The Right Jack

by Margaret Maron

  Sigrid thanked him again for her water and turned back to answer a question from Jim Lowry. Beyond his shoulder, she saw Lieutenant Knight re-enter the Bontemps Room, closely followed by Molly Baldwin. The assistant manager looked exhausted and Sigrid decided she'd settle the point Jill Gill had raised and then let the girl go home before she fell asleep on her feet.

  ***

  As the busboy moved away, he remembered how old George had praised him for acting so quickly and how the boss lady would likely give him a bonus. Andh e remembered something else as well. He turned back, but that police lady was already busy with other people. Besides, he thought, it was such a little thing. She probably already knew about it anyhow.

  He hesitated and the room steward appeared at his shoulder. "Over there, Johnson. Someone's spilled a cup of coffee. Step to it!"

  "Yessir, Mr. George," he said smartly and hurried off.

  12

  ONLY a few minutes had passed since Sigrid swallowed the pain tablet, but already she could feel its effect. The ache in her arm hadn't yet begun to diminish, but at least it had stopped building. In the meantime, she tried to ignore her discomfort and listen intelligently while Lieutenant Knight perched on the edge of a gilt and purple silk chair and described his visit to the graphic studio down in the hotel's lower levels.

  It was near the secretarial pool, he reported, that service area provided as a courtesy for business travelers who required light typing or access to a computer terminal or a Xerox machine during their stays in the city; just down the hall and around a corner from the barber shop and valet services.

  "The calligrapher, a Mr. Gustaffason, says they finished matting the seating chart Wednesday afternoon. It sat on thatt ripod-easel doodad at the front of their studio all evening and was sent upstairs around eleven-thirty Thursday morning. The studio wasn't locked and this Gustaffason seems like a popular, loosey-goosey character, so there's probably a steady stream of people in and out. Dozens could have seen it."

  It was no more than she expected, Sigrid told him, and beckoned to Molly Baldwin, who stood wearily before one of the more exuberant murals. She looked as if she longed to step inside its meadowed depths and curl up on the grass beside one of those fat sheep around whom giddy shepherdesses frolicked with their serenading swains.

  "I know you're tired," Sigrid told her, "so I won't keep you much longer. I forgot to ask you before: do you know Commander Dixon?"

  The girl looked at them stupidly.

  "The female naval officer who sat next to Professor Sutton," prompted Lieutenant Knight helpfully.

  "Oh." her voice was flat. "Sorry. My mind's almost quit functioning. No, I thought I told you. I didn't know anyo f the contestants. Unless it was like Professor Sutton; somebody I'd met in the course of my work and whose name didn't register. I don't remember meeting her here, though. Or Mr. Wolferman or that policeman or any of the others either."

  "One of the players thought that Commander Dixon kept looking at you last evening as if she knew you," said Sigrid.

  "Really?"

  "It was during Mr. Flythe's discussion of the game rules after everyone was seated."

  The girl's fingers began to twine around the same brown curl as she struggled to remember where she had been at that point. "I must have been on the far side of the room then, going over arrangements with the room steward. There were dozens of people between us. Are you sure your witness wasn't mistaken?"

  "She could have been," Sigrid conceded. "Or perhaps Commander Dixon was interested in the steward or another of your people. From the angle, thoughi t would almost have to be someone standing up, wouldn't it?"

  The girl shrugged listlessly and Sigrid accepted the inevitable.

  "That will be all for now, Ms. Baldwin. Thank you for your help today. We'll probably talk again another time."

  "You're sure there's nothing else I can do right now? I don't mind, Lieutenant. Really I don't."

  Even as she spoke, she had to stifle an involuntary yawn.

  "I'm sure," said Sigrid.

  As Molly Baldwin left them, Lieutenant Knight looked at Sigrid critically. "Didn't you just get out of a hospital this morning?"

  Sigrid nodded stiffly.

  "Then shouldn't you take a break? If you don't mind me saying, you look like you're pushing the edge."

  "I'm quite all right," she told him. But she did stand to flex her neck and shoulders and, as long as she was up, she decided to call Metro Medical and check on Tillie's condition.

