The Right Jack (Sigrid Harald)

by Margaret Maron

  Sigrid agreed and continued through her notes. “Now a cribbage board was taken from the unlocked display case—a case Baldwin conveniently forgot to lock—the same day. That gives her a day and a half to construct the bomb.”

  “Did she have a chance to switch boards?” asked Peters.

  “Absolutely,” Albee and Lowry chimed in unison. They paused to grin at each other, then Elaine Albee continued.

  “She was in charge of all the arrangements for the d’Aubigné Room and she was the one who ordered the steward, Mr. George, to use the wrong ashtrays. He’d suggested the plainer ones, but she overrode him; and sure enough, as soon as Lucienne Ronay stepped into the room for a last-minute check, she ordered them changed.”

  “George said he tried to tell Baldwin that’s what would happen,” said Lowry, picking up the narrative, “but she wouldn’t listen. You could make a good case for her planning it to happen that way.”

  “If she’s it, she either switched the boards then,” Eberstadt offered, “or counted on it looking like that’s when it was done so that everyone had the opportunity.”

  “The busboy probably noticed, so he had to be killed, too,” Lowry concluded.

  “Maybe it wasn’t just ash stands she spoke to him about,” said Alan Knight, contributing his own scenario. “What if she told him to meet her in the d’Aubigné Room, perhaps on the pretext of getting started on clearing the room? She doesn’t have a real alibi for that time period.”

  “That we know of,” Sigrid cautioned. “Albee, Lowry, speak to the desk clerks who were on duty yesterday. See if they can confirm her story. Any further thoughts on Molly Baldwin?”

  There were murmured negatives around the conference table.

  “Moving on to Haines Froelick then. Peters, why don’t you and Eberstadt give us what you have for him?”

  “Like we said Saturday, he seems harmless enough,” said Peters. “Used to living well at the Quill and Shutter Club off Park Avenue. Probably spends more on camera equipment than wine, women, or song, but that could be because he doesn’t have as much money as he used to.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah,” said Matt Eberstadt, who had consumed three jelly doughnuts and was now virtuously sweetening his coffee with a packet of artificial sugar. “We haven’t actually seen his bank statements, but we get the strong impression that money’s been a little tight for Froelick these last couple of years—like his income wasn’t keeping up with inflation.”

  “Whose is?” asked Peters, who had no idea how he and his wife were going to fit a third baby into their budget. “Anyhow, six million will buy a lot of cameras. You’ve seen Froelick. He’s ordinary looking, well-dressed; hundreds like him go in and out of the Maintenon every day. There’s nothing to say he’d be noticed if he wandered through the hall where they were coming and going, getting ready for the tournament. The seating chart was out in the hall by the display cases for anybody to stop and read, right? With the cases unlocked, it wouldn’t take more than fifteen seconds to reach in and grab the cribbage board, stick it in his pocket and be on his way.”

  “Those boards are at least a foot long,” Albee objected.

  “Well, up his sleeve then,” Peters said impatiently. “Or inside his newspaper.” Young though he was, Peters wasn’t entirely happy with female colleagues and sometimes his disapproval slipped out. “The point is, a man like Froelick is so ordinary, he’s almost invisible.”

  “And what about that fishy story of his yesterday?” asked Jim Lowry skeptically. “Wandering around the hotel looking for a dime to bury with his cousin? Sounds like a good excuse to get back in the d’Aubigné Room.”

  “It was a schilling,” Albee corrected.

  “The coin was found,” Sigrid reminded them.

  “Yeah,” said Eberstadt, “and the housekeeper started crying when we took it over yesterday afternoon. Claims Wolferman always carried it.”

  “Just the same, Froelick could have put it there before he killed Johnson,” said Elaine Albee. “Then if anyone came in before he’d lured the busboy there—hey! Maybe that’s how he got Johnson there in the first place. Everybody says he was a helpful kid. If some old gentleman came up to him and spun out a story about a lost lucky coin, it would be just like Johnson to stop whatever he was doing and go help look for it.”

