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beckoned to the girl, a pajama-clad, curly-haired brunette with rosy cheeks and an unsmiling bud of a mouth. “Come closer, honey,” Santa implored. The girl would not budge.

“Go see Santa, sweetheart!” the large woman pleaded. She was thirtyish, with the same brunette hair and pink cheeks as the child model. “Rosie, I know it’s summertime, but go tell Santa what you want!”

“I need a smile,” Ian warned from behind the camera. “Is that too much to ask?”

“Look at Mama, baby doll!” called Rosie’s mother. “Smile, honey!” Rosie glanced at her mother; the camera clicked on Rosie’s grim, unsmiling young countenance.

“Look at what I have!” called Leah Smythe, as she waved a Barney doll high in the air. Little Rosie gave the doll a poker-faced stare and made no response.

“Hey!” cried Hanna, “Look at this, Rosie!” Hanna, beautifully dressed, as usual, blew a perfect strand of iridescent soap bubbles across the room. A startled Rosie opened her eyes wide as Santa laughed. Again Ian Hood’s camera clicked and flashed, clicked and flashed.

“How’s Andre feeling?” murmured Rufus Driggle at my elbow.

“Fine,” I whispered back. “He just gets a little overwrought sometimes.”

Rufus shrugged. “Sorry if I worried you. Between him and that lady curator, we’ve got our hands full, I can tell you.” He stroked his scraggly red beard and gave me an unhappy look. “Anyway, we’ve got a guy bringing Ian’s lens to the cabin today, and another guy fixing the picture window. We’ll be able to get back in front of our own Christmas tree tomorrow.” He tilted his head to indicate the ribboned-off cabinets. “Looks like we aren’t the only ones who need help in the glass-replacement department.”

Yeah, they need a contractor, I thought, but said nothing. If Rufus did not know how the glass had been broken, I wasn’t about to enlighten him.

He whispered, “So what do you think of our set?”

I dutifully appraised the fireplace scene. The errant scrim had been set up over Santa’s head to reflect the light. Flats framed both sides of the tableau. A blond boy of about six had replaced Rosie. Perky and obedient, he wore a pair of reindeer-print pajamas as he sat uncomplainingly in Santa’s lap and offered wide, toothy smiles to Ian. Leah and Hanna frowned at the scene while Ian clicked furiously.

“Looks super,” I told Rufus.

“We’ll put flames in the fireplace on the computer, make the two fireplaces look as if they belong together.”

“Look as if what belong together?”

Rufus smiled, showing straight, yellow teeth. “The two fireplaces, of course.” He raised his voice to a lilt. “Both from the country home of the same wealthy, but not too ostentatious family, with their cute kids and their gorgeous clothes. Having their fantastic Christmas.”

“Ah.” I decided to plunge in. “Rufus, did you know Gerald Eliot?”

He shifted his eyes to the cold fireplace. “Yeah, we used to work together, I’m sorry to say.”

“When?”

“Oh, long time ago. Five years, maybe. We hadn’t been together six months when he went off on his own and I came to work for Ian.”

“And why are you sorry to say?”

He shifted his weight, suddenly uncomfortable. “You know he’s dead? The police came to question me.” I nodded. “Well, I felt bad for Gerald. He always sounded so good talking about his skill at carpentry and all that, and how much money we could make together. Then he’d complain about people not paying him, and about supplies not coming in, and pretty soon I realized he was only working three or four hours a day at the most, and the reason supplies hadn’t come in was because he was too lazy to go pick them up.”

“Why in the world did Leah hire him?”

Rufus frowned. “Oh, hell, I went to Phoenix to see about a job. Leah knew he worked here at the Homestead and happened to mention that she wanted some windows put in, although I think it was her brother Bobby who had the idea. Anyway, Gerald did his usual snow job and they hired him. Of course, it just turned into a big mess. Which I could have warned them about if they’d ever listen to me.” He sighed.

“Do you know why the police questioned you, if you hadn’t worked with him in so many years?”

