Christmas Stalkings

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Christmas Stalkings Page 19

by Charlotte MacLeod


  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, beli
eve 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—

  “He and I discussed this question, actually. He did remember one occasion when trash had been strewn around out front. He was afraid we’d get a citation from the Environmental Control Board, so he was working madly to get it picked up. The weather was unseasonably warm, so he took his jacket off and hung it inside, on the newel post at the foot of the stairs. But nobody came in or out except the neighbors.”

  Nick leans closer. “Which neighbors?”

  “He said he saw all three of them.”

  Nick walks to the corner deli and gets himself a cup of coffee to go. Next to Gaston’s French roast, it’s swill. Back at the brownstone, he leans on the fence while he drinks it. He has just tossed his paper cup in the garbage can, still has the lid off, when Barnaby Gough emerges from the front door in a camel’s-hair coat and earmuffs. He is carrying a bulging plastic garbage bag. He waves cheerily at Nick and drops the bag into the garbage can. “Disposing of the Christmas junk mail,” he says and walks briskly away, leaving Nick still holding the garbage-can lid, staring down at the bag. Nick has just realized something.

  When Barnaby Gough returns, now laden with bags from the Integral Yoga Institute’s health-food grocery store on Thirteenth Street, Nick is sitting inside on the stairs. He is holding a red-and-white-striped cardboard fruitcake box imprinted, “To Our Valued Customer.” He holds the box out to Barnaby. “I rescued your fruitcake,” he says.

  Barnaby’s eyes narrow. “So you did.”

  “I noticed it upstairs, and wondered who would send a fruitcake to a health-food nut. So I looked at the small print.” Nick reads, “‘To Our Valued Customer.’ And down here below, ‘From Your Friends at the Admiral Savings Bank.’ If you never do business with banks, why is the Admiral Savings Bank sending you a fruitcake?”

  “Who’s asking?” says Barnaby contemptuously.

  He starts to push by Nick, but Nick stands up. Somehow, in the half-light of the hall, Nick looks enormous. His face is craggy and grave. He says, “I think you’d better answer.”

  “I don’t—it’s a mistake—”

  Nick shakes his head. “It’s no mistake. I called the bank. They confirm that you have a safe-deposit box there. They also said all communication with you was supposed to be through a box number. There must have been a glitch, and the fruitcake got sent here instead.”

  “They can’t give you information like that! It’s privileged—”

  “My guess is, the jewels are in your safe-deposit box, where you put them when you thought up your scheme to defraud the insurance company. Collect the money, right? Then go abroad and sell the stones sometime?”

  Barnaby shrinks. He says, “Who the hell are you, Nick? Undercover cop? Listen, Nick—”

  “You sent the super and his family tickets to Radio City to get them out of the way. You didn’t imagine Matt McGuire would get into the spirit of the season, give away his ticket, and come back to hear you setting the scene upstairs.”

  “I’ve had difficulties, you know. Times aren’t good. I didn’t expect anybody to be arrested—”

  “But when he was, you went ahead and let an innocent man be your fall guy.” Nick shakes his head. “Not only that. You made his son hate Santa Claus.”

  Barnaby’s lips move. He might be trying to say, “I’m sorry.”

  Once Barnaby is in custody, Nick doesn’t stick around for Matt McGuire’s homecoming. Time is short, and there’s too much to do. He does have a brief talk with Jason McGuire. Nick can be persuasive, and by the time he leaves, he’s pretty sure everything is okay on the Jason front. Oh!—he’d better arrange for somebody actually to repair the fireplaces in the brownstone before Christmas. Nick hopes, he really hopes, that Gaston Duvivier believes in Santa Claus.

  ROBERT BARNARD - A POLITICAL NECESSITY

  I’d be interested to know whether any scholar has ever done a Ph.D. thesis on why so many college professors take to a life of literary crime. Few have done so with more zest, skill, and sometimes malicious wit than Robert Barnard.

  Bob could possibly do it in Norwegian, even. After having studied English at Balliol College in Oxford University, he went on to teach English in Australia, then in Norway, finishing his teaching career at the University of Troms0. Troms0 is at the highest latitude you can reach in northern European
universities, and Robert Barnard is about as high as he can get on my personal list of favorites . . . even if some of his characters do choose strange methods of solving their domestic problems.

  It must be rare for the first thought of a newly appointed government minister to be: Now is the time to kill my wife. Don’t get me wrong—I’m sure many of my colleagues would like to, with that dull, insistent sort of wishing which will never actually impel them to action, and which is characteristic of second-rate minds. My thought was not If only I could but Now I can. It had my typical decisiveness and lack of sentiment, as well as that ability to get to the heart of a question and come up with a solution which I am sure was the reason the Prime Minister decided to promote me.

  I was brought into the government in the autumn reshuffle, and my second thought was: Christmas is coming. Ideal.

  I should explain that the post I was given was one of the junior positions in the Home Office. I doubt whether the thought would have occurred to me if it had been in Trade and Industry, or Environment The Home Office, you see, has a great deal to do with Northern Ireland, and everything to do with the imprisonment of IRA terrorists. Its ministers, therefore, are natural targets. Indeed, two days after I took up my post, I had a visit by arrangement from a high-ranking Scotland Yard terrorist officer who lectured me on personal security; elementary precautions I and my family could take, and little indications that might give me the idea that something was wrong.

  Including, naturally, suspect packages.

  He actually brought along a mock-up suspect package, showed me all the signs that should arouse my suspicions, and then proceeded to take it apart and show me the sort of explosive device that would be concealed inside. It was a real education.

  I tried not to show too much interest. Indeed, I hope I gave the impression of a man who is trying to give due attention to an important matter, but who has actually a mountain of things he ought to be doing. In fact my mind was ticking away as inexorably as a real explosive device. A suspect package among her Christmas parcels—a sort of bombe surprise. How wonderful if it could have gone off while she was singing “Happy Birthday, dear Jesus” with the children. But of course that was out of the question. I had no particular desire to harm my children. Merely to render them motherless.

 

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