Three-Day Town - By Margaret Maron Page 0,81

and looked at her watch. “What time is it in New Zealand? I’d better let my mother know. She’ll want to go down and spend some time with her. And she can help fend off the others.”

“It’s great that you’ll have a chance to say goodbye to her while she’s still in control of her life,” Deborah said. Her voice wobbled and Dwight reached for her hand.

Sigrid frowned. “Deborah?”

“Sorry.” Her blue eyes glistened with unshed tears. “My mother died the summer I turned eighteen. She had chemotherapy, radiation, the whole nine yards, and she was so miserably sick at the end. Weak and nauseated. And it only bought her a few extra weeks of life. I think Mrs. Lattimore’s made a better choice.”

Sigrid nodded. “Grandmother’s always been a realist.”

Buntrock poured the last of the wine into Sigrid’s glass and handed it to her. She took a small sip, then set the glass back on the table and reached for her coat. “I’m sorry if this has ruined your dinner party, Elliott, but I’m going to take a pass on jazz. Tell Hentz I’ll see him tomorrow.”

“You didn’t ruin a thing.” He stood and held her coat for her. “Want me to drive you home?”

“Thanks but no thanks. Besides, you’ve had more wine than I did.” She turned to the others. “Thanks for telling me, Deborah.”

They watched her walk away and Elliott said, “I don’t suppose you guys feel like hearing jazz tonight, either?”

“Sorry,” Deborah said. “I really don’t. Dwight? If you want to stay, I can get a cab back.”

“We’ll both get a cab back,” Dwight said.

CHAPTER

22

Such criminals as these seem more cunning than brutal, but perhaps they are more dangerous for that very reason.

—The New New York, 1909

SIGRID HARALD—MONDAY NIGHT (CONTINUED)

When Sigrid crossed the small shadowy courtyard from the gate to her front door, the streetlight on the corner picked out a blackened saucepan lying in the snow, its contents turned to charcoal. She let herself in to find Roman stacking the dishwasher. An odor of burned meat and vegetables permeated the entry hall and kitchen. Both the range hood and the guest bathroom off the hall had their exhaust fans running full blast.

“Did it again, hmm?” Sigrid said, hanging her coat and scarf in the hall closet.

“We really must install more smoke alarms,” Roman said, a sheepish look on his face. “By the time I smelled smoke, the liver was burned to a crisp, and the beans! Well, you must have seen the pan? Completely ruined.”

“The book’s going well, then?” Her housemate’s rooms lay beyond the laundry and utility room. When he plugged into his iPod and lost himself in his writing, a dozen fire engines could roll past and he would hear nothing, certainly not a smoke alarm over in this part of the house.

“Was going well. Was, my dear, until I hit such a tremendous roadblock, and that’s when I finally noticed the smoke. Too late to save even a morsel, I fear. Have you dined? I could whip up something.”

“No, I’ve eaten, thank you. Elliott invited me to join him, along with that couple I told you about, the ones that know my grandmother.”

“The visitors who found a body in that apartment Saturday night?” Roman pushed the start button on the dishwasher, untied the apron from his ample waist, and hung it on a peg in the pantry. “The nine o’clock news said that there’s been a second murder in that same building. Is it true?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“In a garbage bag?”

His fastidiousness made Sigrid smile. “It was a clean garbage bag.”

Which in turn drew a rueful smile from him. “I suppose that did sound a bit Lady Bracknell-ish. And I do know that murder isn’t a sanitized drawing room comedy. All the same, my dear, finally! A homicide that isn’t open and shut! I want to hear every detail.”

He plucked two goblets from the cupboard, extracted a corkscrew from a nearby drawer, and led the way to the living room. “We shall have a glass of the merlot I marinated the liver in and you can tell me all about it. Perhaps something will trigger a solution to my roadblock.”

“I thought your plot involved the poisoning of a dean at a woman’s college,” Sigrid protested. “The death of an apartment super and an elevator operator is nothing like that. Besides, it probably is open and shut. We’re looking for one of the tenants, a teenage boy with a gambling problem who was blackmailing the last