Corpus Christmas

by Margaret Maron

  “Like you?” gibed Peters.

  Sigrid ate her own tuna sandwich swiftly and quietly, with one eye on some paperwork and only half an ear for their give and take. Casual camaraderie had never been easy for her, although now that Nauman had entered her life, she found these unofficial sessions a little easier than before.

  She skimmed through one report a second time, then passed it down the table to Bernie Peters. “The neighborhood canvass turned up someone who remembers the Jurczyks.”

  The others looked at her blankly, trying to place the name.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Peters. “Those baby bones.”

  He read the highlights of the report aloud. “Mrs. Pauline Jaworski remembers the Jurczyk sisters from her childhood in the fifties. Thinks her mother may still be in touch with

  Barbara Zajdowicz. Mother’s name, Mrs. Dorota Palka. Currently resides at Lantana Walk Nursing Home up in Queens.”

  Elaine Albee’s head came up. She had briefly worked undercover there back in the spring. “Lantana Walk? Queens? I thought they put that place out of business last spring.”

  “The director testified against his partners and got off with a suspended sentence and a hefty fine,” said Sigrid, who had followed the situation and been disappointed by its outcome.

  As they wadded up foam cups and paper napkins from their impromptu lunch, word came that Pascal Grant and Richard Evans were ready to make their statements. Sigrid checked her watch. “Lowry, I want you and Albee to sit in on this, too. Peters, see if you can get a statement from that Palka woman.”

  “Just how I wanted to spend the afternoon,” Bernie Peters grumbled to Eberstadt when the other three had gone. “Freezing my ass off on the F train to Queens.”

  “Better than surveillance,” replied his partner, who had done his share of sitting in cold cars on icy winter streets.

  Flanked by their lawyers, Pascal Grant and Rick Evans each appeared very young and very intimidated when they entered the interrogation room; but once all the legal formalities and stipulations were out of the way, their statements were quite straightforward.

  They were questioned separately and then together. The second time around, Rick Evans did all the talking at first, in a soft voice full of southern inflections. Sigrid listened without questions as he described again the noises they had heard the night before, his impression that someone had left through the basement door, Pascal Grant’s discovery of the body, and his own decision to move it to the third floor using the dumbwaiter.

  When he finished, Sigrid said “Do you have anything to add to that, Mr. Grant?”

  Looking like a frightened Raphael angel, Pascal Grant darted a quick glance at her through thick sandy-blond lashes, then bit his lip and shook his head.

  “You didn’t set the burglar alarm; therefore anyone who had a key could have walked in without your knowing. Is that right?”

  He nodded without lifting his eyes. “What if that person didn’t have a key?”

  Puzzled, Pascal Grant looked at her. “He couldn’t come in?” he guessed.

  “No,” Sigrid said patiently. “I meant what would happen if someone rang the bell? Would you hear?”

  “Oh. Yes,” he nodded vigorously. “It’s right over the door in my room. Makes a real loud noise. Even if my tapes are on.” He hesitated. “Or did you mean the bell board in the kitchen? It’s nice. The bells jingle and a little flag comes up to show which one it is. Mrs. Sophie had a bell and Mr. Erich and—”

  “No, I meant the doorbells,” Sigrid said, interrupting his enthusiastic description of how Victorian employers had once summoned their servants to particular rooms of the house.

  “The doorbells ring in the office and they buzz in my room,” said Pascal Grant. “A big buzz means it’s the upstairs door and a sort of littler one means it’s the spiderweb door.”

  “And did you hear either buzzer last night?”

  Pascal shook his head. “You’re sure of that?”

  He nodded solemnly.

  The two youths described how they had returned to the Breul House from an early showing of Round Midnight, entered through the basement door, and headed straight to Pascal Grant’s room without going upstairs and without seeing anyone.

  “So you were in your bedroom listening to jazz tapes,” Sigrid said, “and you heard someone outside. What time was this?”

  Pascal’s smooth brow frowned in concentration. “Around ten-fifteen, I think. Maybe ten-thirty.”

  “Yet you didn’t go out to investigate?”

