The Right Jack

'Around ten. I wanted to wake you, but Oscar wouldn't let me. He said he had an early meeting this morning and Jill was yawning, too, so he took her home then.'

The street gate buzzed and Roman went over to push an electric button that released the latch. 'That'll be young Horatio Hornblower. He told me he'd pick you up this morning.'

But the figure who opened the gate was neither Alan Knight nor the yeoman driver. This sailor was dark and wiry, the sleeve of his navy-blue jumper had a couple of extra hash marks, and hise yes squinted across the courtyard as if he were staring through the briny spray from a fo'c'sle deck, whatever that was. Sigrid was weak on Navy terminology.

She opened the door.

'Lieutenant Knight sent me, ma'am,' he said in as flat a North Jersey accent as Sigrid had ever heard. 'He said you'd be expecting him.'

'I'll be right out,' said Sigrid and hurried down the hall to put on her gun and load the pockets of her jacket with wallet, ID, and other necessities for the day. In passing, she snagged a thin zippered leather folder that held her notes on the bombing and was out the door before Roman could remind her to carry an umbrella.

As she pulled the gate shut, the driver jumped out of the gray station wagon and held the door next to the curb for her to enter. Alan Knight was in the far corner with a suspiciously pasty look on his face.

'You look awful,' Sigrid said by way of greeting. 'Are you all right?'

'It's going,' he answered, popping another digestive mint into his mouth. 'I always thought I could eat anything, but for some.reason, I keep tasting licorice this morning.'

He looked at her closely. 'You don't seem the worse for wear. I thought you'd look like I feel.'

'I don't know why everyone seems to assume I had too much wine last night,' Sigrid said stiffly.

She would have said more, but their driver swerved abruptly with a sharp blast of his horn at a cab that had encroached on his lane. Monday morning rush hour traffic clearly held no terrors for him.

'Petty Officer Schmitt's my regular driver,' said Knight unnecessarily.

The driver's eyes met Sigrid's in the mirror. 'Ma'am.' *

Sigrid gravely returned his nod.

***

headquarters, her first order ot business was to call the hospital. Tillie's conditions continued to improve, they told her.

Her office was too small to hold everyone working on the Maintenonb ombing, so at 9:06 they carried their coffee cups and doughnuts into one of the conference rooms.

At 9:07, a fingerprint technician licked powdered sugar from his fingers and said, 'I'm afraid I have bad news, Lieutenant. The FBI sent us the prints we requested and Ted Flythe's are nowhere close to Frederick Hamilton's.' j

'Dead end,' sighed Lowry. Sigrid was dismayed. 'You're certain?'

'Yes, ma'am. See for yourself.' She studied the photographic enlargements of both sets of prints. Small arrows had been superimposed on distinguishing loops and whorls. Sigrid was no expert in this area, but even she could see that none of the comparison points matched. 'That's not all,' said the fingerprint technician. 'I requested the prints of all known Red Snow members and Flythe's don't match any of them. Sorry, ma'am.' It was a bitter disappointment. Sigrid's assumption of a Red Snow link between John Sutton and Ted Flythe had infected them all. Consciously or unconsciously, they'd let similar assumptions affect the diligence withw hich they'd looked at other possible suspects that weekend.

Because Haines Froelick seemed a harmless dilettante. Peters and Eberstadt had only gone through the motions in checking his background; Elaine Albee shared Sigrid's instinctive rejection of Val Sutton as a killer-'Besides, she wasn't anywhere near the Maintenon yesterday,' said Albee-and those who'd heard of Molly Baldwin's lies about her relationship to Commander Dixon had marked the girl as an uncomplicated, self-centered airhead, much as Vassily Ivanovich was their idea of a comic Russian.

'There's nothing comic about an ex-demolition expert with a KGB son,' said Sigrid, setting her blue mug on the table with a firm thunk. 'Let's stop thinking in stereotypes and start at the beginning again. Comments? Suggestions?'

'Well, we know how much money Zachary Wolferman left Froelick,' said Peters, 'but what about Commander Dixon if the girl's her closest relative?'

'Nothing like six million,' drawled Lieutenant Knight, 'but I'd say notm uch under six hundred thousand.'

'What?'

'Damned if I didn't join the wrong service!' Lowry whispered

'We ran a check on her financial records,' Knight said. 'As a single officer with twenty-two years in service, she's been putting a right tidy sum in her credit union account every month. She seems to have inherited some rental property in Miami a few years back and there were some stock certificates. One way or another, I'd say at least a good half million.'

Sigrid looked at him suspiciously. 'Did you check her financial records before or after you learned of Ivanovich's KBG connection?'

'After,' he admitted, returning her gaze blandly. 'Standard operating procedure, Lieutenant.'

'Did you learn anything else you'd care to share with us?' she asked dryly.

'No, but I was going over my notes just now and if you remember, Ivanovich told us that Molly Baldwin began college as a chemistry major.'

'That's interesting,' said Jim Lowry.

'Chemistry might give her the knowledge to cook up something explosive.'

'I think it's right interesting how Ivanovich stuck it in his testimony,' countered Knight. 'Sort of spreads the wealth around a little.'

'From each according to his ability?' Sigrid murmured. 'Perhaps.'

They continued to pool the scraps of information collected over the weekend, seeking a new pattern. The M.E. had sent the results of Pernell Johnson's autopsy and Sigrid skimmed the report, then passed it around the table.

'From the bruises on the body, Cohen thinks Johnson was first immobilized with something like a karate chop to his neck and diaphragm, then strangled with his tie.'

'Could the girl have handled that?' Peters asked, ignoring Elaine Albee's glare.

'He wasn't very big, was he?' said Lowry, reading from the medical report. 'Five-six, a hundred and twenty pounds, slender build. You could have taken him, Lainey.'

'I could take you, hotshot, but I'veh ad training. Has Baldwin?'

'Find out,' said Sigrid. 'From the top then: We know that Ted Flythe handed Molly Baldwin the pairings sheet with all the players listed sometime in midweek-'

'Tuesday morning,' Knight reminded her.

'-So if Baldwin didn't read through the names and learn then that her cousin would be playing, she certainly knew by Thursday when the chart came back from hotel's graphics studio and Flythe reprimanded her for leaving it in a public area for anyone to see.'

'Which might have been deliberate on her part,' said Detective Eberstadt, disappointed to find no more doughnuts in the box Albee had brought. 'More of that spreading the wealth around.'

Sigrid agreed and continued through her notes. 'Now a cribbage board was taken from the unlocked display case-a case Baldwin conveniently forgot to lock-the same day. That gives her a day and a half to construct the bomb.'

'Did she have a chance to switch boards?' asked Peters.

'Absolutely,' Albee and Lowry chimed in unison… They paused to grin at each other, then Elaine Albee continued.

'She was in charge of all the arrangements for the d'Aubigne Room and she was the one who ordered the steward, Mr. George, to use the wrong ashtrays. He'd suggested the plainer ones, but she overrode him; and sure enough, as soon as Lucienne Ronay stepped into the room for a last-minute check, she ordered them changed.'