The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries Part 86

He turned away. What a gang they all were! What a shabby, out-at-elbows gang! Not a decently cut suit or a well-turned-out woman among the lot of them! And he had imagined that his money had been going to support some of them! Why, they all simply reeked of honest poverty! He could see it now. Bessie explained everything. It was typical of her twisted mind to wring cash from him by threats and give it all away in charities.

"You have always been so good to us." Come to think of it, his stepmother was worth the whole of the rest put together. She must be hard put to it, keeping up Father's old house, with precious little coming in from her children. Perhaps one day, when his money was really his own again, he might see his way to do something for her ... But there was a lot to do before he could indulge in extravagant fancies like that.

Hilda was coming across the room towards him. Her elegance made an agreeable contrast to the get-up of the Grigson women. She looked tired and rather bored, which was not unusual for her at parties at this house.

"Timothy," she murmured, "can't we get out of here? My head feels like a ton of bricks, and if I'm going to be fit for anything tomorrow morning--"

Timothy cut her short.

"You go home straight away, darling," he said. "I can see that it's high time you were in bed. Take the car. I can walk-it's a fine evening. Don't wait up for me."

"You're not coming? I thought you said--"

"No. I shall have to stay and see the party through. There's a little matter of family business I'd better dispose of while I have the chance."

Hilda looked at him in slightly amused surprise.

"Well, if you feel that way," she said. "You seem to be very devoted to your family all of a sudden. You'd better keep an eye on Bessie while you are about it. She's had about as much as she can carry."

Hilda was right. Bessie was decidedly merry. And Timothy continued to keep an eye on her. Thanks to his attentions, by the end of the evening, when Christmas Day had been seen in and the guests were fumbling for their wraps, she had reached a stage when she could barely stand. "Another gla.s.s," thought Timothy from the depths of his experience, "and she'll pa.s.s right out."

"I'll give you a lift home, Bessie," said Roger, looking at her with a professional eye. "We can just squeeze you in."

"Oh, nonsense, Roger!" Bessie giggled. "I can manage perfectly well. As if I couldn't walk as far as the end of the drive!"

"I'll look after her," said Timothy heartily. "I'm walking myself, and we can guide each other's wandering footsteps home. Where's your coat, Bessie? Are you sure you've got all your precious presents?"

He prolonged his leave-taking until all the rest had gone, then helped Bessie into her worn fur coat and stepped out of the house, supporting her with an affectionate right arm. It was all going to be too deliciously simple.

Bessie lived in the lodge of the old house. She preferred to be independent, and the arrangement suited everyone, especially since James after one of his reverses on the turf had brought his family to live with his mother to save expense. It suited Timothy admirably now. Tenderly he escorted her to the end of the drive, tenderly he a.s.sisted her to insert her latchkey in the door, tenderly he supported her into the little sitting-room that gave out of the hall.

There Bessie considerately saved him an enormous amount of trouble and a possibly unpleasant scene. As he put her down upon the sofa she finally succ.u.mbed to the champagne. Her eyes closed, her mouth opened and she lay like a log where he had placed her.

Timothy was genuinely relieved. He was prepared to go to any lengths to rid himself from the menace of blackmail, but if he could lay his hands on the d.a.m.ning letter without physical violence he would be well satisfied. It would be open to him to take it out of Bessie in other ways later on. He looked quickly round the room. He knew its contents by heart. It had hardly changed at all since the day when Bessie first furnished her own room when she left school. The same old battered desk stood in the corner, where from the earliest days she had kept her treasures. He flung it open, and a flood of bills, receipts, charitable appeals and yet more charitable appeals came cascading out. One after another, he went through the drawers with ever increasing urgency, but still failed to find what he sought. Finally he came upon a small inner drawer which resisted his attempts to open it. He tugged at it in vain, and then seized the poker from the fireplace and burst the flimsy lock by main force. Then he dragged the drawer from its place and settled himself to examine its contents.

It was crammed as full as it could hold with papers. At the very top was the programme of a May Week Ball for his last year at Cambridge. Then there were snapshots, press-cuttings-an account of his own wedding among them-and, for the rest, piles of letters, all in his handwriting. The wretched woman seemed to have h.o.a.rded every sc.r.a.p he had ever written to her. As he turned them over, some of the phrases he had used in them floated into this mind, and he began to apprehend for the first time what the depth of her resentment must have been when he threw her over.

But where the devil did she keep the only letter that mattered?

