The Right Jack (Sigrid Harald)

by Margaret Maron

  Jill Gill was the player to pinpoint his last movements. Others had seen the young busboy policing the ash stands out on the landing—”I felt so guilty,” confessed one woman. “He’d just picked three butts out of the sand and here I came with another!”—but only Dr. Gill could tell Elaine Albee, “It was exactly 10:41. I looked at my watch because our break was supposed to last fifteen minutes. Almost nobody’d started back inside though, so I thought I’d still have time to duck into the ladies’.

  “You know how you’ll look around for the nearest inconspicuous door? Well, I saw the busboy pass through a door next to the elevators and I started to follow and then I saw ‘No admittance,’ so I went elsewhere.”

  If anyone else had seen young Johnson after 10:41, they weren’t saying.

  The service landing beyond that door was not visible from the service door at the rear of the Bontemps Room; but LeMays, the busboy who’d used the corridor and freight elevator to fetch more cups from the kitchen, swore the area was deserted when he went down at eleven o’clock.

  He and two others agreed that Ted Flythe had left by the rear hall shortly after the break began. They didn’t think he had returned that way. Nor could any of the Graphic Games people alibi Flythe. It was generally agreed that he did not return to the Bontemps Room and call for order until 10:55.

  Fourteen minutes between the last glimpse of Pernell Johnson and the next view of Ted Flythe.

  “You could go anywhere in this building and back again in fourteen minutes.” Alan Knight frowned. “Aren’t you going to question him?”

  “Not yet,” said Sigrid, touching her hair in absent-minded uneasiness. Roman had used a gentler hand than hers when helping to pin up her hair earlier that morning and she didn’t trust the dark mass not to come sliding down. “If he’s Fred Hamilton, it’s taken more than good luck to stay out of prison all these years.”

  “ESP?”

  “Or the science of body language or whatever else you want to call it,” she said patiently. “No, he can’t read minds, but he’s probably good at picking up unconscious signals like voice tones or eye tension. We’ll know for sure when the prints come in tomorrow, and then we’ll arrest him and do our questioning where there’s no chance of his disappearing for another fifteen years, okay?”

  “You’re the expert.”

  “And you’re not?”

  Knight shrugged. “Look, they gave me a sailor suit, a cram course at Newport, and told me to go read a couple of books. I’m pretty intelligent but whether that qualifies me for Intelligence, I couldn’t say. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but you’re my first real field operation.”

  “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” she said.

  By then, it was nearly four, most of the players had gone, and the Graphic Games crew were packing up the last of their boards and dismantling the display cases out in the hall.

  Feeling somewhat guilty because she’d avoided his Sunday dinner, Sigrid phoned Roman Tramegra to ask if he’d like something from the deli for supper.

  “Don’t bother, my dear. I’ve held the veal.”

  Her heart sank.

  “Is the tournament over?” he asked. “Why don’t you ask Dr. Gill to join us? There’s enough.”

  Fortunately, Jill Gill had not yet departed. “He probably wants me to vet his cockroach article,” she said cheerfully when Sigrid relayed the invitation. “I told him I would.”

  “Cockroaches?” asked Alan Knight curiously.

  “Five hundred spine-chilling words on an insect that can and does live anywhere man can. I believe he hopes to sell it to The National Enquirer. Can’t you see the headline now? ‘Biological Time Bomb Already in Place.’” She smiled at Sigrid through her rhinestone-and-turquoise glasses. “I’ll be happy to come.”

  “It’s anised veal,” Sigrid warned.

  “I can eat anything the roaches eat.”

  “Me, too,” said Alan Knight, with a hopeful expression on his handsome face.

  Sigrid was taken off guard.

  “Oh, let him come,” laughed Jill, pulling on a bright red sweater. “He’ll balance the table and anyhow, Roman will love him. He’s never done an article about the Navy, has he?”

  It was true that Roman would like having fresh brains to pick. But more importantly, thought Sigrid, four people sharing a meal originally planned for two should certainly ensure no leftovers.

