King of Murder (6 page)

She fell silent.

“The police never found the murder weapon. Whoever killed her must have taken it with them. The only thing missing from the desktop was the letter opener. It was a long, thin stiletto that had come from Italy. It was very beautiful, and probably the murder weapon.”

“Have you seen enough?”

Gilda didn't answer. She went and stood behind the desk, beside the leather chair with the same carving as the desk. “She was sitting here, and her murderer was standing about where I'm standing. The murderer probably picked up—”

For a moment Herculeah was back at Hidden Treasures watching Mathias King wielding his invisible “lovely stiletto.” She remembered the way his long, thin fingers drew the blade in the air and then with a quick jab thrust it into a victim. Her hair frizzled. Her hair always frizzled to warn her something was about to happen.

“Gilda,” Herculeah said firmly, “maybe we should go home.”

Gilda glanced over at Herculeah. “You're right.” Without glancing at the desk again, she crossed the room and into the hallway.

She paused at the Buddha. “I never left the house without rubbing Buddha's belly.”

“Never?”

Gilda thought for a moment, and a cloud seemed to fall over her face. “Not that I remember.”

She glanced back at the door to the library. “A person would have to be insane to kill a lovely woman like Rebecca.”

Then with a final motion she rubbed her hand over Buddha's belly. As Herculeah moved for the door, Gilda said, “You don't need any luck?”

Herculeah smiled. She returned, rubbed Buddha's belly, and then led the way out of the house.

“Bye, and thanks,” Herculeah called as she got out of the car and shut the car door.

“It's I who am grateful to you,” Gilda said. “I'll give you a call. We need to talk some more. You've helped me a lot.” She waved good-bye as she drove away.

Herculeah turned and went up the steps without glancing over at Meat's house as she usually did.

As she unlocked the front door and entered the hall, her mom called from her office, “Who gave you a ride home?”

Herculeah went to the open double door to her mom's office. The room had once been the living room, but now it was Mim Jones's office. It was where she saw her clients.

There were two comfortable chairs facing her mom's desk, and Herculeah sat in the one facing the window. Now she could glance at Meat's house without being seen.

The house was dark. Meat must not have returned from his—her brain practically spit out the word—date.

“The nicest woman in the world gave me a ride home,” she said.

“The nicest woman in the world?” her mom said, raising her eyebrows. “Nicer than your own mother?”

“Well, close,” Herculeah said. “Her name's Rita Hayworth.”

“Go on.”

“But everybody calls her Gilda.”

“So what did you do all day, hon? Are you all right? Your face looks flushed.”

“I've had a busy day. I went to Death's Door to get some books and then I went out to Magnolia Downs and had a Tai Chi lesson and then—and then I went with Gilda to see the house her friend was murdered in.”

“That's quite a day.”

“I actually learned something at Tai Chi. Would you like to see me hold up the sky?”

“I've been seeing you do that your whole life.”

Herculeah glanced out the window. She could see Meat's house, but nobody was looking out the window at her house. She hesitated.

She could have told her mom about Meat's treachery, and her mom would have been sympathetic. But it had been such an emotional moment that she didn't know how to describe it. She knew what it was not. It was not jealousy. It was not envy.

It was not any of those terrible emotions you read about in books.

However, until she figured out what the emotion was, she would keep it to herself.

“I think I'll take a shower,” she said.

She got up and started for the door. Again she hesitated. She said, “But if I get a phone call—and I'm halfway expecting one—”

The phone rang, cutting off her comment.

“There's something wrong with this phone. It rings upstairs, but when I pick it up, I just get a dial tone.” Her mom picked up the phone and held it out so Herculeah could hear the tone for herself.

“It's Tarot,” Herculeah said.

“Tarot's learned to ring like a phone?”

“I'm afraid so. Next he'll be answering it. ‘Mim Jones's office.'”

Her mom laughed at the imitation of Tarot. “Oh, wait a minute.” She shifted some papers on her desk and then held up an envelope. “You've got mail.” She sang out the words.

“I never get mail.”

“And it looks like an invitation.”

“I never get those either.”

Herculeah crossed to her mother's desk and held out her hand. The envelope was a square of heavy cream-colored paper, and it was addressed in fine black script that looked almost like calligraphy. She had never seen the words “Miss Herculeah Jones” written more beautifully.

Her mom said, “It wasn't mailed—no stamp. Evidently someone put it through the mail slot. I found it when I got home. It was on top of the regular mail.”

Herculeah turned the envelope over in her hand. The return address was One Kings Row. There was only one person she knew who would have an address like that.

She slipped her thumb under the flap of the envelope and worked it loose. As she reached in to withdraw the heavy cream-colored note card, she felt a faint frizzling in her hair.

She took out the card. On the front, in black ink, was the drawing of a house. It was a two-story house with a tall attic. The windows were shuttered, and there was a gate guarding the walkway up to the house. The tips of the iron fence posts were as sharp as sabers. Chimneys grew out of the roof, and guarding them were what appeared to be birds perched on the edge of the roof.

Herculeah opened the card.

Her mother watched as she opened it. The picture on the front of the card was exposed, and her mother studied the house.

“The house looks spooky,” her mother commented. “Who does it belong to—the Addams family?”

“No, but it belongs to a man who's just about as spooky.”

“So what's inside the note?” her mother asked.

“Oh, nothing.”

“It must be something because it's taking you an awful long time to read it. Is it an invitation?” She laughed. “I'm curious.”

“You're always curious.”