Sylvia Bevans barreled out of her office before Rufus could reply. Short, cylindrical, and bristling with energy, she wore a calf-length pale-green dress, beige silk stockings that had seen better days, and beige shoes, ditto. We moved out of her way as she marched past us into the kitchen. Within a few seconds she was whining, and I heard the clinking of a cup and saucer.

Rufus sighed again. “He owed me money. I’d complained about it in town a few times. I still think Leah and Ian should have waited for me to come back from Phoenix to do the work, but it’s almost as if they hired Gerald out of spite.”

“Spite?” I asked as Ian clicked away at Santa, now working with a young Asian-American girl.

Dismay clouded Rufus’s face, as if he’d already told me more about his private life than he’d intended. “Ian’s been losing jobs to New York and Miami for the last decade. With sunny Phoenix so close, a big percentage of the department stores are moving their fashion shoots down there. At least, that’s what they tell us. Ian’s never been the easiest fellow to get along with. He hates change. Hates the fact that the elk are being driven out of Aspen Meadow by all the newcomers, new apartments, new houses, you name it. He’s been dropping hints about concentrating on the nature photography, and saving the elk so he can have more nature to photograph. So I went to Phoenix to look for a new job. I like Ian but hey, a fellow’s got to look after himself, doesn’t he?”

Leah eyed the two of us narrowly. Was she listening? Hard to tell. Andre accompanied Sylvia Bevans out of the museum kitchen. She grasped a plate that she piled with goodies from the table.

Rufus went on: “So in comes this macho guy, Gerald Eliot. First he screws up Leah’s job, then he says he has to do some consulting on wiring around the windows. Charges Merciful Migrations six hundred bucks delay time. They say they’ll pay him and they don’t. Maybe Leah finally paid him out of her pocket. But nothing happened because by that time he was getting it on with Rustine. He had to do something with his delay time, right? So Leah fired him, but I’m sure Hanna put her up to it, since she was always telling us what a crummy guard Gerald was at the museum, even though she didn’t work here anymore. You know, she still thinks of the place as hers.”

“What about Leah Smythe? How did she feel about Gerald?”

Rufus whispered, “Well, how would you feel? She had broken plaster and a century of dirt all over her cabin. Maybe she was personally out six hundred for the demolition and six hundred for the delay. Ian had to deal with a model who was pissed off because her boyfriend lost his job. But do we have a single window in the kitchen?”

Leah shot Rufus a dirty look. He closed his mouth.

I whispered, “Wow. Would you like some coffee, something to eat?” I motioned to the spread. “Or do we have to wait for Prince Ian to call the break?”

“Prince? Please. Emperor, at the very least. Czar, maybe. And no, thanks, I’ll wait.”

“Break!” called Ian Hood from the far room. Had he heard us? I hoped not.

The crowd all made a beeline for the coffee and snacks. I checked that Santa had his separate fruit bowl and scampered to the kitchen door. Andre and Julian were listening attentively to Sylvia, who was drinking a cup of coffee and gesturing with a roll.

“And of course,” she went on, “the murder investigation has been hampered by that incompetent at the sheriff’s department, Tom Schulz—”

“Ah, excuse me,” I interrupted as I stepped boldly into the kitchen. “Sylvia? What are you talking about?”

She turned slightly pink. I folded my arms and waited for a response. Andre thrust a tray of blondies into Julian’s hands and muttered an order to check the buffet. Julian, glad to be relieved of listening duty, obeyed. Andre, of course, was desperate to hear the story about Gerald Eliot’s murder from someone in the know. He clucked sympathetically to Sylvia, refilled her coffee cup, and motioned for me to sit in the chair vacated by Julian. This I did, wondering why Andre could manage to be courtly toward the curator of the Homestead, who was not a client, but couldn’t be bothered to be civil to the folks who were his clients.

“My husband is off the Gerald Eliot case,” I said to Sylvia once I had my own coffee cup in hand. I didn’t