At last, thought Carmine complacently as the car set him down at the bedlam of Heathrow, I am free of Myron Mendel Mandelbaum! I can use my economy class ticket and suffer the proper indignities of air travel for nine hours. But Myron had the last laugh. No sooner was Carmine on board the 707 than the chief hostess came swanning into the tail of the plane and upgraded him to first class. Accepting a bourbon and soda in a crystal tumbler, Carmine surrendered to the fleshpots.
“You have all the luck,” Ted Kelly said when Carmine ended his story. “We had several tries at Professor Lefevre, but he swore that Erica Davenport was just one more bright American student availing herself of the economic wisdom of the L.S.E. The lying old goat! He fooled us, all the time prating about his membership in the Communist Party. England’s riddled with open Communists, while our really dangerous ones dived underground with the coming of Joe McCarthy. He did more harm than good.”
“Witch hunts always do,” Carmine said.
“We’re no farther ahead for knowing about Erica.”
“I disagree. Ulysses has lost his blind. Have you ever established when exactly Cornucopia began losing secrets?”
“When our blind arrived ten years ago. The rocket fuel governor two years ago brought the thefts into the open when too many people got to know of it,” Kelly said.
“Has Cornucopia lost anything more since Erica began to get cold feet?”
“You think that happened after the Maxwell banquet, right?”
“Sure.”
“We don’t know,” Kelly said gloomily. “There haven’t been any leaps-and-bounds advances in Red designs, though we’ve made real big ones. Our own espionage network can’t find anything.”
“Well, my guess is that Ulysses is lying low. He’s got a cache of secrets waiting to go, but he’s not sure if the storm’s blown over. With Erica silenced, he’s probably relaxing, though that depends on what she told him when he tortured her.”
“What could she have told him?” Kelly demanded.
“Whatever passed between her and Skeps at the Maxwell event, first off,” Carmine said. “Ulysses may not have been there that night, but deputed Erica to quiz Skeps about something-maybe what Skeps knew about him? But she sidestepped until the Pugh blackmail letter. What we don’t know is whether it was addressed to her and she passed it on to Ulysses, or whether it was directly addressed to Ulysses.” Carmine growled in the back of his throat. “Like it or not-and I don’t like it!-I have to make that god-awful drive to Orleans to see Philomena Skeps again. Now that Erica’s dead, the lady might be more forthcoming about her relationship with Erica.”
“Why don’t you fly up?”
Carmine sneered. “Oh, sure! There’s no air service, and I can just see the Commissioner authorizing the hire of a plane.”
“Jesus, Carmine, sometimes you’re dumb! I’ll get you there and back in an FBI helicopter.”
“And that,” said Carmine grimly, “is why we small-time cops hate the FBI! Money to burn. Which is not going to stop me taking you up on the offer.”
“Tomorrow?”
“The sooner the better.”
“How’s your family doing in London?”
“Gallivanting all over the shop,” said Carmine, not about to tell this new ally that Desdemona and Julian were actually staying in a house outside a pair of villages called Upper Slaughter and Lower Slaughter. In fact, so paranoid had he become that he had fitted his home phone with a scrambler and conversed with Delia about his family in whispers. In some corner of his mind he wondered what the Carstairses thought when their phone was fitted with a scrambler too, but he didn’t care; no one was going to get at Desdemona and Julian again if he could help it.
“Pity you couldn’t stay with them a little longer.”
“Yes, but they’re safe, and having a great time seeing all the sights.”
“I’ve realized,” Ted Kelly said slowly, “the significance of the shots on that telescopic camera. Ulysses wanted to see how to get to your house by sneaking along the water’s edge. There’s no public access, all the properties go clear down to the water.”
“My interpretation too, Ted. Though he sent his assistant, who’s either fitter or younger or both. If he thinks we don’t know he has an assistant, sending him would let Ulysses establish an alibi.” Carmine gave a wry smile. “The odd thing is that hers isn’t the first body to wind up on that piece of land. A poor murdered teenaged girl was dumped there during the tenancy of the previous owner. That body was moved by a rowboat, whereas Erica was carried or dragged along the shore.”
Kelly was staring, astonished. “Jesus! Lightning does strike twice!” he exclaimed. “That was the Ghost case, right?”
“Yes. She was artistically arranged on the edge of the path, not anchored underwater.”
The FBI agent got to his feet. “Call me when you have a time set up for Philomena Skeps. I’ll have a chopper waiting at what Holloman calls an airport.”
Carmine grinned. “We do have weekday flights to New York and Boston,” he said. “Have you forgotten Chubb has a law school and a medical school that grow experts like a vacant lot grows weeds? There’s always a bunch of Chubb experts testifying in some court.”
What a difference flying made! Carmine was on the ground at a tiny airport for private planes in Chatham twenty-five minutes after rising precariously off the ground in Holloman. It was a curious sensation, especially staring down at the scene-often water-between his feet; the chopper was like a glass bowl inside and a mosquito outside. His pilot was a silent guy who concentrated on keeping the insect flying, though he did speak as Carmine alighted.
“I’ll be waiting here” was all he said.
A Ford Fairlane lookalike was parked by the fence, the keys in its ignition but not a soul in sight. Well, well, Carmine thought, the FBI wants Mrs. Skeps and Mr. Tony Bera to think I drove here in my cop car, ass sore and temper ruffled.
Between his first visit and this one, the Cape Cod villages had greened up and produced some May flowers; the day was fine and the sky blue, the Atlantic placidly calm. I still want a summer cottage here, Carmine said to himself. It would be so great to take my children paddling, teach them to swim, help them build sand castles, have peanut butter and jelly picnics. My son’s experience in Holloman Harbor won’t turn him off. Julian is not timid or shy; he’s too like his mother.
He thought about them as he drove the short distance to the Skeps house. People like Corey’s wife deemed their overt happiness a front, but then, that was Maureen; she could never believe that other women weren’t filled with her own discontent. And of course what almost everyone-even Patrick-failed to take into account was the age factor. Most people had been married at least ten years by the time he and Desdemona tied their knot, and the events that had drawn them together were as perilous as exhausting. Desdemona had never been married, and his own first marriage had been a brief thing of lust rather than love. Age, he reflected, brought wisdom, but it also brought a genuine gratitude for the happiness of sharing life with someone as much liked as loved.
Philomena Skeps was in her front garden watching for him, clad in cutoff jeans, sneakers and a plain white T- shirt. The flesh of her smooth brown legs was firm, and it was evident that her breasts did not need a bra to enhance them; her mop of black hair was carelessly bunched on top of her head. If she was aiming for a gamine look, however, she missed the mark; her beauty belonged in a French salon, not a street market.
“Captain,” she said, shaking his hand firmly. “If we sit behind the house, we can enjoy the fresh air without getting cold. I do so much love fresh air.”
“Where’s Mr. Bera?” he asked, following her down the far side of the house and around the back to a flagged patio.
“He’ll be here when he makes it,” she said, indicating a white, woven cane chair. “Lemonade?”
“Thanks.”
He let her settle, let her chat about the joys of spring and fresh air, watching her as he sipped an excellent proprietary concoction. Her eyes in the sunlight were the same green as water full of ribboned weed, dense and changeful.
“You weren’t tempted to go to L.A. for Erica’s funeral?” he asked, holding out his glass for more S.S. Pierce
