Death of a Butterfly (Sigrid Harald)

by Margaret Maron

  Sigrid relented. “I’m no believer in coincidences,” she reminded him, “but it just might be a coincidence that the payments stopped when the elder Redmond died. On the other hand, what if she knew a secret someone was paying her to keep from the old man?”

  “So that when he died, they didn’t have to go on paying? An employee maybe?”

  “Worth looking into,” she suggested.

  “I’ll start Peters on it.” He jotted down a few quick notes to himself and then cleared everything neatly away into separate file folders. Tillie seldom punched out the minute his shift ended on weekdays, but weekends revolved around his family.

  “Marian’s mother’s expecting us over,” he explained, “and her Sunday night suppers are really something!”

  He went away to brief Peters before leaving.

  When he had gone, Sigrid tidied up a few loose ends on her own desk. None of the paperwork demanded immediate attention; but unlike Tillie, she had no one waiting for her except a trio of swallowtail larvae. Hardly an inducement to hurry home.

  As she picked up her shoulder bag, its weight suggested an alternative, and she thought, well, why not? It had been a couple of months since she’d done any target practice and there was a firing range in the basement.

  Downstairs, Sigrid signed for several rounds of ammunition, picked up a sheaf of paper targets, and headed for a far lane. Except for a uniformed patrolman who was unhappily evaluating his misses, she had the place to herself.

  It always reminded her of a bowling alley—the separate lanes, each person concentrating on his own efforts, the noise. She adjusted the lightweight plastic ear mufflers, which deadened the gunshots, clipped her first target on the overhead line, and sent it down toward the end of her lane, halting it at twenty-five feet.

  The police academy’s advance silhouette was a black line drawing on buff paper. It was the same unsophisticated depiction of a classic bad guy as might be found in any comic strip and gave a full frontal view of a stocky man, cut off at beefy thighs, who stood slightly crouched as he squinted down the barrel of a black revolver.

  There was nothing very subtle about the drawing. It was life-sized and was meant to hammer home the fact that target practice was more than a pleasant diversion or an exercise in hitting the center of concentric circles.

  Sigrid brought her .38 up in a two-handed grip and steadily emptied the six chambers.

  She retrieved the target sheet. Her first bullet had gone through the figure’s left ear, the second through his right shoulder. The remaining four could be covered by a fifty-cent piece over the black revolver.

  She reloaded, clipped a fresh target to the line, and gave it an extra twenty feet. The gun’s two-inch barrel was less accurate at much distance; but again, all her shots hit the hand and gun. She kept the same range on the next two and began trying for spots precisely placed elsewhere on the target.

  She was one of the lucky ones, Sigrid thought, as the bullets exploded from her gun. She’d never had to shoot at a living, breathing target. She thought she could if it became necessary. She hoped she wouldn’t hesitate—good men lost their lives when their colleagues froze—but she knew deep down that if offered even the slenderest choice, she would shoot to incapacitate, not kill.

  She fired a final volley, then pulled off the mufflers and gathered up the targets. As she turned to leave the range, she was startled to see Captain McKinnon watching from behind the soundproof glass. He met her as she came through the door, his hand outstretched.

  “May I?” he said. It was more a command than a request.

  Wordlessly, she handed over the yellow paper targets.

  She had worked under McKinnon for over a year now and she still felt uncomfortable when going one-on-one with him. She’d been cursed with a tongue-tied awkwardness from childhood but it usually subsided with familiarity. This big, rumpled man made her uneasy and she hadn’t decided why. His brown eyes were sleepy-looking, but she knew they didn’t miss a trick and she had often noticed a vague air of expectation when he looked at her that was absent when he turned his attention to the others.

  “Not bad,” he said of the first two or three targets. He shook out the last couple and asked, “What happened here?”

