"And how did he do that?" Hansen turned back to Colby.
"A small kitchen adjoins the conference-room wall where the Santa chimney is installed. There's a heating vent we modified to lead into the 'chimney' years ago, when this tradition began."
"How many years ago?"
"I don't know, Lieutenant. It's something I've done so long I've forgotten when it began."
"When I was six," Kendall piped up with an odd, childish eagerness.
Colby nodded. "She's twenty-six now. So it was twenty years ago."
"All right." The lieutenant eyed the crowd scene until she spotted Victor Janos. "You have an office? Where?"
"Next door."
"Fine. We'll interview you there, separately, starting with those least related to the incident."
The process took two hours, occurring simultaneously in the big conference room down the hall and in Tony Renaldi's office. The Client was the first group to be dismissed, en masse, as befitted their unified front. Wives and children, except for Kendall, left next. Employees trickled out one by one.
By the end of an hour, Temple's turn came.
Victor Janos's office was a model of masculine simplicity: brown, leather-accoutered and uncluttered.
Lieutenant Hansen, seated behind the massive mahogany desk, gestured Temple to a chair, but Temple declined.
"With the cat attached, standing is easier."
"It must be rather like being pregnant," Hansen agreed, already jotting disconcerting notes in her book.
First came the deadly predictable routine questions. Temple recited name, address, phone number both in Las Vegas and here in New York City, when she had arrived for the party, where she was between then and the Santa Claus appearance. She also explained her relationship to the partners of the firm.
Then Hansen got down to the nitty-gritty.
"Apparently you're the one who split the onlookers into the group sent to Renaldi's office and the crowd kept on the crime scene. Why?"
"To get the children out, number one, before Santa's death traumatized them, or before they milled around enough to mess up the death scene."
"Good thinking." The New York lieutenant said it the way Molina would, as if she meant the exact opposite. "Nothing like saving the police time and trouble on a major crime scene. Why were you playing traffic cop?"
"I have . . . experience."
"As a school crossing guard, or what?"
"I've been present at other crime scenes," Temple said. "By accident."
"Most people present at crime scenes are usually there by accident. Unless they're accessories to the murder. Are you?"
"No. I'm just an experienced witness. You can ask the Las Vegas police."
"We will. Who?" Pen was poised.
"Lieutenant C. R. Molina, crimes against persons unit."
"Molina. One l, one n?"
"And one o, one i, one a."
Hansen glowered up at her. Up at her. Yes! And Temple bowed over by a twenty-pound cat.
"I should get the cat's name, I suppose."
"Midnight Louie. That's 'midnight' with a capital m, and Louie--"
"As in'Louie, Louie'?"
Temple nodded, and then she was free to go. For now, Hansen added with a dire flourish.
Temple paused at the office door to read an elegant blue-enameled clock on the bookshelf: 11 p.m. Only 7 P.M. in Las Vegas. Lieutenant Hansen might actually reach Molina if she called soon. That would be a conversation worth eavesdropping on.
Temple wondered if she should call Molina to warn her. No. The minute she hit Aunt Kit's, she was going to be in a warm bath and Louie would be whisker-deep in a big dish of milk with a little shot of creme de cocoa.
Gosh . . . Kit! She had expected Temple home at least an hour earlier. Was a cab catchable at this late hour? Probably, but maybe she should train Louie to run them down like mice, to leap on their hoods and hang on. That would get their attention, even if she couldn't.
Temple collected her clothes in Kendall's empty office, dumped them in the tote bag and trudged to the hall elevators in her high heels, too weary to change.
Going down the hall, Temple remembered the sinister, cadaverous figure she and Louie had followed only yesterday morning, on their first visit to Colby, Janos and Renaldi. He had vanished down the hall like the ghost of Jersey Joe Jackson at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel in Las Vegas. Maybe he had been an omen of bad things to come. Truly the Ghost of Christmas Past.
Watching the elevator floor-indicator inch toward her position, Temple yawned and shivered at the same time. The head he-Client had hinted that she and Louie had his vote for the job, if the three clones didn't vote otherwise, she assumed. Maybe that was good news, but now it seemed trivial compared to what had happened.
Even Old Saint Nick wasn't safe when Temple, the bad-luck bearer, was on the scene. Wait until Kit heard that Santa Claus had been the death of the party!
Chapter 21
Thanks for the Memories
Matt had barely got home to the Circle Ritz when Molina called.
"Something happen?" Matt knew he sounded anxious.
"Not yet. But I'm inviting you to the interrogation, after all, as an unseen observer. From what little conversation we've had with Mr. Effinger so far, he's got a whole smorgasbord of answers I thought you might be able to detect some of the smoked sham-on-rye he's handing out."
"I'm . . . honored."
"Don't be. It's my way of saying thanks for keeping me on overtime during my kid's Christmas break. Seriously, this is my one free crack at him--yours, too, unless you want to push a deep personal interest over the legal line into Stalking, and I don't think you do. I want this round to count."
"Ditto."
"Get here as fast as Max Kinsella's motorcycle will take you. Don't speed, though, not noticeably, and don't expect too much."
