Three-Day Town dk-17

by Margaret Maron

  “As long as you don’t get too close physically or try to force her to make eye contact.” He glanced at his watch. “I think I’ve established a bit of trust, and if you can make it brief, I’ll stay in the room if you like.”

  He rose, but Sigrid lifted a hand to keep him from leaving. “Something you need to know, Doctor. Mrs. Lundigren’s husband was murdered last night.”

  Again the doctor looked at his watch and gave an impatient scowl. “I’m perfectly aware of that, Lieutenant. Her grief and panic are precisely what we are dealing with here.”

  Sigrid stopped him with a cool, level-eyed look. “Are you also aware, Doctor, that her husband was a woman, not a man?”

  “What?”

  “He—she—had evidently been passing as a man for years,” Hentz said bluntly. “According to the ME, she had not been surgically altered and everything was intact.”

  Dr. Penny sank back into the chair. His belt disappeared into his belly and his chubby thighs strained the seams of his pants. “Well now, that does put a different spin on the ball. One hesitates to leap to conclusions based on insufficient data, yet one immediately has to wonder if her social anxiety disorder has been exacerbated by a closeted lesbianism. Not once in our talks did she refer to her partner as anything but ‘he.’ Surely she knows?”

  “There was only one bed in their apartment, Doc,” said Hentz, “and they’ve lived there together for at least nineteen years.”

  “I see.” He heaved himself to his feet. “Very well. But please try not to upset her more than she already is.”

  “Will she be released today?” Sigrid asked.

  “Before your revelation, I would have said yes. Now it will depend on how this session goes.”

  They followed him halfway down the hall. He lightly rapped on a door and pushed it open. “Denise? It’s Dr. Penny again. These are police officers and they have some questions for you.”

  Denise Lundigren sat in a chair by the far wall on the other side of the single bed. Her hair was neatly combed this morning, but her pretty heart-shaped face was scrubbed clean of the heavy makeup she had worn the night before, although a faint trace of eyeliner remained. Despite the dark shadows beneath her frightened eyes and the inevitable wrinkles, she actually looked younger and seemed more vulnerable than when they last saw her. Her hospital-issued gown and robe had been washed so many times that the floral pattern had faded to pale pink, and she hunched into the robe, pulling the front sides protectively across her thin chest.

  Sigrid remained near the door. Hentz had been able to calm her initial fears last night until they told her of Phil Lundigren’s death, and she was quite willing to let him try to connect again.

  He sat down on the near end of the bed and began talking to the pillow in a soothing voice. “We’re very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Lundigren, and we hate to have to bother you again, but you do want to help us catch whoever did this to Phil, don’t you?”

  Hesitantly, the woman nodded.

  “We’re not going to be able to unless you can tell us about last night. Did Phil seem the same as usual? Was he upset about anything?”

  “Yes,” she whispered as tears filled her eyes. “He was upset.”

  “What about, Denise?”

  She shook her head.

  “Upset with someone in the building?”

  She didn’t reply, just clutched the faded robe tighter, but now she was watching Hentz’s face.

  Without looking at her, he smoothed the pillow that lay between them and kept his voice low and matter-of-fact. “Was it one of his coworkers or one of the tenants?”

  No response.

  “Was it you?” Sigrid asked.

  Startled, the older woman half swiveled in her chair and turned her face to the wall.

  “Sorry,” Sigrid said.

  “All couples have their squabbles, Denise,” Hentz said quietly. “Did you and Phil fight last night?”

  She kept her face averted.

  “What did you fight about, Denise?”

  There was another long moment of silence, then the woman sighed and said, “I—I sometimes take things. I can’t help myself. Little things. Mostly animal things.”

  “Was that what you fought about? You had taken something?”

  “I try not to, but sometimes I just can’t help it and he gets mad if I don’t remember where I got something. Like the cat.”

  “The cat?”

