Too Many Murders

by Colleen McCullough

  “And the three black victims were so totally harmless,” Carmine said. “What about the agonizing ones?”

  “The banker was a bully who sometimes abused his power,” Abe said. “And Dee-Dee was a hooker—a crime in itself to some people.”

  “Evan Pugh was a blackmailer who picked the wrong victim,” Corey said, “and Skeps was probably responsible for the ruination of tens of thousands of lives in one way or another.”

  “Yet the worst death of all was reserved for an innocent.” Carmine stood frowning heavily. “What about her made the killer white-hot hate her?” He looked at Corey from under his brows. “You did the preliminary work, Corey. Did anything ever surface that suggested Bianca wasn’t an innocent?”

  “No, absolutely nothing,” Corey said steadily. “She’s exactly who she seems, I’d stake my life on it.” He went red. “I was on the ball, even if I was having a few personal problems.”

  “I never doubted that you were.” Carmine sat down and waved a hand at chairs. “So here we have a killer of nine or ten people who is capable of pitying some of his intended victims, yet simultaneously capable of implacable hatred for some others. In one case only, the hatred went from ice-cold to white-hot—Bianca Tolano. A twenty-two-year-old economics graduate aiming for a Harvard MBA. Very pretty, a great figure, but on the shy side. Not man-hungry. At second autopsy Patsy decided she was probably a virgin.”

  “She reminds me of Erica Davenport,” said Abe thoughtfully.

  “What?”

  “Well, she does!” Abe prepared to defend an untenable position. “I can see Dr. Davenport at that age, with her summa cum laude degree and the whole world in front of her. She’s an icicle now, but I bet she wasn’t back then. I bet she wasn’t man-hungry either. Too ambitious. Just like Bianca.”

  “Now why didn’t I see that?” Carmine asked slowly. “I spent half of yesterday afternoon looking at Erica Davenport’s FBI file, and failed to see it. Bianca was a surrogate Erica.”

  “Jesus, this case gets screwier by the minute!” Abe cried.

  “Think about it!” Carmine said eagerly. “If Bianca is a surrogate Erica, it puts her murder in perspective. The random element is disappearing. They are all related somehow! We can rule out Erica Davenport. The biggest question I have about her now is whether Bianca’s murder removes her from danger.”

  “There haven’t been any more murders,” Corey said.

  “Where do we go from here?” Abe asked.

  “You guys concentrate on Peter Norton,” Carmine said, tone brisk. “I’m finding it harder and harder to believe that window-of-opportunity garbage. What if Mrs. Norton had been meaning to kill her husband for some time, and was manipulated into doing the deed on April third? If she’s guilty, then she had to get the strychnine somewhere, and maybe that’s the connection to our mastermind. I want both of you lifting up the flagstones on Mrs. Norton’s buried past. A boyfriend? I doubt it, but it has to be excluded. Is she in debt? Jewels? Furs? Clothes? Gambling? Is she bored with her life as Mrs. Small City Banker? She’s plump, but not unattractive. Look behind every blade of grass, guys. I want to know where this murder belongs.”

  Which left him time for lunch at Malvolio’s with Myron, who looked careworn.

  “Is she leaning too hard?” Carmine asked, sliding into the booth, his smile disarming the question’s intrusive side.

  “Not as much since I advised her to let S.S. Cornucopia sail under its own steam. I should have seen that for myself.”

  “You’re the ham in the sandwich.” Carmine turned to the waitress. “I’ll have a lettuce, tomato, cucumber and celery salad with oil-and-vinegar dressing, Minnie, and crackers on the side.” He looked from Minnie to Myron suspiciously. “So what’s the big deal about that?”

  Minnie melted away; Myron shrugged. “For you, Carmine, it’s horrific. What happened to the Thousand Island dressing? The hard rolls? The butter?”

  “If you’d been eating dinner at my place, Myron, you’d know.” Carmine sipped black, sugarless coffee. “My wife has turned into one of the world’s great chefs, so either I eat rabbit food for lunch, or no lunch at all. Otherwise I’ll turn into the Goodyear blimp.”

  “Holy Moses! What gives with the murders?”

