The corridor on the fifth floor was silent and deserted, lit only by an indirect glow from unseen fixtures near the ceiling. There were only three doors, so he knew 501 was going to be a large apartment. He glanced at his watch and saw that it wasn’t yet midnight. Then he listened at the door of 501. Hearing nothing, he reached deep into his bag and extracted a leather case of lock picks. It took him just forty-five seconds to unlock the door. He was mildly surprised that the chain lock wasn’t latched, but the reason quickly became obvious. The woman of the house, Florence Beaufeld, was preparing to go out.
By the glow of a twelve-foot Christmas tree standing near the spiral staircase in the duplex, he saw a handsome brown-haired woman of around forty adjusting a glistening earring. It was her hair, done in an unusual style that evoked the idea of a layered helmet, that caught his attention. She finished adjusting the earring, straightened the neckline of her red-velvet dress, and picked up a sequined purse.
Nick slipped into the dining area, taking shelter in the shadows behind a china cabinet, as the woman stepped to the foot of the staircase and called out, “I’m going up to the Brewsters’ party, Michelle. Go to bed now, it’s almost midnight. And don’t peek at your gifts!” There was a mumbled reply from upstairs as Mrs. Beaufeld let herself out of the apartment.
Nick waited, sweating in his Santa suit, until he heard a grandfather clock chime midnight. Then he left his hiding place and moved silently across the carpeted floor toward the lighted Christmas tree. A fireplace was beyond the tree, along an inside wall, and above it was an oil portrait of Florence Beaufeld seated with a protective arm around a lovely young girl about eight years old. Below it, taped to the mantel, was a single red Christmas stocking, bulging with an unseen gift.
Carefully setting down the bag, Nick moved to the mantel. He reached out and took the stocking in his hand, carefully pulling the tape away from the wood. As he did, he heard the slightest of sounds behind him and turned to see a young woman in a short nightgown and bare legs standing at the foot of the staircase, a tiny automatic held firmly in her right hand.
“Get your hand off my stocking. Santa.” she said, “or I’ll send you back to the North Pole in a wooden box...”
Nick did as he was told. “Come now.” he said gruffly, “you don’t want to point that thing at Santa.”
She motioned slightly with the pistol. “Take off the hat and beard. I like to see who I’m talking to.”
He tossed the red hat on the floor and pulled the sticky beard away from his skin.
“Satisfied now?” he asked in his normal voice.
“Say, you’re not bad-looking. Who are you?”
“Do you mind if I take off this coat and padding before we talk? It’s really quite uncomfortable.”
“Sure, but don’t try anything. I’ve seen all the movies.” She watched him while he dropped the coat on the floor with the rest and then pulled the padding from his pants. He’d worn jeans and a black turtleneck under the Santa suit in case he had to shed it to make his escape. With the padding out, the red pants fell by themselves and he stepped out of them.
“Now, what was your question?”
“Who are you?”
She spoke with an educated, private-school voice, even when her words were tough and gritty. Nick guessed Michelle Beaufeld was now in her late teens.
“I’m a friend of your grandfather,” he told her.
“Charles Simpson?” The truth seemed to dawn on her. “Oh. no!” She started to laugh. “He wanted you to steal the gift!”
“Well, the stocking the gift is in.”
She shook her head. “Santa Claus, the thief! Won’t that make a story for the papers? Grandpa Tries To Steal Child’s Christmas Gift, “
“You’re no child,” Nick pointed out. “Why don’t you put away that gun? I’m not going to hurt you.”
She motioned toward the Santa Claus outfit on the floor. “Put your pants back on.”
“They’re too big for me without the padding.”
“That’s the idea. If you try to rush me. they’ll trip you up.”
When he’d done as she ordered, she sat in an easy chair and carefully set the pistol down on an end table by her side. “Now we can talk,” she said. “I know Grandpa wouldn’t send anyone to harm me, but I can understand his wanting to get his hands on that gift. Let’s have a look at it—toss the stocking over here. No funny business now!”
Nick did as he was told, convinced now that she wouldn’t think of shooting him any more than he’d think of harming her. The stocking landed on the chair by her side and she picked it up, withdrawing the gift in its holiday wrapping. As she worked at unwrapping it, she reminded Nick of her mother adjusting the earring earlier. She had her mother’s high cheekbones and pouting lips, and was well on her way to becoming a great beauty. Putting aside the wrapping, she held up a little plastic pig for Nick to see. It was a gift more suitable for a child of five or six. “There we go! I’ll put it with the others.”
“What others?”
“Didn’t Grandpa tell you? They’re gifts from my father. He sends one every Christmas.”
“Does he know how old you are?”
“Of course he does. They have a special meaning.”
“Oh?”
“That’s what Grandpa’s dying to find out—what their special meaning
is.”
“Do you know?” he asked.
“Well—not yet,” she admitted. “It’s about something I’m supposed to get when I’m eighteen.”
“How old are you now?”
“Seventeen. My birthday’s next month.”
“Does your father ever come to see you?”
She shook her head. “Not since I was twelve. The only time I hear from him is at Christmas, and then it’s just the gift in the stocking. There hasn’t been a note since the first time.”