  Relaxing a little, she released her white-knuckled grasp on the robe. “It was so cute. Purple and pink and little yellow whiskers! But Phil got mad and said I was going to get him fired and he had to put it back. He knew I’d cleaned 6-A the day before, so he thought it was Mr. Lacour’s. I was pretty sure it was Luna DiSimone’s, though, but he made me so mad, I wasn’t going to tell him it was hers.”

  “You like cats, don’t you?”

  Sudden concern crossed her face. “Puff-Daddy! Is he all right?”

  “Don’t worry,” Hentz said. “Your cat’s been fed and has fresh water, but he’s probably missing you.”

  Dr. Penny nodded approval. “You need to be there for your cat, Denise.”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice slightly stronger than before.

  “Did you want to keep the wooden cat?” Hentz asked.

  She shrugged. “It was sweet but it wasn’t crystal, so I didn’t care if he took it back. But he said some mean things. He knows I can’t help it.”

  “So you and Phil fought about the cat?”

  “And the watch.”

  “You took a watch, too?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t always remember when I take things, but he kept yelling at me and said he was going to lose his job if he didn’t give it back to Mrs. Wall. It’s like when he thought I took a necklace from 4-B and he went through all my things looking for it.”

  “So he took the cat up to 6-A?”

  “Yes. He called up and nobody answered so he said he’d go while they were out.”

  “What time was that, Denise?”

  “About ten o’clock? I was trying to watch my program on HGTV and he kept going on and on about the cat and Mrs. Wall’s watch. Right after he left, that nice young colored couple chose the very same house I would have picked.”

  “And that was the last time you saw him?”

  She nodded. “I thought he was coming right back, but he didn’t, so I watched my channel for another hour and went to bed a little after eleven.”

  Her eyes darted to Hentz’s face. “What happened to him?”

  They told her as concisely as possible. “We think he may have interrupted a robber or it might be that someone followed him into 6-A. Was there anyone in the building that he didn’t get along with, Denise? The other employees?”

  “If he had problems with them, he never mentioned it. He didn’t like Antoine.”

  “Why not?”

  “He thought Antoine was sneaky.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged.

  “What about the tenants?”

  “They thought he was Mr. Wonderful.” Her tone turned bitter. “They felt sorry for him because of me. Like he could have had his pick of perfect wives.” She flashed an angry glance at Hentz. “You don’t have to keep pussyfooting around.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve watched enough crime shows. I know what happens when someone gets killed. The autopsy. You want to ask about Phil and me, don’t you?”

  “That he was a woman?”

  “He wasn’t!” she said, beginning to cry. “And don’t you go thinking dirty things about us. Don’t! You want to make out that I’m a lesbo and he was a dyke, but we weren’t. I like men and he was a man in every way except for his equipment. From the time he was a little kid, he knew he was a boy trapped inside a girl’s body. That’s how we could love each other—why we got married. He took care of me.”

  Her sobs grew louder and she turned to Dr. Penny helplessly. “What’s going to happen? How can
I live without Phil? Who’s going to look after Puff-Daddy and me?”

  CHAPTER

  12

  And [society] seems to be very happy, for it wears a beatific smile and sheds an extra beam of pleasure when its members bend to speak to each other.

  —

  The New New York

  , 1909

  There was no getting around the reality of murder. A man had been killed in this apartment, and yes, it was awful to think about, but Dwight and I have both seen our share of violent deaths and we know that life does move on whether or not we dwell on it. Besides, we had been together less than eighteen months and we were still new to married love. Which is to say that despite the way the day had begun, once everyone cleared out, Dwight and I reverted to honeymoon mode, and it was even more delicious than I had thought it would be.

  For starters, we took our coffee and the New York Times back to bed, and while he leafed through the sports section, I slipped into the bathroom and changed from sweater and slacks to my new see-through confection of black ruffles and lace.

  I know, I know. Silly and a total cliché, right? All the same… I mean, sometimes a man (Dwight) likes to see his woman (me) in something besides an oversized Carolina sweatshirt, okay?