  “They went where I wanted them to go,” she said stiffly. “You’d like it better if we gave you full-length targets to hang up so you could practice shooting for the feet or legs?” he growled. “Grow up, Harald! If you ever have to fire your gun for real, you’ll be damned grateful for something as thick as a torso to aim for. And even that will seem too small at times. If your—”

  McKinnon caught himself. Too late now to change the decision he’d made when this tall, grave-eyed young woman first joined his department. He’d thought then that her coolness was hostility at being assigned to the man who’d been her father’s partner. The man who had walked away from that rundown hotel unscathed while her father was carried out on a stretcher with three bullets in his body.

  Leif Harald had been taller than his daughter, a blond, blue­eyed Viking who had smiled at Mac’s caution and had thought—quite correctly, too—that their quarry was a scared little sewer rat caught up in something too big to handle. Confident, laughing Leif had forgotten that even the most cowardly rat will fight if too hopelessly cornered.

  Sigrid had been such a young child then, hardly more than a baby, a toddler with enormous gray eyes whom he’d dandled on his knee and bought birthday presents for and whom he’d never seen again after Leif’s funeral until the day she was assigned to him over a year ago.

  McKinnon soon realized that Anne and Leif’s daughter remembered nothing about that long-ago partnership; that even though Anne blamed him for Leif’s death, she had not filled the girl’s childhood with hate; but by then it was too late. The pattern of their working relationship was set. Besides, it was obvious that this policewoman would have resented thinking she got special treatment because of who her parents were. She was already touchy enough about her position in the department. If she ever suspected the truth, she’d probably demand a transfer and, without analyzing why, he knew that he wanted her to stay.

  So let it be, he’d told himself. Forget about Leif, forget about Anne. Keep it impersonal and professional. Never mind the might-have-beens.

  He thrust the targets back at Sigrid and stomped away.

  If my what? wondered Sigrid. Why did McKinnon always leave her with a feeling of unspoken sentences?

  CHAPTER 16

  Before the branch bank that handled Julie Redmond’s finances could open for business Monday morning, Detective Tildon and his two companions had talked their way past the guard at the front door and had been directed to the proper vice-president.

  Mrs. Schatel was pleasantly fiftyish; she was allowing her short blond hair to go gray naturally, and the jacket of her softly tailored burgundy suit was comfortably loose. Despite her easygoing appearance, however, she was as mulishly suspicious as any other bank official that Detective Tildon had ever encountered.

  “No one may open Mrs. Redmond’s box without a court order,” she repeated.

  Patiently, Tillie started over again. “We’re getting a court order,” he explained.

  “And someone from the Internal Revenue Service,” said Mrs. Schatel.

  “And someone from IRS,” Tillie agreed. “But that’s scheduled for this afternoon, Mrs. Schatel. Right now, all we’re asking is to let us post two plainclothes officers here at the bank so that if anyone asks for Mrs. Redmond’s box, you can point him out to them.”

  “But I’m trying to tell you, Detective Tildon, no one can even enter the vault area unless the owner has authorized a proxy, whose signature must be on record,” said Mrs. Schatel, “and Mrs. Redmond never filed such an authorization.”

  “We only want to see if someone tries,” Tillie reiterated. “Very well,” said Mrs. Schatel “It is this bank’s policy to cooperate with the police whenever possible. We can’t allow any disturbance thou
gh.”

  Her last remark was directed at Officers Jim Lowry and Elaine Albee, who had been picked because they could look like an upwardly mobile young couple seeking a mortgage loan.

  Albee smiled reassuringly, and Mrs. Schatel unbent enough to show them a couch near the loan department where they could wait and watch unobtrusively.

  When Tillie returned to the office, he found Lieutenant Harald at the tag end of a telephone conversation. She saw him standing in her open doorway and motioned for him to come in.

  “If you do hear from her, please have her call me,” he heard her say. She enunciated her name and telephone number carefully and hung up with a slight frown.

