Baby Doll Games (9 page)

danced
. It was sheer
magic
. My dear, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”
Water boiled up in the espresso pot and a rich aroma of dark-roasted coffee filled the kitchen. Roman poured them each a tiny cup and as they sipped the hot liquid, he said, “You didn’t tell anyone today that we are friends, did you?”
“No, why?”
“No reason,” he replied with suspicious airiness. “Roman?” she said sternly.
“My dear, I shall be the
soul
of discretion. No one will suspect a
thing”
he pleaded. “Do say I can play Watson to your Holmes just this once. Think how useful I can be in your investigation if no one knows our connection.” He looked like a large anxious Saint Bernard who had sniffed a juicy T-bone steak just beyond his reach.
“You’ll have absolutely no official status,” Sigrid warned him, “and the minute you do something foolish-”
“I shall be more inscrutable than Charlie Chan,” he promised happily. “More invisible than the Shadow.”

Chapter 11

When Sigrid arrived at headquarters Sunday morning for the day's briefing, she found her office crowded. Bernie Peters was trying to rev himself up with a second cup of black coffee. His bloodshot eyes and deep yawns betrayed another colicky night with his new son. Mick Cluett sat off to one side, immersed in the sports section of the Sunday paper, while Matt Eberstadt absentmindedly fumbled in the box on Sigrid’s desk for another jelly doughnut as he read through the reports the patrol units had submitted.
“I thought you were on a diet,” teased Elaine Albee, moving the doughnuts out of his reach and offering them to Sigrid as the lieutenant took her place behind the desk. “I didn't have any breakfast,” Eberstadt alibied. Sigrid glanced at the depleted choices and selected a squashed doughnut filled with raspberry jam. “What about fingerprints, Lowry?”
“No luck, Lieutenant,” Jim Lowry replied, confirming what they had feared. The iron scaffolding from which Emmy Mion had been flung was covered with overlapping fingerprints of all six dancers. “I even found a clear set of Orland's prints on the lower rungs. But up near the top, where they say that jack-o’-lantern was standing when he threw her, nothing but smudges.”
To add to their lack of leads, Bernie Peters reported a less than fruitful interview with the composer, Sergio Avril. “The guy's blinder n a bat. Lieutenant. Claims he can barely see across the stage even when it's all lit up, so he’s got no idea who the jack-o’-lantern was.”
Sigrid set her coffee mug down fatalistically. “I suppose he can't say if Kee or Delgado were in their places across from him?”
Peters shook his head and Eberstadt chimed in, “That's the skinny little guy with the thick glasses, right? If it tells you anything about the condition of his eyes, I saw him mistake one of those stuffed goblins for a person.”
They all agreed that those life-size puppets were not going to make life any easier.
“What about the alley door?" Sigrid asked Elaine. “David Orland was right. It was unlocked when I examined it. I asked our boys in blue if they’d checked it earlier. No one remembered.”
“So Orland could have walked out the front and come back in through the alleyway,” mused Jim Lowry.
Mick Cluett lowered the sports section to listen phlegmatically as the others batted possible theories back and forth, but if he had theories of his own, he didn’t offer them.
For the next few minutes, the others tried the glass slipper on every foot without really knowing what would make a perfect fit: there was Eric Kee’s possessive jealousy, Cliff Delgado’s lust, David Orland’s spurned love, and Wingate West’s what?
“Laziness?” suggested Elaine. “Maybe they were going to can him for Orland.”
“No,” said Eberstadt, folding the empty doughnut box into a neat square and carefully depositing it in Sigrid’s wastebasket. He hoisted his belt to tuck in his bulging shirt. “West may act goofy offstage but everybody says the guy can dance.”
Eventually they became aware that Sigrid wasn’t with them and Bernie Peters said, “What do you think, Lieutenant?”
“I think we’re going at this wrong,” Sigrid said bluntly. “Stop focusing on who for the moment and think why.” Albee had been dabbing at a drop of jelly which had fallen on the skirt of her dark blue sweater dress and she lifted her blonde head. “Motive?”
Jim handed her another napkin. “Or who profits?” Eberstadt nodded sagely. “And what changes now that she’s dead.”
“That, too,” Sigrid agreed. “But even more, why was Emmy Mion killed yesterday afternoon on a spotlit stage in front of a hundred people? Those four men were her friends. Any one of them could have maneuvered her into a dark alley, someplace deserted and without any witnesses.”
“Hey, that’s right!” said Lowry, his rugged face animated as the alternatives sank in. “Why didn’t he kill her Friday? Or wait till after the second show last night?”
“He could have poisoned her champagne or brained her with the empty bottle when no one was looking,” nodded Peters.
"Instead,” Albee concluded triumphantly, “he killed her in the most public place possible. On stage, front and center.”
"They’re all performers,” said Lowry, “but that’s carrying performance-a bit far.”
