Corpus Christmas

by Margaret Maron

  “Oh, crap!” said Albee. “You don’t think it’s simple B and E, do you? That he left the door open for Thorvaldsen and a burglar came in? In that case, he could have been trying to get help.”

  “Great,” Peters groaned. “So instead of four suspects, you just widened the field to half a million.”

  “I don’t know.” Eberstadt shook his head. “I’ve got a gut feeling about those two kids down there—Rick Evans and Pascal Grant. You sure that janitor’s not stringing you along with that innocent look, Lainey?”

  “And what about that empty glove case in Shambley’s briefcase?” asked Lowry. “That’s got to mean something, doesn’t it?”

  In a half-empty coffee shop on Fourth Avenue, Pascal Grant savored a forkful of fruitcake and drank from his glass of milk as be listened to Rick Evans talk about Louisiana.

  “You’d love it out there in the country, Pasc. No subways or drug pushers every ten feet, no crowds of people hassling you all the time. We could go camping and fishing back in the swamps.”

  “Yeah, but Rick—” He carefully speared two green cherries and a piece of citron with his fork and ate them one by one.

  Christmas carols drifted down from a speaker high on the wall overhead.

  “Is it money? You don’t need much in Louisiana,” Rick said earnestly.

  “Yeah, but you’ll be taking pictures. What’ll I do?”

  “You’ll help me. Or you can do what you do here. In my town, people are always griping because they can’t find anybody to do chores or odd jobs. You can be a gardener. Work outdoors all day long if that’s what you want.”

  “I’d like that,” Pascal said, smiling at Rick across the scarred Formica table.

  “Great!” said Rick. “Then you’ll come with me next Saturday? The day after Christmas?”

  Pascal’s smile faded and his fork explored a raisin. “Mrs. Beardsley won’t like it.”

  “Mrs. Beardsley doesn’t own you, Pasc. You own yourself just like I own myself.”

  “But you’re not a dummy,” Pascal blurted, his blue eyes miserable. “People may not like me in your town. Your mother won’t like me.”

  “Sure she will. And you’ll like her. I called her last night and told her all about you and she said I could bring anybody home I wanted to. And besides, as soon as we’re earning enough money, we could move into a place of our own. Maybe even out in the middle of nowhere where nobody’ll bother us and you can play your jazz tapes as loud as you want.”

  The thought of open country was bewildering to someone who’d only known the city, but Pascal had never had a friend like this, someone who did not merely put up with him but actually seemed to like him unconditionally and as he was. The lure of that friendship and the fear of losing it were irresistible and outweighed any nebulous fears about Louisiana’s alien landscape.

  Pascal put out his hand and shyly touched Rick’s. “Okay,” he said.

  When Sigrid got home at five-thirty, she was surprised to find Nauman and Elliott Buntrock wrestling with an eight-foot Christmas tree in her living room.

  “I thought you had a summit meeting at the gallery,” she said.

  “You didn’t hear what happened with Thorvaldsen?” asked Nauman, holding the tree perpendicular while Buntrock crawled around under the lower branches, tightening the screws of the stand.

  “No,” said Sigrid. “One of his ships sailed today.”

  She nodded. “I know. Two of my detectives rode out into the bay and then came back with him in his launch.”

  “They should have stayed on a little longer,” said Nauman. With his foot he nudged aside a large, much-taped cardboard box so that Buntrock would have more space for his flying elbows. “The Coast Guard was waiting for it just beyond the Verrazano Bridge.”

  “What?”

  “They took down some of the bulkheads in the engine room and found over six million dollars in fifty-and hundred-dollar bills. A lot of them marked so they could be traced, according to the news bulletins we heard at the gallery. Drug money. On its way to buy a fresh shipment in the Caribbean.”

  “They confiscate speedboats and fishing boats when they’re involved in drug deals,” said Buntrock from somewhere beneath the tree. “Do you suppose they’ll confiscate the Sea Dancer?”

  The telephone rang out in the kitchen and Roman Tramegra stuck his head around the corner a moment later. “Ah, Sigrid, my dear. I thought I heard you come in. Telephone.”

