Three-Day Town (16 page)

Her eyes slid away from Sigrid’s thoughtful gaze and she busied herself with the manila employee files that still lay on the coffee table.

Hentz picked up on her body language, too. “Was it a valuable watch, ma’am?”

“Yes,” she said reluctantly.

“May we see it?”

“Why? I told you. I carelessly misplaced it and then I found it again. I felt so bad accusing Denise. I was going to apologize to Phil today.”

“Nevertheless, if we could just see it?” Sigrid persisted, feeling more strongly than ever that there was something about the watch that was making Mrs. Wall uncomfortable. “It will help us understand what objects appeal to Mrs. Lundigren’s weakness.”

“Oh, very well. It’s in my bedroom.”

The woman stood and her bracelets jingled down her wrists as she reached into her pocket for something.

Sigrid and Hentz shared a puzzled look. As soon as Mrs. Wall turned the corner, Hentz quietly crossed the room and paused just beyond the doorway to listen intently. A few seconds later he returned to his chair, and Sigrid said, “She keeps her bedroom door locked?”

He nodded in confirmation. “Everything else in this place may be Craftsman brass and copper, but that sounded like a Yale lock to me. A steel lock with a deadbolt.”

Mrs. Wall returned shortly and handed them a black velvet box. Inside was a cocktail watch disguised as a bracelet. The flat links of white gold were set with a blinding array of pavé diamonds, the thin square dial was outlined in emerald-cut diamonds, and the knob of the winding stem was a small rose-cut diamond.

“It was my mother’s,” she said. “My father had it designed for her.”

“Not exactly a Swarovski crystal cat,” said Hentz.

Mrs. Wall smiled. “No.”

“But it certainly sparkles like one of those figurines,” said Sigrid.

“Which is why I first thought Denise had taken it, but Phil swore to me that jewelry was something she never took.”

“Who had the missing necklace she mentioned?”

“It’s never been recovered, but we’re fairly certain that it was taken by someone else. 4-B had men in to measure for wallpaper. He probably snagged it in passing when no one was looking. By coincidence, Denise had cleaned up after a party there that very morning, so when the owner finally missed the necklace she had left on her dresser, she automatically assumed Denise had taken it. But then Phil remembered that Denise was only hired to clean the kitchen and dining room. She would have had no reason to go into the bedroom. Especially with other people in the apartment. She couldn’t bear to interact with strangers.” Mrs. Wall shook her head ruefully. “Besides, she took a glass ring holder from the windowsill over the kitchen sink that morning, and so far as I know, she’s never stolen more than one item at a time.”

Sigrid closed the velvet jeweler’s box and handed the watch back to Mrs. Wall. “You must have been relieved to find where you left this.”

“Yes,” the older woman said, slipping it into her pocket. “I should very much hate to lose it. My husband thinks I ought to keep it in our bank vault, but I love wearing it to parties.”

“I don’t suppose you were at Luna DiSimone’s party last night?” Sigrid asked.

“You suppose correctly, Lieutenant. I did have to listen to several complaints, though.”

“Did you relay those complaints to Lundigren?”

“Heavens, no! We try”—her eyes glistened with sudden tears—“
tried
not to bother him after hours.”

She gave a deep sigh. “I’ve called an emergency meeting of the board for this evening, but I don’t know how our management company will ever find someone as good to replace him.”

Hentz said, “Mrs. Lundigren said there may have been some animosity between Antoine and her husband. Would you know why?”

“Absolutely not. Whatever happened in the basement stayed in the basement as far as Phil was concerned. Unless it was a firing offense, he wouldn’t speak of it.”

“Have there been many firing offenses?” Sigrid asked.

“We had to let someone go about two years ago,” said Mrs. Wall. “That’s when we hired Antoine Clarke.” She pulled one of the manila files from the pile and quickly scanned the contents. “There’s nothing to indicate a conflict between them.”

Catching sight of a small photograph clipped to the top sheet of paper, Hentz said, “Is that Antoine’s picture?”

Mrs. Wall immediately closed the folder with a clash of silver bangles.

“What about the man who was fired two years ago?” Hentz persisted. “Could he be harboring a grudge?”

