Baby Doll Games

by Margaret Maron

  “Yeah,” said Peters. “And who was with her when she got the call? Eric Kee! Maybe that fight they had wasn’t all about the Judson kid.”

  “Kee told us she was expecting a call,” Sigrid agreed, “but he denies knowing she actually received it.”

  “Of course he’d deny it,” Peters said scornfully.

  It was something else to bat around.

  In the end, Sigrid told Cluett, Eberstadt, and Peters to keep it in mind as they interviewed the remaining witnesses. It was also something that Lowry and Albee might dig at when they’d finished at Emmy Mion s apartment this morning.

  “Do you think someone will be at the theater?” asked Jim.

  “They performed last night and they plan to dance this afternoon,” Sigrid said.

  Before they could react to that news, a clerk rapped at the door. “Lieutenant Harald? There’s a Dr. Ferrell to see you.”

  The psychiatrist. “Ask her to wait five minutes,” Sigrid said.

  As she finished her instructions to the others, the psychiatrist's presence reminded her of something. “Albee. What was the name of that child that was killed last winter?”

  “Child?” Elaine Albee looked at her blankly. “Oh, yes. Helen Delgado mentioned her. A little girl from one of the dancing classes.” She began to thumb through her notebook.

  Once again Sigrid missed Tillie’s solid unimaginative presence. He might lack flair and panache, but he would have promptly supplied the information she wanted. Unfortunately, Tillie was still in the hospital, lucky to be alive, and in his absence she would have to make do with assistants who were possibly brighter but much less meticulous. She repressed a sigh. It was going to be a long three months.

  “Sorry, Lieutenant, I guess I didn’t write down her name,” Elaine said, bracing for a reprimand.

  Fortunately Sigrid had found what she wanted among her own notes, as well as the picture she’d kept of the murdered child. “Amanda Gillespie. Disappeared on her way home from a dance class at the theater last February and later found in a snowbank.”

  Her gray eyes fell on Cluett, who had returned to an article about the New York Jets. “Cluett, get me the records on that case, please.”

  He looked up with a broad vacant face. “Ma’am?”

  “You are with us, aren’t you, Cluett? Amanda Gillespie. I want to see the file on that homicide.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Cluett stowed his newspaper under the chair, heaved himself to his feet, and went off to do as asked.

  As the others set out on their own tasks, Sigrid told them to send in Dr. Ferrell.

  Chapter 12

  Sigrid had formed no mental image of the psychiatrist who had first pronounced Emmy Mion dead, so she hardly expected an elderly bespectacled Viennese in a heavy tweed suit to walk into her office. On the other hand, she wasn’t quite prepared either for a tangle of blonde tresses, clear blue eyes, and a perfect size eight in a cashmere suit and high-heeled Italian boots.

  So much poise and beauty made Sigrid immediately aware of her own shortcomings-her nondescript gray jacket and navy slacks, that absurd haircut. She had a silk scarf similar to the one Dr. Ferrell had looped around her neck for a vivid splash of color, thought Sigrid. Anne had brought her one home from her last mad dash to Paris. It was probably just what today's white shirt could use, so why hadn’t she worn it? And she’d recently started experimenting with makeup, but the habit wasn’t automatic yet and in the morning’s rush, she’d completely forgotten about it.

  “I’m glad you came, Doctor,” she said stiffly, offering the other woman a chair. “I understand you’ve been connected with the dance theater since last winter. Dr. Ferrell remained standing with a quizzical smile on her lovely lips. “You really don’t remember me, do you, Sigrid?”

  Sigrid looked at her more closely. “No, I'm sorry. Have we met before?”

  “St. Margaret’s!” Christa Ferrell laughed musically, drawing a chair up beside Sigrid's desk. “I was a grubby little lower former when you were one of the lofty upperclassmen. You haven't changed a bit, though. I knew you immediately!”

  “Oh?” Sigrid promptly heard the inanity in her own voice.

