Three-Day Town

by Margaret Maron

  Once more Sigrid scrolled through her address book, and when the connection went through she said, “Judge Knott? Deborah? I’m sorry to keep interrupting your vacation, but could I come by this afternoon? Shall we say around three?”

  CHAPTER

  17

  Snow mingles with the dust, is churned dirty by hoofs and wheels, and, if it melts, soon makes a slush underfoot.

  —The New New York, 1909

  Three o’clock will be fine,” I said and tucked my phone back into the pocket of my parka.

  “Who was that?” Dwight asked, picking up the glove I’d dropped on the chilled sidewalk when I answered the phone.

  “Sigrid Harald. She wanted to know if I’d be in around three.”

  “Why?”

  “You think she stayed on the phone long enough for me to ask? God must’ve given that woman forty extra words to last a lifetime and I bet she still has thirty-six of them left. We’ll just have to be there at three if we want to know why.”

  “Not me. I’m meeting Josh Cho, remember?”

  “Oh, right.”

  “You sure you don’t want to come, too?”

  I was tempted. I’ve never sat in on one of Dwight’s seminars and I’ve been told that he’s a good speaker, but that would mean I’d have to call Sigrid back and sound wishy-washy and indecisive. Besides, I knew he wanted time with his old friend, and more importantly—okay, most importantly—there was a shoe store near the apartment that had an enticing pair of red patent leather heels in the window, shoes that would go perfectly with a red-and-black dress I had found at a summer’s end sale last September. All I needed was a little free time without Dwight, and thanks to Josh Cho, this was it. Carpe diem, y’all. While Dwight went to John Jay College of Criminal Justice and spoke to his friend’s students about rural police work, I could pick up a great souvenir of New York.

  Hey, shoes beat a plastic Statue of Liberty, don’t they?

  We had been out since ten this morning, which was when the snow stopped and a dispirited sun almost made it through the gray sky.

  A heavy snowfall is take-your-breath-away poetry in white when left undisturbed. But plowed and shoveled into waist-high walls along every curb, dusted with soot, desecrated by dogs, and churned into gray mush by Monday morning’s heavy wheels?

  Sorry. Poetry it’s not.

  Despite the usual bitching from its inconvenienced citizens in the outer boroughs, the city was coping rather efficiently, all things considered. Most of the main arteries were cleared, and between the sun and the scattered rock salt, the sidewalks were getting easier to navigate except at the corners where water had pooled or the sewer openings were blocked. We took a bus down to Rockefeller Center, where we leaned on the rail to watch the ice skaters till we were thoroughly chilled, then poked in and out of the shops along the Channel Gardens before crossing Fifth Avenue to warm ourselves in the stately quiet of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

  By then we were both in need of a restroom. If St. Patrick’s has any, they aren’t apparent, but there was a hotel nearby. Travel tip: hotel restrooms are spotlessly clean as a rule and some are luxurious marble and mirrored fantasies. Unless you look like a street bum, the staff won’t pay you any attention.

  Warmed and, um, shall we say…rested?… we wandered back toward Eighth Avenue and stopped for lunch at a nondescript café just off Broadway where we ordered steaming bowls of mushroom and barley soup before catching an uptown bus.

  As Dwight got off at Columbus Circle to walk over to John Jay, he reminded me to turn my phone back on.

  He knows I hate feeling like I’m tethered to the world and I had switched it off after Sigrid’s call. In that short time, I had missed three texts from Emma, one of my many nieces. Nothing of substance, just lots of exclamation points exhorting me to call before her lunch period was over. Like I even knew when that would be. A final text told me to check my email. If I knew Emma, it was probably some extra-funny joke going around the Internet. Jokes could wait when shoes beckoned.

  I had not intended to buy new boots, too, but those flimsy plastic ones had already popped an elastic loop, and when the salesman showed me a pair of sleek calf-high boots lined in natural lambswool, I succumbed to temptation.

