Colleen McCullough - Too Many Murders

The decor was interior decorator beige, conservative and safe, nor were there any precious objects scattered around to suggest that Skeps collected art or even kitsch. The pictures on the walls were second-rate watercolors the decorator had probably passed off as first-rate, though in the bedroom this individual had gone for etchings torn out of over-sized Victorian books and framed. The bill had undoubtedly been astronomical, but Carmine spared no pity for a man who didn’t know second-rate when he saw it.

Skeps had been murdered not in his bed but on his massage couch, a taller, narrower item of furniture that would have suited his murderer’s intentions admirably. Either he had climbed onto it voluntarily, or the murderer was strong enough to lift him there bodily after his glass of single malt Glenlivet and chloral hydrate. Certainly he wouldn’t have consumed the Scotch lying flat out on what was to become his deathbed. A strong killer, Carmine said to himself, thinking of the bear trap. These two killings were done personally, and they argued great physical strength. Look for someone rolling in money and built like Mr. Universe and you won’t go far wrong. But what if no one was both? What if no one was either?

Patsy’s boys had been over the crime scene meticulously, so he didn’t bother going over it again. What he wanted was to get an idea of Desmond Skeps from his living arrangements.

He knew what the rest of the world knew already, and from the same sources: gossip magazines, columnists, an occasional serious article in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times . Skeps’s father, a successful manufacturer of automobile parts, had seen the war clouds gathering over Europe in 1938, and had not overlooked Southeast Asia either. He had founded Cornucopia (the name, he said, simply meant a horn of plenty) to manufacture artillery, then branched into airplane engines and machines of war. After Pearl Harbor his empire mushroomed, and it never ceased to grow. Now, in 1967, it manufactured surgical instruments and equipment, guns and howitzers, turbine engines, generators, atomic reactors, missiles, and small arms, and had branched into plastics, particularly those with military importance. Cornucopia had a huge research facility and was on the cutting edge of all it manufactured; it also held a large number of defense contracts for the armed services.

Skeps’s job was enormous, but not hands-on in any way. He had about fifty managing directors, and they didn’t lay their hands on much either; about three or four down the pecking order saw the first such men, Carmine guessed. Well, that was what happened in any conglomerate, and Cornucopia was a modest conglomerate. The physical description he had of Skeps was of a tall, thin, dark and ungainly man who was magnetically attractive to women. That was the power operating, of course, the same as with Myron Mendel Mandelbaum. Once married to a very beautiful woman, he had driven her away with his jealousy, and he had not married again. There was one child, a boy, now aged thirteen, who went to the Trinity Grey School. His name-no surprise-was Desmond Skeps III. His mother had full custody, which indicated Skeps had done something pretty bad to blot his copybook.

What Skeps thought of his son or the boy’s mother was hard to tell, as no photograph or portrait of either hung in the apartment. He would have to see the mother, of course, but that necessitated a trip to Orleans, on Cape Cod, where Philomena Skeps lived. So, at the moment, according to his information, did the boy, convalescing from some serious illness. He had been out of school already for five weeks and wasn’t expected back at school before Trinity Grey closed for the academic year. Which probably meant he would have to repeat. No fun, that.

“What do you think?” he asked Abe and Corey after their tour.

“That someone beat the ME’s boys here,” said Corey.

“I agree,” said Abe, pointing to a vase that had been dusted twice for prints, only the color of the powder giving it away.

Carmine scowled. “My mistake,” he said. “I figured we’d do better to get the smaller fry out of the way before tackling Mr. Skeps, a real whale. I’m scared he won’t give us latitude for the rest. The question is, was anything removed, and if it was, what, why, and by whom?”

“An arm of the Justice Department,” Abe said.

“FBI-the Commissioner has heard something, he dropped a hint. But he didn’t get it from an official source, nor long before our arrival. Jeez, I hate that!” Carmine cried. “Why not come to us and tell us they’re interested instead of floundering around like cock-roaches on a wedding cake?”

“They’ll be downstairs in the offices,” Corey said, looking aggressive.

“We play it cool, guys,” said Carmine.

The agency, they learned as they ducked under the police rope at the entrance to Desmond Skeps’s offices, was indeed the FBI. He was standing, all six foot five and two-fifty pounds of him, in the middle of the main office supervising two Cornucopia janitors removing a four-drawer filing cabinet precariously perched on a dolly. He was a good-looking man with thick dark hair and dark eyes, but how he got to be an agent in the field was a puzzle to the three Holloman cops; his sheer size made him far too memorable for most investigative purposes.

“At your size, Mister, why don’t you just pick it up and carry it? Or is that beneath your dignity?” Carmine asked affably.

The giant jumped, tried to look commandingly superior, and failed. “I hope you’re not going to be obstructive,” he said, flashing his credentials. “I’m Special Agent Ted Kelly of the FBI, and this is vital evidence.”

“Have you got a warrant?” Carmine asked.

“No, but I can get one faster than your cat can lick her ear,” he said, “so don’t even think of it.”

“My cat’s ear is squeaky-clean, Special Agent Kelly. I have a warrant right here, so I’m taking the vital evidence by the power vested in me by the State of Connecticut, County of Holloman. The name’s Carmine Delmonico. This is Abe Goldberg, and that’s Corey Marshall. Guys, wheel my evidence out. And you, Special Agent Kelly, are contaminating my crime scene. Why don’t you go get your pieces of paper, then come back and make your seizures legal?”

“I would get you, wouldn’t I?” Kelly asked, his face flushed. “I can’t say I wasn’t warned.”

Carmine lifted the rope. “Goodbye, Mr. Kelly. And don’t come back until you’re willing to share everything you’ve got with the Holloman Police Department.”

Shit! he thought as he was left victor on the field. That filing cabinet means I won’t be home early tonight, no matter what tricks Myron is up to; by tomorrow the Feds will have pulled enough strings to get their evidence back. No other filing cabinet has been targeted, so whatever Special Agent Kelly hopes to find lies within this one alone. And why do I think there’s more to this than a routine FBI presence? He went to the nearest phone and dialed.

“Delia? Dig out our security clearances, there’s a good girl. Keep yours with you, and send mine over here right now. I’d rather not get arrested on a federal warrant, it’s too hard to find a Get Out of Jail card.”

He hung up on the squawks, grinning, then dialed again. “Danny? The Feds are here, and I smell something rotten in the state of Cornucopia. Tell Silvestri he might have a harder fight on his hands than we expected. Now put me back to Delia.”

She had stopped squawking. “Your credentials are on their way,” she said briskly, “and mine are in my handbag right next to my Saturday night special. What else, Captain?”

“Corey and Abe should be wheeling a filing cabinet into County Services any minute. It’s a big bone of contention, Delia, and we may not win the fight to keep it. The moment it arrives, I want it put in my office and as many photocopiers as our power supply will stand put in there too. Get all the girls out of the typing pool and put them to photocopying the contents”-he grinned-“faster than your cat can lick her ear. Said contents, I add, are for your and my eyes only.”