The Manx Murders

by William L. DeAndrea

  One way she’d changed, though, was that she had no time for this. For all of this—the funerals, and the eulogies, and the sadness. What Flo wanted to know, what she was trying to decide, was how this was going to affect the career of Florence Helen Ackerman.

  On the one hand, there was no doubt about it. The smoke scrubber (or whatever pretentious technical name the Agency decided to give it) was going into production. Flo had gotten Henry’s signature about the matter the day after his brother’s body was found. That had been her job, and the job was done, and she should be promoted, and earn numerous Brownie points with the new administration and so on and so forth and live happily ever after.

  On the other hand, what a mess. Kidnapping, murder, bad publicity. And the fact that the kidnappers had solved the problem. Not her, and not her ace in the hole, the world-famous Professor Niccolo Benedetti.

  Her superior had pointed that out to her in those sweet-poison terms only a woman boss could use to a woman subordinate.

  Translation: Don’t make waves, Florence.

  On another hand, there was still Henry to be dealt with. True, he had signed the proper paper, but the man was now an emotional basket case. Since the kidnapping, he’d aged twenty years, and seemed like a man who was still alive only because he couldn’t summon enough energy to die. Henry was still nominally in control of all the Pembroke corporation’s numerous activities, and he could still cause trouble. Harry Swantek, who’d been for the project from the word go, was making the day-to-day decisions now, but Swantek was a mess as well, refusing consolation of any kind.

  The encouragement Flo could find in that situation was the fact that Swantek (she hoped) would bounce back and get his act together relatively soon. The more she saw Henry Pembroke, the surer Flo became that he never would.

  On the fourth hand (this thing was getting to be a regular octopus), Chip Pembroke had already bounced back from the trauma of finding his uncle choked to death. He was acting like the proverbial tower of strength, propping up both his father and Swantek, gently suggesting the right (from Flo’s point of view) moves, and just in general holding things together. There had been a time when Flo had wondered how Chip had managed to make a success of the ice-cream company. He seemed so callow and ineffectual at first glance. She didn’t wonder anymore. This situation was showing there was a lot more to Chip than met the eye. Her reports to Washington would say (appropriately hedged, of course—the first rule of government service is Cover Your Ass at All Times) that there was little to worry about if Humbert Pembroke II (no wonder he wanted everybody to call him Chip) were for any reason to assume full, active control of the family enterprises.

  On the fifth and final hand (okay, not an octopus, after all), there were the developments, at least locally, in her own social life. Last night, she’d had dinner at an Italian place in Scranton with Chief Viretsky She hadn’t been so naive as to think it hadn’t been at least partly business—Viretsky managed to ascertain Flo’s whereabouts on several important occasions during the last few days, and he’d even dropped a couple of hints about alibis being meaningless in this kind of case because of the probability of the use of accomplices. But mostly he talked about himself, and about her, and there was definitely some interest there. The chief was not like that wife-besotted Ron Gentry, who wouldn’t even engage in some harmless flirting, for God’s sake.

  At the end of the evening, the chief had taken her hands in his, and almost kissed her, and Flo thought that was kind of small-town sweet, too.

  She was pretty sure she’d seen some interest in Chip’s eyes, too, but of course it was too soon for him to do anything about it. It didn’t matter. Flo would be around, if not continuously, the way she had been, then frequently enough. The job wasn’t over by a long shot, but it shaped up as though the fringe benefits might have their points of interest.

  A chorus of voices broke into Flo’s thoughts. People all around her were saying “Amen,” so she said “Amen,” too.

  “Amen,” Chet Viretsky said, but he didn’t bow his head. The chief hated funerals, and it was only a sense of duty that brought him out to them. Not duty as a mourner, but duty as a detective. It was one of the accepted canons of the investigative business that you can learn things at the victim’s funeral if you watched the family and the mourners closely enough. So Viretsky didn’t bow his head—he kept watching. Of course, all he saw when he did this were the tops of people’s bowed heads, but he kept watching, anyway.