“It was not pleasant,” Mrs. Wall conceded. “He made inappropriate comments to some of the young women in the building and even tried to touch them. I don’t have the inactive files at hand, but if you’ll give me an email address, I’ll send you his name and last known contact information.”

“Is your son around?” Hentz asked.

Startled and suddenly apprehensive, she said, “My son? Why?”

“Corey Wall
is
your son, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” she said cautiously.

“His name shows up on two of the lists as being at that party.”

Some of the tenseness went out of her face and she gave a rueful smile. “He probably crashed it.”

“May we speak to him? Is he here?”

“I’m sorry, Detective. He went sledding with some friends this morning. One minute they want to be treated like adults, the next minute they’re five-year-olds playing in the snow. Is it important?”

“That’s okay,” Hentz said easily. “It’s just routine. We’ll catch up with him later.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t know anything that could help you.” She stood as if to indicate that this meeting was over.

The others stood, too, but as she rose, Sigrid said, “Were you aware that the day man walked off the job this morning because someone took the elevator when his back was turned?”

Her brow furrowed. “I knew that Sidney was covering for Antoine, but I didn’t know why Antoine wasn’t here.”

“Is taking the elevator when it’s unattended something your son does very often?”

“They told you that? None of the men have ever complained to us about Corey’s behavior. Besides, we try to compensate with very generous Christmas bonuses.” She flushed under Sigrid’s steady gaze. “He’s only seventeen, Lieutenant. Adolescent humor is sometimes hard for adults to understand.”

CHAPTER

14

The number of restaurants, cafés, lunch counters—places where food is cooked and served—is something amazing to strangers. Some of the side streets are lined and dotted with eating establishments.

—
The New New York
, 1909

S
IGRID
H
ARALD
—S
UNDAY (CONTINUED)

A
s they left the Wall apartment, Sigrid’s phone vibrated in her pocket and she glanced at the screen. Elaine Albee.

Once they were out in the hall with the door closed, she answered the phone and heard Albee say, “Lieutenant? We’re down here in the basement. Does Hentz still have Lundigren’s keys? I think we’ve found where he kept his papers.”

A few minutes later, she and Hentz stepped off the elevator into a basement that smelled of musty cement overlaid with a faint aroma of motor oil and a stronger one of hot pastrami. Off to the left lay the boiler room, and beyond that, a hall that terminated at a steel door to an areaway outside. A high window in the door had bars embedded in the glass for security. The hall was lined with garbage bins that had wheels and tight-fitting lids so that no odors escaped. Although gray and utilitarian and crowded with the equipment needed to keep a building like this running, the basement felt clean and there was a sense of orderliness and purpose.

Straight ahead was a short hall that seemed to open into a locker room where the men could change from their street clothes into the brown wool uniforms provided by the board. Many articles of indoor and outdoor clothing hung from hooks along the wall. Through the arched opening, they saw two large men who sat with their backs to the door while they ate sandwiches at a Formica-topped table. Judging by the sounds from deeper in the room, they were also watching some sort of loud sports program on television. The announcer spoke excitedly in a language that was neither English, Spanish, nor French, the only languages Sigrid could confidently identify.

She glanced at her watch. Almost three. No wonder their fragrant sandwiches were making her hungry.

Battered chairs and occasional tables stood around, castoffs abandoned from above and rescued by the staff. A miscellany of pictures hung on the walls—everything from kitsch framed in ornate gold leaf to a cover of a
National Geographic
magazine signed by a well-known photographer and framed in bamboo.

“Down here,” Lowry called from somewhere off to the right.

They followed his voice through the dimly lit passage to a double bank of ceiling-high wire cages that measured about four feet wide by six feet deep. Each bore the number of an apartment and served as a storage locker for off-season clothes, luggage, or anything else an owner could not find room for upstairs. Most were neatly arranged; others looked as if the doors had been opened and stuff thrown in with a snow shovel.

Lowry pointed to a unit at the far end where Albee waited. “This one’s assigned to the Lundigren apartment,” she told them.

Somebody—Lundigren?—had built shelves to the ceiling to accommodate several cardboard boxes and two rows of books, but had left an alcove large enough to hold a rump-sprung swivel chair, a two-drawer file cabinet with wheels, and a small steel desk that was missing one of its original legs. A fairly new-looking laptop sat on the desk.

