The Prodigal Son (11 page)

“In the big room. We can look,” said Dr. Fennell, getting up. “It would be unusual for post mortem bruises to develop
on a clear, unblemished skin at autopsy,” he said, ambling to the wall that held the cold room door.

“Business is brisk,” said Delia, gazing at several occupied gurneys.

“Two additionals from unexpected murders make a difference. Were it not for Mr. Hall and Dr. Tinkerman, it would have been an average weekend intake. There was a shoot-out in Argyle Avenue, but the rest are just routine investigations requested by puzzled G.P.s.” He peeled away John Hall’s sheet.

Gloved, they examined the body together, front and back, from head to toes and in between.

“Not a sausage,” said Delia, stripping the rubber off her hands. “I had a funny feeling that would prove to be the case. His stepmother is accusing him of trying to rape her last Friday.”

“Shades of Phaedra and Hippolytus,” Gus said with a chuckle.

“You know your Greek mythology, sir.”

“Yes, but it’s an extremely rare woman willing to back up her accusation by killing herself, which is what Phaedra did. Perhaps your Phaedra killed this Hippolytus?”

“I wouldn’t put anything past her. Thank you, Gus dear.”

“So,” she said, reporting to Abe in his office, “I can assure you that if Mrs. Davina Tunbull tells you John Hall tried to rape her, she’s lying. I’ve had Gus Fennell add a post scriptum to the autopsy report stating specifically that the body bears no marks of teeth, nails, fists or feet. What an extraordinary case this is!
People lying so blatantly you wonder about their mental competence. It’s been like that from the start, Abe. Were I Millie, I think I would have shrugged and not bothered to report the loss of the poison.”

A frown had gathered; Abe stared at Delia oddly. “That is very perceptive, Sergeant Carstairs. If she were anyone other than our Millie, my tortuous mind might have sniffed a plot, with her husband’s collusion.”

“That’s our downfall, Abe. Our minds are
too
tortuous. As Carmine says, the first impression is usually the most significant one. What was yours, since I wasn’t at the Tunbulls’?”

“That Dr. Jim did it. Gut instinct, nothing else.”

“It doesn’t add up, though, unless you want to make
his
mind tortuous enough to use the poison on John Hall as practice for the real event — poisoning Tinkerman.”

“You can look at it that way, Deels,” Abe said. “Or you can interpret the whole thing as an attempt to frame Dr. Jim.”

“Oh, I loathe frame crimes!” Delia cried. “It’s that extra layer of Saran wrap makes it impossible to get the pie out unbroken.”

“Good metaphor. Thanks, Delia — and for getting Gus to look at the body again too. I accept your opinion of Davina’s lies as well. It takes someone super smart to act super dumb.” Abe put a hand to the back of his pate, where the hair was thinning. “Anyone in the study could have administered the poison, though it would be a great help if we knew the instrument of delivery.”

“Are you considering Dr. Markoff a suspect?”

“Until I prove he had no motive, yes.”

“Who stands to benefit the most from John’s death?”

“Ivan, Val’s son. Baby Alexis cut him out, I guess, but a baby isn’t the same threat as a grown man. John, they all say, kept emphasizing that he wasn’t interested in Max’s business or money because his adopted father is very wealthy and had already endowed him. My research to date does indicate that this Wendover Hall owns half of Oregon.”

“Dig deeper into John himself,” Delia said.

“I will. I mean, our line of work teaches that people never seem to have enough money. John Hall could be heir to the Vanderbilts and still covet Max’s little bit.”

“Davina’s the one needs research in that house, opinionated skinny bitch that she is!”

Abe didn’t make the mistake of probing into Delia’s sudden detestation of Davina Tunbull; if his exquisitely sensitive nose whispered that it had to do with Delia’s apparel, that was even more reason to shut up. So he confined himself to generalities.

“The Yugoslav background?” he asked.

“No, the New York City modeling career. I smell a very dead rat, Abe — there was some sort of funny business involved. She’s also potty,” Delia said sternly. “She kept telling me things no one in their right mind would say without an attorney present, yet when I cautioned her a la Miranda, she ignored me. Whatever else you do or don’t do, make sure you have two witnesses present when you question her. Otherwise she’ll probably accuse you of raping her, and Uda will back her up.”

“Is she genuinely dumb?”

“If she’s dumb, so is Oppenheimer. That’s why I prefer to call her potty. She thinks the way she thinks we think women think.”

