echoing Purvey’s shark metaphor. “In that respect Erica’s indecision was great. Unfortunately, in most respects it was disastrous.”
“What’s going to happen now that Dr. Davenport is gone?”
“Phil Smith is bound to take over. Funny, that. For the last fifteen years he’s been inert, now all of a sudden he’s woken up and is behaving like a chief executive.” Grierson frowned. “Trouble is, I’m not sure his burst of energy will last. I hope it does. There’s no way I want the job.”
“What’s Smith’s wife like?” Carmine asked, thinking of the brown pancake hat.
“Natalie?” Grierson laughed. “She’s a Lapp-calls herself a Sami. Hard to believe she’s an Eskimo, isn’t it? Weird blue eyes, blonde hair. The Sami are fair, I’m told. Her English is awful. I like her, she’s-uh-jovial. The kids are real lookers, all blonde. A girl, then two boys. None of them wanted to follow Pop into the firm-amazing how often that happens. No matter how rich people are, their kids do their own thing.”
“No clotheshorses among them?”
“Just good workhorses, Natalie saw to that. She has some bug in her head about the homeland, so the minute each kid got through with college, off they went to the land of the midnight sun. They didn’t stay, of course. Scattered around the world.”
“The Smiths sound like an odd couple.”
This is fascinating, Carmine was thinking; I would never have suspected Wal Grierson of this kind of cozy gossip. Just goes to show. He’s best friends with a woman-his wife.
“The Smiths are absolutely orthodox compared to what the Collinses used to be like when his first wife was alive. Aki was Turkish-another blonde. Gorgeous in a weird way. Came from somewhere near Armenia or the Caucasus. Their sons are the best-looking kids-young men now, of course. One’s a Marine officer stationed in West Germany, the other’s a NASA scientist trying to put a man on the moon.”
“What happened to her? Divorce?”
Wal Grierson’s face sobered. “No. She died in a shooting accident at their cabin in Maine. Some fucking gun- crazy idiot mistook her for a deer and blew her face away. That’s why we put up with Fred’s bimbos. When Aki was alive, he was different.”
“That’s a real tragedy,” Carmine said.
“Yeah, poor old Fred.”
Strange pictures were forming in Carmine’s mind, but they wavered and quivered on the fringes of actual thought, like moving objects some sadistic ophthalmologist deliberately kept right on the margins of peripheral vision. They were there, but they were not there. Swing your head to focus on them, and they vanished-poof!
“Or am I going crazy?” he asked Desdemona, the scrambler on the phone engaged.
“No, dear heart, you’re stone cold sane,” she said. “I know the feeling. Oh, I miss you!” She paused, then added in a master stroke of guile, “So does Julian. He does, Carmine! Every time a man approaches with something like your gait, he starts jigging up and down-it’s adorable!”
“That’s an awful thing to say.”
“You have an idea who it is, don’t you?” she asked.
“No, that’s just it-I don’t. I should, yet I don’t.”
“Cheer up, it will come to you. Is the weather nice?”
He got his own back. “Perfect Connecticut spring days.”
“Guess what it’s doing here?”
“Raining. At fifty degrees of latitude, Desdemona, with a climate that mild, it has to rain a lot. It’s the Gulf Stream.”
When Simonetta Marciano barged into his office, Carmine was surprised at the intrusion, but not at the manner of it; Simonetta always barged, it was her nature. She had never grown out of the war-year 1940s, which had seen her greatest triumph, the marital catching of Major Danny Marciano, who had thus far escaped entrapment. Barely out of her teens, Simonetta had no use for the GIs in her own age group. She wanted a mature man who could keep her in good style from the beginning of their relationship. And, setting eyes on Major Marciano, Simonetta went after him with all the delicious ploys of youth, beauty, and high spirits. Now he was within a couple of years of retirement from the Holloman Police, while she was in her early forties.
Today she was clad in a button-down-the-front dress of pink with darker pink polka dots; it ended at her knees, displaying good legs in stockings with seams, and her shoes were pink kid with oldfashioned medium heels and bows on their fronts. Her dark hair was rolled back from her face in a continuous sausage, and on the back of her head she had pinned a huge pink satin bow. The fashion these days was for pink or brownish lipstick, but Simonetta wore brilliant red. All of which might have suggested to strangers that she was free with her favors, but they would have been mistaken. Simonetta was passionately devoted to her Danny and their four children; her baser qualities were all channeled into gossip, and there was nothing she didn’t know. She had feelers into the Mayor’s offices, Chubb, the clutter of departments that made up County Services, the Chamber of Commerce, the Knights of Columbus, Rotary, the Shriners, and many more places that might yield some juicy tidbit. Having Simonetta on your side, her husband joked, was like enjoying all the benefits of the Library of Congress without the hassle of borrowing.
“Hi,” said Carmine, coming to peck her rouged cheek and put her into a chair. “You look great, Netty.”
She preened. “Coming from you, that’s a compliment.”
“Coffee?”
“No, thanks, I can’t stay, I’m on my way to a women’s lib meeting in Buffo’s wine cellar.” She giggled. “Lunch and a good Italian red as well as lots of dirt.”
“I didn’t know you were a feminist, Netty.”
“I’m not,” she said, and snorted. “What I am into is equal pay for equal work.”
“How can I help?” Carmine asked, genuinely baffled.
“Oh, you can’t! I’m not here for
“You were there yourself, Netty.”
“I was, at John’s table. None of us knew a thing about what you were looking for, I remember that.” She plunged off on an apparent tangent. “You know the Lovely Peace funeral home?”
“Who doesn’t? Bart must have buried half of East Holloman.”
“The half that matters, anyway.”
He was intrigued; this was typical Simonetta, a perfectionist at the art of gossip. Drop crumbs on the water and gather all the ducks, then produce your shotgun, that was Simonetta.
“He hasn’t been the same since Cora died,” Netty said.
“They were a devoted couple,” Carmine said gravely.
“Such a pity he didn’t have a son to take over the business! Daughters are well and good, but they never seem to want to follow in Pop’s footsteps.”
“Except, as I recollect, Netty, the older one’s husband is a mortician who has taken over Bart’s business.”
“Don’t let Bart hear you call him a mortician! He likes the old description-undertaker.”
Carmine had had enough. “Netty, where are you going?”
“I’m getting there, I’m getting there! It’s eighteen months since Cora died, and Bart’s daughters worry about him,” Netty said, determined to pursue her own convoluted course. “They let him alone for the first six months, but when he didn’t start to get out and around, they pushed him. He got nagged into going to the Schumann whenever there was a new show in town, to the Chubb Rep season, the movies, public meetings-the poor old guy got no peace.”
“Are you leading up to informing me that he was at the Maxwell banquet?” Carmine asked.
She looked crestfallen. “Gosh, Carmine, you’re impatient! But okay, Bart’s daughters nagged him into buying a plate for the Maxwell banquet.” She cheered up. “I was talking to his younger daughter yesterday, and she said something about Bart’s being at the banquet. Seems he didn’t have a good time, at least when he sat down at some table he told Dolores was full of drunks and weirdos. We were sitting next to each other in Gloria’s beauty parlor, and Dolores mentioned this after I asked how Bart was doing.” She grinned. “I got a blow by blow description of Bart’s progress, we had plenty of time waiting for the lotion to set.” She got up, gathering her sweater, her car keys and her pink plastic pocketbook. “Gotta go, Carmine, gotta go! You go see Bart. Maybe he can help.”
