Three-Day Town

CHAPTER

22

Such criminals as these seem more cunning than brutal, but perhaps they are more dangerous for that very reason.

—

The New New York

, 1909

SIGRID HARALD—MONDAY NIGHT (CONTINUED)

When Sigrid crossed the small shadowy courtyard from the gate to her front door, the streetlight on the corner picked out a blackened saucepan lying in the snow, its contents turned to charcoal. She let herself in to find Roman stacking the dishwasher. An odor of burned meat and vegetables permeated the entry hall and kitchen. Both the range hood and the guest bathroom off the hall had their exhaust fans running full blast.

“Did it again, hmm?” Sigrid said, hanging her coat and scarf in the hall closet.

“We really must install more smoke alarms,” Roman said, a sheepish look on his face. “By the time I smelled smoke, the liver was burned to a crisp, and the beans! Well, you must have seen the pan? Completely ruined.”

“The book’s going well, then?” Her housemate’s rooms lay beyond the laundry and utility room. When he plugged into his iPod and lost himself in his writing, a dozen fire engines could roll past and he would hear nothing, certainly not a smoke alarm over in this part of the house.

“Was going well. Was, my dear, until I hit such a tremendous roadblock, and that’s when I finally noticed the smoke. Too late to save even a morsel, I fear. Have you dined? I could whip up something.”

“No, I’ve eaten, thank you. Elliott invited me to join him, along with that couple I told you about, the ones that know my grandmother.”

“The visitors who found a body in that apartment Saturday night?” Roman pushed the start button on the dishwasher, untied the apron from his ample waist, and hung it on a peg in the pantry. “The nine o’clock news said that there’s been a second murder in that same building. Is it true?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“In a garbage bag?”

His fastidiousness made Sigrid smile. “It was a clean garbage bag.”

Which in turn drew a rueful smile from him. “I suppose that did sound a bit Lady Bracknell-ish. And I do know that murder isn’t a sanitized drawing room comedy. All the same, my dear, finally! A homicide that isn’t open and shut! I want to hear every detail.”

He plucked two goblets from the cupboard, extracted a corkscrew from a nearby drawer, and led the way to the living room. “We shall have a glass of the merlot I marinated the liver in and you can tell me all about it. Perhaps something will trigger a solution to my roadblock.”

“I thought your plot involved the poisoning of a dean at a woman’s college,” Sigrid protested. “The death of an apartment super and an elevator operator is nothing like that. Besides, it probably is open and shut. We’re looking for one of the tenants, a teenage boy with a gambling problem who was blackmailing the last victim and who hasn’t been seen since.”

“One never knows,” he said.

She accepted the wine he poured for her and settled onto the couch, not entirely reluctant to rehash the facts. Soon she would have to go to her computer and tell her mother the bad news. For the moment, though, she would relax and indulge his curiosity about her work.

Ever since he wound up in the middle of a murder in a children’s dance theater, Roman’s quirky logic had often cast a new light on her cases. Summing up the sequence of events would clarify things for her as well. So she began with Deborah Knott’s phone call on Saturday and ended with finding the day man in one of those industrial-size trash bags, ready to be set out on the curb. Without mentioning Lundigren’s true gender, she described his wife’s kleptomania and psychological problems and her insistence that there was another thief in the building. “We’d begun to think he was both the other thief and the killer. Instead, he’s another victim.”

“And the boy you thought was the victim is now your prime suspect?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Not one of the other workmen in the building?”

“Sidney Jackson, the evening man, lives in Queens and was on duty during the party. He left before midnight and didn’t return till he was called to come in Sunday morning. He lives alone, but he gave us the name of the all-night deli where he stopped on the way home and the name of the café where he was eating breakfast when the call came. The night man, Jani Horvath, was there on Saturday night before the super was killed and he was there when Antoine Clarke was killed. He’s getting old and he says he immediately went to bed when Clarke relieved him. We haven’t confirmed either alibi yet, and we don’t have motives for them, although…”

“Although what?” Tramegra asked, pouncing on her hesitation.

“Horvath’s in his sixties and he had the day shift until shortly after Clarke was hired, when they switched shifts. It was supposed to be a mutually agreeable change. We’ve been told that tips are better on the day shift, but that there’s more work, more heavy lifting, and he has a bad back. Now I wonder whose idea it was to make the switch and whether Horvath really didn’t mind giving up the extra tips.”

“What about the super’s wife?”

“She could have followed him upstairs and smashed him with that bronze sculpture, but she was in the hospital when Clarke was killed and it’s a stretch to think we have two killers on our hands.”

“Residents?”

“No love lost between the super and the people who live in the apartment directly overhead. In fact they’re being evicted and blame the super. Unfortunately, they have a solid alibi for the time of the super’s death. So far, Corey Wall’s looking good for both murders. He needs money for gambling. He crashed the party and could have realized this was a good opportunity to loot a fresh apartment. Let’s say Lundigren caught him there, threatened to have him arrested. The boy hits him with the sculpture and runs out the service door. Either Antoine sees him leave or somehow figures it out. Next morning, when he starts down to go sledding, Antoine lets him know that the tables are turned. It could be a Mexican standoff—‘You turn me in for stealing, I’ll say you killed Phil’—or Antoine realizes that murder trumps larceny and tries to blackmail Corey, whereupon Corey kills him, panics, and stashes the body in one of those wheeled bins and hopes it won’t be found till he’s long gone. He’s just a kid, so it wasn’t well thought out. Both murders were probably unpremeditated impulses.”

Tramegra frowned and topped off their glasses. “Not much mystery there,” he objected.

“It’s not one of your novels,” Sigrid conceded. “But I’ve told you before, Roman. Real homicides are usually open and shut. Corey Wall will be picked up in the next few days. He’ll be charged and he will eventually be found guilty. It’s as simple as that. The only puzzle left is who took the sculpture, and we even have a possible for that.”

Roman sniffed. “Maybe that’s how your case will end. I’ve just realized that the killer in my case is the least likely person. The dean’s secretary. She’s been in almost every scene, but no one’s paid her any attention because she’s homely and timid. She was tired of the dean flirting with all the honor students and he ignored her so completely that it was both insulting and a constant irritant.”

Amused, Sigrid shook her head. “You got that out of our discussion?”

“The subconscious works in mysterious ways,” he said airily. He poured the last of the wine into his own glass and rose. “I shall go write the chapter now while it’s still perfectly clear in my head.”

Ready to tackle personal matters, Sigrid sat down at the computer in her bedroom. As near as she could figure it, New Zealand was about sixteen hours ahead of New York, which probably meant that it was tomorrow afternoon there. Happily, there was a note from Anne that had been sent only minutes before, which might signal that her mother still had her laptop on. She immediately sent a message: “You there? We need to talk.”

Back came: “We were just on our way out for drinks. Whassup?”

As concisely as possible, Sigrid repeated what Deborah Knott had told her and pressed the send button.

While she waited for a reply, Sigrid looked at her own calendar. The long leave of absence she had taken after Nauman’s death had used up all of the time she had accumulated, but at the moment she had a new balance of thirty-four days.

And Grandmother’s balance? Two months? Three?

By the time she had brushed her teeth and was ready for bed, there was a final message from Anne: “We’ll see about changing our plane reservations first thing tomorrow.”