  “Don't worry. I know you're too busy to launch into old home week, but I was so surprised to see you up there on the stage yesterday in charge of a homicide, even though I did wonder-”

  Whatever she wondered was left unsaid as Christa Ferrell draped her black wool coat over a nearby chair. “If St. Margaret's only knew!” Her gloves and purse joined the coat. “I never see your name in the alumnae news.”

  “I'm afraid I don’t keep up with it,” Sigrid muttered. She sat down at her desk and pulled her notepad into position, unconsciously trying to restore some semblance of formality between them. “So. Helen Delgado told us you’re a psychiatrist. That you worked with the children when one of their classmates was murdered last winter?”

  “God, yes! Wasn't that horrible? You weren't there then, were you?”

  “No, another officer handled that one.”

  At that moment, Mick Cluett halted in the doorway carrying the Gillespie file. After sending him off to interview his share of names from last night’s audience, Sigrid scanned the high spots of the investigation into little Amanda Gillespie’s death.

  “They said she was a sweet-tempered child, very affectionate and obedient. Followed ail the rules,” said Christa Ferrell, who remembered the whole episode and seemed willing to help, “And you know the first rule city parents teach their kids.”

  Sigrid nodded. “Never talk to strangers.”

  “The other children said she wouldn't have, either. That she was too timid to say boo to a cockroach. My nephew, Calder, had just turned five when it happened and even though he didn’t know little Mandy very well, there was enough gruesome talk to give die children nightmares and implant unreasonable fears. My brother and his wife were worried that he’d be permanently scarred without help and since my specialty’s in pediatrics, of course, I agreed to treat Calder.”

  She crossed her legs and smoothed her skirt over a shapely knee. "A few days later, Emmy Mion and a committee of parents asked if I’d conduct a couple of group sessions to help the other children manage their grief and their fears, so I did.”Children were a dark continent for Sigrid. “Was it hard?” she asked curiously.

  “Not really.” Christa Ferrell smiled. “Grief therapy for young children is mainly a matter of just guiding the discussion until they talk their way through their anxieties and anguish. It helped that Mandy hadn’t been battered or sexually molested. It would have helped even more if they’d found her killer, of course. Children handle things better when everything balances out.”

  It was said almost as an afterthought, but Sigrid felt rather as if she ought to apologize for a departmental lapse in efficiency. “Will you repeat the procedure now that Mion’s been killed?”

  “If the parents and staff wish me to, certainly I will.” Her blonde hair swept the shoulder of her blue suit as she tilted her head to consider. “I wonder if the dance classes will continue, though? The Gillespie child’s death had nothing to do with the theater, but this time-My sister- in-law’s already saying she won’t let Calder go back till this is cleared up, and that’s a fairly typical parental reaction.” Sigrid laid aside the Gillespie folder to read in greater detail later. “I don’t suppose you recognized the jack-o – lantern dancer?”

  “No, I’m really not very familiar with any of them. I did sit in on one of Calder’s classes last month. Two of the men-the Chinese-looking dancer and the one with a blonde punk haircut-conducted that particular session but it certainly wasn’t enough for me to recognize them in costume yesterday.”

  “After the lights came back on, do you remember who was where?”

  “I wish I could say, but I was concerned for Calder, of course, and there was so much confusion around the stage area, although I must say your policeman handled things very competently.”

  Again Sigrid
was made to feel responsible for the whole department, as if she should thank Christa Ferrell for her commendation. Instead, she limited her thanks to the psychiatrist for her help yesterday and for coming in that morning.

  Dr. Ferrell, however, did not reach for her coat. Instead, she smiled at her onetime schoolmate and asked, “Do you believe in coincidence, Sigrid?”

  “You mean this child’s dance instructor now being murdered, too?”

  “No, no.” She waved that aside with a graceful flick of her fingers. “I mean the coincidence of our meeting again like this after so many years. Especially since-” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and leaned forward confidingly. “This is the second homicide in which we’ve overlapped. I thought your name was familiar when I saw it this summer, but it didn’t really connect until yesterday.”

