Death of a Butterfly (Sigrid Harald)

by Margaret Maron

  The sun broke through as they picked up the Nesconset Highway, and when Sigrid rolled down her window, she fancied she could already smell the salt air of Long Island Sound. In less than fifteen minutes, they were entering Port Jefferson.

  Originally an old fishing village and still the southern terminus for the Bridgeport summer ferry from Connecticut, the town was now home port for a flotilla of pleasure boats. Luxury yachts and tall sailboats bobbed democratically in the harbor with modest outboard motorboats. Summer sailors would soon crowd the picturesque narrow streets and rent the white­picket-fenced cottages, stroll along the harbor, or idle in and out of determinedly quaint boutiques and pubs.

  It was still a week before Memorial Day and the traditional opening of the summer season, but there was a fresh-paint sense of anticipation in the air—an attractive little town all prettied up for its party guests.

  Through Peters back at headquarters, Tillie had arranged to be met by one of the local police officers and they spotted his car in a bank parking lot as scheduled.

  “Next week we might have missed him,” said the pug-nosed officer, who looked too young to be driving a car, much less wearing a law enforcer’s uniform. “Once the season starts, seems like every square foot’s got a different car on it.”

  Driving slowly, he led them through winding lanes to a tiny white clapboard cottage with blue shutters. The walk was bordered by a line of perky red and blue petunias. In the drive behind the cottage was George Franklin’s white Volvo sedan.

  “Need any help?” asked their guide as Sigrid and Tillie got out of their car.

  “I don’t think so, thank you,” answered Sigrid.

  She and Tillie had so often encountered jurisdictional badgering when entering another command that they were somewhat surprised when the youth said, “See you around, then,” gave a laconic wave of his hand, and drove away.

  “For small blessings, O Lord, make us truly grateful,” she murmured, and Tillie smiled.

  It was a quarter past seven and the rain clouds overhead were breaking apart into blobby gray and white puffs that chased the emerging sun across patches of bright blue sky.

  The door knocker was a small cast-iron anchor, and Sigrid rapped it briskly.

  “Coming, coming, coming!” caroled a cheerful voice through the open windows.

  The cottage door flew open and Sue Montrose’s freckle-faced smile of welcome turned into a look of blank surprise.

  CHAPTER 22

  Sue Montrose led them through the cottage to a tiny kitchen at the rear, where they found George Franklin barefoot in chinos and singing lustily as he whisked eggs in a stainless steel mixing bowl.

  He turned at their entrance and his handsome face went from curiosity through total shock to sheepishness in rapid succession. Finally he managed a boyish smile, wiped his hands on the seat of his pants and held them both out to Sigrid.

  “Did you bring your handcuffs, Lieutenant?”

  “It was a possibility,” Sigrid said coldly. “Did you forget we had an appointment, Mr. Franklin?”

  “Not for one single second!” he assured her. “But my lawyer was tied up in court, Susie had disappeared, and you were acting like I’d killed her and Julie both, so I thought I’d better find her first.”

  “You seem to have done it very quickly,” Sigrid observed.

  “Well, I remembered that her uncle had this place—we were out here last fall—but I couldn’t remember his name for the telephone listing or even the street, for that matter. It just seemed simpler to come. And I was right. Here she was.”

  He put his arm around Sue Montrose with a doting, slightly foolish grin.

  Sigrid looked at Sue Montrose closely, sensing a new ease that hadn’t been apparent Sunday afternoon. The tension between the couple had dissolved into a mushy honeymoon glow. She’d heard that love conquered all, but suspicion of murder, too?

  “Perhaps now you won’t mind answering our questions,” she said.

  Tillie accepted Sue Montrose’s invitation to sit at the large round table, but Sigrid remained standing, her austere height giving her an unconscious psychological authority.

  “Why was Julie Redmond blackmailing you?” she asked Franklin bluntly.

  “Blackmail? What makes you think—”

  “If we subpoena your bank records for the last three years,” Sigrid interrupted, “do you deny that we’ll find you paid her three hundred dollars every month for almost two years?”

