all copies of the play.

She realized if anyone else read it, they'd start looking at her as a suspect. Just as I did.”

“Were there other reasons you suspected her-before you read the play?”

“There were. Three days ago, I visited Cletus Wilson.” I couldn't help laughing at Luscious's expression. “It wasn't a date. I went over to ask him some questions. He took me downstairs to his shooting range and showed me how to use a gun similar to the one used to kill Oretta. Cletus said he took all his ‘girlfriends’ shooting. Ginnie had mentioned she'd gone over to his house for a drink and had barely escaped with her ‘girlish virtue’ intact. That, and the fact that she lived in the neighborhood and knew about the location of the hidden door in the basement, started me thinking about her. I guess she must have decided to steal a gun rather than buy one and risk being identified.”

“Do you think she broke into your house, too?”

“I'm sure of it. She came in the same way through the basement. She suspected Oretta had brought over a copy of her play the day she brought me the iguana to take care of. But she didn't find it, because Oretta had hidden it under Icky's terrarium, in hopes that when I found it my curiosity would get the better of me and I'd read it.”