The Prodigal Son(66)

By the time everyone met in Carmine’s office at four that afternoon, the atmosphere had changed. Somehow, and absolutely indefinably, people knew that things had happened to knock cop theories down like pins in a bowling alley.

“John Hall’s will is legal and extant,” said Abe, “and it appears that both baby Alexis and Ivan Tunbull are now the richer by several millions each. Which wasn’t known at the time he was killed — we think. But bear in mind that John might have told someone who isn’t owning up, or told the poisoner, who killed him anyway. Mr. Zucker the Portland lawyer has acted for John and Wendover Hall for many years, and could tell me what John’s old will said. Namely, it left everything to a halfway house for recovering psychiatric patients in San Francisco because John had spent almost two years in and out of it during his late teens and early twenties.”

“So his old will left nothing to the Hunters?” asked Delia.

“Nothing. However, he didn’t have much to leave. Wendover Hall’s endowment is very recent — last December, more or less synchronously with John’s new will, which is prudent.”

“But both Hunters maintained he was rich,” Buzz objected.

“He was, but an allowance kind of wealth. Whatever he needed or asked for he was given, and not grudgingly, Zucker says. Nor apparently did the old man ever contemplate disinheriting him. Wendover Hall wanted to see what John decided about his real family before making the major endowment. He was very pleased by John’s decision to have two families.”

“Does he know how John disposed of his gift in the will?” Buzz asked.

“Zucker says no. He does now, of course, but has no wish to fight it. The money was John’s to do with as he willed.”

“It doesn’t take the heat off Ivan,” Donny said.

Abe sat silent for a moment, recollecting his interview with Ivan and Lily Tunbull following on his seeing Max.

“Ivan looks great for the murder of John Hall,” he said now, “but I don’t buy it. He’s a man of Hall’s own age, very settled and domestically happy. That stuck out like a sore thumb. His mind-set is his work, which he really enjoys, and he’s not really hurting financially. I suspect his mother’s ambitions for him were just that — his mother’s. If I had to sum him up, I’d describe him as an intelligent, hardworking, modestly ambitious man who can’t get over his luck at finding Lily for a wife. Ivan wallows in his family, and, having met Lily, I quite see why he’s crazy about her. She’s adorable, and it’s not a facade. The kids are great, his job’s secure no matter who inherits, and he’s too good at it to be replaced, even for spite.”

Strong words coming from Abe Goldberg. Carmine took over, feeling irritable and curiously foiled. “What kind of killer goes to the trouble of making a device he — or she — has no intention of using? Because it screams to me that if Edith Tinkerman was tricked into vectoring the poison to her husband, then John Hall was also killed by injection with a proper syringe and hypodermic. The device wasn’t used at the Tunbull dinner party either. Somehow, by a feat of legerdemain we don’t suspect, John Hall was injected while a room full of men enjoyed their port, cognac and cigars. No one made a bathroom run, Dr. Markoff swears to it, and he’s the one outside constant I can’t overlook or dismiss. The guy’s as nosy as Pinocchio and has a better memory than a quiz show king, and he says no one left the room. The men were in it for about thirty minutes when John’s symptoms began to appear. Too long for the shot to have been administered before they went in.”

“Then it had to have been the device,” Donny said.

But Carmine shook his head. “It’s too risky. Too many factors might have prevented the poison from leaving its reservoir. Look at the junction of the hypodermic and the metal saucer, Donny! Solder? A 25-gauge needle? That’s so small.”

“What’s left, no matter how improbable, has to be the answer,” Delia said, on Donny’s side.

“It presents too many dangers to its operator,” Carmine said. “That’s how I know he didn’t use it.”

“What about Emily?” Liam asked, tired of going in circles.

“The water carafe. Paul found a trace of tetrodotoxin in it, so that at least is certain,” Carmine said.

“Have we enough on Dr. Jim to make an arrest?” Buzz asked.

“What evidence we have is completely circumstantial, so I’d have to say, no.”

“How about we arrest Uda Savovich on suspicion and see what eventuates?” Tony asked. “I just feel that until we can arrest someone, there’s a chance another death might happen.”