The table wasn't set yet. Mrs. Meier started to orchestrate the communal efforts to get things ready, efforts that resulted in a general milling about. Art soon recognized that his talents were best invested in staying out of the way of those who knew what to do.

He watched Adriana fold paper napkins into cute little birds and place them on the table, one in front of each of the six chairs. One sat next to him, and he picked it up, tempted to unfold it and to explore the secrets of its geometry. But something told him that Adriana might not condone experimental disassembly of her work, and he was unsure if he'd be able to restore it afterward. He set the fowl back down to perch on the plate where he had caught it. "They are lovely."

"Thanks." Adriana smiled without taking her eyes from the work of her hands. "I love making them."

"My wife used to fold napkins, too," he said. "Well, not like yours. She didn't do birds. Hers were more geometric. Stars and flowers."

She looked up at him and raised her eyebrows. "Used to? You've been married?"

"Yeah." He nodded, not in the mood to talk about Jane now.

She still scrutinized him. Then she smiled. "Sorry, none of my business."

He shrugged. "It's okay. One of those stories, you know. It just kind of happened."

"What just kind of happened? You two falling in love?"

"Nope, us falling out of it." He knew the words were lacking, not providing the details Adriana wanted to hear.

It wasn't us falling out of it, it was she who had done the falling out.

Art waited for the pain to materialize, the hurt that thoughts of Jane entailed.

Monica.

"You're smiling..." Adriana said.

Yes, he was. And it felt good. "So, do you know what we'll have for dinner?"

She scrutinized him once more, the corners of her mouth bent upwards in a quizzical expression. "Well... someone's changing the topic here... But that's fine. Let's talk about dinner." Her gaze returned to her fingers' work. "As far as I know, the traditional Meier pre-Christmas dinner has featured the same menu for decades. Not that I've lived here that long, of course... but I've been told so. And last year, at least, it was raclette."

"Okay..." Art had had that dish once, in the States, in a specialty restaurant. He remembered greasy globs of half-molten cheddar, which had squatted his stomach like industrial waste in final storage. "It's molten cheese, right?"

"Yes, but not like Fondue, you know."

"Yeah, I know." He nodded. Fondue didn't sound half as intimidating as the cheese globs.

"What about fondue?" Ralph, holding a table-top grill in his hands, had appeared beside them. He placed the contraption on the table, clamping the tail of one of the birds in the process. "We'll have raclette, not fondue."

"I've just told him so," Adriana said.

Ralph nodded and unwound the machine's power cord.

Art pulled the half-crushed bird from under the oven and smoothed its tail.

"Thanks." Adriana smiled at him. "Hold it to your nose."

Confused, Art sniffed at the bird. It carried the wisp of a smell. It was a scent reminding him of Christmas. "Cinnamon?"

"Yes." Adriana lowered her voice. "Mrs. Meier... Agatha... she's storing the Christmas napkins together with cinnamon sticks, for months, to give them this smell. She told me so, last year."

Art sniffed again. "I love this scent. It holds a lot of memories. It's a Christmas smell."

"Absolutely, smells tend to do that. They carry memories, I mean."

"Yeah. They can be reminiscent of all kind of stuff. They are remini... scents." He was proud of his pun.

Adriana looked at him with a slight frown on her face, the joke clearly lost on her.

"Remini... scent, love that." Rashid deposited two jars on the table—they contained pickles. "A scent carrying a memory. Take mothballs, for example, they'll now always remind me of poor Mrs. Knooch."

Art nodded. "Yes, I guess they will."

"To be frank with you..." Ralph had obviously found an outlet to connect the oven to and joined the others. "... I always hated that mothball smell."

His remark was met with silence.

"Anyway, we'll need the pans." Ralph left for the kitchen.

"You know..." Rashid sat down. "The day before yesterday, when I returned to my apartment from work, there it was again, that smell of mothballs, in the staircase. For a moment, I just thought... oh, Mrs. Knooch must have passed... but then I realized that this was impossible."

Art shrugged. "Maybe the scent came from her apartment—a draft of air carrying it through the stairway."

Ralph entered again, carrying a stack of palm-sized pans.

"Ralph?" Adriana eyed the pans while holding her hands protectively over some of her birds. "Do you know if Mrs. Knooch's stuff is still in her apartment?"

