Too Many Murders Read online

“New York City. I have an apartment on East Seventy-eighth.”

  “Do you have a favorite cocktail waitress?”

  “No, sir! I learned my lesson. Nowadays I cruise.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Purvey.”

  Carmine descended six more floors to Dormus, apparently so successful that it occupied three of them.

  Here he met blue jeans, Caterpillar boots, a faded shirt and no tie at all. Mr. Wallace Grierson dressed the part of a turbine engineer, and carried it off convincingly. He was not unlike Ted Kelly in build—very tall and muscularly heavy—but he had fair and freckled skin, a mop of sandy curls, and shrewd grey eyes. Carmine liked him on sight.

  “I’m only here, Captain, because I was ordered to be here,” he announced across the acreage of his boots, up on the desk. “By rights I should be at my factory.”

  “Sorry about that, Mr. Grierson,” Carmine said, sitting down. “I didn’t think there were any hands-on executives, at least on a board level. What’s so different about Dormus?”

  “Nothing. I’m the difference. Unlike those tailor’s dummies, I actually qualified as an engineer, and nobody else is going to run Dormus, including on the shop floor.”

  “Have you lost any top-secret items to the Reds?”

  The question didn’t faze him in the least. “In two separate divisions, Captain. The first, development of the ramjet, which pushes standard-wing planes up over Mach two. The second, our rocket division, where the leaks have been hot and heavy. It was the discovery of my governor on a Russian rocket that opened this whole can of worms, and I am fit to be tied! If Ulysses isn’t put out of business soon, Cornucopia is dead.”

  “Are defense contracts so vital to Cornucopia?”

  “Hell, yes! Des Skeps wanted it that way—he got a charge out of manufacturing America’s defense. Even if we go into new areas outside defense, Captain, we’re just as vulnerable to the spy. Industrial espionage is actually more serious than the treasonous kind to any manufacturer who goes into new territory. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “But the treasonous kind benefits America’s real enemies.” Carmine changed tack. “You don’t look like a man with millions.”

  “Whereas the tailor’s dummies do. I could buy and sell Phil Smith or Fred Collins, and I’m neck-and-neck with Gus Purvey.”

  “Are you married?”

  “Sure! We had our silver anniversary five months ago. We met at CalTech, both doing engineering.”

  “Interests in common, huh?”

  “The double whammy, Captain. Margaret’s gorgeous too.”

  “Any children?”

  “Four. Two girls, two boys. The two oldest are at Brown.”

  “What do you spend your money on, sir?”

  “Not much. We have a nice home out Sleeping Giant way, but it’s not a mansion. Ever try to have a mansion and four kids? We have a hunting cabin in Maine, but we don’t hunt. We hike. Mustang cars—all the kids drive, so we have a fleet of the things. And a ranch at the foot of the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. We usually go there for the summer.”

  “What matters most in life to you, Mr. Grierson?”

  “My family,” he answered without hesitation.

  “And after them?”

  “Dormus. If Cornucopia goes under, I’ll buy it and keep right on making turbine engines for boats and planes.”

  “Funny,” Carmine said as he got to his feet, “I always forget that ships are powered by turbines these days.”

  “Have been since 1906 and the dreadnaughts, Captain.”

  There remained only another interview with Erica Davenport. On his way into Cornucopia Legal, he met Phil Smith coming out.

  “A moment, Mr. Smith. Are you married?” he asked.

  Smith looked offended. “Of course I am!”

  “Once? Twice? Thrice? More?”

  “Natalie is my only wife, of thirty-four years. I do not believe in divorce or infidelity, you impertinent dolt! Nor does she! Would it serve your prurient interest to see our sleeping arrangements? Paddle your greasy hands through our night attire?”

  “That won’t be necessary, sir. Any children?”

  “Yes, three! My daughter did not go to university. My two sons went to Harvard and MIT.”

  “Not Chubb, huh? That’s interesting.”

  “What business is it of yours where my children went to school? Your questions, Captain Delmonico, go beyond the limits of acceptable behavior! I intend to report you to everyone in a position to discipline you, is that understood?” He was beginning to splutter. “You’re a—a—Gestapo inquisitor!”