  In the end, five sat down to dine on Roman’s creation. Nauman turned up unexpectedly with a bottle of wine and some tapes and chapter notes which he thought might interest Sigrid from John Sutton’s office at Vanderlyn College. To help Val, he had volunteered to clean out her husband’s desk and pack up his books and personal effects. Nauman had also brought along some snapshots he found of the Suttons’ McClellan days, including one fuzzy group pose.

  “There’s John,” he said, “and I think that’s Fred Hamilton.”

  “He doesn’t look much like Ted Flythe,” said Knight, peering over Sigrid’s shoulder at the faded photograph.

  “Ted Flythe?” asked Dr. Gill from the kitchen sink where she was peeling avocados for Roman. She wiped her hands on a dish towel and leaned across the breakfast counter where they were clustered in order to see, too. “Why would Professor Sutton have a picture of Ted Flythe?”

  “There’s a possibility that he was once part of a terrorist underground organization that began out at McClellan State.” Sigrid explained the Red Snow connection as she turned the picture so that Jill Gill could get a good look and tapped the figure in the foreground. “What do you think?”

  The entomologist adjusted her harlequin-shaped glasses and examined it closely. “The eyes are similar,” she agreed.

  “Cut the hair, add a beard and fifteen years,” Sigrid said.

  “Insufficient data,” Jill replied and went back to peeling avocados. “Don’t you have fingerprints or something?”

  “They should be coming tomorrow.”

  “Then tomorrow you’ll know for sure, won’t you?” Jill observed sensibly.

  Unperturbed by three extra mouths to feed, Roman was doing a loaves-and-fishes act with salad greens, avocados, and mushrooms. He f1ourished two large Vidalia onions and in his deep bass voice queried, “Who’s unalterably opposed to onions?”

  Alan Knight flashed an insouciant grin in Sigrid’s direction. “Anybody planning to do some kissing later?” he drawled.

  “Where did you find Huck Finn?” asked Nauman, draping his long body onto the couch.

  “Does he strike you as Huck Finn?” Sigrid asked absently. “I’ve been thinking he’s more barefoot boy with cheek.”

  They had repaired to the living room alone after dinner with John Sutton’s tapes and notes, and Sigrid was distracted with extension cords for her portable tape cassette player.

  From the direction of the kitchen came the rumble of Roman’s voice interspersed with Jill and Alan’s lighter tones. Roman was reading aloud from his cockroach article while the two guests cleaned the kitchen and made ribald observations on the mating habits of Blatella germanica.

  Dinner had been a cheerful and slightly rowdy meal, not unusual when people are meeting for the first time and talking over and around each other in layered degrees of familiarity. Oscar and Jill had known each other for years, Sigrid first met all three last spring, and she and Roman had become accidental roommates back in the summer; yet this was the first time the four had dined together. And, of course, this was Nauman and Tramegra’s first meeting with Alan Knight.

  Conversation had ranged from insects to Lucienne Ronay, from nouvelle cuisine to art nouveau, from naval maneuvers to marine zoology—whereupon Alan Knight suggested to Roman that he might get a good article out of crawdads.

  Nauman’s salad fork paused in midair. “What the hell’s a crawdad?”

  “You don’t know what a crawdad is?” grinned Knight, who’d been a bit awed earlier to realize who Nauman was.

  “No, I don’t know what a crawd
ad is.”

  Somehow this clash of cultures so delighted Sigrid that she burst into infectious laughter.

  Roman chose that moment to bring on his entree. “Here we are: veau d’anise avec étables verts,” he announced in his mangled French.

  “What?” asked Nauman. “No chitlins or harmony grits?”

  During dinner they had finished Oscar’s bottle of wine, opened a second, and Sigrid had now brought the remains of a third to the living room with them.

  “Should you be drinking this much with your medication?” Oscar asked when she spread John Sutton’s notes next to the tape player on the low table before them and held out her glass.

  “Nope,” she said happily. “But I haven’t taken a pill since morning, so more wine, garçon,”

  “I’ve never seen you tipsy before.”

