Baby Doll Games (23 page)

* * *

Roman's dinners were always long and boisterous and by the time he had divided three pieces of baklava between four dessert plates and was ready to pour coffee, it was almost ten and conversation was long since back to normal. Anne and Oscar had fought to a draw the question of whether photography should be taken seriously as an art-Oscar for, Anne against, Sigrid and Roman abstaining; Roman raved about a current book on the best-seller lists-Sigrid and Oscar had both disliked it intensely but for radically different reasons which devolved into a subdebate; and Anne passed around the contact prints of some of the pictures she’d taken for the
New York Today
series which was scheduled to begin in January.

“You were right about Christa Ferrell,” she told Sigrid. “She’s wonderfully photogenic.”

The individual pictures on the proof sheet weren’t much bigger than commemorative postage stamps and Roman set the coffee tray on the end of the table and brought out a large magnifying glass in order to see better. Oscar slipped on his reading glasses.

‘This is an old schoolmate?” he asked. “She’s quite lovely.”

Telling herself that she was being stupid, that Nauman certainly didn’t mean to be tactless and that he wasn’t necessarily drawing comparisons, Sigrid rose to set the cups around the table for Roman and to distribute the baklava.

“Likes herself, doesn’t she?” Oscar commented as Anne described the case.

“You noticed that, too?” asked Anne. “I thought maybe it was just me.”

Absurdly, Sigrid’s heart lifted and she looked over their shoulders at the contact prints.

“No one sits on a low chair with her skirt draped like that unless she knows she has perfect legs,” said Nauman.

“And she made sure that she was either full-face or three-quarter profile during the whole session, even when she had the little girl on her lap. See there? See how she never quite lets the child’s face block hers?” Anne looked up at Sigrid. “I don’t know about your friend, honey. There’s just something about her that puts me off and I don’t mean only the way she thinks she s going to come out looking so good in the article.”

“Have you changed your mind about using her?”

“No-o-o,” Anne drawled thoughtfully. “The pictures are good, the story’s dramatic, and she’s promised me fireworks tomorrow. I don’t walk away from a story just because I don’t like one of the people.”

“Fireworks?” queried Roman as he began to pour the coffee.

“The little girl there saw her mother killed by her lover last summer but she’s been blocking it out of her mind ever since then,” Anne explained. “Dr. Ferrell seems to think that tomorrow may be the day she unblocks.” Sigrid handed the contact prints back to her mother The close-ups of little Corrie Makaroff reminded her of Nate Richmond’s photographs and she described them to Anne. “He does the lights at the dance theater Roman’s connected with, but he’s also a very gifted photographer.” Roman nodded enthusiastically. “Sheer
magic
, Anne! His portraits of the children would break your heart with their innocence. Everyone there
likes
the children, of course, but
Nate’s
relationship with them is quite special. He
becomes
a child when he works with them.”

“Peter Pan?” asked Nauman as his fork shattered the multilayered Greek pastry.

“With a dash of Lewis Carroll thrown in for good measure,” Sigrid said, passing the sugar bowl to Anne.

“The Reverend Charles Dodgson.” Anne stirred a heaping spoonful of sugar into her coffee and added cream as well. “He photographed children, too. No, not what you’re thinking. Did I sound lascivious? I’m sure it was quite Victorian and proper. The mamas were always present”

“The Victorians were a curious race,” said Nauman, a propos of nothing that Sigrid could see, so she smiled at him.

“The mamas may not always be present when Nate snaps their children,” Roman said, “but they
love
the results. One father bought ten different poses of his two kids. Makes a nice little sideline for the theater.”

“What about the other men?” asked Sigrid.

“You mean the dancers?” Roman smoothed several strands of sandy brown hair across the high dome of his head. “What about them?”

For Anne and Nauman’s benefit, Sigrid briefly described Emmy Mion’s death and the people involved, embellished by Roman’s eyewitness account of her last moments. Roman was astounded to hear that Emmy must have suspected one of the troupe of murdering the Gillespie child, and the other two were drawn into theorizing about the case quite unwittingly. Although Nauman had twice seen Sigrid in action, she seldom discussed her work with him; and, like Anne, he would have preferred her in a safer profession.

