Harry thought about what Mrs. Hogendobber said. She also listened as Miranda turned the conversation to church gossip. The best soprano in the choir and the best tenor had started a row over who got the most solos. Mrs. Hogendobber interspersed her pearls of wisdom throughout.
At one o’clock Blair brought in Orlando Heguay. The airplane was late, the terminal crowded, but all was well. Orlando charmed Mrs. Hogendobber. Harry thought he was exactly right for BoomBoom: urbane, wealthy, and incredibly attractive. Whether or not he was a man who needed to give a woman the kind of constant attention BoomBoom demanded would be known in time.
As Blair opened his post box a hairy paw reached out at him. He yanked back his hand.
“Scared you,” Mrs. Murphy laughed.
“You little devil.” Blair reached back into his box and grabbed her paw for a minute.
Orlando walked around and then paused before the photograph of the unidentified victim. Studying it intently, he let out a low whistle.“Good God.”
“I beg your pardon,” Mrs. Hogendobber said.
Harry walked over to explain why it was on the wall but before she could open her mouth Orlando said,“That’s Tommy Norton.”
Everyone turned to him, ashen-faced. Harry spoke first.“You know this man?”
“It’s Tommy Norton. I mean, the hair is wrong and he looks thinner than when I knew him but yes, if it isn’t Tommy Norton it’s his aging double.”
Miranda dialed Rick Shaw before Orlando finished his sentence.
59
After profuse apologies for disrupting Orlando’s holiday, Rick and Cynthia closed the door to Rick’s office. Blair waited outside and read the newspaper.
“Continue, Mr. Heguay.”
“I met Fitz-Gilbert in 1971. We were not close at school. He had a good friend in New York, Tommy Norton. I met Tommy Norton in the summer of 1974. He worked as a gofer in the brokerage house of Kincaid, Foster and Kincaid. I was seventeen that summer and I guess he was fifteen or sixteen. I worked next door at Young and Fulton Brothers. That convinced me I never wanted to be a stockbroker.” Orlando took a breath and continued. “Anyway, we’d have lunch once or twice a week. The rest of the time they’d work us through lunch.”
“We?” Cynthia asked.
“Tommy, Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton, and myself.”
“Go on.” Rick’s voice had a hypnotic quality.
“Well, there’s not much to tell. He was a poor kid from Brooklyn but very bright and he wanted to be like Fitz and me. He imitated us. It was sad, really, that he couldn’t go to prep school, because it would have made him so happy. They weren’t giving out as many scholarships in those days.”
“Did he ever come up to Andover to visit?”
“Well, Fitz’s parents were killed in that awful plane crash that summer, and the next year, at school, Fitz was really out of control. Tommy and Fitz were close, though, and Tommy did come up at least once that fall. He fit right in. Since I was a year older than Tommy, I lost touch after graduating and going to Yale. Fitz went to Princeton, once he straightened out, and I don’t know what happened to Tommy. Well, I do remember that he worked again at Kincaid, Foster and Kincaid the following summer and so did Fitz.”
“Can you think of anyone else who might know Tommy Norton?” Rick asked.
“The head of personnel in those days was an officious toad named Leonard, uh, Leonard Imbry. Funny name. If he’s still there he might remember Tommy.”
“What makes you think the photograph reconstruction is Norton?” Cynthia thought Orlando, with his dark hair and eyes, was extremely handsome and she wished she were in anything but a police uniform.
“I wouldn’t want to bet my life on it but the reconstruction had Tommy’s chin, which was prominent. The nose was a little smaller maybe, and the haircut was wrong.” He shrugged. “It looked like an older version of that boy I knew. What happened to him? Before I could get the story from the ladies in the post office you whisked me away.”
Cynthia answered.“The man in the photograph was murdered, his face severely disfigured, and his body dismembered. The fingerprints were literally cut off the fingerpads and every tooth was knocked out of his head. Over a period of days people here kept finding body parts. The head turned up in a pumpkin at our Harvest Festival. It was really unforgivable and there are children and adults who will have nightmares for a long time because of that.”
“Why would anyone want to kill Tommy Norton?” Orlando was shocked at the news.
“That’s what we want to know.” Rick made more notes.
“When was the last time you saw Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton?” Cynthia wished she could think of enough questions to keep him there for hours.
“At my graduation from Andover Academy. His voice had deepened but he was still a little slow in developing. I don’t know if I would recognize him today. I’d like to think that I would.”
“You said he attended Princeton—after he straightened out.”
“Fitz was a mess there for a while after his parents died. He was very withdrawn. None of us boys was particularly adept at handling a crisis like that. Maybe we wouldn’t be adept today either. I don’t know, but he stayed in his room playing Mozart’sRequiem. Over and over.”
“But he stayed in school?” Rick glanced up from his notes.
“Where else could they put him? There were no other relatives, and the executor of his parents’ estate was a New York banker with a law degree who barely knew the boy. He got through the year and then I heard that summer of ’75 that he started to come out of his shell, working back at Kincaid, Foster and Kincaid with Tommy. They were inseparable, those two. Then there was the accident, of course. I never heard of any trouble at Princeton but Fitz and I weren’t that close, and anything I did hear would have been through the grapevine, since we’d all gone off to different colleges. Hewas a good kid, though, and we all felt so terrible for what happened to him. I look forward to seeing him.”
They thanked Orlando, and Blair, too, for waiting. Then Cynthia got on the horn and called Kincaid, Foster and Kincaid. Leonard Imbry still ran personnel and he sounded two years older than God.
Yes, he remembered both boys. Hard to forget after what happened to Fitz. They were hard workers. Fitz was unstable but a good boy. He lost track of both of them when they went off to college. He thought Fitz went to Princeton and Tommy to City College.
Cynthia hung up the phone.“Chief.”
“What?”
“When are Little Marilyn and Fitz returning from the Homestead?”
“What am I, social director of Crozet? Call Herself.”Herself was Rick’s term for Big Marilyn Sanburne.
This Cynthia did. The Hamiltons would be back tonight. She hung up the phone.“Don’t you find it odd that Orlando recognized the photograph, if it is Tommy Norton, and Fitz-Gilbert didn’t?”
“I’m one step ahead of you. We’ll meet them at their door. In the meantime, Coop, get New York to see if anyone in the police department, registrar, anyone, has records on Tommy Norton or Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton. Don’t forget City College.”
“Where are you going?” she asked as he took his coat off the rack.
“Hunting.”
60
In just a few days at the Homestead, Little Marilyn knew she’d gained five pounds. The waffles at breakfast, those large burnished golden squares, could put a pound on even the most dedicated dieter. Then there were the eggs, the rolls, the sweet rolls, the crisp Virginia bacon. And that was only breakfast.
When the telephone rang, Little Marilyn, languid and stuffed, lifted the receiver and said in a relaxed voice,“Hello.”
“Baby.”
“Mother.” Little Marilyn’s shoulder blades tensed.
“Are you having a good time?”
“Eating like piggies.”
“You’ll never guess what’s happened here.”
Little Marilyn tensed again.“Not another murder?”