The Prodigal Son (18 page)

“How come you see all this when no one else seems to?”

The veal was in the pan, the ziti sauce was stirred, the pasta boiling: she blinked. “I ran a very large research unit, Carmine. I know all about researchers.”

“You make me want to despise Jim Hunter, and that’s a brand new feeling.”

The salad was picked over, the jar that held Desdemona’s home-made vinaigrette shaken vigorously. “You mustn’t despise Jim, honestly. The answer doesn’t lie with him — it never did, and it never will. Millie has to put a stop to it, that simple. She just has to say, ‘No, Jim, my money is mine, my equipment is mine, and I want a comfortable life. That means you give me some of your money for a change so I can make a nest and have my babies.’ She’s never said it because she thinks he’ll leave her — what a load of old codswallop! Jim Hunter could no more leave Millie than the Moon could abandon the Earth.”

Head spinning, Carmine laid out knives, forks, the French sauce spoons Desdemona insisted upon for scooping up the last liquid on a plate. “A shiraz?” he asked.

“That nice light Chilean one.” She was getting ready to serve. “Don’t dump on Jim, he’s a special case,” she said. “As a man, he has no idea what women are, or what they need. He’s only ever known one woman — Millie. Who turned herself into a doormat for him —
at fifteen!
How can he possibly know that she isn’t really a doormat? She’s given him no clues.”

The bowls of ziti and sauce had appeared, the salad bowl and two empty china bowls in which to place helpings; then
came the plates beautifully arranged with the saltimbocca. Carmine picked up his knife and fork. “Well, all I can say, my most glorious Desdemona, is that there’s something radically wrong with a man who doesn’t let his wife make a nest — and learn to cook like a Cordon Bleu graduate. Even that fool cat is a part of the home you’ve made for me and our sons. And don’t think I haven’t tumbled to the fact that you think it does my blood pressure good to stroke twenty-two pounds of Winston.”

“Well, it does so too do you good,” she countered, sitting down and sniffing. “Oh, it
does
smell good! Tuck in, Carmine.”

He obeyed orders and tucked in, but after they had made a gooey mess of the runny, smelly cheese and retired to the living room with a pot of tea, his mind returned to what Desdemona had said about Millie Hunter. Frustrated as well as unhappy, and beginning perhaps to think that even if there were a bestseller, all Jim’s royalties would be invested in his research, leaving nothing for Millie or the children Desdemona said she longed to have.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 9
until
FRIDAY, JANUARY 17

1969

THURSDAY, JANUARY 9, 1969

W
hen Delia beat on Emily Tunbull’s door with the brass knocker she preferred to Beethoven’s Fifth, no one answered. How odd! Emily was the reclusive among the Tunbull women, she had been led to believe, and her smart new Cadillac Seville was parked in the garage, its door up as if she had intended driving off, but had been diverted. After five more fruitless minutes, Delia walked around the back; some crazy women, she was aware, hung their washing out on lines to freeze rather than use a dryer. But no Emily Tunbull was pinning out wet clothes to freeze.

The house was a nice one, and a peek through a window revealed a nice interior, safely beige, with classy pieces of furniture. Tunbull Printing obviously did well enough to support all its owners in considerable style. The backyard was a tidy one, partitioned off with a chain link fence, though one side and behind were vacant lots; Ivan and Lily’s equally nice house lay on the other boundary, where the fence contained a
gate. Sure enough, the backyard did contain a clothesline — and two sheds besides, but their door were padlocked; the far shed looked substantial, perhaps even lined.

Delia gave up and walked down Hampton Street to the house on the knoll, where Uda opened the door.

“Is Mrs. Tunbull home?” Delia asked, face serious.

“Wait. I see.”

Cooling her heels on the stoop didn’t last long; Uda came back and held the door wide. “In,” she said.

“I imagine,” said Delia to the walls, “you understand all the nuances of the English language, Uda. You just don’t show it.”

Davina was in the living room, fully clad in a violet pantsuit and matching Italian flatties — the matriarch at home?

“Sergeant Carstairs,” she said. “Coffee?”

“Thank you, no.” Delia found a chair that was low enough to permit her to rest her feet on the carpet; Davina was quite tall and Max a tall man, so it was a Delmonico kind of house in that respect. “Mrs. Tunbull, why do you treat your twin sister like the vilest of servants?”