  “Mr. Smith,” Carmine said gently, “a policeman investigating murder uses many techniques to obtain information, but more than that, he also uses them to learn in the small amount of time at his disposal what kind of person he’s questioning. During our first interview you were rude and overbearing, which leaves me free to tread heavily on your toes, even though your toes are sheathed in handmade shoes. You imply that you have the power to see me—er—‘disciplined,’ but I must tell you that no one in authority will take any notice of your complaints, because those in authority all know me. I have earned my status, not bought it. Murder means that everything in your life is my business until I remove you from my list of suspects. Is that clear?”

  Two Philip Smiths suddenly looked out of one pair of eyes. One was the haughty aristocrat; the other was watchful, careful, hard, and highly intelligent. Carmine pretended not to notice.

  Smith brushed past him without answering. Carmine went on into Erica Davenport’s outer sanctum, staffed, he was intrigued to see, by a thin young man of nondescript appearance.

  “You have a male secretary,” he said, going to her window.

  “It seemed a nice conceit for a woman executive. How may I help you further, Captain?”

  “You didn’t tell me you’re on the Cornucopia Board.”

  “Is it relevant? If it is, I fail to see why.”

  “Everything is relevant in a murder enquiry, Dr. Davenport. And did you really think I wouldn’t find out why the FBI is so interested in Cornucopia? Both you and Mr. Smith passed it off as— irrelevant. I’ve also learned that your regular date is Mr. Gus Purvey, whose penchant for cocktail waitresses you’re happy to conceal from his fellows.”

  Her lips thinned. “Then I had better tell you, Captain, that Mr. Purvey’s cocktail waitresses are men in drag. He likes them about eighteen or nineteen years old, with their own hair grown out and their body hair depilated.”

  “It’s nice to have one’s suspicions confirmed,” he said, smiling. “Now what about Mr. Kelly?”

  A scarlet spot had appeared in each cheek and the lips were a straight line. She answered obliquely. “For two people who may end in seeing a lot of each other, Captain, we’re not getting on too well. Though of my own volition I would never have made a friend of you—you’re too much the male chauvinist pig.”

  He laughed, understanding her. “It’s a lot of years since a man has ever been in a position to throw uncomfortable questions at you outside your legal province, and now here he is, and you don’t like it. Or him. We’re not having a social encounter, Dr. Davenport. You’re being interviewed as a possible suspect in a murder. When we do finally meet socially, this has to be forgotten, not toted like extra baggage.”

  The cobalt eyes flew to his, astonished. Some internal struggle took place, then she sighed and nodded. “Yes, I see, Captain. I apologize. Yes, I am a member of the Board, purely because Desmond Skeps felt he needed Board representation from his legal department. And my dates with Gus Purvey aren’t regular. They’re limited to functions the Board considers obligatory. As for Mr. Kelly—I presume you’ve learned that he’s here to investigate espionage. However, that knowledge is surplus to your requirements, surely. You’re simply an insatiably curious man, Captain Delmonico, one of those irritating guys who can’t bear not knowing every prurient detail of everyone’s life.”

  �
��What a great reading of my character! Insatiably curious! Right on target, Dr. Davenport. However, it’s my insatiable curiosity that’s responsible for my ability to get solutions.”

  “You are, the Governor tells us, formidable.”

  Carmine left the window with a resolution that, for the duration of this investigation, every blind in his house would be drawn. There were too many barbarians.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, ma’am.”

  And off he went, leaving his quarry still standing in front of her desk, full lips thin.

  The filing cabinet contained all of Cornucopia’s data pertaining to any item Desmond Skeps had reason to think had either definitely or possibly been passed to the Communists.

  Delia, whose security clearances were quite as high as Carmine’s, had already waded into the document fray. When Carmine joined her it was four in the afternoon, and she had dealt with the two top drawers, the definite thefts.

  “Jesus!” he exclaimed. “Has Uncle Sam got any secrets left?”

  “Cheer up, Carmine, it’s not as bad as it looks,” she said. “What you see is the paperwork attached to eight items, from the rocket fuel governor to the gunsight. In addition there are two separate and distinct improvements to something called a ramjet, another rocket part, the blueprints of an experimental aviation cannon, a new atmospheric analyzer, and the formula for some sort of steel—this last, it seems, highly experimental. Bad enough, but at first I thought it was going to be far worse. Mr. Skeps stuffed everything in the drawers, including letters and memos. I think he intended to go through every sheet himself—or perhaps he even had, if his murder is related to the espionage.”

  “Which it may or may not be. What’s in the bottom two drawers?” Carmine asked.

