“She says,” Gioia interjected.
“Agreed.” V.I. smiled. “I make no bones about being a partisan: I accept her version. The more so because the only reason she didn’t give it a week ago was that she herself was protecting an old friend.
She thought perhaps this friend had bestirred himself on her behalf and killed Caudwell to avenge deadly insults against her. It was only when I persuaded her that these suspicions were as unmerited as — well, as accusations against herself — that she agreed to talk.”
Max bit his lip and busied himself with getting more coffee for the three women. Victoria waited for him to finish before continuing.
“When I finally got a detailed account of what took place at Caudwell’s party, I heard about three people with an axe to grind.
One always has to ask, what axe and how big a grindstone? That’s what I’ve spent the weekend finding out. You might as well know that I’ve been to Little Rock and to Havelock, North Carolina.”
Gioia began jingling the coins in his pockets again. Mrs. Caudwell said softly, “Grif, I am feeling a little faint. Perhaps—”
“Home you go, Mom,” Steve cried out with alacrity.
“In a few minutes, Mrs. Caudwell,” the sergeant said from the doorway. “Get her feet up, Warshawski.”
For a moment Max was afraid that Steve or Deborah was going to attack Victoria, but McGonnigal moved over to the widow’s chair and the children sat down again. Little drops of sweat dotted Griffen’s balding head; Gioia’s face had a greenish sheen, foliage on top of his redwood neck.
“The thing that leapt out at me,” Victoria continued calmly, as though there had been no interruption, “was Caudwell’s remark to Dr. Gioia. The doctor was clearly upset, but people were so focused on Lotty and the statue that they didn’t pay any attention to that.
“So I went to Little Rock, Arkansas, on Saturday and found the Paul Nierman whose name Caudwell had mentioned to Gioia. Nierman lived in the same fraternity with Gioia when they were under-graduates together twenty-five years ago. And he took Dr. Gioia’s anatomy and physiology exams his junior year when Gioia was in danger of academic probation, so he could stay on the football team.
“Well, that seemed unpleasant, perhaps disgraceful. But there’s no question that Gioia did all his own work in medical school, passed his boards, and so on. So I didn’t think the board would demand a resignation for this youthful indiscretion. The question was whether Gioia thought they would, and if he would have killed to prevent Caudwell making it public.”
She paused, and the immunologist blurted out, “No. No. But Caudwell — Caudwell knew I’d opposed his appointment. He and I — our approaches to medicine were very opposite. And as soon as he said Nierman’s name to me, I knew he’d found out and that he’d torment me with it forever. I–I went back to his place Sunday night to have it out with him. I was more determined than Dr. Herschel and got into his unit through the kitchen entrance; he hadn’t locked that.
“I went to his study, but he was already dead. I couldn’t believe it. It absolutely terrified me. I could see he’d been strangled and — well, it’s no secret that I’m strong enough to have done it. I wasn’t thinking straight. I just got clean away from there — I think I’ve been running ever since.”
“You!” McGonnigal shouted. “How come we haven’t heard about this before?”
“Because you insisted on focusing on Dr. Herschel,” V.I. said nastily. “I knew he’d been there because the doorman told me. He would have told you if you’d asked.”
“This is terrible,” Mrs. Gildersleeve interjected. “I am going to talk to the board tomorrow and demand the resignations of Dr. Gioia and Dr. Herschel.”
“Do,” Victoria agreed cordially. “Tell them the reason you got to stay for this was because Murray Ryerson at the Herald-Star was doing a little checking for me here in Chicago. He found out that part of the reason you were so jealous of Caudwell’s collection is that you’re living terribly in debt. I won’t humiliate you in public by telling people what your money has gone to, but you’ve had to sell your husband’s art collection and you have a third mortgage on your house. A valuable statue with no documented history would have taken care of everything.”
Martha Gildersleeve shrank inside her sable. “You don’t know anything about this.”
“Well, Murray talked to Pablo and Eduardo…Yes, I won’t say anything else. So anyway, Murray checked whether either Gioia or Mrs. Gildersleeve had the statue. They didn’t, so—”
“You’ve been in my house?” Mrs. Gildersleeve shrieked.
V.I. shook her head. “Not me. Murray Ryerson.” She looked apologetically at the sergeant. “I knew you’d never get a warrant for me, since you’d made an arrest. And you’d never have got it in time, anyway.”
She looked at her coffee cup, saw it was empty and put it down again. Max took it from the table and filled it for her a third time.
His fingertips were itching with nervous irritation; some of the coffee landed on his trouser leg.
“I talked to Murray Saturday night from Little Rock. When he came up empty here, I headed for North Carolina. To Havelock, where Griffen and Lewis Caudwell grew up and where Mrs.
Caudwell still lives. And I saw the house where Griffen lives, and talked to the doctor who treats Mrs. Caudwell, and—”
“You really are a pooper snooper, aren’t you,” Steve said.
“Pooper snooper, pooper snooper,” Deborah chanted. “Don’t get enough thrills of your own so you have to live on other people’s shit.”
“Yeah, the neighbors talked to me about you two.” Victoria looked at them with contemptuous indulgence. “You’ve been a two-person wolfpack terrifying most of the people around you since you were three. But the folks in Havelock admired how you always stuck up for your mother. You thought your father got her addicted to tranquilizers and then left her high and dry. So you brought her newest version with you and were all set — you just needed to decide when to give it to him. Dr. Herschel’s outburst over the statue played right into your hands. You figured your father had stolen it from your uncle to begin with — why not send it back to him and let Dr. Herschel take the rap?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Steve said, red spots burning in his cheeks.
“What was it like, son?” McGonnigal had moved next to him.
“Don’t talk to them — they’re tricking you,” Deborah shrieked.
“The pooper snooper and her gopher gooper.”
“She — Mommy used to love us before Daddy made her take all this shit. Then she went away. We just wanted him to see what it was like. We started putting Xanax in his coffee and stuff; we wanted to see if he’d fuck up during surgery, let his life get ruined. But then he was sleeping there in the study after his stupid-ass party, and we thought we’d just let him sleep through his morning surgery. Sleep forever, you know, it was so easy, we used his own Harvard necktie.
I was so fucking sick of hearing ‘Early to bed, early to rise’ from him.
And we sent the statue to Uncle Grif. I suppose the pooper snooper found it there. He can sell it and Mother can be all right again.”
“Grandpa stole it from Jews and Daddy stole it from Grif, so we thought it worked out perfectly if we stole it from Daddy,” Deborah cried. She leaned her blond head next to her brother’s and shrieked with laughter.