Baby Doll Games

by Margaret Maron

  “Don’t be a goop, Siga. We often talk about him.” Anne slipped on a gray wool car coat and wound a burgundy scarf loosely over her hair. “Don’t forget your hat. Did I have gloves?”, Sigrid remained seated. “Never about him and the force.”

  “Really, Sigrid! Even if that were true, which it isn’t, this is hardly the time or the place to begin. People are waiting for our chairs.” Anne made an unconvincing show of looking at her watch. “I‘ve got to run, too. I just remembered that there’s a sublet opening up near Columbus Circle and I was supposed to let them know by this afternoon if I wanted it.”

  This time Sigrid was distracted. “You aren’t going to move again, are you? I thought you liked the Chelsea area.” When other women were bored with a place, they usually junked their old furniture or called in the decorators. Anne Harald notoriously kept her old furniture and instead changed her apartments as frequently as the seasons. Sigrid abhorred chaos and upheaval and remembered with horror a childhood period when Anne moved them into five different apartments within the space of fourteen months. No wonder St. Margaret's had come to feel so safe and so blessedly fixed in time and space, She snatched up her raincoat and hat and hurried after her mother, who had already threaded her way through the crowd to the cash register at the front. By the time Sigrid caught up with her, she had paid and was about to step outside.

  The rain had slackened into a chill drizzle, but after their hour in the overheated restaurant, the wind felt icy and made their goodbyes brief. Sigrid leaned down and Anne stood on tiptoe to kiss her cheek.

  “I'll call you soon,” she promised. Sigrid caught a familiar whiff of jasmine cologne and then Anne had disappeared into Chinatown's narrow clamor.

  As she turned in the opposite direction and headed back to work, however, Sigrid found herself remembering all die times her mother had indeed managed not to talk about Leif Harald. At least not about his police career. Family events, yes. Anecdotes that kept his memory vivid for a daughter who could barely remember him, yes. But of the work which must have occupied half his waking hours, almost never. And despite being a professional photographer, she had taken only one or two pictures of him in uniform. Taken, Sigrid now wondered, or kept?

  Was it because Leif Harald had been killed in the line of duty? Something about his death?

  Last month, for the first time, Sigrid had finally learned that her boss, Captain McKinnon, had been partnered with her father, and had actually been there when he was killed. In the time she had worked for him, Sigrid knew that she’d spoken McKinnon’s name several times in conversation with Anne; yet, until she witnessed an accidental meeting between Anne and the captain, she’d had no suspicion that the two had once known each other.

  Anne had immediately taken off for an assignment in South America, refusing to discuss it; and when Sigrid confronted McKinnon, his only response had been a terse admission that Anne blamed him for Leif’s death.

  “Is she right?” Sigrid had asked bluntly.

  “Read the records for yourself,” McKinnon had told her.

  She had. There was nothing among those yellowing papers to change the way she’d always imagined her father s death or to conflict with the bare facts Anne had told her when she was old enough to understand: acting on a tip, Detectives Harald and McKinnon had tried to arrest a suspected felon thought to be hiding in a seedy hotel just off Times Square.

  The felon was not considered dangerous and had never before been known to carry a weapon. Reading between the lines, Sigrid sensed that her father had gone in overly confident, with only minimum precaution.

  His confidence had cost him his life.

  McKinnon had been backup and he’d returned the felon’s fire, killing him instantly. No mystery there.

  Yet Anne shied away from Sigrid’s probing questions.

  Why?

  Chapter 17

  On the way up to her office after lunch, Sigrid signed for a packet from the medical examiner’s office and when she reached her desk, she read through the technical language that officially confirmed what Christa Ferrell had ascertained informally on Saturday: Emmy Mion had died from massive trauma to and hemorrhage of the left carotid artery.

  The force with which the dancer had been thrown upon the spiked fence had contributed other serious injuries-the report detailed broken ribs, ruptured spleen, collapsed lung, internal bleeding. Those she might have survived, but not that sharp iron point through the side of her neck.

