The Red Queen Dies (11 page)

“We have two unidentified men wearing masks and gloves. We have a stolen car that they left in another alley. That's it.” Dole rubbed his hand over his head. “In case you missed the memo, we're supposed to be focusing where we can get results.”

“Just give us another forty-eight hours on this one, Lou.”

“You've got twenty-four. Now, get out of my office and get back to work.”

“Thanks, Lou,” Pettigrew said.

Yin looked up from his ORB when Pettigrew sat down at the desk across from his. “We still on it?”

“Until tomorrow. Got anything?”

“Research came back with more on Jorgensen. Details of his rise and fall. Nothing we didn't already know. A phenom by the time he was twenty. Women, wine, and riding high. Then the gambling and getting kicked out of baseball.”

“It was probably the gambling again,” Pettigrew said.

“Where does a guy who went bankrupt and was on serious hook to the IRS come up with the kind of money for bets that would bring two professionals looking for him?”

“Maybe they were making an example of him.” Pettigrew reached for his mug.

Yin grimaced. “I don't know how you can drink that stuff.”

“It's better than the brand they were trying a couple of weeks ago. If you don't think about it, it tastes almost like real coffee.”

“I'll take your word for it. Want to ride over to Jorgensen's address?”

“Yeah. The guy lives in a boardinghouse. Maybe his landlady can tell us something.”

Yin reached for his new hat. “Bachelors in the city. When my great-grandfather first arrived in this country, he lived in a boardinghouse down in the City, on Mott Street. Now boardinghouses are back again.”

“Did they ever go away?”

“Maybe not. Maybe they just called them something else for a while.”

Pettigrew grimaced at the sour taste rising from his esophagus. He opened his desk drawer to find an antacid tablet. His ORB beeped.

“Detective Pettigrew,” he said, putting it on voice only.

“Detective Pettigrew, this is Nurse Woods at St. Peter's.”

Relieved that it wasn't his ex-wife calling back, Pettigrew went to visual and a blond woman in a white uniform appeared. “Yes, Nurse Woods?”

“It's about the patient you came to see yesterday. Mr. Jorgensen. I'm afraid he died this morning.”

“Died?” Pettigrew said. “I'm going to put you on speaker so that my partner can hear this.”

He clicked the ORB into the holder on his desk.

“What happened?” Pettigrew said to the nurse. “He seemed all right when we interviewed him. Battered from the beating, but not that serious.”

“Mr. Jorgensen suffered an aneurysm. He died before he could be taken into surgery,” Nurse Woods said. “Because you were investigating the attack on him, the doctor thought you should be informed.”

“Yes, we should be.”

“We have some personal items that belonged to Mr. Jorgensen. Apparently, he had no next of kin. Unless the young woman from this morning was a relative.”

“What young woman?”

“A young woman called on an old-style cell phone. There was a great deal of static on the line, but she wanted to know how Mr. Jorgensen was doing. When she was asked if she was a relative, she hung up.”

“Thank you, Nurse Woods. We'll want to listen to that playback when we stop by to pick up Mr. Jorgensen's personal items.”

Pettigrew closed his ORB.

Yin said, “So now we have a dead ex–baseball player.”

Pettigrew shook his head. “We'd better let the lou know.”

“Cheer up,” Yin said. “Maybe he'll give us more than twenty-four hours on this one now that the vic's dead.”

“I wonder who she was,” Pettigrew said. “The young woman who called.”

 

12

 

To get to Ted Thornton's house on the hill, McCabe and Baxter drove past the homes of several other members of Albany's very well to do. Including the Tudor-style mansion owned by a former corporate attorney named Joanne Barker-Channing, who had made her fortune and then founded a monthly “literary salon” in her home. McCabe's father had sometimes been known to attend, drawn by the highbrow conversation and what he described as the hostess's “graciousness.”

“If you got it, flaunt it,” Baxter said as they drove up the landscaped driveway to the home that Thornton had built when he started doing business in Albany.

“Apparently, the key is to ‘flaunt it' in good taste,” McCabe said.