  “Things that Mr. Skeps may have considered more terrifying than the confirmed thefts. They concern items that passed into production as long ago as a decade.”

  Carmine whistled. “That is scary! If Skeps was right, it means Ulysses has been active inside Cornucopia for the last ten years.”

  Delia sat down on a wheeled stool with a flop that sent it whizzing away until Carmine caught it, by which time they had both found a laugh, soon dead. “If the FBI doesn’t know, they will as soon as they open the bottom drawers. Every company engaged in defense work has lost something,” Delia said.

  “The most maddening part is that I don’t need the extra work involved in looking for Cornucopia’s spy. I’m tempted to call Ulysses a red herring, except that he’s the size of a blue whale, and I don’t know enough to be certain that Skeps’s murder has nothing to do with Ulysses. I feel as if I’m stuck up to my chin in quicksand, Delia.”

  “I believe that in films quicksand is actually just a bath of water with sawdust on top,” said Delia, who was an inveterate moviegoer. “Perhaps this is the same.”

  “Then the bath’s too deep for my feet to reach the bottom.”

  “Why do they need to? Tread water, Carmine, and spit out the sawdust.”

  “How right you are! Kelly’s the espionage expert, not me. I’ll go after the murderer, and if he happens to be the spy, that’s gravy.” He grinned. “Or sawdust.”

  When he let himself in his front door shortly after seven that evening, Carmine expected to hear the joyous sounds that always followed in the wake of Myron Mendel Mandelbaum. Instead, his ears found silence. When he walked into the little sitting room where they usually gathered before dinner, three of the five people he loved most in all the world were there, mute. Desdemona’s face was downcast, Sophia’s tear-stained, and Myron’s a mixture of frustration and anguish.

  “Carmine, tell them I’m not deliberately hurting them!” Myron cried, jumping up.

  “I would, if I knew what you were talking about.”

  “Daddy, he’s leaving!” Sophia said, weeping afresh.

  “Leaving?” Carmine asked, astonished. “You only just got here, Myron!”

  “He’s not leaving Holloman,” Desdemona said, getting up to pour Carmine a drink. “He’s moving to the Cleveland Hotel.”

  “You’re joking!”

  “No, Carmine, I’m not joking. The thing is, I want to be free to see Erica, have her come and go as she pleases and as I please. I understand why you can’t have her as a guest in your house, I really do, but much as I love Sophia, she’s not the reason why I made this trip east. I came to be with Erica, who’s going through a rough time…” Myron faltered, ran down, and stood staring at Carmine helplessly, one man to another.

  God, he must be head over heels in love with the woman, Carmine thought. Myron so thrown off balance that he wounded Sophia with ill-chosen words? It must be the first time ever. And Sophia was howling like a five-year-old, Desdemona was furious at such lack of tact, Myron was shaking as if he was about to keel over—what to do? One thing at a time, Carmine. Get rid of Myron first.

  He threw an arm around Myron’s shoulders and propelled him out of the room. “Are your things packed?” he asked.

  “Yes!” A gasp. “Carmine, I’m so sorry! I didn’t know how to tell them, then I fucked it up—Sophia, my Sophia!”

  “Don’t worry about her, she’ll forgive you. Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll call a cab.” He picked up the hall phone. “Get your bags out of the house up to the road and wait for your cab there. I’ll stay with Sophia and Desdemona.”

  “Thanks, Carmine. I’m in your debt forever. Once all of you get to know Erica, you’ll love her. She’s—wonderful!”

  Hah, thought Carmine, returning to the sitting room. Your Erica is devious, a man-hater, everything you loathe in women, only you can’t see it. What’s her magic, and why don’t I feel it?

  It took a long time to calm Sophia, who was devastated. What else had Myron said to her, between his arrival and now, to provoke the kind of grief that feels like the end of the world? He had made no secret of his reason for coming, and Sophia had seemed to take the news well. But not now, face covered in snot, howls loud enough for the neighbors to hear, and they were way away. Nor could he get through to her, as if she had transferred some of Myron’s crime to him. Because he was another man, or because he was another Daddy? Carmine didn’t know, but his child’s grief cut at him like a blunt knife.

  He had never seen Desdemona so upset either, though a part of him rejoiced at that; it said she loved Sophia with heart and soul, would go to bat for her no matter what.

