Three-Day Town

by Margaret Maron

  From Hentz, sleek and urbane in a well-cut topcoat and dark fedora, she got a neutral, level-eyed nod, but the others gave her respectful smiles as they crossed the room to join her by the French doors. Lieutenant Vaughn entered, too, followed by Kate’s brother-in-law and the John Jay professor. Close on their heels were the crime scene team and an ME. Beyond them, she saw several uniforms from the local house trying to placate the noisy and curious crowd of party guests who objected to being kept there against their will.

  She was pleased to see her team immediately note and document the smear of blood and scuffing on the hardwood floor, two indicators that Lundigren had been killed there in the living room near the coffee table and then dragged onto the balcony. One of them scraped up some of the blood smear and bagged it for the lab. Yes, it was probably the victim’s blood, but assuming the obvious was how cases got lost.

  After setting up floodlights to facilitate their camera work, they opened the French doors wide. Rain had changed to sleet mixed with snow and the room’s temperature quickly dropped.

  “Rigor’s starting, so go ahead and get him on the gurney before he stiffens up,” the ME said.

  As they shifted the body to zip it into a bag, Sigrid leaned forward and said, “What’s that in his hand?”

  More clicks of the camera and Hentz opened the dead man’s callused fingers, tipped his find into a plastic evidence bag, then turned to hold it up so the others could see. A small object gleamed golden in the floodlights.

  “That’s mine,” said Sigrid’s newly met cousin who had left Buntrock in the dining room to come stand next to Major Bryant. “Where’s the other one?”

  She reached for the bag, but Hentz drew back. “Sorry, ma’am. I’ll have to give you a receipt for it.”

  “Evidence, shug,” murmured Deborah’s husband, a ruggedly attractive man.

  By the time the gurney was on its way through the suddenly subdued crowd out in the hall and down to the service elevator that was accessed by a door next to the front elevator, Deborah and Buntrock had each described to the detectives how they left the party with Sigrid, how crowded the hall was, how they had noticed the open door and then discovered the disappearance of a small heavy piece of bronze.

  Sigrid had not looked too closely at the head wound, but upon reflection she realized that the piece could have made a handy weapon.

  The three of them and Dwight Bryant were fingerprinted so that they could be eliminated from the prints found on the balcony doors, the inside knob of the door into the hall, and the kitchen counter where that little bronze had stood. Wiping the ink from his fingers, Bryant said, “Lundigren told us that his wife cleaned here this week, so you’ll probably see her prints here, too.”

  One of the techs had found what looked like a clear thumbprint on the mirror of the medicine cabinet in the master bath, and she had lifted several from the flush handles and raised seats on both toilets as well as the faucets.

  Sigrid heard Deborah say, “I was the last one out of our bathroom, and I did not leave the seat up.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky,” said the tech.

  “What about that painted cat?” the judge said. “I’m about ninety percent sure it wasn’t here when we left tonight, so where did it come from?”

  “Print the cat,” Sigrid said.

  In the dining room, the room closest to the front door, Sam Hentz pulled out a digital camcorder and began to take brief statements from some of the party guests that the uniforms had sent in.

  “Look, the line was five deep around the other bathrooms and you know how long women can take,” said a young man in a Hawaiian shirt, yellow clamdiggers, and purple sneakers. “I saw the door here wasn’t locked so I came in and took a quick leak. That’s all I did.”

  “You didn’t check out the kitchen or bedrooms?” asked Hentz as a crime scene tech inked the young man’s fingertips and rolled them onto a card.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Or notice a draft of cold air?”

  The man shook his head.

  “What time was this?”

  “Around nine-thirty, I guess, give or take a few minutes.”

  “See anybody else in here?”

  “Guy with a blue Mohawk? He came in as I was leaving.”

  The uniformed officer standing nearby nodded when Hentz shot him an inquiring look. By the time Hawaiian shirt had given his name, address, fingerprints, and held his ID up to the camera, the officer was back with a very tall and very thin man whose stiff blue Mohawk added a good four inches to his height. He was dressed like a beachcomber, and his unbuttoned vest hung on a bare torso so skinny they could count his ribs.