As he straightened himself from the desk he heard close behind him a hideous, choking sound. He spun round quickly. Bessie was standing behind him, her face a mask of horror. Her mouth was wide open in dismay. She drew a long shuddering breath. In another moment she was going to scream at the top of her voice ...

Timothy's pent-up fury could be contained no longer. With all his force he drove his fist full into that gaping, foolish face. Bessie went down as though she had been shot and her head struck the leg of a table with the crack of a dry stick broken in two. She did not move again.

Although it was quiet enough in the room after that, he never heard his stepmother come in. Perhaps it was the sound of his own pulses drumming in his ears that had deafened him. He did not even know how long she had been there. Certainly it was long enough for her to take in everything that was to be seen there, for her voice, when she spoke, was perfectly under control.

"You have killed Bessie," she said. It was a calm statement of fact rather than an accusation.

He nodded, speechless.

"But you have not found the letter."

He shook his head.

"Didn't you understand what she told you this evening? The letter is in the post. It was her Christmas present to you. Poor, simple, loving Bessie!"

He stared at her, aghast.

"It was only just now that I found that it was missing from my jewel-case," she went on, still in the same flat, quiet voice. "I don't know how she found out about it, but love-even a crazy love like hers-gives people a strange insight sometimes."

He licked his dry lips.

"Then you were Leech?" he faltered.

"Of course. Who else? How otherwise do you think I could have kept the house open and my children out of debt on my income? No, Timothy, don't come any nearer. You are not going to commit two murders tonight. I don't think you have the nerve in any case, but to be on the safe side I have brought the little pistol your father gave me when he came out of the army in 1918. Sit down."

He found himself crouching on the sofa, looking helplessly up into her pitiless old face. The body that had been Bessie lay in between them.

"Bessie's heart was very weak," she said reflectively. "Roger had been worried about it for some time. If I have a word with him, I daresay he will see his way to issue a death certificate. It will, of course, be a little expensive. Shall we say a thousand pounds this year instead of five hundred? You would prefer that, Timothy, I dare say, to-the alternative?"

Once more Timothy nodded in silence.

"Very well. I shall speak to Roger in the morning-after you have returned me Bessie's Christmas present. I shall require that for future use. You can go now, Timothy."

THAT'S THE TICKET.

Mary Higgins Clark.

AFTER HER HUSBAND SUDDENLY DIED, MARY HIGGINS CLARK, a relatively young mother of five, arose at five o'clock every morning, placed her typewriter on the kitchen table, and began writing a book before getting her kids off to school. Her first suspense novel, Where Are the Children? (1975), was an original combination of the Gothic novel and its modern counterpart, the novel of romantic suspense, in which the emphasis was not on romance but on suspense that became almost unbearable as the heroine was inundated with one dire situation after another. Clark followed that formula in subsequent books to become the world's bestselling writer of suspense fiction. "That's the Ticket" was first published in Mistletoe Mysteries, edited by Charlotte MacLeod (New York, Mysterious Press, 1989).

That's the Ticket.

MARY HIGGINS CLARK.

IF WILMA BEAN HAD NOT BEEN IN Philadelphia visiting her sister, Dorothy, it never would have happened. Ernie, knowing that Wilma had watched the drawing on television, would have rushed home at midnight from his job as a security guard at the Do-Shop-Here Mall in Paramus, New Jersey, and they'd have celebrated together. Two million dollars! That was their share of the special Christmas lottery.

Instead, because Wilma was in Philadelphia paying a pre-Christmas visit to her sister, Dorothy, Ernie stopped at the Friendly Shamrock Watering Hole for a pop or two and then topped off the evening at the Harmony Bar six blocks from his home in Elmwood Park. There, nodding happily to Lou, the owner-bartender, Ernie ordered his third Seven and Seven of the evening, wrapped his plump sixty-year-old legs around the bar stool, and dreamily reflected on how he and Wilma would spend their newfound wealth.

It was then that his faded blue eyes fell upon Loretta Thistlebottom, who was perched on the corner stool against the wall, a stein of beer in one hand, a Marlboro in the other. Ernie thought Loretta was a very attractive woman. Tonight her brilliant blond hair curled on her shoulders in a pageboy, her pinkish lipstick complemented her large purple-accented green eyes, and her generous bosom rose and fell with sensuous regularity.