But both had read accounts of the young dancer’s dramatic death and one of Nauman’s students at Vanderlyn was a friend of Ginger Judson’s, so they were already familiar with the broad outlines and were interested in having it explained to them how one member of a dance troupe could kill another onstage, in front of an audience, and not be recognized.

“I vote for the costume designer and her husband,” said Oscar. “Masks? Hoods? Pumpkin heads? She designed the perfect disguise and he carried out the murder.”

“Why?” Sigrid demanded.

He shrugged. “I don’t do whys, I just do hows.”

“Unfortunately, the D.A’s office insists that I give them whys, too,” Sigrid told him.

“I must admit, dear Sigrid,” said Roman, “that it’s vastly more difficult to question one’s friends about homicide than utter strangers.”

“The Gillespie child,” said Anne, hewing to cause and effect. “Could she perhaps have been killed because she saw something else? A criminal act of one of the troupe? Or perhaps two people making love who weren’t supposed to?”

“Lovemaking isn’t a criminal act,” said Sigrid and a warm wave of awareness promptly washed over her as Nauman s foot nudged hers teasingly under the table.

Fortunately neither Anne nor Roman seemed to notice. Her housemate was still running over the probabilities.

“Rikki’s hopelessly insane over Nate, although Nate can
hardly
be described as oversexed,” he mused in a low rumble. “Emmy was living with David Orland back then and it was certainly no secret from Eric; Win and Emmy may have
slept
together but sex doesn’t seem terribly important to Win either; none of the men would care
whom
Ginger bedded; and Helen
knows
that Cliff s unfaithful and it doesn’t bother her any more than it would bother Cliff should Helen turn the tables.”

“Actually, it does bother Helen Delgado,” Sigrid told him and repeated part of the conversation she’d had with the designer that afternoon, “All the same,” countered Roman, “she's right about the children. I simply do
not
see how anyone in the troupe could have an unhealthy interest in children and it not be soon apparent.”

“Perhaps the child was a coincidence after all,” Anne suggested. “Maybe it was a simple crime of passion-one of Emmy’s scorned lovers.”

“I suggest it was Miss Scarlett in the conservatory with the candlestick,” said Roman. “More coffee anyone?” Sigrid covered her cup with her hand but smiled at Roman even as she shook her head, “You’re probably right.”

Anne hid a yawn behind her hand. “Too deep for me, chickabiddies. And too late. Me for home and bed”

“I’ll drop you,” Nauman offered and Sigrid didn’t know if she was pleased or disappointed.

While Roman went to fetch a book he’d borrowed from Anne a few weeks earlier, Sigrid followed Nauman and her mother out to the hall and handed them their coats.

“’Night, honey,” said Anne, She took the book from Roman, reached up to kiss Sigrid’s bent head, then tactfully stepped out into the chilly courtyard ahead of Nauman, who did not have a peck on the cheek in mind for her daughter.

“I shall load the dishwasher,” Roman announced, not to be outdone in tactfulness.

Sigrid felt her heart do funny little skips as Nauman embraced her.

“Dinner at my place tomorrow night?” he asked.

“Yes, please.”

He smiled at her in the darkness and followed Anne’s small figure across the courtyard, paused at the gate, and then turned back to Sigrid, who had remained in the open doorway despite the cold night air.

“Forget something?”

Nauman jangled Roman’s house keys in his hand. “I don’t think I can start my car with these. You must have given me Romans raincoat.”

Now that he mentioned it, Sigrid realized that the raincoat he’d left in was at least two sizes too large.

“Freud says there's no such thing as an accident,” Nauman observed when he’d retrieved his own coat and found his car keys.

“Smart man, Freud,” Sigrid murmured, not at all displeased to repeat their goodnight kiss.