  “Boots are practical,” I told myself. “A necessity in all this ice and snow.”

  “Boots, yes,” said my internal preacher, “but what’s Dwight going to say about those pricey red high heels?”

  “Bet Dwight won’t say a word if she wears them with that new negligee,” said the pragmatist.

  “Besides, I can truthfully say they were on sale,” I said. Never mind that the sale price was almost twice what I would have paid for an off-brand at home.

  The preacher rolled his eyes, but kept quiet as I pulled out my credit card. The very nice salesman wrapped my old shoes without sneering, put them in a bag with the new red ones, and volunteered to dispose of those plastic horrors. “Now don’t forget to wipe your boots with a clean damp cloth when you get home,” he said. “Wet the cloth with a little diluted white vinegar. Rock salt is hell on leather.”

  Who says New Yorkers aren’t friendly?

  Walking back to the apartment wasn’t too bad even though the temperature had begun to drop. The wind had picked up and felt as if it were blowing straight off the North Pole. I pulled my hat further down over my ears and wrapped my scarf around my face so that only my eyes were unprotected. By nightfall, these filthy puddles of water would be crusted in ice again.

  The man on the elevator was the same as had taken us down earlier today. No brass name tag on his brown uniform. It occurred to me that he had the same slender build as the one who had quit yesterday. Could it be that men were hired for their ability to fit into existing uniforms? After all, how hard could it be to operate one of these things?

  “Are you filling in for Antoine?” I asked.

  “Permanently, I hope,” he said with an easy smile.

  He lacked a chinstrap beard, otherwise he could have been the other man’s brother—same light brown skin, same clipped Afro. No facial hair and no Jamaican accent, though. He spoke pure New York without even a hint of the South. No slight softening and slurring of the words, which so many Northern-born blacks pick up from their expatriated elders or from summers with grandparents and cousins who still live below the Mason-Dixon Line.

  I longed to ask him how many generations removed from the South he was, but I was afraid he’d take it wrong, so I told him my name and he said that he was Jim Williams. “Actually, all my friends call me James, but if you run an elevator, you get tired of people saying, ‘Home, James,’ so Jim’s what I’ll have them put on my badge if I get this job.”

  “Do you know Antoine?”

  “No, I heard about him at the pizza shop down the street. How he walked off the job, so I went right over to the managing agent and applied. I don’t know if they’ll take him back if he wants to stay, but it’s my chance to get in here.”

  “Good luck,” I said and let myself into the apartment just as my phone rang. It was Dwight. “Elliott Buntrock called. Wants to know if we’d like to meet him down in the Village for dinner. Okay with you?”

  “Sure,” I said. “You finished with your class already?”

  “Not yet. This is a ten-minute break at the halfway point. Josh and I will probably stop in somewhere for a beer when the class ends, but I should be back by five. Buntrock said eight o’clock, so that’ll give us plenty of time.”

  By the time I finished wiping down my boots and disposing of the evidence of my shopping trip, it was almost three.

  My phone rang. Emma again. School must be out.

  “Didn’t you get my message?” she wailed.

  “I’ve been busy,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “It’s Lee. He’s in really, really big trouble. Everybody thinks he did it, but Aunt Deborah, you know he wouldn’t!”

  “Wouldn’t what?”

  “Wouldn’t post a dirt
y picture of Ashley Osgood. I mean, it’s not her, of course, but it was on his Facebook page and it came from his phone, but he didn’t do it.” My niece’s distressed words streamed through the phone like rushing water that drowned any coherence. “And now Ashley’s all upset and Dad’s furious and Mother’ll probably make him take his page down and—”

  “Whoa, slow down, Emma. I’m not understanding you.”

  “Don’t you have your laptop up there?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I’ve sent it all to you. Didn’t you even look at it?”

  “Sorry, I—”

  “Just look at it, okay? You’re good at figuring out stuff. There has to be a way to prove that Lee didn’t do this.”

