Carol O'Connell - Mallory's Oracle

"We didn't all agree on Henry, of course," said the woman with the tiny head. "I thought the lot of them, all the heirs, hired a service to do it. Maybe they got a package rate."

"Well, of course they'd get a package rate," said the nodding woman with more enthusiasm than palsy. "This is New York. Who pays retail?"

"And do you favor the conspiracy theory too, ma'am," asked Riker of the thin woman with the cheekbones which made him think she had been hot when she was young.

"Do you think all the heirs are in on it?"

"No, dear. The smart money is on Margot Siddon."

"Margot has been so strange these past few years," said the thoughtful moon. "Or so Samantha used to say."

"Oh please," said the woman of the tiny head with a heave of her ample chest and a diva's sigh. "Compared to whom? You don't think of Henry as the all-American boy, do you?"

The nodding woman's head began to wobble, attempting to contradict her affirmative nod with a negative shake of the head.

The moon beamed on Coffey again. "Henry was really very little trouble to Anne. You know she took him in when his parents died."

"She took Henry and a tidy allowance as guardian and executor," said Riker's favorite. "Henry, incidentally, is worth ten times what Anne had."

"So does Margot Siddon have an alibi, Lieutenant?" The little round face leaned forward, eyes bright.

"I don't see it as a woman's crime, ma'am," said Coffey.

She seemed affronted by this and cocked her head towards the others, who smiled with pleasant endurance and tolerance, and the thin woman's shrug said, "Men."

"According to the testimony of Mrs Whitman's doorman."

"Oh my dear, I hope you haven't relied too heavily on the testimony of doormen," said the tiny-headed diva. "Pearl and I had the same doorman. He's drunk four days out of five."

"I have the same doorman as Anne and Samantha," said the moon. "He does the building football pool on Wednesdays. That was the day Anne died, wasn't it?"

"Now, Estelle's doorman is my doorman. He's very new and very young," said the nodding woman. "You know these young people, they think we all look alike."

Coffey shot a glance at Riker who nodded in agreement. The doormen did not make great witness material.

"Did the four victims have anything else in common besides the seances?"

"Samantha and Anne went to school together. Vassar, I think."

"Estelle and Pearl were very close," said the thin woman. "They did stocks together."

"Pardon?"

"They made the same investments with the same brokerage house. They put me onto quite a good thing once."

Riker watched Coffey make the mistake of the patronizing smile. Coffey must think these women were discussing their pin money instead of the hundred-million-dollar increments they moved around the boards at the stock exchange. But Coffey had not yet read Mallory's print-out on their stock portfolios and recent transactions, which companies they held stock in and which they owned outright.

The moon leaned into the conversation. "Didn't Pearl and Estelle go into partnership on a corporation?"

"That was twenty years ago, dear, and they unloaded it the following year. Things in common," mused the nodder. "Estelle and Samantha are from New York 400 families. Social Register, you know. Anne Cathery and Samantha are both DAR. That's Daughters of the American Revolution."

Riker leaned forward, tapping his pencil on the notebook. "Is there any one thing they all had in common?"

"They were old."

"Thank you," said Riker.

"Ladies," said Coffey, in the same tone Riker had heard him use to address a field trip of third-graders, "do you realize that any one of you could be the next victim?"

"Well, it was something of a crapshoot at first," said the nodding woman. "But this time, we're fairly certain that Fabia's next. Show him the letter, Fabia."

The woman turned her small head down and had to lean over a bit to see beyond her large chest and into the purse on her lap. She produced a folded paper in a dramatic flourish. She was almost gleeful as Riker and Coffey read the lines that demanded her money and threatened her life.

Charles flipped through the library microfiche, rolling by the pages of thirty-year-old newspapers. Kathleen had been right. There it was on the cover of a major daily, a photograph of the hysterical widow, clinging to her husband's body.

The reporter for the Times speculated that Max might have survived, but the bus boy had broken the glass of the water tank when he saw Max was in trouble, remaining in the dead float well past the safety margin, one leg still bound to the weight at the bottom of the tank. The broken glass had cut him to shreds, severing every major artery. Onlookers had watched helplessly while he bled to death.

And now he noticed a new detail in the photograph. His own father's face stared out at him from the crowd of nightclub patrons in the background, a small cameo of horror and disbelief.

Charles understood those disbelieving eyes so well. As a child, it had been hard to believe that Max could ever die.

Nine-year-old Charles had been uncertain of Max's final exit from the world when he attended the funeral in the Manhattan cathedral. He had been holding tightly to his parents' hands as he entered that enormous place lit by a thousand candles, filled with a throng of mourners who had come to say goodbye to the master. Cousin Max lay at peace in a white coffin, dead, so the boy had been told. But Charles had held to the hope that this too was an illusion, another exit, but not the final one.

The cathedral ceiling was higher than heaven. The stained-glass windows and the candles had created a brilliant spectacle of unimagined space and beauty. The candles had gone out one by one, and by no human hand. Though windows kept their brilliance, the interior had dimmed to a ghostly twilight as the first magician had appeared in white top hat, and tuxedo with a flowing white satin cape. Out of this cape he had pulled a glowing ball of fire. Charles had seen this done on stage. It was one of Max's best illusions. The ball of fire left the magician's hand and floated over the coffin where Max slept on. A parade of men and women in white satin had come forward to circle the casket, which disappeared a moment later when they broke ranks and returned to their seats.

The casket had reappeared at the cemetery. Max's wand was broken over the open grave.

He remembered looking up to the sky, that perfect cloudless expanse of blue, as a thousand white doves took flight and blocked out the sun. He had heard the thunderous rush of wings rising, and felt their wind on his face and in his hair. When he looked down again, the coffin was gone, and a scattering of white rose petals covered the earth at the bottom of the open grave. The doves soared up and up, climbing to heaven, wings working with a fury, as though they carried a weighty burden with them, up and away. The little boy followed their flight with astonished eyes.

The advantage of a prominent nose was that it missed very little. Her perfume rose up in the elevator with him. Balancing two bags of groceries and a newspaper, he followed it down the hall. At the juncture of the two apartments, he turned away from his residence to open the office door; Mallory sat behind the desk in the front room, facing a bearded man whose gesturing put one waving arm perilously close to a delicate lampshade of glass panels. This could only be the sociologist from Gramercy Park, heir and murder suspect. He fitted Mallory's scarecrow description, but only in the looseness of his limbs and the awkward way they flew around without direction. His face was attractive, small regular features and warm engaging eyes. The beard suited him and saved him from the small nose which bordered on pug and would have made him an ageing boy for ever.