The Gorgon Festival (7 page)

Cabroni went seeking an eyewitness the only place one might logically be found, at the house across the cul-de-sac from the Gordon residence. A woman, thin, pale, with bulging eyes given an Oriental slant by her tightly pulled bun of hair, opened the door to his knock. Cabroni introduced himself and told the woman, a Mrs. Moresby, that he was investigating the absence of her neighbor, Doctor Ruth Gordon. Mrs. Moresby’s eyes seemed focused on a distance fourteen feet in front of her, but she invited him into the living room.

Beneath a vase of rose stems, sear and leafless, her television set was on. She turned the volume down, slightly, saying, “Yes, strange things have been happening over at that house. But if you don’t mind, officer, I’d like to keep an eye on
Life Can Be Beautiful
. I don’t want to miss this episode.”

“Go right ahead, ma’am,” he said, taking a seat on the divan to her right as she seated herself before the set.

“I can look at you, too, as I talk. My bun gives me good side vision. Those roses on the TV are from Ruth; she brought them over last week, but she forgot to put water in the vase.”

“Did you notice if she had any callers Saturday?”

“Yes, sir. A tall blond man in his late forties, must have been, because he had a haircut. He parked in front of Ruth’s house, headed downhill for a quick getaway, and took some tools into her place. I could see right through the house with the sun behind it and not miss a thing on TV. It’s my side vision. The bun does it. Well, he put his gear in her kitchen and went out back and got Ruth. They came in together and I couldn’t see anything…”

“What time did he arrive, ma’am?”

“Seven-thirty-two. Two minutes into Jackie Gleason’s show… I didn’t see anything interesting till Lawrence Welk, when the man went across the hall to her bathroom with his tool box and pretty soon she came out of her bedroom in a bathrobe and she went into the bathroom with him. Well, they were in there together, but not long enough to do anything. Finally, he came out, but he stood by the door of her bathroom, like he was listening.”

“For how long, ma’am?”

“One Geritol commercial… Then, he went into the kitchen, and pretty soon, Ruth comes out in her robe, almost skipping, and she’s supposed to have arthritis. Hah! Officer, if you’re investigating a sex crime, I think Ruth Gordon was willing. Most of these so-called sex crimes wouldn’t bear investigation, if you want my opinion.”

“Go on, ma’am. Then what happened?”

“Before Engelbert Humperdink, that’s ten o’clock, they came out of the kitchen. Ruth left her light on in the kitchen. Something she don’t usually do. They came down the hall arm in arm, him walking tippy-toed, like the front end of a little pig tripping to the trough, her strutting beside him as proud as a hen with a prize rooster. Officer, I was born on a farm in the Middle West and I know animals. I knew which room they were going to before they got there, and her complaining about arthritis. Hmmph!”

“They went into the bedroom.”

“Yes, sir. Went and stayed, plumb through Humperdink, the eleven o’clock news, and well into Johnny Carson. A little before midnight, he comes out, not strutting, now, but walking fast. Not carrying a thing. He shut the door behind him and got into his car, but he didn’t start that car. No, sir. He let it roll, sneaky-like, with the lights off, down Pinyon Verde Lane. About two blocks down, I heard him start the motor.”

“Can you describe his car to me?”

“One of those little foreign cars you can’t tell whether they’re coming or going.”

“Did you report this to the police, Mrs. Moresby?”

“Me? I’m no nosey busybody, snooping around, prying into my neighbor’s affairs.”

Cabroni’s second interview was with Doctor Carrick.

Carrick’s office was in the administration building on the campus, a corner room on the fourth floor. Though the carpet was linoleum and Carrick’s desk was made of something resembling deal, Cabroni’s intuition told him that the office was the academic equivalent of an executive suite.

After Cabroni explained the purpose of his call, Carrick remarked, “I haven’t seen Ruth since the party, which is unusual. She generally drops by the faculty club for lunch two or three times a week.”

“I’m trying to get a line on who her close friends were,” Cabroni said.

“Doctor Ward’s her closest friend,” Carrick said, “and has been…”

“Platonic or romantic?”

“Doctor Gordon is seventy years old, Lieutenant. I hardly think…”

Cabroni cut across his protestations. “Did they ever engage in joint experiments together?”

“Unequivocally, no,” Carrick said. “Ward would not let his grandmother into his…”

“What’s Ward researching?”

