Naked Cruelty (37 page)

“That's the question I ask myself,” Carmine said.

“Mind you, she loved it,” said Delia.

“So much that she wouldn't have parted with it for any sum, Delia. It had other meanings for her than money. After Helen established its true worth, I communicated with my opposite number in the Venice PD, thinking the glass teddy bear had been stolen. But it hadn't. It was legally Amanda Warburton's property, bequeathed to her in the will of Lorenzo della Fiori, the glass kingpin. Amanda was his mistress. Unfortunately he had a very jealous wife, who invaded the love nest and stabbed della Fiori fourteen times with a kitchen knife. Amanda was stabbed too, but survived. The glass teddy bear—including its eyes—was made especially for Amanda, and was already en route to America when the fracas happened. His kids inherited his money and all his property except the glass teddy bear. It happened eleven years ago, when the eldest child, a girl, was nine.”

“Then the kids are grown enough for revenge!” Nick cried, having heard Carmine's explanation.

“No, the kids are in Venice too busy with their education to worry about the past. Having a mother in prison is no picnic. The eldest boy, another Lorenzo della Fiori, is now seventeen and determined to be the next glass kingpin. Kids don't live in the past unless they're brainwashed, and the only person who would have done that is in prison.”

“Then where did Amanda's money come from?” Delia demanded.

“Sale of other Lorenzo della Fiori pieces. She'd acquired a lot over her years with him, and after his death she sold the lot. They'd never been inventoried, he'd freely given them to her, and it never came out at the time. His work is gorgeous and she got top dollar for every piece,” Carmine said.

“What about the star sapphire eyes?” Delia asked.

“Legally an intrinsic part of the work of art. My Venetian counterpart knew nothing about them, and no theft of a pair of star sapphires answering their description has ever surfaced in Europe, let alone in Venice. The theory he offered me was that the stones came from the USSR, which is a source of fabulous treasure and gems. If old Queen Mary of England could buy some of the Russian crown jewels at auction for relative peanuts, who knows what else has been smuggled westward to obtain hard currency?”

“It sounds like a fairy tale,” Nick said. “How did Queen Mary know the jewels were for sale?”

“They were auctioned at one of the great auction houses,” said Delia. “She bought diamonds and pearls, as I remember, and used her own money—she was awfully rich, and laden with ropes and ropes of pearls.” She chuckled. “Now the pearls you buy in a cheap shop outshine the real ones!”

“How do you know all this gossip?” Nick asked.

“It's not gossip, Nick dear. Cleopatra thought you could dissolve a pearl in vinegar. Of course you can't.”

“Theft of the bear aside, any evidence?” Carmine asked.

“No,” they said in chorus.

“He's crafty and clever as well as shockingly brutal,” said Delia. “He also has luck.”

“Luck?” Nick asked. “Expound!”

They guffawed until Carmine's glare sobered them.

“Consider! Security here is pretty good, yet this chap—
not
the original Vandal, is my guess—got in and got out again without ever being seen. There's a strong element of luck in that. Equivalently, Miss Warburton and Mr. Murray ran out of luck. He seizes his moments, yes, but the moments were there to be seized. Thus far, our killer has led a charmed life,” Delia said.

“Then we're going to proceed on the assumption that our luck is more potent than his,” said Carmine. “Are we finished here?”

“Yes,” Nick said.

“Did Paul give you her keys, or are they missing?”

“No, they were on her, I have them,” Nick said. “Mr. Murray's keys are missing, so every shop in here will have to change its locks, not to mention the Mall itself.”

“Our killer is not coming back,” Carmine said positively. “He took the keys to create havoc, no other reason. Maybe make us think he's a valuables thief. He's not. He's a killer.”

“What about notifying her next of kin?” Delia asked.

“The Warburton twins? They can wait,” Carmine said. “I'm going to inspect her apartment without that pair breathing down my neck. They give me the creeps.”

“Did they do this?” Nick asked as they used the elevator.

“Possible, but not probable.”

“This is gorgeous!” Nick said, gazing around the spacious luxury of Amanda Warburton's apartment. “If she owns this, we have to reconsider our estimates of her worth.”

Carmine was already at the desk, which contained no locked drawers or compartments. He held up papers. “Deeds. She owns this free and clear, no mortgages.”

At which moment a pathetic meow came from the bathroom.

“Her animals!” Carmine said. “Jesus, I'd forgotten them!”

They were huddled in the bath as if they knew what had happened to their mistress, the cat pressed into the dog's belly between its front and back legs, the dog hunched with its nose on the cat's sleek skull. A water dish was empty; cooing and clucking, Delia refilled the bowl and found canned food in a cupboard. They drank and ate ravenously. Nick, it turned out, was more afraid of dogs and cats than of criminals, and Delia seemed to frighten them; when Carmine went back to his examination of the desk, Frankie and Winston sat at his feet and refused to be banished. He decided to ignore them.

“Her will,” he said, brandishing a single sheet of paper. “Everything to the twins except the glass teddy bear, which she wills in perpetuity to Chubb on condition that it's displayed in a suitable manner. Wow! Wait until M.M. finds out! God help us if we don't get it back.”

An accordion file held a portfolio of stocks and shares.

“Blue chip, the lot,” Carmine said. “Robert and Gordon are going to be wealthier than I'd expected, so we move them up on the list of suspects.” A wry grin. “That gives us two names.” He bent down and got a face full of dog hide as well as a sloppy tongue. “Cut that out, Frankie!” To his surprise, the dog desisted at once. A snide smile his team exchanged irritated him: he lashed back. “Delia, don't stand there decorating the place! Call Marcia Boyce and get her here yesterday. Nick, go back to County Services and ask for someone from the pound with two animal carrying cages.”

