Death of a Butterfly (Sigrid Harald)

by Margaret Maron

  “You’d better talk to the Dorritts again, then,” she decided. “Try to pin Sammy down to the precise times that elevator went up and down Saturday morning.”

  She signaled for their check.

  Most of the city’s medallioned cabs are bright yellow, so Karl Redmond’s assertion that he’d taken a yellow cab home Saturday morning wasn’t much help.

  “I’m sorry,” he’d told Jim Lowry when that young police detective came to question him Sunday morning, “but I just didn’t notice what fleet it was from.”

  “So then, of course, I asked him if he could describe the driver,” said Jim Lowry.

  It was Tuesday morning and he was sitting painfully on the edge of his hospital bed with his legs dangling as he spoke to Elaine Albee over the telephone.

  “Are you sure you feel up to talking?” Elaine asked solicitously.

  “I’m okay. They’re letting me go home as soon as my doctor checks me out this morning.”

  It wasn’t a subject he wanted to pursue. Especially not with her. A kneed groin wasn’t like a bullet wound or a broken bone. It hurt like hell, but most people seemed to think it was funny. He’d listened closely but there was no hint of laughter lurking in Lainey’s warm voice.

  “So did Redmond remember the driver?” she asked, respecting his desire to keep the conversation all business.

  “Yeah. It was a woman and her name was Carla. Carla with a C. He noticed that much because of his own name. No idea what the last name was, but you shouldn’t have any trouble. Use the yellow pages on my desk; I checked off the ones I called, and I don’t think there were many left.”

  There were seven, but Elaine got lucky on the second try. “Yeah, we’ve got a Carla driving here,” said the dispatcher at Silberman’s Yellowbird Garage after the policewoman had identified herself. “Carla Berlinger. She’ll be in at ten if you wanna talk to her.”

  The Yellowbird Garage was poorly lit and smelled of exhaust fumes and hot rubber. Elaine Albee sidestepped a puddle of grease just inside the wide doors and waited for her eyes to get used to the dimness before venturing across the wide expanse to the glassed-in office at the back. There she introduced herself to the motherly-looking dispatcher who pointed to a group of drivers at a table in the rear.

  Carla Berlinger was a small, intense brunette in her early forties, dressed in jeans and a denim jacket. “My God, honey! What happened to you?” she exclaimed at the sight of Albee’s colorful jaw.

  “You should have seen it yesterday,” Elaine said ruefully. “Someone kicked me.”

  “And I thought driving a hack was bad news!” Berlinger shook her head and led Elaine back to the front of the office. “I checked out my time sheets for Saturday morning,” she said, “and that’s all I know.”

  If Karl Redmond was vague about Carla Berlinger, her powers of observation weren’t any better. “He must have been an average-looking Joe,” she said. “Who can remember all those faces if there’s nothing special about ’em?”

  Still, they did have the time sheet and it confirmed Karl Redmond’s story. Berlinger had picked up one male passenger at 11:03 Saturday morning on the corner of East Seventy-sixth Street and Third Avenue and dropped him off down in SoHo about twenty minutes later.

  It was her day for babies and lovers, thought Sigrid, following Karl Redmond up the narrow stairs to the loft over Bryna Leighton’s shop.

  She had dropped Tillie at the office and, after a brief stop at a conventional jewelry store, had driven to SoHo.

  Elaine Albee’s report had been relayed to them when Tillie checked in via radio as they drove through Queens, so Sigrid no longer considered Redmond an active suspect; nevertheless, there was one small point she wanted to confirm herself.

  Redmond had been waiting for her downstairs among the exotic costume jewelry, and her appearance surprised him. “Hey, you’re the woman who was here with Bryna Saturday. I didn’t know you were from the police.” His thin face beamed at her. “Come on up and see the baby. You won’t believe how much she’s changed in three days!”

  “I think it would be better—” Sigrid began, but Redmond was already halfway up the stairs and there was nothing to do but follow if she wanted to talk to him.

  “She barely cries at all,” Redmond confided. “You’d hardly know she was around.”

