Too Many Murders Read online

  “I haven’t rescinded the order, as you well know.”

  “Then I’m going to see Dee-Dee’s pimp, her friends, enemies and acquaintances.” She paused, brows lifted. “It would be a lot easier if I had a badge,” she said.

  “That far I won’t go, Delia. Don’t push your luck.”

  The storm blew into Holloman on gale-force winds halfway through the night. Curled in bed with his front shielding Desdemona’s back, Carmine woke to the whipping roar of hard-driven rain on the windows, lifted his head to listen, then lay back with a sigh. No hope that this would last long enough to delay the Cornucopia expedition to Zurich. By afternoon the gale would be blown out.

  “Mmf?” Desdemona asked.

  Carmine cupped a breast. “Just the storm. Go back to sleep.”

  “No damage, but the garden’s a mess,” Desdemona said the next morning, removing her rubber boots in the laundry. “I had high hopes for a weeping cherry, but a flying branch clobbered it. Too exposed to the elements, our dream home.”

  “You can’t have it all, lovely lady.” Carmine shrugged his shoulders into his jacket and poked through the waterproofed coats hanging on pegs. “It’s going to rain all day, so don’t take Julian out. If you need groceries, call someone.”

  A rather cold rain beating in his face, Carmine plodded up the path to their big garage, which had to be on East Circle itself and thus had no sheltered communication with the house, a good fifty feet lower. Inside the garage he shed his raincoat before climbing into the Fairlane; he’d park under the building and keep dry. As soon as he keyed the ignition he turned on the police radio and sat listening. Nothing much, just terse talk larded with the abstruse numbers and letters designed to keep police business the business of the police. If only it did! he thought as he rolled out into the aftermath of the night’s storm. Maybe I’ll take a detour and look at the Cornucopia jet. But I won’t announce my intention on the radio. Too many people make a hobby of tuning in, and they don’t need a radio shack.

  Holloman’s little airport lay behind chain-link fencing on the west arm of the Harbor, which was part industrial wasteland and part working factories. Between it and the perpetually humming artery that was I-95 reared the clusters of tall cylindrical tanks holding every kind of petroleum-based fuel from aviation gasoline to diesel and heating oil.

  Instead of using I-95 for such a short run, Carmine drove along the waterfront dockland, past the fuel farm, and so, finally, turned through the open airport gate onto a concrete apron used as a parking lot. He crossed it and swung around behind the upmarket shed that served Holloman’s commuters as a terminal, his eyes absorbing their first sight of a Lear jet. Disappointingly small, it sat not far from the shed in the glory of flawless white paint, the Cornucopia horn-of-plenty logo emblazoned on its tail.

  A rap on his passenger-side window made Carmine jump. Corey opened the door and slid in, coat streaming.

  “You’re wet, Corey!”

  “It’s wet, Carmine! Sorry, but I had to hide my wheels. No choice except to run through the rain. I figured you’d cruise by to take a look. What d’you think? Squeezing into that must be like going inside a tube of toothpaste. Doesn’t look as if they’d be able to stand up, though I guess they can in a central aisle. Give me a train any day.”

  “It’s a power thing, Corey. They can spit on the peasants being herded like cattle. Have you been here all night?”

  “Didn’t need to. They weren’t going anywhere in that storm. They mightn’t be going anywhere today if the rain doesn’t stop.”

  “What do you hope to find?” Carmine asked curiously.

  The long, dark, beaky face screwed up, the dark eyes narrowed. “I wish I knew! It’s just a feeling I have, boss. Something’s in the wind—or the rain, or the sea spray. I don’t know.”

  “I’ll send someone over with a bacon roll and a thermos of coffee. In an unmarked, over by that hangar,” Carmine said. “Go with your hunches, Corey.”

  And what do you think about that? he asked himself as he drove away. Corey’s found his own case. The fact that nothing’s going to come of it is beside the point. It should have occurred to me that the Cornucopia bunch are sneaky enough to aim for an earlier departure.

