The Right Jack (Sigrid Harald)

by Margaret Maron

  Sigrid grasped his point. “And that’ll tell us if the killer made the change on the pairings print-out or after the hotel’s artist had finished making the display chart.”

  Tillie leafed through the folder till he found a rough sketch of how the tables had been set up and numbered. “Number 161 would have been at Table 7,” he said, passing it over to her.

  “Right in the middle of the room. It would have done a lot more damage if the bomb had gone off there,” Sigrid mused. “I thought the killer had a total disregard for human life, but it would appear I was wrong.”

  She smiled at her partner. “So we finally know that John Sutton’s the right jack. I don’t suppose you found his killer in those notes and papers?”

  “Not yet, but I’ll keep working on it. Looks more than ever like Flythe, doesn’t it?”

  “He may be the killer, but he isn’t Fred Hamilton,” she said and brought him up to date on her trip to Mantausic and the interview with Victor Earle.

  They talked until Sigrid saw the weariness in Tillie’s face and stood to go.

  “I’m glad you stopped by, Lieutenant, and I like the way you changed your hair.”

  Her whole appearance seemed to register for the first time—her wine-colored dress, the high-heeled shoes, the musky scent of perfume.

  “You look very nice tonight,” he said wistfully. “You must be going someplace special.”

  “I did,” she smiled. “I came here. Sleep well, Tillie.”

  “Good night, Lieutenant.”

  By the time Sigrid got home a little after nine, Roman Tramegra was totally exasperated. He had wanted to experiment with a new guacamole dip but the telephone had driven him to distraction.

  “So there you are! Oscar’s been calling every twelve minutes for the last hour. He sounds frightfully upset.”

  Roman had been out when she came home to change earlier, so this was his first view of her new appearance and his hooded eyes widened in appreciation.

  “My dear Sigrid! I never dreamed! That color is you. And your eyes—your hair! Words simply fail me.”

  Sigrid immediately wished that they would.

  The telephone began to ring. “If that’s Nauman, tell him I’m not back.”

  “He’ll only call again,” Roman grumbled, but did as he was told. “No, she isn’t home yet,” he lied irritably. “No, you certainly may not come over and wait. Oscar, I promise you—the very minute she walks in, I’ll have her—”

  He paused and looked at the receiver. “I say, old chap. Are you quite sober?”

  When at last he got off the line, Roman asked crossly, “What on earth is this all about?”

  “Nothing important,” she said airily, leaning over to dip a tortilla chip in his guacamole.

  It was delicious and she suddenly remembered that she’d had nothing except a glass of dreadful wine punch and a nibble of almond-toasted brie since lunch.

  “Don’t add a thing to that for the next three minutes,” she urged, slipping out of her shoes and down to the bedroom.

  There, she changed into a soft yellow robe and switched on her answering machine. The kitchen extension, which was also on her line, began to ring as she came back along the hall.

  “Don’t answer it,” she called and the ringing stopped as the machine took over.

  There were two more attempts on her line before it finally went silent. Sigrid sampled several versions of the dip and had a long relaxing conversation with Roman about the effects one might achieve with cosmetics. As usual, he added to her knowledge from his fund of inexhaustible trivia.

  One of the things the Mantausic beautician had sold her was a tube of green lipstick. Sigrid was intrigued with the way it turned red on her lips, but Roman was less impressed.

  “The Chinese have had rouge like that for ages. Made from safflower, I believe. It used to be sold on little cards and had a brilliant metallic green luster; but as soon as it was moistened and applied to the skin, it turned a delicate pink.”

  “Nothing new under the sun,” she said, which led to Cleopatra’s kohl eyeliner and Elizabeth I’s attempts to stay the calendar with henna rinses.

  “What newswoman was it who said men get grayer with age while women get blonder?” Sigrid wondered.

  “Up to forty, only your hairdresser knows for sure. After forty, it’s a safe assumption.”

  “Is it?” asked Sigrid, thinking of Doris Quinn’s natural­looking daffodil yellow at the gallery tonight.

  “My dear Sigrid, I’m delighted by your new interest in this field—may one assume it’s connected with Oscar’s agitation?—but do not be led down any primrose path. There is no fountain of youth in your little jars and tubes.”

  “Makeup can take off years. Everyone says so.”

  “At a distance perhaps, or in very subdued light; but it’s only an illusion, my dear. Only an illusion.”

  “What about Lucienne Ronay? She’s fifty, almost as old as Mother, yet she looks ten years younger.”

  “Every rule has an exception, although if you stood quite close to her, I’m sure you’d detect wrinkles even there. The Dixon woman you described—”

  “Commander Dixon?”

  “Yes. Now you said—”

  The telephone’s abrupt ring made them both jump.

  Roman looked at her reproachfully. “Don’t you think you should set his mind at rest?”

  Sigrid considered.

  “No,” she decided and switched off the bell.

  They put away the food and cleaned up the kitchen, but every now and then, from his quarters beyond the kitchen door, they could hear the plaintive bleat of Roman’s telephone.

