Three-Day Town (6 page)

Once again, I did not get the smile I’d hoped for.

“That thing my grandmother sent. Did she include a note?”

“I didn’t notice,” I said. “Not after I saw what it was.”

“But what
was
it?” Buntrock asked again.

“Well… it was rather intricate and—Oh wait! I can show you.” I set the camera to display, and when I found a close-up that Dwight had taken, I zoomed in and handed it to him.

Both were too sophisticated to make the obvious lewd remarks, and Buntrock’s brow furrowed as he concentrated. “God! What a racist bit of obscenity. The hooked noses. The exaggerated lips. And yet it reminds me of—Oh, Lord! Could this be one of those Streichert maquettes?”

“A what?” Sigrid and I both asked.

“There was an article in the
Smithsonian
magazine last month on Al Streichert and his early works. Did you see it?”

I shook my head. I’d never heard of an Al Streichert, but Sigrid was nodding slowly. “I didn’t read the article, but someone mentioned it.”

“Who’s Al Streichert?” I asked.

“Albrecht Streichert. Sculptor. Worked mostly in stainless steel.”

I rummaged through old memories of the one art history course I had taken in college. “Like Henry Moore?”

Buntrock nodded. “Only less abstract and not quite as famous. He left Germany in the mid-thirties, but not before he’d bought into all that Aryan garbage about the need for racial cleansing. Once he got to New York, though, and saw how thoroughly integral to the artistic culture Jews and blacks were, he was so conflicted—at least that’s what he later said in his autobiography—that he made a few small bronzes like this thing for his own pathetic amusement.”

He handed the camera to Sigrid, who frowned as she studied it closely. “How on earth did my grandmother come by something so odious?”

“I don’t suppose she was part of the New York art scene in her youth?”

“Not that I’m aware of. Mother might know. On the other hand, Grandmother’s taste in art has always been American landscapes like the Hudson River School.”

I peered into the camera when she handed it back to me. “If he made a bunch of these—”

“But he didn’t,” said Buntrock. “And he never showed them to anyone except like-minded bigots. That’s what makes this so curious. We know about them solely by hearsay and a single photograph which was taken by one of those friends. According to the
Smithsonian
article, he only made three or four, and he melted those down and donated the bronze to the war effort when he fell in love and married his wife. She was Jewish and he was utterly devoted to her. According to the granddaughter—she’s the one who gave the interview—he never got over being ashamed of that part of his past.”

“Maybe this one’s not by him after all,” I suggested.

“I don’t suppose you checked to see if it was signed?” asked Buntrock.

“Sorry.”

Sigrid was still puzzled. “I wonder why Grandmother sent this to Mother. Why didn’t she just destroy it if she read the article?”

Buntrock shrugged. “Would you destroy a Henry Moore?”

Before she could answer, the front door opened and a man and a younger woman entered. I didn’t need to be told that they were homicide detectives.

CHAPTER

5

New York is proud of its police force and keeps reiterating that it is the very “finest” in the world—a statement that is not modest but has a good deal of truth in it.

—
The New New York
, 1909

S
IGRID
H
ARALD
—S
ATURDAY NIGHT

H
ad Sigrid realized that Sam Hentz was on call that evening, she would have pulled in Sergeant Tildon, with whom she was more at ease even though Hentz was the best on the squad and the one who had taken over for her when she fell apart after Oscar Nauman’s death. Despite her slight seniority and better fitness reports, he was a year older and had resented her from the first because he had expected to get that promotion. He had not bothered to hide his resentment, but she had let it ride until he goaded her into losing her habitual cool. Out of the hearing of others, her normally calm gray eyes shooting sparks of ice, she got in his face and in a low cold voice said, “That’s the last time you question my authority, Hentz. I got the promotion, you didn’t. Deal with it or put in for a transfer.”