  “We’re making progress. How much has Erica told you about her childhood and young womanhood?”

  “More than she told Desmond Skeps, I think. She conned all the Cornucopia executives out of self-preservation, but she came clean to me when I asked her. Depression children had a hard time, Carmine.”

  “Don’t tell me, I was one. My father was lucky, he kept his job, but his wages had to be spread around the family some. East Holloman was one of the first districts to improve, so by 1935 things were looking up again. St. Bernard’s high school was underpopulated. We got a lot of teacher time.”

  “I never felt it,” Myron confessed. “The movie industry did well, so did my pop.”

  “It was a crazy decade.” Carmine munched through his salad as if he was enjoying it. “How do you think Erica wound up the person she is now, Myron?”

  “I have no idea, and she won’t tell me.”

  “Has she ever mentioned what she did in Europe while she tripped around there in the summer of 1948?”

  “I didn’t even know she went to Europe, just about London.”

  “It’s in her FBI file, and it might answer a lot.”

  “I won’t spy for you, Carmine.”

  “Nor would I ask you, but spying is already a part of this case. Someone at Cornucopia is selling secrets to the Reds, and Erica is a strong suspect.”

  Myron had gone chalk white. His fork fell onto his plate with a clatter. “Oh, God, that’s awful!”

  “It’s also classified information. You can’t tell anyone, Myron, though you can tell Erica. She knows all about Ulysses.”

  “Ulysses is the spy?”

  “It’s his FBI code name. I don’t think Erica is Ulysses, but I do think she knows who Ulysses is. Your security clearance is probably much higher than mine, so I don’t have any qualms about telling you. If you don’t know, then your businesses and your associates are not involved. But it might be that Erica would welcome a true friend.”

  Myron’s wide grey eyes filled with tears. He nodded quickly, speechless. When he did speak, his voice sounded normal.

  “I seem to have lost my appetite,” he said. “This superb meatloaf is virtually untouched. I don’t suppose…?”

  “Sorry, no, rabbit food only.”

  “My God! Desdemona must rank with Escoffier!”

  “I don’t know about that, but she certainly outranks my grandmother Cerutti, and that’s saying something.”

  The next day brought another trek to see Philomena Skeps. Why, he asked himself, does she have to live in Orleans? A three-hour drive even with the siren on in Connecticut, and this time he doubted she’d give him brunch. It wasn’t a hospitable kind of day; the sky was overcast, the wind was blowing, and the Atlantic was trying to demolish the sand dunes, or maybe pile them up higher.

  He was right about brunch. Mrs. Skeps met him at the door accompanied by Anthony Bera, who directed Carmine into a small parlor poorly lit by a window covered in rambling rose canes. The lawyer had gone fully formal in a three-piece suit with a Harvard tie, and Philomena wore a mossy green wool dress that showed off her voluptuous figure. Why was such a gorgeous woman wasting her fragrance on the Cape’s salty air? Bera he could understand; Bera was the mastiff hoping to be tossed a bone.

  “Do you have any contact with the women’s liberation movement, Mrs. Skeps?” he asked.

  “Not really, Captain. I have given small donations for any projects dear to my heart, but I don’t call myself a feminist.”

  “Have these projects been drawn to your attention by Dr. Pauline Denbigh?”

  “I know her slightly, but she has never solicited me for either membership or money.”

  “Do you sympathize with feminist causes?”
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br />   “Don’t you, Captain?” she countered.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then there we have it.”

  “What did you and Dr. Erica Davenport discuss so earnestly at Mr. Mandelbaum’s party?”

  “You don’t need to answer that, Philomena,” Bera said. “In fact, I advise you not to.”

  “No, I’ll answer,” she said in that sweet, patient voice that never lost its cadence. “We discussed my son’s future, as Dr. Davenport is now the arbiter of his fate. I went to Mr. Mandelbaum’s party for no other reason than to see Erica, and I can’t imagine she had any other reason for asking him to invite me. Erica is not welcome in my home. I am not welcome in any Cornucopia premises. Therefore we chose neutral ground.”

  “I suspected that much,” Carmine said. “But you haven’t really answered me. What aspects of your son’s future did you discuss, and what was the outcome of your—negotiations?”

