Baby Doll Games

by Margaret Maron

  The image of a child’s body stuffed in a snowbank triggered faint memories and Sigrid glanced inquiringly at Albee.

  “I think Hentz and Lambeth caught that one,” Albee murmured, referring to the department's two most chauvinistic detectives. Competent police officers, but seldom interested in a woman’s view on any of their cases.

  “Here,” said Helen Delgado, returning to her chair with four photographs which she spread on the desktop before Sigrid. “That’s Mandy.”

  Her index finger with its large topaz ring located the little girl in two pictures of a clustered class and again in two pictures where she was one of three or four children.

  In the photographs, Mandy Gillespie appeared to be an ordinary child-cute enough, as were most children in Sigrids disinterested view, but nothing to make her an immediate standout among her peers. Her tentative smile hadn’t quite caught up to those new front teeth, but she had nice eyes and, given the chance, would probably have grown up to be an attractive woman.

  “Poor little kid,” said Elaine, her eyes compassionate. “Yeah,” agreed Helen Delgado with a sigh. “We were really cut up about it at the time.”, “Was she sexually molested?”

  “Not that we heard. He strangled her with one of her own hair ribbons. It was rough on the other children, too. Some of them had crying spells and nightmares. We finally had a psychiatrist come talk to them. Dr. Ferrell.”

  “The same Dr Ferrell who was here this afternoon?” asked Sigrid, surprised. She was under the impression that the woman was an internist, not a psychiatrist.

  “Why, yes. She has a nephew in the Monday-afternoon class so she occasionally comes to pick him up. She even makes most of the recitals.” Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Maybe we can get her to talk to the children again.” Retaining one picture of the Gillespie child, Sigrid stood up, flexed her stiff neck and shoulder muscles, and returned the rest of the photographs to their former wall positions.

  “When did you last see Emmy Mion?” she asked as she walked back to the desk and drew her notebook toward her. “Did she seem different in any way? Was something bothering her?”

  The designer sent her dangling earring swinging again as she slowly shook her head, and it snagged on the scarlet fabric. “No,” she said, removing the post from her ear and carefully untangling the sparkling bauble from the thread which had caught it. “Performance mornings are always hectic and today was no different. Emmy's little ghost dress wasn't quite right but she didn’t want to take the time to let me fix it. I finally had to sit on her. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

  A self-deprecating smile lit her face while her fingers played with the earring. “She and Nate were talking about the lights when I tracked her down and stitched on a few more cheesecloth tatters. She seemed the same as ever. Well, no, now that you mention it, maybe she was a little more preoccupied than usual, but Emmy could always hold two thoughts at the same time. I never knew a person more in touch with both sides of her brain.”

  She threw out her hands, dramatically gesturing to the room in which they sat. “I mean, look at this office: sloppy creative choreographer on one side, spastically neat administrator on this side. And both were valid parts. Sometimes she d have trouble changing gears and we’d threaten to board her up in the executive board room. She'd hoot and mellow out again.”

  “We were told she was expecting a telephone call," said Sigrid. “Did she mention it?”

  “I think someone-Rikki? or was that Ginger?-said that was why she and Eric ate lunch in here alone, but Emmy didn't say anything to me about any phone calls. As far as I’m concerned, that's why we bought an answering machine.”

  As the session drew to an end, Elaine Albee suddenly asked, “Did you like her?”

  Delgado stopped playing with the sparkly earring. She looked at it blankly for a moment, almost as if she'd never seen it before, then said, “Good question, doll. I guess I liked the dancer part of her-maybe because she loved it so much. And I liked the bawdy, don’t-give-a- damn-’bout-nothing side of her when she’d kick back and open a bottle of champagne.”

  She slipped the post of her earring through her earlobe and adjusted the bangle. “What I didn’t like was her preacher side. This place used to be a church, you know, and sometimes I’d think we still had a pulpit out front and center on the stage.”

  “What did she preach about?” asked Sigrid.

