Three-Day Town (14 page)

Puzzling as it might be not to learn how her grandmother wound up with something she found disgusting at first sight, Sigrid knew it would be pointless to ask if she had decided not to tell. Maybe when Anne came home? Her mother and grandmother spoke the same language, a language that could charm confessional secrets from a priest, and one that Sigrid had never mastered. Yes, let her mother deal with it, she decided.

Down by the nurses’ station, a short fat white-haired man had approached Hentz, who immediately signaled to her.

When she joined them, he held out his pudgy hand. It was like shaking hands with marshmallows. “Dr. Penny, Lieutenant. I believe you wanted to speak to me about Mrs. Lundigren?”

“Is there someplace we can talk privately?” Sigrid asked.

He led them to a small room down the hall that held a couch and two armchairs. Although Sigrid and Hentz remained standing, he took the farther chair and said, “I’m sure you realize that Mrs. Lundigren is not one of my regular patients, so I don’t have her whole history. Even if I did, I could not discuss the particulars of her case.”

“We understand that, Doctor. We only want your professional opinion. Is she stable enough to answer questions?”

“As long as you don’t get too close physically or try to force her to make eye contact.” He glanced at his watch. “I think I’ve established a bit of trust, and if you can make it brief, I’ll stay in the room if you like.”

He rose, but Sigrid lifted a hand to keep him from leaving. “Something you need to know, Doctor. Mrs. Lundigren’s husband was murdered last night.”

Again the doctor looked at his watch and gave an impatient scowl. “I’m perfectly aware of that, Lieutenant. Her grief and panic are precisely what we are dealing with here.”

Sigrid stopped him with a cool, level-eyed look. “Are you also aware, Doctor, that her husband was a woman, not a man?”

“What?”

“He—
she—
had evidently been passing as a man for years,” Hentz said bluntly. “According to the ME, she had not been surgically altered and everything was intact.”

Dr. Penny sank back into the chair. His belt disappeared into his belly and his chubby thighs strained the seams of his pants. “Well now, that
does
put a different spin on the ball. One hesitates to leap to conclusions based on insufficient data, yet one immediately has to wonder if her social anxiety disorder has been exacerbated by a closeted lesbianism. Not once in our talks did she refer to her partner as anything but ‘he.’ Surely she knows?”

“There was only one bed in their apartment, Doc,” said Hentz, “and they’ve lived there together for at least nineteen years.”

“I see.” He heaved himself to his feet. “Very well. But please try not to upset her more than she already is.”

“Will she be released today?” Sigrid asked.

“Before your revelation, I would have said yes. Now it will depend on how this session goes.”

They followed him halfway down the hall. He lightly rapped on a door and pushed it open. “Denise? It’s Dr. Penny again. These are police officers and they have some questions for you.”

Denise Lundigren sat in a chair by the far wall on the other side of the single bed. Her hair was neatly combed this morning, but her pretty heart-shaped face was scrubbed clean of the heavy makeup she had worn the night before, although a faint trace of eyeliner remained. Despite the dark shadows beneath her frightened eyes and the inevitable wrinkles, she actually looked younger and seemed more vulnerable than when they last saw her. Her hospital-issued gown and robe had been washed so many times that the floral pattern had faded to pale pink, and she hunched into the robe, pulling the front sides protectively across her thin chest.

Sigrid remained near the door. Hentz had been able to calm her initial fears last night until they told her of Phil Lundigren’s death, and she was quite willing to let him try to connect again.

He sat down on the near end of the bed and began talking to the pillow in a soothing voice. “We’re very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Lundigren, and we hate to have to bother you again, but you do want to help us catch whoever did this to Phil, don’t you?”

Hesitantly, the woman nodded.

“We’re not going to be able to unless you can tell us about last night. Did Phil seem the same as usual? Was he upset about anything?”

“Yes,” she whispered as tears filled her eyes. “He was upset.”

“What about, Denise?”

She shook her head.