Ernie observed Loretta with almost impersonal admiration. It was well known that Loretta Thistlebottom's husband, Jimbo Potters, a beefy truck driver, was extremely proud of the fact that Loretta had been a dancer in her early days and was also extremely jealous of her. It was hinted he wasn't above knocking Loretta around if she got too friendly with other men.

However, since Lou the bartender was Jimbo's cousin, Jimbo didn't mind if Loretta sat around the bar the nights Jimbo was on a long-distance haul. After all, it was a neighborhood hangout. Plenty of wives came in with their husbands and as Loretta frequently commented, "Jimbo can't expect me to watch the tube by myself or go to Tupperware parties whenever he's carting garlic buds or bananas along Route 1. As a person born in the trunk to a prominent show business family, I need people around."

Her show business career was the subject of much of Loretta's conversation and tended to grow in importance as the years pa.s.sed. That was also why even though she was legally Mrs. Jimbo Potters, Loretta still referred to herself as Thistlebottom, her stage name.

Now in the murky light shed by the Tiffany-type globe over the well-scarred bar, Ernie silently admired Loretta, reflecting that even though she had to be in her mid-fifties, she had kept her figure very, very well. However, he wasn't really concerned about her. The winning lottery ticket, which he had pinned to his undershirt, was warming the area around his heart. It was like having a glowing fire there. Two million dollars. That was one hundred thousand dollars a year less taxes for twenty years. They'd be collecting well into the twenty-first century. By then they might even be able to take a cook's tour to the moon.

Ernie tried to visualize the expression on Wilma's face when she heard the good news. Wilma's sister, Dorothy, didn't have a television and seldom listened to the radio, so down in Philadelphia Wilma wouldn't know that now she was wealthy. The minute he'd heard the good news on his portable radio, Ernie had been tempted to rush to the phone and call Wilma but immediately decided that that wouldn't be fun. Now Ernie smiled happily, his round face creasing into a merry pancake as he visualized Wilma's homecoming tomorrow. He'd pick her up at the train station at Newark. She'd ask him how close they'd come to winning. "Did we have two of the numbers? Three of the numbers?" He'd tell her they didn't even have one of the winning combination. Then when they got home, she'd find her stocking hung on the mantel, the way they used to do when they were first married. In those days Wilma had worn stockings and garters. Now she wore queen-sized pantyhose, so she'd have to dig down to the toe for the ticket. He'd say, "Just keep looking; wait till you see the surprise." He could just picture the way she'd scream and throw her arms around him.

Wilma had been a darn cute young girl when they were married forty years ago. She still had a pretty face and her hair, a soft white-blond, was naturally wavy. She wasn't a showgirl type like Loretta but she suited him just right. Sometimes she got a little cranky about the fact that he liked to bend the elbow with the boys now and then but for the most part, Wilma was A-okay. And boy, what a Christmas they'd have this year. Maybe he'd take her to Fred the Furrier and get her a mouton lamb or something.

Contemplating the pleasure it would be to manifest his generosity, Ernie ordered his fourth Seven and Seven. His attention was diverted by the fact that Loretta Thistlebottom was engaged in a strange ritual. Every minute or two, she laid the cigarette in her right hand in the ashtray, the stein of beer in her left hand on the bar, and vigorously scratched the palm, fingers, and back of her right hand with the long pointed fingernails of her left hand. Ernie observed that her right hand was inflamed, angry red and covered with small, mean-looking blisters.

It was getting late and people were starting to leave. The couple who had been sitting next to Ernie and at a right angle to Loretta departed. Loretta, noticing that Ernie was watching her, shrugged. "Poison ivy," she explained. "Would you believe poison ivy in December? That dumb sister of Jimbo decided she had a green thumb and made her poor jerk of a husband rig up a greenhouse off their kitchen. So what does she grow? Weeds and poison ivy. That takes real talent." Loretta shrugged and repossessed the stein of beer and her cigarette. "So how ye been, Ernie? Anything new in your life?"

Ernie was cautious. "Not much."

Loretta sighed. "Me neither. Same old stuff. Jimbo and me are saving to get out of here next year when he retires. Everyone tells me Fort Lauderdale is a real swinging place. Jimbo's getting piles from all these years driving the rig. I keep telling him how much money I could make as a waitress to help out but he don't want anyone flirting with me." Loretta scratched her hand against the bar and shook her head. "Can you imagine after twenty-five years, Jimbo still thinks every guy in the world wants me? I kind of love it but it can be a pain in the neck, too." Loretta sighed, a world-weary sigh. "Jimbo's the most pa.s.sionate guy I ever knew and that's saying something. But as my mother used to say, a good roll in the sack is even better when there's a full wallet between the spring and mattress."

