Black Princess Mystery (3 page)

“Can we
change the subject?” Matt asked. “It’s almost Christmas.”

“It would
be hard to kill one person without getting caught,” Henrietta said, ignoring
Matt and staring into Tasheka’s eyes. “How did she get away with six hundred
murders? No one noticed six hundred missing girls? There was no smell? No one
saw or heard anything in twenty-five years? Really, Tasheka, it seems a bit
far-fetched.”

“Well, it
didn’t go unnoticed. It was permitted. Erzsebet Bathory was from a wealthy and
well-connected family. It wasn’t that people didn’t know, they just wouldn’t
stop her. Even after it became public, she was never formally tried in court
because she was a countess. In this case, because she was so rich and so
powerful, she lived beyond the law. She wrote her own law. She was a kind of
female pockmarked Caligula with the will to power.”

“Whatever
that means,” Matt said with a laugh.

“I think
it’s a recipe,” Henrietta joked. “Tonight I’m having an extra helping of
pockmarked Caligula with a double side order of will to power. Anybody want to
join me?”

They all
laughed.

“Really,
though,” Henrietta said, “it must be nice to be able to kill someone.”

“Why would
you say that?” Matt challenged, making a face.

There was
an awkward moment of silence.

“What I
mean is that it must be nice to be able to kill someone without feeling guilt.
I think that people who kill without guilt are probably free in a strange kind
of way.”

“A very
strange kind of way,” Matt chastised with a look of reprimand. “There’s nothing
nice about murder, Henrietta.”

“Actually,”
Tasheka said, “Erzsebet Bathory was punished in the end. She was put into a
small room and sealed in with bricks. She never left that room for the rest of
her life. They passed food through a slot in the wall and her bathroom was a
hole in the floor. After four years of total isolation, she died.”

“Sounds
like hell,” Matt said. “But she got exactly what she deserved. Killing innocent
people is never justified.”

“Are you
saying killing people is all right,” Henrietta asked him, turning the tables on
his moral superiority, “so long as they’re not innocent?”

Matt
looked flustered and didn’t know what to say.

“Well?”
Henrietta insisted.

“If you’re
asking me if some people deserve to die, yes, they do. Damned rights they
deserve it.”

Tasheka
was surprised by his comment and the forcefulness of it.

Henrietta
laughed at him. “What do you think, Tasheka? Is it all right for me to
slaughter men so long as they’re evil?”

“For most
serial killers it makes no difference if the victim is evil or innocent,”
Tasheka said, “because they have no conscience. They feel no guilt. But there
are so many variations. Some serial killers murder only prostitutes, thinking
they are somehow less worthy of life. I think Erzsebet Bathory demanded
innocence and would have derived no satisfaction whatsoever by killing a prostitute.
Some create alter egos—the bad side of their personality—and foist all the
blame on her or him. There have even been cases of people who murdered without
even realizing it.”

“Really?”
Matt asked.

“True,”
Tasheka said. “It’s only later, when they’re confronted with undeniable
evidence, that they remember the acts, in some cases horrendously violent and
bloody.” She nodded, as if to confirm what she said. “But these normal and
average people have gone home, washed up, disposed of their clothes and slept
like babies. It’s as if nothing happened, as if they were sleepwalking through
the whole thing.”

“Now,
really, Tasheka,” Henrietta challenged, “do you really think you could kill a
man and have no memory of it?”

“I don’t
know. You would hope the murderer would at least have some idea her mind was
not right. There would surely have to be some warning signs.”

“I’ll have
to go rob a bank in my pajamas,” Henrietta said, laughing so boisterously a man
shoveling his driveway up the road looked at them. “If they catch me, I’ll say
I was sleepwalking.”

“I know
for a fact that sleepwalking has been used as a defense in a murder trial,”
Tasheka assured her.

“Why does
that not surprise me?” Matt asked.

Tasheka
decided to change the subject. “Mom told me your sister has come here to live
with you.”

“Yes,”
Matt said with a friendly nod. “Marissa and me got together out of the blue and
she’s been here ever since.”

“How does
she like it?”

“She wants
to stay.”

