Three-Day Town

by Margaret Maron

  “Would you?” she asked dryly.

  “Point taken,” he said. “She did make it sound as if he really was a man trapped in a woman’s body. Must have been hell on him growing up.”

  Up ahead of them, a sanitation truck fitted with a snowplow on the front trundled along, throwing up a three-foot high windrow that completely blocked a car illegally parked in front of a delicatessen. They saw the car’s owner come hurrying out, gesticulating wildly.

  Too late.

  He shook his fist at the driver, who passed on, oblivious.

  “Hope that poor bastard has a shovel in his trunk,” Hentz said.

  Although both of them were too young to remember the blizzard of 1969, when the city came to a virtual halt for three days, no succeeding mayor of New York ever forgot the political fallout, and surely this mayor was too savvy to let the streets stay closed for long. New Yorkers might enjoy a Sunday snow, but come Monday morning there would be a price to pay at the next election if too many streets remained blocked for more than two or three days. Private snow removal companies were already out at the major corners, and traffic had to swerve around a yellow backhoe that was loading snow into a big dump truck.

  “Do you suppose the board knew about Mrs. Lundigren’s klepto tendencies?” Hentz asked as he waited for the light.

  Sigrid looked up from her notes. “I was wondering that myself. Lowry and Albee reported that this Mrs. Wall made a point of saying how honest Lundigren was. I think we should go back and ask her about the wife. From what I’ve read, kleptomaniacs steal for the thrill of stealing, not for any material gain. Most times, they’ll just throw the object away. If Lundigren always took back whatever she stole, then maybe the board was willing to treat it as a quirk, something they could put up with in order to keep a valuable employee.”

  “Are you going to tell her about Lundigren?”

  “Only if it’s pertinent.”

  “Wonder where they got married? Were same-sex marriages allowed anywhere?”

  “He was probably already passing by then, but it’s an interesting legal point,” she said. “The state recognizes common-law marriages between heterosexuals, but what’s the standing for same-sex couples? Did he leave much of an estate? Is there a will?”

  “I don’t know about a will, but the Wall woman told Lowry that she’ll benefit from a quarter-million insurance policy. That could be two hundred and fifty thousand reasons to kill.”

  “Maybe, but why do it in 6-A?”

  Hentz flicked her a sardonic look. “Don’t you mean ‘why now’?”

  There was a time when Sigrid would have frozen him with an icy narrowing of her gray eyes, but now she acknowledged his jab with a wry quirk of her lips. Sooner or later in any puzzling case, her team of detectives had learned to expect that pointed question, especially if they could show opportunity and motive for more than one of the victim’s circle of friends, family, or fellow workers. “Why now?” she would ask. “Why not last week? Why not next Wednesday? What’s different? What pushed the killer’s buttons now?”

  Her phone vibrated and it was Detective Albee checking in. She reported that the occupant of 6-B was a friend of DiSimone’s. “They met on Sesame Street and she’s the one who told DiSimone about the building when that apartment came up for sale two years ago. She wasn’t able to add any names to the list, and when we showed her our master list, she didn’t know who had art connections except for this Cameron Broughton. He styled her bedroom and helped her pick out some prints to frame.”

  “What about the other building employees?”

  “The eight-to-four elevator man—Antoine Clarke—seems to have quit, but we’ve talked to the evening man who’s covering for him and to one of the porters. The night man’s around, but we haven’t found him yet. Urbanska’s gone back to the office to start collating the lists.”

  After bringing Albee up to speed on what they’d learned from Denise Lundigren, Sigrid said, “When you’re talking to the staff, ask about any friction between Lundigren and Clarke. And tell Mrs. Wall that Hentz and I want to speak to her. We should be there in ten minutes.”

  Eight minutes later, Sigrid and Hentz were on their way up to the twelfth floor.

  “So what’s with Antoine?” Hentz asked him once the brass accordion cage was closed and the first-floor door slid shut.

  “Ahh, him!” Sidney gave an annoyed twitch of his narrow shoulders. “You’d think he was never a kid himself.”

