Colleen McCullough - Too Many Murders

“Greaser!” said Gerald Junior under his breath. Getting no reaction from Carmine, he spoke louder. “Damn greaser cop!”

So much anger! Carmine looked into Selma’s eyes, which were the color of a sunny sky, then into Gerald Junior’s identical orbs, and couldn’t get past that all-consuming rage.

“What about you, Gerald?” he asked.

“I’m Junior,” he said, suddenly less certain than his sister. “No, I didn’t see or hear anything. You don’t, at this end of upstairs, if the noise is down Jimmy’s end.”

Not down his mother’s end, or his father’s end. Down Jimmy’s end, as if Jimmy owned it.

“Does Jimmy make a lot of noise, then?”

“Yes,” Junior said abruptly, and shrugged. “Like a sheep or a goat. Maaaa!” He imitated an ovine animal, imbuing the sound with mockery. “He wakes up a lot, maaaa!”

One more kid to go. “What about you, Grant?” Carmine asked.

“I never heard nothin’.”

Interesting that the Dormer hadn’t yet managed to iron double negatives out of Grant’s syntax. Carmine cleared his throat and leaned forward. “But you were awake at some time. You got sick.”

Grant jumped, astonished. “How do you know that?”

“First, I could smell it. Secondly, I could see the remains of it. You used your peejays to clean it up, they’re still in your hamper. Doesn’t anyone ever do the laundry?”

“Hey!” cried Selma, stiffening. “You can’t poke through our things, you East Shore greaser!”

“You senior Cartwright children are much addicted to that term,” Carmine said gravely. “It’s not general at the Dormer, or my daughter would have informed me. She’s your age, Selma, she’d be in some of your classes-Sophia Mandelbaum.” He watched the girl go crimson and understood a little more about the pecking order at the Dormer. Selma was a would-be, his daughter was establishment. How amazing that it started so early.

He went on. “You must know that your mother and your baby brother were both murdered the night before last, so why are you so obstructive? You watch enough television, you must be aware of police procedure. In a murder investigation nothing is sacred, including laundry hampers. Just settle down and answer my questions in the comfort of your own home. Otherwise I’ll have to take you downtown and ask you the same questions in a police interrogation room. Is that clear?”

Resistance collapsed; the three children nodded.

“So, Grant, you got sick?”

“Yeah,” he said in a whisper.

Some instinct stirred; Carmine looked at Selma and Junior. “Thank you, the pair of you can go. But the lady policeman should have arrived, so ask her to come here at once. I can’t harm Grant if she’s here, can I?”

Obviously Selma wanted to stay, but she wasn’t quite game to say so. After a suggestive pause that Carmine ignored, she sighed and followed Junior out. The woman cop came in quickly.

“Sit down over there, Gina. You’re chaperone,” Carmine said, then turned to Grant. “Okay, Grant, tell me what happened.”

“I pigged out on Twinkies-dinner was so late!” The boy looked indignant. “Mom gets carried away with Jimmy all the time-we don’t get dinner regular anymore. Then it was”-he pulled a face-“spaghetti! Again! I filled up on Twinkies, and when they ran out, I found a Boston cream pie.”

How long was it going to be before these children realized their mother really was dead? That if dinner had been irregular over the past eighteen months, it was going to become far more so in the future? They were so wrapped up in themselves, in what they perceived to be intolerable injuries. Keeping his face impassive, Carmine pressed on.

“Did you sleep at all, Grant?”

“Oh, sure! I watched some stupid movie on WOR-black-and-white, yet!-and I must have gone to sleep around midnight with it still on. Then I woke up feeling sick, but I figured it would go away. It didn’t, it got worse. I raced to my bathroom, but I didn’t make it. Splat! All over the floor. I felt better after that, so I went back to bed and went to sleep.”

The boy’s demeanor had changed, become uneasy. All truculence had fled, and the brown eyes that had been fixed on Carmine moved suddenly away, refused to return. The truth had come out, but not all of it. And now, while a fraught silence persisted and Gina endeavored to melt into the wallpaper, Grant was trying to manufacture a story that a police captain might swallow. Unfortunately he’d had scant experience confabulating, which indicated a life spent out of real trouble; his lies to date had been simple ones, his parents trusting fools who believed him. Only, what was he hiding? What could he possibly have to hide that required a properly constructed fairy tale?

“Crap!” said Carmine, barking it. “You didn’t go back to bed and you didn’t go back to sleep. What did you do? The truth!”

All color leached out of the boy’s healthy skin; he gave a gulp, his throat working convulsively. “I am telling the truth! Honest! I went to bed and I went to sleep.”

“No, you didn’t. What did you really do, Grant?”

It came out in a despairing rush; people didn’t usually set themselves against him, and he couldn’t-he couldn’t -dream up a story that convinced even himself. “I went to Mom’s bedroom to tell her I’d been sick on my bathroom floor.”

Ah! “What happened then?”

“The light was on-not a night light, the lamp on her table. Jimmy’d never settle down with a night light. The place stank of shit-I mean, it stank, really stank!”

Carmine waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. “You can’t stop now, Grant. I want it all.”

“Jimmy was standing in his crib, yelling his head off. I saw Mom asleep in bed, so I went to wake her. But I couldn’t, sir! I shook her and yelled in her ear, but she went right on sleeping. Then I saw the glass on her table, and I knew she’d knocked herself out. She often did. Great, just great! Jimmy was screeching fit to bust, these real animal noises. I yelled at him to shut up, but the little creep didn’t even notice. Gross! He must have dumped tons of shit in his diaper, the stink was so bad.”

Carmine’s eyes encountered Gina’s; she looked a query, but was answered by a tiny shake of the head. A cold and nauseating presentiment had taken hold of Carmine, who drew in a long breath and forced himself to remain detached. “Go on, Grant, you may as well tell me the rest-I’ll find it out anyway. It will be better if it comes from you.”

The brown eyes turned back to him at last, resigned, full of tears. Grant lifted his shoulders as if to shed a burden. “I went to the crib and let down the side. I figured that if Jimmy was loaded with shit, it would maybe teach Mom a lesson not to knock herself out if she woke up in the same bed as shitty Jimmy. But the little creep hollered even louder. Then he swung a punch at me! Spat in my face! I punched him back. He fell over in the crib, and I don’t know what happened next. Honest, sir, I don’t! All I remember are the screeches and howls, the spits-I mean, he spit on me! I put the pillow over his face to shut him up, but it didn’t. Even through it the noise hurt, but he couldn’t spit on me. I kept pushing the pillow against his face until he did stop yelling. Then I kept it there to make sure. Man, it felt good! The little creep spit on me!”

Oh, sweet Jesus! “Tell me the rest, Grant.”

The boy looked better, relieved of a frightful burden. Did his siblings know? Probably not, or Selma at least wouldn’t have left him. Carmine thought she had an inkling but hadn’t had time to follow up. Just as well. The death of Jimmy Cartwright would otherwise have masked the death of his mother.