Corpus Christmas (29 page)

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.

Sunday, December 20

C
ONSCIENCE, 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?”

He finished with the pots and pans and began to wipe down the stove and surrounding countertops.

“Well, yes,” Sigrid admitted. “But—”

“And most of the time, as soon as you find
one
person with a solid motive, that’s the killer, isn’t it?”

“So what’s your definition of a good motive?” she asked, nettled.

“One that would work for more than two or three people,” he said promptly. “Like your babies in the attic in last night’s
Post
. Even though that was a dreadful picture of
you
, the story itself would make a
smashing
murder mystery. Just
think
: everyone connected with those babies had a reason to kill them—both sisters, the brother, even the husband. If I were using
them in a book, I should probably add in a grandmother and a crazy nurse or priest.”

Roman paused with the wet dishcloth in his hands. “Illegitimacy used to be such a
wonderful
reason for murder! Along with miscegenation and incest. Nowadays, if it’s not drugs or mere lust, it’s for something as pointless
and bizarre as a parking place or a pair of designer sunglasses.

“People used to kill for
noble
reasons—for revenge or honor or to usurp a throne. Today, everyone lets it ‘all hang out.’” His lip curled around the phrase
disdainfully. “You can’t build a believable mystery around simple
scandal
for its own sake anymore. Can you
imagine
trying to write
A Scandal in Bohemia
today? Instead of hiring Sherlock Holmes to retrieve that picture of himself with Irene Adler, the king would probably be
trying to peddle the negatives to
The National Enquirer
.”

Sigrid laughed. “And would probably be turned down because both parties in the picture were fully clothed.”

As she dressed for work, Sigrid thought about the remaining suspects in Roger Shambley’s death in light of Roman’s insistence
that most contemporary homicides were committed for gain. She had to admit that Shambley’s shadowy threats carried little
weight in today’s tolerant atmosphere. And yet…

She brushed her hair, put on lipstick and eyeshadow, and even rooted out a red-and-gold silk scarf to add color to her charcoal
gray suit, but all the time, her mind kept switching back and forth between Matt Eberstadt’s reservations about Rick Evans
and Pascal Grant, and her own unanswered question of why Shambley had been killed on the basement steps.

She put on the shoulder holster she’d begun using when her wounded arm made a purse impractical back in October; and her subconscious
threw up something that she’d overlooked till then: what had Rick Evans done in those few minutes between the time he left
Pascal Grant’s room and the time young Grant met him over Roger Shambley’s body?

The more she thought of it, the surer she became. She glimpsed at her clock. Still a little early but Albee was usually an
early bird, thought Sigrid, and began punching in numbers on her phone.

Elaine Albee answered on the second ring. She sounded a little dubious when Sigrid outlined her theory, but she procured the
address Sigrid wanted.

“You’re the boss,” said Albee, and promised to meet her there as soon as she could get the search warrant.

When Sigrid arrived at the apartment building in the West Eighties, she discovered that Jim Lowry had come along, too.

“I’m the recorder on this case, aren’t I?” he grinned. The building was one of those solid old brick co-ops with a daytime
doorman and a well-tended elevator that rose smoothly to the eighteenth floor.

It was only a few minutes before ten when they rang the bell, but soon there was a flicker of movement behind the peephole,
then the door was opened by Jacob Munson, still in his robe and slippers and holding the art section of the
New York Times.

“Lieutenant Harald?” he said, surprised to find them on his threshold.

“May we come in?” she asked. “This is Detective Lowry, whom you met on Friday, and Detective Albee. We’d like to talk to your
grandson.”

“Richard?
Ja,
sure.” He led them down a dim hall lined with framed black-and-white drawings into a large sitting room bright with a half-dozen
modern paintings on the walls and numerous small sculptures and art objects atop cabinets, tables, and windowsills. The bookcases
were filled to overflowing with art books of all eras and a Mozart sonata cascaded in a ripple of crisp harmonics through
the room.

It was a room of culture, a room that had filled up slowly and judiciously over the long years with objects and pictures that
represented careful winnowing, a room that had probably been familiar to the adult Nauman while she was still a child in grade
school. Imagining Nauman here made Sigrid sad for what she now must do.