But later, just as she was almost asleep, she came wide awake with a sudden certainty as to why Emmy Mion had died on Saturday instead of Friday or Sunday.

And Freud was wrong. There
were
such things as accidents.

Chapter 27

Wednesday morning dawned clear and sunny, cool enough for coats but warmer than the day before. Mick Cluett still had a chesty cough but at least he was at the morning briefing in Sigrid’s office.
As coffee and doughnuts made the rounds, Sigrid said, “Glad to see you’re feeling better, Cluett,” then moved briskly through the review of her team’s caseload as each member brought the others up to date on current lines of investigations.
She was pleased to hear that the leads she’d given Peters and Eberstadt yesterday had borne fruit and that a suspect had confessed to killing the floater.
“The D.A.’s office called,” said Elaine Albee, brushing powdered sugar from her blue tweed jacket. “That podiatrist’s trial went to the jury late yesterday and it took them only twelve minutes to return a guilty verdict.”
Sigrid had deliberately saved the Emmy Mion investigation for last; and after other business was out of the way, she used the timetable she’d constructed yesterday to review what they’d learned so far. As for what she now suspected, she waited until after she’d dismissed everyone except Elaine Albee and Mick Cluett.
Cluett cleared her file cabinet and desk of empty paper cups and dumped them in her wastebasket along with the doughnut napkins as Sigrid outlined her speculations, but he gave her all his attention when she described how the killer might have lulled Emmy Mion’s suspicions.
“How good are you with children?” Sigrid asked Elaine.
The younger woman shrugged. “Average, I guess.”
“The little Pennewelf boy-I think he’s named Billy- goes to school a half-day in the afternoons,” Sigrid said. “See if you can get him to tell you who Emmy yelled at about Amanda Cillespie and then meet us at the theater.” She looked at the time. "Say in two hours?”
As Elaine left, Sigrid gave Cluett Sergio Avril’s address and told him to sign out a car. “This early, he’ll probably be at home.”
In short terse sentences, she told him precisely what he was to ask the composer and what she expected to hear when he joined her at the theater. “But no leading questions,” she warned. “If it’s what I think, I want it to come in Avril’s own words.”
Mick Cluett hoisted his beefy frame from the chair beside her desk and then hesitated.
Sigrid looked up from her paperwork. “Question, Cluett?”
The older man started to answer but was seized by a paroxysm of coughing.
He was carrying at least fifty extra pounds, thought Sigrid, and if his flushed face were any indication, his blood pressure was probably too high. His dark suit fit well enough, but the buttons of his shirt strained at his belly, and his collar was too tight. How many years since he’d seen the inside of a gym, she wondered, or chased anyone down a dark alley? And why had McKinnon specialled in a detective of Cluett’s age, in his condition, instead of leaving him to finish out his forty in Manhattan Beach? “Cluett?” she repeated as his cough subsided.
“I’m okay. I probably should have taken off another day but I don’t have much sick leave left and-” Again he hesitated.
Sigrid frowned. “You wanted something?”
“It's just that I’ve been thinking, Lieutenant. Your name and all.”
"Yes?” she said icily.
Mick Cluett shifted uneasily under her cool gaze, but plunged on. “You wouldn’t be any kin to Detective Leif Harald, would you now?”
“My father.”
Mick Cluett cocked his head. “Well, I’ll be damned!” he said, studying her openly. “Leif Harald's kid. I
thought
there was something familiar about your name.” A broad smile creased his puffy face as he sat back down in the chair, clearly prepared for a long and comfortable session of reminiscing.
Sigrid knew it was to be expected. She remembered her father only in vague and unconnected snatches but always with laughter; and since childhood, she had watched Anne turn strangers into instant friends with her ready smiles and easy southern charm. People who had known only her parents always assumed that Leif and Anne’s daughter had to have inherited their gregariousness.
“You got Leif’s tallness and his eyes,” said Cluett, unconsciously paralleling her thoughts, “but not much of Anne, did you?” He looked suddenly abashed. “What I mean is, well, she was a little thing, wasn’t she?”
