Free City of Ice by John Farrow Page A

smiled back. “There’s another one who thinks Christmas is just another inconvenient smudge in her appointment book. No, Julia, your mother is not here yet. Who knows if she’ll make it? She might be throwing a Christmas brunch for diplomats. Maybe she’s doing her nails. Perhaps she was on her way but met a new man in some roadside diner.”
    “She’s busy,” Julia reminded her. “Doing well, I hear.”
    Her stepmother—annoyingly thin to Julia’s mind, but at least she had mousy hair that never set properly—hung tough. “Being an indentured slave to the government, dear, is not working. Think of it as an extended vacation with pay.”
    “What about you?” Julia shot back. “Found a job yet? Or are you still looking?”
    Her stepmom grinned so brightly that Julia worried she might be defeated in her foray, but the smile proved to be another ruse. “There’s a good job out there with my name on it, sweetheart. My spirits are high, my disposition sunny. I’m thinking positively. Someone will snap me up.”
    “I hope it’s an orgasmic experience for you,” Julia muttered as she moved through to the large living room before Margaret could respond. She slipped her backpack off her shoulders.
    “I heard that, young lady!” The piercing voice from the kitchen trailed after her. “That’s not the sort of language we tolerate in this house. Carting yourself off to a university does not give you the right to be vulgar.”
    “Orgasmic is a word, Margaret. It’s look-up-able.”
    “A word like that you can find in places other than a dictionary—and I know what sorts of places!”
    “Oh, lay off.” She ascended the stairs. “It’s Christmas Day. I don’t want to kill you on Christmas Day. Somebody already butchered that poor sod Santa Claus last night, did you hear? That’s enough violence for a while.”
    Margaret stood at the foot of the stairs, gazing upward, where Julia had vanished. “I told you this would happen,” she said to no one in particular.
    Julia lay down for a few minutes in the quiet of her room. This is going to be nuts. Wait’ll the gang’s all here. This’ll be hell. She had deliberately delayed arriving until the last possible moment, and she didn’t intend to stay long. She felt weary and utterly alone, less resilient, less formidable than expected. Funnily, she was missing Selwyn Norris, missing his attentions, she even missed battling his intellect. This’ll be the worst visit ever. Somehow she had to suppress her anger, make it through until her real mother arrived. After that, with any luck, she might scrape by.
    Julia had to hope that her mother showed up soon. Hope as well that she wasn’t in one of her crankier moods.
    Merry Christmas , she told herself. Welcome home, Julia kitten.
    Sandra Lowndes hung back as she and her husband entered the small apartment where Santa Claus had swung from a coatrack. Émile Cinq-Mars moved about the rooms in stages, observing, concentrating. She wondered if he detected the cries of the victim, or picked up an echo of the killer’s words. Could he identify criminals through intuitive revelation? Émile was eighteen years her senior, and at times she felt his age, the gap apparent in his weariness at the end of the day when an evening’s whiskey caused him to slur his words. Often he fell asleep in his armchair after dinner. They had met around horses, where his concentration in the midst of a negotiation was fearsome. He could detail an animal’s attributes and short-comings in rapid-fire succession and take command of any deal by virtue of his superior knowledge. She had been impressed. Here, in the room where the frightful crime had occurred, she saw again the knitted brow, the eyes moving over the objects of their interest while the head remained perfectly still, the occasional gentle tapping of a middle finger upon the hard bone behind his ear to indicate that notions were alight, in the air.
    She watched him crouch before a