The Right Jack

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.

"Um?" 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 beginning 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 he 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'mo n 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 grabbingu p the case folder with its papers andp hotographs.

Followed by a protesting Alan Knight,h e darted down the stairs and out thew ide front entrance, spotted Petty Officer

Schmitt, and raced towards the stationw agon.

"Hurry up!" she told Knight. To

Schmitt she said, "Hotel Maintenon asf ast as you can."

"Yes, ma'am!"

Almost immediately they were careering 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 thirty-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

– 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 Lo wry.

"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?" a "Th-there!"

They burst through the double doors into a quiet executive office. A woman with light 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 enable 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. 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?" Sobbing, Lucienne Ronay nodded gratefully.

Sigrid straightened from the dead man's body.

"At this point," she said icily, "I think your lawyer would be more helpful."

"Lawyer?" asked Madame Ronay in a trembling voice. "Because a man whow ould kill me is himself killed? Quelle absurdité!"

"Nevertheless, these are your rights," said Sigrid and quoted them to the letter.

"Lieutenant!" cried Mrs. O'Riley, appalled. "How can you? After what she's just been through."

"Lieutenant Knight, please describe the scene you witnessed as we entered this apartment."

As Knight began, Jim Lowry and Elaine Albee, escorted by an elevator attendant with a key, rushed into the penthouse. "The garage man said no one-"

Albee fell silent when she saw Madame Ronay huddled on the couch and Victor Earle's body beyond.

"Continue, Lieutenant Knight," said Sigrid sternly.

"Very well. As we entered, I heard a woman scream for help, followed almost immediately by a gunshot. An instant later, I saw two figures struggling, then the gun fell from Madame Ronay's hand, and Victor Earle followed."

"Not my hand-his!". insisted Lucienne Ronay. "He tried to kill me."

"Blackmail you, perhaps, but not kill," Sigrid said. "He told your secretary he had something of your husband's. Which husband, Brooks Ann Farr? Maurice Ronay or Fred Hamilton?"

IT was late afternoon and Victor Earle's body had long since been taken away, but police technicans continued to process the apartment.

They had found the pseudo-Frenchwoman's hidden cache of chemical compounds, enough to level the hotel, in a concealed compartment built into the floor of her closet. Another hiding place in the paneled ceiling of her dressing room revealed a tin box that confirmed what Sigrid had already reasoned out: pictures of Farr/Ronay with Fred Hamilton and a yellowed news clipping from a French newspaper, the obituary of Lucienne Duval, orpheline, born in Lyons in 1938.

Thanks to her Swiss prep school, Brooks Ann spoke flawless French, so it would have been simple to obtain a birth certificate and step into the identity of a dead woman with no relatives. Had anyone continued to look for Brooks Ann Farr, they would surely look for someone born thirty-seven years before.

It was a stroke of genius, an inspired adaptation of Poe's purloined letter, to hide her past in the public eye. She had lost weight, lightened her hair, and learned to create a glamorous persona with cosmetics, but any woman might do those things.

What made her disguise so flawless, thought Sigrid was her briliant realization that since most women pretend to youth, the best camouflage was a pretense of age. To speak constantly of one's approaching fortieth birthday while still in one's twenties. To be vocally rueful about nearing the half-century while still in one's thirties.

She was ferociously strong-willed and intelligent, and somehow she had captured the whimsical fancy of an elderly French millionaire. They would probably never learn if he had known her true background. Somehow, Sigrid doubted it. On the other hand, Maurice Ronay was said to have had eccentric tastes.

Absently smoothing her hair, Sigrid turned through the souvenirs that Farr/Ronay had chosen to keep of her former life.

Someone cleared his throat and she turned to see Oscar Nauman in the doorway.

"How did you talk your way past the guards and reporters downstairs?" she asked.

"You know my methods, Watson," he said vaguely.

And she did. It could have been Susan O'Riley; it could have been Ronay's personal maid; it could even be one of her own police officers. She'd quit being surprised at the odd assortment of people Nauman knew.

"I've just come from Val's," he said.

Sigrid waited.

"So much for the observation of an artistic eye," he said dejectedly. "I thought John was trying to place that Flythe man and all the time it was really Ronay. Val said John used to feel sorry for her; spent a lot of time listening to her problems with Fred Hamilton, so she must have recognized him immediately and was afraid it would soon be reciprocal."

"Is Val bitter about that?"

"Right now. Eventually, she'll realize that's what made him John."

"Ronay was safe as long as she stayed away from people connected with Red Snow," said Sigrid, absently massaging her wounded arm. "Not hard to do with everyone except Earle either dead or involved in middle-class pursuits. John Sutton was probably the only member of McClellan's SDS ever to walk into the Maintenon and he might not have given her a second glance if he hadn't been immersed then in his book and lectures of the period."

"Did the busboy see her switch the boards?"

"I doubt it. I think what happened is that young Johnson saw Ronay on her way to check on the d'Aubigné Room and followed to offer his assistance. Raymond George said he was going to recommend Johnson for a bonus because he reacted so quickly to the fire, but Johnson had his immediate goal set on becoming a waiter in the Emeraude Room. The boy probably made some innocent remark about not wanting money for what hed id Friday night but a promotion."

Nauman nodded reflectively. "And she interpreted that as a blackmail threat that he'd seen her switch the boards. If I'd been paying attention last Wednesday-"

"Don't heap all the blame on yourself," Sigrid said sharply. "I should have caught it sooner myself, realized that she ordered the ashtrays changed to muddy the waters. I even had a witness tell me on Saturday that Madame Ronay was the one who bumped into the altered seating chart and trampled it underfoot. She probably hoped we wouldn't notice that Sutton's number had been changed to put him where the bomb would do the least damage to her precious ballroom."

Nauman looked round, mentally cataloging the paintings over the bed and on the opposite wall. What sad dim parodies they were of those exquisite entertainments of Watteau and Fragonard, and how suited to the surface image of Lucienne Ronay.

He glanced at Sigrid and found her regarding him with a quizzical expression. Her new bangs wisped softly over her strong forehead but she'd eaten off most of her lipstick. Her bare lips made him feel strangely tender.

"You finished here soon?"

"I'm finished now. Let me tell the others I'm leaving."

"Why don't you ask Knight to join us for a drink?" It was the nearest he could come just then to an apology.

"Alan? Oh, I sent him off with Albee an hour ago."

"You did?" Some of Nauman's old preening masculinity crept back into his smile. "Look, Siga-take off a few days and come to Connecticut with me this weekend."

Sigrid tilted her head.

"You ought to give your arm a chance to heal properly," he coaxed. "I promise I'll behave myself."

Sudden mischief quirked her lips and danced in her gray eyes but her tone was innocent as she asked, "Want to bet?"