  I promised that I would look and then call her back as soon as I could.

  Lee and Emma are eighteen and sixteen, the children of my brother Zach and his wife, Barbara. Zach’s next to me in age, the second of what the family calls the “little twins,” to differentiate them from Haywood and Herman, the “big twins.” He and Adam are number ten and eleven in an unbroken string of brothers. Unbroken till they got to me, that is. I’m told Adam really resented my birth, and sometimes I think he still believes that the only reason he got born in the first place is because Daddy didn’t want to quit till he got a daughter.

  Zach’s an assistant high school principal and has always been pretty tolerant of me, but his wife, Barbara, and I were never particularly close, although that’s beginning to change a little. She heads up our Colleton County library system and she keeps her two children on a fairly short leash. She recently admitted that she had always envied the way the kids in the family seem to confide in me. My brothers and other sisters-in-law put it down to my unwillingness to finish growing up and settle into a conventional adult life. Until I decided to run for judge, I was still doing some of the same things they were—drinking too much, driving too fast, smoking the occasional weed—so the kids rightly figured I would understand when they found themselves on the verge of getting busted.

  Sitting cross-legged on the bed in my stocking feet, it took me a few minutes to power up my laptop and find Emma’s message. She had forwarded me the picture that had appeared on Lee’s Facebook page around noon today. I immediately clicked on his page, but the picture was gone, so I went back to Emma’s download.

  At first glance, I thought it was exactly what people were supposed to think, and I was appalled. Especially since it was captioned, “Hey, y’all, Ashley let me take her picture last night. Who knew girls shaved their thangs?”

  Then I took a second look and realized that it was a close-up of somebody’s closed armpit that I was seeing.

  Once I interpreted all the text-speak abbreviations and disjointed phrases, Emma’s frantic message was that this picture had been posted on Lee’s password-protected Facebook page.

  But he’s never told anyone the password. The picture’s on his phone even though he says it’s been in his locker all day and he’s the only one who knows the combination. Ashley’s freaking. She went home early and now her mom wants Lee’s hide. Dad wants to believe him, but you know how he can’t show favoritism and all the evidence is that Lee did it. Please, Aunt D. Can’t you or Uncle Dwight think how somebody could get his phone out of his locked locker and then could post something like this on his FB page????

  Teenage boys are notorious for pulling stupid stunts without thinking or caring about the consequences, which is why many a young man’s last words before he winds up in a coffin or a hospital bed are, “Hey, y’all! Watch this!”

  Rural South or urban North. Makes no difference. Look at the boys in this building who think it’s funny to take off with an unattended elevator.

  If this had been one of my other nephews—A.K. or Reese, say—I wouldn’t have thought twice before bringing my gavel down on a guilty verdict, but this was Lee, a conscientious by-the-book kid who’s never even had a speeding ticket.

  Running through various scenarios that might somehow exonerate Lee, I had totally forgotten about Sigrid Harald until the doorbell rang. As I passed through the vestibule, I saw something else I’d forgotten. I hadn’t given that red flip-flop a second thought since tossing it onto the chest. I grabbed it up so that I wouldn’t forget again and opened the door with it in my hand.

  Sigrid’s turquoise scarf was loosely looped around the neck of a black wool sweater. I invited her in and hung her white parka on the back of a chair in the dining room. I gestured her toward the living room, spotted the bath mat, started to change direction for the dining room, then realized that she probably wouldn’t be bothered by what was under the mat. I also realized that all this dithering was making me look like an idiot. And it probably didn’t help that I was standing there shoeless, with hat hair, no lipstick, and a red flip-flop in my hand.

  “Sorry,” I said. “One of my nephews is in trouble and I got distracted. Sort of a locked-room mystery. Can I get you coffee? Or a glass of wine?”

  “Coffee, if it’s already made.”

