imagined that she flipped out-she
“What else could it be except the strychnine?”
“I don’t know and you don’t know. Shit happens, Carmine, but we don’t know what kind of shit it is, so cool it!”
A few neighbors had collected, the other two North Holloman cops had cordoned off the path to the house, and Patsy was on the porch waiting for them. He came to meet them.
“Not strychnine,” he said shortly, keeping his voice low. “He choked to death on a pencil eraser that looked like a strawberry.”
The relief flooded through Carmine and Abe like a break in a dam wall, too overwhelming not to be felt before the shame of feeling it succeeded it. Not their negligence! But it might have been, it might have been. The poor little guy was still dead, though a merciful God had spared them the ultimate grief.
“How is she?” Carmine asked, aware that he felt faint.
“Sit down, cuz. You too, Abe.”
They sat on the steps leading up to the porch.
“She’s in there,” Patsy said, sounding savage, jerking his head at the living room windows. “Thank God he’s not. I don’t want to set eyes on that woman ever again!”
Carmine got up at once, astonished. “Patsy! What did she do? Feed the thing to him?”
“She may as well have, but she’ll tell you all about it.” He led them through the front door and up the stairs to Thomas Peter’s bedroom.
Abe and Carmine watched Patrick gather the little boy up tenderly, put him into the towel-lined cavity of a bag, then hurry him away on what looked to the curious like a flat, empty gurney; it had a troughlike bottom that did not betray the presence of a small body.
Mrs. Barbara Norton was sitting with Corey and Sergeant Dave O’Brien. Her calm was unimpaired, and it was only as her story unfolded that the layers of insanity peeled away to ever deeper ones. She seemed to have no idea that her son was dead, though she had known it when she spoke on the phone to Dave O’Brien, had told him that Tommy was black in the face and not breathing; but more, she had said she killed him.
“Now that Peter is gone,” she told the men, “I can do what I want at last.” She leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. “Peter was a glutton. He insisted we had to eat whatever he ate-the children swelled up like balloons! I never tried to argue, it wasn’t worth it. I just bided my time. I bided my time.” She nodded seriously, then sat back and smiled.
“No one really likes fat people, you know,” she began once more, “so after Peter died, I put us on a diet. Marlene and Tommy drink water. I drink black coffee. We can eat all the raw vegetables we like, but no bread, no cookies, no cake, nothing with sugar in it. No milk, no cream, no desserts. I let Tommy and Marlene have crackers at breakfast and lunch. We eat broiled skinless chicken or fish, and steamed vegetables. Rice. The weight just falls off! By the time Tommy goes to school this September, he’ll be as trim as our hedge!”
When a silence fell, Carmine decided to risk a question. “How did you stay so trim, Barbara?”
“Stuck my finger down my throat.”
It’s clear why the poor little guy choked trying to eat an eraser, Carmine thought, but how long has the madness been there? What brought it out? Peter Norton’s death? Or did he die as a consequence of it? Tommy’s death has tipped her right over the edge, but I have to try to get some answers.
“What did you do with the strychnine, Barbara?”
“Threw the bottle in the Pequot.”
“Did you take the cap off first?”
She looked indignant. “Sure I did! I’m not stupid!”
“Why did you pick April third as the day to put strychnine in Peter’s orange juice?”
“Oh, silly, you know that!” she said, eyes widening.
“I forget. Tell me again.”
“Because it only worked on April third! Any other day, and the potion lost its magic. He was very firm about that.”
“Who was?”
“Silly, you know who!”
“It’s my memory again. I forget his name.”
“Reuben.”
“I’ve forgotten his last name too, Barbara.”
“How can you forget what he didn’t have?”
“Where did you meet Reuben?”
“At the bowling alley, silly!”
“What magic worked the potion on April third?”
She was getting bored and tired, or perhaps it was both; her eyelids drooped, then she made an effort and lifted them. “Magic only lives for a single day, Reuben told me.” She began to stir in her chair, agitation growing. “He lied! He lied! He told me that Peter would just go to sleep! I did not get it wrong! April third was the day!”
“Yes, Barbara, you got it right,” Carmine said. “He was the liar. Sit a while and think of happy things.”
The four men endured the silence, too afraid to catch any other pair of eyes, trying not to look at her.
She spoke. “Where’s Tommy?”
Not Marlene, the girl. Just Tommy.
“He’s asleep,” Carmine said.
“I don’t imagine she’ll ever come to trial,” he said later to Commissioner Silvestri, “and the poor little boy solved the case. Can you credit it, John? A starvation diet inflicted overnight on a fat five-year-old who’s been eating nonstop since he started to walk. The girl is three years older, and cunning. She stole from Mommy’s purse to buy food, but she couldn’t steal enough to feed her own appetite, let alone her kid brother’s as well. She was scared stiff of the day Mommy counted her change, but she would have gone on stealing until Mommy did find out.”
Silvestri shook his sleek dark head, blinked rapidly. “Is the girl okay? Are there any relatives willing to take her? The system would turn her into another master criminal.”
“Norton’s parents are taking her-they live in Cleveland. She’s sole heir to his estate, which I imagine will go into a trust until she’s of age.” Carmine found a smile. “Maybe she stands a better chance this way. At least, I have to hope so.”
“A rubber strawberry!” Silvestri exclaimed. “Was it that lifelike?”
“Only to a ravenously hungry little boy,” Carmine said, “though I didn’t see it before he tried to eat it. It wasn’t his, it belonged to the little girl, old enough to know it for what it was. He’d combed the house looking for edibles.”
“I guess it means that if you don’t want fat kids, you have to start ’em off right,” Silvestri said. “That stupid diet turned one child into a thief and killed the other.” His black eyes gleamed at the godless Carmine. “I hope you’re going to have some masses said for little Tommy’s soul-St. Bernard’s can do with a new roof. Otherwise Mrs. Tesoriero will see Our Lady’s face wet next time it rains, and claim a miracle.”
“We’ve all had wet faces today, John. Yes, I’ll see you ten masses and raise you one.”
“I don’t suppose I have any choice,” said Desdemona that evening as they shared their before-dinner drink.
“Choice?”
“I’ve married into a Catholic family, so my children will be raised Catholics.”
Carmine stared at her in surprise. “I didn’t think you minded, Desdemona. You’ve never mentioned it.”
“I suppose that’s because until Julian’s advent I hadn’t thought it important to you. You’re not at all religious.”
“True. That’s my work, it gets God out of the system. But I want a Catholic education for my kids-my old school for the boys, St. Mary’s for the girls,” said Carmine, preparing to do battle. “They should be exposed to a Christian God, and what better one than the original?”
