Persephone Cole and the Halloween Curse Read online

  Kyle nodded, his jaw working and his lips pinched together. He wheeled around and disappeared back down the stairs. She could hear the echoes of his footsteps running to the only pay phone backstage or maybe the producer’s office. The sounds tapered off and the theatre became eerily quiet again.

  Percy reached into the pocket of her jacket and bought out a small but powerful flashlight, one she was never without. Turning it on, she inspected the woman without touching her.

  Laverne, face half hidden by tangled hair, lay on her back with one arm flung over her head, the arm Percy had taken to feel a pulse. One leg was out straight, the other bent, toes touching the knee of the straight one. She had fallen in such a way, she’d almost covered the width of the platform on which she lay. There was wet blood everywhere, in particular on the abdomen and surrounding platform, already soaking into the wood.

  After finding the approximate location of the knife’s penetration, Percy ripped off her jacket, rolled it up, and pressed hard against the wound with both hands. She’d read about soldiers dying on the battlefield not from an injury itself but from the loss of blood. Medics on the field were doing this new practice called a pressure point.

  I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but maybe I can keep her from bleeding to death. Then I’ll find out who’s behind all this.

  She removed one hand for a split-second to glance at her watch. One ten. She tried to ignore the blood on her hand, and returned it to the pressure point.

  The ambulance and police should be arriving any moment. They’ll be followed by the cast of a play that was not going to be performed today, if ever.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Persephone was fiddling with the key in the lock when the door of the apartment sprung open. “Man, are my dogs killing me,” she said to whatever family member was at the door. “I must have been standing on my feet for the past four hours.”

  She looked into her father’s face. His features were stern, eyes sad. A taut mouth replaced his usual smile.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Her heart raced. It was one thing to see tragedy on the job, another close to home.

  Pop leaned into her, his voice barely above a whisper. “They delivered a telegram to Sylvia Rendell this afternoon. Her husband’s missing in action.”

  Percy sucked in a startled breath. “Oh, Pop! Oh, my God, no.”

  Her mind flashed to an all too familiar scene up and down the densely populated block. Two officers, from whatever appropriate branch of the service, standing on the doorstep of a family’s home delivering the news of the dead or missing. She reached out for her father’s hand.

  “How is Sylvia? Does Freddy know?”

  “Not yet. Mother went and picked up the boys a couple of hours ago. They’re in Oliver’s room playing. Freddy’s going to spend the night with us and Sylvia will come for him in the morning. She’s over with her husband’s parents now. I guess she’ll tell the boy tomorrow. There’s no rush on this kind of news.”

  Percy removed her fedora, ran fingers through tangled hair, and threw the hat on the rack near the door. “Let me go in and see how the boys are doing.” She turned back to her father. “You’re sure Freddy doesn’t suspect?”

  “I don’t think so. They’ve been playing toy soldiers and now they’re drawing their Halloween costumes. The winner gets to be the Green Lantern.”

  “What’s that aroma? Doesn’t have the pungent smell of Mother’s milk fish stew.”

  “Sylvia gave Mother the pot of hotdogs and beans for the boys. It’s on the stove in the kitchen.”

  “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.”

  “Persephone, behave.”

  “Sorry, Pop. Just trying to get rid of some of the tension with humor.” She rolled her shoulders a few times. “After I see the boys, I need to take a quick shower,” she said, knocking lightly on her son’s door and opening it. “Then we can talk.”

  The two eight-year old boys were lying on their stomachs on the floor facing one another and coloring on paper. Either they didn’t hear her or were so intent on their project they didn’t look up.

  “Hi, boys. Whatcha doing?”

  Oliver looked up at his mother with a big grin on his face. Freddy glanced up and smiled, one of his top front teeth missing. The children could not have had more different coloring. Oliver inherited his father’s fair skin, coal black hair, dark eyes surrounded by thick, long lashes, and a ready smile. He would be a heartthrob, like Leo the Louse, but unlike him, Oliver was sweet, kind and loving, almost to a fault.

