Three-Day Town (21 page)

“Do you know Antoine?”

“No, I heard about him at the pizza shop down the street. How he walked off the job, so I went right over to the managing agent and applied. I don’t know if they’ll take him back if he wants to stay, but it’s my chance to get in here.”

“Good luck,” I said and let myself into the apartment just as my phone rang. It was Dwight. “Elliott Buntrock called. Wants to know if we’d like to meet him down in the Village for dinner. Okay with you?”

“Sure,” I said. “You finished with your class already?”

“Not yet. This is a ten-minute break at the halfway point. Josh and I will probably stop in somewhere for a beer when the class ends, but I should be back by five. Buntrock said eight o’clock, so that’ll give us plenty of time.”

By the time I finished wiping down my boots and disposing of the evidence of my shopping trip, it was almost three.

My phone rang. Emma again. School must be out.

“Didn’t you get my message?” she wailed.

“I’ve been busy,” I said. “What’s up?”

“It’s Lee. He’s in really,
really
big trouble. Everybody thinks he did it, but Aunt Deborah, you
know
he wouldn’t!”

“Wouldn’t what?”

“Wouldn’t post a dirty picture of Ashley Osgood. I mean, it’s not her, of course, but it was on his Facebook page and it came from his phone, but he didn’t do it.” My niece’s distressed words streamed through the phone like rushing water that drowned any coherence. “And now Ashley’s all upset and Dad’s furious and Mother’ll probably make him take his page down and—”

“Whoa, slow down, Emma. I’m not understanding you.”

“Don’t you have your laptop up there?”

“Yes, but—”

“I’ve sent it all to you. Didn’t you even look at it?”

“Sorry, I—”

“Just look at it, okay? You’re good at figuring out stuff. There has to be a way to prove that Lee didn’t do this.”

I promised that I would look and then call her back as soon as I could.

Lee and Emma are eighteen and sixteen, the children of my brother Zach and his wife, Barbara. Zach’s next to me in age, the second of what the family calls the “little twins,” to differentiate them from Haywood and Herman, the “big twins.” He and Adam are number ten and eleven in an unbroken string of brothers. Unbroken till they got to me, that is. I’m told Adam really resented my birth, and sometimes I think he still believes that the only reason he got born in the first place is because Daddy didn’t want to quit till he got a daughter.

Zach’s an assistant high school principal and has always been pretty tolerant of me, but his wife, Barbara, and I were never particularly close, although that’s beginning to change a little. She heads up our Colleton County library system and she keeps her two children on a fairly short leash. She recently admitted that she had always envied the way the kids in the family seem to confide in me. My brothers and other sisters-in-law put it down to my unwillingness to finish growing up and settle into a conventional adult life. Until I decided to run for judge, I was still doing some of the same things they were—drinking too much, driving too fast, smoking the occasional weed—so the kids rightly figured I would understand when they found themselves on the verge of getting busted.

Sitting cross-legged on the bed in my stocking feet, it took me a few minutes to power up my laptop and find Emma’s message. She had forwarded me the picture that had appeared on Lee’s Facebook page around noon today. I immediately clicked on his page, but the picture was gone, so I went back to Emma’s download.

At first glance, I thought it was exactly what people were supposed to think, and I was appalled. Especially since it was captioned, “Hey, y’all, Ashley let me take her picture last night. Who knew girls shaved their thangs?”

Then I took a second look and realized that it was a close-up of somebody’s closed armpit that I was seeing.

Once I interpreted all the text-speak abbreviations and disjointed phrases, Emma’s frantic message was that this picture had been posted on Lee’s password-protected Facebook page.

But he’s never told anyone the password. The picture’s on his phone even though he says it’s been in his locker all day and he’s the only one who knows the combination. Ashley’s freaking. She went home early and now her mom wants Lee’s hide. Dad wants to believe him, but you know how he can’t show favoritism and all the evidence is that Lee did it. Please, Aunt D. Can’t you or Uncle Dwight think how somebody could get his phone out of his locked locker and then could post something like this on his FB page????