  He was too absorbed in what the Hurricanes were doing to pay any attention when I slipped under the covers beside him, so I quietly picked up the magazine section and tried to concentrate on world affairs.

  As an academic exercise, Dwight had seemed to enjoy his brief busman’s holiday, looking over the shoulder of those New York detectives and mentally comparing their procedures to those he used back in Colleton County. Now, as if hearing my thoughts, he said, “It does feel weird, though.”

  “What does?”

  “To be on the outside looking in on this investigation.” He lowered the sports section and his eyes widened the instant they touched my new negligee.

  I pretended not to notice. “Given your druthers, you’d be out there right this minute, questioning everyone in the building,” I teased. “Right?”

  “Wrong.” He dumped the sports section on the floor in favor of a new sport, and pulled me toward him.

  More newspapers slid off the bed and I flung aside a sheaf of colorful advertising inserts that tried to insert themselves between Dwight’s chest and mine.

  He pushed back my hair so he could nuzzle my neck. “You know that thing Mrs. Lattimore sent up?”

  “Yes?” I tried to tug at the waistband of his shorts, but he had begun to lower the skinny straps of my gown and my arms were briefly imprisoned. “What about it?” I asked as innocently as possible, considering that my negligee had now become a crumpled ball of soft black silk that he tossed to the floor.

  “I’ve been thinking. If we put your leg here”—he positioned my leg across his bare shoulder—“and my head here, and then your hand here while I—”

  The rest of his words were lost as an electric spasm shot through my body. I gasped, and after that, all coherent thoughts and words disappeared beneath an avalanche of physical sensations that culminated in a firestorm of explosions.

  “Dear Lord in the morning!” I said when I could talk again.

  “Well, it is Sunday,” he murmured smugly.

  Once everything quit pinging like an overheated motor cooling down, I spooned my back against the curve of his muscular body and we fell asleep with his hand cupped around my breast.

  I awoke an hour or so later to find his lips touching mine and his hands gentle on my skin, but moving with increasing urgency. This time, our lovemaking was slower and more conventional, but it was very sweet and every bit as satisfying. We showered together afterwards, soaping each other down carefully. For the first time since our first shared shower over a year ago, I only got a halfhearted salute.

  “Sorry, shug,” he said. “The spirit’s willing, but the flesh is gonna need a little time to regroup.”

  After that big breakfast, I wasn’t particularly hungry, but that didn’t stop me from joining Dwight when he got into Luna DiSimone’s party goodies. Afterwards, we called Cal, who was on his way out the door to a birthday party with Mary Pat and did not seem to be missing either one of us bad enough to make him want to be late to the party.

  I talked briefly with Kate, who commiserated about the weather. She was shocked to hear about Phil Lundigren and asked me if I would take some flowers or a potted plant down to his wife.

  “She has an anxiety disorder that makes it hard for her to connect with strangers, so don’t try to make her your best friend, Deborah. Just tell her that the flowers are from me—she probably still thinks of me as Kate Honeycutt from 6-A—and that I’m thinking about her, okay?”

  “Good as done,” I told her.

  As he took the last cold shrimp from the platter, Dwight said, “What do you want to do this afternoon?”

  “Well, we’re not far from the Planetarium and the Museum of Natural History.”

  He frowned. “You really want to look at stars or dinosaur bones?”

  “Not really,” I admitted. I’m all for culture and I know New York’s museums are world-class, but we have a great natural history museum in Raleigh and a fine planetarium over in Chapel Hill.

  Dwight seemed to feel the same. “Why don’t we take the camera and walk over to Central Park? See what city folks do in the snow.”

  We piled on a couple of layers of warm clothes and were soon heading out the door, this time making sure that it was really locked. I felt a bit vindicated when Dwight had to pull on it firmly to make the latch fully engage.

  The man on the elevator was the same one as from Friday evening. Sidney. He was a mixture of regret for the death of a fellow worker and sympathy for our messed-up vacation. Mostly though, he was avid for details.