“Well, so are you. I've caught you time and again in here going through my personal files.”

“We're all curious,” Herculeah said. “That's why you're a private investigator and why Dad's a police lieutenant. And I got a double dose of that curiosity gene. Anyway, you never will tell me anything. Why should I tell you all my stuff?”

“Because you know how horrible it is to be curious and not get an answer.”

“That's true.”

“So?”

“It is an invitation,” she admitted.

“To what?”

Herculeah took a deep breath. “To a party,” she said. She turned to the stairs and put her hand on the banister.

“I'm going to take a shower,” she said. “Maybe I can wash away some of—” She paused.

She was going to say, “some of these bad emotions,” but that would only pique her mom's curiosity.

“Some of what?” her mother asked, her curiosity already piqued.

“I really don't know.”

Then, before her mother could get out another question, Herculeah rushed up the stairs.

“Hi, Herculeah, it's me. You won't believe what happened. Remember I was going to the dentist's office? Well, when I got there, the office was closed, and there was this girl there—she'd had an appointment, too, so my mom—you know how she is—took pity on her and insisted she ...

“Hi, Herculeah, it's me. Guess what happened? My first cousin from Atlanta—I've probably mentioned her—came to town and on the way here she got a toothache, and Mom—you know how she is—insisted that she take my dental appointment and on the way home she—my mom—said...”

Meat was stretched out on the sofa working on some lies. From the TV in the corner of the room came the muted noises of all-star professional wrestling. Meat's dad, Macho Man, was in a life-and-death struggle with the Cyclone.

Usually when Meat watched this tape—even though he knew the outcome—he became anxious for his dad.

Today, however, he was in a life-and-death struggle of his own.

“Hi, Herculeah, it's me.”

The phone rang.

“I'm not here!” he yelled to his mom in the kitchen.

He knew it was Steffie wanting to do something tomorrow. And although he'd been practicing lying all evening, he still hadn't mastered the art, and even if he did think of an excuse, his mom would be there to yell, “That's not true,” into the phone. His mother had proven she could not be trusted.

Also, Steffie was used to getting her way. Herculeah might overlook his having one date, but it would be hard for anybody to overlook two. That was practically going steady.

“I won't lie for you,” his mother warned from the kitchen. She came into the room and turned off professional wrestling as she always did. Apparently his mom preferred live entertainment.

Meat got up from the sofa quickly and stepped out on the front porch. “Now you don't have to lie,” he called before he shut the door. “I'm really not here.”

He waited on the porch for what seemed like an unusually long time, but then again, Steffie was a talker.

As he stood there, he went over his lies, and then a sudden thought stopped him. He did not need to lie. After all, Herculeah didn't know that he knew that she knew about the date. Or something like that.

And! Uncle Neiman was his uncle. His own uncle! She had gone to his uncle's shop. Therefore it was his right, as a nephew, to find out what had happened.

He would take the straightforward approach. None of these confusing tales of girls in distress.

“How did it go at Death's Door?” he would say. “Did you get the Mathias King books from my uncle?”

He was fine-tuning this approach when his mother opened the door. “It's safe. You can come in now.”

Meat entered the living room, turned on the TV, rewound the tape, and threw himself down on the sofa in his original pose.

“Thank you, Mom.”

“You have to understand right now that I am not going to lie for you on the telephone.”

She put her hands on her hips—a pose Meat did not care for. But, hey, he told himself, you owe her. She prevented you from having a phone conversation with Steffie. The only person he liked to talk to on the phone was Herculeah.

“I know, Mom. I don't expect you to. If it happens again, I'll go back out on the porch.”

“Some girls just won't give up,” his mom said.

He certainly agreed with that statement. “Steffie's the epitome of that type.”

To himself he began practicing. “Hi, I was curious about how it went at my uncle's shop.”

It wouldn't hurt to stress the words “my uncle.” He was repeating the phrase when his mother paused in the doorway.

“Oh, that wasn't Steffie on the phone.”

“It wasn't?”

“Steffie's mom is here. I called Dottie to find out what Steffie had said about the date, and Dottie said the wedding was off. That was why Steffie was here in the first place—because her mom was getting married for the third time.”

Meat stopped practicing his straightforward approach. He sat up. His whole body was rigid with sudden alarm.

“It was your little friend across the street.”

“Herculeah?”

“Yes. It was Herculeah.”

Mathias King stood in the doorway to his Den of Iniquity. He inhaled the scent of the room with a sense of pleasure.

Rooms dedicated to murder, he felt, had their own special scent—the way a library did, or a doctor's office, or a hair salon, or ... well he could go on and on.

He stepped inside the room. He pressed the switch that flooded the room with light. The lights were concealed above the cabinets, for Mathias King liked to admire his possessions—but he would not use those lights when Herculeah came to tea. On that special occasion, a different lighting would be called for.

He did not let his eyes linger over his weapons as he usually did. The guns that had fired fatal bullets, the knives that had ended lives were ignored. Mathias King had something else on his mind—the Candles of Tranquility.

There were thirteen of the candles, placed around the room. Some were in sconces on the wall, some grouped on tables, some in tall, wrought-iron candlesticks.

They were all blood red—“scarlet” the lady at the shop had called them, but Mathias King felt blood red was a more appropriate name in this room. The candles were the same color as the heavy draperies at the end of the room.

“These particular candles give off the scent of poppies,” the lady had told him. “Some people have said the scent makes them tranquil.”

“I am not a man who values tranquility,” he had told the woman, “but perhaps some of my visitors would enjoy the sensation.”