The blue eyes swung to her face, arrested, then their lids fell — her usual evasive trick. “I see. You have been talking to Mr. Quinn Preston.”

“Yes. In actual fact he gave the pair of you a glowing report, so you’ve no need to worry on the immigration front.”

“I certainly do not! Uda and I are American citizens!”

“Pursuant to Uda, why do you treat her so abominably?”

“That is insulting!”

“Not as insulting to you as your treatment of her is insulting to Uda.”

A snap of the fingers saw Uda turn to go.

“Kindly stay, Miss Savovich!” Delia said, voice commanding.

“This is
my
house!” Davina snapped.

“This is
my
murder investigation, ma’am. If its consequences are inconvenient to you, I am sorry for it, but that cannot alter your obligation to answer my questions. Why do you treat your twin sister like the vilest of servants?”

“That is how families work in my country,” Davina said with a pout. “Uda was born defective. I have cared for her as she cannot care for herself. She has a comfortable bed in a most luxurious apartment of her own, and all the good food she can eat. I am the family bread winner. Uda takes her bread from me. My price is her labor and her obedience.”

“How do you feel about this one-sided contract, Uda?”

“I am happy. I like work. I care for this house, I care for Vina,” said Uda, accent still thick, but grammar somewhat improved. “I am necessary, Sergeant Carstairs. Without me, my Vina could not manage.”

“Ah!” Delia exclaimed. “Then you appreciate power.”

“Doesn’t everyone?” Davina asked.

“Of course. However, using it wisely is another matter. Would you say, Mrs. Tunbull, that you took a terrific risk in persuading Mr. Max Tunbull to print twenty-thousand copies of
A Helical God
before that was authorized by C.U.P.?”

“Pah!” spat Davina, as if people’s denseness amazed her. “I have already said that I knew Thomas Tinkerman would die at the C.U.P. banquet — where was the risk?”

“You incriminate yourself out of your own mouth.”

“Nonsense!” Davina said. “I believe in Uda’s gifts from long acquaintance with them. When she gazes into the water bowl she is never wrong. And you cannot prove I killed Tinkerman because I did not. I went nowhere near him that night.”

Time to change the subject, thought Delia. “I have another request, Mrs. Tunbull. I want to see your baby.”

That transfixed both of them. Davina, tracing the patterns on the arm of her chair, dug into it so suddenly that Delia heard the nails break. Uda, hands on the back of Davina’s chair, lost color and clenched the fabric fiercely.

“I am sorry, that is impossible,” Davina said, staring at her ruined nails in exasperation.

“Why?”

“Because I do not choose to show him to you.”

“Then, ma’am, I will be back with a warrant — after I’ve posted police guards to make sure you don’t remove the child.”

“You cannot! This is America!”

“I can — and I will.” Delia slid off the chair and stood in all the glory of her purple pantsuit, its orange blouse, the long, bright pink scarf dangling on either side of her head. “Come, Mrs. Tunbull, show me this baby everyone hears so much about, yet no one ever sees. This morning we are private. If I return with a warrant I will be accompanied by two male
police witnesses. It will be a circus. Show Alexis to me now, and it remains between the three of us.”

The Savovich sisters said nothing for a moment; then Davina sighed. “Very well, Sergeant. I will bring Alexis.”

The news was too urgent and vital to trust to the police radio, and Delia didn’t feel like finding an unvandalized phone booth to call Carmine in advance; she simply radioed that she was on her way back to County Services, and needed to see the Captain.

Delia bursting with news, Carmine thought as she skittled in like a crab discovering the joys of forward locomotion, was one of the greater pleasures his police work afforded.

“You look like Pandora bearing her box,” he said.

“I feel more like Mauna Loa on the verge of an eruption,” she said with a squeak in her voice.

“Then hit me with your lava, Deels.”

“There is a baby, and he’s absolutely gorgeous,” Delia said. “One of the loveliest children I’ve ever seen. I would have to say, though, that the greatest factor contributing to his beauty is the color of his skin. He’s black.”

A pin dropping would have sounded like a minor explosion. Jaw sagging, Carmine gaped at her for what seemed a very long time before he shut his mouth and looked himself.