  When Sigrid fell asleep that night, she hugged to herself for the very first time in her entire life the blissful and deliciously feminine knowledge that she was making someone crazy.

  CHAPTER 31

  Alan Knight was not at headquarters when Sigrid arrived there the next morning, but Elaine Albee was. “He called and said he’d be here by ten,” she reported.

  Both women pretended not to notice Jim Lowry’s sullen expression this morning as Albee reviewed the meeting with Ivanovich.

  “Lieutenant Knight’s checking with the Georgia Crayfish Association.”

  “Is there really such a group?” asked Sigrid, amused.

  “Apparently.”

  Everyone was interested to hear of Tillie’s discovery that the tournament pairings had been changed. They unearthed the smudged seating chart that had been trampled underfoot during the confusion Friday night. Despite the damage it had sustained, a close examination did reveal that the middle digits of the numbers 101 and 161 had been altered.

  “That’s exactly what Ted Flythe did with his grandfather’s diploma,” Eberstadt pointed out. “Changed 1907 to 1967.”

  “But why kill John Sutton?” Albee wondered aloud. “What did it gain?”

  More material had come in over the Police Intelligence Network during the night. There was sketchy confirmation of Flythe’s background and something interesting on the room steward: Raymond George, a.k.a. Amiri Attucks, had been a member of a Black Panther chapter in Sacramento where he was twice arrested for unlawful demonstrations in 1970 and was briefly detained in 1972 for the murder of a fellow Panther before his release for lack of evidence.

  “Peters’ invisible man!” said Eberstadt. “Who would be less noticeable than a hotel employee who had every right to be there?”

  The three detectives argued it back and forth until it gradually penetrated that Lieutenant Harald was listening almost absent­mindedly. Something had begun to niggle around the edges of her mind, something as nebulous as a stray hair that one brushes at unconsciously.

  “Urn?” she said, as she became aware of their questions. “Yes, he would certainly have the opportunity.”

  She took her arm out of the sling, flexed it gingerly, then spread across her desk all the photographs that had been taken at the Maintenon over the past weekend. What was begi
nning to coalesce and take shape was so unlikely that she couldn’t voice it and what she sought in the pictures didn’t seem to be there.

  “Albee, were you there when I interviewed Flythe Saturday and those young women on the Graphic Games crew kept coming over to him with questions?”

  “No, I was still rounding up witnesses, why?”

  “We kept being interrupted and finally Flythe told one of them if she had any more questions to go ask one of the crew members with more experience. Barbara, he said.”

  “I think I talked with her,” said Matt Eberstadt, pawing through his notes. “A Barbara Freeman.”

  “I don’t see her in these pictures. Wasn’t she older than the others?”

  He nodded. “In fact I got the impression she thought she should be running the tournament instead of Flythe.”

  He pointed to a stocky figure with her face only partially in view.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Albee. “I remember her.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Twenty-eight or thirty,” Eberstadt hazarded.

  “More like thirty-three or thirty-four,” said Albee.

  “I’d like to know for sure. You interviewed her, Eberstadt? See if you can get her exact birth date. And as long as you’re at it, check the ages of everyone on the Graphic Games crew. Take Peters with you and try not to be too obvious about what you’re looking for.”

  Eberstadt shook his head in puzzlement. “What exactly are we looking for, Lieutenant?”

  “A thirty-seven-year-old killer,” she said bluntly.

  Alan Knight arrived after the others had left—Peters and Eberstadt for Graphic Games, Lowry and Albee for the Hotel Maintenon. They were to question Gustaffason, the hotel’s staff artist, about the pairings list, and they also planned to ask Molly Baldwin which of the maids might have entered the d’Aubigné Room Wednesday morning. Their final chore would be to see that Mr. George was available when Sigrid arrived later that morning.

  There was paperwork that could wait no longer for her attention, but it received only half her mind while the other half zipped among the possibilities.

  Her telephone rang just as Knight finished reporting that the Georgia Crayfish Association had confirmed Vassily Ivanovich’s presence at an all-day meeting on Thursday.

  “Lieutenant?” came Albee’s breathless voice. “I think Victor Earle just came in the hotel.”

  “What?”

  “He looks exactly like you described Earle: bald, enormous moustache, really creepy stare.”

  The creepy stare convinced her. “I’m on my way.”

  Sigrid slammed down the phone. “Is Schmitt downstairs with your car?”

  “Yeah, but I’ve got to tell you—”

  “Tell me later,” she said, grabbing up the case folder with its papers and photographs.

  Followed by a protesting Alan Knight, she darted down the stairs and out the wide front entrance, spotted Petty Officer Schmitt, and raced toward the station wagon.

  “Hurry up!” she told Knight. To Schmitt she said, “Hotel Maintenon as fast as you can.”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  Almost immediately they were careening uptown with as much speed as any New York cabbie ever made on a Wednesday morning.

  “You aren’t listening to me,” said Alan. “I’ve been pulled back to my own office. My C.O. asked for a report this morning and he agrees with me that Commander Dixon wasn’t the intended victim, so—”

  “The Navy can have you back this afternoon,” said Sigrid, easing her arm back into the sling. “In fact, they can have you back as soon as you drop me at the hotel. Victor Earle just turned up there.”

