On Off (25 page)

After the discovery of Margaretta Bewlee’s body on a Hugger property, the Huggers fell over themselves to offer permission to the police to search anywhere they liked. Even Satsuma, Chandra and Schiller crumbled. Maurice Finch’s mushroom tunnel was just that; another search of Benjamin Liebman’s mortuary yielded nothing; Addison Forbes’s “eyrie” consisted of two round rooms, one above the other, overfilled with neatly stacked or shelved professional reading materials; the Smith basement was pure train heaven; Walter Polonowski’s cabin was a love nest, decorously posed photographs of Marian everywhere, a big bed, not much of a kitchen. Paola Polonowski had seized her opportunity and gone up to the cabin in the wake of the police, with the result that Polonowski was now living in it with Marian, and looking a great deal happier. Hideki Satsuma’s retreat turned out to be near the corner of the Cape Cod elbow in Orleans, an architect-designed bachelor pad that held nothing more indictable than a huge amount of pornography heavily into violence, though not murder. No real surprise to Carmine, whose time in Japan had shown him the Japanese penchant for pictorial pornography. Dr. Nur Chandra was just “being bloody-minded” as Desdemona would have phrased it; his secret activity in the cottage he used consisted of a new generation computer that he was trying to program without enlisting one of those amazing young Chubb medical students who paid their way through school by devising programs for specific scientific purposes. Chandra was so sure of his Nobel Prize that he would speak of his work to no one, especially a super-bright, ambitious young Chubb medical student. The Ponsonby forest was a forest; no cabins, sheds, barns, underground anythings. And Kurt Schiller’s worst secret was a photograph of himself, his father, and Adolf Hitler. Papa had been a highly decorated U-boat captain invited to meet der Führer and bring his towheaded little son along; Hitler loved towheaded children with brave fathers. Schiller Senior had gone down with his submarine when it encountered a depth-charge in 1944; Kurt was ten years old at the time.

Therefore, according to Silvestri, Marciano and the rest of Connecticut’s various senior policemen, the killing premises must be makeshift. Were they not, someone would have noticed.

But they are not makeshift, Carmine said to himself. If I were the Ghost, what would I want? Pristine surroundings, that’s what. Surfaces that could be hosed down, scrupulously cleaned. That means tiles rather than concrete, metal rather than wood or rock. I’d want an operating room. Two Ghosts could build it if they were both skilled with their hands; they could even wire it for electricity. What they probably couldn’t do was plumb it, yet it had to be plumbed. A high-pressure water supply, adequate drains, and connection to either a sewer or a septic system. The Ghosts would want a bathroom too, for themselves if not for their victim. Her they probably bed panned, sponge bathed.

So while Abe and Corey waded their way through the
National Enquirer
personals, Carmine checked every Hugger property for unsuitably large power or water bills. Unfortunately the more prosperous Huggers lived where they tapped for well water rather than used a piped supply, but no one’s electricity bill was huge. A generator? Possible, if the noise could be muffled. From that fruitless exercise he waded through plumbing contractors and more humble self-employed plumbers from one end of Connecticut to the other. Looking for a lucrative job that involved installation of what would have been described as a private gymnasium or a plush recreational facility or even a pool house. Those he did find turned out to be genuine, all located in Fairfield or Litchfield counties. He was aware that the kind of thing he was asking about spelled someone with money, but he had always thought that the Ghost had plenty of money. Wherever he looked, he came up with nothing. That said one of three things: the first, that the two Ghosts were able to do their own plumbing; the second, that they had hired a plumber whom they paid generously with cash so he would keep quiet about the job and not pay tax; and the third, that the Ghosts had rented or bought premises already suitable for their purposes, such as a veterinary clinic or surgeon’s rooms. He called around to see how many veterinary clinics and surgeons’ rooms had changed hands late in 1963, but those that had changed hands were bona fide. The usual nothing, nothing, nothing.

“Desdemona, it’s Carmine. On business. Don’t open the door, I’ll key the combination in.”

“How are you?” he asked, shedding his layers and putting the dress box — shit, what
would
she think? — on the table.

She looked neither glad nor sorry to see him. “I’m well but bored to death,” she said. Then, flicking a finger at the dress box, “What’s that?”

“Something I had to assure the Commissioner you wouldn’t talk about to anyone. I knew you wouldn’t, he doesn’t. You mightn’t know that the last victim, Margaretta Bewlee, was found wearing a child’s party dress. We can’t trace it, but I thought maybe with your eye for fancy work, you could tell us
something
about it.”

She had the box open and was shaking out the dress in a second, then held it, turned it around, finally spread it on the table. “I take it that the last girl wasn’t chopped into bits?”

“No, just the head was removed.”

“The newspapers said she was tall. This wouldn’t fit her.”

“It didn’t, but she was wedged into it all the same. Her shoulders were too broad for him to button it down the back, and that leads to my first question — why buttons? Everything these days is zipped.”

Paul had fastened the buttons, which sparkled like genuine jewels under the table light. “That’s why,” she said, fingering one. “A zipper would have spoiled the effect. These glitter.”

“Have you ever seen a dress like this?”

“Only on a pantomime stage when I was a child, but it was makeshift due to clothes rationing. This is very pretentious.”

“Is it handmade?”