“Black,” he said then. “How black, Deels?”

“Medium. Not black black, but darker than café au lait.” She stopped, took a breath, and dropped the real bombshell. “His eyes are green, the exact color of You-know-whose.”

Carmine felt the hairs stand up on his neck. “Jesus!”

“I had to ask her, of course.”

“What did she say? What could she say?”

“Denied it absolutely. Confessed that there was black blood in her own family — a pair of great-grandparents and a grandparent, father of her father. Her grandfather wasn’t a full blood, she said, but he was African to look at. Except for his red hair and his green eyes.” Delia flopped onto a chair.

“And what does Max Tunbull say? Did you get onto that, or did the Savovich ladies dry up?”

“Dry up? Anything but! Once I had Alexis on my knee, they seemed relieved someone else was in on the secret. Apparently Max is so besotted he’d believe anything Davina told him, including the Negro family history. That Jim Hunter could be the father has never even crossed Max’s mind, Davina swears. I confess I am inclined to believe her. She bewitches men, that woman.”

“Did she mention Jim Hunter?”

“No. Just blamed the world for its dirty mind when her baby came out that color. Of course the eyes are only just a known fact — it takes time for babies to color their irises. So for Davina the green eyes are a very recent worry. Instinct prompted her to hide the baby for as long as she could. Emily snipes at her, but Davina holds firm.” Delia propped her chin on her hands. “It is a damnable situation for a woman, I see that. Whether Jim Hunter is the father or the unprovable Negroid family history is true, for a white woman to produce a black baby is — oh, dreadful! Davina has enemies, even among
the Tunbulls. She knows the day of revelation must come, but she hoped to postpone it until after Jim Hunter’s book is a big seller, and the Hunters have moved away from her a little.”

“Does Jim Hunter know there’s a black baby?”

“No. Nor does Millie. The only ones who know are Max and the Savovich twins — and me now, of course. I told her that I’d try to keep her secret,” Delia said. “I actually felt sorry for her, Carmine! What if the family history’s true?”

“It shifts the epicenter of this business,” Carmine said, pacing up and down. “However, for the moment I think you and I will keep Davina’s secret. True or not, everyone will infer Jim. Millie would be devastated, although she’d insist the black family history was fact. That attitude wouldn’t save her from malice and speculation from workplace to the O’Donnells. Besides, how does the Negro look skip generations? I thought the gene was dominant, that it overwhelmed the Caucasian gene.”

“As time goes on, that gets less cut and dried,” Delia said. “In Mendel’s time the laws of inheritance were ironclad, now they’re not. Ask Jim Hunter — the biochemistry’s his field.”

“But people are not educated in modern ideas on it.”

“Precisely.”

“Oh, Deels, this is terrible! Let’s say the father
is
Jim Hunter — when could it have happened?”

“Alexis was born at full term on October thirteen, which would put his conception around Christmas of 1967 until New Year of 1968,” Delia said. “From August of 1967 until that Christmas, Jim wrote
A Helical God
as well as bore his full
research load, coming to its fruition right about then into the bargain. He wouldn’t have had a second to devote to a love affair, especially with Davina. Whereas she would have been among the very first to see the finished manuscript, given Max’s submission to her. A very small window indeed, Carmine, around a year ago.”

“Of course he’d known Davina from earlier books.”

“Yes, why is that?” Delia asked. “Working in Chicago, yet published by Chubb.”

“Max Tunbull should be able to answer that,” Carmine said.

“Or the old Head Scholar. What a pickle!” cried Delia.

I need a walk, said Carmine to himself, shrugging into his down jacket and making sure his gloves were in a pocket. Then it was down to the cobbled yard between the vast twenty-year-old County Services building and the old annex containing the cells.

Sheltered from the worst of the wind, Carmine yanked the hood over his head and began the familiar trek that every tormenting case seemed to provoke. Up and down, around the perimeter, then two diagonals before starting again. Whom would he meet today? He always met some other tormented soul.

Today, Fernando Vasquez, having a hard time adjusting to a Connecticut winter after years of Florida.

“You look like Scott of the Antarctic,” Fernando said.

“Thanks a million for comparing me to the guy who didn’t make it,” Carmine said stiffly.