  Freddy had sandy colored hair, thin and straight, hazel eyes and freckles running across the bridge of his nose and spreading out to the end of his cheeks. They were both adorable.

  And possibly, they’re both fatherless, my child through desertion and Sylvia’s child through war. Sometimes life just plain stinks.

  “Hi, Mommy!” Oliver leapt up from the floor, holding his drawing. “Freddy and I are having a contest. The winner gets to wear the Green Lantern costume.” He ran into his mother’s waiting arms. Percy kneeled down and embraced her son, who whispered in her ear. “I don’t think Freddy’s picture is as good as mine, Mommy.”

  She studied her son’s concerned face. “Did you want him to win, Oliver?” He looked away embarrassed then shrugged. Her voice was soft, as she looked over her son’s shoulder to the child still coloring on the floor. “Well, you could both go as the Green Lantern in identical costumes. How does that sound?” She looked into her son’s face. That wasn’t the answer, she could tell. “Or you could say you’ve decided to go as something else, like a pirate.”

  Oliver’s eyes got big and his mouth dropped open in pleasure and astonishment. “Could I have a parrot?”

  “Not a real one, but we might be able to find a stuffed one or maybe your grandmother could make one out of all those feathers she’s got in her sewing room. I’ll ask her.”

  “What about a peg leg?”

  “That would be more Grandpop’s department, but I’ll ask him, too.”

  Oliver broke free from his mother’s embrace and ran back to his friend. “Freddy, I’m going as a pirate!”

  Freddy looked up, his face frozen in a similar look of joy as Oliver’s. “Wow! Like Bluebeard?”

  “Uh-huh," Oliver answered enthusiastically, nodding his head. “With a parrot and everything!” He threw himself down on the floor and snatched for a clean piece of paper. “I’m going to draw it. You can have the Green Lantern,” he said to Freddy, as an afterthought.

  Percy turned to leave, but hesitated in the doorway. “Freddy.” The small boy concentrating on his coloring, looked up, his face a question mark. “Freddy, this jack-o’-lantern that got stolen, was it carved and everything?”

  He nodded in an animated way, only whispering a ‘yes’ before returning to his coloring.

  “What about the others? Are all the other missing pumpkins carved, too?”

  “Yes, ma’am. But mine was the best,” he uttered with finality. “My grandpa helped me make it.” Freddy reached for another crayon and returned to his project.

  “Thanks, Freddy.”

  She backed out and closed the door, listening to the chatter of the two small boys. Exhaling a deep breath, she went down the hallway and into the kitchen. Mother was stirring something bubbling in a small pot on the stove.

  “Hi Mother. Thanks for picking up the boys at Sylvia’s and looking after them.” She crossed over to her mother and stroked her shoulder. “What are you making?”

  “Rice pudding for dessert, but I’ve thrown in those turnips about to go bad.”

  “Ah!” Percy’s tone was noncommittal. “Any soda pop in the cooler?”

  “No, Serendipity is at the movies with two of her gentlemen friends. They drank them when they were here.”

  “She’s at the movies even though it’s cooled off? It’s supposed to be in the low fifties tonight,” Percy said.

  “The Rialto is having a Cary Grant
marathon, starting with his first film with Mae West. You know, he isn’t dead, just missing.” She stopped stirring the pudding and looked at her daughter.

  “Jeff Rendell, right? Not Cary Grant.” Percy seized the least wrinkled apple from the bowl on the table. She took a big bite and juice ran down her chin.

  “It’s all very frightening, though,” said Mother, returning her attention to the pudding. “I’ve suggested Sylvia not say anything yet to little Freddy until she knows more. It may all be a scare the child need never know about.”

  “Wise words, Mother,” Percy said, heading for the swinging door adjoining the hallway and the kitchen.

  “I didn’t raise three children and not learn something.”

  “I’d say you learned a lot.” Just not about cooking.

  “Are you hungry, Persephone?” Mother spoke as if reading her thoughts. “There’s still plenty of my milk fish stew.”

