Christmas Stalkings (27 page)

“Of course not,” Nick says. He has a touch of heartburn. Carol’s story isn’t sitting well with him.

On the appointed day, full of excitement and good cheer, the McGuire family took the subway up to Radio City. As they stood in line to go in, their attention was caught by another family of three— mother, father, and hysterical little girl. Eavesdropping, they gathered that the family had driven in from Long Island City to see the performance, only to discover they had left their tickets at home. In a burst of generosity,

Matt McGuire offered to give the little girl his ticket, so she could see the show with Carol and Jason.

“They weren’t sure whether to trust us at first,” Carol weeps. “Matt convinced them. He said, it was the season for giving. He gave the girl his ticket, kissed me, and said he’d meet us at home. The show was wonderful. The children were enthralled. Her parents picked her up afterward, and everybody was happy. It was such a sweet thing for Matt to do.”

After Matt gave away his ticket, he took the subway home again. When he entered the building, he heard someone moving around in the apartment above his, an apartment whose tenant was on vacation in the Caribbean and not expected back for another two weeks. He climbed up to investigate and found the door slightly ajar. Fearing the worst, he went inside. One of the French windows was open. Apparently, an intruder had heard Matt coming and retreated to the back balcony, from which it was an easy drop to the ground. To his relief, Matt found the television, the VCR, the stereo, and a collection of ivory
netsukes
still in place. The only (slight) disturbance was in the kitchen, where a metal canister of sugar had been spilled all over the floor.

Delighted that he had frightened off the intruder before anything was taken, Matt swept up the sugar and threw it away. Being extra conscientious, he went to the corner deli and bought more sugar, refilled the canister, and replaced it in the kitchen cabinet. He locked the apartment with his keys. Since no harm had been done, he decided not to sully the season by telling anyone, including the police, about the almost-robbery.

Such, anyway, was his story.

“I believe him, Nick. He’s my husband. I believe him,” Carol says.

All was well until a couple of days later, when the upstairs tenant, a Mr. Barnaby Gough, turned up, saying he’d gotten bored and sunburned in the Caribbean and decided to spend Christmas in New York instead. All hell broke loose when Mr. Gough discovered that the cache of gemstones—diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires—which, being a child of the Depression, he kept in lieu of a substantial bank account, had been stolen from the canister where he kept them mixed in with five pounds of granulated sugar. The police fingerprinted everyone in the building, and found Mart’s prints on the canister, the broom, the doorknob, and one of the
netsukes
.

To all appearances, the former Yuppie Slime had indeed robbed his neighbor at Christmastime, and he was duly arrested. The
McGuires
were unable to come up with bail, so Matt would be incarcerated for Christmas. And Jason McGuire blamed Santa, because it all started with those dumb tickets to Radio City.

What kind of a bozo keeps a fortune in gems in a sugar canister? Nick asks himself as he waits for Mr. Barnaby Gough to answer his knock. Barnaby Gough, however, does not look nearly as nutty as Nick expected. Although he is surely in his seventies, he exudes health and vigor. He is tall, rangy, still a bit sunburned, only slightly dewlapped, and has a shock of white hair to rival Nick’s own, although unlike Nick he is clean-shaven. He wears shorts, running shoes, and a T-shirt emblazoned “Danger! Dirty Old Man.”

The Gough apartment, while elegantly furnished, is a bit of a mess. A huge evergreen wreath with a red velvet bow leans on the mantelpiece. There is a rowing machine in the middle of the floor. The
netsukes
are crowded on the coffee table next to a drift of what appears to be junk mail: catalogs; calendars with greetings from hardware stores and insurance companies; a foot-long cardboard stocking with slots for quarters to donate to a children’s charity; a red-striped cardboard fruitcake box with the legend, “To Our Valued Customer.”

Nick explains what he wants, and Barnaby Gough says, “Feel free.” He settles himself on the rowing machine and strokes and wheezes while Nick conducts a detailed investigation of the fireplace. Finally Nick, gazing upward at the sooty bricks, says, “
Sheesh
.”

Barnaby Gough stops rowing. Nick has the feeling he’d been hoping for an excuse. “Big job, eh?” Barnaby pants.

“One for the books.”

What with Nick pointing out to Barnaby the details of the chimney job, it isn’t long before they are discussing Topic A—the robbery.

“Pathetic,” Barnaby says. “Poor McGuire must’ve snapped. So sad.”

“He knew you kept your jewels in the sugar canister?”

Barnaby grimaces. “It’s not something I advertised, Nick, I assure you.”

“Then how—”

“Well . . .”Barnaby braces himself against the wall and begins doing hamstring stretches. “In September, on my birthday, I gave a party. Just a congenial gathering, you know—this year I served vegetarian pizza, tofu burgers, energy shakes. To avoid complaints about the noise, I invited the neighbors: the
McGuires
, Felicia upstairs, Gaston
Duvivier
on the top floor. Maybe McGuire was snooping in the kitchen and found the stones, and waited until now for a chance to take them.”

Nick scratches his beard. “Couldn’t anybody have done that? The other neighbors, the other guests?”

Barnaby stops hamstring-stretching long enough to waggle a forefinger at Nick. “Good point, except for one thing. It turned out not to be a break-in. The door was opened with a key. I gave one to McGuire because he was the super, and he’s the only person in the world who had one besides me. I don’t hand those babies out on the street corner.”

“Hah.” Nick is silent for a moment. Then he says, “Truthfully, though, wouldn’t it have been easier to put the jewels in a safe-deposit box?”

“Don’t trust banks. Never have. Got what you might call an obsession about it,” Barnaby says promptly. “The insurance company knew that, but they still issued the policy. I thought those stones were perfectly safe. Why would a thief look for valuables in a canister of sugar?”