From Abe’s office Delia went to her own. It had belonged to Lieutenant Corey Marshall, now Senior Lieutenant of Uniforms with Captain Fernando Vasquez, and had lain vacant for less than half a day before Delia swooped, announcing that she needed space for spreading out huge sheets of paper. Carmine had pointed out that she had masterminded his own removal to Mickey McCosker’s suite of offices to have ample spreading room, but he may as well have saved his breath. Yes, but that space was actually Carmine’s, she spread out her sheets on sufferance, she needed her
own
space …

Silvestri gave in, whereupon his niece badgered him for better furniture that, she wheedled, “betrayed the domain and the hand of a woman.” In like manner she had usurped the quite unofficial position of second-in-command of Carmine’s team; if Carmine were absent, Nick, Buzz and Donny all looked to her to issue the orders. How it had happened was a mystery, except that Carmine for one knew how much of the Commissioner lay in her nature. Hesitate, and Delia would take over.

This case was interesting, she thought as she hung up the tiger outer wear and went to a long, narrow table already bearing four large sheets of paper: her C.U.P. banquet seating plans.

The Chubb table, first of those down on the floor, was the most intriguing, she decided, whizzing on her wheeled chair
until she hovered over it. Four Chubb Governors and their wives, three of the Parsons and their wives, His Honor Judge Douglas Wilbur Thwaites and his wife, Dotty, and Dean Robert Highman and his wife, Nancy. The four governors occupied one end of the table, the three Parsons the other, with Dean Highman next to the Parsons and Judge Thwaites next to the governors. As Bobby Highman’s college, Paracelsus, was a Parson endowment, it made sense to seat him in proximity, but no wonder Doubting Doug was in such a royal snit — Governor William Holder, next to him, had once made mincemeat of D.A. Thwaites by getting a guilty-as-sin defendant acquitted. Which might have been all right, save that Holder continued to rub in the defeat every time he saw the now Judge, who rightly blamed the jury, not Holder’s defense.

Two of the Gentleman Walkers of Carew were seated at the C.U.P. table, Delia noted: Dapper Dave Feinman, escorting the editor-in-chief, Fulvia Friedkin, and suave Gregory Pendelton, squiring the director of design, Hester Grey. Publishing, Delia reflected, attracted females, and actually offered them some top management positions — rare in business. The Doctors Hunter were on the high table, but the three Tunbulls and wives were all seated with C.U.P. That meant they must do all C.U.P.’s printing — how interesting!

Very well: coffee with Dotty Thwaites, a chat with Nancy Highman, a long and charming interview with Hester Grey, and — would Abe mind if she tackled Emily Tunbull? The two cases were so entwined, and it would take a crafty woman to prise the lid off Emily’s pot of malice, sheer hearsay though it
was. Then, of course, she had to see how the search through the banquet’s detritus was progressing …

Carmine walked through the door.

“Oh, goodie!” said Delia. “Chief, may I please have the C.U.P. table? It’s stuffed with women, and you have your work cut out dealing with the men.”

He had lost a little weight and was looking, thought his most devoted fan, extremely well. With winter upon them, she had expected a return of last winter’s rather rheumatic gait, but thus far he was moving like a supple youth. Such a very attractive man! Knowing herself a platonic admirer insofar as that were possible, Delia appreciated Carmine for what he was: a man of forty-eight, built like a bull but trim, with the face of a Roman emperor — autocratically good looking, with a pair of jewel-colored eyes that saw clear through to the soul.

Thinking he’d be teaching school, he’d majored in English and Math from Chubb, but after going to his great love, police work, he had pursued a leisurely Master’s degree that discussed the rising tides of urban violence in terms of the huge changes in literary metaphor as evidenced by the Raymond Chandler school. It had been a good but not important thesis that wouldn’t have procured him a doctorate, but ambition wasn’t why he had done a Master’s. That belonged to the boredom of the bachelor years.

“You look well,” she said before he could answer her first question. “No arthur-itis.”

“Desdemona filled some horse-sized capsules with turmeric — you know, the powder turns a curry yellow? She
read somewhere that it’s good for rheumatics, as she calls them. And she’s right — or something is. No aches and pains this winter.” He came to look at the C.U.P. table plan. “Yes, Deels, this one is definitely yours. Abe tells me that Mrs. Davina Tunbull is heavily into incriminating herself.” He perched the edge of his rump on the table.

