Too Many Murders (27 page)

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.

Mrs. Barbara Norton was sitting with Corey and Sergeant Dave O’Brien. Her calm was unimpaired, and it was only as her story unfolded that the layers of insanity peeled away to ever deeper ones. She seemed to have no idea that her son was dead, though she had known it when she spoke on the phone to Dave O’Brien, had told him that Tommy was black in the face and not breathing; but more, she had said she killed him.

“Now that Peter is gone,” she told the men, “I can do what I want at last.” She leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. “Peter was a glutton. He insisted we had to eat whatever he ate—the children swelled up like balloons! I never tried to argue, it wasn’t worth it. I just bided my time. I bided my time.” She nodded seriously, then sat back and smiled.

“No one really likes fat people, you know,” she began once more, “so after Peter died, I put us on a diet. Marlene and Tommy drink water. I drink black coffee. We can eat all the raw vegetables we like, but no bread, no cookies, no cake, nothing with sugar in it. No milk, no cream, no desserts. I let Tommy and Marlene have crackers at breakfast and lunch. We eat broiled skinless chicken or fish, and steamed vegetables. Rice. The weight just falls off! By the time Tommy goes to school this September, he’ll be as trim as our hedge!”

When a silence fell, Carmine decided to risk a question. “How did you stay so trim, Barbara?”

“Stuck my finger down my throat.”

It’s clear why the poor little guy choked trying to eat an eraser, Carmine thought, but how long has the madness been there? What brought it out? Peter Norton’s death? Or did he die as a consequence of it? Tommy’s death has tipped her right over the edge, but I have to try to get some answers.

“What did you do with the strychnine, Barbara?”

“Threw the bottle in the Pequot.”

“Did you take the cap off first?”

She looked indignant. “Sure I did! I’m not stupid!”

“Why did you pick April third as the day to put strychnine in Peter’s orange juice?”

“Oh, silly, you know that!” she said, eyes widening.

“I forget. Tell me again.”

“Because it only worked on April third! Any other day, and the potion lost its magic. He was very firm about that.”

“Who was?”

“Silly, you know who!”

“It’s my memory again. I forget his name.”

“Reuben.”

“I’ve forgotten his last name too, Barbara.”

“How can you forget what he didn’t have?”

“Where did you meet Reuben?”

“At the bowling alley, silly!”

“What magic worked the potion on April third?”

She was getting bored and tired, or perhaps it was both; her eyelids drooped, then she made an effort and lifted them. “Magic only lives for a single day, Reuben told me.” She began to stir in her chair, agitation growing. “He lied! He lied! He told me that Peter would just go to sleep! I did not get it wrong! April third was the day!”

“Yes, Barbara, you got it right,” Carmine said. “He was the liar. Sit a while and think of happy things.”

The four men endured the silence, too afraid to catch any other pair of eyes, trying not to look at her.

She spoke. “Where’s Tommy?”

Not Marlene, the girl. Just Tommy.

“He’s asleep,” Carmine said.

“I don’t imagine she’ll ever come to trial,” he said later to Commissioner Silvestri, “and the poor little boy solved the case. Can you credit it, John? A starvation diet inflicted overnight on a fat five-year-old who’s been eating nonstop since he started to walk. The girl is three years older, and cunning. She stole from Mommy’s purse to buy food, but she couldn’t steal enough to feed her own appetite, let alone her kid brother’s as well. She was scared stiff of the day Mommy counted her change, but she would have gone on stealing until Mommy did find out.”

Silvestri shook his sleek dark head, blinked rapidly. “Is the girl okay? Are there any relatives willing to take her? The system would turn her into another master criminal.”

“Norton’s parents are taking her—they live in Cleveland. She’s sole heir to his estate, which I imagine will go into a trust until she’s of age.” Carmine found a smile. “Maybe she stands a better chance this way. At least, I have to hope so.”

“A rubber strawberry!” Silvestri exclaimed. “Was it that lifelike?”

“Only to a ravenously hungry little boy,” Carmine said, “though I didn’t see it before he tried to eat it. It wasn’t his, it belonged to the little girl, old enough to know it for what it was. He’d combed the house looking for edibles.”

“I guess it means that if you don’t want fat kids, you have to start ’em off right,” Silvestri said. “That stupid diet turned one child into a thief and killed the other.” His black eyes gleamed at the godless Carmine. “I hope you’re going to have some masses said for little Tommy’s soul—St. Bernard’s can do with a new roof. Otherwise Mrs. Tesoriero will see Our Lady’s face wet next time it rains, and claim a miracle.”

“We’ve all had wet faces today, John. Yes, I’ll see you ten masses and raise you one.”

* * *

“I don’t suppose I have any choice,” said Desdemona that evening as they shared their before-dinner drink.

“Choice?”

“I’ve married into a Catholic family, so my children will be raised Catholics.”

Carmine stared at her in surprise. “I didn’t think you minded, Desdemona. You’ve never mentioned it.”

“I suppose that’s because until Julian’s advent I hadn’t thought it important to you. You’re not at all religious.”

“True. That’s my work, it gets God out of the system. But I want a Catholic education for my kids—my old school for the boys, St. Mary’s for the girls,” said Carmine, preparing to do battle. “They should be exposed to a Christian God, and what better one than the original?”

“If we were in England,” said his wife thoughtfully, “I’d plump for Church of England, but there’s really no equivalent here. I like the close-knit East Holloman family network, and I don’t want our children on an outer orbit because their parents failed to agree. I’m the one married into the circle, and the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. But I refuse to convert or go to mass, and I won’t make our children go to mass.”

“Sounds fair,” he said, enormously relieved that there would be no battle. “I only go to mass at Christmas and Easter, though I will go for Tommy Norton. I made a pact with Silvestri.”

“That man is brilliant,” she said, smiling.

“What’s for dinner?”

“Roast loin of pork with crackling.”

“I am putty in your hands, lovely lady.” He looked at her over the rim of his glass. “Why didn’t you fight harder? I expected you to. You did insist on a civil wedding.”

“I was pregnant at the time, and in no mood to fiddle with the bride business. I just wanted to be Mrs. Carmine Delmonico as quickly as I could.”

“It doesn’t answer your attitude tonight,” he persisted.

“Very simple,” she said, draining her glass. “I abominate coeducation, and East Holloman’s Catholic schools are not coeducational. The last thing teenaged children need as they suffer the onslaught of hormones is the presence of the opposite sex in a classroom. Oh, most children survive it, but the cost is dearer. Look at Sophia, tarting herself up every day just to go to school. A dose of uniforms would do her good.”