“Finding that out would be a good project for you, Lieutenant. Ward never publishes. He talks only to Ruth, and Ruth talks only to her hamsters. I asked Ester point-blank what he was doing; all I got from her was… a dismissal.”

To Cabroni, Carrick’s sudden hesitancy meant a cover-up of some sort. The detective’s voice flicked across the desk like a switchblade. “What precisely did she say, Doctor Carrick?”

“Well, that he was running a carpenter’s shop, fixing broken ladders.”

“DNA ladders?”

“Not a chance,” Carrick answered emphatically, but the expression in his eyes was drifting away from the emphasis. “Any man who could do that would have an undivided share of Nobel loot in his pocket.”

Slipping automatically into habitual thought patterns, Cabroni realized that here was motive for murder, if Ward wasn’t willing to share the dough with a co-worker.

Cabroni’s angle of attack shifted. Suddenly he became a respectful, almost humble, petitioner. “Your opinion, please, Doctor Carrick: would the repair of DNA affect arthritis?”

“Depending, of course, on the stage of the disease, the rehabilitation of gristle and surrounding muscle might have a generally beneficial…”

“Would it act as a sexual stimulant?”

As Carrick considered the question, Cabroni studied Carrick’s face for subtle signs of his thought processes, a narrowing of eyes, a quivering of the underlip.

Carrick’s face sharpened. His eyes grew speculative, then calculating, then predatory. His rotundity of body, formerly suggestive of joviality, changed; his shoulders became squarer, his stomach flattened and expanded upward into his chest cavities. Leaning forward, talking to himself more than to Cabroni, he looked powerful, formidable.

“If the cellular structure of the genitourinary tract were reconstituted, in toto, there would be rejuvenation, complete and pristine. The organs would be young and yearning again, possessed of a vitality that would dominate the hypothalamus, crush all psychic blocks to the libido. The discoverer of the process, had he any business acumen, could make millions, for he would possess the greatest aphrodisiac in the world. No, billions…”

“Thank you, Doctor Carrick, and good day.”

“Princes and potentates would lay their treasures at his feet. Frustrated wives of impotent husbands would lay pounds, Reichsmarks, yen, rupees, zloty, kronor and flowers… The greatest aphrodisiac in the world. Generals, premiers, presidents, nations, commonwealths, empires…”

Quietly Cabroni closed the door and hurried from the outer office. The day was wearing on, and he wanted to get to Ester and question her before her husband got home. Because the clues pointed so clumsily to Alexander Ward as the perpetrator, Cabroni did not believe Ruth Gordon had been murdered, but, professionally, Cabroni was willing to assume Ward had murdered her. Too little suspicion could be fatal; too much never hurt.

Twenty minutes later, Cabroni composed his face in hostile lines and rang the Wards’ doorbell. Ward should be easy to intimidate. Most professors, even the new New Left professors who advocated violence, disliked violence when it was directed at them.

“Joe, you beast!”

Ester had opened the door and squealing with unfeigned delight she flung herself around his neck. Unprepared for her friendliness and spontaneity, his arms went around her, but she slipped from his embrace, took his hand, and led him through the house toward the bar, chatting, “I could forgive you for calling when you’re drunk and obnoxious, but I found it hard to forgive you for hanging up. Nobody does that to me.”

“Ester, I was drunk and maybe obnoxious, but I didn’t hang up. Twice on your husband, yes, but never on you.”

“Then someone else got an earful,” she commented, gliding behind the bar. “I’m sorry, all I can give you is a screwdriver because Alex will be home soon.”

“Is that your handiwork?” He waved toward the table in the dining room with its linen, candelabra, and gold-plated china.

“All mine. I fired the maid. Alex thinks I’ve grown domestic, but it’s really that I don’t want another woman in the house.” She lowered her voice and leaned toward him. “Joe, he’s so rampacious lately, a wholly new Alex with an extra added ingredient.”

“Something the mad scientist discovered in his lab?” Cabroni asked.

“Maybe, but I think I had a lot to do with it. When he starts taking that little half-step, coming toward me like an adagio dancer getting ready to jump, I shiver… Imagine, my own husband… Joe, do you love your wife?”

“Not too often,” Cabroni admitted. “Having three children took the prance out of her.”

