"Well, we know how much money Zachary Wolferman left Froelick," said Peters, "but what about Commander Dixon if the girl's her closest relative?"
"Nothing like six million," drawled Lieutenant Knight, "but I'd say notm uch under six hundred thousand."
"What?"
"Damned if I didn't join the wrong service!" Lowry whispered
"We ran a check on her financial records," Knight said. "As a single officer with twenty-two years in service, she's been putting a right tidy sum in her credit union account every month. She seems to have inherited some rental property in Miami a few years back and there were some stock certificates. One way or another, I'd say at least a good half million."
Sigrid looked at him suspiciously. "Did you check her financial records before or after you learned of Ivanovich's KBG connection?"
"After," he admitted, returning her gaze blandly. "Standard operating procedure, Lieutenant."
"Did you learn anything else you'd care to share with us?" she asked dryly.
"No, but I was going over my notes just now and if you remember, Ivanovich told us that Molly Baldwin began college as a chemistry major."
"That's interesting," said Jim Lowry.
"Chemistry might give her the knowledge to cook up something explosive."
"I think it's right interesting how Ivanovich stuck it in his testimony," countered Knight. "Sort of spreads the wealth around a little."
"From each according to his ability?" Sigrid murmured. "Perhaps."
They continued to pool the scraps of information collected over the weekend, seeking a new pattern. The M.E. had sent the results of Pernell Johnson's autopsy and Sigrid skimmed the report, then passed it around the table.
"From the bruises on the body, Cohen thinks Johnson was first immobilized with something like a karate chop to his neck and diaphragm, then strangled with his tie."
"Could the girl have handled that?" Peters asked, ignoring Elaine Albee's glare.
"He wasn't very big, was he?" said Lowry, reading from the medical report. "Five-six, a hundred and twenty pounds, slender build. You could have taken him, Lainey."
"I could take you, hotshot, but I'veh ad training. Has Baldwin?"
"Find out," said Sigrid. "From the top then: We know that Ted Flythe handed Molly Baldwin the pairings sheet with all the players listed sometime in midweek-"
"Tuesday morning," Knight reminded her.
"-So if Baldwin didn't read through the names and learn then that her cousin would be playing, she certainly knew by Thursday when the chart came back from hotel's graphics studio and Flythe reprimanded her for leaving it in a public area for anyone to see."
"Which might have been deliberate on her part," said Detective Eberstadt, disappointed to find no more doughnuts in the box Albee had brought. "More of that spreading the wealth around."
Sigrid agreed and continued through her notes. "Now a cribbage board was taken from the unlocked display case-a case Baldwin conveniently forgot to lock-the same day. That gives her a day and a half to construct the bomb."
"Did she have a chance to switch boards?" asked Peters.
"Absolutely," Albee and Lowry chimed in unison… They paused to grin at each other, then Elaine Albee continued.
"She was in charge of all the arrangements for the d'Aubigné Room and she was the one who ordered the steward, Mr. George, to use the wrong ashtrays. He'd suggested the plainer ones, but she overrode him; and sure enough, as soon as Lucienne Ronay stepped into the room for a last-minute check, she ordered them changed."
"George said he tried to tell Baldwin that's what would happen," said Lowry, picking up the narrative, "but she wouldn't listen. You could make a good case for her planning it to happen that way."
"If she's it, she either switched the boards then," Eberstadt offered, "or counted on it looking like that's when it was done so that everyone had the opportunity."
"The busboy probably noticed, so he had to be killed, too," Lo wry concluded.
"Maybe it wasn't just ash stands she spoke to him about," said Alan Knight, contributing his own scenario. "Whati f she told him to meet her in the d'Aubigné Room, perhaps on the pretext of getting started on clearing the room? She doesn't have a real alibi for that time period."
"That we know of," Sigrid cautioned. "Albee, Lowry, speak to the desk clerks who were on duty yesterday. See if they can confirm her story. Any further thoughts on Molly Baldwin?"
There were murmured negatives around the conference table.
"Moving on to Haines Froelick then. Peters, why don't you and Eberstadt give us what you have for him?"
"Like we said Saturday, he seems harmless enough," said Peters. "Used to living well at the Quill and Shutter Club off Park Avenue. Probably spends more on camera equipment than wine, women, or song, but that could be because he doesn't have as much money as he used to."
"Oh?"
"Yeah," said Matt Eberstadt, who had consumed three jelly doughnuts and was now virtuously sweetening his coffee with a packet of artificial sugar. "We haven'ta ctually seen his bank statements, but we get the strong impression that money's been a little tight for Froelick these last couple of years-like his income wasn't keeping up with inflation."
"Whose is?" asked Peters, who had no idea how he and his wife were going to fit a third baby into their budget. "Anyhow, six million will buy a lot of cameras. You've seen Froelick. He's ordinary looking, well-dressed; hundreds like him go in and out of the Maintenon every day. There's nothing to say he'd be noticed if he wandered through the hall where they were coming and going, getting ready for the tournament. The seating chart was out in the hall by the display cases for anybody to stop and read, right? With the cases unlocked, it wouldn't take more than fifteen seconds to reach in and grab the cribbage board stick it in his pocket and be on his way."
"Those boards are at least a foot long," Albee objected.
"Well, up his sleeve then," Peters said impatiently. "Or inside his newspaper." Young though he was, Peters wasn't entirely happy with female colleaguesa nd sometimes his disapproval slipped out. "The point is, a man like Froelick is so ordinary, he's almost invisible."
"And what about that fishy story of his yesterday?" asked Jim Lowry skeptically. "Wandering around the hotel looking for a dime to bury with his cousin? Sounds like a good excuse to get back in the d'Aubigné Room."
"It was a schilling," Albee corrected.
"The coin was found," Sigrid reminded them.
"Yeah," said Eberstadt, "and the housekeeper started crying when we took it over yesterday afternoon. Claims Wolferman always carried it."
"Just the same, Froelick could have put it there before he killed Johnson," said Elaine Albee. "Then if anyone came in before he'd lured the busboy there-hey! Maybe that's how he got Johnson there in the first place. Everybody says he was a helpful kid. If some old gentleman came up to him and spun out a story about a lost lucky coin, it would be just like Johnson to stop whatever he was doing and go help look for it."
"Nobody saw the kid go down theh all, so who's to say Froelick wasn't with him?" mused Peters, trying to compensate for his earlier shortness.
"We'll ask Dr. Gill if she noticed," said Albee. She knew she was smarter than Peters and seldom took offense at his latent chauvinism.
"Okay," said Sigrid, overlooking their byplay. "That gives us Froelick and Baldwin as possibilities. Each could have rigged a bomb in order to inherit a cousin's wealth and then killed Johnson yesterday because he saw-or they thought he saw-them do it. Now what about the Russian? Lieutenant Knight?"
He shrugged. "Obviously we haven't had a chance to talk to Commander Dixon yet, so all we have is Ivanovich's version of their friendship. It jibes, though, with what's been observed: he and Dixon 's father did meet in the Second World War as he described, he does have a picture of Commander Dixon as a baby, and they've maintained frequent contact since he arrived in New York in July.