  “Lieutenant!” came Albee’s breathless voice. “Did you hear about Thorvaldsen? The feds have arrested him.”

  “So I just heard,” said Sigrid. “This must be what he meant when he said he went back to the Breul House because he didn’t want Shambley to cause any controversy right now. Wow!”

  Sigrid waited until Albee ran out of steam, then observed, “It’s certainly interesting, but I don’t see that it affects Shambley’s murder. Do you?”

  There was a moment of silence, then Albee admitted that she was probably right and rang off.

  As Sigrid hung up the kitchen phone, it finally registered on her that Roman was surrounded by take-out cartons, plastic containers, and green-and-white grocery bags from Balducci’s. He seemed to be arranging a long snakelike creature on his largest platter.

  “What in God’s name is that?” she asked. “Smoked eel. Neapolitans always have eel at Christmas, but I wasn’t sure what to do with a fresh one, so I got smoked. Isn’t it sumptuous? I know it should be skinned and cut, into perfect little ovals, but then we’d lose the effect.” He straightened the tail. “I thought a bed of red lettuce with strands of alfalfa sprouts for seaweed? What do you think?”

  “Roman, are we having a party tonight?” she asked. “A tree-trimming party. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “No,” she said mildly. “Oh, my dear!” he rumbled. “I’m so sorry. I was certain—” He curved the eel around a mound of tortellini salad and paused to consider the result. “It’s such a little party— hardly worth calling it a party at all—but we do want to celebrate our first Christmas tree, don’t we? I’m such a child about Christmas! See what you think of my wassail.”

  He filled a glass from a nearby bowl and passed it to her across the cluttered counter. Sigrid sipped cautiously. Roman might be a child about Christmas but this was no child’s drink. She tasted tart lemon juice tamed by sugar, rum, and some sort of fruity flavor. “Peach brandy?”

  “Do you like it?”

  Sigrid nodded, beginning to feel slightly more festive. “Who’s coming?”

  “Just family, so to speak. Oscar, of course. And, as you see, he brought along his friend. Amusing chap. A bit too fey though.”

  Sigrid almost choked on her drink at this pot calling the kettle black.

  “And Jill Gill and—”

  “What about ornaments?” Sigrid interrupted. “I don’t have any. Do you?”

  “I bought new lights and fresh tinsel.” He smeared two crackers with pâté and handed one to her. “Goose liver.”

  “Umm.”

  “And your mother sent down that enormous box out by the tree. She said it hadn’t been unpacked in her last eight moves, but she’s sure it’s tree ornaments.”

  Since Anne Harald averaged three moves per every two years, no amount of unopened boxes would surprise Sigrid. She refilled her glass and wandered back out to the living room, where Elliott Buntrock had emerged from the shrubbery. He wore black jeans and a black shirt topped by a white sweatshirt that bore the picture of a large yellow bulldozer with the words “Heavy Equipment Is My Life.”

  “My glass is empty,” he complained and headed for the kitchen.

  Roman had decked their halls with bayberry candles but he hadn’t yet lit them, so the woodsy smell of the fresh pine tree filled the room as Nauman turned to her and, with a flat, deadpan Brooklyn accent, said, “Hey, lady, where’s yer mistletoe?”

  She smiled and went into his arms.

  Even without mistletoe, it was a very satisfactory kiss
. “What happens to your show now that Thorvaldsen won’t be underwriting it?” she asked.

  “Elliott had already decided I’m not postmodern enough for the Breul House. He’s talking about using Blinky Palermo or someone like that to put the place back on New York’s cultural map.”

  “Blinky who?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “But what about you?”

  “I let Jacob and Elliott talk me into a three-gallery midtown extravaganza,” he admitted, “and Francesca’s going to line up a new set of sponsors. It’s starting to sound like a cross between Busby Berkeley and Pee-wee’s Playhouse. I may go to Australia for the year. Want to come?”

  She laughed as the buzzer went off in the entry hall announcing the arrival of Anne Harald and Jill Gill at her outer gate.

