Three-Day Town - By Margaret Maron Page 0,49
ceiling-high wire cages that measured about four feet wide by six feet deep. Each bore the number of an apartment and served as a storage locker for off-season clothes, luggage, or anything else an owner could not find room for upstairs. Most were neatly arranged; others looked as if the doors had been opened and stuff thrown in with a snow shovel.
Lowry pointed to a unit at the far end where Albee waited. “This one’s assigned to the Lundigren apartment,” she told them.
Somebody—Lundigren?—had built shelves to the ceiling to accommodate several cardboard boxes and two rows of books, but had left an alcove large enough to hold a rump-sprung swivel chair, a two-drawer file cabinet with wheels, and a small steel desk that was missing one of its original legs. A fairly new-looking laptop sat on the desk.
Hentz handed the super’s set of keys to Albee, and after four tries she found one that turned in the lock. They rolled the files out into the passageway, and after they found its key, Hentz and Sigrid each took a drawer while Albee tackled the laptop and Lowry went through the desk.
Sigrid hit paydirt immediately. “His birth certificate,” she said and handed it to Hentz.
There it was: Phyllis Jane Lundigren, female, born fifty-three years ago in Littleton, New Hampshire. In the same folder was a marriage certificate dated twenty-four years earlier for Phillip James Lundigren, age twenty-nine, and Anna Denise Katsiantonis, age twenty-seven.
“Cute,” said Lowry. “Don’t change the body, just change the name.”
Another folder was devoted to Mrs. Lundigren. It held her birth certificate and her medical records, including a stay in a New York psychiatric facility for treatment following a pseudocyesis when Denise was thirty.
Puzzled, Hentz said, “What’s pseudocyesis?”
“Hysterical pregnancy,” Sigrid told him. “Where a woman thinks she’s pregnant and develops all the symptoms, including morning sickness and actual birth pains.”
“Jeez!” said Lowry. “Talk about a screwed-up couple.”
Lundigren’s medical files showed no hospital stays, only annual physicals. On all the forms, the sex box was checked M, which would indicate a live-and-let-live doctor.
“Here’re their wills,” said Hentz. “Looks like they were pretty careful about the wording. No mention of husband or wife. He leaves everything to Anna Denise Katsiantonis Lundigren, and hers leaves everything to Phillip James Lundigren, both of this address.”
“Hey, Detectives!” someone called from back near the elevator.
“Yeah?” Lowry called back.
“You guys order pizza?”
“Yeah,” said Lowry. “Be right there.”
“I ordered an extra-large,” Lowry told them. “Figured maybe you hadn’t eaten lunch either.”
The promise of pizza was welcome news.
“You didn’t happen to order coffee, too?” Sigrid asked.
He grinned. “Sure did.”
Before he could reach for his wallet, she pulled out hers. “Let me get this, Lowry.”
His refusal was only pro forma. He took the bills she handed him and headed down the long passageway to the outer basement door. Minutes later, the appetizing fragrance of oregano and mozzarella reached them. They dragged chairs over to a rickety card table and were soon pulling apart the slices.
“Postal Pizza?” Sigrid asked. The red-white-and-blue box was printed to look like priority mail.
“Neither snow nor rain stays the swift completion of their deliveries,” Albee said with a laugh. “We got the number from the porter down there. This place delivers twenty-four/seven. The night man says he orders from them all the time, and when you get a look at his figure, you’ll know he’s telling the truth.”
“What’s he doing in so early today?” Hentz asked as he tried to keep sauce from dripping onto the folders he had brought from the files.
“He never left,” said Lowry, handing him a napkin. “The snow was so deep this morning when his shift ended, he just sacked out here. Same as Antoine Clarke. Both of them heard the weather report last night and were here by nine before it got too deep. There’s a set of bunk beds down there.”
“And a fridge, a TV, and a microwave,” said Albee, “plus a shower. All the comforts of home.”
Hentz listened as he leafed through the papers in the folder he had brought to the table. All were stamped by the management company that had hired the men. “Copies of the personnel files,” he said. “I guess he was their on-site eyes and ears.”
A copy of Lundigren’s own original job application was there, too, and they saw a younger version of the victim. In the grainy black-and-white photograph, his eyes appeared open and candid beneath those very bushy eyebrows.
Jim Lowry shook his head. “Even knowing he’s a woman, he doesn’t look