The Right Jack

by Margaret Maron

  Her voice broke off and she looked at them in mute appeal.

  "Was anyone else badly hurt?" she whispered. "They said two men were killed and the man I was playing against

  – a policeman-was seriously hurt but they didn't mention any women."

  "Your cousin is fine," Sigrid said bluntly, guessing what lay behind her question. "She was at the far side of the room and wasn't hurt at all."

  "You know about Molly?"

  Her head sank deeper into the pillows and tears seeped out around her closed lids. "I've been so worried," she whispered. "And I couldn't ask. She said not to and I didn't know if she was in trouble… or what. You're sure she's all right?"

  "We're sure," Knight said.

  She opened her eyes and looked at them gratefully. "Then why hasn't she come?"

  "I'm sure she has," Sigrid lied impulsively. "You were probably too groggy to remember."

  "Yes, that's it. That must be it."

  "Commander," said Alan Knight, "you mentioned Vassily Ivanovich. Could you describe your relationship with him?"

  Commander Dixon turned her head on the pillow and smiled faintly at him. "Isn't he a love? He and my dad were friends once. He rememberss o much about Dad that I had forgotten. Hellraisers., both of them."

  "There's been some suggestion that perhaps Ivanovich's visit here isn't quite as innocent as it appears," said Knight.

  Her eyes widened. " Who suggested?"

  "After all, ma'am, with your job and security clearance-"

  "I forgot you were Intelligence," she said and her bell-toned voice held the first hint of amusement. "Always looking for spies under the bed. Forget it, Lieutenant. I don't talk about my job to anybody, not even to long-lost friends of my father. Anyhow, Vassily's never asked. I don't think he would. Even if they told him to. I know it's hard to understand, but he really does love Americans. My father pulled him out of the water himself. He'd never do anything to hurt my father's child."

  The words had tired her, but she seemed compelled to make him understand. "Some things go beyond ideology, Lieutenant."

  "But, ma-am-"

  "No buts, Lieutenant," she said softly.

  He let it drop for the moment andh elped Sigrid lead her through what she had observed Friday night. It added nothing to what they already knew. No, she had noticed no one hovering around Table 5 before they were asked to take their places; no, she hadn't paid any attention to the cribbage board at the next place. It was the first time that she'd realized that Zachary Wolferman was one of the dead men and her eyes misted.

  "What about his cousin? Mr.-Froman?"

  "Froelick," Sigrid told her. "He wasn't hurt."

  "That's good."

  Her attention drifted towards the packages they had placed on her bed table. "Are those for me?"

  The things they had chosen somehow seemed frivolous and incongruous now.

  "We didn't know-" Knight began awkwardly, then glanced at Sigrid for help.

  "Are there any books you'd like?" asked Sigrid. "Can we bring you anything from your apartment?"

  "Thank you both, but I'm sure Molly will do it."

  She smiled at the back scratcher and kaleidoscope and seemed charmed by Sigrid's cherry tree inside the glass dome. "I was stationed in Japan for two springs," she told them, mesmerized by the tiny pink petals that swirled around the tree. " Washington, too, of course."

  But the gift wrap and tape on the small box defeated her. "I can't." she said wretchedly. "It takes two hands."

  She lifted her left hand. "I can't write with this."

  Her eyes focused on her slender fingers, at the chipped red enamel; and she gave a strangled sob. "I can't even take off my own nail polish."

  Afterward, Alan Knight was to insist that somebody must have rubbed a magic lantern and that the girl who suddenly appeared in the doorway with a small valise and an enormous bouquet of asters and fall chrysanthemums must have been a genie.

  "Commander Dixon?" she chirped. "Hi! A Mr. Haines Froelick sent me. I'm from Elizabeth Arden. Mr. Froelick thought a nice facial might cheer you up.

  I can do your nails, too, if you want."

  "Now there's a man who clearly knows a thing or two about hospital presents," said Knight, as he and Sigrid waited for the elevator to take them down.

  26

  AS they hurtled downtown in the gray Navy station wagon assigned to Lieutenant Knight, Sigrid found herself increasingly exasperated. "That's hardly a logical decision," she told him.