  “What happened?”

  “Looks like he interrupted a robbery,” Dwight said, “and someone smashed him in the head.”

  “Robbery? Was anything taken?”

  “We think part of Mr. Lacour’s collection of gold and enamel pillboxes,” I said.

  “And your earrings,” Dwight reminded me.

  “One of them anyhow,” I said. “And a little bronze sculpture.”

  “You didn’t happen to notice people going in and out of our place last night, did you?” asked Dwight.

  Sidney shook his head. “But then I was busy with people coming and going and the hall seemed to be packed full every time I came up. Someone on the fifth floor was threatening to call the fire marshal on Luna.” His wry smile turned mournful. “Poor Phil, though. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather when they told me. I guess you heard that his wife flipped out when they told her and had to be taken to a psycho ward?”

  We hadn’t, and he told us about Mrs. Lundigren’s mental problems in more detail than Kate had. Kate had told me that the West Side was very liberal and socially tolerant of human failings, but to tolerate a klepto?

  “I probably ought not to be talking about it, but I heard that you’re a police officer yourself?”

  Dwight nodded. “So what happened to the regular morning guy?”

  “Antoine? Who knows? They say he started work as usual and then just left.”

  “So that’s why the elevator never came this morning,” Dwight said. “Even the service elevator wasn’t running. There was someone on duty when I got back. Didn’t seem like a happy camper, though.”

  “That would be Vlad,” said Sidney. “One of the board members called him to come in because of the boiler. The front sidewalk needed shoveling, too. We’re all having to take up the slack. The night man’s still asleep downstairs, but he’s getting too old to pull a double shift.”

  “He spent the night here?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Antoine, too. See, Phil always said if we were gonna get snowed in, we better get snowed in here and not at home, so he and Jani bunked here. Jani took over around eleven last night so I could get home before it got too deep. My place is only a block from th
e stop, so I knew I could get back before four today.”

  “Why would the day man just up and quit?” I asked. “Was it because of Phil?”

  Sidney shook his head and tried to smother a yawn. “He and Phil didn’t get along all that good. Not that he wished Phil bad luck or anything, but I don’t think he’s gonna cry at Phil’s funeral. No, it’s probably that he’s finally had it with teenage boys who think it’s funny to hijack the elevator and leave it on another floor. Vlad was still ticked off about it when I got here.” Beneath that impeccable gray mustache, his lips curved in wry humor. “But then with Vlad, everything’s a big drama.”

  CHAPTER

  13

  Carts work at the snow for days and weeks trying to get it away to the docks and so into the river.

  —

  The New New York

  , 1909

  S IGRID H ARALD —S UNDAY (CONTINUED)

  By the time Sigrid and Sam Hentz backed out of the hospital room, Denise Lundigren was in full-blown hysterics. Leaving Dr. Penny to calm her, they headed back for the car, and both gave involuntary sighs of relief as they got in and slammed the doors. It was one of those rare moments of solidarity and Hentz didn’t push it.

  Instead, he put the car in gear and said, “Think there’s any chance she followed him upstairs and killed him?”

  “The spouse is always a possibility.” Sigrid leaned forward to adjust the heat controls with chilled fingers. “Remember what she said when we told her Lundigren was dead?”

  Hentz nodded. “She asked if he was really dead and not just hurt.”

  “Which could suggest that she had hit him herself without realizing the force of her blow.”

  “And the door was secured with two chains,” Hentz said thoughtfully. He eased down on the brakes so that a man pulling two laughing, well-bundled children on a sled could cross against the light. “Like she didn’t expect him back.”

  “Unless he habitually came and went through the service door,” Sigrid said, trying not to let herself be diverted by that sled and the bittersweet memory it evoked of sliding down a snowy Connecticut hillside into a tangle of blackberry vines with Nauman, another sharp reminder of all that she had lost when he died. “Their living room looks more like a furniture showroom than a place used by someone in coveralls.”