  “The hell you say!”

  For the first time, Sigrid began to believe that Alan Knight might be halfway competent in an investigation. Certainly he could add two and two.

  “The little bastard!” he said softly. “So he did spot something in those pictures. I wondered. But what?”

  He almost tore the folder from Sigrid’s grasp and began turning the photographs rapidly.

  Sigrid stopped him at a long view of the room and pointed to the figure of Barbara Freeman. “Elaine Albee thinks she’s about thirty-three or thirty-four.”

  “Huh?”

  “A woman usually lies about her age. What if she’s really thirty-six or -seven?’

  “I don’t get you.”

  “No?” Sigrid riffled through the pictures and touched another face as the car jounced over a bone-rattling pothole and zoomed around a stalled delivery truck. “Don’t tell me I’m out of my mind. Just remember what that lying Victor Earle told us about Fred Hamilton.”

  The car swerved in toward the curb in front of the hotel and Sigrid had the door open before it came to a complete stop. Alan Knight was right beside her as she dashed into the luxurious lobby and looked around for Lowry or Albee, ignoring the startled looks of several hotel guests.

  Elaine Albee signaled from across the lobby. “We just lost him,” she moaned as they hurried over. “We knew he was watching for someone by the elevators—he made a call on the house phone—but the woman didn’t get off; just held the door open while she spoke to him and then he got on and the doors closed before we realized what was happening.”

  “How old was she?” asked Knight.

  “Old? I don’t know—thirty-nine or forty maybe. Why?” They reached Lowry at the elevator bank, Sigrid flashed her ID at a nearby attendant while Albee commandeered another elevator and the two men watched to see where Earle’s car would stop.

  “NYPD,” Sigrid said. “There was a man just here. Short, bald, large moustache. He met a woman on the elevator—”

  “Mrs. O’Riley,” he nodded.

  “The car’s stopped at thirty,” said Lowry.

  “That’s where she works,” said the attendant. “Up in the office there.”

  They piled into the next elevator; but without a key to turn it into an express, they were forced to pause twice along the way.

  On the thirtieth floor, they stopped a startled secretary and said, “Quick! A Mrs. O’Riley. Where does she work?”

  “Th-there!”

  They burst through the double doors into a quiet executive office. A woman with lightly frosted hair looked up from behind a nameplate which read Susan O’Riley.

  Sigrid had her ID out again. “Police, Mrs. O’Riley. You were just seen with a man, Victor Earle. Where is he?”

  “May I ask what this is all about?”

  “There’s no time to explain. Whose office is this? Where did you take him? Through there?”

  “Now just a minute!” said Mrs. O’Riley rising from her desk. “You can’t go in there!”

  She was too late. They’d already flung open the door.

  It was a corner office with tall windows from floor to ceiling and a magnificent view of midtown Manhattan’s spires and towers. It was also quite empty.

  “Is this Madame Ronay’s office?”

  “Yes,” cried the bewildered secretary.

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know! I thought she was here with him. He said he had something that belonged to her husband.”

  She trailed them across the office as they found a rear exit to a private elevator. There were no floor indicators in sight. Sigrid pushed the button.

  “Where does this go?” she asked.

  Mrs. O’Riley hesitated and Sigrid turned on her fiercely. “Can’t you understand the danger? Someone could get killed.”

  Mrs. O’Riley took a deep breath and became the very capable executive secretary that she was.

  “There are only three stops: this floor, her penthouse, and the basement where her car is garaged. You can get to the garage from any of the elevators outside, but this is the only one that goes directly to the penthouse. I’ll get my keys.”

  “Albee, you and Lowry take the garage; Knight and I will try the penthouse.”

  Mrs. O’Riley was almost bowled over as they shot past her.
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br />   She hurried back and inserted a key in the slot and within seconds, the door slid open. Less than a minute later, they were pounding on the door of Lucienne Ronay’s penthouse.

  Mrs. O’Riley was fumbling through the key ring, but Sigrid nodded to Alan Knight and he smashed the flimsy lock with one solid kick.

  Just as they broke down the door, they heard Madame Ronay scream for help, then a deafening explosion. Through a wide arch, they glimpsed two figures struggling, then a gun fell to the floor, and a split-second later Victor Earle crumpled and fell on top of it.

  Madame Lucienne Ronay stumbled toward them, her face ashen. “Grâce à Dieu!” she sobbed hysterically. “Quelle horreur!”

  “What happened?” cried Sigrid, rushing past her to check Earle’s vital signs.

  “Je ne sais pas. This man. He calls me and says he has something that belongs to my beloved husband. Then, when we are alone, he points at me his gun and forces me here. I say to him ‘Que voulez-vous? Tell me and I will give you anything—money? jewels?’ But he does not say, just looks at me with those horrible eyes. When he hears you, for un petit moment he looks away and I grasp his arm and we fight and then—”

  She covered her face with her hands.

  “Oh, Madame, how awful!” said Mrs. O’Riley. “Shall I call your doctor?”