Sigrid knew very well that he was remembering her mother’s beauty rather than her height, but she nodded. “Hair like yours, though. She still living?”
“We had dinner together last night,” Sigrid acknowledged. “Detective Cluett-•”
“Aw, call me Mickey,” he said expansively. “Everybody else does and hell! I bounced you on my knee a couple of times when you weren’t big as a minute.”
Sigrid mentally gritted her teeth at his familiarity. It was always difficult to make herself speak of anything personal. Especially here. She had kept her off-duty life rigorously separate from her work. Not for her the easy camaraderie the others seemed to fall into, the surface chitchat of daily intercourse. It was easier to hide her self-consciousness behind a facade of reserve. In the past year she d learned to trust Tillie enough to begin to lower her guard with him, but she knew that most of the others considered her a cold and sexless automaton. They might not dispute her competence, but she knew that she made them uncomfortable.
Mick Cluett seemed to feel he had her pegged, though, for he was now rattling on freely about the old days. “Why, I broke your dad in when he first signed on the force. They used to put all the rookies with me for their first six months. I was working over in the old Sixteenth Precinct when Leif came aboard and I remember-”
“Detective Cluett,” she interrupted crisply with a pointed glance at her watch. “I suggest we continue this another time. You’ve now somewhat less than two hours to interview Avril before we meet with Albee at the theatre”
“Oh, yeah. Right, Lieutenant,” he said, getting to his feet heavily. But there was a hurt expression on his broad face as he left.
Yet when she was alone again, Sigrid did not immediately return to work, for, by his loquaciousness, the old detective had stirred a half-memory of her own. She crossed to the file cabinet and pulled out a folder. When Captain McKinnon had suggested she read the records of her father’s death, she had photocopied a set of those yellowing reports for her personal files.
Now she leafed through them until she came to a report filed by the driver of one of the patrol units which had replied to McKinnon's call for help.
It was signed by Michael Cluett.
Since the hardware store didn’t open till ten, Elaine Albee had planned to seek Billy Pennewelf at home three blocks away; and the store was still dark when Sigrid passed. Inside the 8th-AV-8 Dance Theater, however, she found Eric Kee and Win West in the comer prop room where, under Helen Delgado’s supervision, they had begun to construct simple props and backdrops for their Christmas production. Eric was cutting out basic toy shapes from heavy cardboard: a drum, a ball, a teddy bear which would be painted and then stapled to scrap blocks of two-by-fours so that they could stand around the tree.
Win was at work on the tree itself, dreamily pasting strips of newspaper onto a chicken-wire skeleton.
“When it’s sprayed green, and draped in some tinsel, it’ll look enough like a tree,” Helen said confidently.
Sigrid looked around the workroom, noting the slapdash lack of order in the way the designer kept her supplies and equipment.
She wandered back down the hall to the dimly lit stage. The dusty velour maskers on each side were in place again and the life-size goblin puppets were piled beside the light and sound boards, but the back screen was still rolled up above the mirrored rear wall. Sigrid stood quietly at the center of the stage and tried to place each member of the troupe.
There was where Sergio Avril claimed to have stood, there Ginger Judson claimed to have sat. Cliff Delgado there, separated from Eric Kee by one of the maskers. There from Win West’s spot, Rikki Innes claimed to have seen Ginger diagonally opposite before Rikki crossed between the screen and mirror to her own place, again separated from Ginger’s by a velour masker.
Closely witnessed only by Ginger, the killer had entered from Eric’s place to Sigrid’s left, had danced with Emmy for but a short moment or two, lured her to the top of the scaffold over here, then smashed her down onto the fence to spill her life’s blood upon the stage floor there, where one spot was scrubbed cleaner than the rest.
“Lieutenant?”
Sigrid turned to see Elaine Albee watching from beyond the proscenium.
"You were right on the money, Lieutenant.”