“How does he deliver them? I know you don’t believe in Santa Claus.”
That brought a genuine smile. “I don’t know. I suppose Mother must put them there, although she’s always denied it.”
“What does your grandfather have to do with any of this?”
Her face showed exasperation, then uncertainty. “Why am I telling you my family history when I should be calling the police?”
“Because you wouldn’t want to call the police and implicate your grandfather. You told me yourself how funny the headline would look. Besides, I might be able to help you.”
“How?”
“It seems to me you’ve got a real mystery on your hands. If I can solve it for you, there’d be no need for you to keep this little pig, would there?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’d have the answer to your mystery and I’d have the gift to deliver to your grandfather in the stocking.”
“He’s paying you for this, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Nick admitted.
“How much?”
“A great deal. It’s how I make my living.”
She picked up the automatic and for a split second he thought she was going to shoot him, after all. “Take off those foolish red pants,” she said, “and let’s have a beer.”
The kitchen had a sleek contemporary look that clashed with the rest of the apartment. Michelle opened the refrigerator and brought out two bottles of a popular German beer. “Aren’t you a bit young to be drinking beer?” Nick asked as she poured two glasses.
“Aren’t you a bit old to be a thief?”
“All right,” he agreed with a smile, “let’s get down to business. Tell me about your father.”
“His name is Dan Beaufeld. When I was a child, he ran a charterboat business in Florida. He was away from New York most of the time, especially in the winter when he had a lot of tourist business. Sometimes my mother would take me down to visit him and we’d get to ride on one of his deep-sea-fishing boats. I was twelve the last time I saw him, five years ago. That was when my mother divorced him. At the time I had no idea
what it was all about. Somehow I blamed myself, which I guess a lot of kids do. My mother had bought this apartment with her own money, so she stayed here. My father moved to Florida year-round.”
“Did you understand what caused the divorce?”
“Not at first. I knew my grandfather had been part of it. I thought he’d poisoned my mother’s mind against my father. Once when he found me sobbing in my room, he told me I shouldn’t cry over my father because he was a bad man—an evil man.”
Charter boats in Florida in the mid-1980s suggested only one thing to Nick. “Could your father have been involved in drug traffic?”
“That’s what Grandpa finally told me, just last year. He said he’d made a lot of money using his boats for drug smuggling and that the police were still looking for him. That was why Grandpa forced my mother to divorce him. He was afraid the family would be tainted or something.”
“What about these mysterious gifts?”
“They started when I was thirteen. There was a note attached to the first one. It was from my father and he said I was always in his thoughts. He said to keep the gifts, and when I was eighteen they’d make me wealthy. The gifts have appeared in my stocking every Christmas, but there were never any more notes.”
“What were the gifts?”
“The first was a little toy bus with a greyhound on the side. Then there was a copy of Poe’s poem ‘The Raven, ‘ which I loved when I was fourteen. The third year was an apple, and I ate that. Last year there was a snapshot of Mother my father had taken when they were still married. Now there’s this plastic pig.”
“An odd combination of gifts,” Nick admitted. “I can’t see—”
“Who the hell are you?” a voice asked from the doorway.
Nick turned to see Florence Beaufeld standing wide-eyed at the kitchen door, taking in the scene before her.
He stood up, more as a reflex action than from any real fear of attack. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Beaufeld. My name is Nick Velvet.”
“What are you doing here with my daughter?”
“Mother—”
“Were you sent by her father? Are you this year’s Christmas gift?”
“He was sent to steal the gift, Mother! I caught him by the fireplace dressed up like Santa Claus.”
“And you’re sitting here chatting with him? Where are the police?”
“I didn’t call them.”
“My God, Michelle!”
“I’m perfectly all right, Mother. Please.”
“Go upstairs and put on some clothes. I’ll attend to Mr. Velvet.”
Michelle hesitated and then decided to obey her mother’s command. She left the kitchen without a word and went up the staircase, taking the automatic with her. Florence Beaufeld turned back to Nick. “Now tell me the truth. What are you doing here?”
“I was hired by your father, Mrs. Beaufeld.”
“I should have guessed as much. Whenever I mentioned those Christmas gifts from Dan it threw him into a frenzy. I vowed not to tell him if there was one this year, but he had to know. He said Dan was planning to give Michelle a large sum of illegal drug money.”
“Why would he do that?”
Mrs. Beaufeld shook her head. “Only because he loves her, I suppose, and she’s his daughter. He’s been hiding out from the police for over five years now, and he’s never seen her in all that time.”
“What do you make of these gifts?”
“I suppose they’re a message of some sort, like a child’s puzzle, but I haven’t been able to read it. Was there another gift tonight?”
“A plastic pig. But perhaps I don’t have to tell you that—your daughter suspects you’re the one who leaves them for her.”
“I swear I’m not! I have no contact with Dan. That stocking was empty earlier this evening. I looked.”
“At what time?”
“Shortly before ten, I think.”
“Who was in the apartment after that?”
“Only Michelle and me.”
“No one else?”
