names.
“You’ll have to wait for yours until tomorrow,” Faith told Josie. “It’s not wrapped.” Nor were any of the other presents she’d gotten for friends and family. She was so used to doing this chore in the wee hours of Christmas morning, after the Christmas Eve service, that it had come to seem part of the day, a tradition.
Wrap presents, fall asleep. Wake up, open them.
“You sure you’re okay here? This thing with Richard hasn’t bummed you out too much?”
“I’m leaving soon to go across town to my parents.
And no, the thing with Richard hasn’t gotten to me, and I think it would have by now if it was going to—that’s a mouthful, but you know what I mean.” Faith was surprised. She really wasn’t that upset. Maybe the cookbook had some good cookie recipes. She needed new ones. They often served cookies and fruit. Maybe fruit cookies? A Big Apple cookie [see the recipe on page 284]—a cookie with an attitude?
“I know what you mean—and count yourself lucky.
You didn’t go spending a fortune on some Christmas present for him. I did that once—beautiful gold-filled pocket watch. I was fool enough to give him his first.
All I got was a black lace garter belt, and you know who that was a present for. Picked his pocket next date —last date, too.”
When Josie had gone, the kitchen felt unusually empty. Faith had taken down the posters and charts she’d put up on the walls when Have Faith moved in.
She allowed herself a nostalgic moment. The new place was bigger, brighter, yet this had been her first place, and it would always be the most special.
She packed the equipment she needed to cook tonight and tomorrow into a large zippered bag. The only thing she couldn’t find was her strainer. She had two of them. They were essential for sauces—metal and shaped like a dunce’s cap, not mesh, but solid.
They had wooden pestles to push the food against the small holes. Josie must have packed them. Then Faith flashed on the party at the Stansteads’. Hope in the kitchen, fooling around with the equipment; Faith taking the strainer and pestle out of her sister’s hands, shoving it out of the way on the counter. The Stansteads’ apartment was close to her parents. She could stop by for it, say Merry Christmas—and return all of Emma’s keys, too, very discreetly if Michael was home. She went to the phone and called. No answer, which was what she’d half-expected. They’d be at the Morrises’ or the Stansteads’, dividing their holiday time.
She sat down again, feeling ever so slightly triste.
Christmas Eve. It would have been nice to have had somebody. She thought of all the couples she knew— happy and unhappy. Hope was bringing Phelps, which left Faith paired with her grandmother. They’d had an uproarious lunch at a much-denuded Altman’s, where Mrs. Lennox had regaled her granddaughters with tan-talizing tidbits of past scandals—most of the chief figures long gone—interspersed with department-store remembrances of things past: percale sheets like silk, the divine hats, and the only china department with all her patterns. Definitely Granny was a great dinner partner, yet the holidays were one of those arklike times, when you felt a bit peculiar if you were a female zebra, say, without a matching male striped creature at your side.
If there was still no one home at the Stansteads’, she’d stop anyway and get the strainer. The only thing resembling one at her parents’ was an ancient colander, and it would never do to strain the shrimp sauce for the fish mousse. She’d saved some of the mousse from the luncheon the day before, but you had to make the sauce up fresh.
No more sighing. No more looking back, she told herself. She had a terrific business and there were a dozen men out there in Gotham who would be more than happy to dance attendance—or more. And there was always that one she hadn’t met yet. It wasn’t Richard. Even before last night, she’d known that. But he existed. It was simply a question of time.
She stood up and reached next to the counter to turn off the overhead light. The list she’d made on the packing paper stared up at her mockingly. A challenge unmet. The names circled around Emma’s. Faith stared at them again. They almost seemed to move. Birds of prey. She picked up the pencil and drew a dark line across Nathan Fox’s name and then across Lorraine Fuchs’s. The two deaths. The two murders. They were out of the running.
For murder, there has to be a motive—or at least a reason. Nathan could have been killed by a junkie.
That would provide a reason. But Lorraine? Faith found herself sitting down again and gazing intently at the sheet. There had been a peephole in the door of Nathan Fox’s apartment. He would never have let a stranger in— and he had opened the door to his murderer. It effectively ruled out the robbery theory. Had there been time for a greeting? For the recognition of what he’d admitted into his home? Death. Or did it happen fast, right away? The door opened, the shot—he never knew what hit him?
But the motive.
She looked at the other names. Who benefited?
What was the legal term? Cui bono. What did Nathan have? He had his manuscript. What did Lorraine have? The same thing. Arthur Quinn wanted it. But it would probably have made its way to him anyway—he’d have no need to kill for it. Who else? Poppy wouldn’t have wanted it published. “You know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my daughter—
People kill for money. Neither Fox nor Lorraine had had any. They also kill for revenge. That might apply to Fox in some way, but Lorraine? Yet, people also kill to protect themselves, Faith thought with a start. To keep from being found out. Had Lorraine known who’d killed Fox?
Means, motive, and opportunity.
She stared at the names, crossed some out and willed the rest to sort themselves out, willed them to speak—send a Ouija board message, send one name flying away from all the others.
And they did.
“Opportunity,” she whispered aloud. “Opportunity.”
Traffic was heavy, and by the time she got across town, it was getting late. Her father had very noncosmopoli-tan notions of dining hours. Besides, he had to get to church. She was tempted to keep the cab, but the doorman had his arm out for one, so Faith let it go. It was Christmas Eve, after all.
“Merry Christmas, Bobby,” she said to him. “It’s okay. I have the key.”
“Merry Christmas, miss,” he called back, helping the woman loaded down with parcels into the cab.
Ever since she’d left work, Faith had been repeating the same thing over and over to herself: How could I have missed it? She’d been missing a lot lately. She wasn’t worried, though. She knew exactly what she was going to do. The elevator was in use, so she took the stairs, running up, filled with the kind of energy she hadn’t known for weeks. It was almost over now.
Really over this time.
She let herself in. The apartment was dark and empty. No welcoming fire. No hum of conversation.
She walked down the hall to the kitchen. There was light streaming from beneath the door. She pushed it open and stopped.
Michael Stanstead, assemblyman from New York City, clad in a long rubberized raincoat like cops wear over their clothes, was pressing his wife’s hand on the grip of a gun. The muzzle was in her mouth and she was tied to a kitchen chair with wide strips torn from a bedsheet.
“Sorry, didn’t know you were into bondage. I’ll just be going now,” Faith said, trying to bluff as she backed out the swinging door. Tears were running down Emma’s cheeks, but she wasn’t saying a word. Faith wouldn’t have, either. Not with a Smith & Wesson stuck between her teeth.
Michael whirled around. The gun was now aimed at Faith.
“Get in here. And don’t move.”
She took a step forward and let the door swing shut behind her. “How did you get in the apartment? Nobody called up!”