  “No thank you, Mother,” she said, her voice laced with false regret. “I had something midtown while waiting to be interviewed by the police.”

  It was another one of her lies, a little white one, she liked to call it. She’d grabbed a hotdog from a vender outside the front stoop of the apartment building on her way up but was still starving. Maybe she could sneak off to the corner diner later for a hot plate dinner before it closed. This was chicken potpie night.

  “By the way, I hope you haven’t started on the Green Lantern costume. Oliver decided he wants to go as a pirate. Freddy’s going to be the Green Lantern.”

  “I already told Sylvia not to worry about Freddy’s Halloween costume, that I would make it. I’m half way through with the green one, but the boys are the same size. It won’t make any difference.”

  “You’re one in a million, Mother. Oliver wants to wear a parrot on his shoulder. I can work on that unless you happen to have some spare feathers you can stitch together by Halloween.”

  “Mr. McKlusky, upstairs, is a taxidermist, Persephone. Perhaps he has a spare one.”

  “Never know. But I’ll deal with it later. Right now I have to have a talk with Pop. Business.” As the door swung closed she heard her mother’s voice.

  “I’m going to call the boys for dinner now, but I’ll save you some rice pudding, dear.”

  “Thank you, Mother.”

  She walked down the hall and into her bedroom. There she grabbed fresh clothes and headed for the bathroom and a quick shower. Not ten minutes later, she opened the door of the combination office, parlor.

  The largest room in the apartment, the fifteen by twenty-five foot parlor was more Mother’s room than anyone else’s. It held pieces of her great-aunt’s ornate furniture, each gilded within an inch of its life. Paintings of pastoral scenes and imaginary French aristocrats, Mother’s plunge into the world of art, littered the walls. Another one of her hobbies gone awry, they filled wall space and brought forth much amusement, even from Mother. Except with her cooking, Mother was the first to admit a craft which eluded her, and painting certainly had. In sharp contrast, lush emerald green ferns hung in each of the large windows and other plants luxuriated on table tops, symbols of Mother’s more accomplished diversion, her green thumb.

  One corner of the room was given over to Cole Investigations. Pop was apparently listening for Percy to come in. At the sound of the door closing, she heard his voice from behind the two still-life peacocks strutting on the golden background of a pseudo Louis the Sixteenth room divider. That’s where her father’s dark oak desk and file cabinets sat. As a child, she knew of many long nights he sat working at that desk.

  “Persephone, that you?”

  “It is, Pop.”

  “I was just going over my notes.” He came around the screen and looked at her.

  “Child, say what we will about Mother’s cooking, she does know how to sew,” Pop remarked, when he noticed Percy wearing the orange, black and white Japanese print kimono Mother recently made for her birthday. She wore the robe over pajamas, wet hair wrapped in a thick yellow towel. Her father studied her face. “You look all wrung out. Are you sure you want to go over this tonight? It can wait until morning.”

  “It really can’t, Pop.” Percy threw herself down on the parlor’s sofa, a comfortable-looking but faded brocade sofa with matching chair and ottoman dominating the section of the room nearest the door. A large and highly polished oak radio console sat next to one end of the sofa, Pop’s pride and joy. A mock Tiffany floor lamp stood at the other. Percy reached up and gave the pull-chain a tug. Warm light flooded the room, helping to soften the day for Percy.

  “Call it a gut instinct,” she said, “but I don’t think anything is the way it seems. We need to figure this out before more people get hurt. ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’.”

  “Sherlock Holmes?”

  “Macbeth.”

  “Doesn’t sound good no matter who said it,” Pop commented. “I called Mick at the station while waiting for you. He says the woman’s going to make it. You saved her life, Persephone. She lost a lot of blood. Another ten or fifteen minutes and she would have been a goner.”

  “You’re telling me. It felt like I got most of her blood on me. Is she awake yet? Can she talk?”

