The Red Queen Dies

by Frankie Y. Bailey

  Baxter grinned at McCabe. “Damn robot’s as touchy about the name thing as you are.”

  McCabe glanced at him as they walked toward their car. “Thanks for stepping in back there when he threw me by mentioning my family.”

  “Always got your back, partner.”

  “Looks like your favorite sports car is out doing errands.”

  Baxter stared at the empty space where the car had been when they arrived. “I just hope she doesn’t park it in a mall somewhere.”

  They got into their city-issue sedan. As McCabe was buckling her seat belt, she said, “Mike, did you get the sense Lisa Nichols may not be Ashby’s favorite person?”

  “You mean the way he tried to subtly suggest she might have ducked out on the interview?”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “Maybe he’s got the hots for his boss and isn’t thrilled because the fiancée has come between them.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt to check a little bit more on both Ashby and the fiancée.”

  “Just to see if anything turns up?”

  “Never hurts to be thorough,” McCabe said. “As I’m sure Ted Thornton would agree.”

  13

  The trim gray-haired woman who had answered the door at the house in Pine Hills called back over her shoulder, “Thelma, don’t forget to put parsley in the stew.”

  She turned to Pettigrew and Yin. Pettigrew noted that her eyes were red-rimmed under her glasses.

  “I’m Caroline Young,” she said. “You must be the detectives about poor Nils.”

  She used Jorgensen’s given name rather than the name he had been known by on the baseball field.

  “Detectives Pettigrew and Yin, Ms. Young,” Pettigrew said

  She glanced at their badges. “Please come in. I have to go out, but Thelma, who helps me here in the house, will show you up to Nils’s room.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Yin said. “But if we could speak to you for just a few minutes before you leave.”

  Ms. Young glanced at the watch on her wrist. “I can give you a few minutes, but I’m due at the community center. We have to finish putting together the care packages we’re shipping out to the soldiers.” She sighed. “I remember my mother doing that when I was a child. We’re still doing it.”

  “Yes, ma’am, we won’t keep you,” Pettigrew said, “Is there anything you can tell us about Swede … Nils?”

  Ms. Young nodded her head, “He came here to live three years ago. I explained at the time that I run a respectable boardinghouse. He always followed my rules.” She frowned slightly. “At least he did until last Friday evening, when I caught him sneaking down the back stairs with a young woman.”

  Yin said, “So when you saw them, they were on their way out?’

  “Yes, and Nils claimed they’d needed to speak in private and that was the reason he’d taken her up to his room.”

  Pettigrew said, “I don’t suppose he introduced the young woman?”

  “Introduced her? She ran past me and out the door.” Ms. Young’s lips tightened. “She was barely out of her teens, from what I saw of her.”

  “Did Jorgensen go after her?” Yin asked.

  “He stayed for a few minutes to try to explain himself to me. And then he went out, whether after her or not, I can’t say.”

  “When did he come back in?”

  “To the best of my knowledge, he didn’t return until the next morning. He came in as Thelma and I were getting breakfast set out.”

  “Did he mention where he’d been?” Pettigrew asked.

  “No, and I didn’t ask. It was not my business.”

  “How many other boarders do you have, Ms. Young?” Yin asked.

  “Three others. Two of them travel with their jobs. Roy, who has the room across from Nils, is usually here. He’s retired.”

  “Is he here now?”

  “He said he was going out for a walk, but I expect he’ll be back soon.” She glanced at her watch. “And now I do have to leave.” She picked up her wide-brimmed straw hat from the table by the door. “I am very sorry about Nils. In spite of the recent incident involving the young woman, I found him a good boarder.” She sniffed and blinked behind her glasses. “And a good man.” She called out, “Thelma, please show the detectives up to Mr. Jorgensen’s room.”

  Thelma bustled in from the kitchen as Ms. Young was going out the door. She looked to be in her forties, perhaps a couple of decades younger than her employer, plump, with rosy cheeks. She said nothing other than “His room is upstairs.”