  “He was right outside the door when I left with our camera,” Deborah said.

  “Quite right,” said the man in an impeccable British accent. “Sorry, m’dear, but I was in urgent need of a loo and when I saw that you hadn’t latched the door and that another chap had gone inside uninvited, I’m afraid I took advantage of your unintended hospitality.”

  “And it didn’t occur to you to latch the door when you left?” Deborah asked sharply.

  “Actually, it did,” he said in an Oxbridge drawl. “And I did.”

  “You left the door locked?” asked Hentz.

  The blue Mohawk nodded in affirmation. “I think so. To be precise, I didn’t push any buttons or turn any knobs, but I did pull it shut and felt it click. I assumed it locked automatically.”

  “Which bathroom did you use?”

  “The one through there.” He gestured toward the master bedroom.

  “Was anyone in the apartment when you left?”

  “I suppose there could have been,” he said, sounding dubious. “But I didn’t see or hear anyone. I must admit that my tummy kept me in the loo for quite some time and I did hear the other toilet flush at least twice before I emerged.”

  “And what time was it when you think you locked the door?”

  He pursed his lips in concentration. “Bang on twenty till ten. I looked at my watch because I was supposed to meet someone at ten.”

  “Did the apartment seem chilly to you when you were here?”

  “No, but you Americans keep your buildings so bloody hot.” The front of his open vest swung back across his scrawny bare chest. “I was quite grateful to Luna for an excuse to dress comfortably.”

  “I don’t suppose you glanced into the living room?”

  “Sorry, mate.”

  They checked his ID, then sent him over to be fingerprinted.

  “Did you notice the chill when you got here?” Hentz asked.

  Sigrid nodded. “And I was wearing a coat.”

  “So if they’re both telling the truth,” said Hentz, “the murder probably took place between nine-forty and eleven.”

  Sigrid glanced at her watch. Almost one. By now, the hallway was nearly empty except for a small cluster of guests who lingered down by Luna DiSimone’s doorway and four uniformed police officers who were ready to turn over the lists of names they had collected.

  “I think we got them all, ma’am.”

  “Anyone see the victim enter the apartment?”

  “Not that they said. Before we let people leave, we asked them for as many names of the other guests as they could remember,” said a veteran patrolman who seemed to have taken the initiative. “I figure you guys can cross-match and probably come up with the names of everybody that was here tonight. I also had them send the pictures they’d taken with their cell phones to the address I got from Detective Hentz.”

  “Good thinking, Officer”—Sigrid leaned in to read his nameplate—“Huppert. Nice work.”

  She passed the yellow legal pads over to another detective and asked him to finish talking to the remaining guests Officer Ted Huppert had seen fit to send in for extra questioning.

  “If you don’t need me anymore, Lieutenant, I’m going to shove off before the snow gets too deep,” said Jarvis Vaughn.

  They all glanced toward the balco
ny and saw that snow had indeed begun to accumulate.

  “Don’t you want someone to drive you home?” she asked.

  “All the way to Sheepshead Bay?” He grinned. “Thanks, but the subway’s quicker and I’m only two blocks from the station. Good seeing you again. Just sorry it couldn’t have stayed social.”

  “I’ll walk with you,” said Josh Cho. “Call me, Dwight, if you or Deborah change your mind. Friends tell us it’s a comfortable couch.”

  Dwight Bryant had put his arm around Deborah and Sigrid heard him say, “We’ll be fine. Right, Deb’rah?”

  By which Sigrid gathered that they meant to go on staying in this apartment. For some reason she had thought that this Southern woman would be too squeamish to sleep here tonight, but the judge shrugged and said, “This building must be close to a hundred years old. I’m sure he’s not the first person to die in it.”

  Knowing this would be their last chance at the apartment before it was thoroughly contaminated by the Bryants, Sigrid instructed her team to give the room a final examination.