  “Nobody saw the kid go down the hall, so who’s to say Froelick wasn’t with him?” mused Peters, trying to compensate for his earlier shortness.

  “We’ll ask Dr. Gill if she noticed,” said Albee. She knew she was smarter than Peters and seldom took offense at his latent chauvinism.

  “Okay,” said Sigrid, overlooking their byplay. “That gives us Froelick and Baldwin as possibilities. Each could have rigged a bomb in order to inherit a cousin’s wealth and then killed Johnson yesterday because he saw—or they thought he saw—them do it. Now what about the Russian? Lieutenant Knight?”

  He shrugged. “Obviously we haven’t had a chance to talk to Commander Dixon yet, so all we have is Ivanovich’s version of their friendship. It jibes, though, with what’s been observed: he and Dixon’s father did meet in the Second World War as he described, he does have a picture of Commander Dixon as a baby, and they’ve maintained frequent contact since he arrived in New York in July.

  “As far as we can ascertain, Ivanovich is unofficially retired. His duties with the delegation are almost nonexistent and look like a polite fiction to justify what’s essentially a nice long capitalistic vacation.”

  As Knight paused to drink from a foam coffee cup, Sigrid was inwardly amused to note his drawl almost disappeared when he spoke officially.

  “He may look like a friendly Russian teddy bear,” she said, “but without a Red Snow link for Flythe, Vassily Ivanovich is our only sure expert in handling high explosives. Could he have been sent here simply because he once was friendly with Dixon’s father and could get close to her without arousing suspicion?”

  “It’s possible,” said Knight.

  “What about her work?” asked Elaine Albee. “Does Dixon work with secret documents or something? Is anything missing?”

  Knight hesitated. “I can’t go into a lot of detail. There’s not a lot to go into, actually. Most of her work is in a supervisory capacity and deals with computer-generated—well, call it code work. So there aren’t any documents per se.”

  “Floppy disks? Software?” asked Lowry.

  “Her people have been working double shifts since Friday night trying to check. If anything’s been compromised, they haven’t found it. And just for the record, there’s never been the slightest question of Commander Dixon’s loyalty or integrity. Her people say that if Ivanovich had made the smallest overture, no matter how subtle, she’d have reported it immediately.

  “On the other hand,” he said with a wry grin, “that’s what every spy’s friends and co-workers have said.”

  “Makes security officers old before their years, I’m told,” Sigrid said with such dryness that Jim Lowry began to wonder for the first time if maybe Tillie’d been right about the lieutenant having a sense of humor.

  “The problem with Ivanovich, though,” she continued, “is that he’s at least six-three and doesn’t look like Peters’ invisible man. If Ivanovich had been lurking around the Maintenon’s display cases Thursday, they certainly would have spotted him.”

  Elaine began riffling through her notes. “I can’t find it right this minute, but someone—oh, here it is. One of the players was ticked off because Ivanovich got up and walked out on their match a few minutes after eleven o’clock.”

  “Yes, he followed us out into the hall,” Sigrid said.

  “What annoyed the man was that Ivanovich was late getting back after the break. If you’re more than five minutes late, it’s supposed to be an automatic forfeit; but the guy decided to be nice about it and then, two hands into their match, Ivanovich just split.”

  Alan Knight recalled the timetable. “Pernell Johnson was last seen at
ten-forty-one. Flythe called for order around ten-fifty-five, so that makes it no earlier than eleven o’clock for Ivanovich to sit down to play.” The drawl was back. “Looks like a few cribbage players’ll have to be questioned again; see if any of ’em saw what Comrade Ivanovich was doing during that time.”

  Albee grinned and said she’d be plumb tickled to do that little old thing.

  “Has anyone spoken to Johnson’s aunt?” asked Sigrid sharply. There was no criticism in her tone but the others shifted uncomfortably as her slate-colored eyes swept around the table.

