Death of a Second Wife (A Dotsy Lamb Travel Mystery) (23 page)

“What time is it?”

“Nine-thirty.”

“What’s he doing here so early?”

“He wants to talk to you.”

My heart did a flip. “Is Chet here? Did they release him yet?”

“No. I asked Kronenberg about that but he avoided the question.” She looked at my double armload of clothes. “I’ll take those down to the laundry room for you. You go talk to Kronenberg.”

I hadn’t even brushed my teeth yet.

* * * * *

Kronenberg let me grab a glass of orange juice and a piece of toast before leading me to the dining room
, where we automatically took the same seats we’d adopted in our earlier sessions. His junior officer, Seifert, whispered something to him, eyeing me none too subtly as he did so. Kronenberg mumbled something back and Seifert left the room.

“I need to ask you a few more questions about Sunday evening. Let’s start with the time after dinner, about ten o’clock, when you decided to go for a walk.”

My heart started pounding. We’d been over this. He already had detailed notes on my every move between dinner and the next morning. What was he looking for? I exhaled slowly.

“It was turning cold at that time. What did you wear when you went out?”

What did I wear? This sounded really ominous.
I had to think about it. “I changed out of my traveling clothes before dinner and freshened up. I wore my pink cashmere sweater and black slacks and my black slides. Gold hoop earrings.”

“Slides?”

“Shoes.”

“No jacket or coat?”

“Oh. When I went outside, I put on my new tweed jacket.”

“May I see this jacket?”

What the hell?
I slipped across the hall to my room and yanked the jacket off its hanger. I handed to him. “I seem to have lost one of the buttons.”

“When did you lose it?”

“I don’t know. I noticed it the other day, but since it’s warmed up, I haven’t needed to wear it.” So this was something to do with my missing button. What? Had it been found in a place where it shouldn’t be? In the bunker, maybe? I flashed on a mental image of that next morning, dashing into the bunker with Erin, finding Stephanie’s body. That was the first and only time I’d ever been there, and I certainly hadn’t been wearing my new jacket. I’d run out the kitchen door in my robe and slippers.

“When you came back from your walk, did you take off your jacket or did you continue wearing it while you”
—he consulted his notes—“while you visited with Babs and Juergen in the living room?”

“I’m sure I must have taken it off. It would have been too warm in the living room with my cashmere sweater.”

“But you don’t actually remember taking it off.”

“I’m sure I must have.”

Seifert returned and pulled out a chair for himself. Kronenberg handed him my jacket, somewhat furtively, I thought. He asked the younger man, “What time did Lettie Osgood and Patrick arrive?”

More note flipping. “About eleven, sir.”

“And after they did arrive, Herr Merz asked you to go to the kitchen and brew coffee.”

“He told me to check and see if Gisele was in the kitchen. If she was, I was to tell her to make a pot. If not, he asked me if I would do it.”

“And about that time he got a phone call?”

“Yes. From Stephanie. Something about wine.”

“When you went to the kitchen, were you wearing your jacket?”

“No! Why would I put on a jacket to go to the kitchen?”

I shouted this. Frustrated, angry, I failed to use my indoor voice. This brought Brian up the stairs from below and Patrick in from the hallway. They converged on the scene like barroom bouncers on a table of drunks. Brian held his arms clear of his sides the way he does when he’s ready for action.

Kronenberg and Seifert didn’t appear to be armed, and I prayed they weren’t. I caught the look Kronenberg sent his partner as he threw up his hands, recoiling. “We mustn’t impose on these good people any more, Seifert
. We can handle the rest of this interview at the station.”

Both policemen stood and quickly gathered their belongings.

Brian, still at threat level orange, said, “You’re taking my mother with you?”

“I need to ask her a few more questions.”

“Does she need a lawyer?” Patrick’s gaze darted from me to Kronenberg and back.

“Not at this point.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “If I think I need a lawyer, Patrick, you can be sure I’ll ask for one.” I gave both my sons my best mother-is-in-control look, now praying only that no fists would fly before we left this house.

* * *
* *

They had brought the LaMotte police vehicle with the huge tires. I hadn’t seen it since that first morning when the local police had driven it across new snow up from the
western road. They put me in the back seat with a partition between me and the two of them in the front. How had it come to this? A half-hour ago, I was innocently taking my clothes to the laundry room.

* * *
* *

Brian, Patrick, and Juergen beat us to the police station. Having taken the elevator down, they sat in a row on a bench outside, saying nothing but presenting a unified front. Kronenberg took me to an interview room that didn’t look much like the ones I’d seen on TV. The standard recording device, a phone, and a box of tissues sat on a Formica-top
ped table but the chairs were oak spindle-backs and the window was trimmed with cotton eyelet tie-backs. I felt as if the last suspect interviewed here might have been the Big Bad Wolf. But my mood darkened when I glimpsed an official-looking form on the file cabinet behind Kronenberg’s seat. He punched a button on the recorder and spoke the date, time, and persons present into its plastic face.

“You didn’t like Stephanie Lamb, did you?”

“She wasn’t my best friend, but I didn’t hate her, either.”

“There’s a lot of room between best friend and hate. Tell me more.”

With the recorder running Kronenberg sat, arms folded, while I endeavored to describe my feelings toward the woman who, some five years before, had wrecked my plans for the rest of my life. I tried to sound sincere without sounding vengeful. “I’ve gotten past that now. I’ve made a new life for myself in teaching. I love teaching. I have my five children, my grandchildren, and a nice circle of friends back home.” I waited for Kronenberg to relieve me of the burden this monologue.

He merely nodded and said, “Continue.”