“I have a woman who cooks and cleans for us. She left at about that time. I can’t remember whether I looked at the stocking before or after she let herself out.”
‘Would you give me her name and address?”
“Are you a detective of some sort?”
“Only a professional trying to earn some money. I was hired to bring your father the stocking with the latest gift. Maybe if I solve the riddle for your daughter, she’ll let me have it. Then everyone will be happy.”
“Well. I’m certain Agnes isn’t involved, but you can have her address if you want.” She wrote it on a piece of notepaper.
“One other thing. Before I leave, could I see the gifts your daughter received? She told me she ate the apple, but the others?”
She studied him through narrowed eyes. “You have a way with you, Mr. Velvet. For all I know you’re nothing but a common thief, yet you charmed my daughter and now you seem to be doing the same with me. Come upstairs. I’ll ask Michelle to show you the gifts.”
He followed her up the staircase and waited discreetly in the hallway while she checked to see that her daughter was wearing a robe. Then he entered the girl’s bedroom. All seventeen years of her life seemed to be crammed haphazardly into it. Michelle led him to a bookcase where a rock star’s poster dominated shelves of alphabet books and stuffed toys. There the four objects were lined up, just as she had described them—the toy bus, the Poe poem, the snapshot of Mrs. Beaufeld, and now the pig.
“Michelle will be eighteen next month,” Nick said. “It’s my understanding the message must be complete, whatever it is, if it’s to direct her to a fortune by then.”
“But how is he able to get in here to leave these things?”
“I’m hoping Agnes can tell me that,” Nick said.
The clock was chiming one as he left the apartment.
Downstairs, a different doorman and security guard were on duty. Nick slipped the doorman a ten-dollar bill. “Merry Christmas.”
“Thank you, sir. Are you a resident here?”
“Only a visitor. I was wondering if you’ve worked here long enough to remember Dan Beaufeld. He was in Apartment 501 before his divorce about five years ago.”
“Sorry. I just started last year.” He called over to the security guard watching the television monitors. “Larry, were you here five years ago?”
The man shook his head. “Just over four years. The old-timers get the day and evening shifts.”
“Thanks anyway,” Nick said. He went out into the cold night air and took a cab home. Gloria was waiting up for him, to exchange gifts over a bottle of champagne.
* * *
The Beaufeld maid and cook, Agnes Wilson, lived on Fifth Avenue, too, but far uptown in Harlem. It was noon on Christmas Day when Nick visited the housing project where her apartment was located. Her husband eyed him suspiciously and asked, “What do you want with Agnes?”
“I just have a couple of questions. It won’t take a minute.”
“You a cop?”
“Do I look like one? I’m a friend of the Beaufeld family.”
Agnes Wilson was small and pretty, with deep-brown eyes and a friendly smile. “I never knew Mr. Beaufeld.” she said. “They were still married when I started there, but he was always in Florida. I never saw him.”
“Mrs. Wilson, someone left a Christmas toy in Michelle’s stocking by the fireplace last night. Do you know anything about it?”
“No.”
“You didn’t leave it? You weren’t paid to leave it?”
“No one paid me to do anything.”
“Not Dan Beaufeld?”
“Not him or anyone else.”
Nick leaned forward in his chair. “Michelle has received gifts in her stocking for five years now—a toy bus, a poem, an apple, a photograph, and a plastic pig. Do these mean anything to you?”
“No, they don’t.” She seemed genuinely surprised. “I didn’t know ab
out the gifts. A couple of years back I mentioned to Mrs. Beaufeld that I thought Michelle was pretty old to be hanging a stocking on the fireplace Christmas Eve, but she just shrugged it off. It wasn’t any of my business, so I shut up. Maybe it wasn’t so odd, after all. I worked for a German family once that hung stockings on the fireplace for St. Nicholas every Christmas—all of them, even the parents.”
“Did any strangers come to the door this week when Michelle or her mother were out?”
“No strangers get by the doorman in that building. They’ve got TV cameras in the elevators and everything.”
Nick got up to leave, handing her a folded ten-dollar bill. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Wilson. I hope you and your husband have a Merry Christmas.”
Agnes’s husband saw him to the door. “You always go calling on Christmas Day?”
“Just like Santa Claus,” Nick told him with a smile.
He telephoned Charles Simpson from a pay phone at the corner. “Are you having a good holiday?” he asked.
“Is that you, Velvet? What luck have you had?”
“Fair. I had the stocking in my hands, but I don’t have it now.”
“What was in it?”
“If I tell you, do I get paid?”
“A partial payment. I won’t know if I need the stocking and the gift until I see them.”
“All right. I’ll try to have them tonight, or tomorrow morning for sure.”
He hung up and grabbed a bus heading downtown. Ten minutes later he was back at the Beaufelds’ building. The doorman was the same one who’d been on duty the previous day when he’d first scouted the building. Nick asked him if he’d known Dan Beaufeld.
The doorman told him he’d only been there three years.
Nick asked the security guard the same question. “Me? I’ve been here a year. I know the mother and daughter, not the ex-husband. He never comes around, does he?”
Murder Most Merry Page 17