  The telephone was at the end of the hall in a secluded alcove. Awkwardlyc lutching the phone with her wounded hand, she inserted coins and punched out the number she had hastily scrawled on a scrap of paper that morning. The hospital switchboard passed her from one extension to another until at last she was plugged in to the intensive care waiting room and heard Marian Tildon's voice on the other end of the wire.

  Tillie's wife sounded tired but buoyant with relief. "You caught me on my way home for a few hours' sleep," she told Sigrid. "Oh Lieutenant, it's wonderful! Charles is out of the coma! He said my name. He knew who I was!"

  Until that moment Sigrid had not realized how worried she had been about Tillie. Hearing Marian's report, she felt some of the day's tension drain away.

  ***

  Up in Zachary Wolferman's comfortable Central Park apartment, Haines Froelick was succumbing to the housekeeper's care. A hot cup of tea and then straight to bed had been Emily's motherly decree. Outside the tall narrow windows.

  October seemed poised to jump from Indian summer to true autumn. Curtains of rain swooped across the park below and sheeted the gold and scarlet leaves with cold water.

  It had been a horrid day, Mr. Froelick thought, splashing in and out of the limousine in the rain, making arrangements for Zachary's body. The conference with the undertaker and another later with the minister, the notices to the papers, and the telephone that never stopped ringing. Fortunately, good old Emily had sensibly suggested that he ask Maritime National to send someone up and now a capable young lady, a Miss Vaughan, sat in Zachary's study and listened to their friends' condolences and courteously promised to relay them to Mr. Froelick.

  Then after lunch had come those two awful police detectives in their damp wool jackets with so many questions: Who hated Zachary? Who wanted him dead? Whom had he recognized at the Maintenon last night? And then their interest in his photography: What sort of cameras did he own and didn't onea lmost need a degree in chemistry to develop one's own film? And each of his answers had been greeted with such skepticism…

  Now he lay awake in the guest bedroom. Emily had tearfully offered to put fresh linens on Zachary's bed, but he wasn't quite ready for that yet.

  It would come, of course, thought Mr. Froelick. Zachary had made no secret of his will. This was all his now. Zachary's apartment, his housekeeper, his chauffeur, his limousine, his villa in Florence, his chalet in Switzerland, his money. Zachary had been more than generous, but accepting his generosity had sometimes chafed.

  No more of that. No more worrying and watching the dwindling buying power of his own tiny trusts.

  No more long walks with the man who'd been a brother to him, though. No one to share childhood memories or match wits with over a cribbage board either.

  He sighed and buried his head in the lavender-scented pillow and as he fell asleep, he told himself philosophically that every silver cloud had a dark lining.

  ***

  On the Upper West Side, in an apartment she shared with two other young women, Molly Baldwin hung up the telephone and finished toweling her short brown hair. She'd gotten soaked in the downpour, but that was the least of her worries. She had learned nothing from the call and would probably never learn anything if she didn't go over and identify herself.

  But if she did that-

  What would Ted Flythe say? He might not make an issue out of it, but Madame Ronay would. If La Reine found out, she would probably fire her and then it would all have been for not
hing and how could she stay in New York?

  On the other hand, how could she explain? Much less justify?

  Almost whimpering with indecision, Molly Baldwin did what she'd been doing for most of her twenty-three years when faced with a dilemma: she crawled into bed and pulled the covers over her head.

  ***

  The parade of cribbage-playing witnesses continued through the afternoon in the Bontemps Room. Two more besides Jill Gill had noticed Commander Dixon's wandering attention during Flythe's lecture on cribbage rules. The room steward, Raymond George, was questioned at length, but denied knowing her. Vassily Ivanovich, however, was quite another matter. Not only did he admit knowing Commander Dixon when they spoke to him during a break in the competition, he insisted upon it. "Since T. J. Dixon is a little girl I am knowing her."

  "Would you like an interpreter or someone from your legation here?" they asked.

  The big Russian was scornful. Did they doubt his linguistic abilities? "Me, I speak very good the English," he informed them proudly.

