Murder Most Merry (24 page)

“Because you wouldn’t want to call the police and implicate your grandfather. You told me yourself how funny the headline would look. Besides, I might be able to help you.”

“How?”

“It seems to me you’ve got a real mystery on your hands. If I can solve it for you, there’d be no need for you to keep this little pig, would there?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’d have the answer to your mystery and I’d have the gift to deliver to your grandfather in the stocking.”

“He’s paying you for this, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Nick admitted.

“How much?”

“A great deal. It’s how I make my living.”

She picked up the automatic and for a split second he thought she was going to shoot him, after all. “Take off those foolish red pants,” she said, “and let’s have a beer.”

The kitchen had a sleek contemporary look that clashed with the rest of the apartment. Michelle opened the refrigerator and brought out two bottles of a popular German beer. “Aren’t you a bit young to be drinking beer?” Nick asked as she poured two glasses.

“Aren’t you a bit old to be a thief?”

“All right,” he agreed with a smile, “let’s get down to business. Tell me about your father.”

“His name is Dan Beaufeld. When I was a child, he ran a charterboat business in Florida. He was away from New York most of the time, especially in the winter when he had a lot of tourist business. Sometimes my mother would take me down to visit him and we’d get to ride on one of his deep-sea-fishing boats. I was twelve the last time I saw him, five years ago. That was when my mother divorced him. At the time I had no idea what it was all about. Somehow I blamed myself, which I guess a lot of kids do. My mother had bought this apartment with her own money, so she stayed here. My father moved to Florida year-round.”

“Did you understand what caused the divorce?”

“Not at first. I knew my grandfather had been part of it. I thought he’d poisoned my mother’s mind against my father. Once when he found me sobbing in my room, he told me I shouldn’t cry over my father because he was a bad man—an evil man.”

Charter boats in Florida in the mid-1980s suggested only one thing to Nick. “Could your father have been involved in drug traffic?”

“That’s what Grandpa finally told me, just last year. He said he’d made a lot of money using his boats for drug smuggling and that the police were still looking for him. That was why Grandpa forced my mother to divorce him. He was afraid the family would be tainted or something.”

“What about these mysterious gifts?”

“They started when I was thirteen. There was a note attached to the first one. It was from my father and he said I was always in his thoughts. He said to keep the gifts, and when I was eighteen they’d make me wealthy. The gifts have appeared in my stocking every Christmas, but there were never any more notes.”

“What were the gifts?”

“The first was a little toy bus with a greyhound on the side. Then there was a copy of Poe’s poem ‘The Raven, ‘ which I loved when I was fourteen. The third year was an apple, and I ate that. Last year there was a snapshot of Mother my father had taken when they were still married. Now there’s this plastic pig.”

“An odd combination of gifts,” Nick admitted. “I can’t see—”

“Who the hell are
you?
” a voice asked from the doorway.

Nick turned to see Florence Beaufeld standing wide-eyed at the kitchen door, taking in the scene before her.

He stood up, more as a reflex action than from any real fear of attack. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Beaufeld. My name is Nick Velvet.”

“What are you doing here with my daughter?”

“Mother—”

“Were you sent by her father? Are you this year’s Christmas gift?”

“He was sent to steal the gift, Mother! I caught him by the fireplace dressed up like Santa Claus.”

“And you’re sitting here chatting with him? Where are the police?”

“I didn’t call them.”

“My God, Michelle!”

“I’m perfectly all right, Mother. Please.”

“Go upstairs and put on some clothes. I’ll attend to Mr. Velvet.”

Michelle hesitated and then decided to obey her mother’s command. She left the kitchen without a word and went up the staircase, taking the automatic with her. Florence Beaufeld turned back to Nick. “Now tell me the truth. What are you doing here?”

“I was hired by your father, Mrs. Beaufeld.”

“I should have guessed as much. Whenever I mentioned those Christmas gifts from Dan it threw him into a frenzy. I vowed not to tell him if there was one this year, but he had to know. He said Dan was planning to give Michelle a large sum of illegal drug money.”

“Why would he do that?”

Mrs. Beaufeld shook her head. “Only because he loves her, I suppose, and she’s his daughter. He’s been hiding out from the police for over five years now, and he’s never seen her in all that time.”

“What do
you
make of these gifts?”

“I suppose they’re a message of some sort, like a child’s puzzle, but I haven’t been able to read it. Was there another gift tonight?”

“A plastic pig. But perhaps I don’t have to tell you that—your daughter suspects you’re the one who leaves them for her.”

“I swear I’m not! I have no contact with Dan. That stocking was empty earlier this evening. I looked.”

“At what time?”

“Shortly before ten, I think.”

“Who was in the apartment after that?”

“Only Michelle and me.”

“No one else?”

“I have a woman who cooks and cleans for us. She left at about that time. I can’t remember whether I looked at the stocking before or after she let herself out.”

‘Would you give me her name and address?”

“Are you a detective of some sort?”

“Only a professional trying to earn some money. I was hired to bring your father the stocking with the latest gift. Maybe if I solve the riddle for your daughter, she’ll let me have it. Then everyone will be happy.”

“Well. I’m certain Agnes isn’t involved, but you can have her address if you want.” She wrote it on a piece of notepaper.

“One other thing. Before I leave, could I see the gifts your daughter received? She told me she ate the apple, but the others?”

She studied him through narrowed eyes. “You have a way with you, Mr. Velvet. For all I know you’re nothing but a common thief, yet you charmed my daughter and now you seem to be doing the same with me. Come upstairs. I’ll ask Michelle to show you the gifts.”

