Three-Day Town

CHAPTER

12

And [society] seems to be very happy, for it wears a beatific smile and sheds an extra beam of pleasure when its members bend to speak to each other.

—

The New New York

, 1909

There was no getting around the reality of murder. A man had been killed in this apartment, and yes, it was awful to think about, but Dwight and I have both seen our share of violent deaths and we know that life does move on whether or not we dwell on it. Besides, we had been together less than eighteen months and we were still new to married love. Which is to say that despite the way the day had begun, once everyone cleared out, Dwight and I reverted to honeymoon mode, and it was even more delicious than I had thought it would be.

For starters, we took our coffee and the New York Times back to bed, and while he leafed through the sports section, I slipped into the bathroom and changed from sweater and slacks to my new see-through confection of black ruffles and lace.

I know, I know. Silly and a total cliché, right? All the same… I mean, sometimes a man (Dwight) likes to see his woman (me) in something besides an oversized Carolina sweatshirt, okay?

He was too absorbed in what the Hurricanes were doing to pay any attention when I slipped under the covers beside him, so I quietly picked up the magazine section and tried to concentrate on world affairs.

As an academic exercise, Dwight had seemed to enjoy his brief busman’s holiday, looking over the shoulder of those New York detectives and mentally comparing their procedures to those he used back in Colleton County. Now, as if hearing my thoughts, he said, “It does feel weird, though.”

“What does?”

“To be on the outside looking in on this investigation.” He lowered the sports section and his eyes widened the instant they touched my new negligee.

I pretended not to notice. “Given your druthers, you’d be out there right this minute, questioning everyone in the building,” I teased. “Right?”

“Wrong.” He dumped the sports section on the floor in favor of a new sport, and pulled me toward him.

More newspapers slid off the bed and I flung aside a sheaf of colorful advertising inserts that tried to insert themselves between Dwight’s chest and mine.

He pushed back my hair so he could nuzzle my neck. “You know that thing Mrs. Lattimore sent up?”

“Yes?” I tried to tug at the waistband of his shorts, but he had begun to lower the skinny straps of my gown and my arms were briefly imprisoned. “What about it?” I asked as innocently as possible, considering that my negligee had now become a crumpled ball of soft black silk that he tossed to the floor.

“I’ve been thinking. If we put your leg here”—he positioned my leg across his bare shoulder—“and my head here, and then your hand here while I—”

The rest of his words were lost as an electric spasm shot through my body. I gasped, and after that, all coherent thoughts and words disappeared beneath an avalanche of physical sensations that culminated in a firestorm of explosions.

“Dear Lord in the morning!” I said when I could talk again.

“Well, it is Sunday,” he murmured smugly.

Once everything quit pinging like an overheated motor cooling down, I spooned my back against the curve of his muscular body and we fell asleep with his hand cupped around my breast.

I awoke an hour or so later to find his lips touching mine and his hands gentle on my skin, but moving with increasing urgency. This time, our lovemaking was slower and more conventional, but it was very sweet and every bit as satisfying. We showered together afterwards, soaping each other down carefully. For the first time since our first shared shower over a year ago, I only got a halfhearted salute.

“Sorry, shug,” he said. “The spirit’s willing, but the flesh is gonna need a little time to regroup.”

After that big breakfast, I wasn’t particularly hungry, but that didn’t stop me from joining Dwight when he got into Luna DiSimone’s party goodies. Afterwards, we called Cal, who was on his way out the door to a birthday party with Mary Pat and did not seem to be missing either one of us bad enough to make him want to be late to the party.

I talked briefly with Kate, who commiserated about the weather. She was shocked to hear about Phil Lundigren and asked me if I would take some flowers or a potted plant down to his wife.

“She has an anxiety disorder that makes it hard for her to connect with strangers, so don’t try to make her your best friend, Deborah. Just tell her that the flowers are from me—she probably still thinks of me as Kate Honeycutt from 6-A—and that I’m thinking about her, okay?”

“Good as done,” I told her.

As he took the last cold shrimp from the platter, Dwight said, “What do you want to do this afternoon?”

“Well, we’re not far from the Planetarium and the Museum of Natural History.”

He frowned. “You really want to look at stars or dinosaur bones?”

“Not really,” I admitted. I’m all for culture and I know New York’s museums are world-class, but we have a great natural history museum in Raleigh and a fine planetarium over in Chapel Hill.

Dwight seemed to feel the same. “Why don’t we take the camera and walk over to Central Park? See what city folks do in the snow.”

We piled on a couple of layers of warm clothes and were soon heading out the door, this time making sure that it was really locked. I felt a bit vindicated when Dwight had to pull on it firmly to make the latch fully engage.

The man on the elevator was the same one as from Friday evening. Sidney. He was a mixture of regret for the death of a fellow worker and sympathy for our messed-up vacation. Mostly though, he was avid for details.

“What happened?”

“Looks like he interrupted a robbery,” Dwight said, “and someone smashed him in the head.”

“Robbery? Was anything taken?”

“We think part of Mr. Lacour’s collection of gold and enamel pillboxes,” I said.

“And your earrings,” Dwight reminded me.

“One of them anyhow,” I said. “And a little bronze sculpture.”

“You didn’t happen to notice people going in and out of our place last night, did you?” asked Dwight.

Sidney shook his head. “But then I was busy with people coming and going and the hall seemed to be packed full every time I came up. Someone on the fifth floor was threatening to call the fire marshal on Luna.” His wry smile turned mournful. “Poor Phil, though. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather when they told me. I guess you heard that his wife flipped out when they told her and had to be taken to a psycho ward?”

We hadn’t, and he told us about Mrs. Lundigren’s mental problems in more detail than Kate had. Kate had told me that the West Side was very liberal and socially tolerant of human failings, but to tolerate a klepto?

“I probably ought not to be talking about it, but I heard that you’re a police officer yourself?”

Dwight nodded. “So what happened to the regular morning guy?”

“Antoine? Who knows? They say he started work as usual and then just left.”

“So that’s why the elevator never came this morning,” Dwight said. “Even the service elevator wasn’t running. There was someone on duty when I got back. Didn’t seem like a happy camper, though.”

“That would be Vlad,” said Sidney. “One of the board members called him to come in because of the boiler. The front sidewalk needed shoveling, too. We’re all having to take up the slack. The night man’s still asleep downstairs, but he’s getting too old to pull a double shift.”

“He spent the night here?” I asked.

“Yeah. Antoine, too. See, Phil always said if we were gonna get snowed in, we better get snowed in here and not at home, so he and Jani bunked here. Jani took over around eleven last night so I could get home before it got too deep. My place is only a block from the stop, so I knew I could get back before four today.”

“Why would the day man just up and quit?” I asked. “Was it because of Phil?”

Sidney shook his head and tried to smother a yawn. “He and Phil didn’t get along all that good. Not that he wished Phil bad luck or anything, but I don’t think he’s gonna cry at Phil’s funeral. No, it’s probably that he’s finally had it with teenage boys who think it’s funny to hijack the elevator and leave it on another floor. Vlad was still ticked off about it when I got here.” Beneath that impeccable gray mustache, his lips curved in wry humor. “But then with Vlad, everything’s a big drama.”