  “But a hotel!” she said between clenched teeth. “How dare he? The Cleveland is close to a hundred years old!”

  “If he doesn’t like the way the toilet flushes, he can afford to call a plumber. Besides, they refurbished their suites last year, and you know Myron—no poky single room looking at the back of Macy’s. He’s sleeping with her, Desdemona.”

  Finally, Sophia put dinnerless to bed and Desdemona a little mollified, he got his drink.

  “I wonder where he met her?” Desdemona asked.

  “Given the effluxion of time, my love, we’ll find out.”

  “Do politicians really use that phrase? It’s so pompous.”

  “I’m led to believe they do. But, far more important, how’s Julian? That kid could sleep through the San Francisco earthquake—the noise element, anyway. I’d forgotten how loudly Sophia can howl. Poor little runt.”

  “Erica or no Erica, Myron can jolly well take Sophia out to lunch and buy her that set of peridot jewelry she’s been lusting after for weeks.”

  “It’s not too valuable, is it?” Carmine asked anxiously.

  “No, dear heart. A semiprecious, apple green stone, medium on the Mohr scale, and set in fourteen karat gold.”

  “Can he really buy her?”

  “Oh, no! Because she loves him as her father, she’ll forgive him, but she has to make him understand that forgiveness comes at a price. Today she crossed a narrow arch across the abyss, and the last vestiges of childhood are gone. We’ve witnessed the tragedy of life—that even the
strongest ties begin to fray. Myron is hers in a way you’ve never been, Carmine. In future she’ll love Myron quite as much, but never with complete trust. He betrayed her by showing her that this new woman is more important to him than she is.”

  “But that’s like trying to have your cake and eat it too,” Carmine protested. “If she hadn’t come to us, Myron wouldn’t have gotten so lonely. He was a sitting duck.”

  “Yes, we both know that—and so does she. But there was enough child left in her to think she could have her cake and eat it too. Now she knows differently, and a part of her sorrow is because she left him,” Desdemona said.

  “My children are very lucky,” he said, pulling her into the chair and kissing her tenderly. “They have a wise mother.”

  “No, just a rather elderly one.” She gave him a kiss of her own and draped her long body across his lap. “Our dinner is ruined, and we daren’t get Emilia in to babysit, with Sophia feeling mildly suicidal—no, no, she won’t do anything silly, but she’ll think about it, and I’d rather be here. Therefore you have your choice between bologna and cheese on your sandwiches. Or you could have both.”

  The murder of Desmond Skeps continued to preoccupy Carmine, who met Ted Kelly in a quiet corner of the Cornucopia cafeteria unaccompanied by Abe and Corey.

  “The contents of the filing cabinet were disappointing,” he said, eating scrambled eggs on toast, a dozen rashers of crisp bacon and a mess of baked beans; bologna sandwiches did not a dinner make, and Julian had decided to go colicky just as Desdemona got out the frying pan.

  “How do you know what was in the filing cabinet?” Kelly demanded. “I got it back before you had time to go through it!”

  “Uh … photocopiers?”

  He gaped. “You can’t photocopy top-secret information! That’s a hanging offense!”

  “I’ve never been clear on federal death penalties—do you hang them, shoot them, or fry them? It’s been a while since a treason case hit the newspapers. But to counter your statement, Ted, no one has seen my photocopies since they came off the Xerox machine except Delia Carstairs and me, and we’ve got the clearances. Besides, can you see Ulysses sneaking into the Holloman County Services building in search of secrets? Our copies are locked in the evidence cage along with everything from bloody axes to counterfeit plates and a few keys of heroin. It’s a small department, which means the evidence cage sergeants know every cop face that comes through the door. The fact of the matter is that Holloman PD security is infinitely better than Cornucopia security, and you know it. Those dipshits you rubber-stamped as security personnel at Cornucopia couldn’t find their ass with both hands inside their shorts. The real linchpin of good security is knowing the faces that go through the door, and writing every single one of them down in a log. If that happened, you’d know who Ulysses is, even if he’d been Desmond Skeps himself, because not every visit would be bona fide. People are lazy, Ted! They cut corners. And unfortunately employers like Cornucopia save the high salaries for their board members. But you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. If there are log books, how often are they used? Yeah, yeah, I know it’s not under your direct control, but it should be. You’re built like Hercules, but these Augean stables fill up with shit far faster than you can shovel.”