Avenue Armory, on Sixty-sixth Street, just a few blocks from my home.
'Sure. Is Jake gonna be there tonight?'
'No. He doesn't get back to New York until Sunday.' The schedule Jake Tyler had as a political correspondent and stand-in anchor for Brian Williams on
I parked the car and we went upstairs. As soon as I put the key in the door, I could smell the delicious scent of the Douglas fir that I had bought two nights ago on my way home to serve as a Christmas tree. I had been raised as a Jew and was observant in the Reform tradition, but my mother's religious upbringing was entirely different. Her ancestors were Finnish, and she had converted to Judaism when she married my father. Our family tradition combined elements from both of their backgrounds, and although I had lighted the candles on a Hanukkah menorah earlier in the month, I always looked forward to decorating a tree and rediscovering the boxes of antique ornaments that my mother had collected throughout her life.
'I'm going to freshen up. Make yourself useful. Pour us a drink.'
'Mind if I use the phone? I was gonna meet some of the guys down the street at Lumi's for a drink before the party.'
'Of course. Anybody I know? Invite them over here. And while you're calling, check with your office to see whether there's a final on the autopsy results. Then you can start putting some of those bulbs on the top branches of the tree that I can't reach. Don't peek at the pile of presents. I haven't finished wrapping yours yet.'
I went inside to wash my face, add a colorful scarf to my black suit, slip into a pair of higher heels, and spritz some Caleche on my neck. I played back the messages on my answering machine. The usual freeway greeting from Nina Baum in L.A., a callback from one of my sisters-in-law in response to my question about what the kids wanted for Christmas, and the persistent voice of
Chapman had rested my Dewar's and his Ketel One on the coffee table while he hooked and hung some of the fragile old ornaments. 'That one belonged to my grandmother. She landed at Ellis Island when she was an infant, just before Christmas in 1900, a century ago. It's a glass bird, hand painted, that her father bought for her that year.'
'Think she'd approve of the way you make a living?'
'She would have liked me to have gotten married by the time I was twenty and had six kids in pretty short order. Made her crazy that I never learned her recipes for Finnish icebox pudding or blueberry pie.'
I thought of the time I had almost made her happiest. In my grandmother's last years, when she was living as an invalid in my parents' home, I had come up from Virginia during my final semester of law school to tell my family that I was going to marry Adam Nyman, a young medical student with whom I had fallen in love. Although in her nineties and quite infirm, Idie had insisted on coming to the Vineyard to be with us at the wedding. I know it hastened her death and literally broke her heart, as it did mine, when she learned that Adam had been killed on the turnpike the night before the wedding.
'Wipe that frown off your puss and stay with me, Coop. My Granny Annie wanted me to go back to the old sod as the ambassador to Ireland. Live in Phoenix Park. Ride to the hounds. If she ever thought for a minute I'd be sniffing around dead bodies like my pop, she'd have locked up all the liquor and never let me watch
I sipped at my scotch and nodded my head.
Mike glanced at his steno pad to read the notes of his conversation. 'The ME spoke to Lieutenant Peterson an hour ago. Lola's death was asphyxial. No question she was strangled, probably with a ligature. Kestenbaum will do some more tests on the pattern of injury, but he thinks the killer used her own woolen scarf. Thrown overboard just for show. The elevator cab certainly crushed the body, which was designed to disguise the homicide. But somebody made sure she took that header without any air in her lungs.'
'Any semen?'
'Nope. Not in the body. He hasn't checked the bed linens yet. That takes more time. But there were two strands of hair-just loose, no roots. Kestenbaum can't say for sure that they were in her hand, like she'd grabbed at anybody. Could be they just transferred from someone's clothing earlier in the day-or from the first cops who came to the crime scene. They're not going to be of much value at the moment.
'The other news is from the building inspector, who was at Lola's apartment with Lieutenant Peterson. He's confirmed that the elevator's been out of whack for weeks. First of all, it was under repair, and wasn't even supposed to be in operation yesterday. The out-of-order sign that had been posted in the lobby had been taken down at some point, which could easily lend itself to an accident theory. Besides, people had complained that the cab was stopping between floors all the time, so it wouldn't have been tough to catch it a foot off the ground on the fifteenth floor and roll the body in.'
Chapman glanced at his watch and walked into the den to click on the television. A series of commercials preceded Alex Trebek's close-up, announcing the subject of the
'Tonight's category is Famous Quotes,' Trebek said, pointing up at the card displayed on the screen.
'Twenty bucks,' Mike said, taking the bill out of his pocket and dropping it on top of the coffee table. 'I'm feeling lucky. Jake's out of town, I've got a new murder on my hands, and there's no reason for Santa to put coal in my stocking this year.'
I laughed and told him to make it thirty, pulling the bills from my wallet.
'Pretty cocky, blondie.' He withdrew another ten and tossed it on the pile. We knew each other's strengths and weaknesses inside out after a decade of this trivia exercise. My four years of major concentration in English literature before going to law school raised my expectation of taking the evening's pot.
'Well, gentlemen,' Trebek enthused, turning to the three contestants poised at their buzzers. 'The answer is, the majestic leader who urged his troops to battle with the phrase: 'Soldiers, forty centuries are looking down on you.''
Dead meat. Chapman had not only studied military history at Fordham, but the subject had become a passion for him: he read about it voraciously and visited battlefields whenever the opportunity presented itself. The butcher from Kansas City and the ophthalmologist from Louisville seemed as clueless as I was, neither one writing anything on his electronic screen.
'Belly up, blondie. What's your best guess? Double or nothing?'
'Not a prayer.' I watched the pastry chef from Baltimore record his answer with furious determination, as I tried to think of a civilization with that long a heritage. 'Who was… Genghis Khan?'
Chapman gloated as he picked up the sixty dollars, giving the correct response while Trebek was telling the chef he had guessed incorrectly. 'Napoleon, 1798. Rallying his men to fight the Egyptians at the foot of the great pyramids of Giza. Enjoying a brief success, actually, like ten days, before m'man Horatio Nelson arrived in time to destroy the entire French fleet.'
I sidled up next to him and reached my fingers into his pants pocket, pulling out the wad of money. 'But you forgot to put it in the form of a question, so-'
As he slapped my hand away, the doorbell rang.
'And one more surprise for the night,' Mike added. 'Hope you don't mind, I told the doorman your guest didn't have to be announced.' I walked behind him as he went to the entrance, and gasped with delight to see Mercer Wallace.
He towered over both of us, six feet six inches tall with dark black skin and a rock-solid chest that had stopped a bullet just four months ago. Mercer grabbed me in an embrace as we swayed each other back and forth. 'This is the very best of Christmas presents,' I said, pulling his face down to mine and planting a kiss on the top of his head.
'So this was the date you were meeting at Lumi's, huh?' I said to Mike. 'And not planning to invite me? Santa may have to rethink whether that was naughty or nice.'
'Well, if you hadn't suggested stopping here, I was going to take you there. But they don't have a TV and I
