Three-Day Town - By Margaret Maron Page 0,44

death of a fellow worker and sympathy for our messed-up vacation. Mostly though, he was avid for details.

“What happened?”

“Looks like he interrupted a robbery,” Dwight said, “and someone smashed him in the head.”

“Robbery? Was anything taken?”

“We think part of Mr. Lacour’s collection of gold and enamel pillboxes,” I said.

“And your earrings,” Dwight reminded me.

“One of them anyhow,” I said. “And a little bronze sculpture.”

“You didn’t happen to notice people going in and out of our place last night, did you?” asked Dwight.

Sidney shook his head. “But then I was busy with people coming and going and the hall seemed to be packed full every time I came up. Someone on the fifth floor was threatening to call the fire marshal on Luna.” His wry smile turned mournful. “Poor Phil, though. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather when they told me. I guess you heard that his wife flipped out when they told her and had to be taken to a psycho ward?”

We hadn’t, and he told us about Mrs. Lundigren’s mental problems in more detail than Kate had. Kate had told me that the West Side was very liberal and socially tolerant of human failings, but to tolerate a klepto?

“I probably ought not to be talking about it, but I heard that you’re a police officer yourself?”

Dwight nodded. “So what happened to the regular morning guy?”

“Antoine? Who knows? They say he started work as usual and then just left.”

“So that’s why the elevator never came this morning,” Dwight said. “Even the service elevator wasn’t running. There was someone on duty when I got back. Didn’t seem like a happy camper, though.”

“That would be Vlad,” said Sidney. “One of the board members called him to come in because of the boiler. The front sidewalk needed shoveling, too. We’re all having to take up the slack. The night man’s still asleep downstairs, but he’s getting too old to pull a double shift.”

“He spent the night here?” I asked.

“Yeah. Antoine, too. See, Phil always said if we were gonna get snowed in, we better get snowed in here and not at home, so he and Jani bunked here. Jani took over around eleven last night so I could get home before it got too deep. My place is only a block from the stop, so I knew I could get back before four today.”

“Why would the day man just up and quit?” I asked. “Was it because of Phil?”

Sidney shook his head and tried to smother a yawn. “He and Phil didn’t get along all that good. Not that he wished Phil bad luck or anything, but I don’t think he’s gonna cry at Phil’s funeral. No, it’s probably that he’s finally had it with teenage boys who think it’s funny to hijack the elevator and leave it on another floor. Vlad was still ticked off about it when I got here.” Beneath that impeccable gray mustache, his lips curved in wry humor. “But then with Vlad, everything’s a big drama.”

CHAPTER

13

Carts work at the snow for days and weeks trying to get it away to the docks and so into the river.

—The New New York, 1909

SIGRID HARALD—SUNDAY (CONTINUED)

By the time Sigrid and Sam Hentz backed out of the hospital room, Denise Lundigren was in full-blown hysterics. Leaving Dr. Penny to calm her, they headed back for the car, and both gave involuntary sighs of relief as they got in and slammed the doors. It was one of those rare moments of solidarity and Hentz didn’t push it.

Instead, he put the car in gear and said, “Think there’s any chance she followed him upstairs and killed him?”

“The spouse is always a possibility.” Sigrid leaned forward to adjust the heat controls with chilled fingers. “Remember what she said when we told her Lundigren was dead?”

Hentz nodded. “She asked if he was really dead and not just hurt.”

“Which could suggest that she had hit him herself without realizing the force of her blow.”

“And the door was secured with two chains,” Hentz said thoughtfully. He eased down on the brakes so that a man pulling two laughing, well-bundled children on a sled could cross against the light. “Like she didn’t expect him back.”

“Unless he habitually came and went through the service door,” Sigrid said, trying not to let herself be diverted by that sled and the bittersweet memory it evoked of sliding down a snowy Connecticut hillside into a tangle of blackberry vines with Nauman, another sharp reminder of all that she had lost when