“I was just thinking aloud. Thank you very much, Mr. Kapistan. You’ve been most helpful.”
“Any time at all,” Kapistan answered, “Its was nice talking to you. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” Carella said, and he hung up. He sat at his desk for a moment, nodding, smiling, and then he turned to Meyer. “You want to take a ride to the country?” he asked.
“What country?”
“Sands Spit.”
“Why?”
“To talk to Mary Tomlinson.”
“Why?”
“I want to tell her she’s going to be ten thousand dollars richer. I want to see what her reaction is.”
* * * *
What can your reaction be when two bullies march into your living room and tell you they know all about an insurance policy on your dead daughter’s life, and want to know why you didn’t tell them about it? What can your reaction be when these same two bosses tell you they suspect your daughter wasn’t leaving for Reno until the 16th of May because the earliest she could collect on the policy was the 15th of May?
What do you do?
You cry, that’s what you do.
Mary Tomlinson began crying.
Meyer and Carella stood in the middle of the miniature living room and watched her quiver and shake as sob after sob wracked her enormous body.
“All right, Mrs. Tomlinson,” Carella said.
“I didn’t mean to lie,” she sobbed.
“All right, Mrs. Tomlinson, let’s cut off the tears, huh? We’ve got a lot of questions to ask you, and we don’t want…”
“I didn’t mean to lie.”
“Yeah, but you did.”
“I know.”
“Why, Mrs. Tomlinson?”
“Because I knew what you’d think.”
“And what would we think?”
“You’d think I did it.”
“Did what?”
“Killed my own daughter. Do you think I’d do that?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Tomlinson. Suppose you tell us.”
“I didn’t.”
“But she was insured for ten thousand dollars.”
“Yes. Do you think I’d kill my own daughter for ten thousand dollars?”
“Some people would kill their own daughter for ten cents, Mrs. Tomlinson.”
“No, no,” she said, shaking her head, the tears streaming down her cheeks. “I wanted her to have the money.”
“Then why didn’t you just sign the policy over to her?”
“I would have, if she’d asked me. But she didn’t make her plans until only recently, and we figured it would be just as simple to wait until the thirteenth of next month, when the policy matured. I wanted her to have the money, don’t you think I wanted her to have it? I took out the policy when she was just a year old, my husband had nothing to do with it, God rest his soul. I gave it to her for a first birthday present because I figured she could use the money for her education or whatever she wanted to do with it, when she reached the proper age. So don’t you think I wanted her to have it? It cost me four hundred and sixty-two dollars and seventy cents a year. Do you think it was easy to scrape together that kind of money, especially after my husband died, poor man?”
“You seem to have managed it, Mrs. Tomlinson.”
“It wasn’t always easy. But I did it for her, I did it for Margaret. And now you think I killed her to get the money back? No, no, no, no, no, believe me, no, no, no…”
“Take it easy, Mrs. Tomlinson.” Carella paused. “You should have told us the truth from the beginning.”
“You’d have thought the same thing. You’d have thought I killed my own little Margaret.”
“Take it easy, Mrs. Tomlinson. Is that why she was holding off on the Reno trip? Until she got the policy money?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Tomlinson sniffed and nodded.
“Was there any possibility that she wouldn’t have got that money?”
“What do you mean?”
“Mrs. Tomlinson, your daughter may have committed suicide, we don’t know. And if she did, she must have had a reason. The note we found said there was no other way, but apparently she’d figured out another way and was ready to get ten thousand dollars that would help make the other way possible. I want to know if anything could have happened, if anything could have been said, or implied, to make her think she wasn’t going to get that money.”
“No.”
“Do you know what I’m driving at?”
“Yes. If she thought the money wasn’t coming, she might possibly have felt there was no other way out. No. She knew the money was hers. I’d told her about it since the time she was old enough to understand.”
“Mrs. Tomlinson,” Carella said suddenly. “I’d like to look inside your medicine cabinet”‘
“Why?”
“Because our man at the lab casually mentioned that your daughter and Tommy Barlow could have been drugged, and I remember you saying something about taking pills every night, and I want to see just what kind of pills you’ve got in that…”
“I didn’t do anything. I swear on my dead husband, I swear on my dead daughter, I swear on my own eyes, with God as my witness, I didn’t do anything. I swear, I swear.”
“That’s fine, Mrs. Tomlinson, but we’d like to look through your cabinet, anyway.”
The medicine cabinet was in the bathroom at the rear of the house. Meyer put down the seat and cover of the toilet bowl, sat, crossed his legs, opened his pad, and got ready to write as Carella opened the cabinet.
“Boy,” Carella said.
“What?”
“Full to the brim.”
“I’m ready,” Meyer said. “Shoot.”
“Contents medicine cabinet of Mrs. Charles (Mary) Tomlinson, 1635 Federico Drive, Sands Spit. Top shelf: one bottle aspirin, one bottle tincture merthiolate, one bottle Librium, one container adhesive bandages, one packet bobby pins, one bottle sodium chloride and dextrose, one tube hydrocortisone acetate, one letter opener. You got that?”
“I’ve got it,” Meyer said, writing. “Shoot.”
“Second shelf: one bottle Esidrix, one tube Vaseline, one bottle insect repellent, one match book, one tube suntan lotion, one bottle Seconal, one toothbrush, one man’s razor, six razor blades new, two razor blades used, one black address book trylon and perisphere gold-embossed on cover, one bottle Demerol APG…”
“I just thought of something,” Meyer said.
“Yeah, what?”
“If I were J. D. Salinger, listing all this crap in the medicine cabinet would be considered a literary achievement of the highest order.”
“It’s a shame you’re only Meyer Meyer,” Carella answered. “Third shelf: one bottle Nytol, three leads from a mechanical pencil, one bottle Florinal…”