Teenage boys are notorious for pulling stupid stunts without thinking or caring about the consequences, which is why many a young man’s last words before he winds up in a coffin or a hospital bed are, “Hey, y’all! Watch this!”

Rural South or urban North. Makes no difference. Look at the boys in this building who think it’s funny to take off with an unattended elevator.

If this had been one of my other nephews—A.K. or Reese, say—I wouldn’t have thought twice before bringing my gavel down on a guilty verdict, but this was Lee, a conscientious by-the-book kid who’s never even had a speeding ticket.

Running through various scenarios that might somehow exonerate Lee, I had totally forgotten about Sigrid Harald until the doorbell rang. As I passed through the vestibule, I saw something else I’d forgotten. I hadn’t given that red flip-flop a second thought since tossing it onto the chest. I grabbed it up so that I wouldn’t forget again and opened the door with it in my hand.

Sigrid’s turquoise scarf was loosely looped around the neck of a black wool sweater. I invited her in and hung her white parka on the back of a chair in the dining room. I gestured her toward the living room, spotted the bath mat, started to change direction for the dining room, then realized that she probably wouldn’t be bothered by what was under the mat. I also realized that all this dithering was making me look like an idiot. And it probably didn’t help that I was standing there shoeless, with hat hair, no lipstick, and a red flip-flop in my hand.

“Sorry,” I said. “One of my nephews is in trouble and I got distracted. Sort of a locked-room mystery. Can I get you coffee? Or a glass of wine?”

“Coffee, if it’s already made.”

“All I have to do is turn it on,” I said. “My husband mainlines caffeine, so as soon as one pot’s empty, he usually goes ahead and gets another ready to go.”

She did not smile and it struck me that she might feel equally ill at ease. Instead of going on into the living room, though, she followed me out to the kitchen and said, “Locked room?”

I switched on the coffeemaker and we sat on the kitchen stools while I gave her a brief recap of Lee’s situation. It might have been my imagination, but she seemed grateful for an interlude before she got to the point of her visit.

When I had told her all I knew about the hot water Lee was in, she said, “And the picture was definitely sent from his cell phone?”

“That’s what they say.”

“Combination locks on the lockers?”

“Yes, and the kids are required to leave their phones there during class periods.”

“Then he probably told someone the combination at some time.”

“He swears he didn’t.”

“What about access to the master list?”

“No way. My mother-in-law keeps them in a locked file in her office.”

“Your mother-in-law?”

“She’s the school principal.”

“And your brother is her assistant?” She lifted an eyebrow at that.

I shrugged. “What can I tell you? It’s the country.”

The coffee was done and I filled two mugs. She started to move the red flip-flop out of the way.

“Oh,” I said. “I keep forgetting. Take a look at the bottom.”

She turned it over. “Your missing earring?”

“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to call you. I took Luna’s cat back to her yesterday and this was in a catchall bowl by the door along with other stuff that people left in her place Saturday night.”

She took it by the spongy bottom, avoiding the smooth thong that might still hold a usable fingerprint even though both of us had touched it. Luna, too, probably. “Whose is it?”

I shrugged. “I can’t say for sure, but I’ll be surprised if it’s not Cameron Broughton’s.”

I described how I’d found it and how I was pretty sure that he had started to claim it and then changed his mind as it registered that my earring was embedded in the sole. “The most logical place he could have stepped on it is inside this apartment.”

Her wide gray eyes seemed to turn inward to consider the possibilities and I said, “Have you run his prints through IAFIS yet?”

She gave me a sharp look and I shrugged. “I’m not saying he’s your killer, but there’s something familiar about him. He says he’s from the Wilmington area—North Carolina’s Wilmington, not Delaware’s—and I held court there a few summers back. I’m district court, so whatever it was had to be relatively minor and nonviolent. There’s something familiar about those pale blue glasses he wears that makes me wonder if he came up before me while he was back visiting or something. I could ask the clerk of the court, if that wouldn’t be interfering.”

“Would it matter?” she asked with the first half smile I’d seen on her face.