  “I thought it was Dr. Shambley,” Pascal said slowly. “Did Dr. Shambley often come down to the basement that late?”

  “He was everywhere.”

  “Did you like Dr. Shambley?”

  “No,” said the golden-haired janitor before his lawyer could stop him.

  “My client’s personal feelings toward the deceased had nothing to do with his death,” said Harvey Pruitt.

  “Then you won’t mind if he tells us why he disliked Dr. Shambley?” Sigrid asked.

  “I’m afraid I can’t allow that at this time,” Mr. Pruitt said austerely.

  “Very well. What about others at the house, Mr. Grant? Who else didn’t like Dr. Shambley?”

  “Mrs. Beardsley didn’t like him.”

  “Why not?”

  Mr. Pruitt started to object, then sat back. “I don’t know,” said Grant. “She said he got her place or something.”

  Sigrid looked at the lawyer, but Pruitt shook his head. “This is sheer hearsay, you realize?”

  “Of course.”

  She turned to Rick Evans. “You said you had an impression that someone else was there in the passageway when you came out of the bedroom. Who did you think it was?”

  Rick shook his head. “I didn’t think. I just heard—like footsteps or something. And then I felt a draft from the open door and heard it close.”

  “Did you go down and look through the door window?” asked Lowry.

  “I didn’t see anyone,” Evans said.

  They asked Pascal Grant to explain once more why there was blood on his softball bat if he hadn’t hit Shambley with it.

  “I didn’t!” Pascal said.

  “He’s telling the pure truth,” said Rick in his soft Southern voice. “I was the one carrying that bat. The whole time. I didn’t want to touch Dr. Shambley at first. I thought he was dead. He looked dead and I just sort of poked him to make sure he really was.”

  The weakest part of their story was the reason they gave for moving the body and not calling the police. No matter how many times the police detectives returned to that point, the story remained that they were afraid to have Shambley’s body found so close to Pascal Grant’s door. Period.

  While Jim Lowry and Elaine Albee pressed the two youths for stronger reasons, Sigrid leaned back in her chair trying to decide whether or not to charge one or the other or both with the murder. They’d had a weapon, an opportunity, and probably a motive if that lawyer’s reluctance to let Grant discuss his distaste for Shambley meant anything.

  On the other hand, Grant said he hadn’t heard a doorbell, yet that Beardsley woman claimed she’d seen Thorvaldsen there at midnight.

  And what was Rick Evans holding back? That he and Grant were sleeping together. Was that all?

  She was almost grateful when a uniformed officer opened the door, peered in, and signaled that she had an important phone call.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Lieutenant,” he said when she came out into the hall and closed the door to the interrogation room, “but Dr. Cohen said you’d probably want to know right away.”

  The assistant medical examiner was as laid-back over the telephone as in person. “You know that softball bat you people just sent over? Forget it. Too big. You’re looking for a rod, not a club.”

  “A rod?” Sigrid was surprised. “With a wound that messy?”

  “I told you there was something odd about that head,” Cohen reminded her. “He had a big skull, but
it was paper thin. Want the Latin for it?”

  “Put it in your report,” she said. “What do you mean by a rod? Like a curtain rod?”

  “One of those solid brass ones, maybe. Or a broom handle.”

  “What about that mop handle?”

  “Not thin enough. We’re talking something no thicker than my thumb. A cane, maybe, or a poker or the handle of an umbrella even. Anyhow, as thin as his skull was, it wouldn’t have taken much force whatever they used.”

  Back in the interrogation room, Sigrid told the two lawyers that as soon as a statement could be typed up and signed, their clients would be free to leave.

  Rick Evans gave an involuntary sigh of relief and smiled at Pascal Grant. His smile faded though when she added, “Of course, there will probably be further questions in the next few days, so we expect you not to leave town.”

  “I won’t,” Pascal Grant said earnestly.

  “No easy solutions,” Sigrid told Elaine Albee and Jim Lowry when Grant and Evans had signed their statements and departed. The younger officers were disappointed to learn that the blow that killed Shambley could have been delivered by either a man or a woman, or possibly even a determined child.

  “Did any of those people last night carry a walking stick?” asked Albee.