Whenever the lieutenant sat so quietly watchful with her thin fingers laced on the desktop before her, something about her erect carriage stirred subconscious memories in all her officers of certain intimidating teachers they’d each had in grade school. Even though the severe, old-maidish bun had recently been replaced by a much shorter and softer hair style, no one equated it to a softening of her manner; and when her cool eyes silently moved from one speaker to the next, even a latent chauvinist like Bernie Peters suddenly started feeling as if he ought to raise his hand and wait to be called on before speaking.
“Maybe he couldn’t wait till after the show?” he offered diffidently.
The lieutenant gave a half-nod of approval. “Why not?”
Peters shrugged, but Albee glimpsed the direction Lieutenant Harald was moving toward. “That phone call!” she exclaimed. “Maybe Emmy Mion learned something dangerous and she let it slip just before the show started and he had to kill her before she told the others. Or us,” she added, thoughtfully running her fingers through her blonde curls. “Several people mentioned how rigid she was about some things-especially anything illegal.”
“Yeah,” said Peters. “And who was with her when she got the call? Eric Kee! Maybe that fight they had wasn’t all about the Judson kid.”
“Kee told us she was expecting a call,” Sigrid agreed, “but he denies knowing she actually received it.”
“Of course he’d deny it,” Peters said scornfully.
It was something else to bat around.
In the end, Sigrid told Cluett, Eberstadt, and Peters to keep it in mind as they interviewed the remaining witnesses. It was also something that Lowry and Albee might dig at when they’d finished at Emmy Mion s apartment this morning.
“Do you think someone will be at the theater?” asked Jim.
“They performed last night and they plan to dance this afternoon,” Sigrid said.
Before they could react to that news, a clerk rapped at the door. “Lieutenant Harald? There’s a Dr. Ferrell to see you.”
The psychiatrist. “Ask her to wait five minutes,” Sigrid said.
As she finished her instructions to the others, the psychiatrist's presence reminded her of something. “Albee. What was the name of that child that was killed last winter?”
“Child?” Elaine Albee looked at her blankly. “Oh, yes. Helen Delgado mentioned her. A little girl from one of the dancing classes.” She began to thumb through her notebook.
Once again Sigrid missed Tillie’s solid unimaginative presence. He might lack flair and panache, but he would have promptly supplied the information she wanted. Unfortunately, Tillie was still in the hospital, lucky to be alive, and in his absence she would have to make do with assistants who were possibly brighter but much less meticulous. She repressed a sigh. It was going to be a long three months.
“Sorry, Lieutenant, I guess I didn’t write down her name,” Elaine said, bracing for a reprimand.
Fortunately Sigrid had found what she wanted among her own notes, as well as the picture she’d kept of the murdered child. “Amanda Gillespie. Disappeared on her way home from a dance class at the theater last February and later found in a snowbank.”
Her gray eyes fell on Cluett, who had returned to an article about the New York Jets. “Cluett, get me the records on that case, please.”
He looked up with a broad vacant face. “Ma’am?”
“You
are
with us, aren’t you, Cluett? Amanda Gillespie. I want to see the file on that homicide.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Cluett stowed his newspaper under the chair, heaved himself to his feet, and went off to do as asked.
As the others set out on their own tasks, Sigrid told them to send in Dr. Ferrell.

Chapter 12

Sigrid had formed no mental image of the psychiatrist who had first pronounced Emmy Mion dead, so she hardly expected an elderly bespectacled Viennese in a heavy tweed suit to walk into her office. On the other hand, she wasn’t quite prepared either for a tangle of blonde tresses, clear blue eyes, and a perfect size eight in a cashmere suit and high-heeled Italian boots.
So much poise and beauty made Sigrid immediately aware of her own shortcomings-her nondescript gray jacket and navy slacks, that absurd haircut.
She
had a silk scarf similar to the one Dr. Ferrell had looped around her neck for a vivid splash of color, thought Sigrid. Anne had brought her one home from her last mad dash to Paris. It was probably just what today's white shirt could use, so why hadn’t she worn it? And she’d recently started experimenting with makeup, but the habit wasn’t automatic yet and in the morning’s rush, she’d completely forgotten about it.
“I’m glad you came, Doctor,” she said stiffly, offering the other woman a chair. “I understand you’ve been connected with the dance theater since last winter. Dr. Ferrell remained standing with a quizzical smile on her lovely lips. “You really don’t remember me, do you, Sigrid?”
Sigrid looked at her more closely. “No, I'm sorry. Have we met before?”
“St. Margaret’s!” Christa Ferrell laughed musically, drawing a chair up beside Sigrid's desk. “I was a grubby little lower former when you were one of the lofty upperclassmen. You haven't changed a bit, though. I knew you immediately!”
“Oh?” Sigrid promptly heard the inanity in her own voice.