  “Now, Lieutenant, can you really do that?” he asked, smoothing down the thick dark curls that he’d carelessly mussed before. “You have to show cause or something, don’t you? And I really don’t think you can.”

  “Don’t, George,” said Sue Montrose, slipping away from his arm. She placed knives and forks in a pottery mug and set the mug on the table. “We’re going to have to tell her about it sooner or later and it might as well be now. Get it over with.”

  She handed him the fork she’d been turning bacon with and faced Sigrid. “George explained everything to me last night,” she said earnestly. “You’re right—Julie had blackmailed him once.”

  “What for?”

  Franklin muttered something, but Montrose laid her square little hand on his arm and he relaxed.

  “Okay, Lieutenant,” he said finally. “Remember Julie’s dig about mistakes? I made a beaut a few years ago and if you think I’m going to give you all the details, forget it.

  “Let’s just say I had access to certain computer codes that tapped into a financial institution and I used them to borrow some money without anybody knowing. Except that I learned almost immediately that those codes were being set up to trap somebody else.

  “Frankly, it scared the hell out of me. I replaced the funds instantly and covered my tracks completely.”

  “It was while Julie was still his secretary,” said Sue. “She found a piece of incriminating evidence, but she didn’t tell him at the time, just held onto it until she quit her job and didn’t like living on what her husband gave her. George might not have been prosecuted but it would have made things awkward for him at Landau and Maas. Electronic security is their business, you know, and trust is a very important part of the image. So he paid her.”

  “And then last year you traded a tap on her telephone for the evidence she held?” asked Tillie, pleased to have one of his rare leaps in the dark proved correct.

  “Seemed like an awful lot of trouble to go to for a divorce,” said Franklin. “She said it was because of the new laws—that judges weren’t giving out decent settlements anymore without hard proof. I guess she just wanted to clean him out good.”

  From the tone of his voice, Sigrid surmised that he didn’t care what happened to Karl Redmond so long as he got out from under Julie’s power. What could such a seemingly level-headed woman as Sue Montrose possibly see in this lazily amoral man? Granted he was as handsome as a daytime television actor, but did looks compensate for no character?

  Evidently.

  Sigrid decided against telling them what Julie Redmond had really wanted with the tap. Not that the death of a blameless old man would make any difference to Franklin, but she suspected that Montrose would view the knowledge differently and she didn’t fancy herself as the apple-offering serpent in this seaside garden of Eden.

  “For the record, where were you Saturday morning?” she asked Franklin.

  Her question produced unexpected results. The man flushed a dark red and threw an anguished look at Sue Montrose, who dissolved in giggles.

  “Dammit, Sue!”

  “I’m sorry, darling.”

  But she didn’t sound contrite, thought Sigrid, watching the girl lift sizzling strips of bacon from a red-enameled frying pan. Sue’s lips twitched as Franklin picked up the bowls of eggs and began whisking them again with unnecessary violence.

  She took the bowl from his hands and, like a mother prompting an unwilling child, said, “Tell the lieutenant where you were so we can get on with br
eakfast.”

  “I was at my hair stylist’s,” he said sulkily.

  Sigrid was puzzled. “Hair stylist?”

  “I go every week—shampoo, a trim, and—uh—styling.” Sigrid still didn’t understand, but Tillie saw the point. “Hair weaving?” he asked shrewdly.

  Franklin looked at them belligerently, daring them to laugh at him.

  “I’ve got a receding hairline,” he confided.

  “All the way back to the top of his head,” Sue added affectionately.

  “So I supplement it a little,” said Franklin. “For it to stay looking natural though, I have to keep it up. Every Saturday morning. I have a standing appointment.”

  “I thought he was seeing Julie then,” said Sue. “He acted so secretive and guilty whenever I tried to get him to meet me on Saturday mornings.”

  “It’s just not something a man likes to talk about,” Franklin told them.