“I don’t know what else to say.” I paused, then softened my voice. “When Patrick and Erin told me about their plans get married here, I assumed we’d all be staying at hotels of our own choosing, but then they told me about Juergen’s chalet and how much it meant to them for us to all be together. Of all my children, Patrick is the one who’s had the most trouble accepting the divorce.”
Why am I telling this to policemen?
They have no right to know these things.
I felt as if I were walking naked through Times Square. “For Patrick’s sake I said okay. So I came here determined that we
would
all get along—and we did. Until . . .”

“
Yes,” Kronenberg muttered. He consulted his notes. “Let’s go back to the evening of the murders. You all had dinner together. Did you say, when Stephanie Lamb walked past you, ‘Someone is walking on my grave.?’ ”

“I don’t recall saying anything of the kind.”

“What did you mean by that?”

I made note of the fact that my denial was ignored and figured he had certain knowledge I
had
made that statement. Someone at our table that evening was trying to frame me. Who? Hurriedly replaying what little I remembered about the dinner conversation—Stephanie called to the phone, strange reactions from Babs, from Erin, and from Juergen when Gisele had announced, ‘Telephone, Steph.’ ”

“Grave. I remember now. I did say, ‘Someone’s walking on my grave,’ but it had nothing to do with Stephanie. I said it when I shivered. A cold breeze must have blown through just then. It’s an old country saying in America. When you shiver for no apparent reason, you say, ‘Someone’s walking on my grave.’ ”

Kronenberg said nothing. He flipped through a few note pages, raised his eyebrows at something he’d written, and then looked up at me. “Why did you bring me the notes from the telephone note pad in the kitchen? It seems like such a strange thing to do. You wanted to make sure I saw what was on that pad, didn’t you? Why?”

“I simply thought the last words Stephanie ever wrote in her life might be of interest to you. I wondered myself whose phone number she’d written down.”

“The Cook County, Illinois, Bureau of Vital Records. And you must have made a copy of the note before you handed it to me because you called it yourself later that same day. At eleven forty-one, our time.”

How could he possibly know that? I’d got a recording when I called, so either the Bureau’s answering machine
keeps the numbers of after-hours calls or Kronenberg had gotten access to my cell phone records. “If you know this, you must also know what the Cook County Bureau of Records had to tell us. Erin had a problem with her marital status that did, indeed, call a halt to the wedding. Somehow, Stephanie must have suspected this and called Cook County. Erin has even told me Stephanie confronted her that evening. It was to Erin that Stephanie said, ‘If you don’t tell him, I will!’ Do you remember? I told you about that the first time you talked to me, but at the time I guessed she’d been talking to Gisele, not Erin. I was wrong.”

Kronenberg slouched nonchalantly and threw one arm over the chair’s spindle back. “It’s taken me a long time to straighten out this mess, Mrs. Lamb, but I’ve finally done it. Every resident of the house had a motive for killing either Stephanie or Gisele
, and the other could have been killed because she witnessed the murder. So I’ve been following a hundred false leads, examining videotapes that, I now realize, mean nothing. Searching for a bullet casing I’ll never find because the killer has long since disposed of it. Here’s how it happened.”

He leaned forward and squared his forearms on the table. He glanced toward Seifert and then toward the top of the file cabinet. “You probably came here with the intention of killing Stephanie Lamb. All this one-big-happy-family thing was an act. As soon as you arrived, you started asking Juergen questions about the bunker. What did they keep inside? What sort
s of weapons? After dinner, you took a walk, alone, to check out the situation. You walked around the house, walked to the bunker, noticed the bunker door could only be opened by the keypad and you didn’t know the combination.

“About eleven-thirty, you hear Juergen talking to Stephanie on his mobile phone and they’re discussing wine. Aha! Stephanie must be in the bunker right now because that’s where they store the wine. And then, as luck would have it, Juergen asks you to go to the kitchen
, which gives you an excuse to leave the room.”

Kronenberg paused, pressing his laced hands to his chin. “I doubt you really meant to do it that night. Not so soon after arriving. Look too suspicious. But there it was, your perfect chance. Stephanie is in the bunker with a huge stash of weapons
, and all you have to do is run up there and do it. You don’t even have to make up an excuse to get her up there alone. She’s already there. No one can question why she was in the bunker at that time of night because she’s just explained it to her brother while everyone in the living room was listening. Perfect.

“You run to the kitchen, tell Gisele to make a pot of coffee, dash out the side door, up to the bunker. Was the bunker door standing open? I’ll bet it was. You probably had to talk to Stephanie for a few minutes while you located a suitable weapon . . .”

“Stop! None of this ever happened!”

“While discussing the merits of Italian wine
, you spotted a handy Glock, already loaded, on the shelf with a number of other guns, grabbed it, grabbed Stephanie. But Stephanie surprises you.
She doesn’t want to be killed!
You struggle. Stephanie heads for the door. You grab her, she grabs your jacket. One of the buttons pops off. Flies out the door.”

He signaled to Seifert, standing near the window, his head framed by eyelet curtains. “Where’s that evidence bag with the button?” Seifert pulled a file drawer open, drew out a plastic bag, and handed it to Kronenberg. “We found this less than a meter away from the door to the bunker.” He let me take the bag in
to my own hands.

It
definitely was my missing button. No doubt about it. Like the buttons still on the jacket, it had a metal shank on the back, and the front was covered with the same tweed material as the jacket itself. “It’s my button all right, but I don’t think it went missing until a couple of days ago.”

“Are you sure? Can you prove that?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”

“You can’t prove it, Mrs. Lamb, because it didn’t go missing
a couple of days ago
,” he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “We found this button frozen solid in ice. Ice from the snow that fell about four o’clock that morning, then partially melted and froze again. There’s no way this button was put there
after
the snow.”