  “Oh Lord! I don’t know if I can give you an example off the top of my head. It was never over anything really big.” Delgado thought for a moment. "Okay, how’s this: one of our friends-has anyone told you about David Orland? How he and Emmy were together before she moved in with Eric?”

  Sigrid and Elaine nodded, so Helen Delgado continued, “This was last winter when they were still living together. David got us an incredible deal on some decent sound equipment and Emmy decided that the stuff had to’ve been stolen for that price. David said so what? He didn’t steal it, she didn’t steal it, so as long as they were clean, what difference did it make?

  “He and Sergio finally had to wait till she was out, then they put a big dent on the console of the synthesizer and told her that was probably why it was so cheap- salvaged goods. Too late, though. I think that’s why she dumped him.”

  “Not wanting to be a receiver of stolen goods is hardly a character flaw,” Sigrid said stiffly.

  “Maybe not to a cop,” said Delgado with a throaty chuckle, “but when you’re trying to put together a dance theater on nothing, you can’t afford to be too picky about bargains. Maybe that was a bad example. Try this: it was Ginger’s turn to come down one Saturday morning last winter and put up the heat before the kids got here for the first class and she overslept. If she’d just said she’d overslept, Emmy would have bitched a little and that would’ve been the end of it. Instead, Ginger made up some cock- and-bull story about why she was late, and then forgot and let it slip that her clock hadn’t gone off. Emmy went right up in smoke and started preaching about liars and duty and obligations to the company and to the children. How Ginger's negligence left the children shivering in their little leotards. Big deal. So they had to warm up a few minutes longer. It wasn't all that cold inside and-”

  She broke off as the door opened and the police officer who'd been stationed in the green room bustled in with a youth who held a cold wet towel to his face. There were cuts on his jaw and a bruise was already darkening around his swollen eye.

  “David Orland,” the officer told Sigrid. “They’re saying he's the one killed that girl.”

  Chapter 9

  The minor cuts on David Orland's cheek had stopped bleeding and the swelling around his eye seemed to have peaked but the cut on his chin still needed the ice cube someone had provided.

  “I want a doctor and I want a lawyer,” demanded the battered youth. His stubby fingers gingerly probed his square-jawed face for additional damages.

  “That's certainly your right,” said Sigrid. “Albee, get Peters to help you escort the witness over for questioning.”

  “Witness?” yelped Orland. “What witness? I wasn't even here. Listen, I left before the first scene was over-”

  “Mr. Orland,” Sigrid said firmly, “you have the right to a lawyer when you're questioned, but if you choose to give up that right-”

  “I’m not giving up nothing,” he said, thrusting out a belligerent jaw.

  “Fine. Detective Albee?”

  Elaine Albee slid her notes into her calfskin bag and slung it over her shoulder. “Okay, Orland, let’s go.”

  He started to rise, then slumped back into the chair with a fatalistic, “Aw, what the hell?”

  “Does this mean you forego the lawyer?" Sigrid asked, wanting his waiver on the record.

  “Yeah, yeah, ask your questions. I got nothing to hide." He took the cloth-wrapped ice cube from his chin and examined it for fresh blood.

  In assessing this fourth male dancer, Sigrid decided that David Orland was probably a stage name. The
young man had a wiry and well-muscled body and his pugnacious attitude proclaimed him a street-smart Hispanic. Late twenties in age, about five-eleven in height, he had black hair and smoldering dark eyes, with light olive skin. He wore jeans and a denim jacket, but visible through the holes in his fashionably ragged white sweatshirt was a black tank top. Glancing down at his sneakers, Sigrid saw that his feet were sockless except for the stirrups on the black tights he wore beneath his jeans.

  “Begin with your movements today, please,” she said. “Why you came here, when you left, who you saw.”

  “You want it from this morning?” He pulled a worn address book from his back pocket and read them the precise address of the dance class he had attended up near Lincoln Center. “Class breaks before one and it’s a nice day, sun shining and everything, so I tell myself I’ll walk down Eighth Avenue to the Village. Listen, I wasn't even coming here, believe me. But I don't know-somehow I wind up getting here a couple minutes to two and I think what the hell? Might as well stick my head in, right? Count the house, see how they’re shaking down. The kid on the door knows me so I walk in and sit near the back,”

  “You didn’t stay long,” Sigrid observed.

