The Prodigal Son (15 page)

“You fool!” Hunter snarled, muscles audibly creaking. “Oh Jesus, you cops are stupid! I’m like, down on kindergarten level, crawling! Millie wasn’t the third wheel — she was the fulcrum! John was nuts about her, and she liked him too much — I almost lost her to a man I liked, respected, and was in debt to — how do you think that made me feel?”

He stopped, but whether from horror at having broken, said too much, or rather to give himself precious seconds to think of his next tack, Buzz just couldn’t tell. After fifteen years as a cop and innumerable interrogations, Buzz Genovese knew himself as a raw beginner. Oh, why wasn’t Carmine here to witness this? With any other person he would have taken events at face value, yet some instinct in the cop part of his mind whispered that Dr. Jim was as much in possession of his wits now as he had been until now. How could that be?

“John was a rich guy,” Jim Hunter said, voice level. If I was working all night and didn’t need Millie, he’d take her out to dinner in places I couldn’t even afford to drink the water in the finger bowls. A couple times he gave her little presents — a necklace of really good-looking fake pearls, a rhinestone pin. I let him because it let me work without needing to worry about Millie. Usually she worked as my technician, but there were times when she would have been in the way. Literally, I mean.
Space is not something universities are generous with.” He stopped again.

“When was all this?” Buzz asked.

“Right at the end, thank God. We left for Chicago the day after it all came out in the open. Millie dealt with John — I never saw him at all.”

“How did it come into the open, Doctor?”

“I came home early and caught them kissing. Millie swore it was the first time, and that John kissed her against her will, but it sure looked reciprocated to me. He’d just given her the pearl necklace, and I grabbed at it — it broke, pearls went everywhere on the floor. Millie got down on her hands and knees to pick them up, howling, nose running — she said the pearls were real, and the rhinestones were actually diamonds. I remember I took her face between my hands — I could have crushed her skull to pulp if I’d wanted.” He drew in a great, sobbing breath. “But I couldn’t. Not Millie! I just knew I was going to lose her.”

“And did you lose her, Doctor?”

“No. She put the pearls and the diamond pin in a parcel and took it to him in person.”

“Wasn’t he still present?”

“No. He shot out the door while Millie was gathering pearls.”

“So she took him the gifts. What happened between them?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask.”

“How did this affect your marriage?” Buzz asked.

The full upper lip lifted. “That’s none of your business. I will only say that Millie and I are joined at the hip — no one and nothing can break us apart.”

“So meeting John Hall again can’t have been all pleasure.”

“I hadn’t seen him since the end of July of 1960. That’s now eight years ago. Certainly I didn’t see his advent as any kind of threat to my marriage, Sergeant. I’m even in a position to pay him back for the surgery, and his death can’t change that, it’s a debt of honor. I’ll pay his estate,” Jim Hunter said.

“So your wife’s state of mind wasn’t a concern?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Let’s get back to the poison, Doctor. Did you take it?”

“Absolutely not.”

“But you must have been tempted.”

“Why? John Hall was no threat to me.”

“His emotional involvement with your wife is motive.”

“California was over eight years ago. Passé, Sergeant.”

“Have other men than John Hall pursued your wife, Doctor?”

“Not that I’ve noticed, and she’s never said so.”

Buzz looked at the clock. Over three hours. He was itching to continue, but the man had waived the presence of an attorney, and Buzz was aware that he was skating dangerously close to what an attorney could later term harassment. The wrong time for lunch, but it would have to happen.

“Lunch break,” he said briskly. “I’ll send to Malvolio’s for a tray — brisket, rice pudding and decent coffee sound okay?”

“Indeed it does. May I stretch my legs?”

“Of course, but inside the County Services courtyard.”

Carmine was back, looking satisfied; after Buzz reported, his mood soured a little.

“I just can’t be sure of the guy,” Buzz said as they ate at Malvolio’s. “Even when he broke about Millie, I wondered. The cop in me shouts that he’s playing with us, that everything he says, how he says it, what he looks like when he says it,
everything
is calculated. Yet it all makes sense.”

“Then, if it is calculated, why did he need to insert Millie and infidelity into the equation?” Carmine asked. “It attributes motive to him that we didn’t know about before, so
why
?”