Matt hung up, understanding that one low-level interrogation was small stuff. Still, he and Molina had a big stake in what Effinger would say, would give away. What was Effinger to her, and she to Effinger, that it mattered so much? Maybe a promotion. Maybe a bigger crime to be uncovered. Maybe Max Kinsella to hound and hunt down for something concrete, instead of just nagging suspicions.
Help Molina, help himself and help Max Kinsella right out of Temple's life. Molina would tell him that was in Temple's best interests, but Matt had always found doing things for people's own good a form of dictatorship. He could only think of Temple's searing disappointment if Max proved to be criminally involved.
Effinger.
Trapped. In a room. With Matt behind a one-way mirror, watching him for lies. Justice? Or for just another foolish attempt at erasing a painful past with a vengeful present?
Matt checked his watch. Not even 8 p.m. Lucky he had the night off.
At 8:30 a uniformed officer escorted Matt by elevator to the proper floor. The young, stoic guy gave no indication of what he thought of Matt's presence or mission. Probably nothing.
Molina met him in her long, narrow office, as cramped and dysfunctionally functional as usual, and led him to a string of small, nondescript empty rooms.
"We're interviewing him in there. We gave him a coffee break." She led Matt through a different door to another room as antiseptically devoid of decoration as the one indicated. "You'll look and listen from here. I'll leave the interrogation room if I want to confirm what he says with you. Just sit down and get comfortable."
Matt eyed the oak armchair that belonged in a courthouse anteroom. It was no red suede sofa. He couldn't help smiling.
"Coffee?" Molina's tone was as warm as the Stewardess from Hell's.
"Yeah. I brought a notepad and pen."
"Aren't you the Boy Scout, always prepared?"
She shut the door, giving him an instant tinge of claustrophobia, which was ridiculous in the face of the huge picture window framing the adjoining room. She returned soon, butting the ajar door open to enter carrying two plastic cup holders and their filled cups.
Matt accepted one and sat down, watching the blank window. Imagine, viewing Cliff Effinger like a specimen bug in a plastic box. If only he had glimpsed this day years ago.
Matt felt like someone watching an ill-produced early TV show.
The Spartan setting--a wooden table and metal folding chairs-- was as stark as The Honeymooners' apartment in the Jackie Gleason classic skits, and remained empty.
Could people live with so little as the Kramdens had in New York City of the fifties? Matt had wondered that the first time he'd viewed retrospectives of the early TV show. Now he wondered, could the police do much with so little? A bare room and a few questions, with a peephole -turned-picture -window that everyone recognized for what it was.
Finally the door with the chicken-wire-sandwiched window glass opened into the next room. A mustached man in a beige shirt and pants showed in Effinger. Molina came last, coffee cup in hand. Every click and rustle and scrape of their motions transmitted to the room Matt occupied.
Molina spoke. It was her show. "You know your rights," she told Effinger and the tape recorder. "You've waived the presence of your attorney."
"What's to wave at?" Effinger's upper lip writhed in an Elvis-curl. He waved at the window, and Matt flinched. "I don't have an attorney and I'm not going to answer much."
With his hat off, he looked worn and seedy, but his age-seamed face still had the mean under bite of a junkyard dog.
"Just wanted to know your whereabouts on September twenty-ninth of last year."
"Like I keep a Day Runner."
"Think."
"I wasn't even in Las Vegas around then."
"Where do you go?"
"Places. L.A. Chicago."
Molina nodded. "Any witnesses see you there?"
"No! I visit places, not people."
"In LA.?"
"The track."
"In Chicago?"
"The dogs."
"Always gambling. Why travel for it when it's all here?"
"Variety."
"What do you know about this man?"
From his observation post, Matt could see a black and white photo of the corpse that fell from the Crystal Phoenix ceiling last fall, the corpse that had carried Cliff Effinger's ID, but not his finger-prints. What had anyone hoped to gain from that?
"What do I know about this guy? He's dead?" Effinger offered with a shrug.
"Why did he have your ID on him?"
"Was it my ID? Probably he stole it."
"What about the ID you're carrying now?"
"What about it?"
"It's not yours."
"Prove it."
Molina got up, walked to Matt's window, folded her arms and kept her back to Effinger. "We don't have to prove it. We can get your fingerprints. The inkpad tells all."
"Not all. People can have their fingerprints altered."
"To match yours! Why on earth would anyone want to be taken for a petty crook like you?"
Effinger shrugged.
Molina turned back to the table and skated two more photos from the folder toward him. "Know these guys?"
Effinger's glance was cursory, but Matt saw something tighten in that indifferent face. He'd always done that when he was preparing to lash out, or to lie to someone's face.
"Nope. Never saw them."
Molina eyed the photos with certain ruefulness. "Well, that doesn't surprise me, Cliff. Seems no one's seen these two Vegas eyesores for a few months. My guess is that someone quietly took them out."
Effinger grew even stiller.
"You have any idea who might want to do that, hmm? They're ugly customers, as they used to say, but small fry, really. What do you think? Did someone run or buy them out of town, or just drive them out on the desert?"
"Like you said, Lieutenant. They're not worth the cash or the gas. I say they took off for greener pastures."