  And damned if this time he didn’t see something—Ron Gentry not bowing his head, scanning the crowd as assiduously as the chief himself. Their eyes met, and both men had to suppress grins. The chief told himself he had to remember to compare notes with Gentry someday. He personally had never detected a goddam thing at a funeral.

  That only served to remind him that he hadn’t detected a goddam thing in this whole case, except for the fact that, as so eloquently outlined the first night by Mr. Gentry, none of it made sense.

  The FBI had come in after their twenty-four hours, and were being very busy and very secretive, but they hadn’t learned squat, either. That was another thing Chet Viretsky had detected—he had grown good and sick of the FBI in less than two days.

  The reports trickled down to him, usually twelve hours or more late, but for all the good they did, the feds might as well have held on to them. No known criminals imported into the area. No suspicious associations among anybody involved in the case. No significant scientific evidence.

  In short, no nothing.

  But Chet had detected a couple of other things. He detected in himself a growing case of the hots for Flo Ackerman. The woman was tough, possibly tougher than he was, and she was making the grade in a tough racket. She was good-looking, and she wasn’t shy. He’d have to watch himself until this thing got cleaned up.

  Which was another reason he wished he could find a way to make Benedetti hang around.

  Not that the old philosopher had been any more forthcoming than the feds. In fact, he’d been less so, since apparently philosophers don’t file reports, twelve hours late or otherwise. Nevertheless, from things Ron Gentry had let slip, like the fact that the old man was grumping away in his room, fumigating himself with cigar smoke and painting or whatever the hell it was he did, Viretsky suspected he was on to something.

  Any something was a whole lot more than the mess of nothing the chief found himself looking at now. He wished he could detect a way, short of bankrupting the Town of Harville, to keep Benedetti poking around into the case.

  Mikta, the funeral director (and this gig undoubtedly put his firm in the black for the next couple of years), was going around passing out flowers to put on the coffin. He handed Chet a white one, pretty, of a kind he didn’t recognize. The chief put it to his nose and took a sniff, but he couldn’t get a smell of anything.

  Typical, he thought. Just like this case.

  Sandy Jovanka sniffed at the rose the guy had given her. It smelled great, but she reminded herself not to say “Mmm” or to smile at it. Sandy was getting very heady about being photographed by the press. She had been on ABC and CNN, and there was talk of her being paid actual money to tell the story of what went on in Omega House for one of the tabloid shows.

  She wouldn’t do it, though. She didn’t think so, at least. She wanted to hold out for a spot on Phil Donahue. Sandy thought Phil Donahue was dreamy, for an old guy.

  Anyway, even though she felt sorry for poor old Mr. Clyde Pembroke (who must have been a very great man, gosh, look at all the photographers), she had to admit her being in the Thick of Things had led to her being treated at long last with a little respect around this town.

  It wasn’t as though she were dumb or anything. Dumb people do not become secretaries for Pembrokes, even if it was only Chip Pembroke and his ice-cream plant they were talking about. Besides, it was very excellent ice cream. Sandy knew this to her sadness, because she was always tempted to try some, being around there and smelling it all da
y. Like it said on every container, “Real, rich cream, pure cane sugar, no thickeners or artificial ingredients. Ever.” That made her proud, because she was a part of that quality.

  Of course, real, rich cream and pure cane sugar can turn you into a blimp, and Sandy had no intention of that happening to her. Sandy came from a family of fat women cramming their feet into high heels, with fat flopping down over the sides of their shoes, and bras the size of a pair of Indian tents, and more chins than a Chinese telephone book.

  Her father had said that once at Thanksgiving, that thing about the Chinese, and all the men had laughed, and the kids, too, including Sandy, but all the aunts got mad, especially Aunt Ada, who hadn’t talked to Daddy for six months, until she needed somebody to pick up her new armchair at the store and Daddy was the only person she knew who had a station wagon, so she forgave him.