  “I’ll go,” volunteered Jim Lowry, somewhat nettled with Elaine for flirting with Knight.

  “That brings us back to Ted Flythe. Even without a Red Snow connection, he’s still in the running. He was in the hotel Wednesday morning when the CUNY professors met to discuss their dinner, he had ample opportunity to steal a cribbage board from the display and switch it when the ashtrays were being changed, and so far as we know he doesn’t have an alibi for those missing fourteen minutes when Johnson was killed. Somewhere we might find that his path has crossed Sutton’s.”

  Matt Eberstadt cleared his throat. “Now that everything’s up for grabs again, what about the possibility that the bomb was meant for Tillie?”

  “I don’t know,” Sigrid said doubtfully. “We haven’t seen any linkage. On the other hand, if the commander hadn’t dropped a peg so that her chair was pushed away from the table and Tillie was actually under the table when the bomb went off, they probably would have been killed, too.”

  “It would certainly help if we knew who the real target was,” Albee complained.

  “The right jack,” said Knight.

  They looked at him curiously.

  “It’s a cribbage term,” he explained. “When you’re counting up points after the hand’s been played, if a jack in your hand matches the suit of the turned card, you get an extra point. It’s called the right jack.”

  “So all we have to do is find out what suit the turned card is?” Elaine Albee smiled.

  “You got it, honeybunch.”

  CHAPTER 24

  While Alan Knight used her typewriter to type up his notes from all their interviews that weekend, Sigrid went to Captain McKinnon’s office to deliver a progress report. She had never felt entirely at ease with him and had tried in the past to cover it with strict professionalism. Knowing now that he and her father had once been partners, that he must have recognized her the moment she was assigned to him and yet had never spoken of it—all these combined to make her more distant than ever.

  A gruff man who did not lightly suffer fools, McKinnon was usually accessible to his staff. “If my door’s open,” he was wont to say, “then walk in. If it’s closed, stay out.”

  The door was open today and Sigrid paused on the threshold while her boss finished speaking to one of the clerks.

  As the other man left, McKinnon beckoned for Sigrid to enter. “Close the door and have a seat.”

  She closed the door, but remained standing. “This will only take a moment. I wanted to post you on the status of the Maintenon homicides.”

  “I understand Detective Tilden’s better,” he said, sounding equally stiff. He was large and solid and he filled the battered leather chair behind the wide cluttered desk. His big hand absently shuffled papers.

  “Yes, he was moved out of intensive care into a regular room yesterday. I plan to see him after lunch today.”

  “And that Navy commander. Too bad about her arm. How’s your arm?” he asked, glancing at the loose sling.

  “It feels much better. My doctor’s going to take a look at it today.”

  “Not rushing things too much, are you?”

  “No, sir.”

  The crisp monosyllables seemed to bring him back to the official nature of her visit. “Okay, what do you have?”

  As she succinctly outlined the facts learned, people interviewed, alibis established, and theories they had formed, McKinnon leaned back in his chair and listened with half his attention, while the other half studied her face.

  An odd combination of her parents, he thought. Leif’s tall slender build and Anne’s coloring, although Anne’s eyes were more hazel than gray.

  His thoughts flew back across the years. “She’s such a serious little thing,” he remembered saying as he watched Leif and Anne’s baby daughter try to wind the musical toy he’d brought for a Christmas present.

  “It’s her eyes,” Anne had laughed. “They’re too big for her face right now. Our baby owlet. She’ll grow into them.”

  Anne had knelt gracefully on the carpet to turn the blue knob. As a nursery tune tinkled from the toy radio, the child’s large gray eyes caught the glow of the Christmas tree and her solemn little face had beamed in delight.

  “Will that be all, Captain?” Sigrid repeated, and a tinge of color flushed her thin cheeks, as if she were aware of his scrutiny and his memories.

  “No, that’s not all,” he growled. “And sit down, dammit!”