“You sound like my husband. He’s always saying I stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

The coffee finished making and I poured us each a cup. “As long as I’m being nosy, did Mrs. Lattimore tell you where she got that bronze thing?”

She shook her head, laid the red flip-flop on the counter, and took a cautious sip of the hot coffee. “That’s what I came to ask you about.”

“Wish I could help,” I said, “but she didn’t give me a clue. Just handed me the wrapped box and asked me to bring it to your mother.”

Sigrid set her cup back on the counter and looked me straight in the eye. “Do you know a Chloe Adams?”

“Chloe Adams? Sure.” Almost immediately, I realized the significance of what she was asking, and that realization caused me to set my cup down so quickly that coffee slopped onto the counter. Grateful to escape her penetrating gaze, I reached for the paper towels to wipe up the mess. “She’s a cousin of my daddy’s housekeeper. I’ve known her most of my life. Nice woman.”

Before I could go on chattering like a demented parrot, Sigrid’s phone rang. “Harald here.” She listened intently, then said, “When?… Is she sure?… Okay. I’ll be right up.”

“What’s happened?” I asked.

She ignored my question and reached for the flip-flop. “Do you have a plastic bag I can put this in?”

Annoyed, I opened a drawer and handed her a box. “I want a receipt for my earring.”

“Later,” she said brusquely, already heading for the door. She grabbed her coat in passing and was gone before I could object.

CHAPTER

18

And yet there are other dark features of the city that are not to be slipped by unmentioned if one would make a fair survey and a candid commentary.

—
The New New York
, 1909

S
IGRID
H
ARALD
—M
ONDAY AFTERNOON

S
am Hentz was waiting outside the open door to the Wall apartment when Sigrid reached the twelfth floor. The new man on the elevator seemed inclined to stay and see what was going on until Sigrid turned and said “Thank you” so pointedly that he closed the cage and left.

Having been on the receiving end of the lieutenant’s chilly dismissal more than once, Hentz was torn between amusement and irritation.

An anxious Mrs. Wall joined them at the door. Her silver hair looked as if she had combed worried fingers through it, and her face was as pale as the light gray turtleneck and slacks she wore. “Did he tell you?”

“That your son Corey is missing? Yes,” Sigrid said. “When did you last see him?”

“Yesterday morning. He said he was going sledding in the park. When he didn’t come home, I tried calling him, but he wouldn’t answer. We—we’d had words and he was angry with me. Fine, I thought. I’d just back off and give him time to get over it. I thought he’d crashed with some friends and gone to school from there. He often does that without telling me, but when he didn’t come home today, I started calling around. No one’s seen him. He didn’t meet them yesterday morning and he wasn’t in school today.”

“You’ve tried calling him again?”

“Of course I have.” Her anger at being asked something so obvious did not mask her mounting fear. “Here.”

She pressed a speed dial button on her phone and thrust it into Sigrid’s hand. Almost immediately, a mechanical voice said, “The person you have called is unavailable. Please try your call again later.”

“I’ve heard that the police don’t consider someone truly missing until they’ve been gone forty-eight hours, but please. Corey’s been gone more than thirty hours.”

“You said your son was angry when you last spoke,” Sigrid said. “Are you quite sure that his friends are telling you the truth? Is it possible that they’re lying as a favor to him?”

Mrs. Wall hesitated and Hentz said, “What did you fight about, ma’am?”

She tried to shrug him off. “What don’t teenagers and their parents fight about? Curfews, schoolwork—”

“Stealing your jewelry?” Sigrid asked quietly.

What little color had been in Mrs. Wall’s face drained away and the vibrant woman they had interviewed yesterday now looked old and defeated. “How did you know?” she whispered.

“Drugs or alcohol?” Hentz asked.

She gave a long unhappy sigh. “Corey doesn’t do either of those. He gambles. Last year he lost nearly six thousand dollars playing poker online. We put a block on his computer so that he can’t do that anymore, but he’s found live games here on the West Side. He’s hocked almost everything of value in this house. His computer, his camera, his television, even the silver that’s been in our family for four generations. If he realized the pottery was valuable, that would be gone, too.”