  Anyway, Sandy had realized real young that it was impossible to gain weight, then go on a diet and lose it, so she decided she would go on a diet before she got fat. And it worked. She was pretty and thin all through high school, except, of course, for that horrible three months when her acne got bad, but that went away and everything was okay again.

  She didn’t even mind (too much) that she got a Reputation in high school. For one thing, built girls always got reputations, whether they did anything or not, and Sandy was definitely built and would not, even if somebody gave her the choice, have given up her build to avoid the reputation.

  For another thing, she just happened to like boys. Boys were easier to deal with than girls. Boys might have only one thing on their minds, but Sandy at least knew what that was. The girls in high school, Sandy never knew what the heck they were thinking about. They whispered too much, and they were always laughing at jokes Sandy didn’t get.

  Sandy decided they were just jealous because Sandy was Built but Not Fat, and also Popular With Boys, even though she didn’t put out nearly so much as everyone seemed to assume, like maybe three times altogether. She always told this to the boys she didn’t have sex with, because she didn’t want them to get the wrong idea that all the other guys she went out with were Getting It but not them. That would hurt their feelings.

  It turned out not to matter, of course, because after Harville High, she went to secretarial school, and was near the top of her class. She was a great typist, and the teacher said she had a real gift for shorthand, not that she got to use it much, because Mr. Chips (some of the guys at the plant called Chip Pembroke that behind his back, but Sandy never did because it wasn’t respectful) hardly ever dictated anything to her live—he always had some kind of recording dictaphone gadget, new ones all the time, that she had to use.

  That was a nuisance (so was working Saturdays), but she put up with it because the rest of the job was so good.

  Also, she liked Chip Pembroke. He could have done like a lot of rich boys and lived like a playboy in Scranton or even New York on his allowance, but instead he hung around town and made jobs for people. Family tradition, sort of.

  He was even cute in a nerdy sort of way. Sandy could tell he liked her, too, or at least he liked looking at her, and he treated her very nice, like a gentleman.

  Maybe too much like a gentleman. After all, his mother hadn’t even been a secretary, according to the story, just a factory worker, for crying out loud. Oh, God, wouldn’t it be something to wind up Mrs. Pembroke? Of course, Chip had to do something about that first. He was so shy. Either that, or he was scared by sexual harassment stuff.

  Sandy was all for women’s rights, because she was a woman, wasn’t she? But she sometimes wondered what the feminist leaders were going on about. I mean, the only way for a secretary like herself to make it Really Big was to marry the boss, and how could that happen if he was even afraid to ask you out?

  The idea was to help women, right? So how does it help women to scare guys with money away from them, that’s what Sandy wanted to know. For crying out loud, she was not going to make it to the top in the ice-cream business. She didn’t even eat ice cream, because if she did, she would be genetically doomed to FAT. Didn’t these big-time feminists ever think of that?

  Anyway, there was another way to make it big, and that was to get famous. A good way to do that was to sleep with somebody famous like an evangelist or a future president or something and then tell about it. But like in high school, Sandy was just not That Kind of Girl. Much. But maybe being a witness in a murder case could do it. Maybe she could get a book out of this, or a modeling thing, or learn how to sing. Or even act.

  She knew you had to prepare for that, but she already was. She’d spent hours finding a black dress that was modest but would still show she was built. And, now, for practice, maybe she could manage a tear as she put her flower on the coffin.

  She thought of her ankles spilling over her shoes, and it worked. Sandy just hoped the cameras were rolling.

  Three

  THE SUN CAME OUT just about the time the last blossom hit the coffin. It occurred to Ron that this was the first time he’d seen it since he’d come to Harville five days before.

  The crowd noticed it, too, and it added to the air of relief, if not happiness, that comes with the end of a funeral. Ron took Janet’s arm and headed for the car. The Professor followed along, quietly.

  Then a voice behind them. “Professor?”

  They turned to see Chip Pembroke.

  “Mr. Pembroke,” Benedetti said softly. “My condolences. And my apologies.”