He followed her up the staircase and waited discreetly in the hallway while she checked to see that her daughter was wearing a robe. Then he entered the girl’s bedroom. All seventeen years of her life seemed to be crammed haphazardly into it. Michelle led him to a bookcase where a rock star’s poster dominated shelves of alphabet books and stuffed toys. There the four objects were lined up, just as she had described them—the toy bus, the Poe poem, the snapshot of Mrs. Beaufeld, and now the pig.

“Michelle will be eighteen next month,” Nick said. “It’s my understanding the message must be complete, whatever it is, if it’s to direct her to a fortune by then.”

“But how is he able to get in here to leave these things?”

“I’m hoping Agnes can tell me that,” Nick said.

The clock was chiming one as he left the apartment.

Downstairs, a different doorman and security guard were on duty. Nick slipped the doorman a ten-dollar bill. “Merry Christmas.”

“Thank you, sir. Are you a resident here?”

“Only a visitor. I was wondering if you’ve worked here long enough to remember Dan Beaufeld. He was in Apartment 501 before his divorce about five years ago.”

“Sorry. I just started last year.” He called over to the security guard watching the television monitors. “Larry, were you here five years ago?”

The man shook his head. “Just over four years. The old-timers get the day and evening shifts.”

“Thanks anyway,” Nick said. He went out into the cold night air and took a cab home. Gloria was waiting up for him, to exchange gifts over a bottle of champagne.

* * *

The Beaufeld maid and cook, Agnes Wilson, lived on Fifth Avenue, too, but far uptown in Harlem. It was noon on Christmas Day when Nick visited the housing project where her apartment was located. Her husband eyed him suspiciously and asked, “What do you want with Agnes?”

“I just have a couple of questions. It won’t take a minute.”

“You a cop?”

“Do I look like one? I’m a friend of the Beaufeld family.”

Agnes Wilson was small and pretty, with deep-brown eyes and a friendly smile. “I never knew Mr. Beaufeld.” she said. “They were still married when I started there, but he was always in Florida. I never saw him.”

“Mrs. Wilson, someone left a Christmas toy in Michelle’s stocking by the fireplace last night. Do you know anything about it?”

“No.”

“You didn’t leave it? You weren’t paid to leave it?”

“No one paid me to do anything.”

“Not Dan Beaufeld?”

“Not him or anyone else.”

Nick leaned forward in his chair. “Michelle has received gifts in her stocking for five years now—a toy bus, a poem, an apple, a photograph, and a plastic pig. Do these mean anything to you?”

“No, they don’t.” She seemed genuinely surprised. “I didn’t know about the gifts. A couple of years back I mentioned to Mrs. Beaufeld that I thought Michelle was pretty old to be hanging a stocking on the fireplace Christmas Eve, but she just shrugged it off. It wasn’t any of my business, so I shut up. Maybe it wasn’t so odd, after all. I worked for a German family once that hung stockings on the fireplace for St. Nicholas every Christmas—all of them, even the parents.”

“Did any strangers come to the door this week when Michelle or her mother were out?”

“No strangers get by the doorman in that building. They’ve got TV cameras in the elevators and everything.”

Nick got up to leave, handing her a folded ten-dollar bill. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Wilson. I hope you and your husband have a Merry Christmas.”

Agnes’s husband saw him to the door. “You always go calling on Christmas Day?”

“Just like Santa Claus,” Nick told him with a smile.

He telephoned Charles Simpson from a pay phone at the corner. “Are you having a good holiday?” he asked.

“Is that you, Velvet? What luck have you had?”

“Fair. I had the stocking in my hands, but I don’t have it now.”

“What was in it?”

“If I tell you, do I get paid?”

“A partial payment. I won’t know if I need the stocking and the gift until I see them.”

“All right. I’ll try to have them tonight, or tomorrow morning for sure.”

He hung up and grabbed a bus heading downtown. Ten minutes later he was back at the Beaufelds’ building. The doorman was the same one who’d been on duty the previous day when he’d first scouted the building. Nick asked him if he’d known Dan Beaufeld.

The doorman told him he’d only been there three years.

Nick asked the security guard the same question. “Me? I’ve been here a year. I know the mother and daughter, not the ex-husband. He never comes around, does he?”

“Not lately.” Nick agreed. “Do you have keys to all the apartments?”

“We have one set of master keys, but they never leave this locked desk unless they have to be used in an emergency.”

“And there’s always someone on duty here?”

“Always,” the guard said, beginning to look suspiciously at Nick. “The doorman and I are never away at the same time.”

“That certainly speaks well for the security here. No one gets in who isn’t expected.”

“Including you,” the doorman said. “Who are you here to see, anyway?”

“Florence Beaufeld.”

The doorman called up on the phone and then sent Nick up on the elevator.

Florence Beaufeld met him at the door with word that they’d be leaving soon to have Christmas dinner with her father. “He’ll be picking us up in his car.”

“This won’t take long. Are you likely to discuss the gift in Michelle’s Christmas stocking?”

“No chance of that.”

Michelle came down the stairs. “Are
you
back again?” She was wearing a sparkling green party dress with a flared skirt. “Have you solved the riddle yet?”

“I may have. But first I’d like to see a picture of your father. A snapshot, anything.”

“I threw them all away after the divorce,” Florence said.

“I have one,” Michelle told him and went off to get it. She returned with a snapshot of a handsome man with a moustache and a broad grin, squinting into the camera.

Nick studied it for a moment and nodded. “Now I can tell you about the gifts. It’s just a theory, but I think it’s correct. Here’s my proposition. If I’m right, you give me the stocking and the latest gift to deliver to your grandfather.”