Corpus Christmas

“And why would he hang around there for another hour and a half?” asked Elaine Albee.

“Looking for the picture Shambley promised him?” Lowry guessed.

“With Grant and Evans ru

“Up and down the back stairs,” Lowry reminded her. “They never said they were in the main rooms.”

Despite Lowry’s reservations, the others were willing to strike the Danish ship owner from their dwindling list.

“Reinicke, Munson, Kohn, Beardsley and Peake,” said Lowry. “I move to strike Reinicke, too. I can’t see him tying the dog up somewhere while he goes in and bops Shambley over the head just because the guy sneered at his taste in art. He didn’t seem to be that thin-ski

Sigrid listened with only half an ear as they bounced theories off each other. “That’s probably all it really was,” she told them.

“Ma’am?” said Eberstadt.

“What Lowry said about a bop over the head. A simple whack with a weighted cane that happened to be handy. One blow, not a shower of them. If Shambley’s skull had been half as thick as his skin, he might not have suffered anything other than a simple concussion.”

“Unpremeditated,” mused Albee.

“He was at the party for less than an hour,” Sigrid said, “but in those few minutes, he insulted Reinicke and Thorvaldsen and half threatened Kohn and Peake with public disgrace. He didn’t seem to care what he said; but at a party, of course, he could get away with it. Although,” she added, “Thorvaldsen almost threw a punch at him.”

“So,” Peters said, “if he mouthed off to the wrong person-”

“Bop!” Lowry gri

“If we eliminate Reinicke,” said Sigrid, “I could see Benjamin Peake or Hester Kohn flying off the handle. And even Mrs. Beardsley or Jacob Munson might be pushed. But why then and there?”

They didn’t see her point.

“Look,” she said. “Assume that Shambley says something that so enrages or scares the killer that he or she grabs up the cane and starts after him. At that point, Shambley’s already passed through the door under the main staircase and started down the basement stairs when the blow lands on his head. Why? His study was in the attic. Elliott Buntrock went through the paintings stored down there and he’s certain that none of them are worth much more than the canvas they’re painted on. So why was Shambley going to the basement?”

“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 i

“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 he 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 ski