away.
Over breakfast at the Lotus Diner-veggie omelet for Pearl, scrambled eggs and sausages for Quinn-Pearl said, “How are we going to play it today?”
“I’ll send Sal and Harold to meet with the liaison cop Renz is giving us. They can pick up whatever information the NYPD has. It’s still early for there to be much of that. Millie’s body’s barely cold.”
Pearl took a bite of egg-sheathed broccoli and chewed thoughtfully. She sipped her coffee, also thoughtfully. “Maybe this whole thing will be easier than we think. Could be Millie was having an affair with Philip Wharkin and he turned out to be a nutcase. They had an argument. Then everything went all pear shaped, as the British say. It was a one-off thing.”
Quinn looked at her. “You’ve been to England?”
“Been to the BBC.”
“Would it be that simple on the BBC?”
“Never. The inspector would have nothing to do.”
“There we are,” Quinn said.
“Where?”
“Pear shaped.”
They were finishing their second cups of coffee when Pearl’s cell phone sounded its four opening notes of the old Dragnet theme. She pulled the instrument from her purse and automatically flipped up the lid, completing the connection without thinking to check to see who was calling.
“Pearl? Are you there, dear? It’s important.”
“Hold on a minute,” Pearl said. She moved the phone well away from her, beneath the table. “It’s my mother, out at Golden Sunset,” she said to Quinn. “This is gonna take a while. Why don’t you go ahead without me and I’ll see you at the office.”
Pearl’s mother lived at Golden Sunset Assisted Living in New Jersey, only she didn’t quite see it as living.
“Tell her I said hello,” Quinn said, and took a last sip of coffee.
Pearl watched him pay at the cash register and wave at her as he walked from the diner.
“I’m back, Mom,” Pearl said. “Now what’s so important?”
“Did I hear that nice Captain Quinn, dear?”
“You did. He was just leaving. And he’s no longer a captain. What’s so-”
“Pot roast,” her mother said. “You know how, when you too seldom visit here at the nursing home-”
“Assisted living.”
“-you coordinate it with pot-roast night? Well, many others have and do and would like to continue. Traditions are much underrated and important, even life-sustaining, like in that song in Fiddler on the Roof… ”
“What’s happened, Mom?”
“Pot-roast night. They have moved pot-roast night.”
Pearl was bewildered. “Can’t you… adjust?”
“They have moved it from Tuesday evening to Thursday evening. People like yourself come to visit on pot- roast night because-and here you will agree-the pot roast is the only digestible food they serve. And to make things worse, not in the gastronomical sense, Thursday evening is SKIP-BO night. The choice for the inmates-”
“Residents.”
“-will be either conversation with their visitors, or SKIP-BO. ”
SKIP-BO was a card game Pearl didn’t understand and didn’t want to learn. Or talk about. “Damn it!” Pearl said.
“Don’t curse, dear.”
“My phone’s blinking, Mom. Battery’s going dead. I forgot to charge it last night.”
“A string tied around the finger…”
Pearl held the phone well away from her.
“… not so tight as to leave an unattractive indentation in the skin…”
“Fading and breaking up,” Pearl said.
Pearl snapped her phone closed, breaking the connection.
“Quinn says hello,” she murmured, and finished her coffee before it was too cool to drink.
6
Quinn was seated behind his desk, clearing away yesterday’s mail, when Pearl walked into the Quinn and Associates office on West Seventy-ninth Street. The office was still warm, even though the air conditioner had been running awhile. There was a trickle of rust-stained condensation zigzagging down the wall beneath the window housing the unit. Pearl was wearing the expression she usually wore after a phone conversation with her mother. Quinn could understand Pearl’s aggravation, but he rather liked her mother.
Sal Vitali and Harold Mishkin were already there. Vitali was seated at his desk, making a tent with his fingers. Mishkin was standing over by the coffee machine, gazing down at it with his fists propped on his hips, as if to hurry it along. Vitali was short but with a bearlike build, swarthy complexion, and thick black hair going gray. He had a voice like a chain saw.
“Harold brought doughnuts,” he grated.
Over by Mr. Coffee, Mishkin smiled and nodded. He was slight, and with the beginning of a stoop. His brown hair was thinning and arranged in a comb-over, his chin receded beneath a narrow mouth and enormously bushy graying mustache. Mishkin was everybody’s idea of a milquetoast. Everybody would be mostly right, except for when Mishkin knew he had to do something extremely difficult. Then, hands quaking, mustache twitching, stomach knotting, Mishkin would do it. “True courage,” Vitali often growled, defending his longtime partner.
“I’m coming from a big breakfast,” Pearl said. “You’ve gotta let us know the day before if you’re gonna bring doughnuts, Harold.”
“They’re the kind you like,” Mishkin said. “Cream-filled with chocolate icing.”
“You trying to talk me into one to soothe your conscience, Harold?”
“You read too much into it, Pearl,” Vitali said. “He’s just trying to make you fatter.”
Pearl picked up a silver letter opener and held it so morning sunlight glinted into Mishkin’s sensitive eyes. Mishkin took off his glasses and turned away.
“He’s being nice to you, Pearl,” Vitali growled. “He figures you can eat breakfast and have a doughnut for dessert. It’s not against the law.”
“If I wanted a doughnut-”
“For God’s sake!” Quinn said, thinking it was amazing how Pearl could walk into a room and change the mood, even the temperature. “Has anybody looked up the killer in the phone book?”
Vitali appeared surprised. “Huh?”
“Philip Wharkin. The guy who wrote on the victim’s mirror with her blood.”
“We don’t know he’s the killer,” Pearl pointed out.
“Do we know he isn’t? Do we know he’s not some psycho with an irresistible urge to leave his name at murder scenes?”
“I guess not,” Mishkin said, and sampled his coffee. He made a face as if it was too hot.
“Then let’s find out. I know it’s unlikely somebody named Philip Wharkin is actually the killer, but there’s some reason that the killer left a name behind, even if it’s only so we waste our time. Only it’s not a waste of time.” He walked over and stood in front of his desk, facing everyone but Mishkin, who was off to the side. “Sal, you and Harold find all the Philip Wharkins in the New York-area directories. Talk to them and find out where they were when Millie Graff’s murder was committed. Pearl will use the computer to help you locate them. For all we know, the killer’s got a website where he brags about what he’s done. When Fedderman comes in, he and I are gonna drive over to Millie’s neighborhood and interview anybody who might have seen, heard, tasted, touched, or smelled anything that might possibly be connected with what happened to the victim.”
Vitali stood up and began stuffing pens and papers into his pockets. Mishkin worked a plastic lid onto his
