The mood at the Cartwrights’ had changed, and drastically; with Grant in custody for the murder of Jimmy, a pall of gloom had descended over the three remaining Cartwrights, suddenly horribly aware of Cathy’s death. The haughty princess Selma was in the kitchen trying to prepare dinner, her tears running unchecked into a bowl of cooked elbow macaroni. Several different kinds of cheese stood on the counter together with a carton of milk. Carmine took pity on her.
“Grate a cup each of cheddar, Romano and Parmesan,” he said, tearing off a sheet of paper towel and handing it to her. “Wipe your face and blow your nose, then you’ll be able to see.” He took a piece of macaroni, popped it in his mouth, and made a face. “No salt in the cooking water.”
The girl had obeyed him and was now gazing into a cupboard. “What does a grater look like?” she asked, sniffling.
“This,” said Carmine, producing it from a cabinet. “Hold the block of cheese against it and shove it downward- onto a plate, not the counter. Find the measuring set and keep each cheese separate. While you do that, I’ll find your father. When you’re finished, wait for me, okay? We’ll get there.”
Gerald Cartwright was in his office upstairs, weeping quite as hard as his daughter.
“I don’t know what to do, what would work out for the best,” he said helplessly when Carmine came in.
“Get your mother down here, first off. And a sister, yours or hers. You can’t bring up your daughter in ignorance of domestic routines and then expect her to pitch in like a trained housekeeper-which you should have employed when Jimmy was born, then at least the Grant half of this mess wouldn’t have happened. Can’t you afford a housekeeper, Mr. Cartwright?”
“Not right now, Captain,” Cartwright said, too dejected to defend himself. “Michel just quit-he’s gone to a restaurant in Albany.
Now I have to decide what to do with l’Escargot-close it, or change the cuisine along with the name.”
“I can’t help you there, sir, but I do suggest that you think a little less about your businesses and a little more about your children!” Carmine said tartly. He sat down and glared fiercely at Gerald Cartwright. “However, right at this moment I want to know about your wife. You’ve had time to think, and I hope you’ve used it. Did she have any enemies?”
“No!” Cartwright said on a gasp. “No!”
“Did you engage in pillow talk when you were home?”
“I guess so, insofar as Jimmy let us.”
“Which one of you did the talking?”
“Both of us. She was always interested in what Michel was doing. She thought I was too soft on him.” Cartwright stopped to mop his eyes. “She talked about Jimmy, how unhappy the other kids were-and you’re right, she kept asking for a full-time housekeeper. But I thought she was exaggerating, honest! We’ve always had Mrs. Williams once a week for the heavy cleaning.”
“Did Mrs. Cartwright ever mention anyone stalking her, or otherwise annoying her? What about her friends? Did she get on with them?”
“It’s like I told you before, Captain, Cathy didn’t have time for a social life. Maybe other wives complain about catty friends or the bargains they picked up in Filene’s Basement, but not Cathy. And she never once mentioned a man.”
“So you have no idea why she was murdered?”
“No, none at all.”
Carmine got up. “Make your business decision quickly, Mr. Cartwright, and bring some family in. Otherwise you might have Junior in trouble with the law too.”
Gerald Cartwright went sheet-white, and bent his head over his books defensively.
Junior was glued to the giant television in the den next door; on his way past, Carmine beckoned imperiously.
“Come on, kid, turn it off. Until she gets some help, your sister needs a hand in the kitchen.”
The boy did as he was told, but sulkily, and followed Carmine downstairs with dragging steps.
The cheese was grated, but the recalcitrant block of Parmesan had bitten back. Its crumbling tendrils were stained, and Selma was sucking her knuckles.
“Junior, get a Band-Aid,” Carmine commanded, inspecting the graze. “Lesson number one when grating: watch your hands when the cheese wears down.”
He sprinkled salt into the macaroni, teaching as he went, showed Selma how to make a tolerable cheese sauce, then made her mix half the Parmesan with breadcrumbs and sprinkle it on top of the macaroni and cheese. Into the oven it went, then, perched on a kitchen stool, Carmine found Cathy Cartwright’s copy of
“Did your mom have any enemies that you know of, Selma?” he asked, thumbing the pages of the cookbook.
“
He put the cookbook down, slid off the stool and pressed her shoulder briefly. Then his gaze fell on Junior, about to disappear through the inside door; his lips tightened.
“And you,” Carmine said to her brother as he opened the back door, “are going to do your share of the chores in future. If Selma is the cook, you’re in charge of the laundry.”
Snap! The door closed on Junior’s outraged protests.
As he walked to his car, Carmine was grinning. It was rare for him to involve himself so personally in a family’s tragedy, but the
Cartwrights were a special case. Not one but two murders, each by a different killer. They would survive, but thanks to Selma rather than to either Gerald. Though she hadn’t known how, she had already been trying to cook when he arrived. The tragedy had thrown her in at life’s deep end, but she was paddling bravely.
Carmine went back to County Services and a desk piled high, sat himself down and thanked his lucky stars for his secretary, Delia Carstairs, who happened to be Commissioner John Silvestri’s niece. One incidence of nepotism actually working, he thought as his gaze traveled over the neat piles. Delia was a treasure he had inherited along with his captaincy; mere lieutenants didn’t have secretaries, they availed themselves of the typing pool or their own typing skills, and they did their own filing. The odd thing was that she had belonged to Danny Marciano, his senior still, yet Danny had given her up with no more than a loud wail of anguish-and two secretaries to replace her.
She walked in from her tiny office, tiny only because all four of its walls were taken up by monstrous filing cabinets.
“About time,” she said, distributing another sheaf of papers on various stacks.
She was thirty years old, short, and dressed in a manner that she called smart but that Carmine privately called appalling. Today she wore a fussy suit of some multicolored, knobby fabric whose skirt barely reached her knees. Two utterly shapeless legs of the kind seen on grand pianos supported a tubby body and the weight of far too much massive costume jewelry. Her face was caked with makeup, her frizzy hair was an improbable shade of strawberry blonde, and her shrewd, twinkling, light brown eyes were surrounded by enough paint to satisfy a Cleopatra. The only product of a union between
Commissioner Silvestri’s sister and an Oxford don, Delia had been born and raised in England.
Both parents despaired of her. But Delia required no parental guidance of any kind; she knew exactly what she was going to do and where she was going to do it. A course at a top London secretarial college saw her graduate at the head of her class; as soon as her papers and certificate were in her hands, she packed her bags and climbed on a plane for New York. There she went to work in the NYPD headquarters typists’ pool, and soon found herself the private secretary of a deputy commissioner. Unfortunately, the bulk of his work concerned social misfits, and it quickly dawned on Delia that she was actually too desirable to wind up where she wanted to be-in Homicide. The NYPD was just too vast, and she was too good at her job.
So she took a train to Holloman and asked Uncle John for a job. Since his phone had been ringing off the hook about her all the previous day, Silvestri ignored his dictum about nepotism and grabbed her. Not for himself, but for Danny Marciano, whose administrative duties were far heavier. What Delia didn’t know about police work could have been written on the head of a pin, but it didn’t occur to Uncle John that his niece craved blood and gore until