  Pop shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “They might close the show because of this, Pop, and it’s too bad. Riding back and forth on the subway I’ve been reading Macbeth. I haven’t since high school. You don’t appreciate it so much when you’re a kid.” She arranged several of the throw pillows at one end of the sofa then lay against them. “Oh, my aching back. I guess I’m not in as good a shape as I thought I was. Did I tell you about crawling down the side of that twenty-foot platform when no one was looking?”

  Pop took on a worried look and sat down in a chair across from Percy, as threadbare but as comfortable as the sofa. “Persephone, I don’t like you doing this type of work. It’s not suited for a girl.”

  “Pop, I’d hate to be hanging by the neck since I was a ‘girl’. Besides, now we can fix the fridge, buy Oliver a new pair of shoes, and maybe have a steak when this is over. More important, we promised to solve this. At least, I did and I mean to keep my word.” The last statement sounded harsher than she intended. Percy picked the rest of her words with care, saying them with a smile, “I need your help with this, Pop. I hope we can be partners.”

  His face softened. “Well, I did learn a few interesting things, Persephone, and if we work on this together, I can keep an eye on you.” He leaned forward and touched her hand lightly.

  “Hmmm. That’s good thinking, Pop, and along those lines, they’re down two male spear carriers, one took a hike and the other is now one of the witches. I’ll tell Wainwright you’re about to join the cast as a replacement first thing in the morning. This way we can keep an eye on each other.”

  “I never fancied myself an actor, Persephone.”

  “I’d say, point your spear in the right direction and then follow it. Remember, Pop, there’s no business like show business.”

  “You could have gone all day without saying that, Persephone. And I’d advise you not to do it again.”

  “Afraid I’ll throw everything over for a life on the boards?” She laughed. “Fat chance. So what have you got, Pop?”

  “First off, the knife or dagger. It was one of the two used in the play and kept in a locked box when not in use. But before and during the play, it’s left out on the prop table. The Prop Master had laid it out around twelve-thirty today. Anybody could have taken it.”

  “Props is in charge of it, right? What’s the Prop Master’s name? Ralph somebody.”

  “Ralph Dunston. He’s been doing his job for the past thirty-eight years. Ready to retire.

  No reason it should be him. But he could be getting a bit sloppy.”

  “Or maybe scoring a big payoff to see him through his golden years. I’ll check him out.”

  “How did you get so cynical, Persephone?”

  “I had a cop for a father.”r />
  They both laughed.

  “Did you know about the binoculars?” Pop looked at her with a grin, while she shook her head. “Hanging over the railing.”

  “There’s no mention of them in the inventory list Mick gave to Mavis.”

  “Keeping them under wraps, Persephone. You know, you don’t always want to tip your hand. Mick says they found a partial thumbprint on it.”

  “So maybe somebody’s been watching from up there. I wonder what you can see. Or maybe it’s a red herring” Percy mused for a moment.

  “You mean, someone put the binoculars up there just to throw people off?”

  “Or waste time.”

  “They’re going to be fingerprinting the entire cast and crew starting tomorrow,” Pop said.

  “That’ll take a day or two. A lot can happen in that time.”

  “But, if there’s a match, it might solve the whole thing.”

  “Maybe.” Percy let out a sigh, half from fatigue, half from sadness. “I don’t know, Pop. ‘Something wicked this way comes.’”

  “Another ditty from Macbeth?”

  “Yeah. Spoken by the first witch.” She looked at her father. “Pop, you tell Mick about Bert’s ex-wife back in Arizona?”

  “Yes, he’s going to have someone check it out.”

  “If Bert is there, I want Mavis to send him his pay, so I’ll need to know one way or the other.” She let out another sigh.

  Pop patted his daughter’s hand. “You’re doing your best and then some. You can’t take care of everybody, if that’s what’s troubling you.”

  Percy shook her head. “Not just that, Pop. I have a bad feeling about how all of this is going to play out. Not much adds up. I don’t think this is about money. I think it’s a vendetta.”

  “Those are the worst kind of cases, Persephone. No sense in them.”

  “I know.”

  They were both silent for a moment, each thinking their own separate thoughts.