Three-Day Town

“Not a problem,” said Dwight. “The way it’s still coming down out there, I doubt if we’ll be going anywhere today.”

I suppose I should have been disappointed to come five hundred miles just to get snowbound, but a day spent relaxing with Dwight and reading the Sunday New York Times from front page to last, and relaxing with Dwight, and… well, you get my whim, as my brother Haywood would say.

Without his jacket on, I got the full effect of Elliott’s blue sweatshirt, which was emblazoned with a pair of silver Yamahas.

“You ride?” I asked.

He followed my eyes to his thin chest and looked down to remind himself what he was wearing. “Motorcycles? God, no! My sister sends these things. I ran over her foot with my tricycle when I was in nursery school, and she’s never forgiven me. She still thinks I’m a terrible driver.”

He asked what we’d planned for the week.

“We’re just playing it by ear,” Dwight said.

“And leaving ourselves open to serendipity and suggestions,” I added. “You have one? A suggestion, I mean?”

“Well, if you like jazz and find yourself down in the Village some evening, there’s an authentic little club I like. It’s just a hole-in-the-wall, but Sam Hentz sits in on piano sometimes.”

I drew a blank on the name, but Dwight was surprised. “Detective Hentz plays jazz piano?”

“Put himself through college playing in bars and restaurants. He’s not half bad either. I’ve gone down to hear him a few times.”

He pulled out his phone, scrolled through till he found the address, and gave it to Dwight. “Take the One train down to Christopher Street, then walk one block north to Tenth. Smalls. You can’t miss it.”

“Actually, Dwight and I do have one item on our dance card.”

Dwight raised an eyebrow. “We do?”

“Someone at the party last night gave me a pair of tickets to the matinee of The Mikado on Wednesday.”

“You like Gilbert and Sullivan?” Elliott asked.

I nodded. Dwight made a comme ci, comme ca gesture with his hand.

“That’s how Sigrid and I got to know each other,” Elliott said. “She was investigating a death at the Breul House—and if you’re interested in some of the worst excesses in nineteenth-century art collecting, you owe yourself a visit. Bad taste preserved in amber, although the house itself has good lines, architecturally speaking. Anyhow, she heard me whistling one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s patter songs and I was hooked as soon as I realized she knew all the words.”

“Really?” I took the last dab of scrambled eggs from the bowl. “She doesn’t strike me as a person who would like anything so frivolous.”

“I thought that, too, at first.” He cut a raspberry Danish in half and slid it onto his plate. “On the other hand, Gilbert and Sullivan may be frivolous, but they aren’t stupid.” He licked raspberry jam from his finger. “Remind me to give her that magazine article we found.”

“Right. I stuck it back in the box.”

When I went out to the kitchen to start a second pot of coffee, I took out the pages and started to flatten the box so it would fit into the recycle bin easier. Upon disposing of the bubble wrap at the bottom, though, I discovered a small white envelope underneath, an envelope addressed to Anne Harald.

Sealed, unfortunately.

(“Not that you would read someone else’s letter if it were unsealed,” my internal preacher said starchily. His pragmatic roommate gave a cynical snort. He has no illusions about my strength of character when my curiosity’s in full gallop.)

Elliott regarded the envelope with equal curiosity when I brought it and the magazine pages back to the dining room.

“Let’s hope Sigrid won’t wait till Anne gets back from New Zealand next month,” he said.

I topped off his coffee cup and paused to look out the dining room window. Blown by the wind, snowflakes swirled down and around like confetti at a political convention.

“People were out on skis before,” Dwight said. “Why don’t we buy you some boots and maybe walk over to the park?”

“Will a shoe store be open on Sunday?”

“Some guy was selling cheap plastic boots on the sidewalk in front of the market. Right next to a woman selling mittens and scarves. How do you suppose they do it? How did he put his hands on a bunch of boots in the middle of a snowstorm?”

Elliott nodded in amused agreement. “Street vendors are a breed unto themselves. Two drops into a downpour and you’ll see them hawking umbrellas on every corner. They—”

He was interrupted by a knock on the door.

I looked at Dwight. “I thought people had to be buzzed in first.”

“They’re cops,” he reminded me.

Of course.

But when I answered the door, it wasn’t Sigrid and her team. Luna DiSimone stood there looking perfectly