  “All I have to do is turn it on,” I said. “My husband mainlines caffeine, so as soon as one pot’s empty, he usually goes ahead and gets another ready to go.”

  She did not smile and it struck me that she might feel equally ill at ease. Instead of going on into the living room, though, she followed me out to the kitchen and said, “Locked room?”

  I switched on the coffeemaker and we sat on the kitchen stools while I gave her a brief recap of Lee’s situation. It might have been my imagination, but she seemed grateful for an interlude before she got to the point of her visit.

  When I had told her all I knew about the hot water Lee was in, she said, “And the picture was definitely sent from his cell phone?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “Combination locks on the lockers?”

  “Yes, and the kids are required to leave their phones there during class periods.”

  “Then he probably told someone the combination at some time.”

  “He swears he didn’t.”

  “What about access to the master list?”

  “No way. My mother-in-law keeps them in a locked file in her office.”

  “Your mother-in-law?”

  “She’s the school principal.”

  “And your brother is her assistant?” She lifted an eyebrow at that.

  I shrugged. “What can I tell you? It’s the country.”

  The coffee was done and I filled two mugs. She started to move the red flip-flop out of the way.

  “Oh,” I said. “I keep forgetting. Take a look at the bottom.”

  She turned it over. “Your missing earring?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to call you. I took Luna’s cat back to her yesterday and this was in a catchall bowl by the door along with other stuff that people left in her place Saturday night.”

  She took it by the spongy bottom, avoiding the smooth thong that might still hold a usable fingerprint even though both of us had touched it. Luna, too, probably. “Whose is it?”

  I shrugged. “I can’t say for sure, but I’ll be surprised if it’s not Cameron Broughton’s.”

  I described how I’d found it and how I was pretty sure that he had started to claim it and then changed his mind as it registered that my earring was embedded in the sole. “The most logical place he could have stepped on it is inside this apartment.”

  Her wide gray eyes seemed to turn inward to consider the possibilities and I said, “Have you run his prints through IAFIS yet?”

  She gave me a sharp look and I shrugged. “I’m not saying he’s your killer, but there’s something familiar about him. He says he’s from the Wilmington area—North Carolina’s Wilmington, not Delaware’s—and I held court there a few summers back. I’m district court, so whatever it was had to be relatively minor and nonviolent. There’s something familiar about those pale blue glasses he wears that makes me wonder if he came up before me while he was back visiting or something. I co
uld ask the clerk of the court, if that wouldn’t be interfering.”

  “Would it matter?” she asked with the first half smile I’d seen on her face.

  “You sound like my husband. He’s always saying I stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

  The coffee finished making and I poured us each a cup. “As long as I’m being nosy, did Mrs. Lattimore tell you where she got that bronze thing?”

  She shook her head, laid the red flip-flop on the counter, and took a cautious sip of the hot coffee. “That’s what I came to ask you about.”

  “Wish I could help,” I said, “but she didn’t give me a clue. Just handed me the wrapped box and asked me to bring it to your mother.”

  Sigrid set her cup back on the counter and looked me straight in the eye. “Do you know a Chloe Adams?”

  “Chloe Adams? Sure.” Almost immediately, I realized the significance of what she was asking, and that realization caused me to set my cup down so quickly that coffee slopped onto the counter. Grateful to escape her penetrating gaze, I reached for the paper towels to wipe up the mess. “She’s a cousin of my daddy’s housekeeper. I’ve known her most of my life. Nice woman.”

  Before I could go on chattering like a demented parrot, Sigrid’s phone rang. “Harald here.” She listened intently, then said, “When?… Is she sure?… Okay. I’ll be right up.”

  “What’s happened?” I asked.

  She ignored my question and reached for the flip-flop. “Do you have a plastic bag I can put this in?”

  Annoyed, I opened a drawer and handed her a box. “I want a receipt for my earring.”

  “Later,” she said brusquely, already heading for the door. She grabbed her coat in passing and was gone before I could object.