While Nick is considering the question, there is a knock at the door, and Barnaby bounds to answer it. To the person outside he says jovially, “
Fifi
the fair! Come in, come in.”

A thin woman with a handsome, beaky-nosed face steps into the room. Her dark hair is pulled back by a wide headband, and she is dressed in a long, loose sweater over high boots and black tights. She looks about forty, but may be considerably older. She says, “Just got back from the health club, Barnaby. Thought I might run into you over there.” She notices Nick. “Whoops! I didn’t know you were busy.”

“No problem. This is a guy you have to meet. Nick Santos, Felicia
Fairlie
, my upstairs neighbor.”

“Pleasure,” Nick says.

Felicia gives Nick a practiced once-over, and Nick wonders if white hair turns her on. Certainly
Bamaby
seems smitten, inviting her to sit down, offering her herb tea, and generally hovering and beaming. When Felicia hears that Nick is going to rehabilitate the fireplaces, she claps her hands. “Ooh, that’s wonderful! When do you want to look at mine?”

“Any old time,” Nick says.

“You would not believe the change in Barnaby. You wouldn’t believe it,” says Felicia.

“Since his, jewels were stolen, you mean?” says Nick. Nick is crouching in her fireplace, his head up the chimney.

“No! Since I got him to start living a healthy life. Would you believe it, Nick? The man used to drink a martini every night.
Every night.
Never exercised. And the poisonous additives he was ingesting you wouldn’t believe.”

Nick emerges from the chimney to find Felicia, who is sitting on the sofa with her shapely legs crossed, eyeing his waistline. He slaps his midriff. “Milk and cookies,” he says.

Felicia howls as if he had said something really witty.

When she recovers, blotting her eyes delicately with a knuckle, Nick says, “I take it you and Barnaby are good friends.”

Felicia gives him a woman-of-the-world look. “I’m very fond of Barnaby.”

“You spend a lot of time together, huh?”

“A fair amount.”

Nick, a master at extracting information, fixes her with a steady gaze. “Did you know he kept gemstones in the sugar?”

Felicia draws herself up. “Nick, if I had had any idea Barnaby kept
sugar
in his kitchen, believe me I would have taken it upon myself to throw the nasty stuff out immediately.”

Then she looks embarrassed and studies her fingernails.

As Nick climbs up to inspect the fireplace of the top-floor tenant, Gaston
Duvivier
, a heavenly smell wafts toward him. It is the smell of chocolate, but somehow it is the quintessence of chocolate, and mixed with it are other smells more subtle and equally delicious. By the time Nick reaches the apartment door, where he pounds and yells, “Chimney man!” his knees are weak.

Gaston
Duvivier
is balding and squatty, with protruding green eyes. He is wrapped in a chocolate-smeared apron. In a heavy French accent he tells Nick to take as long as he likes with the fireplace, and he disappears into the kitchen. Nick inspects the fireplace, and inspects it again. The smells from the kitchen become more excruciating. Gaston
Duvivier
does not reappear.

At last, Nick sticks his head into the kitchen. “Hey, thanks.”

Gaston is removing a sheet of fat chocolate cookies from the oven of a stainless-steel restaurant stove. “You are finished? Good.”

Nick leans in the doorway.
 
“Finished for now, anyway.” Gaston is removing cookies from the pan. “Christmas cookies, huh?”

Gaston shrugs. “An experiment. Something to do on my day off.”

“Yeah? What kind of job have you got?”

“I am a pastry chef.”

“Wow.”

Nick gazes at the cookies. Finally, with a resigned expression, Gaston says, “You would like to try one, yes?”

“Try one? Sure.”

Nick is a connoisseur of cookies, and Gaston
Duvivier’s
chocolate cookie is the best cookie he has ever tasted. After some of Nick’s heartfelt praise, Gaston offers him another. More praise and several cookies later, Gaston nibbles one himself and says, “It is perhaps not bad.”

As they munch, Nick asks Gaston what he thinks of the theft of Barnaby Gough’s jewels.

Gaston responds with a Gallic shrug. “I think nothing.”

“Are you a friend of his?”

Gaston has brewed coffee. He pours a mug for Nick and says, “Not a friend, no. I was once in his apartment, for his birthday party.”

“How was it?”

Gaston’s eyes roll upward. “Horrible! The food!
Mon
Dieu
!
The worst I have tasted in my life.”

“That bad, eh?”

“The dessert, Nick! The dessert!” Gaston leans forward to grasp Nick’s arm. Nick notices tears in his bulbous eyes.

Another cookie melts in Nick’s mouth. “What was the dessert?”

“Some sort of ghastly pudding made of tofu. Disgusting! Inedible! I had to slip away, into the kitchen, to search for the—the—”

Gaston falters. Nick says, quietly, “To search for the sugar, Gaston? To make it more palatable?”

Gaston recovers himself. “I was going to say, to search for the garbage can, in order to get rid of it discreetly.” He blinks once or twice, and his eyes are clear. Nick leaves a short while later, when all the cookies are gone.

Standing in the doorway at the
McGuires
’, Nick discusses the chimney-and-flue situation with Carol. Behind her, he sees a dart board. A picture of Santa Claus is pinned to the target, and Jason is throwing bull’s-eyes at Santa’s red nose. To Carol, Nick says, “One thing keeps bothering me. About . . . your husband’s problem.”

“What’s that?”

“The person who stole the jewels had a key to the Gough apartment, right? Could somebody have stolen your husband’s keys? Or borrowed them long enough to make an impression in clay or something?”

Carol shakes her head. “Matt was unbelievably conscientious. He kept those keys in his jacket pocket at all times.” He never—