  They followed her up to the second floor. She pointed at a closed door halfway down the hall. Then she turned and went back down the stairs.

  “Guess it’s not locked,” Yin said.

  They opened the door of Swede Jorgensen’s room and went in.

  “Maybe he had to sell everything to pay off the IRS,” Pettigrew said as they glanced from bed to dresser to armchair and lamp table by the window.

  “Maybe he was practicing to be a monk,” Yin said.

  Pettigrew opened the closet door. “Clothes, but not too many of them.”

  Yin walked over to the dresser. “Well, maybe we’ll find something in a pocket or in his sock drawer.”

  After he was done with the closet, Pettigrew got down on his knees to look under the bed. “Not even dust.”

  He lifted the edge of the mattress, then the pillows.

  Yin dropped the chair cushion that he had been looking under. “I guess we should have expected this after we saw what the hospital called his ‘possessions.’ The clothes he had on when he was brought in, a bus pass, and a pack of energy gum.”

  “Yeah, but I still think the thugs might have gone through his pockets and taken whatever—”

  “Sean, there’s no record the guy even had an ORB. It looks like he was trying to live off the grid.”

  From the doorway, a squeaky voice said, “You the cops?”

  The man in the doorway was no more than five feet tall, a shriveled little man with a full gray beard and bowlegs in his overalls. He was holding a bug-eyed Chihuahua.

  Pettigrew said, “Your landlady allows pets?”

  “She’s okay with Max. Max doesn’t yip unless something’s wrong.”

  “Has he been yipping lately?”

  “Nah. It’s been quiet around here. Except for when Swede’s little friend dropped by and Caroline caught them.”

  “So you were here when that happened?” Yin said.

  “Yeah, but I was asleep until Swede and Caroline started arguing on the back stairs.”

  “So you didn’t see the girl?” Pettigrew asked.

  “Nope. Just heard the yelling about her.”

  “Did Swede say anything to you about what happened?” Yin asked.

  “Swede wasn’t much of a sharer. Or a talker, for that matter.”

  “So,” Yin said, “I guess there’s nothing you can tell us, Mr.—”

  “LeBlanc. LeRoy LeBlanc. And I didn’t say that.” He nodded his head toward the hall. “Come over to my room. I got something to show you.”

  Pettigrew and Yin crossed the hall and stood in the doorway of LeBlanc’s room, staring. “You collect locks and keys?” Pettigrew said.

  “Used to be a locksmith,” LeBlanc said. “Like to keep my hand in.”

  He found what he was looking for in the one clear space on his desk. Something wrapped in a wad of paper.

  “I found this out in the yard after Swede and the girl were here. I was going to give it to him to return to his girlfriend.”

  Pettigrew unwrapped the paper. It was a lipstick case and mirror.

  “Looks like real gold,” Yin said.

  LeBlanc laughed. “Yeah. So what does a girl with money and looks want with old Swede?”

  Pettigrew opened the tube and rolled it up to make sure it did contain lipstick. “Pink,” he said. “We should ask if she was a blonde.”

  Yin said, “Casey wears pink lipstick sometimes. She’s a redhead.”


  “Got anything else for us?” Pettigrew asked LeBlanc.

  “Nope, that’s it. But you might want to talk to Thelma, if you haven’t already. She saw the girl and Swede come in.”

  Thelma was in the small greenhouse off the kitchen. Pettigrew glanced around and thought again of trying to grow a few things on the terrace of his apartment.

  In answer to Yin’s question, Thelma said her last name was Wilson.

  “Yes, I saw them. I was going to tell Caroline when she came back. But she caught them herself.”

  “Did you hear any of the conversation?” Yin asked. “Between the girl and Jorgensen, I mean.”

  “They weren’t talking. Just trying to sneak up the stairs.”

  “So they were in a hurry?” Pettigrew said.

  Wilson turned and gave him a look. “Yes, but I don’t think it was for what you’re thinking. That girl looked scared. He looked upset, too.”

  Yin said, “But she was going with him willingly?”

