Frenzy (13 page)

Quinn saw the possibilities here. If the killer had stumbled into something that enticed him, and that had unexpectedly developed into mass murder, maybe it would be one of his rare mistakes. The one that might lead to his death or apprehension.

“You will accept our payment for your services?” Castle asked.

“Let's see how the investigation goes,” Quinn said. “See just what the connections are. Then we can talk about the return of the bust.”

Castle suddenly seemed to get taller, paunchier, distressed and insulted. Quite a gamut of emotions played over his wide features. “I can assure you the bust is not stolen property from some museum.”

“We'll check the museums as a matter of routine,” Quinn said. He was somewhat surprised by Castle's concern for his honor and reputation.

“We shall shake on it,” Castle said, extending his hand. Another abrupt change of mood. He moved in on Quinn and pumped his hand with a crushing grip. No limp-handed English handshake here. This shake had sealed the deal.

“This is wonderful!” Maria said, beaming at Quinn. “We were so distressed by the deaths of both girls.”

Quinn was confused. “There have been seven victims.”

“Yes, of course. I didn't mean to slight anyone.” Now she actually did cross herself, absently and so quickly that Quinn barely saw it. “It's the two who most concern us, but the others are held just as close and dear to the breast of—”

“Which two are those?” Quinn asked.

Maria clasped her hands, and her Renaissance peasant features became solemn. “Andria Bell and Jeanine Carson.”

Quinn felt as if he were lost in the nearby hedge maze. D.O.A. had slain Jeanine Carson to keep his hand in, to divert, to taunt Quinn. Other than what might have been a coincidental involvement with art, that was the two women's only connection—they were tortured and killed by the same sadistic, cunning animal. Used as pieces in the game he played.

“Sisters,” Maria Castle said. “They were—God help them—sisters.”

27

“S
isters, all right,” Jerry Lido said. He had spent much of the night doing ancestry research online. He'd informed Quinn that he hadn't had a drink since the day before, so Quinn wasn't positive of Lido's findings. The Q&A tech whiz did his best work while fueled by alcohol. While skunked, actually.

He was slumped in an uncomfortable wooden chair angled toward Quinn's desk. His shirt was half tucked in and his tie was loosened and askew. Quinn noticed that Lido's hairline had receded what seemed like another inch or so, leaving a sharp widow's peak.

“Andria Bell and Jeanine Carson are daughters of Ida Tucker and Robert Kingdom. Jeanine was briefly married to a Brady Carson, who died three years ago in a boating accident on Lake Erie.”

“What kind of accident?”

“Explosion. Fumes from the boat's engine compartment below deck built up and went boom.” Lido shrugged his bony shoulders. “It happens with some frequency. Nothing suspicious about it, and nothing to suggest there was an investigation.”

“Was he alone on the boat?”

“No, he was with a fishing guide. That's whose boat it was. The guide lived long enough to tell his rescuers what happened. Carson had ducked below deck to get some tackle, and he lit a cigar. It was unlit in his mouth when he lowered himself down through the hatch, and he had a book of matches in his hand. That was all the guide remembered. He'd yelled for Carson to be careful, but it was too late.” Lido gave a weary, wicked grin. “Bad things can happen when you light a forbidden cigar.”

Quinn pondered that.

“Learn anything useful about the sisters?” he asked.

Lido gave his weary shrug again. His inebriated mannerisms had invaded his sober world. “Both dead,” he said.

“Don't give me a lotta crap, Jerry. I get enough of that with the menagerie I have to contend with here.”

“Every one a Sherlock,” Lido said. “Speaking of which—Weaver.”

Quinn rested his elbows on his desk and leaned toward Lido. “Nancy Weaver?”

“The same. While I was doing my research, I came across her tech footprints.”

“Meaning?”

“She'd recently visited several of the sites I explored.”

“Doing her own exploring?”

“Looked that way. No surprise. She belongs to Renz.” Lido raised his eyebrows. “She has to be pretty good on a computer, judging by what I saw.”

“Weaver has multiple talents.”

“That's what I hear, but who really knows?”

Quinn's land line desk phone rang. He nodded to Lido, dismissing him, and snatched up the receiver. The phone's caller ID said the call originated at the Far Castle.

 

 

Quinn identified Q&A and himself, watching Lido drift out the door. On his way to catch up on either his drinking or his sleep. Quinn knew how he would bet.