  “My son must endure almost eight years of Dr. Davenport’s authority, and the last three or four of those years will be quite insufferable for him. He doesn’t like her, he never has. What I hoped was to persuade her to agree to having another—a second—person involved in his future. It worries me terribly that this woman could ruin his inheritance. Not intentionally, but through incompetence.”

  “But anyone left in charge during an heir’s long minority might ruin a business empire,” Carmine objected. “I take it you have no faith in a woman at the Cornucopia helm?”

  “No, it’s not that, it’s her! I asked her to bring Tony—Mr. Bera—in as the second person. She refused. And that was the end of our conversation.”

  “You must have been mighty thick with Dr. Davenport to have fallen out so badly,” Carmine said. “Why does your son dislike her? When and where have they met?”

  Her head slewed to Anthony Bera. Help, help, rescue me! What do I say? What do I do?

  “I advise you not to answer, Philomena,” said the mastiff, earning his bone.

  Carmine extricated himself from his extremely uncomfortable chair. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Skeps.”

  I feel like Michelangelo chipping away at a hunk of marble, he thought, commencing the interminable drive home. Today I have bared an elbow, a forearm, and a hand. But is it the right one, or the left? And where does Ulysses fit in?

  On his return he discovered that Delia had usurped half of his office, where a trestle table and a wheeled chair now stood.

  “I’m too cramped,” she explained. “Uncle John really has not been fair about space! The captain of detectives must have a secretary, and said secretary must have a suitable office. I occupy a cupboard!”

  “Then why don’t you go complain to Uncle John? Where are Abe and Corey going to put their chairs if I call a conference? And much as I love you, Delia, I do not need your ears flapping in time with your mouth. A work space is only useful to one person. How can I think if every time I look up, I’m looking at you?”

  She took this in the spirit it had been tendered, but she had no intention of moving the acres of paper she had spread around, huge sheets with smaller ones clipped to them. Now I have to go fight Delia’s battles, he thought, moving to the door as soundlessly as always. Any other man, thought Delia, would have stomped, but not Carmine. By next Monday I will have a bigger office.

  She waited until a certain emptiness invaded the air, her way of telling whether Carmine was in the building. Good, gone!

  “Have you worked out how to do it, Uncle John?” she cooed, sidling around the Commissioner’s door.

  “No, Delia, I have not. I figured I’d just sit here and wait for you to come tell me how to do it,” Silvestri said.

  “How very perspicacious, Uncle John. It’s Mickey McCosker is the trouble. He has twice as much room as Carmine or Larry, but he’s never here. What I propose is that you give Carmine his two rooms, and put Mickey where Carmine is. Shall I have Plant Physical do it tomorrow?”

  He nodded wordlessly. Why is she always right?

  “Tell me that,” he said to Carmine in Malvolio’s five minutes later, “and I’ll give you Danny’s job. Or mine, if you want it.”

  “Cheers, chief.” Carmine raised his glass. “I’m happy to be a captain of detectives, especially if I can have Mickey’s office—or am I supposed to move into his second room?”

  “No, you get his office. The second room, Delia informs me, is twice as big.” Somehow he managed to turn his face into a passable imitation of his niece’s, and said in a shrill falsetto, “‘Bags I the second room, Uncle John!’ I said yes. Easier in the long run.” He sipped his bourbon reflectively.

  “As I remember Mickey’s second room,” said Carmine, “even at the rate Delia acquires filing cabinets, it should shut her up for two-three years.” He grinned. “Then you’ll have to run for mayor, John, and build her a new County Services.”

  “In a pig’s eye!” The Commissioner downed the last of his drink and waved for another. “What’s Delia doing?”

  “Some crazy project only she could understand or want to do. It’s about public meetings and functions and it’s germane to the case, so I guess I’m using her as a detective.” Carmine waved for another bourbon, then looked hopeful. “I don’t suppose you’d give her the lieutenancy?”

  “No, I would not! Bad enough that she’s got me drinking at four-thirty in the afternoon. Delia and her paper chases!”