Nick and Delia scattered, but not before they flashed each other another snide smile. The chief was being conned by two real experts.

***

Marcia Boyce was shocked but not rendered speechless. “I don't know why, but I've been expecting something like it,” she said to Carmine in Amanda's sitting room, its glass wall showing the tree-filled beauty of Busquash Inlet like a landscape painting, complete to mirror-bright water and dreamy little fishing shacks.

“Why, exactly?” Carmine asked, pouring her more tea.

“You'll laugh at me, but sometimes I see penumbras around people, and Amanda has always had one. Black, laced with the red of fire—or blood, I guess. It's waxed until lately it's all but obscured her face and body—kind of like a shroud.”

I hate people like this, Carmine was thinking. They always have after-visions they're convinced perpetually existed. I bet Miss Boyce consults a ouija board and goes to séances. But I also bet she never showed this side of herself to Amanda, who would have derided it—and her. “Can you tell me anything more concrete, Miss Boyce?”

“Only that, from what Hank Murray and I pieced together, she had had doubts about making the twins her heirs. But then she suddenly announced that she was going to leave them as her heirs because she had no one else. She wasn't too happy about it, I add.” Marcia sipped her tea, then supplemented it with a dollop of Amanda's costly cognac.

“How do you feel about the Warburton twins, ma'am?”

“I detest them! Though I wouldn't have thought they had the guts or gumption for murder.” She looked down at the dog and cat, glued to Carmine's feet. “Oh, poor babies! What will become of them, Captain?”

“Unless you want them, Miss Boyce, they go to the pound.”

“Oh, no! That's
awful
!”

“The solution rests with you.”

“I can't possibly take them! Amanda managed fine because she could take them to work with her, but I can't possibly do that. I'd come home to find that Winston had shredded my best upholstery and Frankie had torn the drapes down.”

“Do they do that to Miss Warburton?”

“No, they like her. Would you believe that Amanda trained Winston to perch on the toilet to go for his number ones
and
number twos? Frankie wees in the shower stall and does his number twos on newspaper. Amanda was a very patient person.”

He kept Marcia Boyce a little longer, but learned nothing new that wasn't connected with penumbras. The Warburton twins had chameleon penumbras, never the same color for more than a day at a time, and Carmine's penumbra was amber with a purple edge.

After Miss Boyce departed a little unsteadily for her own apartment on the same floor, all Carmine had to do was wait for the guy from the pound. He arrived fifteen minutes later, a small animal carrying cage in either hand, and a hollow pipe ending in a rope noose tucked in his belt.

Frankie and Winston took one smell and retreated behind Carmine, the dog growling, the cat hissing.

“You never said the dog's a pit bull, Captain!” the pound guy said in horror.

“He only looks. For a dog, he's a pussycat.”

Out came the rod. The noose, as Carmine knew, could be loosened or tightened once slipped over the animal's head; with visions of the insult to these sheltered, much-loved house pets chasing through his mind, Carmine stood watching as the pound guy decided to start with Winston.

“Your cats is worse,” the guy said, preparing his noose. “Your cats got your four sets of claws and your teeth. Your dogs just have your teeth, even your pit bulls.”

Ten minutes later the cat was behind a credenza and the dog vigorously defending it.

“Fuck off,” said Carmine tiredly, “and take your gallows with you. Leave the cages. I'll deal with the animals myself.”

It was too much. He had made up his mind as the pound guy fruitlessly pursued the gigantic marmalade cat. Amanda Warburton had been a thoroughly nice woman whose life, cruelly shortened, had seen more unhappiness than bliss, and he had liked her. Now she was dead, and no one wanted her beloved animals. The pound? That couldn't be allowed to happen. Like a totally innocent man thrown without warning into an overcrowded jail cell.

“Butter! Grandmother Cerutti always used butter,” he said, going to the refrigerator.

Diet margarine. No, grandmother Cerutti wouldn't have had it in her house. So he went down to the corner store, run by two young Nepalese, for a stick of butter. Their cold storage wasn't very efficient, so he didn't have to hang around too long waiting for the stick to soften.

“Come on, Winston,” he said to the cat, which had emerged, “I won't let anyone hurt you. Butter sticks, not gallows sticks.”

It lay upside down on his knees and allowed its paws to be buttered, then walked into its cage when he lifted the door. The dog was just as easy. What was it with the pound guy?

The cages went on the Fairlane's back seat; Frankie and Winston took a ride in a car that smelled of babies, detectives and assorted evidence.

When he marched into Desdemona's work room carrying two animal cages, she gaped.

“Two fully house trained, adult pets,” he said in tones that indicated he wasn't prepared to concede the tip of his finger. “They belonged to a very nice lady who was murdered last night, and there's no one to take them except the pound. It's time Julian learned that he can't pull a cat's tail without getting scratched, and the dog's loyal. They are now members of the Delmonico family.”

Desdemona shut her mouth. “Um—am I allowed to ask their names, sir?”

He laughed, hugged her. “The cat is Winston. He sits on the toilet to piss. The dog is Frankie. He goes in a shower stall, but if we have a flap cut in the back door, they'll probably prefer to go outside except in snowstorms. I buttered their paws, so they can't go home.”

Desdemona was on hands and knees, opening cages. “Oh, how lovely! Prunella was just saying we should go to the pound for an adult animal as a house pet—puppies and kittens behave like the babies they are, adults are better. Did you bring them food? Does the cat drink milk?”

“Water and canned stuff. I brought what Miss Warburton had in her cupboard. It will cost a bit more to feed us, but two animals will be a help in occupying the kids.”

And that, he thought as he returned to County Services with two empty animal cages, was well done; he didn't even grudge filling out the form that enabled him to commandeer a uniform to drop the cages at the pound, way out of town.