“Don't worry. I know you're too busy to launch into old home week, but I was so surprised to see you up there on the stage yesterday in charge of a homicide, even though I
did
wonder-”
Whatever she wondered was left unsaid as Christa Ferrell draped her black wool coat over a nearby chair. “If St. Margaret's only knew!” Her gloves and purse joined the coat. “I never see your name in the alumnae news.”
“I'm afraid I don’t keep up with it,” Sigrid muttered. She sat down at her desk and pulled her notepad into position, unconsciously trying to restore some semblance of formality between them. “So. Helen Delgado told us you’re a psychiatrist. That you worked with the children when one of their classmates was murdered last winter?”
“God, yes! Wasn't that horrible? You weren't there then, were you?”
“No, another officer handled that one.”
At that moment, Mick Cluett halted in the doorway carrying the Gillespie file. After sending him off to interview his share of names from last night’s audience, Sigrid scanned the high spots of the investigation into little Amanda Gillespie’s death.
“They said she was a sweet-tempered child, very affectionate and obedient. Followed ail the rules,” said Christa Ferrell, who remembered the whole episode and seemed willing to help, “And you know the first rule city parents teach their kids.”
Sigrid nodded. “Never talk to strangers.”
“The other children said she wouldn't have, either. That she was too timid to say boo to a cockroach. My nephew, Calder, had just turned five when it happened and even though he didn’t know little Mandy very well, there was enough gruesome talk to give die children nightmares and implant unreasonable fears. My brother and his wife were worried that he’d be permanently scarred without help and since my specialty’s in pediatrics, of course, I agreed to treat Calder.”
She crossed her legs and smoothed her skirt over a shapely knee. "A few days later, Emmy Mion and a committee of parents asked if I’d conduct a couple of group sessions to help the other children manage their grief and their fears, so I did.”Children were a dark continent for Sigrid. “Was it hard?” she asked curiously.
“Not really.” Christa Ferrell smiled. “Grief therapy for young children is mainly a matter of just guiding the discussion until they talk their way through their anxieties and anguish. It helped that Mandy hadn’t been battered or sexually molested. It would have helped even more if they’d found her killer, of course. Children handle things better when everything balances out.”
It was said almost as an afterthought, but Sigrid felt rather as if she ought to apologize for a departmental lapse in efficiency. “Will you repeat the procedure now that Mion’s been killed?”
“If the parents and staff wish me to, certainly I will.” Her blonde hair swept the shoulder of her blue suit as she tilted her head to consider. “I wonder if the dance classes will continue, though? The Gillespie child’s death had nothing to do with the theater, but
this
time-My sister- in-law’s already saying she won’t let Calder go back till this is cleared up, and that’s a fairly typical parental reaction.” Sigrid laid aside the Gillespie folder to read in greater detail later. “I don’t suppose you recognized the jack-o – lantern dancer?”
“No, I’m really not very familiar with any of them. I did sit in on one of Calder’s classes last month. Two of the men-the Chinese-looking dancer and the one with a blonde punk haircut-conducted that particular session but it certainly wasn’t enough for me to recognize them in costume yesterday.”
“After the lights came back on, do you remember who was where?”
“I wish I could say, but I was concerned for Calder, of course, and there was so much confusion around the stage area, although I must say your policeman handled things very competently.”
Again Sigrid was made to feel responsible for the whole department, as if she should thank Christa Ferrell for her commendation. Instead, she limited her thanks to the psychiatrist for her help yesterday and for coming in that morning.
Dr. Ferrell, however, did not reach for her coat. Instead, she smiled at her onetime schoolmate and asked, “Do you believe in coincidence, Sigrid?”
“You mean this child’s dance instructor now being murdered, too?”
“No, no.” She waved that aside with a graceful flick of her fingers. “I mean the coincidence of our meeting again like this after so many years. Especially since-” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and leaned forward confidingly. “This is the second homicide in which we’ve overlapped. I
thought
your name was familiar when I saw it this summer, but it didn’t really connect until yesterday.”
“This summer?”
“When Darlene Makaroff was killed. In July. I should have come to you before now because I can really use your professional assessment. You
will
help, won’t you?”
“I’m sorry, Dr.-uh, Christa.” Sigrid was completely bewildered. “I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
“Darlene Makaroff. She and her two young daughters were Social Services clients-that’s where I work, you see-and her lover killed her. Smashed her head m with a hammer. Your name was on one of the reports.”
“Really?” Sigrid tried to recall that particular homicide. Back in July?
A chill November wind now harried lower Manhattan and she had trouble separating the Makaroff murder from a half-dozen others. She reached for her phone and had a clerk bring her the file; but even after skimming through the thick folder, memory’s bells were only faintly chiming.