  “I’ve seen them rehearse for the last three weeks and besides, all of a sudden, I remember a phone call I gotta make.”

  “Whom did you call and what telephone did you use?” Sigrid asked, her pen poised.

  “Two booths down the comer," Orland answered promptly. He shifted the cold compress from his swollen eye back to his cut chin, but even bruised and battered he couldn't resist turning straight narrative into animated pantomime with broad hand gestures. “One's out of order, see? And three people's waiting for the other one so I go in the deli there and get a pastrami till this fat lady quits yakking, only she don't and its not all that far to the guy I had to see, so I just walked it.”

  The address was near St. Vincent’s Hospital, less than a ten-minute walk away. It was all very loose, thought Sigrid, looking at the rough timetable. The chances of finding anyone who could confirm Orland’s wait by the telephone were remote. They'd check the friend, of course, and the deli-see if he and his pastrami sandwich were remembered and if so, try to put a specific time on the transaction.

  Time was their problem. They were talking a leeway of minutes. Less than fifteen minutes after Orland left the auditorium, Emmy Mion was dead.

  “Do you have a key to the alley door?” asked Sigrid. “No way, Jose,” he answered fliply.

  “You came back this afternoon. Why?”

  “No reason.” His brown eyes met hers, then darted away. “Nothing else to do. Everybody's usually up after a show and it’s fun to sit in, hear them critique it. When I get here, there's a photographer from the News just leaving and he says what’s happened. Listen, I’m freaking and the cops won't let me in sa I walk around to the alley and come in that way.”

  “I thought you said you didn't have a key.”

  “I don't. The door's unlocked.”

  Sigrid looked sharply at Elaine Albee.

  “I'll find out,” Elaine promised, making a mental note of it. ^ “Hey, Lieutenant, don't you believe me?” Orland asked cockily.

  Sigrid ignored his gibe. “When did you last see Emmy Mion?”

  “Yesterday morning. I'm out for orange juice and the Times and she’s passing by my corner, coming here, so we stop and talk a minute.”

  “Did she seem concerned about anything? Upset?” He shook his head. “Nope, she's just like always- revved up about today's performance, happy about the way things are going here. She gives me a copy of the program and I’m telling you: getting killed by one of those bastards is not on it, believe me,” he said bitterly.

  “Who do you think did it?” asked Sigrid.

  “Listen, Lieutenant, if I know that-” He made a helpless, palms-up gesture. “She also tells me she's gonna move out on Eric, move in with Ginger or maybe live alone awhile. ‘Feature me as a nun, David?”she says. Believe me, she was never a nun. Moving out though, yeah, that’d frost him.”

  “Wingate West?”

  “Naw, he’s too ditsy, but Cliff Delgado? Listen,” he said, leaning forward with the ice cloth in his hand, all flippancy gone from his face, “that’s a volcano looking to erupt, believe me.”

  By five-thirty, Sigrid was ready to disband her troops and call it a day. All the major witnesses had been questioned, wheels had been set in motion at headquarters and computer nets cast. Follow-up on the audience could start tomorrow. The whole theater had been thoroughly searched for potential leads, right down to the letters Emmy Mion had sealed and stamped only a few hours earlier. Ulrike Innes had been called back for that chore since she seemed to be the one most conversant with Mion’s office routines. Sigrid had hoped they might cast light on the dead girl’s frame of mind, but the envelopes held only routine end-of-the-month dance class bills.

  With nothing solid to give them a handle on why Emmy Mion had died, Sigrid dismissed her officers. “We’ll pick it up in my office tomorrow morning.”