  Ivanovich was the embodiment of the Russian Bear: big, burly, and expansive. He had small bright blue eyes, short gray hair, and a flat, florid face. He wore American style clothes-a dark tweed sports jacket, a green wool shirt buttonedt o the neck, no tie, and brown corduroy pants-but something about their fit gave them a vaguely Slavic cast.

  "Her papa and I are good friends from the war. We are all Navy together," he said, including Alan Knight in his statement. "You are working with her, Lieutenant Knight?"

  "Not exactly with her," Knight hedged.

  "ONI?" Ivanovich guessed shrewdly, revealing an unexpected familiarity with the Office of Naval Intelligence.

  For a moment, various possibilities seemed to give him pause, then he shrugged broadly. "What the hell? My people know and your people know we are friends. They know we do not talk secrets. Me, I have no secrets."

  In heavily accented English, Vassily Ivanovich described how he had met Commander Dixon's father during World War II.

  "He is on minesweeper in the North Atlantic; I am on little ship blown up by German U-boat. They stop for us."

  Chief Dixon had shared his quarters, his tobacco, and his cribbage deck with the young Russian sailor; andb y the time the minesweeper reached Murmansk, they were warm friends. A chance meeting a few months later in Reykjavik, followed by a riotous shore leave of mythic proportions in New York, sealed the friendship in blood.

  Not to mention scotch and vodka, gin and slivovitz, and a few margaritas that got mixed in by mistake.

  They had somehow managed to keep in touch through the war years, but the various thaws and freezes of postwar Soviet-American relations eventually made their friendship impractical, if not dangerous. After 1948, they ceased to correspond. I

  Ivanovich pulled out a plump plastic folder of photographs and showed them the son who was an agricultural minister near Minsk and the son who was a rising member in the Party. That was the one who had pulled a string or two to get his father attached to a Soviet trade delegation so that the long-retired Ivanovich could enjoy one last American fling.

  There were pictures of his deceased wife, the sons' wives, himself surroundedb y four baby-bear grandchildren, and, stuck between several family pictures, one of his old friend Dixon with his pretty little daughter on his lap-Commander T. J. Dixon at the tender age of two.

  Sigrid was inexpressibly touched by the child's beauty, knowing that the small right arm which lay so confidently on her father's might soon be lost.

  "So," Vassily Ivanovich was saying, "last winter, before I come to America, I write to my old comrade and after many weeks, little T. J. writes back he is dead twenty-six years in boiler explosion, but she is commander now and also in New York. We meet, we talk about what hell-raisers are her papa and me when we young. She is like daughter to me here and she is also very good cribbage player. One day each week we take lunch together and we play. Just like in old days with her papa."

  "Whose idea was it to enter this tournament?" asked Sigrid.

  "Little T. J. Someone shows her in Daily News and she says, 'We are both so good, Vassily. Let us go and win lots of capitalistic dollars.'"

  He looked at them doubtfully. "This is joke. She calls me big socialist bear; I say she is little capitalistic pig."

  His broad face clouded. "I love her very much. Officers. They do not let me see her at hospital so I am staying here and I am playing cards but also I am watching. Yet here are so many! Tell me what to watch for," he entreated. "Let me help you catch who hurts my comrade's little girl."

  They thanked him for his offer but admitted they weren't sure what to watch for themselves.

  "We aren't even certain whom the bomb was meant for," said Sigrid. "Did she ever speak of any enemies? Any problems with her work or in her personal life?"

  "Work we do not talk about," Ivanovich stated flatly. "It is not proper. Sometimes she does say how busy day it is, like I say how is weather, but no more. She very much likes her Navy job and wishes she can go to sea or have ship, but never will they let her."

  "Is she bitter about that?" asked Lieutenant Knight.

  "Sometimes, you bet! More times, she accepts. You ask of personal life, Lieutenant Harald. She is knowing I am old-fashioned about women."

  "So she didn't go into detail about the men in her life?"

