The Right Jack

10

IT surprised the hell out of me, too. Lieutenant," Ted Flythe admitted frankly. He sat on an imitation eighteenth-century settee upholstered in mauve silk and gazed at the nearly four hundred people engrossed in their cards and hunched over their cribbage boards. According to a small plaque near the gold-and-white enameled double doors, The Bontemps Room was named for one of Madame de Maintenon's godparents. It was slightly smaller but just as ornate as the damaged d'Aubigné Room. The walls were covered with murals meant to depict the court of Louis XIV at play; elaborately bewigged and silk-suited courtiers sported beneath the trees with equally bewigged and lavishly dressed ladies. The ceiling far overhead simulated a celestial blue sky enhanced by puffy white clouds and interspersed with golden sunbursts from which depended brass and crystal chandeliers.

It was a room meant for formal music, for dancers in tuxedos and jewel-toned taffetas, for the discreet clink of champagne glasses and witty repartee. It was not quite the setting for these cribbage players casually dressed in corduroy or plaid wool slacks and autumn-colored sweaters, who kept the ventilating system busy dispersing clouds of cigarette smoke, and who broke the room's pastel serenity with smothered laughter and occasional raucous cries of 'fifteen four and there ain't no more!'

"I held a meeting with the players this morning, told them I was authorized to refund all the entrance fees, but they wanted to go ahead with the tournament," said Mr. Flythe. "Not everybody. Not those who were hurt of course; a good number were too frightened to stay, but look at this!"

He gestured toward the tables. "Over three hundred and fifty people! Hell of a note, isn't it? You'd think they'd be afraid their board might be next."

The mauve silk couch and several matching side chairs formed a separate sitting area near the front of the large room. With the table and extra chairs Detectives Albee and Lowry had rounded up, it made a suitable place to winnow out and question witnesses.

They had just begun on Mr. Flythe when Sigrid entered with Lieutenant Knight and Molly Baldwin. Handing Flythe over to her, they had plunged back into the crowd, using newly revised seating charts to locate promising witnesses of last night's events.

"I suppose some of the contestants came a long distance," suggested Sigrid. "Perhaps had hotel or plane reservations they couldn't change easily?"

"Partly that," the tournament director conceded, "but I think it's mainly that they like the excitement. Most of the players are from the metropolitan area. They can go home by bus or subway. It's not as if they have to stay; but damned if they didn't want to, even though I made it clear that we'd have to reduce the prize money in proportion to how many pulled out.

"We've had to cut back on how many games they'll play, too. Instead of best out of seven, it's now three out of five to advance. That should finish us up in time."

While Mr. Flythe spoke of the procedural changes made in order to bring the tournament to a close on schedule tomorrow evening, Sigrid studied him unobtrusively, remembering Nauman's account of John Sutton's puzzled glances back at the man he'd met on Wednesday.

There was more than a suggestion of a traveling salesman on the lookout for a likely farmer's daughter about Mr. Flythe, a slight arrogance in his lazy way of assessing every woman as if she wore no clothes. In his late thirties or early forties, Sigrid judged. No gray in his dark hair or beard but his hairline was receding a bit at the temples and there was a slight puffiness beneath his sleepy brown eyes. Bedroom eyes, her Grandmother Lattimore would have called them. If his chin line had begun to blur, that was hidden by the short beard which was clipped into a modified Vandyke point.

His clothes fit well, too: there was no tightness in the collar of his crisp blue-striped shirt, no straining at the waist of his custom-tailored navy blazer or gray wool pants.

If Alan Knight embodied the ail-American lustiness of sunny haystacks and bosky dells, Ted Flythe was the comme ci comme ça of a sensual blues piano in a cocktail lounge on a rainy night; and his vibrations were just as strong as Knight's.

And he knew it, too, Sigrid suspected, noting how Molly Baldwin had instinctively chosen the empty space on the settee and how she sat closer than was required, just as the female members of the Graphic Games crew seemed compelled to consult their superior more often than one would have thought necessary.

"Perhaps we should finish this interview somewhere quieter," Sigrid suggested, when a blazered girl approached for a third time since they began talking.

"Sorry, Lieutenant. This is her first tournament, too." he beckoned the girl nearer. "Look Marcie, I can't answer your questions right now, but I tell youw hat: you have any problems, you ask Barbara over there. She's an old pro at this, okay?"

"Okay," the girl pouted.

Sigrid was interested in Flythe's unexpected revelation. "Your first tournament, Mr. Flythe? You haven't been with Graphic Games long?"

"Only since the end of the summer," he admitted, watching Marcie's sulky retreat.

"And before that?"

"You name it, I've probably done it," he answered easily. "From waiting tables in high school to selling refrigerators to Eskimos."

"And in any of your varied jobs had you ever met John Sutton before?"

"Who?"

"One of the men who died in last night's explosion," Sigrid said sharply, wondering why no one connected with the hotel seemed willing to admit having met Sutton. "You saw him, you even spoke with him in the d'Aubigné Room on Wednesday morning."

Ted Flythe stroked his beard into a sharp point; the lids of his sleepy eyesd rooped lower. "I didn't realize it was the same man," he said. "No, if I ever met him before, I don't remember. Why?"

"No reason, really," she said. "Someone in the group thought that Professor Sutton seemed to have recognized you from a previous meeting."

"It's possible, I suppose. I've been all over. West Coast, East Coast, and everywhere in between, including a few years after college when I led tour groups around Europe. Maybe he was on one of those tours."

"Maybe," Sigrid conceded and made a mental note to mention that point when she spoke with Mrs. Sutton. "What college, if I may ask?"