  She sat and gazed at him warily.

  “I’ve been calling all weekend,” he said bluntly. “Anne doesn’t answer the phone.”

  “No, she’s on assignment in Peru.”

  “Peru?”

  “An interview with El Diego, the poet.”

  “Oh.”

  McKinnon had picked up a pencil from the desk top and he turned it in his big hands while the silence grew.

  “She should be home this weekend,” Sigrid said at last. “I’ll tell her you were—”

  The pencil snapped.

  “What did she say about me Friday night?” he asked, not meeting her eyes.

  “That you and my father were once partners.”

  “That’s all?”

  “And that you were with him when he was killed. She blames you for Dad’s death, doesn’t she?”

  “Is that what she said?” Suddenly he looked more tired than she had ever seen him, and sad.

  “No, but why else would she—?” Sigrid took a deep breath and began again. “She’s heard me speak your name, yet she never once asked if you were Dad’s partner. And you! You’ve known all along who I was, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why, Captain? Is Mother right? I always thought he was killed in the line of duty.”

  “He was.” McKinnon looked up from the broken pencil ends he’d been fitting back together and his brown eyes met hers squarely. “Pull the report and read it yourself.”

  “Who wrote it?”

  He gave a short bitter laugh. “Right.”

  Sigrid flushed. “If I’m wrong—”

  “No, don’t apologize for your instinct. Anyhow, you’re right. I wrote most of it. But not all. And every word’s the truth. Leif got careless. The guy that did it—a penny-ante small-timer messed up in something bigger than he could handle—he was holed up in a hotel room off Times Square and scared out of his skull. Your dad knew him. From the days when he was walking the beat. He figured he could just walk in the guy’s room and waltz him down to the station. He laughed at me because I had my gun out.”

  His voice trailed off as he remembered. Sigrid waited quietly.

  “He was a Viking. Do you remember him? Big and blond and so sure of himself.” There was pain in his voice.

  Sigrid shook her head. “Not very clearly. There are pictures, of course. And I remember standing at a high window once and waving good-bye to him down in the street. A few things like that. Not much more.”

  “You were so young.” He looked at her and his smile was almost wistful. “I don’t suppose you remember the trot-a-horse rides you took on my knee?”

  “No. What happened to the man who shot him, your penny-ante small-timer?”

  “I saved the state the cost of a trial,” McKinnon answered flatly. “It’s all in the report.”

  “If that’s the way it happened, why did Mother react the way she did?”

  “You’ll have to ask her.” He’d gone back t
o twisting the pencil ends. “Maybe she thought I should have shot sooner or maybe she thought I should have been the one to go into that room first. She wouldn’t talk to me or see me after the funeral. I tried. God knows I tried. She called me a murderer and said she hoped to heaven she’d never see me again. I don’t know. Maybe she was right. Maybe there was something I could have done. I couldn’t bring Leif back, but I could get out of her life and I did.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me when I was first assigned to work here?”

  He shrugged and threw the broken pencil aside. “What was the point? At first I thought you knew and chose not to speak of it. Later I realized you probably didn’t know and then it seemed best not to rake up the past. You’re a good officer. I didn’t want you to transfer out.”

  “I wouldn’t do that! I fought for this job. It’s all I ever wanted to do.”

  “So maybe I should let you get out of here and do it,” McKinnon growled, reverting to the gruff superior she’d always known.

  She rose and crossed to the door.

  “Keep me posted on these Maintenon killings,” he said as she stepped through the doorway. “And, Harald?”

  “Sir?”

  “Would you let me know when Anne comes back?”

  Returning to her office, Sigrid passed Peters and Eberstadt in the hallway, Peters knotting his tie as he hurried on short legs to keep up with his partner.

  “We thought we’d catch the Wolferman funeral,” said Eberstadt. “It’s at eleven up at St. John’s.”

  That explained the somber suits, Sigrid realized. Usually the two men wore casual sports jackets and went tieless as much as possible.