  Bryna Leighton sat nursing her infant daughter in a low rocking chair by the windows. With sunlight haloing her silver­blond hair, the baby’s tiny pink hand upon her white breast, and the sweet smile of welcome on her lips, she looked more than ever like a Flemish Madonna.

  “Sigrid!” she said softly. “How nice.”

  “Hello, Bryna,” Sigrid said, suddenly feeling awkward again. She knew it was unprofessional to get personally involved during an investigation, but surely an exception could be made of little Katrina? She took a small gift-wrapped box from her purse and handed it to Bryna, who carefully removed the paper and lifted the lid.

  It was a silver mug, chased with a garland of flowers around the lip and last Saturday’s date engraved on the side.

  “It’s lovely,” said Bryna. “Thank you. Want to hold her?”

  “Oh no! I don’t—I’m not used to—I wouldn’t know how,” she stammered; but before she knew what was happening, she found herself folded into Bryna’s low rocker with the baby in her arms.

  It was so incredibly tiny. Sigrid sat absolutely rigid, watching the diminutive mouth, abruptly deprived of milk, still make sucking movements. Surely it would start crying now.

  Bryna laughed. “Relax, Sigrid. She’s not going to break.”

  Cautiously, Sigrid let out the breath she’d been holding.

  There was a sweet smell of baby powder.

  “Isn’t she a marvel?” asked Karl Redmond. “Look at those long fingers!”

  Sigrid looked. Long was a relative term, she decided. She’d seen dolls with longer fingers than that.

  “And each fingernail so exquisitely made,” crooned her father. “You forget between times how beautifully babies are made. Look at her little feet. And her ears! Did you ever see prettier ears?”

  “Never.” She said it so dryly that all three found themselves relaxing in warm laughter. Unprofessional or not, thought Sigrid, she liked them and that did make it harder to ask questions.

  She handed the baby back to Bryna and said as much.

  “It’s okay,” said Bryna. “We’ve nothing to hide, have we, Karl?”

  He shook his head. “No one really thinks I could have killed Julie, do they?”

  “Ex-husbands are always potential suspects,” she said kindly, “but in your case, no. Not unless you bribed Mr. Cavatori, his maids, the doorman, and a cab driver to lie for you.”

  “You questioned every one of those people about me?”

  “We did.” She hesitated a moment, wondering if he’d ever suspected what a strong motive he had to kill his ex-wife.

  “Has Timmy seen the baby?” she asked obliquely.

  The boy’s name sent a shadow across their faces.

  “No,” said Karl. “I went to visit him Sunday evening, but he wouldn’t even look at me. Just screamed if I tried to touch him. I remember when he was born—just like Katrina—so tiny . . .” His voice trailed off sadly. “He has his own lawyer now, did you know that? Vico said he needed someone objective to look after his interests. I guess that was in case I turned out to be Julie’s murderer.”

  “Oh, Karl!” said Bryna, seeing the old hurt in his dear face.

  “Don’t, love.”

  He smiled at her and gently lifted her free hand to his lips.

  “It’s okay. I guess it’s best for Timmy if he stays with Vico and Luisa. They’re crazy about him and he really loves them. They’ve been like his own grandparents ever since he was born. My father was killed last year, you know. Timmy probably doesn’t even remember him.”

  “Then you haven’t talked to Timmy’s lawyer?” asked Sigrid.

  “Hagstrom? No.” He g
lanced at Bryna, but she shook her fair head, too.

  Briefly, Sigrid described the opening of Julie’s box at the bank yesterday—the money they’d found, the jewels and the tape.

  Karl looked at her numbly. “She set Pop up?” he whispered. “She had Pop killed for some lousy diamonds?”

  His face crumpled. “Oh God!” he sobbed. “Papa!”

  Bryna thrust the baby back into Sigrid’s startled grasp and instinctively gathered Karl into her arms.

