Three-Day Town

There was a time when Sigrid would have frozen him with an icy narrowing of her gray eyes, but now she acknowledged his jab with a wry quirk of her lips. Sooner or later in any puzzling case, her team of detectives had learned to expect that pointed question, especially if they could show opportunity and motive for more than one of the victim’s circle of friends, family, or fellow workers. “Why now?” she would ask. “Why not last week? Why not next Wednesday? What’s different? What pushed the killer’s buttons now?”

Her phone vibrated and it was Detective Albee checking in. She reported that the occupant of 6-B was a friend of DiSimone’s. “They met on Sesame Street and she’s the one who told DiSimone about the building when that apartment came up for sale two years ago. She wasn’t able to add any names to the list, and when we showed her our master list, she didn’t know who had art connections except for this Cameron Broughton. He styled her bedroom and helped her pick out some prints to frame.”

“What about the other building employees?”

“The eight-to-four elevator man—Antoine Clarke—seems to have quit, but we’ve talked to the evening man who’s covering for him and to one of the porters. The night man’s around, but we haven’t found him yet. Urbanska’s gone back to the office to start collating the lists.”

After bringing Albee up to speed on what they’d learned from Denise Lundigren, Sigrid said, “When you’re talking to the staff, ask about any friction between Lundigren and Clarke. And tell Mrs. Wall that Hentz and I want to speak to her. We should be there in ten minutes.”

Eight minutes later, Sigrid and Hentz were on their way up to the twelfth floor.

“So what’s with Antoine?” Hentz asked him once the brass accordion cage was closed and the first-floor door slid shut.

“Ahh, him!” Sidney gave an annoyed twitch of his narrow shoulders. “You’d think he was never a kid himself.”

“Kid?” asked Sigrid.

“Probably Corey Wall, although the Petersen kid in 11-B’s done it a time or two as well.”

“You mean someone took this elevator up when Antoine wasn’t looking? And that’s why he quit?”

“Who knows? Usually it’s the night man who loses it, but Corey did get me once when I was delivering a package to 1-B and I stepped inside to set it down in the kitchen. Two minutes flat and it was gone. Used to happen to poor Jani at least once a month. He’s pushing sixty-five and when he gets comfortable in one of the lobby chairs, he’s out. The buzzer’s loud enough to wake the dead, so that’s no problem. If someone comes in at two in the morning and Jani’s asleep in the lobby, adults will just wake him up. The boys, though? They don’t do it as much as they used to, but they’re kids and they think it’s funny to hop in and take it up themselves, and then they just leave it on whichever floor and we have to go run it down.”

“And Antoine takes it personally?”

“First time it happened to him, last summer, he bitched about it for three days. Not to Corey’s parents or any of the owners, of course. Or to Phil either, for that matter. It’s like Phil kept telling us: this is a good job. Good pay, good benefits, and anybody can learn it in an hour. I’ll cover for Antoine today, but if he’s not back here tomorrow at eight, they’ll have a new guy in a brown uniform before noon. Just between you and me, though, I don’t know that the kids take it as much as he claims. I think Antoine sneaks out for a cigarette and doesn’t always hear the buzzer. Easy to say he’s hunting for the elevator when he’s the one that stopped it.”

“I’m surprised they don’t install a self-service elevator,” said Hentz, who lived in an East Side high-rise.

“Never gonna happen,” Sidney said, running his hand across the shiny brass fittings, almost like an affectionate owner petting a favorite dog. “People love this thing. It’s been here since the place was built and it’ll probably still be here when they take it down.”

Mrs. Wall invited them into her living room and Hentz looked around appreciatively as they loosened their coats and stuffed their gloves into pockets.

“Roycroft?” he asked, touching the hammered copper tray on the coffee table.

Mrs. Wall seemed surprised and Hentz said, “My aunt’s big on the Arts and Crafts movement. She has a Craftsman house on a lake upstate.”

Sigrid kept her face carefully immobile. She was the only one in the department who had connected Lizzie Stopplemeyer, the aunt listed as Hentz’s next of kin in his personnel file, with the Mrs. Irving Stopplemeyer, whose late husband’s face was as familiar to strudel lovers as Colonel Sanders’s was to chicken lovers. She waited until the amenities were done before describing Denise Lundigren’s present mental state.

Mrs. Wall seemed to grow uncomfortable when they asked about thefts in the building. “Phil Lundigren was the most honest person I ever met. As I told those other detectives who were here earlier, if he found a penny in the hallway, he would go door to door looking for the owner. Denise’s kleptomania distressed him no end, but he always brought anything back as soon as he realized she had taken it. She doesn’t leave the building very often and never alone, so it was easy for him to keep track of anything new in the apartment. It’s so sad and it’s not even that she wants the things she takes. I can’t tell you how often Phil or one of the porters finds a missing item on the service steps. Phil said that taking things gives her an adrenaline rush. It’s not the object, it’s the act of stealing itself.” She opened the drawer of a nearby end table and showed them four or five little glass animals. “I’ve started putting these out on Thursdays when Denise cleans for me. So far, it’s working.”

She sighed and her straight silver hair gleamed against the rich brown of the wall behind her. The silver bracelets on her slender arm tinkled as she pushed back her artfully ragged bangs. “So, so sad,” she repeated.

“She said something about a watch and a necklace,” Sigrid said.

“Denise didn’t take my watch,” Mrs. Wall said quickly. “I misplaced it and Denise had cleaned here the day before, so I did ask Phil to look for it. As he pointed out, though, she’s never taken jewelry and I did find it later.”

Her eyes slid away from Sigrid’s thoughtful gaze and she busied herself with the manila employee files that still lay on the coffee table.

Hentz picked up on her body language, too. “Was it a valuable watch, ma’am?”

“Yes,” she said reluctantly.

“May we see it?”