  With the dramatic onstage murder immediately interrupting local radio broadcasts and an early television news program using it as the leadoff story at five, the theater’s telephone rang nonstop. Roman Tramegra had written a new message for the answering machine and Ginger judson had taped it so that callers now heard that the weekend’s performances would continue as scheduled in tribute to the troupes late colleague, “whose joyous vision brought the 8th-AV-8 Dance Theater into existence.” (Gingers tremulous voice had broken on the word “joyous” and Cliff Delgado, who was handling the mechanics of the taping, refused to let her do a tape-over. “It’ll tug at their heartstrings,” he told her cynically.) In the green room, Eric Kee and David Orland established a wary truce and, to Roman's wonder, everyone seemed to take it as a matter of course that Orland would dance tonight. In fact, the six dancers had begun to discuss the mechanical problems caused by substituting a male dancer for a female.

  “Who’s dancing Emmy's solo?" asked Helen Delgado in her rich contralto. She had changed into her working clothes, a thigh-length paisley tunic over black stretch pants, and carried a half-bolt of gauzy white cheesecloth. “It’ll take me at least an hour to whip up another ghost costume. Rikki? Ginger?”

  Roman noticed that both women seemed instinctively opposed to the idea.

  “David’s the logical choice,” said Ulrike.

  Eric and Cliff protested, but Rikki overrode them. “It’s less complicated. That way, we five can dance the first scene as we’ve rehearsed it, David improvises the solo, and the only place we’ll have to make changes is when he comes in at the middle of the goblin dance”

  “Listen, you don’t want me to solo, I understand,” said David Orland, tensing again. “I can probably fake the first scene.”

  Eric and Cliff looked at Win, who shrugged. “Up to you, guys.”

  “Rikki’s right,” Eric said reluctantly. “We just don’t have time to rework both scenes before eight o’clock tonight.”

  “Okay,” said David. He propped his foot on the edge of a chair and began untying his sneaker laces. “I’ll need to listen to the tape a couple times and then maybe we can do a quick run-through from where I come in with the goblins?”

  “Tape first,” Helen Delgado said decisively. “Sergio can bring it to my room and you can listen while I rig a new ghost costume.”

  “Certainly,” said the composer, who had sat wordlessly behind his thick glasses until commanded by Helen’s flashing dark eyes. All bony arms and legs, he scurried out to set up a tape player in her workroom.

  The others began to murmur about supper, but Helen paused in the doorway to remind them of the horrible but unavoidable task that had to be performed before the show could go on. “There’s an extra scrub bucket under the sink,” she told them.

  Eric Kee's honey-colored face turned pasty as he realized the meaning of her words. “No,” he moaned. “God, no! I couldn’t!”

 
Roman Tramegra’s own stomach roiled and he sat very still, hoping no one would suggest that a scenarist might pitch in at this point.

  “Men! You’re all a disgusting bunch of babies.” Scornfully, Ginger Judson jumped down from her crosslegged perch atop a table. Her orange freckles stood out against the sudden pallor of her face but she tried to carry it off with bravado. "Women always get stuck cleaning up the messes you make.”

  She jerked open the doors beneath the sink and one of them slammed into Cliff’s shin.

  “Now just a goddamned minute, okay?” he snarled, but Ginger was past caring.

  With tears streaming down her face, she banged a yellow plastic bucket into the sink, dumped in a half-bottle of pine-scented liquid cleanser, and turned the faucet on full.

  Chapter 10

  The little red message light on the answering machine connected to her bedroom phone was blinking when Sigrid got in shortly past six-thirty. She executed the playback sequence, then kicked off her sensible flat-heeled shoes and stepped out of her gray wool slacks as she listened.

  The first message was another wrong number from a private elementary school on the Upper East Side, only this time, instead of an acerbic female, the recorded voice was sorrowfully masculine. It regretted to inform her that “your son Jason missed two unexcused days of school last week.”

  Similar messages had begun appearing on her tape soon after classes started in September and Sigrid had phoned the school three times before giving up. No wonder Jason continued to skip, she thought, unbuttoning the black cotton shirt. As long as the school's machine kept calling her machine, his parents would assume he was safely tucked away on that college prep assembly line. She could hope Jason was using his freedom to visit the zoo or the planetarium or one of the city’s many museums, some place that would actually plant a seed; but experience told her he was probably holed up at a laser tag maze.