“I’m glad
to hear it,” Tasheka said sweetly. “Be sure to tell her I said hello.”

“I’ll tell
her,” Matt assured.

Tasheka
spoke with her friends for a few more minutes and then continued toward the
Lakeside Golf Course. Once they reached the parking lot, the sun unexpectedly
came out and she stopped to admire the view. Directly in front of her was the
eighteenth fairway. It was about fifty yards wide, covered in virgin snow, and
barren of all growth except for an ancient oak tree and a long, low and thick
hedge that ran beside the tree from the lake toward her. Tasheka knelt down and
unhooked Kie’s leash. He frolicked at her side for a moment, ran ahead, looked back
to make sure she was coming, and then bounded forward, throwing up snow with
each exuberant burst.

Fifteen
yards from Dead Man’s Oak, Kie suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. He stared
at something and started barking wildly.

“I hope
that’s not a porcupine,” Tasheka mumbled, hurriedly running to protect her dog.

Kie was
still barking with great agitation when she approached him. He was staring at
the hedge, much of it buried under snow.

“I can’t
see anything, sweetie,” Tasheka said, following his eyes and seeing nothing out
of the ordinary. She tentatively continued forward.

Kie barked
more excitedly, a frantic tremor in his tone. His head was lowered, his ears
drawn back, and his attention affixed to a single spot in the hedge. Tasheka
was frustrated at not being able to discover the cause of his alarm. She took a
few more steps when, suddenly, by moving her head in just a certain way, her
whole body tensed as if she had been shocked. She put her right hand over her
mouth, and a low, panicked gasp escaped her lips. Before her, not twenty yards
distant, was a human hand sticking out of the snow. It was stained with blood
and wedged almost imperceptibly among the curling branches of the hedge. A
large silver ring glinted in the bright sunlight, the black initial ‘T’ clearly
visible against the gold background.

“Oh, my
God!” Tasheka exclaimed, unable to comprehend what she saw before her.

Though she
wanted to run, the young woman froze. Her heart pounded furiously and every
nerve in her body fired madly in all directions. The image —the bloody hand and
that ring— became her whole world, her only focus, the single point in her
entire universe. It held her in its grasp, needling directly into her heart,
twisting like a knife held in the hands of a ruthless murderer. The frozen hand
stood stark still, the stiff fingers curled and contorted as if their owner’s
last moments had been pure agony. But the ring. The ring! Tasheka moaned with
the wavering voice of someone awakening from a terrifying nightmare. She stumbled
backward. Kie, too, backed away from the gruesome scene, his hair on end.

“Oh, my
God,” Tasheka repeated, her eyes bulging. She hurriedly fumbled with the leash,
hooked it to Kie’s collar, and then ran through the deep snow in a staggering,
headlong rush. “This is impossible,” she muttered in horrified disbelief.
“Impossible!”

The
mysterious message suddenly appeared in her mind: M-Bexter-Nat. Tasheka did not
know why, she did not know how, but she did know, beyond all doubt, that inside
this strange combination of letters was hidden a secret she had to reveal.

M-Bexter-Nat.

Chapter Two

Tasheka
was soon laboring for breath, but she paused only for a moment, gulping air as
if hyperventilating. The beautiful winter’s day was gone. Gone forever. It had been
replaced by the bloody hand frozen like a claw in the tangled bushes. The hand,
and the ring.

“It makes
no sense,” she mumbled to Kie, frantically pulling him along as if someone was
pursuing them. She glanced back over her shoulder, but the second her eyes fell
on the hedge, she turned away as if looking at a hideous monster. She wondered
if it could be some kind of elaborate joke. Was she the victim of a reality
television show with cameras filming her reactions? No, that didn’t seem
possible. But what other explanation could there be? It was the ring.
The
ring. No doubt about it.

People
again stopped shoveling when they saw her, but she quickly hurried past them,
tears in her eyes and a frantic expression on her face. They asked what was
wrong, but their words were a jumbled, incoherent noise. Neighbors looked at
each other with confusion, then dug their shovels into snow banks and followed
Tasheka to the Lakeside Garage. No one had ever seen her like this.