  “I can’t seem to put my hands on Sue Montrose,” she complained. “The receptionist at Landau and Maas says she didn’t come to work this morning. That was her roommate, Jenny Wills, who said she hadn’t seen Montrose since she left to play tennis with George Franklin yesterday afternoon. She said Franklin came back alone—that was when I was questioning her at the tennis courts—and she went out before Montrose returned. When she got in last night, neither Montrose nor Franklin was there. She’s concerned because this is the first time Montrose has stayed out all night without leaving word.”

  “Did you talk to Franklin?” asked Tillie.

  “Not yet. Round up a cassette player for that tape we found, Tillie, and let’s go hear what he says when we play it for him.”

  “Why do you keep bringing it up? What’s the point of—? Damn! Are you taping this?”

  George Franklin’s darkly handsome face was wary as Julie Redmond’s taped laughter filled his large, comfortably appointed office.

  “Shall I play it again?” asked Sigrid, pressing the rewind button.

  “No!” he said. His hand darted to his thick black hair. He smoothed it back in a gentle patting motion, then straightened his impeccable tie.

  Sigrid and Tillie could see him visibly brace himself to brazen it out.

  “So we once had something going,” Franklin said. He paused and gave her a boyish grin. “So what? It wasn’t a secret at the time. Besides, that was four years ago, as you just heard. That’s when Julie decided a jeweler made better husband material than an electronics systems analyst.”

  “Why did you install a telephone tap for her?” asked Sigrid.

  “What are friends for?” he parried lightly, but his charms weren’t thawing this iceberg of a police lieutenant. He tried a different tack. Openness usually melted them.

  “Look, Lieutenant Harald, I knew it wasn’t strictly kosher, but Julie was an old friend and she was caught in a bad marriage. Her husband was cheating on her and she asked me to help her get the proof.”

  “So you accommodated out of friendship, pure and simple?” He nodded.

  “And not because she held something over you?” The woman’s tone was so icy that he shivered involuntarily and reminded himself that there was no way she could know what Julie had known.

  “What mistake had you made that you didn’t want her to keep bringing up?”

  Franklin’s wariness returned. “Now, Lieutenant,” he said urbanely, “as Julie said, we all make mistakes and we make them all the time. I don’t know which particular mistake Julie had in mind—maybe that I let her get away? Whatever it was, it certainly can’t have anything to do with her death.”

  “Where were you Saturday morning?”

  “I had a dental appointment.”

  “His name and address?” Tillie asked, his pencil poised. Franklin’s urbanity turned to alarm. “What do you need that for?”

  “To verify your alibi,” Sigrid answered.

  “Alibi? What the hell do I need—? You think I killed Julie?”

  “If you were at your dentist’s, it would prove you didn’t,” she said.

  “Ask Sue. She was there, wasn’t she? She’ll tell you I didn’t come near Julie’s apartment Saturday morning.”

  “Where is Miss Montrose?” asked Sigrid, who had noticed the empty desk outside when they came in.

  He shrugged. “Home, I guess. We had a fight yesterday—well, not a fight really, more of a misunderstanding—and I guess she’s still mad. She didn’t come in today.”

  “Her roommate says she didn’t come home last night either. In fact, Mr. Franklin, she seems to be missing, and you were the last one to see her. And now you say you fought? What about?”

  “To hell with this!” cried Franklin. “I’m not saying another word till I see my lawyer, and you can’t make me!”

  He pushed back his padded leather chair, stood up, and belligerently put his hands on his hips.

  Sigrid stood just as abruptly. “Very well, Mr. Franklin. Shall we say three o’clock in my office at headquarters?”

  Tillie cleared his throat. “You’re scheduled to be at the bank at two,” he reminded her.

  “So I am,” she agreed, and told Franklin, “Change that to three-thirty instead.”

  His bluff called, Franklin looked back at her numbly.

  “Don’t forget the information about your dentist,” Sigrid said. “And, Mr. Franklin?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t make us have to send an officer with an arrest warrant,” she said kindly. “Be there.”

