The Right Jack

"So on Friday night you were still angry with Commander Dixon?" asked Sigrid.

"Oh, that's not why I didn't say we were cousins."

"Then why, Ms. Baldwin?"

"Because of the tournament," she said, as if it were obvious. "When I saw her name on the pairing chart, I freaked. I didn't know what to do. She's crazy about cards and the tournament's nots upposed to be open to family members of the staff and Teejy's my family, see?"

Clearly they did not.

"Well, I couldn't pop up two days before the tournament started when it was too late for her to get her entry fee back and all and say 'Here I am and you can't play because I work here,' now could I?"

Was the girl as naive as she appeared? wondered Sigrid. Did she really think the term 'immediate family' covered a cousin she hadn't spoken to in over a year?

"I was petrified that Madame or Mr. Flythe would find out." H

Evidently she was that naive.

"Ms. Baldwin-"

"Oh, I know it was wrong of me, but what else could I do? I left a message on Teejy's answering machine to pretend not to know me if we met unexpectedly and she did. And then when the bomb went off-It's been so horrible for me! I haven't known what to do."

Her pretty blue eyes began to resemble rain-drenched forget-me-nots again.

Sigrid glanced at Alan Knight. There was a faint expression of distaste on hisf ace and she gave him a nudge under the table. Immediately, he made soothing noises and proffered his handkerchief.

"Please, you won't tell them, will you?" she asked, dabbing at her eyes.

"Only if it becomes unavoidable," Sigrid assured her expressionlessly.

"The hospital won't give me any details over the telephone," moaned Molly. "I guess I could have gone down, but if she was unconscious, that wouldn't do her any good, would it? And I was afraid you'd have someone there, you see, and then you'd know"

She looked at Alan Knight timidly. "She's going to be okay, isn't she? I mean, she's not going to die or anything?"

"No," Knight said tightly. "They expect her to live."

"Oh great!" she said with an exaggerated sigh of relief.

Hastily, Sigrid asked, "Lieutenant Knight, would you ask somebody to get us something to drink? I'd like coffee. Black. Ms. Baldwin?"

"Ginger ale, please."

Wordlessly, Knight went himself.

So much for good cop/bad cop, thought Sigrid.

By the time he returned, with their beverages on a tray and his distaste on hold, she had led Molly back over Friday night again. The girl still insisted that she hadn't particularly noticed Pernell Johnson's movements. She did, however, remember Ted Flythe's.

"He rushed around and helped change the ashtrays with the rest of us. The cut-glass ones are so much prettier, but harder to clean and with cardplayers-Mr. George has to put out fresh ones every three hours. Those people smoke like chimneys."

Alan Knight glanced at Sigrid, who acknowledged with a slight nod how easy Flythe might have found it to switch one cribbage board while everyone else was switching hundreds of ashtrays.

"Let's move on to today," said Sigrid. "Several people say you spoke to Pernell Johnson at the service door shortly before the ten-thirty break."

"That's right. I didn't know his name though. I was asking him to keep an eye on the ash stands on the landing.

Madame Ronay has a thing about dirtys and. People can be so messy. They dropc hewing gum off there, or leave candyw rappers. So I asked him to tend themd uring the break."

"And did he?"

"I guess I forgot to look."

"Madame Ronay stopped in at the

Bontemps Room during the break tol ook for you. She says you weren't theret hen."

"No, I'd gone down to my office."

"But she'd just come from there andd idn't find you."

"We must have just missed each other. Mr. Flythe had given me the copies you wanted of the pairings and after I spoke to the busboy, I went on down the back way. I put the sheets in a folder for you, took care of some things on my desk, and then returned by the grand staircase about forty-five minutes later."

Knight had been following her story on his sketched floor plan. "It could have happened like that," he said. "As many exits and elevators and halls as this place has, you could play ring-around-the-rosy all day."

"Madame Ronay spent some time in her office,.too," said Sigrid "is that near yours?"

Molly gave a feminine hoot. "My office is in that warren back of the main desk. La R -I mean, Madame Ronay's is up on thirty, next to the boardroom. On thirty, even the broom closets are bigger than my office."

"So from approximately ten-thirty till eleven-thirty, you were at your desk alone?"

Molly Baldwin nodded her curly brown head.

"Did you see anyone, speak to anyone along the way?"

"Gee, I don't know. You know how it is: you just nod or wave; you don't stop to talk every time. There was the desk clerk, of course, and the bell captain. There're always people coming or going."

"In your office, too?"

"Well, no. Clerical staff don't have to work on Sundays. Just a skeleton crew down in the secretarial pool in case of emergencies. They mostly goof off or read or knit 'cause nothing ever happens on Sunday."

"Now, Ms. Baldwin, you've told us that you did not know Pernell Johnson except by sight and only as a staff member employed here at the hotel. Is that correct?"

As Sigrid's voice became more official, Molly tensed again. "That's right," she said anxiously.

"We've heard that he recently moved here from Miami. That's where you're from, too, isn't it?"

"But I didn't know him," Molly protested. " Miami 's huge. That's like saying I ought to know you because we both live in New York."

"So, in fact, he gave no indication that he'd ever seen you around Miami either?"

Molly Baldwin shook her head.

"Very well, Ms. Baldwin," Sigrid concluded. "If you'll bring me those pairings sheets, I think that'll be all for now."

The girl looked at Alan Knight entreatingly. "Would you tell them about me at the hospital?" she asked. "My name, I mean, and that I'm Commander Dixon's cousin so they won't give me ah ard time about letting me see her?"

"Certainly, Ms. Baldwin," he said formally.

"Oh, thank you," she breathed, and slipped away to fetch the papers.

"Aren't you going to tell her?" Sigrid asked.

"Let her find it out at the hospital," said Knight. "Did I apologize for thinking you were callous about Commander Dixon? And Dixon 's her only relative, for God's sake."

One of the uniformed officers whom Sigrid had instructed earlier came over with a slender young black girl in tow.

"Lieutenant Harald, this is Miss Terri Pratt, the victim's friend."

She was a winsome child, not pretty exactly, but with a su

They had snatched a few minutes in passing since Friday night, she told them; had even pla

"And he would have," Terri Pratt assured them. "At least I think he would. He talked about everything else that happened that night."

At the end, Sigrid thanked her and added, "We're very sorry about your loss, Miss Pratt."

The girl shook her head. "We weren't that far yet. Things were just starting between us and there was so much else we needed to do first: school, work. Pernell wanted to start a chain of small resort hotels in Florida. He'd have done it, too. He could've done anything." Her face drooped as she spoke of what would now never be. "He was so-ooh, I don't know. I