Hentz handed the super’s set of keys to Albee, and after four tries she found one that turned in the lock. They rolled the files out into the passageway, and after they found its key, Hentz and Sigrid each took a drawer while Albee tackled the laptop and Lowry went through the desk.

Sigrid hit paydirt immediately. “His birth certificate,” she said and handed it to Hentz.

There it was: Phyllis Jane Lundigren, female, born fifty-three years ago in Littleton, New Hampshire. In the same folder was a marriage certificate dated twenty-four years earlier for Phillip James Lundigren, age twenty-nine, and Anna Denise Katsiantonis, age twenty-seven.

“Cute,” said Lowry. “Don’t change the body, just change the name.”

Another folder was devoted to Mrs. Lundigren. It held her birth certificate and her medical records, including a stay in a New York psychiatric facility for treatment following a pseudocyesis when Denise was thirty.

Puzzled, Hentz said, “What’s pseudocyesis?”

“Hysterical pregnancy,” Sigrid told him. “Where a woman thinks she’s pregnant and develops all the symptoms, including morning sickness and actual birth pains.”

“Jeez!” said Lowry. “Talk about a screwed-up couple.”

Lundigren’s medical files showed no hospital stays, only annual physicals. On all the forms, the sex box was checked
M
, which would indicate a live-and-let-live doctor.

“Here’re their wills,” said Hentz. “Looks like they were pretty careful about the wording. No mention of husband or wife. He leaves everything to Anna Denise Katsiantonis Lundigren, and hers leaves everything to Phillip James Lundigren, both of this address.”

“Hey, Detectives!” someone called from back near the elevator.

“Yeah?” Lowry called back.

“You guys order pizza?”

“Yeah,” said Lowry. “Be right there.”

“I ordered an extra-large,” Lowry told them. “Figured maybe you hadn’t eaten lunch either.”

The promise of pizza was welcome news.

“You didn’t happen to order coffee, too?” Sigrid asked.

He grinned. “Sure did.”

Before he could reach for his wallet, she pulled out hers. “Let me get this, Lowry.”

His refusal was only pro forma. He took the bills she handed him and headed down the long passageway to the outer basement door. Minutes later, the appetizing fragrance of oregano and mozzarella reached them. They dragged chairs over to a rickety card table and were soon pulling apart the slices.

“Postal Pizza?” Sigrid asked. The red-white-and-blue box was printed to look like priority mail.

“Neither snow nor rain stays the swift completion of their deliveries,” Albee said with a laugh. “We got the number from the porter down there. This place delivers twenty-four/seven. The night man says he orders from them all the time, and when you get a look at his figure, you’ll know he’s telling the truth.”

“What’s he doing in so early today?” Hentz asked as he tried to keep sauce from dripping onto the folders he had brought from the files.

“He never left,” said Lowry, handing him a napkin. “The snow was so deep this morning when his shift ended, he just sacked out here. Same as Antoine Clarke. Both of them heard the weather report last night and were here by nine before it got too deep. There’s a set of bunk beds down there.”

“And a fridge, a TV, and a microwave,” said Albee, “plus a shower. All the comforts of home.”

Hentz listened as he leafed through the papers in the folder he had brought to the table. All were stamped by the management company that had hired the men. “Copies of the personnel files,” he said. “I guess he was their on-site eyes and ears.”

A copy of Lundigren’s own original job application was there, too, and they saw a younger version of the victim. In the grainy black-and-white photograph, his eyes appeared open and candid beneath those very bushy eyebrows.

Jim Lowry shook his head. “Even knowing he’s a woman, he doesn’t look like a woman. He must have taken hormones in the early years.”

Sigrid took the personnel file. The forms for later hires had color copies of their photographs and she lingered on that of Antoine Clarke. He had honey brown skin, brown eyes, and a clipped Afro. A trendy half-inch-wide beard outlined his square chin from ear to ear with a small pointed goatee in front. According to his application form, he was five foot seven, weighed 135, and was twenty-seven years old. Born in Jamaica, he became a naturalized citizen at age eleven when his parents were granted citizenship. An address in Queens had been crossed out and a new one up on West 146th Street penciled in. To the question of previous arrests, he had copped to a shoplifting charge eight years ago and a D&D two years after that.