"Your mother said that?" Ernie was bemused at the practical wisdom. He began to sip his fourth Seagrams and Seven-Up.

Loretta nodded. "She was a million laughs but she told it straight. The heck with it. Maybe someday I'll win the lottery."

The temptation was too great. Ernie slipped over the two empty bar stools as fast as his out-of-shape body would permit. "Too bad you don't have my luck," he whispered.

As Lou the bartender yelled, "Last call, folks," Ernie patted his ma.s.sive chest in the spot directly over his heart.

"Like they say, Loretta, 'X marks the spot.' There were sixteen winnin' tickets in the special Christmas drawing. One of them is right here pinned to my underwear." Ernie realized that his tongue was beginning to feel pretty heavy. His voice sank into a furtive whisper. "Two million dollars. How about that?" He put his finger to his lips and winked.

Loretta dropped her cigarette and let it burn unnoticed on the long-suffering surface of the bar. "You're kidding!"

"I'm not kidding." Now it was a real effort to talk. "Wilma 'n me always bet the same number 1-9-4-7-5-2. 1947 'cause that was the year I got out of high school. 'Fifty-two, the year Wee Willie was born." His triumphant smile left no doubt to his sincerity. "Crazy thing is Wilma don't even know yet. She's visiting her sister, Dorothy, and won't get home till tomorrow."

Fumbling for his wallet, Ernie signaled for his check. Lou came over and watched as Ernie stood uncertainly on the suddenly tilting floor. "Ernie, wait around," Lou ordered. "You're bombed. I'll drive you home when I close up. You gotta leave your car here."

Insulted, Ernie started for the door. Lou was insinuating he was tanked. What a nerve. Ernie opened the door of the women's restroom and was in a stall before he realized his mistake.

Sliding off the bar stool, Loretta said hurriedly, "Lou, I'll drop him off. He only lives two blocks from me."

Lou's skinny forehead furrowed. "Jimbo might not like it."

"So don't tell him." They watched as Ernie lurched unsteadily out from the women's restroom. "For Pete sake, do you think he'll make a pa.s.s at me?" she asked scornfully.

Lou made a decision. "You're doing me a favor, Loretta. But don't tell Jimbo."

Loretta let out her fulsome ha-ha bellow. "Do you think I want to risk my new caps? They won't be paid for for another year."

From somewhere behind him Ernie vaguely heard the din of voices and laughter. Suddenly he was feeling pretty rotten. The speckled pattern of the tile floor began to dance, causing a sickening whirl of dots to revolve before his eyes. He felt someone grasp his arm. "I'm gonna drop you off, Ernie." Through the roaring in his ears, Ernie recognized Loretta's voice.

"d.a.m.n nice of you, Loretta," he mumbled. "Guess I chelebrated too much." Vaguely he realized that Lou was saying something about having a Christmas drink on the house when he came back for his car.

In Loretta's aging Bonneville Pontiac he leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. He was unaware that they had reached his driveway until he felt Loretta shaking him awake. "Gimme your key, Ernie. I'll help you in."

His arm around her shoulders, she steadied him along the walk. Ernie heard the sc.r.a.ping of the key in the lock, felt his feet moving through the living room down the brief length of the hallway.

"Which one?"

"Which one?" Ernie couldn't get his tongue to move.

"Which bedroom?" Loretta's voice sounded irritated. "Come on, Ernie, you're no feather to drag around. Oh, forget it. It has to be the other one. This one's full of those statues of birds your daughter makes. Cripes, you couldn't give them away as a door prize in a looney bin. No one's that nutty."

Ernie felt a flash of instinctive resentment at Loretta's putdown of his daughter, Wilma Jr., Wee Willie as he called her. Wee Willie had real talent. Someday she'd be a famous sculptor. She'd lived in New Mexico ever since she dropped out of school in '68 and supported herself working evenings as a waitress at McDonald's. Days she made pottery and sculpted birds.

Ernie felt himself being turned around and pushed down. His knees buckled and he heard the familiar squeak of the boxspring. Sighing in grat.i.tude, in one simultaneous movement, he stretched out and pa.s.sed out.