  “I’m not tipsy.” She took a slow sip of the amber wine and reconsidered. “Relaxed, perhaps, but definitely not tipsy.”

  She turned on the tape player, slipped off her shoes, and leaned back lightly against his shoulder with her feet tucked under her.

  Pleasantly surprised by her unaccustomed initiative, Oscar shifted slightly so that she fit more comfortably into the curve of his arm while John Sutton’s voice filled the room.

  CHAPTER 23

  Monday began brightly enough, although the kitchen radio was predicting rain by the afternoon.

  Sigrid was in good spirits as she poured herself a glass of juice. She’d slept well and for the first time since Friday night’s incident, her arm barely ached. With her hair tightly braided and pinned into a secure knot at the nape of her neck, she felt more like herself than at any time since the knifing.

  Roman had again helped with her hair, but he was a mixed blessing this morning, surprised that she felt so cheerful and unconvinced that she wasn’t hiding a headache or a hangover.

  “I did not have too much to drink last night and I did not pass out,” she told him firmly. “I barely slept Saturday night and then worked all day yesterday. That’s the only reason I fell asleep on the couch.”

  Roman sniffed.

  Sigrid supposed she deserved his skepticism. True, it had been a little disconcerting to wake up sometime in the middle of the night in the living room with the apartment dark and silent and a blanket tucked around her, but she’d been too drowsy to care. She’d simply stumbled sleepily to her room, shed her clothes, and crawled into bed where she promptly zonked out again.

  “What time did everyone leave?” she asked Roman.

  “Around ten. I wanted to wake you, but Oscar wouldn’t let me. He said he had an early meeting this morning and Jill was yawning, too, so he took her home then.”

  The street gate buzzed and Roman went over to push an electric button that released the latch. “That’ll be young Horatio Hornblower. He told me he’d pick you up this morning.”

  But the figure who opened the gate was neither Alan Knight nor the yeoman driver. This sailor was dark and wiry, the sleeve of his navy-blue jumper had a couple of extra hash marks, and his eyes squinted across the courtyard as if he were staring through the briny spray from a fo’c’sle deck, whatever that was. Sigrid was weak on Navy terminology.

  She opened the door.

  “Lieutenant Knight sent me, ma’am,” he said in as flat a North Jersey accent as Sigrid had ever heard. “He said you’d be expecting him.”

  “I’ll be right out,” said Sigrid and hurried down the hall to put on her gun and load the pockets of her jacket with wallet, ID, and other necessities for the day. In passing, she snagged a thin zippered leather folder that held her notes on the bombing and was out the door before Roman could remind her to carry an umbrella.

  As she pulled the gate shut, the driver jumped out of the gray station wagon and held the door next to the curb for her to enter. Alan Knight was in the far corner with a suspiciously pasty look on his face.

  “You look awful,” Sigrid said by way of greeting. “Are you all right?”

  “It’s going,” he answered, popping another digestive mint into his mouth. “I always thought I could eat anything, but for some reason, I keep tasting licorice this morning.”

  He looked at her closely. “You don’t seem the worse for wear. I thought you’d look like I feel.”

  “I don’t know why everyone seems to assume I had too much wine last night,” Sigrid said stiffly.

  She would have said more, but their driver swerved abruptly with a sharp blast of his horn at a cab that had encroached on his lane. Monday morning rush hour traffic clearly held no terrors for him.

  “Petty Officer Schmitt’s my regular driver,” said Knight unnecessarily.

  The driver’s eyes met Sigrid’s in the mirror. “Ma’am.”

  Sigrid gravely returned his nod.

  At headquarters, her first order of business was to call the hospital. Tillie’s condition continued to improve, they told her.

  Her office was too small to hold everyone working on the Maintenon bombing, so at 9:06 they carried their coffee cups and doughnuts into one of the conference rooms.

  At 9:07, a fingerprint technician licked powdered sugar from his fingers and said, “I’m afraid I have bad news, Lieutenant. The FBI sent us the prints we requested and Ted Flythe’s are nowhere close to Frederick Hamilton’s.”

  “Dead end,” sighed Lowry.