  “Kid?” asked Sigrid.

  “Probably Corey Wall, although the Petersen kid in 11-B’s done it a time or two as well.”

  “You mean someone took this elevator up when Antoine wasn’t looking? And that’s why he quit?”

  “Who knows? Usually it’s the night man who loses it, but Corey did get me once when I was delivering a package to 1-B and I stepped inside to set it down in the kitchen. Two minutes flat and it was gone. Used to happen to poor Jani at least once a month. He’s pushing sixty-five and when he gets comfortable in one of the lobby chairs, he’s out. The buzzer’s loud enough to wake the dead, so that’s no problem. If someone comes in at two in the morning and Jani’s asleep in the lobby, adults will just wake him up. The boys, though? They don’t do it as much as they used to, but they’re kids and they think it’s funny to hop in and take it up themselves, and then they just leave it on whichever floor and we have to go run it down.”

  “And Antoine takes it personally?”

  “First time it happened to him, last summer, he bitched about it for three days. Not to Corey’s parents or any of the owners, of course. Or to Phil either, for that matter. It’s like Phil kept telling us: this is a good job. Good pay, good benefits, and anybody can learn it in an hour. I’ll cover for Antoine today, but if he’s not back here tomorrow at eight, they’ll have a new guy in a brown uniform before noon. Just between you and me, though, I don’t know that the kids take it as much as he claims. I think Antoine sneaks out for a cigarette and doesn’t always hear the buzzer. Easy to say he’s hunting for the elevator when he’s the one that stopped it.”

  “I’m surprised they don’t install a self-service elevator,” said Hentz, who lived in an East Side high-rise.

  “Never gonna happen,” Sidney said, running his hand across the shiny brass fittings, almost like an affectionate owner petting a favorite dog. “People love this thing. It’s been here since the place was built and it’ll probably still be here when they take it down.”

  Mrs. Wall invited them into her living room and Hentz looked around appreciatively as they loosened their coats and stuffed their gloves into pockets.

  “Roycroft?” he asked, touching the hammered copper tray on the coffee table.

  Mrs. Wall seemed surprised and Hentz said, “My aunt’s big on the Arts and Crafts movement. She has a Craftsman house on a lake upstate.”

  Sigrid kept her face carefully immobile. She was the only one in the department who had connected Lizzie Stopplemeyer, the aunt listed as Hentz’s next of kin in his personnel file, with the Mrs. Irving Stopplemeyer, whose late husband’s face was as familiar to strudel lovers as Colonel Sanders’s was to chicken lovers. She waited until the amenities were done before describing Denise Lundigren’s present mental state.

  Mrs. Wall seemed to grow uncomfortable when they asked about thefts in the building. “Phil Lundigren was the most honest person I ever met. As I told those other detectives who were here earlier, if he found a penny in the hallway, he would go door to door looking for the owner. Denise’s kleptomania distressed him no end, but he always brought anything back as soon as he realized she had taken it. She doesn’t leave the building very often and never alone, so it was easy for him to keep track of anything new in the apartment. It’s so sad and it’s not even that she wants the things she takes. I can’t tell you how often Phil or one of the porters finds a missing item on the service steps. Phil said that taking things gives her an adrenaline rush. It’s not the object, it’s the act of stealing itsel
f.” She opened the drawer of a nearby end table and showed them four or five little glass animals. “I’ve started putting these out on Thursdays when Denise cleans for me. So far, it’s working.”

  She sighed and her straight silver hair gleamed against the rich brown of the wall behind her. The silver bracelets on her slender arm tinkled as she pushed back her artfully ragged bangs. “So, so sad,” she repeated.

  “She said something about a watch and a necklace,” Sigrid said.

  “Denise didn’t take my watch,” Mrs. Wall said quickly. “I misplaced it and Denise had cleaned here the day before, so I did ask Phil to look for it. As he pointed out, though, she’s never taken jewelry and I did find it later.”

  Her eyes slid away from Sigrid’s thoughtful gaze and she busied herself with the manila employee files that still lay on the coffee table.