  Her dread of emotional confrontations made this next part of the job difficult for her, but knowing it could not be put off any longer, she signaled to Sam Hentz and said to Vaughn and Cho, “We’ll ride down with you.”

  On the ground floor, Lieutenant Vaughn and Dr. Cho headed out into the falling snow. The elevator man on duty earlier had been relieved by the night operator, one Jani Horvath. He was big and beefy, with a snowy white walrus mustache. When Hentz asked him when he’d last seen Lundigren, the man seemed genuinely surprised. “Phil? That was Phil that got killed? I thought it was somebody from Luna’s party.”

  “Did you see him tonight?” they asked.

  He shook his head and his mustache seemed to droop mournfully. “No. I came in early on account of the snow. The weather channel said we were gonna get at least twelve inches. I sacked out for a few hours downstairs and relieved Sidney early so he could get home before it got too deep. I heard somebody got killed, but I never thought it was Phil. Poor bastard. You coming to tell Denise?”

  “Is that his wife?”

  Horvath nodded. “You’ll go easy on her, right? She’s real shy. I forget what they call it—where somebody can’t stand to be around new people?”

  “Social anxiety disorder?”

  “Yeah, that’s what Phil called it. There was a time that he was the only one she could talk to or relax with, but then a psychiatrist bought into the building and he helped her a lot. She’s okay with people she knows good or in a crowd that’s not paying her any attention, but she still has a little trouble with new people where she has to talk or answer questions, so—”

  A loud buzz from someone on the sixth floor interrupted him and he stepped back into the cage.

  “Right around the corner,” he told them. “First door on the right.”

  They rang the doorbell twice and knocked loudly, but no one came.

  “If she’s a nutcase, we may be wasting our time,” said Hentz.

  Sigrid held her finger on the doorbell until the door, secured by two safety chains, finally opened a narrow crack.

  The woman who peered out at them had a thin drawn face and sleep-rumpled coal black hair that needed a touch-up at the gray roots. Incongruously, her eyes were sooty with heavy black mascara, blusher pinked her cheeks, and her lips were freshly painted a bright red that matched her quilted satin robe.

  Sigrid tried to remember what she had read about social anxiety disorder and wondered if putting on makeup was part of this woman’s coping technique.

  “Phil’s not here,” the woman said. “Come back later.”

  Hentz blocked the door with his foot before she could close it, and they held up their badges.

  “Police, Mrs. Lundigren,” Sigrid said. “May we come in?”

  “Phil’s not here,” the woman said again.

  “We know. That’s why we have to talk to you.”

  Grudgingly, the woman removed the chain, then quickly retreated to the far doorway of this small room to watch them uneasily as they entered her home. The moment their eyes met hers, she instantly looked away.

  Having seen the body of the dead man, bulky and coarse-looking in his dark brown coveralls, and having heard that his wife supplemented their income by cleaning, Sigrid had subconsciously expected an equally bulky woman and a drab apartment, perhaps furnished with castoffs from the building’s residents.

  Instead, the wife was slender and pretty and this tiny room was nicely furnished. The walls were painted a deep red with white enamel trim. The single window was draped in white linen over white sheers. Red-and-white floral cushions softened the clean lines of an off-white loveseat, and two wingchairs were upholstered in white velvet. Several dainty crystal cats sat atop a gleaming end table that also held a lamp with a cut-glass base and white silk shade. A modern oriental-style rug lay on the dark oak floor. The whole effect was crisply feminine.

  Mrs. Lundigren’s arms tightened across her thin chest. “Where’s Phil?”

  “Excuse me?” Sigrid said.

  “You said you know he’s not here, so where is he?” Her eyes flickered over to them and then dropped to the floor.

  “When did you last see him?” Sam Hentz countered.

  “After supper. There was a party up on six. Loud people coming and going through the lobby. He said he was going up to check on things.”

  “What time would that be, Mrs. Lundigren?”

  “Maybe ten o’clock? I don’t know.” Her fingers brushed her wrist absentmindedly. “I don’t have a watch.”