  Especially not a man who prides himself on his virile appearance, thought Sigrid, as Tillie took down the salon’s name and address. Well, if Montrose found his baldness endearing, more power to her.

  The smell of bacon had filled the kitchen and reminded Tillie that he and the lieutenant had only had a doughnut apiece this morning.

  “Won’t you join us?” asked Sue Montrose, hospitable now that George’s secrets were out in the open. “No trouble to throw some more bacon in the pan. Add a few eggs?”

  Sigrid ignored Tillie’s wistful face. “No, thank you, Miss Montrose. We’re almost finished and then we’ll leave you to breakfast in peace. We’ll still want you to sign the statement you gave me Sunday afternoon. Unless your discussion with Mr. Franklin last night has helped you remember something else since then?”

  Sue missed the irony in the other woman’s tone. “No, nothing,” she answered innocently.

  Nevertheless Sigrid asked her to recount once again her Saturday morning vigil, from the time Mrs. Cavatori rang Julie Redmond’s bell at ten-fifteen until she herself entered at twelve-fifteen to find Julie cool to the touch.

  Tillie looked at Sigrid curiously when she went back to that eleven-fifteen glass of milk.

  “You say that someone from the Cavatori apartment went down on the elevator at eleven and again just before you left the door to get your milk. Are you sure that neither person crossed the vestibule to Redmond’s apartment?”

  “Positive.”

  “And you’re equally positive that someone did in fact go down on that elevator at eleven-fourteen?”

  “Where else would he go?” Sue Montrose asked sensibly. “I heard the door to 3-B open and close, the elevator came up, those doors opened and closed, then the elevator started back down. You can ask my uncles. One of them was on duty then, Uncle Sammy, I think.”

  “And then minutes after drinking your milk, you fell asleep?”

  “A very light doze, Lieutenant, and only for a few minutes. I know I’d have heard if anybody’d come up then. That hall door is right beside the elevator shaft, if you recall.”

  Sigrid nodded, her mind suddenly so filled with speculations that she didn’t realize what a stern gaze she had turned upon George Franklin.

  The man cleared his throat uneasily and said, “Do I still have to bring my lawyer down and sign anything?”

  Sigrid focused on him and brought herself back to the present. “I’m afraid so, Mr. Franklin. That tap might be an important element in another criminal investigation,” she said, thinking of Mickey Novak.

  “You mean she was blackmailing someone else?” asked Sue Montrose.

  “Something like that.”

  “Oh God!” moaned Franklin.

  “Your company may not have to learn of your involvement,” Sigrid said, correctly interpreting his groan.

  He brightened immediately. “Thanks, Lieutenant. You’re a doll”

  The look she gave him with those slate gray eyes was so chilling that he was reminded that he had business in the refrigerator. Butter to find. Jam. A place to hide.

  A mirthful Sue Montrose showed them out.

  CHAPTER 23

  With Tillie behind the wheel, they drove through Port Jefferson, looking for their turnoff back to New York. At least Tillie was looking. Sigrid was too preoccupied to pay more than mechanical interest to the streets they were passing.

  He paused at a stop sign to allow a silver Volkswagen convertible on the through street to make a left turn past them, then proceeded leisurely on. In the rearview mirror, he noticed that the Volks had come to an abrupt halt and executed a hasty U-turn in the middle of the block.

  As the little car zoomed up behind them, Tillie saw that the driver was a young woman with bright yellow hair. He edged over to give her room to pass, but she seemed content to follow. She followed much too closely for Tillie’s liking and he speeded up.

  She matched his speed.

  Annoyed, he slowed again and thrust his arm out the window to wave her around.

  “Something wrong?” Sigrid asked, finally noticing.

  “Tailgater,” he muttered.

  Sigrid twisted around to look and when she did, the blonde waved and began blowing her horn.

  “Hilda?” said Sigrid wonderingly.

  “A friend of yours?”

  “Cousin,” she answered tersely. “Better pull over.”

