His breakfast finished, Chez lit a cigarette and beckoned for the waitress and coffee. “You trying to say we’re mixed up in this by accident?” he asked incredulously.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Her eyes widened. “Chez, I’m afraid! I’m deliberately being incriminated, I know I am!”
“Don’t the cops have other suspects?”
“A black man — I mean a black man! A genius biochemist who’s written a popular book on his work. The long lost son, John, knew him and his wife in California. The wife — she’s white — is very beautiful. She could have been a model, except that she’s another biochemist, the one who made the poison. They’re a striking couple, Chez. When I saw them at the C.U.P. banquet, I was amazed. She looks at her husband as if he’s God.”
“Anything else to report?”
“No. And I hope you remember that I’ve paid back my loan.”
He laughed. “I don’t need your dough, Vina. There’s not a high end property in my part of Florida doesn’t come through me, and some of my commissions run into six figures. You’re safe, and you have to admit that Max Tunbull was just what you were looking for.”
“I admit it freely. I had no intention of continuing to model until the work stopped coming in, Chez. But never think you masterminded me through a marriage connection. You didn’t. I have a great talent for design that suits book publishing. I am grateful for the loan that enabled me to buy Imaginexa. Grateful too for the hint to approach Max Tunbull. But my debts are all paid back and I owe you no favors, my shady New York friend. That part of both our lives is best kept closed.”
“Are you still smoking Sobranies?” he asked.
“When I need to make an impression.”
Chez leaned across the table, his head close. “Did the same guy poison my Em as well as the other two?”
“The cops think so.”
“But no one knows who it is, except it’s a man.”
“They’re not even sure of that.” She prepared to leave. “Now I’m going home to my baby.”
“How old?”
“Three months.”
“Did the worst happen?”
“Yes.”
“And the guy who wrote the book is black?”
“Yes.”
“Caught on the horns of a dilemma, Vina?”
“No. Max is a very good and a very loyal husband.”
Ivan and Lily gave Val lunch; Chez had gone off somewhere in his rental car, a Cadillac, without saying when he would be back, and Lily was the kind of wife would effortlessly produce a lunch for Uncle Chez when he returned.
His advent was the main topic of conversation.
“He seemed very nice to me,” said Lily, who was one of those fortunate people can find nothing to dislike in others. “I love his hair, it’s so trendy.” She ran an affectionate hand over Ivan’s thatch, which did cover his ears as a homage to the fashion, but longer than that he would not go. “And his clothes! Hip as well as trendy.”
Lily was far lower class than Emily had hoped for in Ivan’s wife, but it hadn’t taken Emily long to understand that there was no social class for saints, and Lily was definitely a saint. So she had never suffered the sharp edge of her mother-in-law’s tongue, and didn’t appreciate for one moment the significance of Davina’s gift for her — a strappy garden plant called mother-in-law’s tongue.
The two children came in, panting and laughing. Maria was seven, had the Tunbull hair and yellowish eyes, and promised to be very pretty when she matured; Billy was five, the same in coloring, and a little rotund; he had his mother’s sunny nature and a lust for adventure that kept her in a lather of worry.
“Mom, it’s starting to snow,” said Maria. “Please may we stay outdoors a while?”
“Yes, yes!” Billy trumpeted.
Lily considered it, smiled and nodded. “An hour,” she said. “Maria, keep an eye on your watch, you can tell the time. Bring Billy back whether he wants to or not.”
Off they trooped; she sat down.
“Chez has changed out of all recognition,” said Val, still prone to dissolve into tears. “Em would have been so impressed.”
“I hardly remember him,” Ivan said, tackling his creamed chipped beef and toast with enthusiasm; he hadn’t much liked his mother, especially after he married Lily and discovered how lovely women could be. “Except,” he said, swallowing a delicious mouthful, “he looked like a greaser. And a hood. Didn’t he hang out with Vito Gianotti, Dad?”
“He sure did. He must have been arrested a dozen times for this or that, but the cops always had to let him go. He had a brain. He also had a high opinion of himself. About fifteen years ago he moved to New York City and never bothered to come back, even on a visit. But he sent Em really good jewelry on her birthdays and Christmases. It’ll all go to you now, Lily. A New York City cop up here making enquiries told me he was running a racket involving good-looking, sexy girls, but not as prostitutes. Used them to blackmail old guys of some pretty big payments. If one was unco-operative, he had a special girl he’d send to see the wife. But he was clever, the cops couldn’t pin a thing on him or his stable. Then about five years ago he skipped. Even Em had no idea whereabouts he’d gone,” said Val, less fond of creamed chipped beef.