  “This summer?”

  “When Darlene Makaroff was killed. In July. I should have come to you before now because I can really use your professional assessment. You will help, won’t you?”

  “I’m sorry, Dr.-uh, Christa.” Sigrid was completely bewildered. “I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Darlene Makaroff. She and her two young daughters were Social Services clients-that’s where I work, you see-and her lover killed her. Smashed her head m with a hammer. Your name was on one of the reports.”

  “Really?” Sigrid tried to recall that particular homicide. Back in July?

  A chill November wind now harried lower Manhattan and she had trouble separating the Makaroff murder from a half-dozen others. She reached for her phone and had a clerk bring her the file; but even after skimming through the thick folder, memory’s bells were only faintly chiming.

  Her initials were on the first reports but Detective Bernie Peters had actually completed the investigation. It read like such a routine domestic killing. No mystery, nothing bizarre, just another of those unpremeditated eruptions of violence, like a sudden summer thundercloud that roils up out of nowhere to strike the earth with electrical, destructive intensity and then is gone with only some wrecked umbrellas and leaf-strewn streets to mark the short-lived fury.

  Not that Sigrid equated a human death with an inverted umbrella. It would not occur to her to think of her job in fanciful metaphors, but she did occasionally worry about going stale and times like this made her wonder if objectivity were being replaced by indifference.

  She skimmed the papers again, trying to visualize the reality behind the official language. A disturbance at a run-down apartment building tenanted by welfare recipients near Thompkins Square. (Broken plaster and filthy marble tile, she thought. Passageways lit by bare forty- watt bulbs, the stench of urine and vomit in the stairwells.) Dead at the scene from apparent blows with_ a hammer was one Darlene Makaroff, female Caucasian, age twenty-four. (A dress? Jeans? Or, on such a hot night, perhaps she’d been that nude?) Alleged assailant, one Ray Thorpe, male Caucasian, age twenty, seen fleeing from the Kingston’s twelfth floor and identified as the victim's lover.

  According to subsequent additions to the forms in his case jacket, Thorpe had narrowly eluded capture in Newark back in September and had recently been spotted in Queens. A watch was being kept on his sister’s house there and an arrest was expected any time now.

  just in time for a Thanksgiving arraignment, thought Sigrid, and considering his prior arrest record, Ray Thorpe would have cause for thanks if he didn’t get the book thrown at him.

  Making a mental note to ask Detective Peters to keep her posted on the case, Sigrid closed the file, aligned it neatly with others in her Out-basket, and looked up to meet Christa Ferrell’s clear blue eyes.

  “Sorry, Christa. I just don’t have a clear recollection of that night.”

  To be perfectly truthful, her recollection of Dr. Christa Ferrell wasn’t all that clear either, although she had no intention of admitting it. She vaguely recalled that they might have roomed on the same hall one year at school, but Ferrell was at least three years younger and Sigrid knew that children always pay more attention to those above them than those below.

  She tried to imagine die tousled blonde hair a shade lighter and perhaps longer, to imagine her schoolmate’s stylish cashmere suit and wool coat replaced with one of St. Margaret’s ugly brown-and-green plaid uniforms; but memory was just as recalcitrant there as with poor Darlene Makaroff. Christa Ferrell’s poise and air of bright confidence must have been her birthright, a birthright shared with most of the school’s student body, so that was no help either. Few of the girls had been as shy and gawky or as achingly self-conscious as young Sigrid Harald.

  Away from headquarters, some of that childhood awkwardness remained; here in her own office, though, she possessed a cool competence.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “If you knew how many domestic homicides we see in-”

  "There were two little girls,” Christa Ferrell persisted. “They saw their mother murdered. They must have been there when you arrived.”

  “Not necessarily. One of the neighbors might have taken them to a different apartment. Is it really so important?”

  Ferrell’s graceful shrug conceded the dead end. “It might have been helpful for me to have an objective account of that night.”

