“Oh, I wish this publicity tour wasn’t happening!” cried Desdemona. “Jim doesn’t want to do it, especially now that Millie has to stay behind for some minor surgery.”
“When did this happen? She didn’t mention it to me at the party,” Delia said, frowning.
“She told me when she phoned yesterday. Minor surgery, she said. I gathered it was to do with her woman’s works.”
“So Jim Hunter hits the road alone,” said Carmine.
“A multiple murderer,” said Desdemona. “Are all publicity tours so interminable and their chaperones so — well, tactless?”
“The rub of this one,” said Carmine, “lies in the Intelligence Quotient of the author. According to my sources, the publicist probably treats Jim like any other first-time author, whereas you can’t. How many people deal successfully with genius? Miss Devane can’t. Put her with any other first-time author, and she’s probably superb. Millie’s defection doesn’t bode well.”
“And launch party tomorrow,” said Delia.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2, 1969
The rare book museum, Pamela Devane thought complacently, made an ideal venue for the reception launching A Helical God upon the reading public. The great square space in the middle of the broadly tiered white marble floor permitted a square column of clear glass to soar toward the ceiling far above; the column was filled with volumes in shelving that patently said the books could be accessed. The full impact of the cellular walls didn’t manifest itself after dark, but the artificial lighting was clever and effective.
A hundred and fifty people had congregated, clad in black tie or evening gown, a glittering assemblage. If the acoustics were on the poor side thanks to the lack of small or soft objects to absorb the sound waves, that couldn’t be helped; it just made the noise far noisier. M.M. and Chauce Millstone were the joint hosts, both in academic robes, and consequently much photographed. Angela, doing her best wafty impression, was circulating merrily in a beaded dress reminiscent of a 1920s flapper. Yes, thought Pamela Devane, an Ivy League institution like Chubb had a way of doing things that made political or business parties, doomed to hotel ballrooms, look tawdry. What a setting!
Millie Hunter was magnificent. Her hair was loosely swept up on top of her head, she wore a small pair of diamond studs in the lobes of her little flat ears, and her face was made up so well that the cameras feasted on her. Her dress was long and graceful, of tawny satin that displayed her figure to perfection. She wore her large, beaded bag on a long, beaded cord over her left shoulder.
“Isn’t this grand?” Patrick asked his first cousin as they stood with their wives to one side of the main gathering. “Millie is gorgeous. For the first time, Carmine, I really feel as if the nightmare of uncertainty at least is over.”
When Nessie and Desdemona moved away in the direction of Gloria Silvestri and Delia Carstairs, Patrick’s expression changed.
“Is it true, what Millie tells me? That you suspect Jim of all these murders? It’s been hell existing outside the parameters of your investigations, but surely it can’t be Jim,” Patrick said.
Carmine sighed. This man had stood as a father to him through the stormy years of adolescence, despite his own growing family and his medical commitments. Of all the men on this earth, Carmine loved Patrick O’Donnell the most. And, as thanks, he was the harbinger of terrible news. Well, it had to come, but he had hoped not here, not tonight. “Patsy, let’s leave it until we can sit over some of your coffee, drown it with bourbon if we want?”
“By all means,” Patrick said stiffly, “but I need an answer tonight. Let it be short. We can have the talk tomorrow.”
“Okay. First of all, I have no proof. None at all. Yet I know that Jim Hunter killed three people to protect the moment that’s happening tonight. Not all personally. He vectored one, and brilliantly, and is implicated in a fourth killing. If Millie knows, it’s because Jim told her, but I don’t think he has told her. To try to check his homicidal career, I told him that I know he is a killer. That, I think, will stop him.”
“I see.” Patrick whisked away tears. “Thanks, cuz.”
“Tomorrow, your office, five o’clock.”
People moved in the patterns of a large party minus seating, forming small circles around certain guests like Gloria Silvestri, soignée in a limp, heavy, subtly glittering grey dress slit to mid-thigh, revealing a black-sheathed, perfect leg — how did she do it at her age?
“Complete control of her emotions,” said Delia to Angela. “Aunt Gloria has no self-doubts, no money worries, and two sons who never gave their parents any real trouble. She could stand amid the ruins of Troy already planning how to have a comfortable, carefree enslavement. In short, she’s a goddess of a kind.”