  Ivanovich nodded. Delicately, the big Russian explained that he knew T. J. Dixon was a normal woman with the usual appetites. But her career meant more than marriage, and she discreetly embraced the old sailors' tradition of someone in every port. Currently in New York 's busy harbor were a Dave, a Judd, and an Eli.

  "We know about those," Lieutenant Knight told Sigrid. "Incidentally, there's a Bob, too. She must be some lady."

  "She iss lady!" growled Ivanovich, ready to defend the injured T. J.'s honor. "And she is gentleman, too, when comes the end. Someone start to love her too much, someone marriage speaks-" His large callused hand made a swift chopping motion. "She cut it off clean! Always I say to her, sure you good officer, but you are woman, too. You need someday a home, a husband, babies. And she laugh ands ay she have little Molly, but now she and Molly fight and-"

  "Molly?" exclaimed Sigrid and Knight in one breath.

  "Daughter of her dead cousin," said Vassily Ivanovich. "In Florida she is living?"

  "Molly Baldwin?" – i

  "Da, da. You are knowing her?"

  "That's why her name sounded familiar this afternoon," groaned Alan Knight. "I'm a dunderhead! I read it in Dixon 's file last night but it never sunk in."

  "Tell us about Molly Baldwin, please," said Sigrid.

  "What is to tell?" asked the bewildered Ivanovich, cocking his grizzled head at their interest. But he complied.

  Molly Baldwin was Commander Dixon's much younger cousin, orphaned six or eight years earlier, he told them. T. J. had been close to Molly's widowed mother and took a great interest in the child. After the child's mother died, T. J. had sent her to prep school and then college.

  Each was the other's only relative and Ivanovich thought Molly had satisfieda ny maternal yearnings T. J. might have possessed.

  "Yet you said they fought?" probed Sigrid.

  Not really fought, Ivanovich quibbled. With much gesturing of his beefy hands and with their assistance on various idiomatic English phrases which escaped him, he managed a picture of the usual mother-daughter generation clash. On the one hand was T. J. Dixon, career-oriented, purposeful in her goals, her personal life separate from her professional.

  On the other hand was young Molly, pretty and loving but also weak willed and indecisive. And not very industrious. She had drifted from one major to another through college, from chemistry to biology to history, no career in mind, her grades barely sufficient to earn a degree in sociology at the last minute. Once out of school, she seemed to expect her older cousin to continue her allowance as she took and lost a succession of modest jobs.

  Finally last summer, Co
mmander Dixon had thrown up her hands in exasperation.

  "In a dress shop Molly is working and one time too many she comes late, so they tell her to leave and T. J. gives her money enough for one month to live and says, 'No more, kiddo. This is last red penny you have from me as long as I live.' Then Molly says ugly things and they finish." Ivanovich shook his head meaningfully.

  "They aren't in touch now?"

  "Only yesterday T. J. is thinking maybe she is too hard on Molly. She is still little girl, says T. J. Since they fight, she is not hearing from Molly and this hurts T. J. very much."

  "Have you ever met Molly Baldwin?"

  "No. Pictures I see, but Molly real, never."

  He was astounded when Sigrid told him that Molly Baldwin worked here at the hotel and had, in fact, been present last night and again today.

  "You're sure Commander Dixon didn't know?" she asked.

  "No. This I swear."

  He wanted to thresh out their revelation detail by detail, but Sigrid patiently led him back to the night of the explosion.

  Grudgingly, Ivanovich told of meeting Commander Dixon at a nearby restaurant for a light super, then on here to the Maintenon. He told of her chance meeting with the banker Zachary Wolferman, of their subsequent conversation with his cousin Haines Froelick, and Mr. Wolferman's beautiful memory of a young German governess with a voice exactly like T. J.'s.

  "Was there anyone else she knew here?"

  "No one, Lieutenant. We talk, then they say for everyone to sit down, so we do. Then we play and then Boom!"

  ***

  At a hospital several blocks away, the surgeon pushed back from the conference table. The charts and X-rays only confirmed what he'd earlier feared.

  The grafts weren't taking. Blood had quit circulating, oxygen was no longer reaching Commander Dixon's arm.