  “She seemed to be. If she hadn’t, I would have said something to him right then and there.”

  Pettigrew said, “Did you get a good look at the girl?”

  Wilson nodded. “Long blond hair, big blue eyes, skinny but pretty. She was wearing a white dress, looked like it cost a lot of money. Little sandals on her feet.”

  “You seem to be a very observant woman,” Pettigrew said. “What did you think of Swede?”

  She considered that for a moment. “He was all right. Never gave me or Caroline any trouble. Worked down at the docks, but he never made a mess when he came in. Never had much to say, but polite when he asked for something.”

  Pettigrew said, “Ms. Wilson, would you be willing to come down to the station and give a sketch artist a description of the girl? That might help us locate her.”

  “I’ll come. But you might be too late to help her if those same men who beat him up got hold of her.”

  14

  Friday Evening

  “No, I don’t want to go with you,” Angus said. “I want to stay here with my shoes off, watching Bette Davis go blind and die. Then I’m going to start reading that new book about what might have happened if Truman really had beaten Dewey. Probably a lot of academic gibberish, but I might want to write a review.” He waved his hand at her. “I got myself a full evening planned. Get out of here and go spend some time with your friends. Tell ’em I said hello.”

  McCabe kissed her father’s forehead and left him to watch Davis’s Dark Victory.

  She intended to take the evening off. The toxicology report had confirmed that Vivian Jessup had died of a lethal phenol injection. The same way that Bethany Clark and Sharon Giovanni, the first two victims, had died.

  Tomorrow, she and Baxter would go down to the City to meet an NYPD detective and go to Jessup’s condo. Then they would come back and meet with the other members of the task force that the commander had put together. They would go over what they had and try to figure out what, if anything, the three victims, two Albany girls, one twenty-two, the other twenty-one, and a Broadway actress, British-born, age forty-seven, had had in common.

  Tonight, McCabe didn’t want to think about it. She had exchanged her workday blouse and slacks for a silk top and skirt and she was going to sit in her friend Chelsea’s café restaurant and listen to whoever was playing the piano.

  On Friday night, Chelsea’s Place got busy. Reservations required.

  As McCabe slid past the people waiting to be shown to tables, she heard a woman tell her male companion, “You have to try the zucchini pasta. I had it when I was here for lunch last week and…”

  Somehow, Chelsea and her husband, Stan, managed to combine concepts like healthy, locally grown, vegetarian-based cuisine with cool vibes and live jazz on weekends, and make it work.

  “Hi, slugger,” Stan said when McCabe waved to him from the double kitchen doors. “Come on in and talk to me.”

  McCabe made her way into the heart of the kitchen. She perched on her usual stool in the corner, out of the flow of the controlled chaos of the kitchen staff, but within chatting distance of Stan’s workstation. “Looks busy out there,” she said. “Did Chelsea desert you?”

  “She’ll be back in a few minutes. She’s on an emergency run to the supermarket.”

  “The supermarket? Chelsea?”

  Stan laughed. “I offered to send someone, but she said we needed all of the staff here working on a Friday evening.”

  “What emergency could make Chelsea walk into a supermarket?”

  “Sea salt. Our vendor left it out of our order. We don’t have enough to get through the evening.”

  McCabe smiled. “And it didn’t occur to Chelsea to just announce to any diner who complained that salt’s bad for you.”

  “She thought of that, but I vetoed the idea. Can’t expect the diners who are only occasional vegetarians to be purists.”

  “That’s why I love you, Stan. You acknowledge the need for salt, chocolate, and fat, along with fruits and veggies.”

  Stan wiped his hands on a cloth and poured wine from the bottle on the counter into a glass. “And good wine from the grape,” he said.

  He brought the glass over to her.

  “Thank you,” McCabe said. “This is exactly what I need.”

  “Long day?” he said, picking up his knife again.

  McCabe watched him attack the mountain of kale in front of him.

  “And not much to show for it,” she said.

  “Case getting you down? Want to talk about it?”

  “Not really,” McCabe said, and leaned back against the wall.