  The Volkswagen convertible drew abreast of them and the driver broke into a delighted welcoming smile. “Siga! It is you! I don’t believe it. What on earth are you doing in Port Jeff?”

  “Actually, we were leaving it,” Sigrid answered.

  “Leaving? Without saying a word or stopping by for a cup of tea?” Even as she spoke, she was giving Tillie a thorough appraisal and Sigrid’s heart dropped as she thought of the wild rumors that would soon be flying through the family if she left Hilda without fully allaying her suspicions.

  From either side came impatient car horns as other vehicles tried to get around them in the narrow street.

  “Follow me,” said Hilda, and pulled ahead of them. Tillie looked at Sigrid inquiringly.

  Resigned, Sigrid nodded.

  They were the same age and comparisons begun in childhood carried over to the present at rare family get-togethers. Hilda Sivertsen had been a plump and merry golden-haired child; as Hilda Carmichael, she was now a plump and merry young matron married to a CPA with a thriving business here on the Island. She also had a thriving family, as Tillie soon discovered.

  “Hey, she has a baby with her!” he said, easing into the lane of traffic behind the open Volks. The padded infant seat beside her cousin had been strapped in so that the baby was riding backward, and only now had he noticed the tiny head bobbling inside.

  Sigrid tried to recall the name of this last baby and found she couldn’t even remember if it was a boy or a girl.

  Fortunately, Hilda helped her out. As Sigrid performed the introductions in the driveway of Hilda’s huge front yard—carefully stressing that Tillie was Detective Tildon and that they were in Port Jefferson on business—Hilda unstrapped the baby from its seat and said, “You haven’t even met little Lars yet, Siga.”

  Then Sigrid remembered that the baby had been named for their mutual great-uncle, the closest thing she’d had to a grandfather in her father’s family. She looked at the plump, tow­headed baby. His eyes were the exact same delft blue that Uncle Lars’s eyes had been, and she suddenly felt very close to Hilda, who had loved the old man, too.

  “I wish we could stay,” she said and was surprised to realize that she meant it. “But we really are working.”

  “Then come back and visit soon,” said Hilda. She had been a spontaneous, loving child and she gave Sigrid an impulsive hug. “We don’t see you nearly often enough.”

  So seldom was she touched or caressed that Sigrid never knew how to respond. She always found herself going still and self-conscious, unable to return these casual shows of affection.

  “She seems like a nice person,” Tillie ventured, as they headed back to
the city.

  “She is,” Sigrid said and turned the conversation back to more impersonal topics.

  They stopped for a quick breakfast on their way in, and Tillie telephoned to arrange an interview with Karl Redmond while Sigrid ordered wheatcakes and sausage for them both.

  “I didn’t quite understand why you kept taking Montrose over that part about the milk,” he said when his plate was nearly empty. “You think somebody could have come up on the elevator just as Vico Cavatori was going down?”

  “No, that hadn’t occurred to me,” Sigrid said. She turned it over in her mind. “It is a possibility though. Think about it, Tillie: What if someone did arrive when Cavatori was leaving? If it’s the murderer, he would quite logically wait a moment or two to see if anyone else was around. By the time he crossed the vestibule to the Redmond apartment, Sue Montrose would be in the kitchen, pouring milk.”

  “And when he left,” said Tillie, “she would be dozing.”

  “So she wouldn’t see him either time,” Sigrid nodded.

  “That’s two coincidences, Lieutenant. I thought you didn’t like coincidences.”

  “Just because I don’t like them doesn’t mean they never happen,” Sigrid said wryly.

  “Okay, but how did he leave? Not by the stairs. Novak’s are the only footprints tracked through the fresh paint, and Montrose would have heard the elevator.”

  “Unless she was sleeping more soundly than she thought,” said Sigrid. “I suppose the only sensible thing to do is ask Cavatori himself. Any word on how he’s doing?”

  “I called the hospital this morning after talking to you, and they said his condition had stabilized but he’s still in the cardiac intensive care unit. That means nobody can see him except his immediate family.”