Colleen McCullough - Too Many Murders

“I didn’t pinch anything!”

“Horseshit! You did, and before my Medical Examiner and his team reached the crime scene.”

“You have no basis for saying that.”

“I do. Otherwise, my friend, you wouldn’t have disturbed my crime scene ahead of the coroner. You know the rules as well as I do, and you know who has jurisdiction in a murder that doesn’t cross state borders or have concrete ties to juicy stuff like espionage. There was something inside Skeps’s penthouse that you didn’t want us provincial turkeys seeing, and I intend to find out what it was.”

“I didn’t take so much as a paperclip! I just had a look at the body and walked around.”

“Did you touch the body?”

“No!”

“Describe it.”

“After more than twenty-four hours? Give me a break!”

“Crap! You’re a trained observer. Describe it.”

Special Agent Ted Kelly closed his eyes. “Skeps was lying on his back on his massage couch, the mark of an IV needle in his arm. It had dribbled a tiny drop of clear pink fluid, no blood. And yes, I used a swab to take a sample, which dried it up. Skeps was naked. Someone had done a rough shave of his body hair down to the base of his penis, but no farther, and his name was written in a burn. There were other burns as well. His nipples had been cut off with something blunt and heavy. There were ligature marks on his wrists and ankles. That’s all.”

“God, you’re a liar, Kelly! Never touched the body, eh?”

“I didn’t touch it! The swab did!”

“How long was it between your leaving the penthouse and the arrival of Dr. O’Donnell?”

“Half an hour.”

“Did you remain in the vicinity?”

“No, I went downstairs to Skeps’s offices.”

“And you refuse to tell me what you pinched?”

“I didn’t pinch anything.”

“Well, as far as I’m concerned, Ted, the espionage is a goddamn nuisance. If you’d left things alone, we would have shared with you. It’s a pity that the pendulum only swings one way. I won’t be giving you any professional courtesies, be warned.”

“Skeps was murdered by Ulysses, this is a federal case.”

“Offer me some tangible evidence.”

“I can’t.”

“Or won’t, more like.”

“Honestly, Carmine, my hands are tied!”

“Luckily mine aren’t.” Carmine got up. “Comforting to know that all cafeteria coffee is lousy, isn’t it? If you want a good meal and good coffee while you’re in a pint-sized state full of eccentrics, Ted, eat at Malvolio’s Diner. It’s right next to County Services.” He stopped. “Are you married?” It seemed the question people hated answering.

“Used to be,” said Kelly, looking sour. “She hated the fact that I was away from home so often, thought there was another woman.”

“Did they ever put you undercover?”

“At my size?”

Carmine grinned and resumed his progress out. “Good to know that someone at the FBI has a brain. See you around.”

“The IV wound shouldn’t have had a droplet of any kind,” Patsy said when Carmine told him what Ted Kelly had done. “I know we were late, but Skeps had been dead too long by the time he was discovered to be oozing liquid Kelly could soak up on a swab. Incidentally, it means he came armed with specimen jars, tubes, swabs, the whole nine yards. He must have swabbed every orifice, put a magnifying light over what he could see of the body. I bet no one there even noticed if he had equipment.”

“I’m going to subpoena the FBI for their analytical results, especially the droplet,” Carmine said. “Judge Thwaites will love it! A Longfellow eccentric indeed! Kelly didn’t even know Longfellow was a poet, the ignorant shit. Though sometimes I wonder how much of his act is an act.”

“I’m still fretting about the liquidity,” Patsy said.

“Heparin?”

“Why, for God’s sake? Skeps was immobilized. If the IV came out, there were other veins. Unless our murderer isn’t an expert jabber. Maybe he got lucky on his first vein and decided not to risk failure later on. Hence, heparin. I’ll swab the area myself.” He looked unhappy. “What this does show me beyond a shadow of a doubt is that I need to go back to Skeps’s body for a second look. I wasn’t thorough enough.”

“Patsy, Skeps was one of twelve cases.”

“I know, and that’s what really scares me. How many of them got my best shot? The baby and his mother… I’m going back to nine out of the eleven, Carmine, and this time every last one of them will get my best shot.”

There was no point in arguing; Patrick’s mind was made up. “Then start with Evan Pugh,” Carmine said.

“The most important, you think?”

“Not think. Know.”

“Evan Pugh it is. By the way,” Patsy said a little too casually, “I hear that Myron’s moved out of East Circle?”

“How the hell does the word get around?”

“The East Holloman grapevine, which has a particularly large tendril wound around the cops. Aunt Emilia is livid.”

As Aunt Emilia was Carmine’s mother, he gave a very Italian shrug. “Then you know as much as I do.”

“More, probably. He’s taken the entire top floor of the Cleveland Hotel and is planning to introduce his darling Erica to all of Holloman who matter.”

“Wow! He is serious.”

“I just hope she is.”

“My hope is she’s innocent of murder.”

“Is she high on your list?”

“No. Just about halfway up.”

Carmine left Patrick assembling his forces for another attack on Evan Pugh and went to his office, where a small stack of single sheets of paper awaited him. Most were memos, some more formal letters, but they had leaped out at Delia because they were neatly typed, neither signed nor initialed, and gave no hint of their origins.

“Sir,” said the top one, a memo, “this is to remind you that you agreed to meet me to discuss the suggested improvements to our atomic reactor design. The usual place and time, please.”

All fifteen-four letters, eleven memos-had the same fishy smell to them, Delia said.

“They look as if they’ve all been typed on the same machine, but that’s a lot harder to establish if your firm uses IBM golfball machines whose letters haven’t worn or warped, and it seems to me that all the executive secretaries have new or nearly new typewriters. The carbon ribbon is used only once and there are no mistakes, which suggests a very good typist. I hate to say it, Carmine, but I think Mr. Kelly should look at the executive secretaries, not the executives. I don’t know of a managerial sort who can type for tuppence.”

“What about a woman executive?” Carmine asked.

“Unless she started as a secretary, I’d say the same applied to her. And Dr. Davenport has never been a secretary. In college she paid a typist to do her papers and theses.”

“I suppose that’s a relief.” Carmine thought of Myron.

“Have you had your invitation yet?”

“Invitation to what?”

“Mr. Mandelbaum is giving a reception and buffet dinner at the Cleveland Hotel on Saturday night. Uncle John’s been asked, so has Danny, and so have I,” said Delia.

“Then I daresay Desdemona, Sophia and I will see you there. In the meantime, is there anything else from the filing cabinet I should tackle, or can I leave it with you?”

“I think I can safely burn the rest of the contents.”

“Then let’s not do Ted Kelly’s work for him, the lying son of a bitch. We’re going back to our murders. Today is Thursday, but it’s too late to drive to Orleans and get back again by dinnertime, so Mrs. Skeps can wait until tomorrow. Let her know I’ll be coming, would you? Where are Abe and Corey?”

“In the newspaper morgue, reading. Shall I phone them?”