After that, they had developed a modus vivendi that allowed them to work together with grudging respect, which was all that Sigrid required, especially when the job became awkward on a personal level. Part of it was inheriting artworks worth millions; the other part was discovering that her boss had once been her father’s partner and her mother’s lover. Within the department, it was like the shifting of tectonic plates. Even those who managed to take her new wealth relatively in stride and who knew that she was good at her work could not help wondering if she had made lieutenant because Captain McKinnon had smoothed the way.

After Mac retired and married her mother, things should have been easier. Instead, his replacement was a woman who alternated between sucking up to her and making digs at what was presumed to have been Sigrid’s protected position. She was aware that most of her colleagues wondered why she continued to stick it out when she no longer needed the pension and budgetary contraints had frozen promotions, but no one had the nerve to ask her why, not even Tildon, the detective who was most comfortable with her.

Social ease had never been one of her strengths and she had struggled hard to mimic it after Nauman died. Feeling that she owed it to the artist’s memory to become the woman he had thought she was, she styled her hair, learned how to dress, and mastered the intricacies of makeup. Accepting that she had become a public figure was a different matter. When her housemate sat her down in front of his computer and Googled her name, she had been appalled to see over a hundred thousand citations. Nevertheless and against all reason, she still hoped the job would eventually let her become anonymous again.

From Hentz, sleek and urbane in a well-cut topcoat and dark fedora, she got a neutral, level-eyed nod, but the others gave her respectful smiles as they crossed the room to join her by the French doors. Lieutenant Vaughn entered, too, followed by Kate’s brother-in-law and the John Jay professor. Close on their heels were the crime scene team and an ME. Beyond them, she saw several uniforms from the local house trying to placate the noisy and curious crowd of party guests who objected to being kept there against their will.

She was pleased to see her team immediately note and document the smear of blood and scuffing on the hardwood floor, two indicators that Lundigren had been killed there in the living room near the coffee table and then dragged onto the balcony. One of them scraped up some of the blood smear and bagged it for the lab. Yes, it was probably the victim’s blood, but assuming the obvious was how cases got lost.

After setting up floodlights to facilitate their camera work, they opened the French doors wide. Rain had changed to sleet mixed with snow and the room’s temperature quickly dropped.

“Rigor’s starting, so go ahead and get him on the gurney before he stiffens up,” the ME said.

As they shifted the body to zip it into a bag, Sigrid leaned forward and said, “What’s that in his hand?”

More clicks of the camera and Hentz opened the dead man’s callused fingers, tipped his find into a plastic evidence bag, then turned to hold it up so the others could see. A small object gleamed golden in the floodlights.

“That’s mine,” said Sigrid’s newly met cousin who had left Buntrock in the dining room to come stand next to Major Bryant. “Where’s the other one?”

She reached for the bag, but Hentz drew back. “Sorry, ma’am. I’ll have to give you a receipt for it.”

“Evidence, shug,” murmured Deborah’s husband, a ruggedly attractive man.

By the time the gurney was on its way through the suddenly subdued crowd out in the hall and down to the service elevator that was accessed by a door next to the front elevator, Deborah and Buntrock had each described to the detectives how they left the party with Sigrid, how crowded the hall was, how they had noticed the open door and then discovered the disappearance of a small heavy piece of bronze.

Sigrid had not looked too closely at the head wound, but upon reflection she realized that the piece could have made a handy weapon.

The three of them and Dwight Bryant were fingerprinted so that they could be eliminated from the prints found on the balcony doors, the inside knob of the door into the hall, and the kitchen counter where that little bronze had stood. Wiping the ink from his fingers, Bryant said, “Lundigren told us that his wife cleaned here this week, so you’ll probably see her prints here, too.”

One of the techs had found what looked like a clear thumbprint on the mirror of the medicine cabinet in the master bath, and she had lifted several from the flush handles and raised seats on both toilets as well as the faucets.

Sigrid heard Deborah say, “I was the last one out of our bathroom, and I did
not
leave the seat up.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” said the tech.

“What about that painted cat?” the judge said. “I’m about ninety percent sure it wasn’t here when we left tonight, so where did it come from?”

“Print the cat,” Sigrid said.