  The next hour was a happy jumble of untangling light cords, testing bulbs, and running extension cords from badly placed outlets, helped along with generous servings of Roman’s wassail.

  Jill Gill had brought with her a selection of Christmas records ranging from Alvin and the Chipmunks and the Norman Luboff Choir to Gregorian chants; and Sigrid took a bittersweet trip down memory lane when Anne opened the carton of ornaments and lifted out a crumpled tinsel star. All at once she was three years old again and her father was holding her up in his strong young arms to place that same star on the very top of their Christmas tree.

  She had been so young when he was killed that her memories of him were fragmentary, and suddenly here was a new one that she hadn’t even known she possessed.

  Anne leaned over and a faint mist of familiar jasmine followed as her lips brushed Sigrid’s cheek. “I know, honey,” she whispered.

  Candles glowed from a dozen different clusters around the warm room. Nauman struggled to relight his pipe, Buntrock and Roman were debating the aesthetics of icicles slung on in clumps (Buntrock’s method) or carefully draped one by one (Roman’s), and Jill brought a fresh platter of canapés hot from the oven.

  Elliott Buntrock beamed as he savored the ambience. “How utterly postmodern this is!”

  “Late postmodern,” Nauman corrected.

  Later, when everyone else had left and Roman had stumbled off to bed, Sigrid walked out to Oscar’s disreputable yellow sports car with him. It was midnight and the temperature was frigid, but for once the air was so clear that the brighter constellations shone through the city’s reflected glow.

  At the car, Nauman unlocked the passenger door, but Sigrid touched his arm regretfully. “I can’t go home with you. I promised Roman I’d help him clean up before work in the morning.”

  “I know,” he said. “But I have something for you and it’s too cold to stand out here on the sidewalk.”

  As soon as they were inside, Oscar switched on the engine and started the powerful heater; then he turned and gently traced the contours of her chilled face with gentle fingers. In this dim light, for a fleeting moment, the memory of other faces flickered between his hands—women he had known, women he had slept with, women he had even loved for a little space of time.

  And now this woman.

  For the first time, he had admitted to himself that she had it within her to be the last. And for the first time he was both awed and apprehensive by what be felt for her.

  Half angered by the powerful emotions she aroused in him, he reached into the space behind her seat and drew out a flat package wrapped in brown paper. “Here,” he rasped. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Nauman?” She looked at him, puzzled by his sudden belligerence.

  He shrugged and stared through the windshield. Bewildered, Sigrid undid the paper and found a cardboard folder approximately ten inches wide by eighteen inches tall. Inside was a drawing.

  Silently, Oscar turned on the interior light so that she could see, and he heard the sharp intake of her breath as she realized what she held.

  It was a sheet of light gray paper with a textured surface that was exquisite to touch; and on it was her own portrait, drawn in delicate silver point and highlighted with touches of white.

  A taxi lumbered past, an ambulance wailed in the distance, and from the river a block away came the lonesome hoot of a tugboat’s horn; but Nauman’s small car was a pool of silence.

  At last Sigrid turned to him. “It’s like something Dürer would have done,” she whispered brokenly. “Is that how you see me?”

  “Just like Dürer,” he said and leaned forward to touch the tear that glistened on her cheek.

  Paris.

  … add my condolences to the Ambassador’s and hope it may somehow comfort you to know that it was not a cold, indifferent stranger that personally supervised the packing of your son’s possessions, but a father like yourself; moreover, one who has also had to submit to the heaviest burden Providence may lay upon the shoulders of any father.

  As a pen more gifted than mine has written, “What is the price of a thousand horses against a son where there is one son only?”

  I pray God may strengthen you in this hour of darkness.

  LETTER TO ERICH BREUL SR., DATED 12.15.1912,

  FROM MR. LEONARD WHITE, PERSONAL ASSISTANT

  TO THE HONORABLE MYRON T. HERRICK,

  AMBASSADOR TO FRANCE.