She parked the city-issue sedan they had picked up from the garage after lunch behind the only other car in the circular drive.

The other car's hinged upper body had been left up. It lifted on each side from the center to allow the exit of passengers and packages.

Baxter stood there staring at the car. Then he walked over and circled around it slowly, with reverence.

McCabe laughed. “Wipe the drool off your chin, Mike, and let's go in.”

“Do you know how fast this baby can go?”

“Fast enough to flap its wings and take off from the ground?”

“I guess I'm not going to impress you with my collection of classic automobile magazines.”

“Probably not,” McCabe said. She walked over to the car. “And this looks more futuristic than classic.”

“A futuristic take on a classic,” Baxter said.

“Ah, now, I understand, sensei. Ready?”

“Yeah, let's get to it.”

They went up the three steps to the door and McCabe knocked.

“Hello,” she said as the door swung open. And then she realized no one was there.

“Mike,” she said, drawing his attention from the car to the empty foyer in front of them and the empty stairway winding up to the balcony above.

He said, “The guard at the gate called—”

“Yeah,” McCabe said.

“Hello,” she said, pitching her voice louder. “Detectives McCabe and Baxter, APD. May we come in?”

From around the corner, a melodic female voice said, “Please come in, Detectives McCabe and Baxter.”

A moment later, the speaker glided into view.

Baxter whispered to McCabe, “Ever see
The Jetsons
? Rosie, the robot.”

“I am Rosalind,” the maid said, focusing her metallic gaze on Baxter.

He coughed. “Sorry. Wrong robot.”

Rosalind held out her arm in a gesture of welcome. “Please come in.”

“Thank you,” McCabe said.

They stepped into the foyer with the two-story ceiling, and Rosalind closed the front door.

“Please follow me.”

The maid, clad in trim black uniform and white apron, glided off toward the back of the house. They followed.

McCabe caught glimpses of expanses of glass and airy rooms with modern furniture in white, black, and brown, with scattered animal prints. Lots of green plants.

A cat jumped down in front of them, springing from the back of a chair by the door of the room they were about to pass. Gold and brown, tail raised straight up, he stared at them. The cat weighed at least twenty pounds.

Both McCabe and Baxter stopped in their tracks.

Rosalind, the robotic maid, said, “The cat is named Horatio. He is a Maine coon cat and a fine fellow. He will not bite or scratch unless threatened. Please let me know if you are allergic and require medication.”

McCabe said, “Thank you, Rosalind. I don't require medication.” She looked at Baxter. “You okay, Mike?”

He shook his head, mouth twitching with laughter. “I'm just fine and dandy.”

McCabe held her hand down to the cat. “Hello, Horatio.”

Horatio strolled over, sniffed her hand, and then nudged her leg. She patted his head. He meowed and strolled off back into what seemed to be a library, where he jumped up onto an armchair and looked out at them from his golden eyes.

Rosalind said, “Please follow me.”

A rainbow of colors played along her metallic legs as they passed the cathedral windows in an empty stretch of hallway.

They reached their destination: Ted Thornton's own private gallery.

McCabe turned to the left and right, looking around her. Thornton's taste was eclectic, but the theme seemed to be transportation—from toy trains on an elevated track to a miniature balloon about to take off from a field. From sketches of flying machines that might have been done by da Vinci to scale models of spaceships, if it moved, Thornton seemed to have cataloged it, including a replica of the UFO from 2012.

Rosalind said, “Mr. Thornton will be with you shortly.” She gestured toward the rear of the room. “Please help yourself to refreshments from the bar. Wine, beer, and nonalcoholic beverages, including coffee and tea, are available.”

“Do we get a movie on this flight?” Baxter asked.

“Movies are not shown in this room. However, I can activate a slide show of photographs.”

“That's okay. I was only—”

He was too late. Rosalind had glided to a blank white wall. She waved her metallic hand and the slide show began. “Is there anything else you require?”

McCabe said, “No, thank you, Rosalind. We'll be fine until Mr. Thornton joins us.”

“Please press the buzzer by the door if you should require my presence.”

They watched her glide away, back the way they had come.