  Two bacon rolls and a thermos of coffee were most welcome. Warm and relatively dry, Corey Marshall settled to spend a few boring hours of waiting. The windows of his car were cranked down just enough to prevent his windshield fogging up, and he was cunningly situated where he couldn’t be seen, yet could see in all directions. The rain had steadied, neither pouring down nor sprinkling, and it had been falling now for eight hours. The ground was hard even where it was exposed; between that, the big areas of concrete, and some patches of tar-seal, runoff was copious. On the road outside the airport gate a section of the bed had sagged and crumbled, plugging up a drain grating and causing the water to pool fairly deeply. Lovely weather for ducks, thought Corey, trying to find interest in everything. He had to stay awake, but more than that: he had to stay alert.

  A great deal of his time was occupied in thinking about the lieutenancy and, he had come to realize with a sinking horror, a marriage that hadn’t panned out the way he had envisioned. Oh, he loved Maureen and more than loved his two children, who seemed to suffer from Maureen’s deficiencies even more than he did; he pitied them, an awful emotion for a father to feel. He understood that a person’s nature was a given, but he wished with all his heart that Maureen’s nature was less avaricious, less scratchy. His daughter, nine years old, had worked out how to keep out of trouble, mainly by effacing herself, whereas his son, now twelve, was beginning to inherit his mother’s frustrations at the world of men. Always in trouble for untidiness, loudness, poor grades at school. It had come to a head a couple of weeks earlier, and he had hoped that, recalled to a sense of her own imperfections, Maureen would let up on the two males in her home. And she had—for a week. Now it was drifting back to where it usually was.

  In his heart of hearts he knew that divorce was inevitable, for he knew that even if he did get Larry Pisano’s job, Maureen would find something fresh to pick about. A clunky second car, an unsatisfactory kitchen, Gary’s acne due to eating junk food—what the raise in pay wouldn’t stretch to fix, she would nag about. Not for any other reason than that she was permanently discontented, and how could you fix that? If it weren’t for the kids he would file for divorce tomorrow, but for the sake of the kids he couldn’t do that, ever. No fool, he knew that they loved him as the bearable side of their home life, their coconspirator and ally. In a war?

  Well, he decided as midday became early afternoon, the Marshall family just has to get through this. It won’t end until Denise is at college and no one’s left at home except Maureen and me. Then the shit can hit the fan in all directions, and I won’t care.

  His preoccupation vanished the moment a passenger van drove through the gates and crept across to the Lear. The crew, Corey decided as they got out, talking cheerfully among themselves, chiefly about the fact that the rain had stopped. A flight crew of three men in tailored navy uniforms, the captain with four rows of gold braid on his sleeves, the other two with three rows. Wow! The Cornucopia Board wasn’t stinting on what they paid the guys responsible for keeping them safely in the air. Two slender, very pretty women in navy uniforms Corey put down as the cabin crew. No stinting here either. The steps were let down, and the men entered the cockpit, one armed with a clipboard; the two girls went to the back of the van and dealt with foil-wrapped containers, a big styrofoam chest for cold food, and various towels and linens. Amazed, Corey watched the girls work for some time. Even several small flower arrangements were unearthed.

  The ground crew turned up; one of them connected the Lear to a fuel source, taking exquisite care that not a drop spilled onto the concrete. Hoses were hooked up, tires checked, a dozen and one tasks performed. In the cockpit Corey could see the heads of pilot and copilot, their hands fluttering over what he presumed were the toggles and
switches of gear on the roof above the instrument panels.

  Next to arrive was a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, two men seated in its front: Wal Grierson and Gus Purvey. They alighted and went into the shed, Corey guessed to use the rest room—a bigger facility than available on an airplane, even a private jet. Each was carrying a briefcase, but neither was dressed formally. Jeans, open-necked shirts, button-up sweaters, jackets over their arms. Laughing, they walked to the Lear and climbed the steps. As they disappeared inside, a small Ford drove up, two men aboard. One got out, went to the Rolls and got in. Then Ford and Rolls drove away. That’s how you do it when you don’t feel like a chauffeur, Corey thought. A peon picks up what you’ve discarded.

