Three-Day Town

Chapter


10


Many of [the drawing rooms] resemble nothing so much as antique shops…. Louis Seize cabinets back up against the walls and hold Chinese porcelains, silver, glass, miniatures.



—The New New York, 1909



The doorbell rang and I called, “It’s open, Elliott. Come on in.”

“Sorry,” Lieutenant Harald said, “it’s not Elliott.”

Dressed in a white parka with the hood pushed back, she entered through the unlatched door, followed by Detective Hentz, whom we had met the night before, and a Detective Dinah Urbanska, a sturdy young woman in a navy blue jacket with golden brown hair and light brown eyes.

Lieutenant Harald seemed a little surprised to realize Elliott Buntrock wasn’t with us. “He left?” she asked.

“No, I’m still around,” he called, striding down the hall. He wore a white silk scarf around his neck now and had a heavy black overcoat draped over his arm. “Luna and her boyfriend said they would try to construct a guest list for you.”

“She doesn’t have the original?” asked Hentz.

“In case you haven’t realized it yet, Hentz, our Luna is a creature of impulse,” said Buntrock. “She decides to give a party, and two minutes later she’s scrolling through the numbers on her phone to text everyone she thinks might like to come to a beach party in January. Amazing how many of us are amused by her impulsiveness.”

“I didn’t find being accused of theft all that amusing,” I said. “And after making such a fuss about that cat, she went off and left it here.”

“Cat?” asked Detective Urbanska. She looked around as if expecting to see a real one emerge from behind a chair.

I lifted the brightly painted wooden cat from a nearby table. “This one. It was over there with those pillboxes. Luna said it was hers. Accused my husband and me of stealing it last night.”

“Now, now,” said Elliott. “She merely blurted out the first thing that came into her head to explain how it got here. She really doesn’t think you stole it.”

“No?” I was suddenly feeling cranky and tired of all these people and wished they would go away and leave Dwight and me alone. I was sorry that someone had died here. Phil Lundigren had seemed like a nice enough person and he probably didn’t deserve to be killed. All the same, it wasn’t as if he were someone we’d had any kind of a relationship with.

“Anyhow,” Buntrock said, “it’s just a cheap Mexican souvenir. Probably didn’t cost her ten bucks.”

“Let it go, shug,” Dwight said quietly. “Any of those guys who helped themselves to our facilities last night could have set it on that table.”

Sigrid held out her hand and I gave her the cat. No more than two inches tall and approximately four inches long from tail tip to nose, it was carved to look as if it were about to pounce. “It was over here, right?”

She carried it to the table halfway down the living room wall and set it down next to the two pillboxes. By lamplight the rich deep enamel had made them glow like jewels. By daylight, they were merely shiny and pretty.

“I can’t swear to it,” I said, “but I think there were at least five or six more of those little boxes there before the cat appeared.”

“Are they valuable?”

“I have no idea. I guess it depends on their age and who made them.” I lifted one and saw some indecipherable characters engraved on the bottom. “Anybody here read Chinese?”

“Is it important?” Elliott asked her.

Sigrid shrugged. “If they’re valuable and if someone wished to steal two or three, putting an equally colorful object in the middle of them might distract a casual eye from noting the loss.” She restored the figurine to its original position, and even though it really didn’t go with the exquisite little boxes, I realized it could indeed serve as a decoy.

Intrigued, Elliott Buntrock began to lift the boxes and hold them up high so he could study the markings on their bottoms. For some reason, he reminded me of a long-ago springtime on the farm when two of my brothers decided to raise chickens for a 4-H project.

“You ever sex biddies?” I asked.

His lips twitched. “What?”

“Baby chicks. You look at their bottoms to see whether they’re male or female so that you don’t wind up with too many roosters.”

“I grew up on the East Side,” he said dryly. “Not many baby chicks there. But this one’s got a hallmark on its little bottom. Probably gold, if I’m not mistaken. Could be worth a tidy sum.” He carried it over to the French doors to study it in better light.

“I don’t suppose you found a pillbox in the victim’s pocket?” Dwight asked as we moved back to the vestibule.

“Or my other earring?” I asked.

Sigrid shook her head. “Sorry.”

While we had been distracted by the Mexican cat and the pillboxes, Detective Hentz had stepped into the hall to answer his phone, and now he said to Sigrid, “Lowry and Albee are on their way down, Lieutenant.”

“Good.” She turned to Dwight. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, Major, that if anything about last night occurs to either of you—”

“No,” Dwight said. “You don’t. And we do have your number.”

“Oh wait!” I cried. “When I pulled all the bubble wrap out of the box that Mrs. Lattimore sent, we found an envelope.”

I darted into the dining room and retrieved the envelope we’d left on the table beside the magazine pages. When Elliott realized what was happening, he hastily set the box back on the table and joined us.

To my disappointment, Sigrid merely turned the envelope in her hand, then put it and the magazine article in the pocket of her white parka.

“Come on, Sigrid,” Elliott complained. “Aren’t you going to tell us what she said?”

“It’s not addressed to me,” she said coolly. “Shall we go see how Miss DiSimone’s getting on with her guest list?”

Okay, I had wanted them to clear out and leave Dwight and me alone, but it was frustrating not to know what was in Mrs. Lattimore’s letter.

Elliott slipped on his jacket and gathered up his overcoat. “Thanks again for sheltering me from the storm. If you’re free one night, perhaps you’ll let me treat you to dinner?”

“That would be great,” I said before Dwight could say no.

We exchanged phone numbers, and when everyone was gone, Dwight shook his head in amusement. “You don’t fool me, honey. You’re hoping he’ll find out what Mrs. Lattimore wrote.”

“Aren’t you at all curious, too?”

“Maybe, but I’m more patient. Besides—” He took a business card from his pocket and flourished it. “Detective Hentz gave me his card. He’s playing at that jazz club down in the Village tomorrow night. I thought perhaps we could buy him a drink.”