  "I don't care," Knight replied. "Anyhow, it may not be logical, but it's certainly reasonable."

  He peered out at a passing street sign. "Weren't we supposed to turn there, Schmitty?"

  "No, sir," said their patient helmsman as he navigated the tricky waters of Greenwich Village.

  "You can't dismiss Froelick as a suspect simply because he did something nice for Commander Dixon," Sigrid said.

  "The hell I can't! If you can take Molly Baldwin off your list because she's too immature, I can take Haines Froelick off mine because he's thoughtful. Somebody empathic enough to send over a beautician is too damn decent to bomb a roomful of people." Pleased with his circuitous logic. Knight grinned at her.

  Unconvinced, Sigrid leaned back, shaking her head. "How long did you say you've been doing intelligence work?"

  "This the right place, ma'am?" asked Petty Officer Schmitt, drawing up before the gracious Greenwich Village brown-stone that housed the Sutton apartment.

  "This is it."

  Before leaving the hospital, Sigrid had checked in with headquarters and learned that Nauman had left a message that Val Sutton was back and wanted to see her.

  When Sigrid rang the doorbell on the second floor, Nauman himself answered.

  "That was quick." His welcoming smile dimmed as Alan Knight loomed up behind her.

  "Sir," said Knight, touching his hat in a half salute.

  "I see you're still babysitting," Nauman muttered in Sigrid's ear.

  A bearded graduate student with a giggling Sutton tot on each shoulder passed them in the hall headed for the kitchen. The children had become somewhat jaded by the presence of so many people in the last few days and paid no attention to the new arrivals.

  In the study, Val Sutton was leafing through a stack of sympathy cards. She wore a loose black sweater dress belted with a gold chain, and a pot of vivid yellow chrysanthemums brightened the cold hearth.

  "I don't mind 'Our thoughts are with you' or 'in your time of sorrow,' but I'll be damned if I'll look at 'God has a purpose!'" she said, kiting the offensive message towards the fireplace. "How can they drivel that disgusting pap? Laying John's murder on God!"

  A pudgy rumpled man in baggy corduroy pants and even baggier rust-color sweater rescued the cards from the sooty hearth. "A little more charity, Val," he admonished mildly. "They mean well."

  "When the world has reduced itself to a polluted ball of rubble, the last man will probably erect a stone that reads 'They meant well,'" she replied; yet the shadow of a sardonic smile softened the bitter words and her smile widened as

  Nauman appeared in the doorway with Sigrid and Alan Knight.

  She greeted Sigrid warmly and was introduced to Knight, but Sigrid immediately noticed how tired she looked. Something about her face had hardened. She was still exotic, still resembled a sleek expensive cat, but something was gone, thought Sigrid. Youth? No, not youth exactly, nor confidence either… Vulnerability, she decided. Val Sutton was in the process of growing a chip-proof shell and unless something intervened, it would slowly harden around her like the chrysalis of one of Jill Gill's butterflies, smooth and beautiful and utterly impervious to rain or sun.

  And the man knew it, she thought, extending her hand to the one Val was introducing as Sam Naismith.

  "We met by phone Saturday night," Sigrid reminded them.

  "Sam's going to act as John's literary executor," said Val. "Finish John's book."

  "Won't that be rather difficult?"
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  "Val's rounding up all his notes for me," said Naismith, with a gentle smile. "And don't forget that John and I roomedt ogether at McClellan, so we shared a lot of the same experiences."

  "Sam spent the weekend phoning all over the country to locate Tris Yorke," said Val, motioning them to take chairs.

  "I'm sorry you went to that trouble," said Sigrid. "We learned this morning that Ted Flythe's definitely not Fred Hamilton. The fingerprints are completely different."

  "But Hamilton 's really alive!" said Naismith. "I finally tracked Tris down at a wilderness camp he's running for terminally ill kids near Niagara Falls. Back in 1970, when he was working at a country hospital as a C.O.-"

  "C.O.?" asked Alan Knight, wondering how a war protester became a hospital's commanding officer.

  "Conscientious objector," explained Naismith. As a college professor, he had grown inured to the realization that his recent history was terra incognita to a younger generation. "Those who could prove that they objected to the war on long-held conscientious grounds were allowed to perform alternate service. Tris worked as an orderly in a littleh ospital in upstate New York."