  No surprises there, but then Sigrid reached the description of what the dead woman had worn, all of which would have been sent to the department’s property clerk: a tattered white cheesecloth dress, a sleeveless white Lycra leotard, white cotton underpants, a taffeta hair ribbon, a pair of gold stud earrings, a gold pinkie ring with the initial E on it.

  Officer Paula Guidry’s photographs of the crime scene had come in that morning and Sigrid leafed through the prints until she found a close-up of Emmy Mion’s head and shoulders. Using the brass-bound magnifying glass that doubled as an occasional paperweight, Sigrid examined the photograph in minute detail.

  Odd, she thought.

  Guidry was a thorough photographer and she had taken the same shot from three different angles, yet Sigrid still couldn’t see it.

  She flipped through the rotary card file beside her telephone for the number to Dr. Cohen’s direct line. Through her open door, as she waited for the assistant medical examiner to answer his phone, she saw Elaine Albee, Jim Lowry, and Bernie Peters returning from lunch and signaled for them to join her.

  “Cohen here,” said a flat nasal voice in her ear.

  “Lieutenant Harald,” she answered, tapping the part of the. report she wanted the others to read. “About that report you did on Emmy Mion-”

  “Yeah?”

  “Among her personal effects, you list a taffeta hair ribbon.”

  “I’ve examined the photographs and I don't see any ribbon. Where was she wearing it?”

  “She wasn’t. It was in First National.”

  “What?”

  “Between her boobs. That’s what my grandma used to say. You want to hear more about my grandma or can I get back to this alleged vehicular homicide you interrupted?”

  Elaine Albee volunteered to go request the ribbon from property and while they waited, Sigrid remembered to ask Bernie Peters about the Darlene Makaroff-Ray Thorpe case. The freshness of his memory for the details surprised Sigrid, but then, of course, he’d actually worked it, she thought, and having two little girls of his own must have personalized the tragedy for him.

  “Cute kids,” he concluded. “I’m glad they won’t have to testify.”

  “They won’t? How do you know?‘They picked Thorpe up in Queens last weekend; the arraignment was Tuesday. He bargained a manslaughter-one.”

  “Tuesday?” Sigrid's voice went cold. “I read the case file yesterday. There’s nothing in it about Thorpe’s arrest or arraignment.”

  “Still on my desk,” Peters said sheepishly. “I guess I’m a little behind in my paperwork.”

  “At least a week,” Sigrid agreed, her eyes icy with disapproval. “Have it on my desk, complete and up-to- date, before you leave today.”

  Jim Lowry shifted uncomfortably in his own seat and looked relieved when the tension in the small office was broken by Matt Eberstadt, who stuck his frizzy gray head in the door and waved a square white pastry box. “Dessert, anybody?”

  Peters, grateful for the opportunity to distract attention from Lieutenant Harald’s censure, said, “I thought you promised Frances you'd stick to fruit for dessert.” Frances Eberstadt had enlisted in the losing battle with her husband’s waistline.

  “This is fruit,” grinned Eberstadt. “Apple-raisin turnovers.”

  The ribbon with which Elaine Albee returned was a plaid taffeta, predominantly red and blue, an inch wide and eighteen inches long, and so crumpled and creased that it'd lost most of its original crispness except for an inch or two in the middle that
was now stiff with dried blood.

  Sigrid frowned. “Emmy Mion had very short hair, didn’t she?”

  “A pixie cut,” Albee agreed. “Much too short for a ponytail. And this ribbon’s not long enough to tie around her head. So why was she carrying it?”

  Jim Lowry looked up from the sinuous ribbons he had doodled across his notepad. “Probably found it on the floor and just picked it up absent-mindedly-”

  “-and put it in Boston Security for safekeeping,” said Eberstadt, unconsciously echoing Cohen.

  “Where?" laughed Elaine.

  Eberstadt chuckled. There was a small fleck of apple on his upper lip. “My Aunt Madge had a chest like a wardrobe. If she didn’t have a purse with her, that’s where she’d carry a letter or handkerchief or folding money. And since she was from Massachusetts-”

  Lowry grinned at Elaine and started to add something bawdy then suddenly remembered whose office they were in. The lieutenant was not known for a sense of humor.