“To some extent, but probably not as much as you assume. The rhinestones have been sewn on, yes, but by a specialist who can wallop them on faster than you can eat pot roast. The person is a piece-worker, so she sticks her needle through the hole, loops her strand of cotton around the rhinestone once, then tacks her needle through the lace to the next rhinestone — see?”

Carmine saw.

“Some of them are missing because they weren’t sewn on firmly enough, and they come off in a chain as long as the strand of cotton in the needle — see?”

“I thought Paul might have done that in the lab.”

“No, it’s more likely to have happened with rough handling, and I can’t imagine it would receive that in a pathology lab.”

“So what you’re saying is that the dress is affordable?”

“If you have something over a hundred dollars to spend on a frock that the child would probably only wear once or twice, then yes. It’s a profit exercise, Carmine. Whoever makes and sells these knows how often the frock will be worn, so they cut as many corners as they can. The lining is synthetic, not silk, and the underskirt is cheap net stiffened with thick starch.”

“What about the lace?”

“French, but not top quality. Machine made.”

“With that kind of price tag, we should look in the children’s wear at places like Saks and Bloomingdale’s in New York City? Or maybe Alexander’s in Connecticut?”

“A fairly expensive shop or department store, certainly. I would call the frock showy, not elegant.”

“Like Astor’s pet horse,” he said absently.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Just a saying.” He drew a deep breath. “Am I forgiven?”

Her eyes thawed, even twinkled. “I suppose so, you graceless twit. Too little Carmine Delmonico is worse than too much.”

“Malvolio’s?”

“Yes, please!”

“Now to a different subject,” he said over coffee. “It’s late, we can talk here. Manual skills.”

“Who at the Hug has them, and who doesn’t?”

“Exactly.”

“Starting with the Prof?”

“How is he, incidentally?”

“Shut up in an exclusive loony bin somewhere on the Trumbull side of Bridgeport. I imagine they’re loving him as a patient. Most of their intake consists of alcoholics or drug addicts drying out, plus heaps of anxiety neuroses. Whereas the poor old Prof has had a severe breakdown — illusions, delusions, hallucinations, loss of contact with reality. As to his manual skills, they are considerable.”

“Could he wire for electricity and plumb a house?”

“He wouldn’t want to, Carmine. Anything requiring hard manual labor he would regard as beneath his dignity. The Prof dislikes getting his hands dirty.”

“Ponsonby?”

“Couldn’t change the washer on a tap.”

“Polonowski?”

“A fairly skilled domestic handyman. He hasn’t the money to hire a carpenter when the children break a door or a plumber when the children stuff a cuddly toy down the lavatory.”

“Satsuma?”

She rolled her eyes heavenward. “Lieutenant,
really!
What do you think Eido is for? There’s also Eido’s wife, she slaves. Chandra has a whole army of turbaned lackeys.”

“Forbes?”

“I’d say he was competent with his hands. He works on his house, I do know that. They were so lucky, the Forbeses! At the time they bought it, the mortgage rate was two percent, and they have thirty years to pay it off. Now it’s worth a fortune, of course — water frontage, two acres, no oil tanks next door.”

“Relocating those to the bottom of Oak Street helped everyone on the east shore. Finch?”

“Builds his own glasshouses and greenhouses. There is a big difference, he tells me. Isn’t above grubbing out a mushroom tunnel. But I’d say Catherine is even more competent. All those thousands of chickens.”

“Hunter and Ho the engineers?”

“Could construct the Empire State Building, with improvements.”

“Cecil?”

“Now isn’t that an indictment?” she asked, scowling. “I just can’t tell you, Carmine. He has skills, but in one’s mind he tends to be not only a flunky, but a black flunky into the bargain. No wonder they hate us. We deserve to be hated.”

“Otis?”

“At present Otis isn’t doing any heavy lifting. Apparently he has the beginnings of congestive cardiac failure, so I’m trying to arrange a nice pension for him with the Parsons. Personally I doubt his troubles have much to do with how hard he works. His bugbear is Celeste’s nephew, Wesley. Otis is terrified that the boy is going to make mischief for Celeste. The Hollow and Argyle Avenue are rather boiling.”

“Wait until spring,” Carmine said grimly. “We’ve bought some time with the weather, but when it gets warmer, all hell is going to break loose.”

“Anna Donato’s husband is a plumber.”

“Anna Donato…Refresh my memory.”

“She looks after all the cranky equipment, has the touch.”

“The Kyneton ménage?”

“Oh, dear! The fourth floor is a circus these days. Hilda and Tamara are at daggers drawn. Mostly screaming matches, but on one occasion they rolled around the floor, kicking and biting. It took our four office workers and me to drag them apart. So we are profoundly glad that the Prof isn’t there to see women at their worst. However, Hilda will be gone before the Prof is due to come back. Dearest, darlingest Keith got the partnership he was after in New York City.”

“What about Schiller?”

“Not
handy. He can’t even sharpen a microtome blade. Mind you, he doesn’t have to. That’s what technicians are for.”

“How about coming back to my place for a cognac?”

Desdemona slid out of the booth. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Carmine walked her down the block back in that high school happy haze after his prom date had told him she’d loved the evening and offered him her lips. Not that Desdemona was about to offer her lips. A pity. They were full and unlipsticked. He started to laugh at the memory of trying to scrub off bright red lipstick.

“What’s so funny?”

“Not a thing, not a thing.”