“Maybe when he realized we were serious enough to detain him for way over the usual time span of a questioning, he thought we’d do the same to Millie. He’s no dummy, he knows the pair of them are our main suspects. Jim Hunter doesn’t break, but Millie just might. So he paved the way,” Buzz said.

“Very, very good!” Carmine said, smiling broadly. “That is exactly what he did. Paved the way for Millie to crumble.”

“Do I get Millie in?”

“Definitely, as soon as possible. Give her lunch too. I’m going upstairs to the Commissioner.”

“I have a feeling there’s more to come,” Carmine said to Silvestri after filling him in.

“So do I. For instance, is Dr. Jim himself free from sin? He’s an idol on the science campus,” the Commissioner said.

“If it’s half as good as M.M. says, his book will make him an idol on every science campus in the country. Not to mention
a lot of homes and institutions. With the death of Dr. Tinkerman and the eclipse of the Parsons, nothing is going to stop
A Helical God
hitting the bestseller lists and staying there for many months.”

“Did he write it consciously to sell, Carmine?”

“Sure, he must have, though someone else gave him the idea. Family legend has him pictured as completely absorbed in his work, a man who never reads an ordinary book or watches the news on television. His isolation from popular scientific publishing is a good point, John, that we have to explore. I gather Dr. Jim wrote
A Helical God
very quickly, effortlessly — and recently. So where did he get the idea?”

“Millie?” asked Silvestri.

“Yes, she’s the most likely one.” Carmine shrugged. “The trouble with that pair is that it’s hard to get beyond them. Yet Millie is no more au fait with the world of commercial book publishing than Jim is. However, we’ll pursue it.”

“It’s early days yet, I know, but you think it’s the Hunters behind both murders,” Silvestri said, tone dispassionate.

“Unless we dig up something really unexpected, it does look that way. But which one? Or was it both? Today we have to get a better idea about what makes the Hunters tick, as Desdemona would put it.” He looked thoughtful. “There’s huge family opposition to so much as the idea that Millie might have been involved, and I tend to side with that myself, having known her since she was born. Despite her history, she’s no black sheep.”

“Unfortunate metaphor,” Silvestri said dryly, “but I get your drift. Keep on digging, Carmine, and don’t worry about
Patsy. I’m keeping him close to me, so he and Nessie don’t feel utterly alone in their troubles. Gloria’s a tower of strength.”

Millie arrived bewildered, but very glad to see Jim, whom she was allowed to see in passing only — no chance for a talk.

She was in jeans and a sweat shirt; her down-stuffed outer clothes were hanging outside the room to which she was taken. No make-up, no hair styling; her looks did not preoccupy her, never had as far as the family knew. Her thin body was not the product of strict diets, it was due to a combination of trying to eat the right (and more expensive) foods, giving the lion’s share to Jim, and often plain forgetting to eat because the work called. But she moved with grace and dignity, held her head proudly atop a swanlike neck, and had plenty of shape in her physique — small but lovely breasts, a tiny waist, swelling hips. Set her side by side with Davina Tunbull and you would see the real thing next to a caricature. In K-mart clothes, Millie turned heads; in Fifth Avenue clothes, she’d be offered movie contracts.

“Why am I here?” she asked Carmine.

“A few things have come up about John Hall, Millie. You never told us that he hit on you in California, gave you expensive jewelry — that he kissed you, if nothing more.”

She went so white that Carmine almost left his chair to go to her, but she recovered quickly, lifted her chin. “It was my business, no one else’s, Captain.”

“In a murder enquiry? When the person who hit on you is the victim? That doesn’t wash, Dr. Hunter, and you know it. Did you have an affair with John Hall?”

“No, I did not,” she said, steady now. “He kissed me once — and not at my invitation. He’d just told me that the pearls were real, and the rhinestone pin was diamond. I’d automatically assumed they were fake, but when he kissed me and told me he was in love with me, he told me their real value. I told him that I couldn’t return his love, and gave them back.” She shivered. “It was one of the most awful days of my life.”

“I understand that you and Mr. Hall were surprised in the act of kissing by your husband, who tore a string of pearls from around your neck. He accused you of infidelity,” Carmine said.