Matt was
tossing Henrietta’s old muffler into a bin when he looked up and saw Tasheka
running down the road. “What’s wrong!” he exclaimed, wiping his hands on the
greasy rag he carried in his back pocket.

Tasheka
stopped and caught her breath. “There’s a body on the golf course, Matt.
Someone’s dead.”

“What!” he
asked incredulously. “Are you sure?”

“There’s a
hand sticking out of the snow,” she said in a broken voice. “We have to call
the police.”

“Yes,
yes,” he agreed, leading her inside.

As Matt
dialed only a foot away from her, Tasheka noticed the rag hanging from his back
pocket. There were stains on it that she thought might have been dried drops of
blood. Matt handed her the phone and stepped back. The police told her to wait
at the garage, but no sooner had she hung up than the villagers started
crowding in and inquiring about the trouble. Tasheka sat in a chair and told
them everything, alternately rubbing Kie’s back and glancing at the dumbfounded
group. As they stared down at her, their faces looked like masks at a carnival.
Feeling morbidly uncomfortable, Tasheka turned away, her eyes drifting across
the Coke machine, the dirty windows, the old-fashioned cash register, the
calendar with its December pinup beauty, and a crudely made sign written in
black marker on brown cardboard, that declared—
ABSOLUTELY NO CREDIT. NO EXCEPTIONS
.

“Are you
sure it wasn’t just a plastic hand?” Matt asked. “Maybe a few kids are having
some fun.”

“It’s
real,” she assured him. “It’s wearing a ring I recognize.”

“What
ring?”

“Father
Tim’s ring.”

“Father
Tim Murphy?” several people asked at once, the tone of their voices elevated.
“Father Tim Murphy? Are you sure?”

“It’s his
ring.”

Matt bit
his lip. “Tim Murphy dead? There’s no way Timmy Murphy is dead. It must be a
different ring.”

“I know
what his ring looks like, Matt. I’ve shaken hands with him many times after
masses.”

“Tasheka,
it cannot be Murphy. That is not possible.”

“I know
it’s not possible,” she agreed. “It’s utterly impossible because I saw Father
Tim not more than fifteen minutes before discovering the body.”

“Where did
you see him?” asked one of the villagers, the others gathering round with
jealous ears.

“I saw him
pick up the newspaper at the rectory,” Tasheka said, “and then he went back
inside. After that I walked to the garage, talked to Matt and Henrietta for a
few minutes, and then went on to the golf course. It is literally impossible
for that body to be Father Tim.”

The
villagers seemed heartened by this news, but only for a moment. “If it’s not
somebody from around here,” a lady with grey hair reckoned, “then that means
it’s a stranger. Now I ask you, what would a stranger be doing wandering around
the Lakeside Golf Course in a blizzard?” She raised her eyebrows and nodded.
“This is a bad business, a very bad business, indeed.”

“I’m
calling Father Tim to make sure he’s all right,” Tasheka said, picking up the
phone. Her hand was shaking. After it rang ten times, she hung up with an
irritable groan.

“Maybe
someone stole Father Tim’s ring,” a villager observed, “or maybe he lost it.”

Matt
nodded. “Either that, or like I say, it’s a different ring.”

Tasheka
walked with Kie toward the door. “I’m going to the church,” she declared.

“You
better wait here,” Matt advised her with emphasis. “The police will want you to
stay put. Besides, if he didn’t answer the phone, he must not be there.”

“Yes,”
Tasheka answered distractedly, her mind in a fog. She sat down and rubbed her
forehead. “I’ll wait here and talk to the police.”

Fifteen
minutes later a police car pulled into the service station. Villagers who had
not realized anything was wrong immediately took notice. Within minutes,
several people began tentatively walking toward the garage, irresistibly drawn
by the need to know what had descended over their sleepy little community. The
police officer told everyone but Tasheka and Matt to wait outside. When the
building had been cleared, there arose a great chatter in the parking lot, and
more villagers appeared as if from nowhere, swelling the ranks of the
inquisitive mob. A host of cell phones were magically produced, their owners
drifting off to spread the news.