  “Perhaps a social worker?” Sigrid suggested. “Someone from your place?”

  “Martha Holt,” she acknowledged.

  ‘Too bureaucratic?”

  “Oh Lord, no! If anything, just the op. She never forgets that Social Services is supposed to ease problems, not make new ones. All she cared about that evening was getting the kids out of that dreadful place and bedded down somewhere civilized for the night. She told me everything she saw, but I thought you could add something from the police viewpoint, things she might not have picked up on.”

  “I wish I could help,” said Sigrid, still puzzled by Christa's connection with this nondescript case. As a police officer, she knew better than to judge by appearances but “I’d have thought you'd be in private practice,” she probed delicately.

  Delicacy was unnecessary. Christa Ferrell appeared to find it perfectly natural that everyone would be as interested in the twists and turns of her career as she was herself.

  “I'm still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up,” she confided with a smile that was clearly mock-rueful. “My M.D. was in pediatrics, but first-year residency convinced me that my true interest wasn’t in the physical illnesses of children. It’s their mental problems that absolutely fascinate me.” Enthusiasm animated her flawless features and glowed in the depths of her eyes. “Eventually, I’ll open a private practice of my own, of course, but right now I’m doing psychiatric evaluations for the city and getting more solid experience than I’d ever dreamed possible. The things these welfare kids have been exposed to! You can't imagine!”

  She broke off with an appealing laugh. “Listen to me telling you And you a policewoman!”

  She somehow managed to make Sigrid s career choice sound slightly eccentric.

  “Well, I can’t give you more details of that night,” Sigrid said stiffly, “but maybe someone from the beat-” Again she consulted the sheaf of papers in the case jacket. “The patrolman who got there first was Officer J. T. Hickler. Personnel can give you his address.”

  She wrote the name on a memo slip and handed it to Christa, who glanced at it and then tucked it in her jacket pocket with so little interest that Sigrid’s earlier feeling returned that something more lay behind the psychiatrist's visit than helping with Emmy Mion’s murder or recreating the scene of a patient’s trauma.

  “I guess I’m taking this case too much to heart, Sigrid, but we see so much hopelessness and this one looks like it'll have a happy ending.”

  “Oh?” Curiosity about where the hook would come made Sigrid more patient than usual.

  “Both the kids are cute as Mickey Mouse buttons and there's a couple that wants to adopt them just as soon as Corrie-that’s the younger one that Fm wor
king with. She’s blocked out that whole evening but Fm beginning to get glimmers of light. Nothing big yet, but little glimmers of light at the ’way far end of the tunnel. So it’s really going to be a marvelous success story for the agency.”

  She paused and looked at Sigrid expectantly.

  “That’s good,” Sigrid murmured inanely. She felt she was being nudged toward some goal, but what?

  Christa Ferrell’s winsome smile did not falter. “There are so many gloomy failures in the services the city provides, so when I heard your mother was doing an in-depth story about the different agencies for New York Today, and there was your name on the investigation of Darlene Makaroff’s murder, the coincidence was too much to overlook.”

  So that was it, thought Sigrid, leaning back in her chair and tenting her fingers before her.

  Anne Harald’s career as a freelance photojournalist had taken her all over the world, where she recorded award-winning images of the human side of war, famine, calamity, and mass upheavals. She had been out of the country on various assignments for most of the year, but was back now with the avowed intention of staying right in New York at least through Christmas.

  Sigrid thought she remembered talk about a projected series in which Anne would use actual case histories to illustrate selected entitling laws. “Someone else will write up all the statistics,” Anne had said. “All I have to do is prowl around and take the right pictures.”

  Pictures that would be seen by a wide audience, thought Sigrid. The series would carry a load of built-in grimness, so yes, a segment that illustrated how two little girls were successfully helped would offer welcome relief, especially if they were photogenic (“cute as Mickey Mouse buttons”). With an equally photogenic psychiatrist?

  “It would be so good for the agency, too,” said Ferrell, with a guileless tilt of her blonde head.