Three-Day Town - By Margaret Maron Page 0,48

files from the pile and quickly scanned the contents. “There’s nothing to indicate a conflict between them.”

Catching sight of a small photograph clipped to the top sheet of paper, Hentz said, “Is that Antoine’s picture?”

Mrs. Wall immediately closed the folder with a clash of silver bangles.

“What about the man who was fired two years ago?” Hentz persisted. “Could he be harboring a grudge?”

“It was not pleasant,” Mrs. Wall conceded. “He made inappropriate comments to some of the young women in the building and even tried to touch them. I don’t have the inactive files at hand, but if you’ll give me an email address, I’ll send you his name and last known contact information.”

“Is your son around?” Hentz asked.

Startled and suddenly apprehensive, she said, “My son? Why?”

“Corey Wall is your son, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” she said cautiously.

“His name shows up on two of the lists as being at that party.”

Some of the tenseness went out of her face and she gave a rueful smile. “He probably crashed it.”

“May we speak to him? Is he here?”

“I’m sorry, Detective. He went sledding with some friends this morning. One minute they want to be treated like adults, the next minute they’re five-year-olds playing in the snow. Is it important?”

“That’s okay,” Hentz said easily. “It’s just routine. We’ll catch up with him later.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t know anything that could help you.” She stood as if to indicate that this meeting was over.

The others stood, too, but as she rose, Sigrid said, “Were you aware that the day man walked off the job this morning because someone took the elevator when his back was turned?”

Her brow furrowed. “I knew that Sidney was covering for Antoine, but I didn’t know why Antoine wasn’t here.”

“Is taking the elevator when it’s unattended something your son does very often?”

“They told you that? None of the men have ever complained to us about Corey’s behavior. Besides, we try to compensate with very generous Christmas bonuses.” She flushed under Sigrid’s steady gaze. “He’s only seventeen, Lieutenant. Adolescent humor is sometimes hard for adults to understand.”

CHAPTER

14

The number of restaurants, cafés, lunch counters—places where food is cooked and served—is something amazing to strangers. Some of the side streets are lined and dotted with eating establishments.

—The New New York, 1909

SIGRID HARALD—SUNDAY (CONTINUED)

As they left the Wall apartment, Sigrid’s phone vibrated in her pocket and she glanced at the screen. Elaine Albee.

Once they were out in the hall with the door closed, she answered the phone and heard Albee say, “Lieutenant? We’re down here in the basement. Does Hentz still have Lundigren’s keys? I think we’ve found where he kept his papers.”

A few minutes later, she and Hentz stepped off the elevator into a basement that smelled of musty cement overlaid with a faint aroma of motor oil and a stronger one of hot pastrami. Off to the left lay the boiler room, and beyond that, a hall that terminated at a steel door to an areaway outside. A high window in the door had bars embedded in the glass for security. The hall was lined with garbage bins that had wheels and tight-fitting lids so that no odors escaped. Although gray and utilitarian and crowded with the equipment needed to keep a building like this running, the basement felt clean and there was a sense of orderliness and purpose.

Straight ahead was a short hall that seemed to open into a locker room where the men could change from their street clothes into the brown wool uniforms provided by the board. Many articles of indoor and outdoor clothing hung from hooks along the wall. Through the arched opening, they saw two large men who sat with their backs to the door while they ate sandwiches at a Formica-topped table. Judging by the sounds from deeper in the room, they were also watching some sort of loud sports program on television. The announcer spoke excitedly in a language that was neither English, Spanish, nor French, the only languages Sigrid could confidently identify.

She glanced at her watch. Almost three. No wonder their fragrant sandwiches were making her hungry.

Battered chairs and occasional tables stood around, castoffs abandoned from above and rescued by the staff. A miscellany of pictures hung on the walls—everything from kitsch framed in ornate gold leaf to a cover of a National Geographic magazine signed by a well-known photographer and framed in bamboo.

“Down here,” Lowry called from somewhere off to the right.

They followed his voice through the dimly lit passage to a double bank of