  “How’s it going with your brother?”

  “He and Pop are watching soccer together these days. He and I are awkward.”

  “Thought of sitting down with him and getting it all out in the open?”

  “We did that once. It didn’t work.”

  “But you’re both older now.”

  “And he’s still in a wheelchair. A super-duper wheelchair, but a wheelchair. And I’m still walking and running.” McCabe took a sip of her wine. “So it’s the same old, same old.”

  “Maybe you’ll be able to get to know each other again now that he’s back in Albany.”

  “Maybe,” McCabe said.

  Stan went on with his work, a big man with a weight lifter’s build, who was sensitive enough to know when to let a conversation lag.

  McCabe settled into the noise around her, letting her body relax.

  * * *

  Chelsea burst into the kitchen. A five-four dynamo carrying a tote bag filled with cartons of salt. She dropped the tote bag on the counter.

  “There was a woman standing right there in the middle of the supermarket offering samples of grilled bioengineered beef strips.”

  “Well, at least, they were grilled,” her husband said.

  “Do you know how they—”

  “Hannah’s here,” Stan said.

  Chelsea whirled toward McCabe’s corner. “Hi, girl. You made it.” She came over and gave McCabe a hug. “Love that top.”

  “You should,” Hank said. “You gave it to me two Christmases ago.”

  “I know. I just wanted to remind you that I have excellent taste. How’s it going with—”

  A crash, a tray of dishes hitting the tile floor, sent Chelsea dashing. “Back in a moment and we’ll talk.”

  McCabe shook her head at Stan and slid off her stool. “I’m going to get out of the way and go listen to the music for a while.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell Chelsea to catch up with you out front.”

  McCabe kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks for letting me hang out in your kitchen.”

  “Always glad to have your company, slugger. Come over to the house for breakfast on Sunday. Real waffles. I promise.”

  “In that case, I’ll be there. Unless I have to work. Right now, I’m going to go claim my table. I have a reservation tonight. I’m going to go sit at one of your tables like a real customer. And
I want my check, Stan.”

  He held up his hand in pledge. “We will send it to you, ma’am. Can’t have a cop always eating here for free.”

  “Nope, neither a cop nor a friend.”

  * * *

  At shortly before midnight, when the last set was over and most of the supper crowd had departed, Chelsea plopped down in the other chair at McCabe’s table.

  “Now we might actually have a chance to talk.”

  “I came for dinner and the music, Chelsea Ann. I told you the third time you popped by that I was fine tucked here in my corner. Your new appetizer and dessert menus are excellent, by the way.”

  Chelsea shook her head, “And healthy, in the event one of our customers decides to have appetizers and desserts instead of a balanced meal. Stan says you’re coming to breakfast on Sunday. Bring your dad, too.”

  “You know that’s not going to happen. Retired or not, Sunday is Pop’s day of rest. Breakfast in bed with his newspaper.”

  “The man does know how to take it easy.”

  “Except now he needs to get more exercise.”

  “Is he beginning to perk up?”

  “I think he may be turning the corner.”

  Chelsea said, “That reminds me, did I tell you that our lawyer has a new associate in his office?”

  “No, you didn’t mention that,” McCabe said.

  “Six-three, gorgeous, funny—”

  “No, Chelsea.”

  “But he’s—”

  “No, Chelsea.”

  “You just spent a Friday evening sitting alone at a table—”

  “It was exactly how I wanted to spend my Friday evening. What happened at the doctor’s?”

  Chelsea made a face. “I really hate getting up on that table with my legs in the air. You would think they’d have figured out a more dignified—”

  “Chelsea Anne, tell me—”

  “She said I’ve healed from the miscarriage. It’s okay to have another try at a baby.”

  “This time, it will be all right.”

  “It better be. This time, Mother Nature better not even think of keeping me from being a mother.”

  “That’s exactly the expression you had on your face the day you punched Joey Morgan in the stomach.”

  Chelsea smiled. “I couldn’t believe I’d really done that. Not until everyone started applauding.”