  CHAPTER 24

  Sigrid felt tired when she drove back to headquarters and more than a little edgy. Karl and Bryna were nice people, she reflected. There was caring, respect, and mutual support, but emotional scenes always exhausted her and each visit to that SoHo loft had certainly been emotional.

  It was a relief to return to the relative order of her office and she viewed Tillie’s sensible, steady face with unaccustomed pleasure.

  “Good news,” he told her. “Mickey Novak’s been picked up in Florence.”

  “Florence?” Sigrid was momentarily diverted. “Are we hooked into Interpol?”

  “Not Florence, Italy.” Tillie grinned. “Florence, South Carolina. He was apparently on his way to Florida. I’ve started the paperwork. We should get him back by the end of the week.”

  “Excellent,” she said, thinking of Karl Redmond’s anguish. At least one unsolved homicide would finally be closed. She rubbed the back of her neck and tried to concentrate on all the intertwined threads of this case. “Did you have a chance to question the Dorritts again?”

  “I just came from there. Wait a second.”

  He flipped through his notebook until he came to the correct section. “Okay, here we are: Sammy Dorritt says he was in the lobby from eight-thirty till twelve noon on the dot. The only ones using the elevator around that time to go or come from the third floor were just as we thought—Karl Redmond came down around eleven and Vico Cavatori about ten or twelve minutes later. Neither of them went back up.

  “The other tenants who used the elevator during that particular period were an elderly couple from the fourth floor and a baby-sitter and two children from the seventh. I think we can eliminate them?”

  Sigrid agreed. “So much for our double coincidence murderer,” she said glumly.

  “You wouldn’t have liked it anyhow,” Tillie consoled her absentmindedly, looking back through his notes.

  Sigrid looked at him suspiciously, but he really was absorbed in his notebook.

  It had been the sort of remark and in the same tone of voice Nauman might have used. She gave herself a brief moment to think of Nauman; to remember how he liked to needle her. She wondered how long he’d be tied up in Amsterdam and if the museum’s staff included any cute young things or if—oh, hell!

  “Did you say something, Lieutenant?”

  “Never mind, Tillie. Let me see your timetable again. We must be missing something obvious.”

  She studied his figures with a growing sense of frustration. It seemed improbable that Mickey Novak had killed his sister, however neat a solution that would make. True, he was a self­confessed thief and murderer, condemned by his own taped voice; but the necklace had been ripped from Julie Redmond’s neck after she was dead and Sue Montrose was positive that her body had been cool to the touch minutes after Novak first entered the apartment.

  Sammy Dorritt said Vico Cavatori had emerged from the elevator at the time he said and Montrose hadn’t seen him cross her line of sight. Ditto for Karl Redmond. Vico had ushered him into the elevator; Dorritt had seen him leave it and exit from the building. Elaine Albee had efficiently located the cab driver who had picked him up almost immediately afterward.

  Sue Montrose had seen no one else enter or leave the apartment except Luisa Cavatori and Timmy Redmond and Julie had been alive then, had called instructions to Timmy to be good.

  Poor Timmy. As if he could be naughty, as cowed as he’d probably been by his mother. He was still young enough that he might not suffer permanent emotional scars from the brusque treatment she’d given him. Luisa and Vico Cavatori had provided stable love all along and under their guardianship, that stability would continue.

  Unless—

  There was that unbidden thought again which Dorritt’s statement couldn’t completely erase, but she really didn’t want to face all the emotional ramifications such a theory conjured up. Not now. She’d had enough of emotions for one day.

  She rubbed the back of her neck again and looked at the clock. It was only three-fifteen, but she told Tillie, “Let’s call it a day.”

  Instead of going straight home, Sigrid found herself drawn to the health spa where she was a member. In the locker room she stripped and changed into a one-piece white swim suit, mechanically piled her long hair on top of her head, tucked it into a white bathing cap, and headed out to the Olympic-sized pool.

  Since childhood, swimming had been a solace for her. If she had been asked to analyze her feelings about the water, she would have said that swimming was good exercise, a means of unwinding physically, nothing more.