  A fire engine from Station Two trundled in, the special truck fitted out for airport duty. No plane bigger than a joyriding specimen could take off or land without a fire truck’s presence. Its crew looked pleased to be liberated from a rainy shift, and patently admired the neat little jet they were obliged to shepherd off the runway in as much safety as tanks full of avgas allowed.

  Only Phil Smith and Fred Collins to come. Activity died down as the hostesses entered the plane for good. The van drove away, the fire truck went to its designated position.

  Corey didn’t huddle down again. Instead, he turned in his seat to look back up the road, idly noting that beyond the pool where the road had subsided a little, a four-inch steel pipe had risen through the asphalt and lay right across the road like a ship’s cable or a filled fire hose. A silence had fallen with the cessation of the rain, and in the distance Corey heard the roar of a powerful sports car approaching. Going far too fast, it appeared in his vision on the heels of its grunty sound, a twelve-cylinder XKE Jaguar painted British racing green, Phil Smith behind its wheel, Fred Collins beside him. They too were laughing, “away at last!” written all over their faces.

  The front wheels of the Jag hit the pipe, and the rest seemed to happen in slow motion. First the sensationally long hood of the sports car rose vertically into the air, followed by the remainder. The car actually did a somersault, Smith and Collins spilling out onto the road before the Jag crashed, top side down, and lay next to the pool with its front wheels spinning crazily.

  “Ambulance! Ambulance to airport, road emergency!” Corey was barking into his radio before the Jag came down. “Medics! Need medics! Road emergency at airport! Road emergency!”

  Almost before he had finished speaking, Corey was out of his car and running, suddenly aware that no one else had seen a thing. He went first to Fred Collins, closer, and bent to find a carotid pulse. Yes! Strong, and there didn’t seem to be a widening sheet of blood. One leg was twisted under him and he was groaning. He was probably all right unless he had internal injuries.

  Now to Smith, who lay on his right side, eyes closed. Yes! A carotid pulse, and fairly strong. He wasn’t moving.

  The wind gusted; a sheet of paper blew into Corey’s eyes, was brushed away impatiently. Then Corey saw Smith’s briefcase, still in his hand. Had the fool tried to drive a stick-shift sports car hanging on to a briefcase? Or had he grabbed for it even as the accident happened? It was beautifully turned and crafted stainless steel with two combination locks, but the force of the impact had sprung them, and there were papers everywhere. Most had settled on the surface of the pool.

  “Nothing I can do for you, buster,” he said, “but I can pick up your papers before they blow away.”

  Working in a frenzy, he gathered every sheet he could find. Many were wet from immersion in the water, but Corey didn’t care; he collected them as the sirens wailed in the distance, then ran for his car. The firemen were coming, but he had the excuse of needing to use his radio again, and who’d remember that he was carrying loads of papers? Their attention was on the accident.

  The papers went into his trunk, just in case some nosy Cornucopia guy came looking. He picked up his mike and talked to Dispatch, who informed him that Captain Delmonico was on his way and that two ambulances should already be there.

  “Thank God it stopped raining,” he said to Carmine a minute later. “Want me to tell those turkeys on the jet that they’re not going anywhere unless they want to leave two Board members behind in the hospital?”

  “Abe’s got that,” Carmine said, eyeing Corey shrewdly. “I want to know why you look like the mutt that got to the pedigree bitch ahead of her designated mate.”

  For answer, Corey led him around to the back of his car and popped the trunk. “The contents of Phil Smith’s briefcase,” he said. “I wish I could say I’d gotten all four briefcases, but one is a start. The way I saw it, there the guy is, lying unconscious in the road, and his papers drowning in that pool there. So I did what any considerate citizen would do—I picked them up. Then I figured I could always say later that our police labs have great facilities for drying papers that would otherwise have disintegrated, so I saw it as my citizen’s duty to save them if I could. He won’t buy it, but he can’t argue about it either.”

  “Great work, Corey,” Carmine said sincerely. “Our luck that the accident happened, but your initiative and presence of mind that Smith’s papers have fallen into our hands.”

  The two men walked back to the road, where both ambulances were loading up. Thanks to Corey’s having demanded medics, two of the new physician’s assistants had come with the standard crews.

  They reached Fred Collins’s medic first.