  Sigrid barely heard their banter. She wove the ribbon ends through her ringless fingers and tried to remember. A small face and plaid ribbons in twin ponytails… of course, there were thousands of children and miles of ribbon in this city, but still… The Gillespie folder was still on her desk from yesterday and, yes, little nine-year-old Amanda Gillespie had been strangled with one of her own hair ribbons. Said hair ribbon was described as red-and-blue plaid taffeta, one inch wide, eighteen inches long, and currently being held by property as evidence for when and if a suspect in the child’s murder was brought to trial.

  That only one ribbon was being held would seem to indicate only one ribbon had been found on the child’s body.

  “Cluett-” Sigrid looked around and noticed for the first time that Detective Mick Cluett had not returned from lunch.

  “Um, Lieutenant.” Jim Lowry pointed to a memo which Sigrid had overlooked in her In-basket. “He said he thought he was coming down with the flu or something.”

  “He looked pasty and his forehead felt a little hot,” Albee added as Sigrid read Cluett’s note that he was going to see his doctor and probably wouldn’t be back to work that day.

  She returned it to her basket without comment. “Eberstadt, see if Hentz is around and ask him to join us, please.”

  “Did that ribbon belong to the Gillespie child?” asked Elaine alertly, as Eberstadt moved past her.

  ‘“The description matches,” Sigrid replied noncommittally, handing her the pertinent form.

  “Oh, Lordy!” Jim was reading over Elaine’s shoulder. “If Mion found that ribbon in a place that implicated one of those guys in the kid’s death, now that’s some motive!”

  “And it would have to be after she’d gotten dressed or else why stick the ribbon there?” Elaine’s face mirrored her excitement. She riffled through her notes, trying to document the dancer’s every movement after dressing.

  Bernie Peters had been smarting over his reprimand, but now he, too, reached for the description of Amanda Gillespie’s ribbon.

  Matt Eberstadt returned with Detective Hentz, a trim and dapper officer whose dark hair had begun to show a little gray at the temples.

  “You wanted to see me, Lieutenant?” As always, Sam Hentz managed to attach a slight sneer to her title. He didn’t like women working homicide and having to maintain a pretense of civility with a younger woman who outranked him clearly galled even more.

  His hostility made Sigrid uncomfortable but Hentz was a better-than-average officer. As long as he did his work competently and as long as he didn’t openly challenge her authority, she was forced to maintain her own facade of indifference and put up with it. Nevertheless, both of them knew quite well what would happen if Hentz ever goofed and the lieutenant found out about it.

  “The Amanda Gillespie case,” Sigrid told him, motioning him to a chair.

  “I’ll stand, thanks,” said Hentz, his voice as cool as hers. He did take the file she pushed toward him, however, and scanned it, refreshing his memory. “Okay. What do you want to know?”

  “The child seems to have worn her hair in two ponytails most of the time. Two elastic bands and two hair ribbons, yet only one ribbon’s listed in the M.E.’s report- the one that strangled her.”

  “So?”

  “Was there a second ribbon?”

  Hentz shot the cuffs of his navy-and-white pinstripe shirt, leaned against the door frame, and folded his arms across the front of his crisply tailored charcoal suit, still holding the file. "She was wearing two the last time anyone noticed her as the class broke up, but the only one we found last February was around her neck. We figured the killer kept a souvenir.” He nodded toward the one in her hand. "Where'd you find it?”

  “Is it the mate?”

  “Looks like it. Where’d you find it?” he repeated sharply.

  “On the body of Emmy Mion. She was killed Saturday at-”

  “At that dance theater over on Eighth Avenue. Yeah, I heard.”

  “The same dance theater where the Gillespie child had been the afternoon she was killed,” Sigrid continued mildly.

  She laid the colorful red-and-blue ribbon on her desk and leaned back in her chair. “How thoroughly did you look at that theater last February?”

  Hentz met her level gaze with an appraising look of his own. “As thoroughly as we felt the place deserved. If you mean did we search it, no, we didn’t. We questioned the dancers, talked to the kids with a psychiatrist present-”

  “Dr. Ferrell?”

