Colleen McCullough - Too Many Murders

Cornucopia executives out of self-preservation, but she came clean to me when I asked her. Depression children had a hard time, Carmine.”

“Don’t tell me, I was one. My father was lucky, he kept his job, but his wages had to be spread around the family some. East Holloman was one of the first districts to improve, so by 1935 things were looking up again. St. Bernard’s high school was underpopulated. We got a lot of teacher time.”

“I never felt it,” Myron confessed. “The movie industry did well, so did my pop.”

“It was a crazy decade.” Carmine munched through his salad as if he was enjoying it. “How do you think Erica wound up the person she is now, Myron?”

“I have no idea, and she won’t tell me.”

“Has she ever mentioned what she did in Europe while she tripped around there in the summer of 1948?”

“I didn’t even know she went to Europe, just about London.”

“It’s in her FBI file, and it might answer a lot.”

“I won’t spy for you, Carmine.”

“Nor would I ask you, but spying is already a part of this case. Someone at Cornucopia is selling secrets to the Reds, and Erica is a strong suspect.”

Myron had gone chalk white. His fork fell onto his plate with a clatter. “Oh, God, that’s awful!”

“It’s also classified information. You can’t tell anyone, Myron, though you can tell Erica. She knows all about Ulysses.”

“Ulysses is the spy?”

“It’s his FBI code name. I don’t think Erica is Ulysses, but I do think she knows who Ulysses is. Your security clearance is probably much higher than mine, so I don’t have any qualms about telling you. If you don’t know, then your businesses and your associates are not involved. But it might be that Erica would welcome a true friend.”

Myron’s wide grey eyes filled with tears. He nodded quickly, speechless. When he did speak, his voice sounded normal.

“I seem to have lost my appetite,” he said. “This superb meatloaf is virtually untouched. I don’t suppose…?”

“Sorry, no, rabbit food only.”

“My God! Desdemona must rank with Escoffier!”

“I don’t know about that, but she certainly outranks my grandmother Cerutti, and that’s saying something.”

The next day brought another trek to see Philomena Skeps. Why, he asked himself, does she have to live in Orleans? A three-hour drive even with the siren on in Connecticut, and this time he doubted she’d give him brunch. It wasn’t a hospitable kind of day; the sky was overcast, the wind was blowing, and the Atlantic was trying to demolish the sand dunes, or maybe pile them up higher.

He was right about brunch. Mrs. Skeps met him at the door accompanied by Anthony Bera, who directed Carmine into a small parlor poorly lit by a window covered in rambling rose canes. The lawyer had gone fully formal in a three-piece suit with a Harvard tie, and Philomena wore a mossy green wool dress that showed off her voluptuous figure. Why was such a gorgeous woman wasting her fragrance on the Cape’s salty air? Bera he could understand; Bera was the mastiff hoping to be tossed a bone.

“Do you have any contact with the women’s liberation movement, Mrs. Skeps?” he asked.

“Not really, Captain. I have given small donations for any projects dear to my heart, but I don’t call myself a feminist.”

“Have these projects been drawn to your attention by Dr. Pauline Denbigh?”

“I know her slightly, but she has never solicited me for either membership or money.”

“Do you sympathize with feminist causes?”

“Don’t you, Captain?” she countered.

“Yes, of course.”

“Then there we have it.”

“What did you and Dr. Erica Davenport discuss so earnestly at Mr. Mandelbaum’s party?”

“You don’t need to answer that, Philomena,” Bera said. “In fact, I advise you not to.”

“No, I’ll answer,” she said in that sweet, patient voice that never lost its cadence. “We discussed my son’s future, as Dr. Davenport is now the arbiter of his fate. I went to Mr. Mandelbaum’s party for no other reason than to see Erica, and I can’t imagine she had any other reason for asking him to invite me. Erica is not welcome in my home. I am not welcome in any Cornucopia premises. Therefore we chose neutral ground.”

“I suspected that much,” Carmine said. “But you haven’t really answered me. What aspects of your son’s future did you discuss, and what was the outcome of your-negotiations?”

“My son must endure almost eight years of Dr. Davenport’s authority, and the last three or four of those years will be quite insufferable for him. He doesn’t like her, he never has. What I hoped was to persuade her to agree to having another-a second-person involved in his future. It worries me terribly that this woman could ruin his inheritance. Not intentionally, but through incompetence.”

“But anyone left in charge during an heir’s long minority might ruin a business empire,” Carmine objected. “I take it you have no faith in a woman at the Cornucopia helm?”

“No, it’s not that, it’s her! I asked her to bring Tony-Mr. Bera-in as the second person. She refused. And that was the end of our conversation.”

“You must have been mighty thick with Dr. Davenport to have fallen out so badly,” Carmine said. “Why does your son dislike her? When and where have they met?”

Her head slewed to Anthony Bera. Help, help, rescue me! What do I say? What do I do?

“I advise you not to answer, Philomena,” said the mastiff, earning his bone.

Carmine extricated himself from his extremely uncomfortable chair. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Skeps.”

I feel like Michelangelo chipping away at a hunk of marble, he thought, commencing the interminable drive home. Today I have bared an elbow, a forearm, and a hand. But is it the right one, or the left? And where does Ulysses fit in?

On his return he discovered that Delia had usurped half of his office, where a trestle table and a wheeled chair now stood.

“I’m too cramped,” she explained. “Uncle John really has not been fair about space! The captain of detectives must have a secretary, and said secretary must have a suitable office. I occupy a cupboard!”

“Then why don’t you go complain to Uncle John? Where are Abe and Corey going to put their chairs if I call a conference? And much as I love you, Delia, I do not need your ears flapping in time with your mouth. A work space is only useful to one person. How can I think if every time I look up, I’m looking at you?”

She took this in the spirit it had been tendered, but she had no intention of moving the acres of paper she had spread around, huge sheets with smaller ones clipped to them. Now I have to go fight Delia’s battles, he thought, moving to the door as soundlessly as always. Any other man, thought Delia, would have stomped, but not Carmine. By next Monday I will have a bigger office.

She waited until a certain emptiness invaded the air, her way of telling whether Carmine was in the building. Good, gone!

“Have you worked out how to do it, Uncle John?” she cooed, sidling around the Commissioner’s door.

“No, Delia, I have not. I figured I’d just sit here and wait for you to come tell me how to do it,” Silvestri said.

“How very perspicacious, Uncle John. It’s Mickey McCosker is the trouble. He has twice as much room as Carmine or Larry, but he’s never here. What I propose is that you give Carmine his two rooms, and put Mickey where Carmine is. Shall I have Plant Physical do it tomorrow?”

He nodded wordlessly. Why is she always right?

“Tell me that,” he said to Carmine in Malvolio’s five minutes later, “and I’ll give you Danny’s job. Or mine, if you want it.”