  (From the Erich Breul House Collection)

  X

  Sunday, December 20

  CONSCIENCE, DUTY, AND SHEER WILLPOWER KEPT Sigrid from burying her groggy head back under the pillow when her alarm clock went off ninety minutes early the next morning. Getting up at any hour was always a chore, but she had promised Roman that if he’d leave the mess, she would help him clean up before she went to work; so she dragged herself out of bed and into the shower.

  After so much wassail the night before, Roman had professed himself uninterested in doing anything other than putting away the leftovers and trundling off to his bed in what had once been the maid’s quarters beyond the kitchen.

  Ten minutes in the shower restored the outer woman and Sigrid headed toward the kitchen to see what hot black coffee could do for the inner. As she passed through the living room, she gathered up a handful of dirty glasses and plates and carried them out to the sink.

  Roman had cleared himself space on the green-and-white tiled counter and was seated there with newspapers and coffee. His miniature countertop television was tuned to the morning news.

  “There’s your friend,” he said, pouring her a cup of coffee by way of greeting.

  She paused to watch Søren Thorvaldsen arrive in hand-cuffs at the federal courthouse. A moment later, cameras panned over the Sea Dancer tied up in custody as belligerent vacationers streamed down her gangways. While the camera lingered lovingly on the stacks of paper money uncovered in the engine rooms, Sigrid opened the refrigerator for juice, encountered the glassy eyes of the Saran-Wrapped eel, and closed the door again, all desire for juice abruptly gone.

  When the program moved on to another story, Roman clicked it off and rose with a sigh. “How art the mighty fallen,” he said portentously. “I’ll begin on the dishes if you’ll bring in the rest.”

  “Deal,” she said and carried a large tray out to the living room for the demitasse cups and saucers that had accompanied Roman’s bûche de Noël. Christmas trees with their lights extinguished always looked vaguely forlorn to Sigrid. There was something sad about shimmering tinsel when it reflected only cold winter daylight.

  Two trips with the tray cleared out most of the disorder and five minutes with the vacuum took care of cracker crumbs, stray tinsel, and a crushed glass ball. Afterwards, she poured herself a second cup of coffee and began to dry the pots and pans while Roman continued to wash by hand the things he couldn’t fit into the dishwasher.

  An unquenchable optimist, he announced that his sale of that short mystery story had finally convinced him that he was ready to begin writing the full-length murder mystery he’d been planning since the first day they met back in April.

  “In fact,” he said, scouring vigorously with steel wool, �
�I finished the first chapter yesterday morning. Now if I were to average three pages a day, I could be finished by Easter.”

  “Three months?” Sigrid asked dubiously. “I thought a book took at least a year.”

  “That’s for serious writers,” he told her.

  “And you’re not?”

  “My dear, I’m forty-three years old. I have a certain flair for the English language, a certain facility, but depth? I fear not.”

  He rinsed a copper saucepot and handed it to her. “Writers with something profound to say write poetry, writers with something serious to say write novels, but writers with nothing to say write genre fiction. I shall become a mystery writer.”

  He handed her another wet pot. “Don’t look so sad. I shall try to be a very good mystery writer.”

  Sigrid smiled. “Tell me about your plot.”

  “Actually, I don’t have one yet,” he confessed. “That’s the one drawback. I don’t want to write suspense or thrillers or, God forbid, one of those dreary down-these-mean-streets-a-man-must-go sort of social tracts. No, I want to write classic whodunits, elegantly contrived puzzles, and for that you need a cast of several characters who all have equally good motives to kill the same person. But that’s almost impossible anymore. I’ve been doing some research and there are no good motives left.”

  “No good motives for murder?” Sigrid snorted. “Roman, I’m a homicide detective. Believe me, people kill for a thousand different reasons.”

  “And most of your cases, dear child, are open-and-shut, no? Domestic violence. The husband enraged at his wife’s nagging; the wife who simply refuses to be battered any more; addicts killing for drug money. I’ve been so disappointed to see how really ordinary most of your work has been. Oh, I won’t say you haven’t occasionally had interesting puzzles, but usually, it’s for money or power, is it not?”