“You’re aware that Antoine left his post yesterday morning without any notice?”
“Yes, we were told that.” Sigrid held up her hand for silence and pressed the phone’s speaker button so that the others could hear.
“The thing is, his girlfriend’s called twice this morning,” said Mrs. Wall. “She says Antoine never came home yesterday and he’s not answering his mobile. She’s worried that something’s happened to him.”
“Give me her name and number,” Sigrid said, “and we’ll check into it. In the meantime, we still want to speak to your son Corey.”
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but he’s not due home from school until three.”
By the time she hung up, the others had begun to connect the dots.
“Antoine Clarke’s done a runner on us?” asked Yanitelli.
“He was in the building Saturday evening,” said Lowry.
“And we know that he has at least two Class A misdemeanors,” Albee chimed in.
Hentz leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. Stainless steel links gleamed in the French cuffs of his crisp white shirt. “If he’s worked there two years, he’s probably had opportunity to acquire a few passkeys.”
Tillie walked over to their whiteboard and began constructing one of his detailed timetables. At the top, he wrote,
To one side he wrote,
“Jackson worked the elevator until eleven,” Sigrid said, “and everyone says people streamed in and out all evening.”
Hentz went back to his notes. “Horvath said he slept till he relieved Jackson a little before eleven, which is when Jackson said he went home. You think Jackson would have had enough time to sneak back up and kill Lundigren before you and Judge Knott entered the apartment?”
“Maybe,” Sigrid said slowly, “but Denise Lundigren says her husband called right before he left her to see if the Bryants were there. Tillie, contact the ones who admitted being in the apartment and ask if they heard the telephone ring around ten o’clock. It wouldn’t take him an hour to return the cat and no one seems to have seen him after he left his own apartment. Did a canvass of the building turn up anything?”
“There are forty-five apartments,” Elaine Albee said, reading from a list compiled on Saturday night. “The uniforms say they knocked on every door. No responses from twenty-one, and eight of those twenty-one still didn’t answer the door when we tried them yesterday. At least half of those were out of town, according to their neighbors. The Rices in 7-A will be in with their lawyer today. The owner in 3-C told one of the officers that Lundigren fixed a leaky faucet in her kitchen around five-thirty. No one else admits to seeing or speaking to him after that.”
“The wife says they watched television that evening and they had words about her taking things from various apartments,” Sigrid said. “So he leaves with the cat about ten.”
Tillie added that to the neat timetable he was compiling.
“Let’s say he lets himself in through the back door and surprises Antoine in the act of stealing those little gold- and-enamel boxes and the judge’s earrings. Antoine hands the earrings back, then picks up that chunky bronze piece and smashes Lundigren on the head. Lundigren goes down, Antoine tries to stash the body on the balcony but doesn’t quite get the door shut.”
“Did he take that bronze with him or did someone else?” Lowry wondered aloud.
“Both are possibilities.”
“Horvath told us that Antoine was awake at nine-thirty but just going to bed at eleven when he got up to relieve Jackson early,” Hentz said, keeping his eye on the main ball. “So Clarke was around and awake all evening. And Vlad the Regaler did tell us that there was some animosity between Antoine and Lundigren, if that’s not another of his embellishments.”
“Either way, we definitely need to find Antoine Clarke,” Sigrid said. “This doesn’t look like a premeditated murder to me, so maybe we’ll get a quick confession.”
Dinah Urbanska tossed her empty coffee cup toward the nearest wastebasket. It missed and splashed its last few drops on Tillie’s shoe. Flushing, Urbanska apologized and said, “Um, Lieutenant? I was wondering. Nothing much has been said about it, but do you think Lundigren’s death had anything to do with the fact that she—I mean, that
“Sorry, Tillie. When Cohen had the super’s body on the table yesterday, he discovered that Lundigren had all the physical attributes of a female,” she said, and told him of Mrs. Lundigren’s insistence that it was a heterosexual marriage. “And to answer your question, Urbanska, if anyone at his apartment building suspected otherwise, we haven’t heard a whisper. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no reason to make things more uncomfortable for Mrs. Lundigren unless it becomes an obvious factor in this death.”
She referred again to her notes. “Speaking of Mrs. Lundigren?”
“I spoke to Dr. Penny,” Hentz said. “He’s going to send her home today with something to help her cope with her anxiety.”
Jim Lowry looked up from his computer screen. “Here’s the information Mrs. Wall sent us about the elevator man that Lundigren recommended for firing. Want me to follow up on it?”
Sigrid shook her head. “Let it ride for now. I’d prefer that you run the names of those guests with a known art background. See if any of them have priors. And, Tillie, let’s have a list of all the guests who can’t be alibied. We’ll finish up here, then go back after lunch and see if we can speak to the occupants of those eight apartments that weren’t home yesterday.”