Her initials were on the first reports but Detective Bernie Peters had actually completed the investigation. It read like such a routine domestic killing. No mystery, nothing bizarre, just another of those unpremeditated eruptions of violence, like a sudden summer thundercloud that roils up out of nowhere to strike the earth with electrical, destructive intensity and then is gone with only some wrecked umbrellas and leaf-strewn streets to mark the short-lived fury.
Not that Sigrid equated a human death with an inverted umbrella. It would not occur to her to think of her job in fanciful metaphors, but she did occasionally worry about going stale and times like this made her wonder if objectivity were being replaced by indifference.
She skimmed the papers again, trying to visualize the reality behind the official language. A disturbance at a run-down apartment building tenanted by welfare recipients near Thompkins Square. (
Broken plaster and filthy marble tile,
she thought.
Passageways lit by bare forty- watt bulbs, the stench of urine and vomit in the stairwells.)
Dead at the scene from apparent blows with_ a hammer was one Darlene Makaroff, female Caucasian, age twenty-four. (A
dress? Jeans? Or, on such a hot night, perhaps she’d been that nude?)
Alleged assailant, one Ray Thorpe, male Caucasian, age twenty, seen fleeing from the Kingston’s twelfth floor and identified as the victim's lover.
According to subsequent additions to the forms in his case jacket, Thorpe had narrowly eluded capture in Newark back in September and had recently been spotted in Queens. A watch was being kept on his sister’s house there and an arrest was expected any time now.
just in time for a Thanksgiving arraignment, thought Sigrid, and considering his prior arrest record, Ray Thorpe would have cause for thanks if he didn’t get the book thrown at him.
Making a mental note to ask Detective Peters to keep her posted on the case, Sigrid closed the file, aligned it neatly with others in her Out-basket, and looked up to meet Christa Ferrell’s clear blue eyes.
“Sorry, Christa. I just don’t have a clear recollection of that night.”
To be perfectly truthful, her recollection of Dr. Christa Ferrell wasn’t all that clear either, although she had no intention of admitting it. She vaguely recalled that they might have roomed on the same hall one year at school, but Ferrell was at least three years younger and Sigrid knew that children always pay more attention to those above them than those below.
She tried to imagine die tousled blonde hair a shade lighter and perhaps longer, to imagine her schoolmate’s stylish cashmere suit and wool coat replaced with one of St. Margaret’s ugly brown-and-green plaid uniforms; but memory was just as recalcitrant there as with poor Darlene Makaroff. Christa Ferrell’s poise and air of bright confidence must have been her birthright, a birthright shared with most of the school’s student body, so that was no help either. Few of the girls had been as shy and gawky or as achingly self-conscious as young Sigrid Harald.
Away from headquarters, some of that childhood awkwardness remained; here in her own office, though, she possessed a cool competence.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “If you knew how many domestic homicides we see in-”
"There were two little girls,” Christa Ferrell persisted. “They saw their mother murdered. They
must
have been there when you arrived.”
“Not necessarily. One of the neighbors might have taken them to a different apartment. Is it really so important?”
Ferrell’s graceful shrug conceded the dead end. “It might have been helpful for me to have an objective account of that night.”
“Perhaps a social worker?” Sigrid suggested. “Someone from your place?”
“Martha Holt,” she acknowledged.
‘Too bureaucratic?”
“Oh Lord, no! If anything, just the op. She never forgets that Social Services is supposed to ease problems, not make new ones. All she cared about that evening was getting the kids out of that dreadful place and bedded down somewhere civilized for the night. She told me everything she saw, but I thought you could add something from the police viewpoint, things she might not have picked up on.”
“I wish I could help,” said Sigrid, still puzzled by Christa's connection with this nondescript case. As a police officer, she knew better than to judge by appearances but “I’d have thought you'd be in private practice,” she probed delicately.
Delicacy was unnecessary. Christa Ferrell appeared to find it perfectly natural that everyone would be as interested in the twists and turns of her career as she was herself.
“I'm still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up,” she confided with a smile that was clearly mock-rueful. “My M.D. was in pediatrics, but first-year residency convinced me that my true interest wasn’t in the physical illnesses of children. It’s their mental problems that absolutely fascinate me.” Enthusiasm animated her flawless features and glowed in the depths of her eyes. “Eventually, I’ll open a private practice of my own, of course, but right now I’m doing psychiatric evaluations for the city and getting more solid experience than I’d ever dreamed possible. The things these welfare kids have been exposed to! You can't imagine!”
She broke off with an appealing laugh. “Listen to me telling
you\
And you a policewoman!”
She somehow managed to make Sigrid s career choice sound slightly eccentric.
“Well, I can’t give you more details of that night,” Sigrid said stiffly, “but maybe someone from the beat-” Again she consulted the sheaf of papers in the case jacket. “The patrolman who got there first was Officer J. T. Hickler. Personnel can give you his address.”