  “Classy blonde. I forget her name. Anyhow, there was nothing immediate to link the theater with the kid’s death. She was found four blocks from the place, practically on her own doorstep. Her killer could have been anybody- from the building, from her school, a nut from anywhere in the neighborhood. You know the odds.”

  “But you did question the parents about the dance troupe?” asked Elaine Albee.

  Hentz started to ignore her, but something about the way the lieutenant sat so quietly, watching, made him swallow his irritation. “We did the whole drill, Albee. Not one of those kids had ever complained about being touched or molested in any way by one of those dancers, and parents are damn well on the lookout for things like that these days.”

  Sigrid glanced around the momentarily silent group. “Any other questions? That'll be all then, Hentz.”

  But Hentz did not move. “That dancer-you think she found out who strangled Amanda Gillespie?”

  “It's the best motive we’ve come up with yet.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Hentz’s face was grim. “She was such a tiny little thing and he threw her in a snowbank and just left her there like she was a piece of garbage.” His voice took on remembered anger. “Don’t leave this one in the open file, Lieutenant. Nail the bastard!”

  Chapter 18

  With the preliminaries of this ease out of the way, Sigrid let Eberstadt and Peters return to work on other ongoing investigations. Those two were concurrently responsible for a rape-homicide, a domestic stabbing, and, from last Friday morning, what looked like a botched murder-suicide pact between an elderly husband and his cancer-stricken wife. Unfortunately the husband’s aim was so bad, he’d missed his own heart and was expected to live, which meant he was going to come out of his coma feeing an automatic charge of manslaughter-second.

  Albee and Lowry went off to compare the taffeta hair ribbon found on Emmy Mion’s body with the one still at property. If it matched as perfectly as they expected, they planned to visit the Gillespie child’s parents.

  Piled on Sigrid’s desk was more than enough paper to occupy the rest of her afternoon and that would have been the sensible thing to attack. Or she might have waited until Captain McKinnon returned from a conference and gone in to brief him on the status of the cases under her direction. Instead, as soon as her office cleared, she slipped on her raincoat and hat, left word with the front desk where she’d be and, with a vague sense of playing hooky, headed for the 8th-AV-8 Dance Theater.

&nb
sp; Exiting with her fellow subway riders, Sigrid came up a flight of grubby wet metal steps beside a store whose windows reflected the schizophrenia of the season: cardboard monsters and remaindered Halloween candy, drastically reduced, were wedged in with Thanksgiving turkey candies, foil-wrapped chocolate Chanukah gelt, and Christmas tree ornaments. The cold rain fell heavily now, making the late afternoon even grayer; and a partially clogged grate at the corner had formed a pool of dirty water at the crossing so that pedestrians were having to take wide detours around and through vehicular traffic to avoid it.

  Sigrid turned up the collar of her raincoat, tugged her hat down firmly and sprinted for the theater, which lay two blocks north.

  Inside the narrow lobby, she felt an immediate wave of warm air. Someone must have decided that the budget could afford heat. From deeper within the theater came the sound of drumbeats and childish voices.

  A young woman holding a clipboard stepped around the partition that separated the lobby from the auditorium and looked Sigrid up and down. "Are you a parent?” she asked suspiciously.

  “No,” Sigrid replied. “Police.”

  “May I see some identification?”

  Sigrid complied and the woman neatly copied her name and the time onto the sheet of paper on her clipboard. “We’re probably locking the barn door too late,” she said grimly, “but better late than never. Do you know who killed Emmy yet?”

  “We’re still investigating, Mrs.-?”

  “Weinberg. Liz Weinberg. I have a son and daughter in today's class.”

  Sigrid vaguely remembered seeing the Weinberg name on a supplementary list of parents not yet interviewed. “You weren’t here when it happened Saturday?”

  “No, thank God! We had a bar mitzvah up in Syracuse this weekend- Didn’t get back till last night and the phone ringing off the hook till all hours while we worked out a schedule. From now on the alley door stays locked and everybody has to sign in whenever the kids are here.” Evidently it had not occurred to the young mother that they might be locking the fox in with the chickens, thought Sigrid, passing into the darkened auditorium.