Valerie Malmont: Death, Snow, and Mistletoe

Reluctantly, it seemed, she said, “My brother, Peter.”

The other child stepped forward. “I'm eleven,” he said.

“Anybody else with you?”

The shiny heads shook their denial.

“Aren't you two a little old to be playing with a five-year-old?”

“He always tags along,” Peter said.

“What happened up there?”

Pearl, who seemed to be the leader, answered. “Kevin got tired of playing. Said he wanted to go home.”

“We wasn't ready,” Peter said. “He was blubbering, so we told him to go home by hisself.”

“We didn't know he was lost till we got home 'bout an hour later,” Pearl put in.

I had to express my incredulity. “You mean, you just let a five-year-old boy go off by himself in the woods?”

“Sure, why not? He done it all the time. Didn't he, Pearl?”

She nodded vigorously. “All the time.”

“If you guys think of anything you haven't told the police, call me at the paper. You won't get into any trouble.” I handed Pearl a Chronicle business card with my name handwritten on the back. Peter extended his hand, and I gave him one, too.

I decided to get creative. “There's a reward,” I told them. Maybe that'd get one of them talking.

For a brief moment, it seemed that Peter wanted to tell me something. But then he turned to Pearl, and his eyes seemed to search her face. She placed her hand on his upper arm and squeezed until he grimaced. Whatever he'd been about to say, he thought better of it.

“Okay,” Pearl said. “But I can tell you right now, there ain't nothing we didn't already tell the cops.”

They were keeping something back, I was sure of it. I've interviewed enough people in my life to know when someone is lying or telling a half-truth.

“Kevin's lost out there,” I said. “He's very small, and he's cold and frightened. Do me a favor. When you get into your warm beds tonight, think about that.”

Their sullen faces showed no emotion. I left them and drove back to Lickin Creek as rapidly as the slippery road allowed. All I wanted to do was get into a hot shower and steam away my distasteful encounter with the Poffenbergers.

What child is this?

MOON LAKE MARKS THE SOUTHERN BORDER of the Borough of Lickin Creek. Where once a sandy beach stretched along the shore of the crescent-shaped lake, there is now a thorny forest extending to the water's edge. Where once ladies in long white dresses and men in natty suits and straw hats strolled along well-tended paths, there is now only desolation. Where excited children once rode the carousel, there is now only the vine-covered ruin of a pavilion. A decaying dock is a nostalgic reminder of times when renting a rowboat on a dreamy summer day was the stuff memories were made of.

Great mansions, built before the turn of the century as the vacation cottages of the very rich from D.C. and Baltimore, have crumbled for years beneath the ancient trees. In the summer, the area is heavy with the fragrance of wild honeysuckle and old rosebushes. Only in the winter, when the bare branches admit the sun and the snow hides imperfections, can one imagine the original grandeur of the old summer colony.

World War I, the stock market crash, and the development of rapid transportation brought the glory days of Moon Lake to an end. But in the past few years the development had once again sprung to life, and many of the huge homes were now occupied by young professionals, some of whom commuted daily to the cities of D.C. and Baltimore. They arrived in their minivans and BMWs with grand and often unrealistic plans for remodeling the enormous white elephants and filling them with large families.

I entered the colony through the rusted iron gates, turned off the main road circling the lake, and drove down the narrow dirt lane that approached the largest, grandest, and gloomiest of the lakefront mansions: my temporary home-sweet-home. It was the perfect setting for one of the gothic novels I'd loved to read in junior high, even rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a woman who died during childbirth in one of its fairy-tale turrets. I've often thought it would be fun to don a long white nightgown and flit about the yard like a heroine on the cover of a gothic but have decided to wait until the weather gets warmer.

The reason I was living in such unusual splendor was that I was house-sitting for a college professor on sabbatical in England to study the use of contractions in medieval writings. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. I had a free (except for utilities) place to live for the six months I'd committed to editing the Chronicle , and all I had to do for Dr. Ethelind Gallant was make sure the house she'd inherited from her grandparents didn't collapse while she was gone.

It was fun having all that space to spread out in, but the utilities turned out to be a huge expense. I really hadn't considered what it would cost to heat a thirty-room house in the winter. That's why I was angry with myself tonight, for I could see a sliver of light shining through the chink where the velvet drapes didn't quite meet in one of the front-parlor windows. I couldn't afford to be so careless with electricity.

I left Garnet's macho-man pickup truck in the roundabout in front of the mansion and shuffled through the light dusting of snow to the kitchen entrance in back. Some of the new owners had successfully renovated their homes, but Ethelind was not one of them.

Right before she flew off to merry olde England, she'd casually mentioned that the front porch roof was on the verge of collapse. “Don't go slamming the front door,” she'd cautioned me. I hoped the warning note I'd tacked on a pillar near the steps was sufficient to protect unwary visitors.

I hung my coat on the oak hall tree on the enclosed back porch, slipped off my boots, and opened the door into the kitchen. Funny-I thought for sure I'd locked it. I was getting to be more like the natives every day.

Before I could turn on the lights, my nose began to twitch. My nose is unusually sensitive, and I recognized the sweet, spicy scent drifting in the air; it was the aroma of carnations, mingled with the smoky smell of burning firewood.

Good grief! Ethelind had said not to use the fireplaces because she hadn't had the chimneys checked for safety. I hadn't lit any fires. Who had?

As I groped for the light switch next to the door, I realized something was dreadfully wrong. There were no warm, furry cats rubbing against my legs, begging for food and affection.

“Fred… Noel…?” I called in a soft voice. No answer.

I sniffed the air and identified the scent. Only one person I knew wore Bellodgia, a distinctive and expensive perfume from Paris, and that person was Praxythea Evangelista!

Praxythea was the best-known psychic in America, thanks to the many TV talk-show hosts who desperately needed guests. She was always a welcome addition to their shows because of her glamour, intelligence, and her well-publicized talent for helping police departments solve hopeless crimes. Now, she reclined on an antique chaise longue in my front parlor. On her lap lay Fred, curled into a round orange ball and grinning like a big dope. The more sophisticated Noel rested her chin on one of Praxythea's shapely ankles and appeared to be enjoying the unexpected luxury of the fire blazing in the marble-faced fireplace.

On the index finger of the hand that held a crystal goblet half full of amber liquid, an emerald of immense proportions, surrounded by diamonds, glimmered in the firelight. Praxythea's hair, hanging loose around her shoulders, was the color of the flames that threatened to burn the house down. She looked at me through those amazing catlike eyes, which matched her emerald, and smiled. “So glad you have Glenfiddich. Double malts cause psychic confusion-too many clashing vibrations.”