He began to wish he had throttled Effinger before the man could destroy Matt's present life as thoroughly as he had his past one.
Chapter 22
Santa Who?
Temple awoke feeling she should be someplace else.
But this was Sunday, her muzzy brain finally figured out as it took in the tall windows covered with drawn white miniblinds.
She wasn't scheduled to return to the advertising agency offices until Monday, even without the intervention of a death.
She patted the bedcovers, in search of either Midnight Louie's big furry body annexing the comforter, or her glasses, which weren't on the bedside table. The glasses materialized under her hand. She'd fallen asleep reading the Colby, Janos and Renaldi promotional booklet she had shown Kit.
Her dreams came back, a jumbled "Christmas Carol" production with Colby, Janos and Renaldi as the three ghosts and old Ebenezer Scrooge the cadaverous figure that had ridden up on the elevator with her that first day. Or did Scrooge symbolize the Old Year, the bent, paper-thin, robed figure with the scythe . . . Death himself?
Heavy. Temple donned her glasses and let her toes do the walking along the bedside as they felt for the fat, fuzzy bedroom slippers Kit had lent her. Knit wool slippers packed easily, but they were no protection against bear wood floors in a cold climate.
When she was properly shod in her borrowed mukluks, she skated over the polished oak to the windows to slit open the blinds. A white overcast sky blazed in, shaking down powdered sugar against the window glass.
A great day to stay in, curl up by the coffeemaker and attack the New York Times's hugely nasty Sunday crossword puzzle ... or the more relevant puzzle of a death by hanging from a golden chain.
Kit was in the living room, already immersed in the four-inch-thick paper, a mug of coffee on the sofa table in front of her, and Midnight Louie sprawled on the classified ads section, carefully cleaning his fingernails, i.e., claws. He reminded Temple of Victor Janos in Colby junior's office last night. A strange, compulsive reaction to a sudden death in the area.
" 'Morning, Temple." Kit barely looked up from the paper. "Coffee's on in the kitchen. Box of bagels, box of sticky buns, box of croissants. Grab a mug, a thousand calories, and come back in."
Temple shuffled off to the triangle of kitchen around the corner. The coffee smelled of cinnamon and nuts. She kept it black instead of adding her usual whitewash of skim milk and joined her aunt on the couch.
"There it is." Kit slapped a fat section of newsprint onto Temple's flannel lap. "That looks like a Minnesota nightgown, granny. How did you come by it?"
"Honestly. I brought it with me when I moved to Vegas. For when I had a cold."
Kit nodded. "Nothing like floor-length flannel to soothe the savaged respiratory system. I thought I detected a faint perfume of Vick's VapoRub. Good thing we're both single at the moment. Check out page thirty-eight."
Temple paged through the ink-laden sheets, trying to contain a sneeze. How long would messy, heavy, tree-slaying newsprint last, she wondered, now that cyberspace was here?
"I don't see anything, Kit."
"Lower right. Two inches."
"murder must advertise. Cute. That New York Times staff certainly has a wide background."
"Dorothy Sayers title, isn't it?"
"Did you read her too?"
"Ages ago. Probably when she was still alive. Too bad they never found anybody to play the part who could live up to the Wimsey in her mind, the way that Jeremy Brett went over the top to reinvent Holmes."
"Some characters are meant to live only on the page. I can't believe this. An item in the morning paper. How--?"
"New York may look inefficient to outlanders, but we do just fine here. Get a lot done, well done."
"This is odd. It says the street clothes of the 'slain Santa' carried no identification."
"What's odd? The 'slain Santa' or the no ID bit?"
"Both, as a matter of fact. Lieutenant Katrina must have told a reporter that the death was not an accident. Kind of soon to make that judgment."
"I told you. We don't waste time here. Besides, how many golden chains end up in a booby trap at the top of a pressed-wood chimney?"
"At Christmastime a lot of golden bric-a-brac ends up lying around. Maybe Marley's ghost was set to make a later appearance."
"That's interesting." Kit looked up through the mottled-indigo metallic of her eyeglass frames. "Marley was a business partner, wasn't he? Maybe the chain was sending a message."
Temple stopped considering the fact that she'd probably look just like Kit in thirty years; in fact, she looked a lot like her now--maybe she should try contact lenses again soon.
"You mean that the means of death, the golden chain, was symbolic, not just handy?"
"How many golden chains you got hanging around your place?" Kit's skeptical eyebrows overshot her eyeglass frames. "Of course, I may be discounting any leftover props--personal or professional-- from your erstwhile boyfriend the magician."
"Just handcuffs and silk scarves," Temple rushed to assure her aunt, then realized that she had done nothing of the kind.
"What I can't figure out," Kit said after a truly pregnant pause and a sip of coffee, "is why the dead man was taken for this Brent Colby, Junior, for so long, even by his own daughter, not to mention partners and employees."
"Any homicide cop would tell you that strangulation does not produce a pretty corpse, and I can testify to the fact. Talk about a dark red and swollen face. Besides, he was still wearing the Santa getup, and all that shows is eyes and nostrils."
Temple sipped her coffee, then squinted at the gray canyons of Manhattan out the windows. "After the death, when I was thinking everything over, I realized that when I blundered into the wrong conference room, I'd swear that the Santa guy looked startled and then guilty to see me. I figured I'd caught the dignified Colby lurking with intent to surprise. But he seemed more surprised by my presence than vice versa. Anyway, that's the kicker. A face full of permanent-waved cotton batting totally distorts the features underneath. I keep trying to imagine what the Santa I saw would look like without the whiskers and mustache and fur-trimmed cap down to his frosty eyebrows, but it's impossible."
Kit nodded dolefully. "Now I get the picture. If I were a crook trying to pass as somebody else, a Santa suit disguise would be my number one choice. It distorts face and figure, yet it's so familiar to people from their earliest childhood that we never try to look beneath it; that ruins the whole point of Santa."
"Then the likeliest scenario is that the golden chain was meant for the custom-shirted neck of Brent Colby, Junior, but only Colby knew he was using a substitute this year. That opens up oodles of motives, especially among Colby's closest associates."
"And family."
Temple frowned. "I'd hate to think Kendall did it."
"Why?"
"Well, she's his only daughter, and she's been nice to me."
"Temple. Judas was 'nice' to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Those who will betray you with a kiss are the most dangerous of all. What about Mrs. Colby?"
"A long-gone ex, I'd assume. Nobody even brought her up. Guess I should. I'll delicately ask Kendall about her family background first thing Monday."
"Don't you imagine the police are doing plenty of that today? Maybe they'll crack the case by Monday."
Temple shook her head and tapped the tiny article at the back of the huge newspaper section. "Not if the dead Santa had no ID. Someone doesn't want him identified, and that makes it look like he was the target."