“No, I refuse to believe that in his heart of hearts Jim thought me capable of betrayal,” Millie said huskily. “He was jealous, and that made him angry. But Jim’s not a hot man, his temper cools quickly. So when it did, his ability to think things through returned, and he saw immediately that I was innocent.”

An explanation couched in feminine drama, using words like betrayal and innocence, thought Carmine. In an odd way, they defused what had been an explosive situation, one of the worst days of her life. Had she hated John Hall for exposing her, the perfect wife, to Jim’s ire and disappointment?

“When did this happen in relation to your time in L.A.?” Carmine asked. “I should tell you that we know about your husband’s sinus operation and the loan from John Hall to finance it, and that it took place in June of 1959.”

“We left California in August of 1960,” Millie said slowly, “and John hit on me about six months before that — around the end of February of 1960, it would have been.”

Ah! thought Carmine, astounded. He says it happened the day before they left for Chicago, she says it was six months earlier. It’s Hunter lying, not his wife — but why?

“So your last six months in L.A. weren’t spent in company with John Hall?”

Now she look astounded. “Things went on the same after as before,” she said. “Why wouldn’t they? It was just a temporary aberration, Captain. John apologized to Jim, and that was the end of it.” Her brow creased. “Infatuation, that’s all it was.”

“And how did you fit after the incident?”

“Me? I was just relieved it all blew over. I wasn’t nearly as vital to John as his bond with Jim was.” Her hands moved, as if they could convey what words couldn’t. “You see, John was one of those people who worship at the feet of genius, and every time John saw Jim, the genius hit him between the eyes. There was nothing homosexual in their relationship, but it was tight — very tight. My own theory was that John could compete with Jim in one way only — his attraction for women — and he set out to see if he could steal
something
from a genius, if only a wife.”

“You make it sound as if a wife is unimportant to a genius.”

“No, no! I don’t mean I’m unimportant to Jim! But the wife is separate from the genius — at least, that was what John Hall thought. He assumed that the space I occupied in Jim’s life was all to do with making sure he wore more clothes than a fig leaf, ate regular meals, put my feminine body next to him in a bed.
California saw the worst period of Jim’s ill health, so my importance to Jim as a colleague in his work wasn’t on its usual full display. He lost sight of the fact that I’m a biochemist too, and that that allows me to serve a genius in ways wives can’t. Until we came to Chubb, I was Jim’s chief technician, even though I was never on his books. These days he has so many acolytes he doesn’t need me the way he used to.” She smiled. “However, I sometimes appear after eleven of a night, when he’s all alone, and work as his best technician. No one is my equal.”

She stopped, her eyes suddenly full of tears. “John never picked up on that, and once Jim cooled down, he understood what had actually happened — the stealing from a genius.”

“But Jim forgave him.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Did he forgive you, Millie?”

“He had nothing to forgive.”

“Your husband said this incident with John Hall occurred the day before you left for Chicago.”

She laughed merrily. “He would! In fact he may even think it was. Jim’s not good on time spans and dates. Science is his all, he’s neither perceptive nor poetic, I’m afraid.”

“Yet I’m told that
A Helical God
is both perceptive and peotic. How come?”

“Work, Captain, that’s his work! A different compartment entirely from ordinary living. Where his work’s concerned the genius comes roaring up out of the depths of his brain and you wouldn’t know him for the same person. Jim is split.”

“Have there been infidelities on his side?”

Millie looked stunned. “Jim? Unfaithful?” Her eyes danced. “If it had ever occurred to him, maybe he might have been, but women have the wrong skeleton. It’s not a helix. Physically he is the strongest man I’ve ever encountered, but he doesn’t waste his strengths on things that aren’t helical.”

“Whose idea was it to write
A Helical God
?” Carmine asked.

For a long moment Millie looked absolutely taken aback, then she drew a breath as if she had forgotten that to breathe was a necessity. “What a fascinating question, Carmine! Do you know I just can’t answer it? He didn’t say anything to me, he just sat down at our old IBM typewriter one night and started hammering the keys. I wasn’t even aware he knew such a thing as a bestseller existed until he explained what he was doing when he went to bed about four in the morning. Oh, his mind! It came out already parsed, analyzed and edited, Dr. Carter said. Every chapter in sequence, the jargon dumbed down to exactly the right extent. His prose was amazing! So poetic! I was awed, Carmine, awed.”