  Sigrid was dismayed. “You’re certain?”

  “Yes, ma’am. See for yourself.”

  She studied the photographic enlargements of both sets of prints. Small arrows had been superimposed on distinguishing loops and whorls. Sigrid was no expert in this area, but even she could see that none of the comparison points matched.

  “That’s not all,” said the fingerprint technician. “I requested the prints of all known Red Snow members and Flythe’s don’t match any of them. Sorry, ma’am.”

  It was a bitter disappointment.

  Sigrid’s assumption of a Red Snow link between John Sutton and Ted Flythe had infected them all. Consciously or unconsciously, they’d let similar assumptions affect the diligence with which they’d looked at other possible suspects that weekend.

  Because Haines Froelick seemed a harmless dilettante, Peters and Eberstadt had only gone through the motions in checking his background; Elaine Albee shared Sigrid’s instinctive rejection of Val Sutton as a killer—“Besides, she wasn’t anywhere near the Maintenon yesterday,” said Albee—and those who’d heard of Molly Baldwin’s lies about her relationship to Commander Dixon had marked the girl as an uncomplicated, self-centered airhead, much as Vassily Ivanovich was their idea of a comic Russian.

  “There’s nothing comic about an ex-demolition expert with a KGB son,” said Sigrid, setting her blue mug on the table with a firm thunk. “Let’s stop thinking in stereotypes and start at the beginning again. Comments? Suggestions?”

  “Well, we know how much money Zachary Wolferman left Froelick,” said Peters, “but what about Commander Dixon if the girl’s her closest relative?”

  “Nothing like six million,” drawled Lieutenant Knight, “but I’d say not much under six hundred thousand.”

  “What?”

  “Damned if I didn’t join the wrong service!” Lowry whistled.

  “We ran a check on her financial records,” Knight said. “As a single officer with twenty-two years in service, she’s been putting a right tidy sum in her credit union account every month. She seems to have inherited some rental property in Miami a few years back and there were some stock certificates. One way or another, I’d say at least a good half-million.”

  Sigrid looked at him suspiciously. “Did you check her financial records before or after you learned of Ivanovich’s KGB connection?”

  “After,” he admitted, returning her gaze blandly. “Standard operating procedure, Lieutenant.”

  “Did you learn anything else you’d care to share with us?” she asked dryly.

  “No, but I was going over my notes just now and if you remember, Ivano
vich told us that Molly Baldwin began college as a chemistry major.”

  “That’s interesting,” said Jim Lowry. “Chemistry might give her the knowledge to cook up something explosive.”

  “I think it’s right interesting how Ivanovich stuck it in his testimony,” countered Knight. “Sort of spreads the wealth around a little.”

  “From each according to his ability?” Sigrid murmured. “Perhaps.”

  They continued to pool the scraps of information collected over the weekend, seeking a new pattern. The M.E. had sent the results of Pernell Johnson’s autopsy and Sigrid skimmed the report, then passed it around the table.

  “From the bruises on the body, Cohen thinks Johnson was first immobilized with something like a karate chop to his neck and diaphragm, then strangled with his tie.”

  “Could the girl have handled that?” Peters asked, ignoring Elaine Albee’s glare.

  “He wasn’t very big, was he?” said Lowry, reading from the medical report. “Five-six, a hundred and twenty pounds, slender build. You could have taken him, Lainey.”

  “I could take you, hotshot, but I’ve had training. Has Baldwin?”

  “Find out,” said Sigrid. “From the top then: We know that Ted Flythe handed Molly Baldwin the pairings sheet with all the players listed sometime in midweek—”

  “Tuesday morning,” Knight reminded her.

  “—So if Baldwin didn’t read through the names and learn then that her cousin would be playing, she certainly knew by Thursday when the chart came back from the hotel’s graphics studio and Flythe reprimanded her for leaving it in a public area for anyone to see.”

  “Which might have been deliberate on her part,” said Detective Eberstadt, disappointed to find no more doughnuts in the box Albee had brought. “More of that spreading the wealth around.”