  “Not that I noticed,” said Sigrid. “The wife of one of the trustees, Mrs. Reinicke, walked with a slight limp, but I didn’t see her with a cane.” She described the animosity she’d witnessed between Shambley and Reinicke, then checked the time. “I’ll take Thorvaldsen and Lady Francesca Leeds; you two can split the trustees—the Reinickes, the David Hymans, and Mr. and Mrs. Herzog.”

  Sigrid’s voice was cool and her face perfectly serious as she told Lowry, “Mrs. Herzog was a Babcock, you know.”

  “Huh?” said Lowry.

  Later, he and Albee stood on a chilly IRT platform, surrounded by Christmas shoppers with brightly wrapped packages, and debated whether or not the lieutenant’s last remark was meant to be humorous.

  As the Lexington Avenue train squealed to a stop, they decided it probably wasn’t.

  In a cab headed uptown, Hester Kohn and Caryn DiFranco discussed the pros and cons of contact lenses while

  Rick Evans sat sandwiched between them on the rear seat with his feet drawn up on the transmission hump.

  The furry hood of Ms. DiFranco’s parka brushed Rick’s nose as the lawyer leaned over for a closer look at the lenses in Hester Kohn’s eyes.

  “I just can’t wear mine,” she sighed. “I looked absolutely gorgeous in them, but I can’t see a damn thing. Besides, I’ve decided glasses are who I am. People expect me to look like this. I expect me to look like this.”

  The round gold frames of her granny glasses had slipped down on her little button nose and she pushed them up in a delicate gesture.

  “I know what you mean,” said Hester Kohn. “I wore glasses for almost twenty-five years. They were such a part of me I felt naked the first few times I went out without them.”

  Caryn DiFranco peered into Rick’s brown eyes. “Do you wear contacts, Rick?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Ma’am? Omigod! That makes me sound like I’m eighty years old.”

  Rick flushed. “Sorry. I keep forgetting people don’t say that up here.”

  “It’s okay, kid. You’ll be as rude as the rest of us soon enough.” She caught a glimpse of passing street signs and tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Let me out at Macy’s, okay?”

  The driver grunted.

  “I’ve got to buy and mail presents to half of Michigan,” she complained to Hester Kohn. “Be grateful you’re Jewish.”

  “I frequently am,” Hester said dryly.

  As the taxi double-parked in a no-parking zone and Caryn DiFranco opened her door, Hester added, “Thanks for coming down, Caryn.”

  “Don’t thank me. You’ll get the bill. Speaking of which, do we bill that MCP partner of yours or the gallery?”

  “The gallery.”

  “Right. Stay out of mischief, Rick, and don’t talk to any strange cops.”

  “Thanks, Miss DiFranco,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes, slammed the door, and disappeared among the crowds of Christmas shoppers.

  The cold air that rushed in when Caryn DiFranco got out had briefly dispersed Hester Kohn’s gardenia perfume, but as the cab swerved back into the flow of traffic, the sweet scent again filled the space between them even though Rick had moved to the far side of the seat. For him, it was a disorienting smell, one connected with hot drowsy summer days, swinging on the porch of his mother’s house, a porch surrounded by those glossy bushes heavy with waxy white blossoms. Somehow it seemed all wrong to be smelling his mother’s gardenias here in this New York City taxicab on a cold December afternoon. Especially with the new associations the heavy scent of gardenias now held.

  Dusk was falling and rush hour had begun in earnest. All lanes were clogged at Forty-second Street.

  Forty-sixth, Forty-seventh, another snarl in front of Radio City Music Hall.

  Hester Kohn smoothed her dark hair and loosened the top button of her red wool coat. “Want to tell me what’s really bothering you?”

  “Nothing.” Without a camera to shield himself from her face, he unconsciously sank deeper into his corner and kept his eyes on the neon-lit stores and buildings they were now creeping past.

  A complex blend of affection and irritation and a few stray tendrils of pity as well swept over Hester as she remembered Rick’s first few weeks at the gallery.