“This is Winston Castle,” said the voice on the phone. It was well enunciated and deep. Castle's BBC voice. “There's been a development that might be of interest to you.”

“Try me,” Quinn said. He couldn't get over the feeling that he was being played by Castle. He reminded himself, not the first time, that the business he was in might create that kind of suspicion. Everyone he met while on a case didn't necessarily have some sort of angle or ulterior motive. It only seemed that way.

“That woman called me again, about ten o'clock last night,” Castle said. “Identified herself as Ida Tucker again and said she was a distant relative of my wife.”

“Is she?”

“Maria isn't sure.”

Quinn bet Jerry Lido could be sure. He wished now that Lido hadn't left. On the other hand, even Lido might not be able to straighten out this mess. “So why did Ida Tucker call?”

“She wanted to negotiate some more on that Michelangelo bust,
Bellezza.
”

Quinn was beginning to really like this case. “Negotiate what?”

“Not just the missing art, but the letters she claimed are with it, the ones Henry Tucker wrote on his deathbed, just before he succumbed to wounds he'd suffered at Dunkirk. She wanted me to come to someplace called Green Forest, Ohio, and examine and purchase the letters. I asked her to simply mail me copies, but of course she wouldn't do that. What's valuable—in her mind, anyway—is what the letters contain, as well as their authenticity.”

That made sense to Quinn. So did something else. “Why didn't you simply tell her no thank you and hang up?”

“Because I'm curious. And so are you, eh, my friend?”

Quinn smiled. Castle had him there.

“We're both afflicted with that dread disease, curiosity,” Castle said. “The one that killed the cat. And there's something else. This time when we talked, Ida Tucker seemed especially interested in whether the police had found any letters among the contents of Andria Bell's luggage, or in the hotel suite where the murders took place.”

“And what did you tell her?” Quinn asked.

He could almost see Castle's devilish dark smile over the phone. “I told her nothing, of course. She was so curious, I thought I'd leave her that way. Knowing you'd understand.”

“Oh, I do,” Quinn said.

Quinn caught up with Jerry Lido at the Dropp Inn lounge, a few blocks from the office. It was a bar with a step-down entrance that caused first-timers to stumble. Regular customers amused themselves by silently watching newbies for interesting falls and reactions. Dim and cool inside, the Dropp Inn at this time of day was almost deserted.

Quinn knew about the tricky threshold, but nevertheless had to take a quick double step to maintain his balance when he entered.

There was one other drinker besides Lido in the lounge, an absolutely ravished looking gray-haired woman in her sixties. She had an expensive-looking choppy hairdo, and without the wrinkles in her clothes she would have been stylishly and crisply dressed, as if for finance and business. There was a sadness about her bearing that was almost tangible. She made Quinn wonder if the stock market had tanked.

Lido was slouched in a cramped wooden booth near the opposite end of the bar. At least he'd had sense enough to stay away from the woman. Though he was glancing in her direction.

“That's how you're going to wind up,” Quinn said, motioning toward the life-worn woman as he slid into the seat across from Lido.

Lido squinted at the woman and brought her into focus. “Oh, her. I happen to know she's eighty-seven.”

“Like we are,” Quinn said.

“She's a gin drinker,” Lido said.

“I've seen you drink gin.”

“I've seen you try to keep up.”

“Not one right after the other in slow-motion suicide.”

“She was probably beautiful once,” Lido said, still staring at the woman. “I can perceive that in her still.”

“You're beginning to sound like Winston Castle.”

The bartender came out from behind the bar and stood over the booth. These weren't free, these seats on the sidelines while the world slid past outside.

Quinn ordered the same kind of beer Lido had—a microbrewery brand he'd never heard of—and a fresh one for Lido. Quinn figured Lido had had time to consume about three or four beers, so he might be at his perceptive best.

“I need to ask you something more,” Quinn said.

Lido gave him a mushy grin. “I didn't think you followed me here to assess the female presence and possibilities.”

“Not that female,” Quinn said, with a nod toward the woman at the bar. “A woman named Ida Tucker. Do you recall where she fits into the family tree whose roots and various branches you researched?”

A certain gleam appeared in Lido's bloodshot eyes. A sharpness that Quinn recognized. In its strange way, alcohol acted as some kind of cerebral lubricant that allowed Lido's thoughts to follow appropriate tributaries to surprising headwaters.