  But so intense was her need today that she was almost running when she entered the large tiled space, felt the warm moist air and smelled again the flat aroma of chlorine. Everything here was clean, uncluttered, unadorned and utterly satisfying in its Spartan rigor. Flat white planes, sharp angles, only the water itself soft and flowing.

  The pool was divided into marked lanes for serious swimmers and an unmarked area for general puddlers. There was only one other girl in the lanes and she was concentrating on wind sprints. Sigrid chose an empty lane farthest from her and dived in.

  Her mind went blank as she stroked her way through the water, one arm over the other in steady synchronization. She did three quick laps, then turned over and backstroked at a more leisurely pace.

  The water lifted her up and she moved through it almost effortlessly after that first furious spurt. The water slid along her boy-slim body, pulling her out of herself, as her arms stretched wide. In the water, she could reach out and give herself up to an unacknowledged sensuousness that would be unthinkable with people.

  Nauman’s image floated in her mind and she didn’t fight it. Here in the water, she felt no responsibility for undisciplined thoughts that would have been banished at another time and place.

  Nauman’s face soon drifted into Karl Redmond’s. She watched again while Karl clung to Bryna with great sobs wracking his body until at last Bryna took their infant daughter from Sigrid and made Karl hold her.

  She thought of Hilda’s baby Lars and of Great-uncle Lars, who had taken them to Prospect Park as children and bought them peanuts to feed the pigeons and who had seemed to know that even though Sigrid couldn’t emulate Hilda’s prodigal hugs and kisses, her stiff little body held a love just as fiercely given. Uncle Lars had been dead nine years and she still missed his uncritical acceptance, the way his blue eyes lit up whenever she appeared.

  As the emotional tensions which had been building up in her all day were sluiced away in the limpid, translucent water, Sigrid relaxed enough to think consciously of more mundane issues. Her apartment, for instance.

  Roman Tramegra had called it mediocre and she supposed it was by some standards. It was a straightforward utilitarian set of rooms, adequate space and comfortable enough, but he was right—there was nothing to differentiate it from thousands of other similar apartments throughout the city. No particular charm to it; nevertheless, it had been a fixed fact of life these last few years and she didn’t want to move.

  Yet here in the water, she could even consider it. Could contemplate the disorder and upheaval without last night’s dismay.

  She touched the tiled edge of the pool, flipped onto her stomach, and began a final series of serious laps.

  CHAPTER 25

  As she headed home, completely refreshed now, a name suddenly floated up from Sigrid’s subconscious: Gilbert Fitzpatrick. They had forgotten all about that prim and fussy little lawyer whom Julie Redmond h
ad delighted in tormenting.

  She unlocked the door to her apartment and hurried in so quickly that she almost collided with Roman Tramegra advancing to open the door for her.

  “My dear Sigrid,” he boomed. “How wonderful that you’re home early. I—”

  “Excuse me a minute, Roman,” she said, and made for the telephone. A child’s voice answered and said, “Daddy’s not here. He’s helping Chuckie play ball.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “Mommy’s here.” Sigrid heard a clunk as the phone at the other end hit the table. A distant infantile voice called “Mommy!” In the background came the painful strains of someone practicing scales on the violin. Someone very new at it.

  “Hello?” said Marian Tildon’s unruffled voice.

  Sigrid identified herself and asked if Tillie could call her at home when he’d finished playing ball. Marian cheerfully agreed to relay the message.

  “Sigrid, my dear,” said Roman when she had hung up, “I must tell you something—that is, ask you something—most important.”

  “Very well,” she said and waited expectantly.

  But things were seldom that simple with Roman. She had to be seated comfortably on the couch; had to assure him that, no, she did not wish to change clothes first, she still felt fresh from her swim; and yes, she had time to listen.

  Tramegra smoothed his sandy hair carefully over his bald spot and Sigrid’s heart sank. Nervous apprehension was not a trait she’d seen in him so far. He had never discussed the personal problems which had sent him fleeing home from Europe and she hoped this didn’t signal the opening of emotional floodgates.