Too Many Murders (26 page)

“Is there anything else significant about April third?” Corey asked. “It’s a Monday. It’s the first working day of the month, which is the last month of quite a few financial years—”

“It’s a frustration because April Fool’s Day fell on a Saturday,” said Abe, grinning. “No pranks this year.”

“A source for the strychnine never turned up,” said Carmine.

“No,” said his team in chorus.

“Let’s look at things a different way, even if it does make us seem macabre.”

Carmine didn’t like using a blackboard, but occasionally it became necessary to tabulate things, and then a board was handy.

“There are gentle deaths and agonizing deaths.” He drew a line up the center, forming two columns. “On the gentle side are Beatrice Egmont, Cathy Cartwright, and the three black victims. I call them gentle because none of them saw it coming and all of them died very quickly. Okay, five gentle.”

He entered the left-hand side of his board. “Agonizing has to include Dean Denbigh, but we exclude him here because he falls outside our scope. Which leaves us with five agonizing deaths: Peter Norton, Dee-Dee Hall, Bianca Tolano, Evan Pugh, and Desmond Skeps. However, I want to write them down in order of magnitude—easiest to worst. Who had the easiest death?”

“Peter Norton,” Corey said. Man, he was flying today!

“Why?”

“Because he probably lost consciousness the moment the convulsions began. I know we can’t say that for sure, but I’m betting Patrick would say generalized convulsions interrupt the brain’s conscious pathways.”

“I agree, Corey. So we write Peter Norton down as easiest. Who next in this grisly catalogue?”

“Dee-Dee Hall,” said Abe. “She didn’t fight. She just stood and exsanguinated. A slow bleed from both jugulars, but slow is relative—the blood would have poured out like any liquid under pressure from a pump, and the heart’s a perfect pump. Her suffering would have been as much mental as physical, except that she didn’t move a muscle to defend herself or run. That might suggest that Dee-Dee wasn’t sorry her life was ending.”

Carmine wrote her name on the blackboard. “So we equate her as more or less equal with Peter Norton.”

“Evan Pugh next,” said Abe.

“You really think so, Abe?”

“I do too,” Corey said. “He died of trauma to the spinal cord and internal organs. It was slow, but it was
clean
. The worst of it would have been inside his mind, and that we can’t speculate about. Everybody’s different.”

“Evan Pugh,” said Carmine, writing. “Next to last?”

“Desmond Skeps,” said Abe. “His death was diabolical, but most of the torture wasn’t half as bad—in my view, anyway—as what Bianca Tolano went through.”

“Abe’s right, Carmine,” said Corey firmly. “Skeps was a famous man, he knew he’d made a lot of enemies, and he must have known there was always a chance one of them would hate him enough to kill him. His torture was superficial, even the cut-off nipples. Whereas Bianca Tolano was an innocent who suffered the ultimate degradation. Skeps could only have equaled her if he’d been raped, and he wasn’t. His murderer—um—”

“Preserved his integrity as a man,” Carmine finished. “Yes, that’s important. None of the male victims was sexually tampered with, and only one female: Bianca Tolano.”

He wrote her name at the bottom of the right-hand column, and stared at the board. “We have to presume that the killer knew them all, so what was it about each one that decided their particular death?”

“Beatrice Egmont was a real nice old lady,” Abe said.

“Cathy Cartwright was a nice woman having a helluva bad time with her family and Jimmy,” Abe said.

“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?”

“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?”