"Oh, a little denominational school out in Michigan that you probably never even heard of. Carlyle Union. It's defunct now."

Lieutenant Knight had listened quietly until then and now leaned forward to ask, "Excuse me, Mr. Flythe, but were you ever in the military?"

"Nope. That's one experience I missed."

Sigrid paused, expecting Knight to pursue his question. When he settledb ack in his chair without doing so, she said, "For the record, Mr. Flythe, had you met any of the other victims? Zachary Wolferman, Commander Dixon, or Detective Tildon?"

"For the record, no, Lieutenant." He hesitated. "I heard that one of those seriously hurt was a policeman. Did you know him?"

"Yes," she said tightly and the curtness of her tone froze the conventional expressions of sympathy Flythe started to voice. "Ms. Baldwin had told us about the seating chart being brought up early from the calligrapher's. How did you arrive at those pairings?"

"Not me," said Flythe. "It's all done by computer. There's a space on the entry blank where a contestant can list anybody he doesn't want to play against-his, wife, say, or a friend-whoever he's traveling with. That's so both of them have an equal chance of staying alive." Hearing what he'd just said, Flythe grimaced. "Bad choice of words. Sorry. What I mean is, if two friends play each other, one of them is definitely going to be eliminated, right? Whereas if each plays as tranger, there's a good chance, or at least a possibility, that both can advance."

Logical, thought Sigrid. "So your computer ensures that spouses or friends don't play each other."

"At least not in the earlier rounds. Towards the end it can't be helped. Of course, we have consolation games, too. The main tournament will go on until tomorrow night, but in another hour or so we'll be in a sort of mini-tournament for people who've been eliminated so far. Tonight we'll start a couple of smaller pools where losers can buy in for five or ten dollars. Our policy is to let as many people keep playing as long as they want to."

"When were the first pairings made?"

"The deadline for entries was two weeks ago. Our corporate office handles all that. I got the printout Monday and sent it over to Miss Baldwin here-was it that afternoon, Molly?"

The girl had been following his every word and Sigrid noted how she colored faintly at the intimacy of his smile, recovered quickly, and said, "The messenger brought it Tuesday morninga nd I hand-carried it straight down to our graphics studio with a rush order. They sent it back up sometime Thursday morning because it was there in the hall when I came by after lunch and that's when I set it inside the d'Aubigné Room."

"Which means that anyone passing through the hall could have seen it and learned who was to sit where for the opening round," Sigrid mused.

"Yes," Molly Baldwin nodded. "Ted-Mr. Flythe told me it was to be kept confidential, but I forgot to tell them downstairs and-"

She looked so miserable that Flythe reached over to pat her hand consolingly. "Don't blame yourself, Molly. For my money, the bomber probably didn't know where to put it till just before we started last night."

"Why do you say that, Mr. Flythe?" Lieutenant Knight asked.

In answer, Flythe caught the eye of one of the Graphic Games crew and signaled for her to come over.

"This is Kelly Underbill," he told them. "Keeper of our cribbage boards.

Now, Kelly, I want you to tell Lieutenant Harald exactly what you told me this morning."

"Sure, Mr. Flythe," beamed the freckle-faced youngster, thrilled to be in the spotlight. Stretching out her shining moment as long as possible, she told her audience that she was entrusted with keeping tabs on the expensive cherry cribbage boards. "The losers can keep the cards if they like, but they have to return the boards because they cost too much to give away."

Graphic Games had provided two hundred and seventy-five boards packed in eleven boxes. That was twenty-five to the box, she explained, and they were packed in five rows with five boards to each stack so it was easy to keep a running count.

"I gave Mr. Flythe three boards on Thursday to put in those glass display cases and when one of them got stolen, I gave him another board to make up for it; so that left me with two hundred and seventy-one.

"Then last night, we had two hundred fifty set out to play with, which left mew ith twenty-one boards, see?"

She waited for their confirmation, and receiving Knight's nod, went on eagerly.

"Well, this morning, when the players decided to go on with the tournament and the policeman in the other room said we could move our stuff, we packed up all the boards and brought them in here. Some of the pegs got lost-we had to send over to the office for extras-but I found two hundred and seventy boards. Of course two of them were broken-from the explosion, I guess.

"I didn't think anything about having that many because I knew one of them'd had the bomb in it; but Nancy Kaiser knew I was worried about keeping up with all the boards-anything missing comes out of my pocket, see?-and she told me that the police had taken one of them for comparison tests or something."

She held out the crumpled receipt her friend had been given by someone in Forensics. Sigrid examined it and then handed it back.

"Well, don't you see?" said the girl. "After one board got stolen, I had twoh undred and seventy-four. There're three on display, one board blew up and the police took one, so I should have only two hundred and sixty-nine." She stopped triumphantly.

"I do see," said Sigrid, leaning back in the gilt-legged chair, conscious of pain returning to her wounded arm. "Whoever stole the first cribbage board brought it back again. Undoubtedly with the bomb inside."

"And switched boards after the tables were set up," concluded Ted Flythe.

"Which was when?"

"Late Friday afternoon," Kelly Underhill replied, hurt by Lieutenant Harald's lack of response to her clever discovery. "We finished around five."

"Then I locked the doors myself," said Molly Baldwin, "and they weren't unlocked until I opened the service door at seven so the stewards could prepare the hospitality table."

"When were the hall doors unlocked?"

"At seven-thirty."

"So it would appear that the switch was made sometime between seven and nine," said Sigrid.

"Assuming no one from Graphic Games was involved," observed Lieutenant Knight.

Before Ted Flythe could take exception to his insinuation, Sigrid felt someone touch her on the shoulder and heard a merry voice say, "Ciao, Sigrid! I thought that was you."