In a voice not at all slurred, he said, “Let me tell you about Ida Tucker.”

“And the rest of her family. The whole mess of a maze of them.”

Lido smiled. Sipped. “I took it back to Henry Tucker, a British soldier who died in an English hospital after escaping the German advance at Dunkirk.” Lido fixed a bleary eye on Quinn. “We're talking World War Two here.”

“I figured,” Quinn said.

“Henry had a brother, Edward. Edward had a wife, Ida. Okay?”

“Sure.”

“Henry, at the time of his death, was having a hot affair with an English nurse named Betsy Douglass. Betsy had a sister, Willa, living in Ohio and married to a Mark Kingdom.”

“Okay,” Quinn said. “Mark and Willa Kingdom. Should I be writing this down?”

“I'll give you a printout later,” Lido said. He continued. “For medical reasons, Willa and Mark couldn't have children—he'd been injured in the merchant marines—and they adopted two wards of the state: Robert and Winston. That's where the two families intersect, in the breeding grounds of Ohio. Winston died in childhood.”

“Wait a minute,” Quinn said. “Winston Kingdom? Winston Castle?”

“Not yet,” Lido said. “He's actually Robert Kingdom, Jr. He's something of an Anglophile.”

“I'll say.”

“Still, he's married to Mariella Lopez, a Mexican immigrant.”

“Maria? Are you kidding me? I assumed she was Italian.”

“She is Italian. Her last name was Righetti until she married a Mexican mathematician named Lopez. He died five years ago.”

“Don't tell me his boat blew up.”

“No, he was struck by lightning. A year later, Mariella migrated to the U.S. and married Winston Castle. Whose name was Kingdom, Jr. then.”

Quinn took a long pull of his beer. “Isn't anything the way it appears with this family?”

“No. And they seem to take some delight—or at least satisfaction—in that. That sort of thing is genetic, don't you think?”

“Yes,” Quinn said. The older he got, the more madness he had seen, and the more he thought people were, at least to some extent, slaves of their DNA. But with this family, blood relationship didn't seem essential to share the lunacy.

Lido continued: “After Willa Douglass and Mark Kingdom died in a tornado, Ida Tucker divorced Edward, and married Robert Kingdom, Sr. She continued using her former name, Tucker. They adopted sisters, Andria Bell and Jeanine Bell. Also they adopted a son, Robert Kingdom, Jr., who now, for reasons of his own, calls himself Winston Castle.”

“Ah! Anybody else in the family using an alias?”

Lido shrugged.

“Why was this family so eager to adopt?”

“Money accompanied children who were wards of the state. That's one reason. Another might simply be that they were big-hearted people.”

“Those kinds of people do exist,” Quinn admitted.

“It's not just you and me,” Lido said.

“Or maybe they do things simply because they are mad.”

“But with purpose,” Lido said.

“Robert Kingdom, Sr. and Ida Tucker,” Quinn said. “Despite the
Senior,
wasn't she robbing the cradle?”

“Ida was considerably older. But judging by photos I saw on the net, she was a hot potootie. Maybe still is.”

Lido took a swallow of beer, licked his lips, and continued:

“Willa must have hunted down Edward Tucker after the war. The two families intersected and merged into the bunch we have now. Many of them were adoptees, or the sons or daughters of adoptees. Orphaned or farmed out. Dependent on each other. Maybe more so than in other families. The more I learned about them, that's what came out. The entire zoo struck me as . . . needy. And I don't mean just for material things.” Lido lifted his shoulders and dropped them as if they were suddenly burdened by great weight. “I dunno, Quinn. I guess plenty of people are needy. I'm no expert on family life, but it seems to me there are lots of families like this one, the way marriages and parenthood have gone all to hell.”

He looked as if he expected Quinn to agree or disagree.

Quinn had no feel for the subject. He did consider that his ex-wife and daughter lived in California, and he lived with Pearl and the young woman he considered to be like his own daughter, who was by blood Pearl's daughter.

Was any or all of this bad? Or inevitable? Who knew? The Tuckers and the Kingdoms and their offspring, natural or adopted, did constitute a support system. Perhaps one that filled a greater need than if they'd been blood relatives and belonged to something whether they liked it or not.

Quinn said, “So Ida is making arrangements to claim the bodies of her daughters.”