  They glanced around the small room. There was no clock in sight. No television either. In fact, now that Sigrid looked more closely, this room did not seem to be used at all. Nothing out of place.

  “Is this where you were when he left?” she asked.

  Mrs. Lundigren studied the floor and shook her head. “In the den.”

  Without really knowing why she cared, Sigrid took a step forward and said, “May we see?”

  “No!”

  The force of her refusal surprised the two officers.

  Trembling now, she edged behind a wingback chair and moaned, “Please. Go away now. And tell Phil to come home. Please!”

  Sigrid looked helplessly at Hentz, who made soothing noises. “It’s okay, Mrs. Lundigren. We’re going to stay over here. Why don’t you take a seat and let us tell you why we came?”

  He continued to reassure her with soft words, and eventually she forced herself to come out from behind the chair and sit down in it. Once she had stopped trembling, Hentz stepped aside for Sigrid, who took a deep breath and said, “I’m really sorry, Mrs. Lundigren, but Phil is dead.”

  “What?”

  “Up in 6-A. Someone—”

  “No,” said Denise Lundigren. “No, no, no! He can’t be dead.”

  When they did not reassure her, she looked around in wild agitation as if her husband might suddenly appear. “Who’s going to look after me?”

  “Is there someone we can call?” asked Hentz.

  She shook her head, then, almost meeting his eyes, she said, “Are you sure he’s really dead? Not just hurt?”

  “I’m very sorry, ma’am.”

  Wrapping her arms even tighter, the woman began to rock back and forth, keening in a high shrill wordless scream that seemed to go on and on forever.

  Hentz started to reach out to her to offer comfort, but she recoiled, screaming even louder.

  “Bellevue?” Hentz asked Sigrid in a low voice.

  She nodded.

  CHAPTER

  6

  Eating and drinking, instead of being the satisfaction of a physical need, is here a social function.

  —The New New York, 1909

  When I looked out, I saw that the snow was falling more fiercely than ever, driven by a sharp wind that had already piled several inches against the French doors where we’d found Phil Lundigren a few hours earlier.

  Although Dwight ha
d taken a professional interest in the proceedings and was now in deep conversation with the detectives Sigrid and her colleague had left to finish up, I was too tired and hungry to listen. Supper had been a few glasses of wine, two bites of cheese, and a cube of melon, and that was over three hours ago.

  I stifled a yawn and Elliott Buntrock said, “Tired?”

  “Not at all,” I lied.

  “If you prefer, I can wait for Sigrid downstairs.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said, knowing that it would probably be at least another hour before everyone cleared out and left Dwight and me alone. “I am hungry, though. Can I get you something, too?” His bony face brightened. “What do you have?”

  I laughed. “I’m not sure. The last time I looked, though, the refrigerator was stuffed. My husband’s absolutely besotted with the grocery store around the corner.” “Fairway Market, right? It’s a madhouse, but people come from all over town to shop there. Have you tried their café upstairs? They do a great breakfast.” Without actually being invited, he followed me into the kitchen. While I wiped fingerprint powder off the countertops, he murmured approval of the high ceilings and period woodwork, then held the refrigerator door open so I could rummage through the little plastic boxes and bags.

  “Artichoke salad? Mixed olives? Bruschetta?” I asked. “Sliced rare tenderloin? Smoked salmon?” “Yes, please,” he said. “And is that a pack of oatmeal stout hiding in the back?” It was.

  “I must say that I rather like your husband’s taste.”

  We dumped everything on the kitchen counter and pulled out two of the four stools. Picnicking at a murder scene might be considered a little bizarre, but if Dwight and I were going to stay here, we needed food and drink, and I was ready for both. Besides, the crime scene team seemed to be through with the kitchen.

  “Plates in here?” Elliott asked, reaching for a cupboard door.

  “Glasses there. Plates one door over,” I told him.

  As he assembled dishes and utensils, I moved the cardboard box that had held that chunky bronze thing that Mrs. Lattimore had sent and started to wad up the paper that had cushioned it.