"No." He shook his head. "Her nephew and some people came to get her things... two days ago. It's all gone now, and they've cleaned the place, too. She had some fine furniture... South American. She and her husband had lived there for a couple of years. He was a mining specialist. Anyway, her nephew has taken care of it all."

Art remembered having seen the nephew on yolk-day, the day he had cleaned up the egg in the staircase. A tall, handsome athlete of a man, and he had a key to the house.

A nephew, an aunt having fine furniture, and a murder.

"Was she rich, Mrs. Knooch?" The question left his lips without checking in at security.

Ralph shrugged. "Maybe. In fact, in all the time she lived here, she never worked. I mean, she did do work, but not of the paid kind. Charity stuff, she always said... but then, if she had been rich, would she really have lived in a place like this one? Anyway, I know what you're thinking, and you're wrong. We've discussed the nephew with inspector Savage, and they have checked him out. He must have a sound alibi."

"Her nephew?" Adriana arched her eyebrows.

Ralph set down the pans on the table, barely missing one of the birds. "Yes, her nephew. Jake."

"Do you have any news of the... investigation?" Adriana asked.

Ralph turned his palms up. "Monica's still in custody. So the police... they obviously haven't changed their mind."

Adriana nodded. "Yes, obviously... You know, I always did wonder why she was the first to find the... body, that morning. I don't think she's an early riser."

"Definitely not," Ralph agreed.

Art realized he was gritting his teeth and tried to relax. "That doesn't make her a killer, does it?" His words were louder than intended.

They all looked at him. Ralph raised his hands as if Art had pointed a gun at him.

Adriana's face was serious. "But remember, she did have an argument with Knooch, the day before she died, and she's a hot-tempered one."

"And," Ralph added, "the police must have more evidence, I'm sure."

Yes... an argument, and DNA, and disposable gloves.

Art remained silent and shrugged.

"Still..." Rashid shook his head. "It's strange. I don't think she's a killer. She's a wild one, right. Wouldn't hesitate to give you a black eye if you looked at her the wrong way. But... killing a helpless, old lady? That's not her style."

"Absolutely." Art's heart embraced Rashid's words. "She may be impulsive, but she didn't have an easy life... I guess. And she's not a murderer."

"I wasn't aware that you know her so well." Adriana looked at him, her head tilted to one side.

"I don't..." Art inhaled, trying to stem back the heat threatening to rise in his face. "Just call it man's intuition." He grinned at her.

"Ha, male intuition..." Adriana laughed. "Isn't that restricted to tinkering with gadgets and predicting soccer results? As everyone knows, intuition is a women's domain, they—"

"No, no, no. Not at all." Rashid held up a hand, stopping her. "Women are emotional, and their decisions are based on their..." He placed the hand on his belly. "They are based on their gut feelings. But that's not intuition. Intuition is the art of sifting through scarce information..." He started picking invisible objects from the airspace in front of his face with both hands. "And from that, you're able to derive useful conclusions." His hands moved outwards, along a horizontal line. Then he lifted a finger. "And to be able to do that, you have to grasp the subtleties of the data you have. This grasping to subtleties requires an... absence of emotion. It's like an act of meditation... abstract yourself from your bodily juices, just be curious spirit observing little facts. Women are all about feelings... compassion, love, hate, fear. These feelings are important, but they won't listen to subtle hints, they'd just flush them out. To be intuitive, you have to heed the tiny bits of knowledge, you need to cherish them. But then, of course, men's decisions will often ignore feelings, which isn't good either. Most of all, our decisions may lack compassion... or moral values in general." Rashid hesitated, his mouth open. Then he closed it.

Adriana turned towards Rashid. "Women's decisions..." She pointed a fork at his nose, its tips mere inches from his skin. "Women's decisions aren't just based on their gut feelings, sir. Because if they were, I'd skewer you right now."

He held up his hands. "Of course not, I got carried away there, please accept my apologies."

She knotted her brows, then she lowered her weapon.

"But still..." Rashid said, "intuition and emotions... they don't mix well, I think."

Silence ensued.

Silence was interrupted by three short bursts of the doorbell.

Ralph's still puzzled face acquired a smile. "That..." He got up. "... must be our surprise guest."