Wilma Bean and her sister, Dorothy, had had a pleasant day. In small doses Wilma enjoyed being with Dorothy, who was sixty-three to Wilma's fifty-eight. The trouble was that Dorothy was very opinionated and highly critical of both Ernie and Wee Willie, and Wilma could take just so much of that. But she was sorry for Dorothy. Dorothy's husband had walked out on her ten years before and now was living high on the hog with his second wife, a karate instructor. Dorothy and her daughter-in-law did not get along very well. Dorothy still worked part-time as a claims adjuster in an insurance office and as she frequently told Wilma, "the phony claims don't get past me."

Very few people believed they were sisters. Dorothy was, as Ernie put it, like one side of eleven, just straight up and down with thin gray hair which she wore in a tight knot at the back of her head. Ernie always said she should have been cast as Carrie Nation; she'd have looked good with a hatchet in her hand. Wilma knew that Dorothy was still jealous that Wilma had been the pretty one and that even though she'd gotten heavy, her face hadn't wrinkled or even changed very much. But still, Wilma theorized, blood is thicker than water and a weekend in Philadelphia every four months or so and particularly around holiday time was always enjoyable.

The afternoon of the lottery drawing day, Dorothy picked Wilma up from the train station. They had a late lunch at Burger King, then drove around the neighborhood where Grace Kelly had been raised. They had both been her avid fans. After mutually agreeing that Prince Albert ought to marry, that Princess Caroline had certainly calmed down and was doing a fine job, and that Princess Stephanie should be slapped into a convent until she straightened out, they went to a movie, then back to Dorothy's apartment. She had cooked a chicken, and over dinner, late into the evening, they gossiped.

Dorothy complained to Wilma that her daughter-in-law had no idea how to raise a child and was too stubborn to accept even the most helpful suggestions.

"Well, at least you have grandchildren," Wilma sighed. "No wedding bells in sight for Wee Willie. She has her heart set on her sculpting career."

"What sculpting career?" Dorothy snapped.

"If we could just afford a good teacher," Wilma sighed, trying to ignore the dig.

"Ernie shouldn't encourage Willie," Dorothy said bluntly. "Tell him not to make such a fuss over that junk she sends home. Your place looks like a crazy man's version of a birdhouse. How is Ernie? I hope you're keeping him out of bars. Mark my words. He has the makings of an alcoholic. All those broken veins in his nose."

Wilma thought of the outsized Christmas boxes that had arrived from Wee Willie a few days ago. Marked Do not open till Christmas, they'd been accompanied by a note. "Ma, wait till you see these. I'm into peac.o.c.ks and parrots." Wilma also thought of the staff Christmas party at the Do-Shop-Here Mall the other night when Ernie had gotten schnockered and pinched the bottom of one of the waitresses.

Knowing that Dorothy was right about Ernie's ability to lap up booze did not ease Wilma's resentment at having the truth pointed out to her. "Well, Ernie may get silly when he has a drop or two too much but you're wrong about Wee Willie. She has real talent and when my ship comes in I'll help her to prove it."

Dorothy helped herself to another cup of tea. "I suppose you're still wasting money on lottery tickets."

"Sure am," Wilma said cheerfully, fighting to retain her good nature. "Tonight's the special Christmas drawing. If I were home I'd be in front of the set praying."

"That combination of numbers you always pick is ridiculous! 1-9-4-7-5-2. I can understand a person using the year her child was born but the year Ernie graduated from high school? That's ridiculous."

Wilma had never told Dorothy that it had taken Ernie six years to get through high school and his family had had a block party to celebrate. "Best party I was ever at," he frequently told her, memory brightening his face. "Even the mayor came."

Anyhow, Wilma liked that combination of numbers. She was absolutely certain that someday they would win a lot of money for her and Ernie. After she said good night to Dorothy, and puffing with the effort made up the sofabed where she slept on her visits, she reflected that as Dorothy grew older she got crankier. She also talked your ear off and it was no wonder her daughter-in-law referred to her as "that miserable pain in the neck."

The next day Wilma got off the train in Newark at noon. Ernie was picking her up. As she walked to their meeting spot at the main entrance to the terminal she was alarmed to see Ben Gump, their next-door neighbor, there instead.

She rushed to Ben, her ample body tensed with fear. "Is anything wrong? Where's Ernie?"

Ben's wispy face broke into a rea.s.suring smile. "No, everything's just fine, Wilma. Ernie woke up with a touch of flu or something. Asked me to come for you. Heck, I've got nothing to do 'cept watch the gra.s.s grow." Ben laughed heartily at the witticism that had become his trademark since his retirement.

"Flu," Wilma scoffed. "I'll bet."