  Resuming the main thread of his story, he said, "Two days after the explosion at Cayuga Lake, Fred Hamilton and the Farr girl showed up at his place looking like a couple of singed chickens. Tris said at first he didn't want to help them because of the draft board bomb that killed the kids, but Fred talked him around. Told Tris it wasn't his fault, that it was all a miscalculation on someone else's part. Tris finally bought it. He got them clothes and papers and drove them up to Montreal himself."

  " Montreal?"

  "Yeah. Fred spoke fluent French-he'd worked in French Guiana with the Peace Corps-and he figured he could blend in there. That was Tris Yorke's last sight of Fred."

  Sigrid leaned back in the leather armchair, her fingertips lightly touching across her lap. "It's interesting, but I'm afraid it doesn't really get us any closer to who booby-trapped that cribbage board. Flythe's fingerprints were compared with all known Red Snow members and there's no match. We brought pictures-"

  Alan Knight extracted them from his briefcase. The police photographer had done an excellent job. Her black-and-white eight-by-tens showed Ted Flythe both full-faced and in profile; his hooded eyes, sensuous lips, and pointed beard were sharply detailed.

  "Red Snow aside, have you seen this man elsewhere?" Sigrid asked. "We're running a background check, but nothing's come in yet. Remember, Val? He said he graduated from a small college in Michigan. Carlyle Union. He says he's done a little of everything, including guiding European tours."

  Val studied the prints minutely, but finally frowned and shook her head. Naismith was no more successful.

  "I can see why he reminded you of Tris, though," he told Val, covering the lower half of the photo with his broad hand. "Same sort of eyes."

  He handed the pictures back to Alan Knight. "If you've ruled out Red Snow, I guess you aren't interested in Victor Earle."

  "Who?" asked Sigrid.

  "Victor Earle. He's the guy I mentionedo n Saturday who was out of the country when Red Snow self-destructed. Served a couple of years for drugs and illegal arms. Tris saw him when he first came back to the States; said he'd run into Fred in Europe. Tris did some calling, too. Earle's out on Long island now. Mantausic."

  "This Victor Earle was an active member of Red Snow? He'd know everyone on sight?"

  "He should."

  Naismith took a handful of paper scraps from his pocket and dug through them till he found one with a Mantausic address scrawled on it.

  "Why don't you; show him Nydut pictures?"

  "Thanks,"d md Sigrid.r i "Perhaps? WE will.",

  Nauman followed them from the apartment. As Knight went on down the steps to find Petty Officer Schmitt, Oscar and Sigrid lingered at the top in the thin sunlight. There was a damp feel tot he air. It would rain before nightfall. Brown and gold leaves fell from the few trees which stood in little circles of dirt encased by concrete. Across the street, a well-dressed matron swept leaves from her steps with jerky stabs of the broom, watched by a tiny poodle.

  "Sleep well last night?" Nauman inquired mildly, leaning back against the wall to light his meerschaum pipe. The sweet smoke smelled vaguely autumnal.

  "Sorry about that. I hope you don't think it's because of the wine?"

  "Never crossed my mind," he teased. "Or that I was bored?"

  "Nope. I decided it was because you felt at ease with me. Unthreatened." He checked his watch. "It's early and I have to see some students at six, but why don't you send Ralph Rackstraw home and let's go have a drink."

  "I'm a working woman," she said. "With miles to go before I drink. But I haven't forgotten that Piers Leyden opening tomorrow night."

  Alan Knight had collected Schmitt, and the car was now parked in front of the apartment with the motor running.

  "I have to go," Sigrid said, starting down the steps.

  "How much longer are you going to keep this naval escort?" Naurnan asked irritably.

  "You'd prefer the army?" She smiled back up at him from street level.

  "I'd prefer somebody who didn't look like a young David and make me feel like old King Saul," muttered Nauman.

  But Sigrid was already crossing the sidewalk and if she heard, she didn't respond.