In the dining room, the room closest to the front door, Sam Hentz pulled out a digital camcorder and began to take brief statements from some of the party guests that the uniforms had sent in.

“Look, the line was five deep around the other bathrooms and you know how long women can take,” said a young man in a Hawaiian shirt, yellow clamdiggers, and purple sneakers. “I saw the door here wasn’t locked so I came in and took a quick leak. That’s all I did.”

“You didn’t check out the kitchen or bedrooms?” asked Hentz as a crime scene tech inked the young man’s fingertips and rolled them onto a card.

“Absolutely not.”

“Or notice a draft of cold air?”

The man shook his head.

“What time was this?”

“Around nine-thirty, I guess, give or take a few minutes.”

“See anybody else in here?”

“Guy with a blue Mohawk? He came in as I was leaving.”

The uniformed officer standing nearby nodded when Hentz shot him an inquiring look. By the time Hawaiian shirt had given his name, address, fingerprints, and held his ID up to the camera, the officer was back with a very tall and very thin man whose stiff blue Mohawk added a good four inches to his height. He was dressed like a beachcomber, and his unbuttoned vest hung on a bare torso so skinny they could count his ribs.

“He was right outside the door when I left with our camera,” Deborah said.

“Quite right,” said the man in an impeccable British accent. “Sorry, m’dear, but I was in urgent need of a loo and when I saw that you hadn’t latched the door and that another chap had gone inside uninvited, I’m afraid I took advantage of your unintended hospitality.”

“And it didn’t occur to you to latch the door when you left?” Deborah asked sharply.

“Actually, it did,” he said in an Oxbridge drawl. “And I did.”

“You left the door locked?” asked Hentz.

The blue Mohawk nodded in affirmation. “I think so. To be precise, I didn’t push any buttons or turn any knobs, but I did pull it shut and felt it click. I assumed it locked automatically.”

“Which bathroom did you use?”

“The one through there.” He gestured toward the master bedroom.

“Was anyone in the apartment when you left?”

“I suppose there could have been,” he said, sounding dubious. “But I didn’t see or hear anyone. I must admit that my tummy kept me in the loo for quite some time and I did hear the other toilet flush at least twice before I emerged.”

“And what time was it when you think you locked the door?”

He pursed his lips in concentration. “Bang on twenty till ten. I looked at my watch because I was supposed to meet someone at ten.”

“Did the apartment seem chilly to you when you were here?”

“No, but you Americans keep your buildings so bloody hot.” The front of his open vest swung back across his scrawny bare chest. “I was quite grateful to Luna for an excuse to dress comfortably.”

“I don’t suppose you glanced into the living room?”

“Sorry, mate.”

They checked his ID, then sent him over to be fingerprinted.

“Did you notice the chill when you got here?” Hentz asked.

Sigrid nodded. “And I was wearing a coat.”

“So if they’re both telling the truth,” said Hentz, “the murder probably took place between nine-forty and eleven.”

Sigrid glanced at her watch. Almost one. By now, the hallway was nearly empty except for a small cluster of guests who lingered down by Luna DiSimone’s doorway and four uniformed police officers who were ready to turn over the lists of names they had collected.

“I think we got them all, ma’am.”

“Anyone see the victim enter the apartment?”

“Not that they said. Before we let people leave, we asked them for as many names of the other guests as they could remember,” said a veteran patrolman who seemed to have taken the initiative. “I figure you guys can cross-match and probably come up with the names of everybody that was here tonight. I also had them send the pictures they’d taken with their cell phones to the address I got from Detective Hentz.”

“Good thinking, Officer”—Sigrid leaned in to read his nameplate—“Huppert. Nice work.”

She passed the yellow legal pads over to another detective and asked him to finish talking to the remaining guests Officer Ted Huppert had seen fit to send in for extra questioning.

“If you don’t need me anymore, Lieutenant, I’m going to shove off before the snow gets too deep,” said Jarvis Vaughn.

They all glanced toward the balcony and saw that snow had indeed begun to accumulate.