  As she and Tillie left his office, George Franklin bent over his telephone and began dialing.

  At the branch bank near East Seventy-sixth Street, Jim Lowry nudged his colleague. “What do you think, Lainey?”

  Elaine Albee casually lifted her blue eyes from the current issue of Working Woman and let them drift over the noontime surge of customers who’d just entered the bank. Almost immediately she saw the slender, dark-haired man Lowry must have meant. They’d both studied Mickey Novak’s mug shots and description very carefully; this man was a perfect match.

  In accordance to the plan they’d agreed upon, Lowry rose and made his way toward the newcomer, who had joined the shortest line. He was right behind him when the man inquired about visiting a safe deposit box.

  “That’s Mrs. Schatel,” caroled the young teller. “First desk on the left.”

  Elaine Albee pulled out her compact and busied herself with a lip moistener as the dark-haired young man approached Mrs. Schatel’s desk.

  “May I help you?” the bank official asked.

  “My sister asked me to get something out of her box for her,” he mumbled.

  For all her earlier objections, Mrs. Schatel’s voice was calm and pleasant as she reached for her card file. “Certainly,” she said. “What is your sister’s name?”

  “J-julie Redmond,” he said nervously. “Mrs. Julie Redmond.”

  “You do have the key?” she asked.

  A flash of gold gleamed in the man’s hand.

  “I’ll take that, Novak,” said Jim Lowry from just above his right ear.

  Mickey Novak whirled and, without hesitating for an instant, kneed Lowry in the groin with such viciousness that the young policeman dropped to the floor in excruciating pain.

  Elaine Albee leaped over her partner’s writhing body and darted after Novak, who eeled through the startled customers and was out the door before the guard could intercept him. Just past the main entrance, a postman’s cart blocked his path for a fraction and Albee hurtled through the doors after him.

  Novak’s foot slipped on a candy wrapper someone had discarded on the sidewalk and, as he regained his balance, Elaine Albee made a flying tackle and pinned his left leg. Both crashed to the ground, Novak twisted sharply, and the toe of his right shoe connected with her left jaw.

  As pain exploded through her head, her hands went limp and Mickey Novak wriggled free. By the time her head cleared and she was on her feet again, excited bystanders could only point to the general direction in which he’d fled.

  “Unbloody, but bruised and bowed,” Tillie reported as he reentered Sigrid’s office with a fresh ice pack. “The doctor says Lowry won’t be back to work for at least three or four days.”

  Sigrid sighed and
turned back to Elaine Albee, who took the ice pack gratefully and held it to her swollen jaw. The skin wasn’t broken but it looked raw and tight and was already exhibiting a range of color from bright red to blue-black.

  “I feel so stupid!” said the girl. “I had your murderer on the ground and then I let him get away.”

  “You were on the ground, too,” Sigrid pointed out. “Don’t heap ashes on your head, Albee. It could have happened to anyone. And if it’s any consolation, I rather doubt that he’s his sister’s killer.”

  She carefully hid from the younger woman the disappointment she felt. Albee was a good officer and would get better with more seasoning, but it had been a letdown to return to headquarters feeling that everything was starting to fall into place only to learn that one of her stakeout officers was in the hospital and the other probably should be.

  “I’m okay, Lieutenant, really,” Albee insisted. “The doctor said there was no fracture and he gave me a needleful of some sort of enzyme derivative that’s supposed to dissolve this bruise in a few days. At least we got this.”

  She held out her hand and a golden filigreed heart and key dangled from the delicate chain. “Novak dropped it when Jim surprised him.”

  “Bingo!” said Tillie. “The Fitzpatrick kid was right.”

  “Very nice,” Sigrid agreed, taking the chain. “Anything else, Albee?”

  “No, Lieutenant.” Elaine Albee shook her head and the unguarded movement made her wince with pain.

  “Then take the rest of the day off,” Sigrid said. “And no false heroics,” she added crisply as the girl started to object. “You’ve earned it.”