  Her own virginity had been lost so long ago that she had forgotten what terrors true sexual innocence could hold. Despite their age difference, she had dazzled him, made him want her, made him helpless to resist; yet, until they were well into the act, she hadn’t even considered the possibility that it might be his first time. In that moment she had become tender and sentimental and had almost broken it off because she suddenly found herself panged by a conscience she didn’t know she still possessed.

  If I’d known, I would have made it more beautiful, she thought.

  Too late. Already the sweet liquids of youth were spilling from his touchingly inept body.

  With those first hot rushes of manhood, another boy might have become immediately cocky and boastful, a royal nuisance. Instead, Rick came to each subsequent session reluctantly and seemed miserable and guilty afterwards.

  As he was now, in this overheated cab. It wasn’t only his involvement in Roger Shambley’s death that made him shrink into that corner, yet Hester knew that if she removed her glove and touched his bare, chapped hand with hers, he would be unable to resist. She considered testing her power, but they were now too close to the gallery.

  Instead, she sank back into her own corner and wondered if young Rick had, after all, seen or done more last night than he was willing to admit.

  Over in Queens, an artificial Christmas tree decorated the main lobby of the Lantana Walk Nursing Home and an electric menorah stood on the reception desk with two bulbs lit for this second day of Hanukkah. As Detective Bernie Peters soon discovered, he had arrived at the most restless hour of the day for ambulatory residents, and Mrs. Palka was not in her room.

  “The dinner shift is promptly at five,” explained the new resident-director, “but they begin gathering outside the door by four o’clock. No doubt that’s where we’ll find Mrs. Palka.”

  They walked through halls wide enough for two wheel-chairs to pass each other, into a lounge decorated with more symbols of Hanukkah and Christmas. There they found a querulous elderly woman with thick glasses and a hearing aid struggling to understand what she could expect for dinner as her incurably cheerful friend read the menu aloud.

  “Roast ham?” she sniffed. “We had ham for supper last night and dry, stringy fodder it was, too, with a smidgen of honey glaze or pineapple.”

  “Lamb!” her friend enunciated loudly. “Roast lamb, Maureen. And you know perfectly well the doctor said you can hav
e sweet things.”

  “Wheat beans? What’re wheat beans? Do speak up, Dora.”

  “There she is,” said the director, gesturing toward the cheerful little dumpling of a woman, who leaned heavily upon her aluminum walker and watched their approach with lively curiosity.

  The director introduced Detective Peters to Mrs. Palka, pointed them to a quiet corner of the lounge, and expertly vectored Mrs. Palka’s hard-of-hearing friend toward another group of residents waiting for their dinner.

  “My daughter told me someone from the police might be up,” beamed Mrs. Palka. She lowered herself painfully into a chair, refusing Peters’s help. “I had a hip replacement two years ago,” she explained. “Eighty per cent who get it can go dancing in six months. I’m part of the twenty per cent who have to hang up their dancing shoes.”

  “I’m sorry,” Bernie Peters said awkwardly. The infirmities of age made him uncomfortable. Even though he knew intellectually that everyone grows old, he was still young enough to believe he would somehow be exempted.

  Mrs. Palka patted his hand. “Don’t be sorry. I danced plenty in my lifetime, believe me.” She sat erectly in her chair and cocked her small white head. “So! Dead babies in Gregor Jurczyk’s attic. Whose babies were they?”

  “Well, that’s what we were hoping you could tell me Mrs. Palka. Your daughter thought you were friendly with the Jurczyk family and might remember some of the people who lived in that house.”

  “Pauline says between 1935 and 1947. That right?”

  “Those were the dates on the newspapers we found them wrapped in,” Peters nodded.

  “Now let me think. The Depression was going strong then and then came the war. They couldn’t have been Barbara’s. She was very good, very religious and would never. Besides, she and Karol—that was her husband, lovely man— they couldn’t have babies. And Angelika was a business-woman, worked as a secretary in one of those big-shot investment places on Wall Street. She never married, so it couldn’t have been her. There was a Mr. and Mrs. Rospochowski, but they had a new baby almost every year. When did she have time to slip in four more? Now there was a pretty little redheaded thing. What was her name? Anna? Anya?