Colleen McCullough - Too Many Murders

“Cheers, chief.” Carmine raised his glass. “I’m happy to be a captain of detectives, especially if I can have Mickey’s office-or am I supposed to move into his second room?”

“No, you get his office. The second room, Delia informs me, is twice as big.” Somehow he managed to turn his face into a passable imitation of his niece’s, and said in a shrill falsetto, “‘Bags I the second room, Uncle John!’ I said yes. Easier in the long run.” He sipped his bourbon reflectively.

“As I remember Mickey’s second room,” said Carmine, “even at the rate Delia acquires filing cabinets, it should shut her up for two-three years.” He grinned. “Then you’ll have to run for mayor, John, and build her a new County Services.”

“In a pig’s eye!” The Commissioner downed the last of his drink and waved for another. “What’s Delia doing?”

“Some crazy project only she could understand or want to do. It’s about public meetings and functions and it’s germane to the case, so I guess I’m using her as a detective.” Carmine waved for another bourbon, then looked hopeful. “I don’t suppose you’d give her the lieutenancy?”

“No, I would not! Bad enough that she’s got me drinking at four-thirty in the afternoon. Delia and her paper chases!”

Of chaos there was none; by Monday midday Carmine was well ensconced in his new office, which was at the back of County Services and consequently suffered little traffic noise. Light came in through a series of high windows that faced Holloman’s prevailing winds, giving him an occasional cool gust during the dog days of August. The proximity of Abe and Corey’s office was an additional bonus; it lay two doors down the hall. Carmine’s old office was up two flights of stairs on the same floor as the Commissioner’s.

“We need a coat of paint and new furniture,” said Delia.

“When I go on vacation,” said Carmine in his no-arguments tone as he inspected her quarters, strewn with broadsheet-sized papers. “What are these? Plans?”

“Of a kind. With more floor space, I can really spread them out. I should be able to give you my report on Friday.”

Corey walked in. “Carmine, a domestic in the Hollow,” he said. “Woman battered to death, lover nowhere to be found.”

And this, said Carmine to himself as he left, means we’ve hit a stone wall with the mastermind. For now, it’s business as usual. There has to be a loose thread somewhere! I am not giving up, I am not pulling these nine files out of my current load and shelving them at Caterby Street!

“There’s been a development at the Norton house,” Abe said quietly on Tuesday morning. He looked drawn, horrified.

Carmine was up and around his desk in seconds. “What?”

“The little boy is dead.”

His step faltered. “Oh, Jesus! How? Why?”

“Drank or ate something, I was told.”

“But the strychnine was never found!”

“I don’t know if it is strychnine, Carmine.”

“What else could it be?”

“Let’s wait until we know for sure, okay?”

He could walk again. Carmine began to hurry, then wondered why. Poor little Tommy was dead. “Is Patsy on his way?”

“I told him first. Corey went with him.” Abe’s voice shook.

“What’s the little guy’s proper name?”

“Thomas Peter. Five a few days ago in April, so he doesn’t go to school until September. Never will now.”

They climbed into the Fairlane; Abe put the light on the roof automatically. Carmine sat in the front seat, hands over his face.

A nightmare, it was a nightmare! The noise of the siren was oddly comforting: a lonely, desolate sound. They were approaching North Holloman before he took his hands away.

“Has she confessed? Who’s seen her?”

“Only Dave O’Brien-he’s sergeant on duty at North Holloman this week. She called him calm as you like, didn’t call anyone else. Dave went right on over to the house and then called me. That’s all I know.”

“How could that stupid doctor of hers not know what she was hiding? She was so doped up both times I saw her, I didn’t stand a chance of getting anywhere! I should have pushed her, Abe, but she fooled me!”

“Carmine, none of us could have known. If she did kill her husband, the reality was so far from what she imagined that she flipped out-she wasn’t acting! But we don’t know if she did it yet, and that’s the only fact that matters.”

“What else could it be except the strychnine?”

“I don’t know and you don’t know. Shit happens, Carmine, but we don’t know what kind of shit it is, so cool it!”

A few neighbors had collected, the other two North Holloman cops had cordoned off the path to the house, and Patsy was on the porch waiting for them. He came to meet them.

“Not strychnine,” he said shortly, keeping his voice low. “He choked to death on a pencil eraser that looked like a strawberry.”

The relief flooded through Carmine and Abe like a break in a dam wall, too overwhelming not to be felt before the shame of feeling it succeeded it. Not their negligence! But it might have been, it might have been. The poor little guy was still dead, though a merciful God had spared them the ultimate grief.

“How is she?” Carmine asked, aware that he felt faint.

“Sit down, cuz. You too, Abe.”

They sat on the steps leading up to the porch.

“She’s in there,” Patsy said, sounding savage, jerking his head at the living room windows. “Thank God he’s not. I don’t want to set eyes on that woman ever again!”

Carmine got up at once, astonished. “Patsy! What did she do? Feed the thing to him?”

“She may as well have, but she’ll tell you all about it.” He led them through the front door and up the stairs to Thomas Peter’s bedroom.

Abe and Carmine watched Patrick gather the little boy up tenderly, put him into the towel-lined cavity of a bag, then hurry him away on what looked to the curious like a flat, empty gurney; it had a troughlike bottom that did not betray the presence of a small body.

Mrs. Barbara Norton was sitting with Corey and Sergeant Dave O’Brien. Her calm was unimpaired, and it was only as her story unfolded that the layers of insanity peeled away to ever deeper ones. She seemed to have no idea that her son was dead, though she had known it when she spoke on the phone to Dave O’Brien, had told him that Tommy was black in the face and not breathing; but more, she had said she killed him.

“Now that Peter is gone,” she told the men, “I can do what I want at last.” She leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. “Peter was a glutton. He insisted we had to eat whatever he ate-the children swelled up like balloons! I never tried to argue, it wasn’t worth it. I just bided my time. I bided my time.” She nodded seriously, then sat back and smiled.

“No one really likes fat people, you know,” she began once more, “so after Peter died, I put us on a diet. Marlene and Tommy drink water. I drink black coffee. We can eat all the raw vegetables we like, but no bread, no cookies, no cake, nothing with sugar in it. No milk, no cream, no desserts. I let Tommy and Marlene have crackers at breakfast and lunch. We eat broiled skinless chicken or fish, and steamed vegetables. Rice. The weight just falls off! By the time Tommy goes to school this September, he’ll be as trim as our hedge!”

When a silence fell, Carmine decided to risk a question. “How did you stay so trim, Barbara?”

“Stuck my finger down my throat.”

It’s clear why the poor little guy choked trying to eat an eraser, Carmine thought, but how long has the madness been there? What brought it out? Peter Norton’s death? Or did he die as a consequence of it? Tommy’s death has tipped her right over the edge, but I have to try to get some answers.