  Hentz picked up on her body language, too. “Was it a valuable watch, ma’am?”

  “Yes,” she said reluctantly.

  “May we see it?”

  “Why? I told you. I carelessly misplaced it and then I found it again. I felt so bad accusing Denise. I was going to apologize to Phil today.”

  “Nevertheless, if we could just see it?” Sigrid persisted, feeling more strongly than ever that there was something about the watch that was making Mrs. Wall uncomfortable. “It will help us understand what objects appeal to Mrs. Lundigren’s weakness.”

  “Oh, very well. It’s in my bedroom.”

  The woman stood and her bracelets jingled down her wrists as she reached into her pocket for something.

  Sigrid and Hentz shared a puzzled look. As soon as Mrs. Wall turned the corner, Hentz quietly crossed the room and paused just beyond the doorway to listen intently. A few seconds later he returned to his chair, and Sigrid said, “She keeps her bedroom door locked?”

  He nodded in confirmation. “Everything else in this place may be Craftsman brass and copper, but that sounded like a Yale lock to me. A steel lock with a deadbolt.”

  Mrs. Wall returned shortly and handed them a black velvet box. Inside was a cocktail watch disguised as a bracelet. The flat links of white gold were set with a blinding array of pavé diamonds, the thin square dial was outlined in emerald-cut diamonds, and the knob of the winding stem was a small rose-cut diamond.

  “It was my mother’s,” she said. “My father had it designed for her.”

  “Not exactly a Swarovski crystal cat,” said Hentz.

  Mrs. Wall smiled. “No.”

  “But it certainly sparkles like one of those figurines,” said Sigrid.

  “Which is why I first thought Denise had taken it, but Phil swore to me that jewelry was something she never took.”

  “Who had the missing necklace she mentioned?”

  “It’s never been recovered, but we’re fairly certain that it was taken by someone else. 4-B had men in to measure for wallpaper. He probably snagged it in passing when no one was looking. By coincidence, Denise had cleaned up after a party there that very morning, so when the owner finally missed the necklace she had left on her dresser, she automatically assumed Denise had taken it. But then Phil remembered that Denise was only hired to clean the kitchen and dining room. She would have had no reason to go into the bedroom. Especially with other people in the apartment. She couldn’t bear to interact with strangers.” Mrs. Wall shook her head ruefully. “Besides, she took a glass ring holder from the windowsill over the kitchen sink that morning, and so far as I know, she’s never stolen more than one item at a time.”

  Sigrid closed the velvet jeweler’s box and handed the watch back to Mrs. Wall. “You must have been relieved to find where you left this.”

  “Yes,” the older woman said, slipping it into her pocket. “I should very much hate to lose it. My husband thinks I ought to keep it in our bank vault, but I love wearing it to parties.”

  “I don’t suppose you were at Luna DiSimone’s party last night?” Sigrid asked.

  “You suppose correctly, Lieutenant. I did have to listen to several complaints, though.”

  “Did you relay those complaints to Lundigren?”

  “Heavens, no! We try”—her eyes glistened with sudden tears—“ tried not to bother him after hours.”

  She gave a deep sigh. “I’ve called an emergency meeting of the board for this evening, but I don’t know how our management company will ever find someone as good to replace him.”

  Hentz said, “Mrs. Lundigren said there may have been some animosity between Antoine and her husband. Would you know why?”

  “Absolutely not. Whatever happened in the basement stayed in the basement as far as Phil was concerned. Unless it was a firing offense, he wouldn’t speak of it.”

  “Have there been many firing offenses?” Sigrid asked.

  “We had to let someone go about two years ago,” said Mrs. Wall. “That’s when we hired Antoine Clarke.” She pulled one of the manila files from the pile and quickly scanned the contents. “There’s nothing to indicate a conflict between them.”

  Catching sight of a small photograph clipped to the top sheet of paper, Hentz said, “Is that Antoine’s picture?”

  Mrs. Wall immediately closed the folder with a clash of silver bangles.

  “What about the man who was fired two years ago?” Hentz persisted. “Could he be harboring a grudge?”