Sigrid swung herself over the edge and motioned Elaine to one of the pews where they could speak without the risk of being overheard.
With commendable brevity, the younger detective reported on her approach to Billy Pennewelf s mother and the mother’s no-nonsense request that the child answer her questions. “One thing,” Elaine concluded. “Billy said Emmy was angriest-and I'm quoting him directly-over his holes. Does that make any sense to you?”
Sigrid nodded. “I think it does.” She looked at her watch. Cluett should have been here by now. Well, they’d have to continue without him.
They went backstage through the side door, down past the wooden steps, past the office and the bathroom, switching on lights as they went, to Nate Richmond’s workroom. Elaine turned on the lights there and Sigrid immediately went past her into the makeshift cave which served as the light wizard s darkroom.
It was as Sigrid remembered from her cursory examination on Saturday: the pipes and faucets that serviced the darkroom were jury-rigged taps on the bathroom plumbing next door. Most of the cracks on the bathroom side had been legitimately patched with wide electrical duct tape to prevent light from leaking into the darkroom; but as she’d expected even before hearing Billy Pennewelf s testimony, concealed beneath a calendar and the instruction sheet from a box of toner were two small holes, covered by easily movable flaps, on either side of the leaky toilet next door about half-way up the wall.
He would only have had to wait until a child turned its back to the wall and dropped its underpants to take as many surreptitious pictures as he liked, the camera sounds masked by the constantly running water in the tank.
“Amanda Gillespie told her sister that he used to let her help him in the darkroom,” Elaine said. “Maybe the flap wasn’t closed tightly that day and light leaked in. Or maybe she walked in on him as he was taking pictures.”
Even as she spoke, the outer door opened and Nate Richmond entered, followed by Ulrike Innes.
“Ah.” He smiled at them. “I thought for a moment I must have left the lights on. Were you looking for…?”
His words died away as he stepped into the darkroom and saw the open flaps over his sink.
“Yes, Mr. Richmond,” said Sigrid. “We were hoping to see the pictures Emmy Mion found Saturday when she came looking for pictures of Amanda Gillespie’s class. I can’t believe you would have destroyed them after the trouble you went to to make them. And to steal them back.”
“I-I don’t know what you mean,” he faltered, his face ashen.
Ulrike Innes placed her strong body in front of him protectively. “Aren’t you supposed to have a search warrant before you invade someone’s privacy?”
Elaine snorted. “Mr. Richmond didn’t seem to mind invading the kids’ privacy,” she said hotly.
Sigrid held up a restraining hand.
“We can, of course, get a warrant if you insist-”
“Don’t bother,” Richmond said wearily. “I’ll show you.”
“Nate!” cried Rikki, swinging around to face him. “What are you doing?” The pale oval of her face was terrified for him.
“It doesn’t matter, Rikki,” he soothed her. “I haven’t done anything wrong. Not really. You’ll see.”
Above the sink was a set of metal shelves which held yellow boxes filled with photographic paper, developing chemicals and the like. Nate stood on a step stool and brought down one of the eight-by-twelve boxes.
Inside were dozens of black-and-white photographs of partially nude children, some printed through gauzy filters, the others in sharp detail.
“And this is how you get your jollies?” asked Elaine, repulsed.
\ “No!” he said. “See, Rikki? That’s why I couldn’t talk about it, not even to you. Everyone looks at pictures like this and yells
Voyeur!
But I’m not!” He was almost in tears as he pleaded his case to Sigrid. “I’m not, Lieutenant. I love children, but for themselves alone. Their sweetness, their innocence-everything about them. I’d never do anything to mess that up. I don’t lust for them. Not like dirty-minded people think. It's only that their bodies are so beautiful, so delicate. Look at the curve of that small bottom, the way her skin almost glows with an inner luminosity. They grow up and out of that beauty so quickly.”
He fanned out some of the pictures. “I look at these pictures and I feel like Wordsworth. Remember? ‘Not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from God.’ Heaven really does lie all around young children- so much immortal beauty and so fleeting.”