“Ration her, Joe. Once every other Tuesday might do it. Strew a few photographs around of Greek statues, without fig leaves, and don’t lose patience. It took me five years with Alex, then, suddenly last Sunday, wham!”

She came around the bar and perched on the stool beside him. She wore a peasant blouse and her eyes glowed with intellectual fire which suggested to Cabroni that Ester might yield to a commonsense approach.

“Ester, a girl with your resources should spread it around. How would California and Arizona feel if all the water in Lake Meade was cornered by Las Vegas? You’re too much woman for one…”

A peculiar squeal sounded from the front porch, and Ester shot from the stool, clearing the split-level into the living room with a gazelle’s leap. Cabroni turned back to his drink on the bar, thinking a little sadly how love fled.

Arm in arm, husband and wife advanced across the living room and Cabroni, turning, could see that Ward was prancing tonight. He envied the couple their domestic bliss. No doubt about it, there was something captivating about Ward’s walk. He envied Ward for it, envied him for Ester, and as they tippy-toed down into the dining room, Cabroni’s envy died in self-revulsion as he caught himself almost envying Ester.

Ward was more open, attentive, alert than he had been when Cabroni saw him last. The hand he extended in greeting matched Cabroni’s in its grip. Murder sometimes did this to a man, Cabroni knew, by releasing his aggressions and frustrations.

“I’m glad to see you and Ester patch up your little misunderstanding, Joe.”

“I’m not here to patch up misunderstandings,” Cabroni said formally. “Doctor Ruth Gordon has been missing since Saturday night.”

“You were supposed to be up there, Saturday night, pruning roses.” Ester said.

“I talked to her last Wednesday,” Ward blurted.

“Were there any witnesses?” Cabroni asked.

“Not to a telephone conversation,” Ward answered, catching himself.

“Doctor Ward, she was last seen alive on Saturday night.” Cabroni stressed the “alive.”

“I know,” Ward said. “I left my gear in her bathtub.”

“What were you doing in her bathtub?” Ester asked.

“That’s what I’m here to interrogate him about,” Cabroni said.

“I was treating her for arthritis,” Ward said to Ester.

“She’s believed to be murdered,” Cabroni said.

“By whom?”

“For the record, there are no suspects, yet.”

“I mean, who believes she was murdered?”

“I do,” Ester almost screamed. “I believe you did it to her in the bathtub and she drowned.”

Moaning, Ester staggered back and fell into an overstuffed chair.

“The official theory holds she was electrocuted,” Cabroni said.

“Control yourself, Ester.” Ward turned to his stricken wife. “Joe’s from homicide and he takes murder seriously… Joe, that’s my gear in her bathtub, almost three hundred dollars’ worth. And if you haven’t found Ruth’s body, she isn’t dead.”

“A corpse is no longer needed to establish the corpus delicti,” Cabroni said.

“I told you you’d been practicing,” Ester sobbed. “I had faith in you, Alexander Ward.”

“Ester, please,” Ward squatted before her, “you’ve got every reason to trust me that I’ve got to trust you. Why should I practice on a seventy-year-old woman when the campus is full of co-eds?”

“Because it’s furtive, that’s why. Sex is no fun unless it’s furtive.”

He leaned forward and kissed her, and Cabroni noticed an immediate change in the tempo of her sobs as Ward turned and looked up at the detective.

“Joe, I’m worried about Ruth, but I can explain the electrodes. Let’s go up there.”

Cabroni considered the request. Ward was putting on an act that might convince a rookie. If he continued the act, volunteering to go up as a friend of the deceased, he might give self-incriminating evidence that could later be used against him without the warnings of his rights or the presence of counsel or any of that Supreme Court crap.

“Let’s go,” Cabroni said.

“Dinner will be ready at eight,” Ester said dully.

As the two men walked toward the detective’s car, Cabroni considered the turn of events. For the best results, interrogation procedures required two men, one hostile and one friendly, but caught without a partner he would have to play both roles at once. “So you were giving her a treatment for arthritis, Alex,” he said gently. “That was decent of you.”

“Actually she gave herself the treatment. I set up the electrodes.”

This one was clever, Cabroni thought as he held the door open for Ward. Already he was twisting his story to fit the evidence.

“Were there side effects?” Cabroni asked, starting the motor.

“Yes,” Ward said, and lapsed into a silence Cabroni read as suspicious, then added, “but on the whole the treatment was beneficial.”