  27

  IT had taken several phone calls the previous afternoon to locate Victor Earle. Or rather, to locate someone who knew him, since he did not seem to own a telephone. The landlady at his boarding-house sounded reliable and she had promised Sigrid to tell Earle to expect her the next morning, Tuesday, around ten.

  "You don't have to come," she'd told Alan Knight, but he pointed out that she could hardly drive herself the length of Long Island with one arm in a sling and besides, he wanted to see this thing to the end.

  Mantausic, on South Oyster Bay, was a scruffy little sea town, the kind that could be found all up and down the Atlantic coast. Unlike the towns that serviced Fire Island a little further east, Mantausic had never drawn a white-wine-and-brie crowd, and it did not pull down the shades or roll up its waterfront after

  Labor Day. Mantausic was home port to a small fleet of charter boats and October had always been a good month for blues, weakfish and flounder.

  Dedicated sportsmen from all over Brooklyn, Queens or Nassau would arise before daylight and drive through the dawn hours to be at the dock by sailing time at six A.M., tackle boxes and coolers in hand.

  It was a little past ten and all the boat slips were empty as a car from the Navy's motor pool drove slowly along Front Street looking for the repair shop where Victor Earle was said to work.

  Petty Officer Schmitt had been left in the city and Sigrid sat on the front seat beside Alan Knight and peered through the windshield.

  "There it is," she said, pointing to a tin-sided garage with a sign over the open sliding doors that read 'Kryschevski's Marine Repairs-Diesel Engines our Speciality.'

  "Sorry," said Mr. Kryschevski, straightening up to wipe his hand on a grease-smeared rag, when they inquired for Earle. "'Fraid you've got a little wait. The Margie Q was short-handed this morning so Vic went out with her."

  "Out where?" asked Sigrid. "Maybe we could-"

  "Out on the water," said the mechanic. "Don't you worry though. The Margie Q's only a half-day charter. They don't go all the way out. Just do a little bottom fishing off the point. They'll be back around twelve-thirty, one o'clock."

  "We thought he worked here," said Knight.

  "Does. But when things are slow like they are right now, Vic picks up a day now and then on the water.",

  "Has he worked for you long?" j

  "'Bout a year now, off and on." Kryschevski walked over to a drink dispenser, pushed in some coins, and popped the top of a diet cola. He took a long swallow, eyeing them carefully all the time. "Vic in trouble again?"

  "What makes you ask that? Has he been in trouble before?"

  "No, no." Kryschevski to
ok another swallow. "Not really. There was that business with the Peconic Pearl. You're

  Navy though, aren't you? Not Coast Guard."

  With prodding, Kryschevski described a little scrape the Peconic Pearl had gotten herself mixed up in late one night back in the summer. The Coast Guard accused her of rendezvousing with a Colombian freighter a few miles off shore and perhaps taking on a few bales of drugs. By the time they overtook her and searched her, though, the Peconic Pearl seemed to be clean and there was no proof.

  "Was Early aboard the Pearl that night?"

  "Yeah. The Coast Guard was around next day to talk to him."

  "What about this past weekend?" asked Sigrid.

  "This weekend?";

  "Friday night or Sunday morning?"

  "Well, Friday night he helped me work on the engine of the Seabreeze II till after midnight. Sunday? I don't know. Seems like he might've gone out on the Pearl Sunday. You'll have to ask him."

  ***

  Kryschevski told them they were welcome to wait inside the garage, but Sigrid and Knight decided to poke around the small town instead.

  It had rained during the night and heavy gray clouds overhead promised more, but they left the car parked near the berth of the Margie Q and walked up the main street, a tree-lined thoroughfare that led directly from the waterfront. They walked past two pharmacies, a bank, a grocery, and a tackle shop-the usual small town assortment-and paused before a window full of what would be antiques over in the Hamptons but were here unpretentiously labeled Frank's Used Furniture.

  They had excellent coffee in the Chowder Bowl, browsed through the reduced book table at the Inglenook Book Shop, and read all the tombstones in the tiny graveyard surrounding the Mantausic Anglican Church at the end of First Street.

  Beyond lay a marshy area that had been designated a wildlife refuge for sea birds. Knight was ready to explore it, but Sigrid became uneasy whenever her feetl eft concrete, so they turned back.

  It was a little past eleven.