“I wonder if she cooks and does laundry,” Baxter said. “I'd sure like to have one of those if she does.”

“I don't think you can afford her,” McCabe said. “Look at these photographs. They're incredible.”

The slide show on the wall moved from one image to another, shifting, changing shapes, zooming in and out. The photos were of people in action, caught at the moment of danger: a parachutist falling through the sky; a bungee jumper flinging himself from a bridge; a man scaling a skyscraper using only his bare hands and feet; a bullfighter facing a charging bull.

“Amazing, aren't they?”

McCabe and Baxter turned at the sound of the voice that had become familiar to most Albany residents. It was deep, with a hint of amusement, a slight catch, sometimes a bit of a stammer.

As McCabe had expected, Ted Thornton was wearing blue jeans, sneakers, and his most disarming smile—his “Oh shucks” smile, as one editorial writer had described it. The smile that his opponents had come to recognize before he pounced.

In those few seconds before she had to respond, McCabe wondered if her superiors had reached the right conclusion during the meeting they'd held to discuss this interview. After considering the other options, once the commander had conferred with the chief and the chief had made a “courtesy call” to the mayor, it had been decided that she and Baxter should handle the initial interview. The reasoning had been that if anyone higher up in the food chain came to call, it would look as if too much was being made of the dinner plans Thornton and his fiancée had had with the victim. Better the primary investigators drop by for a routine visit. Better, too, in case the media got hold of it and declared Thornton had received special treatment by dealing with the brass instead of the lowly detectives working the case.

So here they were. And personally, McCabe thought she and Baxter had been sent in first to see if they survived.

“Yes, these photos really are amazing, Mr. Thornton,” McCabe said, smiling back. “Did you take them?”

One of Ted Thornton's dark, devilish brows went up, slanting over a wide brown eye. “Me? Oh, not me, Detective, I'm not a photographer. These were taken by Lisa Nichols, my … my very talented fiancée.”

“What I particularly like is how she caught each subject in motion,” McCabe said, glancing a last time at the shifting display. Then she dug into her bag for her badge. “I'm sorry, I should introduce myself. I'm Detective Hannah McCabe, and this is my partner, Detective Mike Baxter.”

Tall and gangly, Thornton stepped forward, his long-fingered hand extended. “Pleasure to meet you.” He grimaced, accentuating the brackets on each side of his mouth. “Although the circumstances are horrible, aren't they? Vivian was a good friend. A dear friend.”

McCabe shook his hand, noting the strength of his grip. “Yes, it is horrible. You have our sympathy, Mr. Thornton. We will do our best to find the person who killed Ms. Jessup.”

“I'm sure you will. Sure of that,” Thornton said, moving on to shake Baxter's hand. “Let's sit.… Can I get you something from the bar? Or you can just go help yourselves. And then let's sit down and talk.”

“Thank you, we're fine,” McCabe said.

“No, no, please. Rosalind invited you to have something, didn't she? What did you think of Rosalind?” That smile again. “But let's get our drinks. Detective Baxter, please, help yourself. And would you bring me back a beer. Bottle's fine. Detective McCabe?”

“Just a water, please,” McCabe said.

“Great. Got that, Detective Baxter? Need a hand?”

“No, I'm good.”

“Then let's sit right over here, Detective McCabe.”

He gestured toward the sofa and chairs in one corner of the room.

McCabe, stalling for time, paused to look at a framed cartoon of a sheep, a duck, and a rooster in the basket of an ascending hot-air balloon.

Thornton said, “September 1783, the first balloon flight. It lasted fifteen minutes and the … passengers survived.”

McCabe nodded. “I saw your airship landing at the airport once. It's really quite impressive.”

“A fantasy I've had since I was a boy.” A flash of his smile. “The really cool part about having lots of money, Detective McCabe, is being able to spend it on anything you damn well please. Including things other people think are nuts.”

“Since your airship flies, I guess it wasn't as nutty an idea as some people thought.” McCabe sat down.

Thornton sat down in a chair at an angle to hers.

Mike, coming back with the drinks, was left to occupy the sofa.