“I reminded her of the Miranda decision, boss, but she ignored me. I think you should see her yourself, Carmine. Something’s going on — all this rubbish about the deceased trying to rape her! Only don’t see her without witnesses. Her cretinous servant will back up any lie Davina tells.”

“If there is myxedema there, Delia, then Uda can’t possibly be intelligent. Mental retardation is a part of the syndrome,” Carmine objected. “You can’t be half a cretin.”

“I disagree!” Delia said vigorously. “I have seen it before in other cretinous-looking individuals, and I stand by the evidence of my eyes. Cretins can sometimes preserve their brains, and Uda is one such. Perhaps the syndrome is only partially established, I don’t know, but Uda has as good a brain as Davina.”

Carmine stood upright. “Go home, Delia. It’s still Sunday, and Ivy Hall won’t be ready for your attentions until tomorrow. Davina Tunbull can wait, so can the rest.”

“Gus Fennell likened Davina and John Hall to Phaedra.”

“The young wife of Theseus’s old age, who fell in love with his son by the Amazon queen,” Carmine said, smiling.

Home for Delia was a beachfront apartment in Millstone, on the easternmost edge of Holloman County; Millstone Bay was a scallop in the coastline beyond the Busquash peninsula, and was one of the more expensive places to live. That Delia had recently been able to buy her condo was thanks to a tidy bequest from her father’s sister; it had made all the difference to her financially.

Not everyone’s idea of beauty, perhaps, but it was Delia to the enth degree, between its theme of rust, yellow and bright sky blue, its dozens of daisy-embroidered doilies, knick-knacks and very comfortable furniture; she even had an easy chair and a dining chair designed for Desdemona.

Divested of her outer wear, she took her glass of sherry to the plate glass window that formed most of the front wall of her living room, and stood looking with pleasure at a winter world. The stony beach was littered with eerily beautiful chunks of ice washed up from some shattered berg drifting down in the Arctic current — the water was below air freezing, still liquid because of its salt content — and the trees showed forth in the splendor of their lacy grey skeletons. Not much snow, considerable ice; it could happen that way, and Holloman had had a true ice storm two days before Christmas that left pendulous icicles on eaves and branches still. Long Island was visible, but only just; more bad weather coming, given that black snow sky. Glorious! Delia loved her beachfront view in all its seasonal moods, and prayed, along with everyone else in Millstone, that this year they’d have the big storm that put the sand back on the beach. It had been snatched away eleven years
ago as part of some cycle; the local Yankees swore it was due to reappear soon.

She had made a big pot of pea-and-ham soup, one of the happier aspects of being a spinster, she reflected as she pigged out on it and buttery fingers of toast. She could fart all night and offend no nose save her own.

That awful Davina Tunbull! popped into her mind as she put her plate, cup and bowl into the dishwasher. Lose thirty pounds, indeed! Live on lettuce leaves and black coffee instead of pea-and-ham soup and buttery toast? I could run her down inside a hundred yards, the smug bitch! They may not look good on a Times Square billboard, but my legs are made for
using
, not looking at.

Carmine was staring at the same wintry, watery landscape, but his was a busier view, encompassing the harbor and its shipping. The ice was crusted around the East Holloman shore, but it wasn’t going to be the sort of winter saw the ice breakers working to clear a channel to the hydrocarbons farm. The black sky said lots of snow, but the absence of mackerel said it wouldn’t blow a gale to pile up snowdrifts.

He had ignored his front door, halfway down the sloping two-acre property he called home, in need of some salt in the air and a sense of a wider world than the one at present occupying him in its worst manifestation: close blood relatives were implicated in the crimes he and his detectives had sworn an oath to pursue to a successful conclusion. What he had to do
was banish the specters of Jim and Millie Hunter, assemble them with the rest of the suspects, and admit that, as things stood at the moment, they were the most likely suspects.

The worst of it was that as yet he hadn’t encountered many of the participants — nor would, unless he usurped Abe Goldberg’s position as chief investigator of the Tunbull dinner party. And that he would not do. Under ordinary circumstances it would not matter, but these two cases were inextricably linked through the mechanism of the two deaths — Dr. Millie Hunter’s esoteric neurotoxin. Luckily he could see anyone involved in the Tunbull death from the aspect of Thomas Tarleton Tinkerman’s death, save for Uda, whom he was dying to meet. Whatever Davina was, Uda had a hand in it. If Davina was a poisoner, then Uda had a hand in that too.