  “Apologies?” Chip looked confused.

  “My presence did nothing to save you and your father from these sad events.”

  Chip shrugged it off. “You couldn’t have foreseen—”

  Benedetti gave him a sad shrug. “I have become accustomed to a high standard for myself. I must be the judge of whether I have met it.”

  “Of course. But if you could wait a moment, my father would like to talk to you.”

  “I owe him that much.”

  Chip led the way. Ron and Janet weren’t specifically invited, but they went anyway. Henry Pembroke was still standing at the grave site, his back to the catafalque.

  “Thank you, Professor,” he said when they approached.

  “I have done nothing.”

  “Your advice got me through ... this.” Henry Pembroke looked especially pale today. The purple mark on his wrist had been joined by several on his face, and they stood out against his white skin like jelly on a tablecloth.

  “The sun feels good,” Pembroke continued. “It’s not appropriate, but it feels good.”

  “Advice is always cheap to the giver of it. I am glad it has helped you.”

  “Yes. The question, Professor, is what am I going to do now?”

  “Surely that is a question you must answer for yourself.”

  “For myself, I have answered it. I am still following your advice. You told me to hold on to my anger. Right now, that anger is all I have. I am determined to find whoever has done this and make them pay.”

  “That is your privilege, sir.”

  “I want you to help me do it.”

  “Niccolo Benedetti does not help find malfattori, eh? I study evil and the perpetrators of it. And only when I have been asked.”

  “I am asking you.”

  “Are you sure? You must be very sure. Once started, I will not be swayed, whatever the results.”

  “I want results.”

  “You may not like them.”

  “I want the people who killed my brother. My twin brother. There is no closer relationship, Professor. When we fought with each other, it was because we were unhappy with ourselves. We—I—have done some foolish things in my life, and I’ll pay for them. But the thought of my brother being deliberately strangled—I start to choke, myself. I’m saying this badly.”

  “Not at all.”

  “All I can say is that it’s as if I’ve been murdered myself. The difference is, I’m still around to do something about it. I have no talent in that direction, n
o genius. All I have is money and influence. They will be put at your disposal to the limit. Do this for me. Please.”

  Ron, by this time, was puzzled. Since the murder, Benedetti had shown no interest in life, much less the case. Ron had assumed that despite the facets of the case that didn’t make sense, the Professor had decided the whole business had been the work of a bunch of ham-fisted incompetents with an urge for easy money and delusions of grandeur, a common kind of criminal, and a kind in which the old man had absolutely no interest.

  So Ron had been surprised at the Professor’s stringing Henry along like that. Benedetti could play cat and mouse with the best of them, but he was seldom cruel.

  Then the old man said, “Very well,” and Ron wanted to hug him. Henry Pembroke, too. The millionaire’s face broke into a weak but genuine smile, as if his smile muscles had been called out of retirement, and were game but out of practice.

  “However,” the Professor said, “I must ask your son’s opinion, as well.”

  Henry Pembroke looked startled. “Why, Chip wants what I want. Don’t you, Chip?”

  Benedetti asked, “Do you?”

  “What? Sure. Of course. Like Dad says, I want this guy caught. After all, they might have killed me, too. Sometimes I’m surprised they didn’t.” Chip shook his head.

  “You must thank God for your deliverance. And I must thank you for your commission. I cannot, however, engage to do this any longer from a suite in the Harville Inn.”

  It took a little hinting around, but, in the end, the Professor maneuvered the surviving Pembrokes, as he had Clyde before them, into inviting him and Ron and Janet (and, he supposed, Nimrod) to use Alpha House and the servants thereof for as long as he needed them.

  The Professor thanked them and bowed, and they headed for the car.

  “Professor,” Ron said, as he made his way from the cemetery an hour later, “I hate to admit this, but I’m not up to you.”

  “There is no reason you should be, amico. I have taught you to fathom many things, but you will always find it difficult to fathom me. I can hardly do it myself.”