  Of chaos there was none; by Monday midday Carmine was well ensconced in his new office, which was at the back of County Services and consequently suffered little traffic noise. Light came in through a series of high windows that faced Holloman’s prevailing winds, giving him an occasional cool gust during the dog days of August. The proximity of Abe and Corey’s office was an additional bonus; it lay two doors down the hall. Carmine’s old office was up two flights of stairs on the same floor as the Commissioner’s.

  “We need a coat of paint and new furniture,” said Delia.

  “When I go on vacation,” said Carmine in his no-arguments tone as he inspected her quarters, strewn with broadsheet-sized papers. “What are these? Plans?”

  “Of a kind. With more floor space, I can really spread them out. I should be able to give you my report on Friday.”

  Corey walked in. “Carmine, a domestic in the Hollow,” he said. “Woman battered to death, lover nowhere to be found.”

  And this, said Carmine to himself as he left, means we’ve hit a stone wall with the mastermind. For now, it’s business as usual. There has to be a loose thread somewhere! I am not giving up, I am not pulling these nine files out of my current load and shelving them at Caterby Street!

  “There’s been a development at the Norton house,” Abe said quietly on Tuesday morning. He looked drawn, horrified.

  Carmine was up and around his desk in seconds. “What?”

  “The little boy is dead.”

  His step faltered. “Oh, Jesus! How? Why?”

  “Drank or ate something, I was told.”

  “But the strychnine was never found!”

  “I don’t know if it is strychnine, Carmine.”

  “What else could it be?”

  “Let’s wait until we know for sure, okay?”

  He could walk again. Carmine began to hurry, then wondered why. Poor little Tommy was dead. “Is Patsy on his way?”

  “I told him first. Corey went with him.” Abe’s voice shook.

  “What’s the little guy’s proper name?”

  “Thomas Peter. Five a few days ago in April, so he doesn’t go to school until September. Never will now.”

  They climbed into the Fairlane; Abe put the light on the roof automatically. Carmine sat in the front seat, hands over his face. A nightmare, it was a nightmare! The noise of the siren was oddly comforting: a lonely, desolate sound. They were approaching North Holloman before he took his hands away.

  “Has she confessed? Who’s seen her?”

  “Only Dave O’Brien—he’s sergeant on duty at North
Holloman this week. She called him calm as you like, didn’t call anyone else. Dave went right on over to the house and then called me. That’s all I know.”

  “How could that stupid doctor of hers not know what she was hiding? She was so doped up both times I saw her, I didn’t stand a chance of getting anywhere! I should have pushed her, Abe, but she fooled me!”

  “Carmine, none of us could have known. If she did kill her husband, the reality was so far from what she imagined that she flipped out—she wasn’t acting! But we don’t know if she did it yet, and that’s the only fact that matters.”

  “What else could it be except the strychnine?”

  “I don’t know and you don’t know. Shit happens, Carmine, but we don’t know what kind of shit it is, so cool it!”

  A few neighbors had collected, the other two North Holloman cops had cordoned off the path to the house, and Patsy was on the porch waiting for them. He came to meet them.

  “Not strychnine,” he said shortly, keeping his voice low. “He choked to death on a pencil eraser that looked like a strawberry.”

  The relief flooded through Carmine and Abe like a break in a dam wall, too overwhelming not to be felt before the shame of feeling it succeeded it. Not their negligence! But it might have been, it might have been. The poor little guy was still dead, though a merciful God had spared them the ultimate grief.

  “How is she?” Carmine asked, aware that he felt faint.

  “Sit down, cuz. You too, Abe.”

  They sat on the steps leading up to the porch.

  “She’s in there,” Patsy said, sounding savage, jerking his head at the living room windows. “Thank God he’s not. I don’t want to set eyes on that woman ever again!”

  Carmine got up at once, astonished. “Patsy! What did she do? Feed the thing to him?”

  “She may as well have, but she’ll tell you all about it.” He led them through the front door and up the stairs to Thomas Peter’s bedroom.

  Abe and Carmine watched Patrick gather the little boy up tenderly, put him into the towel-lined cavity of a bag, then hurry him away on what looked to the curious like a flat, empty gurney; it had a troughlike bottom that did not betray the presence of a small body.