  “It was not pleasant,” Mrs. Wall conceded. “He made inappropriate comments to some of the young women in the building and even tried to touch them. I don’t have the inactive files at hand, but if you’ll give me an email address, I’ll send you his name and last known contact information.”

  “Is your son around?” Hentz asked.

  Startled and suddenly apprehensive, she said, “My son? Why?”

  “Corey Wall is your son, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” she said cautiously.

  “His name shows up on two of the lists as being at that party.”

  Some of the tenseness went out of her face and she gave a rueful smile. “He probably crashed it.”

  “May we speak to him? Is he here?”

  “I’m sorry, Detective. He went sledding with some friends this morning. One minute they want to be treated like adults, the next minute they’re five-year-olds playing in the snow. Is it important?”

  “That’s okay,” Hentz said easily. “It’s just routine. We’ll catch up with him later.”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t know anything that could help you.” She stood as if to indicate that this meeting was over.

  The others stood, too, but as she rose, Sigrid said, “Were you aware that the day man walked off the job this morning because someone took the elevator when his back was turned?”

  Her brow furrowed. “I knew that Sidney was covering for Antoine, but I didn’t know why Antoine wasn’t here.”

  “Is taking the elevator when it’s unattended something your son does very often?”

  “They told you that? None of the men have ever complained to us about Corey’s behavior. Besides, we try to compensate with very generous Christmas bonuses.” She flushed under Sigrid’s steady gaze. “He’s only seventeen, Lieutenant. Adolescent humor is sometimes hard for adults to understand.”

  CHAPTER

  14

  The number of restaurants, cafés, lunch counters—places where food is cooked and served—is something amazing to strangers. Some of the side streets are lined and dotted with eating establishments.

  —The New New York, 1909

  SIGRID HARALD—SUNDAY (CONTINUED)

  As they left the Wall apartment, Sigrid’s phone vibrated in her pocket and she glanced at the screen. Elaine Albee.

  Once they were out in the hall with the door closed, she answered the phone and heard Albee say, “Lieutenant? We’re down here in the basement. Does Hentz still have Lundigren’s keys? I think we’ve found where he kept his papers.”

  A few minutes later, she and Hentz stepped off the elevator into a basement that smelled of musty cement ove
rlaid with a faint aroma of motor oil and a stronger one of hot pastrami. Off to the left lay the boiler room, and beyond that, a hall that terminated at a steel door to an areaway outside. A high window in the door had bars embedded in the glass for security. The hall was lined with garbage bins that had wheels and tight-fitting lids so that no odors escaped. Although gray and utilitarian and crowded with the equipment needed to keep a building like this running, the basement felt clean and there was a sense of orderliness and purpose.

  Straight ahead was a short hall that seemed to open into a locker room where the men could change from their street clothes into the brown wool uniforms provided by the board. Many articles of indoor and outdoor clothing hung from hooks along the wall. Through the arched opening, they saw two large men who sat with their backs to the door while they ate sandwiches at a Formica-topped table. Judging by the sounds from deeper in the room, they were also watching some sort of loud sports program on television. The announcer spoke excitedly in a language that was neither English, Spanish, nor French, the only languages Sigrid could confidently identify.

  She glanced at her watch. Almost three. No wonder their fragrant sandwiches were making her hungry.

  Battered chairs and occasional tables stood around, castoffs abandoned from above and rescued by the staff. A miscellany of pictures hung on the walls—everything from kitsch framed in ornate gold leaf to a cover of a National Geographic magazine signed by a well-known photographer and framed in bamboo.

  “Down here,” Lowry called from somewhere off to the right.

  They followed his voice through the dimly lit passage to a double bank of ceiling-high wire cages that measured about four feet wide by six feet deep. Each bore the number of an apartment and served as a storage locker for off-season clothes, luggage, or anything else an owner could not find room for upstairs. Most were neatly arranged; others looked as if the doors had been opened and stuff thrown in with a snow shovel.

  Lowry pointed to a unit at the far end where Albee waited. “This one’s assigned to the Lundigren apartment,” she told them.