  “I don’t think he’s suffered much internally,” the woman said, folding up her stethoscope. “Blood pressure’s okay. Comminuted fracture of his right femur—he won’t be going skiing for a while. Grazes and bruises. That’s about it.”

  “Head injury,” said Smith’s medic. “Broken right humerus, right scapula is suspect too. His skull impacted on the road, but the water cushioned it some. No left-sided weakness that I can find, but we’ll know more when he’s examined by neurosurgeons. His pupils are reacting. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get him to where they can deal with any cerebral edema.”

  Wal Grierson and Gus Purvey were waiting anxiously, prevented from approaching by the customary police cordon. Sergeant Terry Monks and his team had just arrived, and would inspect the site of the accident to reconstruct it and apportion blame.

  “Though,” Terry Monks said to Carmine angrily, “what are two stupid old men doing in an E-type Jag with no roll bar and no seat belts?”

  “A roll bar would spoil the car’s looks, and seat belts are for people who drive Yank tanks. However, if you’re fair, Terry, you’ll have to admit that not wearing seat belts saved their lives,” Carmine said, just to ruffle Terry.

  “Yeah! But a roll bar and seat belts would have seen the stupid old geezers walk away.”

  Onward to Grierson and Purvey.

  “This is terrible! Terrible!” Purvey said, face ashen. “I can’t count the times I’ve told Phil to stop behaving like Stirling Moss! He drives like a bat out of hell!”

  “A pity he’s not conscious to hear himself described as a stupid old geezer,” Carmine said. “That’s the verdict of our traffic accident men.”

  “Stupid is right,” Grierson said through his teeth, more angry than upset. “I guess we’re not going to Zurich. Gus, you get to tell Natalie and Candy while I deal with things here.” As if on cue, the little Ford and the Rolls appeared and parked just down the road. “Take the car. It can come back for me as soon as you get home and get your own wheels.”

  Purvey, looking hangdog, set off along the airport’s chain-link fence in the direction of the Rolls.

  “I thought you were a Mustang man,” Carmine said.

  “The Rolls is the most comfortable car on the road,” said Grierson, smiling slightly. “Jesus, what a mess!”

  Carmine looked at Corey and Abe. “Corey, drive across the tarmac and out the far gate. Abe, you’re still with me.”

  The Fairlane followed Corey’s car closely. Only when they were out of the far gate and back on the road past the fuel farm did Carmine breathe a sigh
of relief. He had used the time to fill Abe in on what resided in Corey’s trunk, and Abe’s hands were trembling in sheer excitement. He glanced at Carmine.

  “One chance in four it’s the right briefcase,” he said.

  “Where’s Delia?”

  “Out like a bloodhound on Dee-Dee’s trail.”

  “There’s a phone booth, and I do believe the phone is still connected,” Carmine said, pulling in to the side of the road. “Abe, get on to Danny and ask him to send out search parties for Delia. This isn’t something I want going out on our radio; it’s too important for truckers and bored housewives. The one person we need most in this operation is Delia.”

  Who was waiting, eyes bright, when Carmine and Abe walked in. Two Plant Physical workmen had erected a setup consisting of as many trestle tables as the office would hold, their tops newly covered with butcher paper held down by thumbtacks. The limp and sodden contents of Philip Smith’s briefcase were stacked haphazardly on a chair seat under Delia’s martial eye. As soon as the last table was finished and the two handymen had left, she began distributing the papers, one sheet at a time, on the off-white surfaces at her disposal.

  “Oh, the man is a treasure!” she exclaimed, bustling from one table to another with various sheets. “Meticulous in the extreme! Not his secretary’s doing, I can assure you—apart from Yours Truly, no secretary would dream of such precision. See? Every follow-on page is labeled in the top left-hand corner with subject or person plus date of the missive, while the page number is in the right-hand corner. Wonderful, wonderful!”

  In all, there were 139 pages of letters and reports, plus a bound 73-page dissertation on the advantages of maintaining a research facility. That seemed peculiar to Carmine; Cornucopia Research was at least five years old, so why carry a bulky book full of long-established facts well known to the whole industry?