"Like L.A.? Or Chicago?"
Effinger shrugged.
Molina packed her folder and picked up her empty coffee cup.
"Coffee anyone?" she inquired in a tone that didn't encourage a yes, not even from her so-far-silent interrogation partner.
She left the room and Matt braced himself.
A moment later his door opened.
She slapped the folder down on the table, then leaned on the table edge.
"We'll get zilch from him. At least directly. What did you notice?"
"He was lying about the two photos you showed him."
"Of course."
"Were they the hoods who assaulted Temple?"
"What do you think?"
"Are they really missing?"
She nodded.
"He knew them, Effinger did."
She nodded.
"Then--" Matt realized where he was going, and stopped.
"Say it." Molina smiled grimly. "You're not protecting anyone or anything but your own shadow-sense of honor. Effinger lied about knowing those two thugs, who are--?"
Somehow he had become the one being interrogated. Seeing Molina's cleverness in using one to prod the other, he understood-- almost sympathized with--Effinger's weary reluctance to speak. But there was no escape for anyone who still pretended to honesty.
Matt opened the folder to pull the two photos into the light. "If this is the pair who assaulted Temple, that means that--"
"That means that their intense interest in Max Kinsella's whereabouts, and their unadmitted recognition by Cliff Effinger, ties Kinsella into the recent casino killings."
"You're not saying Kinsella killed these absent creeps? If they're dead."
"I'm saying that he's one of the few people in Las Vegas I can think of who could, and would. If you have any idea where he's gone to ground--"
"I don't."
"If you have any idea that Miss Temple knows where he's gone to ground--"
"I don't, I hope she doesn't and I wouldn't say even if she did."
Molina swept the photos back into the folder "But you do see what--and who--Effinger knows? You know anybody in Chicago who might provide an alibi for him?"
"I'll ask the next time I get there," Matt said, as blankly as she.
"Do that. And don't forget to tell me what you find out." Molina pushed herself free of the table's hard-edged support. "You can go now. The coffee isn't that good here."
Matt left, aware that Molina had always hoped to get more out of him than Effinger during this double-edged interrogation.
He began to wish he had throttled Effinger before the man could destroy Matt's present life as thoroughly as he had his past one.
Chapter 22
Santa Who?
Temple awoke feeling she should be someplace else.
But this was Sunday, her muzzy brain finally figured out as it took in the tall windows covered with drawn white miniblinds.
She wasn't scheduled to return to the advertising agency offices until Monday, even without the intervention of a death.
She patted the bedcovers, in search of either Midnight Louie's big furry body annexing the comforter, or her glasses, which weren't on the bedside table. The glasses materialized under her hand. She'd fallen asleep reading the Colby, Janos and Renaldi promotional booklet she had shown Kit.
Her dreams came back, a jumbled "Christmas Carol" production with Colby, Janos and Renaldi as the three ghosts and old Ebenezer Scrooge the cadaverous figure that had ridden up on the elevator with her that first day. Or did Scrooge symbolize the Old Year, the bent, paper-thin, robed figure with the scythe . . . Death himself?
Heavy. Temple donned her glasses and let her toes do the walking along the bedside as they felt for the fat, fuzzy bedroom slippers Kit had lent her. Knit wool slippers packed easily, but they were no protection against bear wood floors in a cold climate.
When she was properly shod in her borrowed mukluks, she skated over the polished oak to the windows to slit open the blinds. A white overcast sky blazed in, shaking down powdered sugar against the window glass.
; A great day to stay in, curl up by the coffeemaker and attack the New York Times's hugely nasty Sunday crossword puzzle ... or the more relevant puzzle of a death by hanging from a golden chain.
Kit was in the living room, already immersed in the four-inch-thick paper, a mug of coffee on the sofa table in front of her, and Midnight Louie sprawled on the classified ads section, carefully cleaning his fingernails, i.e., claws. He reminded Temple of Victor Janos in Colby junior's office last night. A strange, compulsive reaction to a sudden death in the area.
" 'Morning, Temple." Kit barely looked up from the paper. "Coffee's on in the kitchen. Box of bagels, box of sticky buns, box of croissants. Grab a mug, a thousand calories, and come back in."
Temple shuffled off to the triangle of kitchen around the corner. The coffee smelled of cinnamon and nuts. She kept it black instead of adding her usual whitewash of skim milk and joined her aunt on the couch.
"There it is." Kit slapped a fat section of newsprint onto Temple's flannel lap. "That looks like a Minnesota nightgown, granny. How did you come by it?"
"Honestly. I brought it with me when I moved to Vegas. For when I had a cold."
Kit nodded. "Nothing like floor-length flannel to soothe the savaged respiratory system. I thought I detected a faint perfume of Vick's VapoRub. Good thing we're both single at the moment. Check out page thirty-eight."
Temple paged through the ink-laden sheets, trying to contain a sneeze. How long would messy, heavy, tree-slaying newsprint last, she wondered, now that cyberspace was here?
"I don't see anything, Kit."
"Lower right. Two inches."
"murder must advertise. Cute. That New York Times staff certainly has a wide background."
"Dorothy Sayers title, isn't it?"
"Did you read her too?"
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