So it’s a D.A.R. household, Carmine thought. Ponsonby and his sister probably don’t vote for anyone left of Genghiz Khan.
He got up, his head spinning slightly; the Ponsonbys served their sherry in wine glasses, not little sherry glasses. “Thanks for the hospitality, I appreciate it.” He glanced across at the dog, lying with eyes fixed on him. “So long, Biddy. Nice to meet you too.”
“What do you think of the good Lieutenant Delmonico?” Charles Ponsonby asked his sister when he returned to the kitchen.
“That he doesn’t miss much,” she said, folding stiff egg whites into her cheese and spinach sauce.
“True. They’ll be tramping all over our forest tomorrow.”
“Do you care?”
“Not a bit,” said Charles, scraping the raw soufflé into its dish and putting it in the hot oven. “Though I do feel sorry for them. Futile searches are exasperating.”
Chapter 16
Thursday, January 13th, 1966
“Carmine looks down,” Marciano whispered to Patrick.
“He and Desdemona aren’t playing speaks.”
Commissioner Silvestri cleared his throat. “So how many of them refused to let us look around without a search warrant?”
“In general they’ve been pretty co-operative,” said Carmine, who did indeed look down. “I get to see anything I ask to see, though I’m careful to make sure one of them at least is with me. I didn’t ask Charles Ponsonby for permission to search his forest because I didn’t see the point. If Corey and Abe find any fresh tracks through all this snow, or evidence that fresh tracks have been covered up, then I’ll ask. My bet is that all twenty acres are pristine, so why give Chuck and Claire anguish ahead of time?”
“You like Claire Ponsonby,” said Silvestri, stating a fact.
“Yes, I do. An amazing woman, doesn’t harbor any grudges.” He put her out of his mind. “To answer your original question, so far I’ve had refusals from Satsuma, Chandra and Schiller, the three aliens. Satsuma shipped his private peon, Eido, up to his Cape Cod cottage about ten seconds after I left his penthouse, is my guess. Chandra is an arrogant bastard, but that’s probably understandable in a maharajah’s number one son. Even if we did manage to get a warrant, he’d complain to the Indian Embassy, and that is one very aggressively touchy nation. Schiller is a more pathetic case. I don’t suspect him of anything more unorthodox than lots of photos of naked young men on his walls, but I haven’t pushed him because of his suicide attempt. It was a serious one, not a grandstand.”
Carmine grinned. “Speaking of photos of naked men, I found a doozy in Tamara Vilich’s chains-and-leather bedroom. None other than that ambitious neurosurgeon, Keith Kyneton, who strips better than Mr. Universe. They say these muscle-building guys do it to compensate for an undersized dick, but I can’t say that of him. He’s hung like a porn star.”
“Well, what do you know?” asked Marciano, leaning back in his chair to avoid Silvestri’s cigar – why did it always have to be his nose it got shoved under? “Does that eliminate the Kynetons? Or Tamara Vilich?”
“Not entirely, Danny, though they’ve never been high on my list. She paints very sick pictures and she’s a dominatrix.”
“So Keith baby likes having the shit beaten out of him.”
“Seems so. However, Tamara can’t mark him much or his doting wife would notice. It’s his mother I feel sorriest for.”
“Another one you like,” said Silvestri.
“Yeah, well, time to worry when there’s nobody I like.”
“What do you plan now?” Marciano asked.
“Taxing Tamara with the Kyneton business.”
“That won’t cost you any pain. Her, you don’t like.”
He bearded her in her office. “I found the picture of Dr. Keith Kyneton under the one of your mom,” he said bluntly, admiring her spirit; her eyes, more khaki in this light, lifted to his face fearlessly.
“Fucking isn’t murder, Lieutenant,” she said. “It isn’t even a crime between consenting adults.”
“I’m not interested in the fucking, Miss Vilich. I want to know whereabouts you meet to fuck.”
“At my house, in my apartment.”
“With half of the neighborhood working somewhere in the Chubb Medical School or on Science Hill? Someone who knows Kyneton or his car would be sure to spot him sooner or later. I think you have a hideaway somewhere.”
“You’re wrong, we don’t. I’m single, I live alone, and Keith makes sure there’s no one about if he arrives before dark. Though he never does arrive before dark. That’s why I love winter.”
“What about the faces peering behind a lace curtain? Your affair with Dr. Kyneton gives him a double connection with the Hug. Wife and mistress work there. Does his wife know?”
“She lives in complete ignorance, but I suppose you’ll yap far and wide about Keith and me,” Tamara said sulkily.
“I don’t yap, Miss Vilich, but I will have to talk to Keith Kyneton, make sure there isn’t a hideaway somewhere. I smell violence in your relationship, and violence usually means a safe hideaway.”
“Where the screams can’t be heard. We never go that far, Lieutenant, it’s more a matter of playing out some scenario,” she said. “Strict teacher with naughty little boy, lady cop with her handcuffs and sandbag baton – you know.” Her face changed, she shuddered. “He’ll dump me. Oh, God, what will I do? What will I do after he dumps me?”
Which only goes to show, thought Carmine, departing, just how wrong assumptions can be. I thought the only person she loves is herself, but she’s nuts about a turkey like Keith Kyneton, which may account for her paintings. They’re how she feels about love – how sad, to hate love! Because she knows that Keith is only there for the sex. It’s Hilda he loves – if he’s capable of love.
Tamara caught him at the elevator.
“If you hurry, Lieutenant, you’ll find Dr. Kyneton between operations,” she said. “Holloman Hospital, tenth floor. The best way to get there is through the tunnel.”
It was as spooky as all tunnels; after exploring the warren of tunnels the Japs had lived in on some of the Pacific islands during the War, Carmine feared them, had had to force himself to descend into the bowels of the earth in London to walk the tunnels between tube connections. Tunnels had a growl to them, an anger transmitted from the outraged, invaded earth. No matter how dry or brightly lit, a tunnel suggested lurking terrors. He strode the hundred yards of the Hug tunnel, took its right-hand fork and came into the hospital basement near the laundry.
All the operating rooms were on the tenth floor, but Dr. Keith Kyneton was waiting for him at the elevator block, clad in greens, a pair of cotton masks dangling around his neck.
“Private, I insist on keeping this private,” the neurosurgeon said in a whisper. “In here, quick!”
“Here” was a storeroom choked with boxes of supplies, devoid of chairs or an atmosphere Carmine could use to good effect.
“Miss Vilich told you, huh?” he asked. “I never wanted her to take that goddamn photograph!”
“You should have torn it up.”
“Oh, Jesus, Lieutenant, you don’t understand! She wanted it! Tamara is – is fantastic!”
“That I can believe if you like kinky. Nurse Catheter and her enema kit. Who started it, you or her?”
“I don’t honestly remember. We were both drunk, a hospital party Hilda couldn’t make.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Two years. Christmas of 1963.”
“Where do you meet?”
“At Tamara’s place. I’m very careful going in and out.”
“Nowhere else? No little hideaway in the country?”
“No, just at Tamara’s.”
Suddenly Kyneton turned, put both hands on Carmine’s forearm and clung, trembling, tears coursing down his face.