“Upset with someone in the building?”

She didn’t reply, just clutched the faded robe tighter, but now she was watching Hentz’s face.

Without looking at her, he smoothed the pillow that lay between them and kept his voice low and matter-of-fact. “Was it one of his coworkers or one of the tenants?”

No response.

“Was it you?” Sigrid asked.

Startled, the older woman half swiveled in her chair and turned her face to the wall.

“Sorry,” Sigrid said.

“All couples have their squabbles, Denise,” Hentz said quietly. “Did you and Phil fight last night?”

She kept her face averted.

“What did you fight about, Denise?”

There was another long moment of silence, then the woman sighed and said, “I—I sometimes take things. I can’t help myself. Little things. Mostly animal things.”

“Was that what you fought about? You had taken something?”

“I try not to, but sometimes I just can’t help it and he gets mad if I don’t remember where I got something. Like the cat.”

“The cat?”

Relaxing a little, she released her white-knuckled grasp on the robe. “It was so cute. Purple and pink and little yellow whiskers! But Phil got mad and said I was going to get him fired and he had to put it back. He knew I’d cleaned 6-A the day before, so he thought it was Mr. Lacour’s. I was pretty sure it was Luna DiSimone’s, though, but he made me so mad, I wasn’t going to tell him it was hers.”

“You like cats, don’t you?”

Sudden concern crossed her face. “Puff-Daddy! Is he all right?”

“Don’t worry,” Hentz said. “Your cat’s been fed and has fresh water, but he’s probably missing you.”

Dr. Penny nodded approval. “You need to be there for your cat, Denise.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice slightly stronger than before.

“Did you want to keep the wooden cat?” Hentz asked.

She shrugged. “It was sweet but it wasn’t crystal, so I didn’t care if he took it back. But he said some mean things. He knows I can’t help it.”

“So you and Phil fought about the cat?”

“And the watch.”

“You took a watch, too?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t always remember when I take things, but he kept yelling at me and said he was going to lose his job if he didn’t give it back to Mrs. Wall. It’s like when he thought I took a necklace from 4-B and he went through all my things looking for it.”

“So he took the cat up to 6-A?”

“Yes. He called up and nobody answered so he said he’d go while they were out.”

“What time was that, Denise?”

“About ten o’clock? I was trying to watch my program on HGTV and he kept going on and on about the cat and Mrs. Wall’s watch. Right after he left, that nice young colored couple chose the very same house I would have picked.”

“And that was the last time you saw him?”

She nodded. “I thought he was coming right back, but he didn’t, so I watched my channel for another hour and went to bed a little after eleven.”

Her eyes darted to Hentz’s face. “What happened to him?”

They told her as concisely as possible. “We think he may have interrupted a robber or it might be that someone followed him into 6-A. Was there anyone in the building that he didn’t get along with, Denise? The other employees?”

“If he had problems with them, he never mentioned it. He didn’t like Antoine.”

“Why not?”

“He thought Antoine was sneaky.”

“Why?”

She shrugged.

“What about the tenants?”

“They thought he was Mr. Wonderful.” Her tone turned bitter. “They felt sorry for him because of me. Like he could have had his pick of perfect wives.” She flashed an angry glance at Hentz. “You don’t have to keep pussyfooting around.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve watched enough crime shows. I know what happens when someone gets killed. The autopsy. You want to ask about Phil and me, don’t you?”

“That he was a woman?”

“He wasn’t!” she said, beginning to cry. “And don’t you go thinking dirty things about us. Don’t! You want to make out that I’m a lesbo and he was a dyke, but we weren’t. I like men and he
was
a man in every way except for his equipment. From the time he was a little kid, he knew he was a boy trapped inside a girl’s body. That’s how we could love each other—why we got married. He took care of me.”

Her sobs grew louder and she turned to Dr. Penny helplessly. “What’s going to happen? How can I live without Phil? Who’s going to look after Puff-Daddy and me?”

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

T
here 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?”