Too Many Murders(15)

Grant’s bathroom smelled sour. There were traces of vomitus, clumsily cleaned up, in the middle of the blue-tiled floor. When Carmine lifted the lid of the hamper he found a set of pajamas soiled and encrusted with vomitus; clearly they had been used to do the wiping up. There was probably a cleaning woman who did pretty much as she liked, and she hadn’t gotten around to Grant’s room yet, though when she did, her ministrations would be basic. Provided, that is, that she ever ventured in at all.

Time to go back to the den.

He knocked loudly. The three faces swung around, then all three children got to their feet. A stranger! And a cop. Selma turned the volume right down.

“My name is Carmine Delmonico, and I’m a captain with the Holloman Police,” Carmine said, pulling a straight chair to one side and sitting on it. “Swing your chairs around so you can see me, and sit.”

They obeyed, but sulkily. Under the veneer of bravado were layers of fright, shock at the death of their mother, terror at what might happen to them, and a certain quiet satisfaction that Carmine put down to the death of Jimmy, who would not be mourned.

“Did you see or hear anything the night before last, Selma?” Carmine asked the girl, who, he noted, bit her nails right down to the quick.

“No,” she said baldly.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes!” she snapped. “Yes, yes, yes!”

“Greaser!” said Gerald Junior under his breath. Getting no reaction from Carmine, he spoke louder. “Damn greaser cop!”

So much anger! Carmine looked into Selma’s eyes, which were the color of a sunny sky, then into Gerald Junior’s identical orbs, and couldn’t get past that all-consuming rage.

“What about you, Gerald?” he asked.

“I’m Junior,” he said, suddenly less certain than his sister. “No, I didn’t see or hear anything. You don’t, at this end of upstairs, if the noise is down Jimmy’s end.”

Not down his mother’s end, or his father’s end. Down Jimmy’s end, as if Jimmy owned it.

“Does Jimmy make a lot of noise, then?”

“Yes,” Junior said abruptly, and shrugged. “Like a sheep or a goat. Maaaa!” He imitated an ovine animal, imbuing the sound with mockery. “He wakes up a lot, maaaa!”

One more kid to go. “What about you, Grant?” Carmine asked.

“I never heard nothin’.”

Interesting that the Dormer hadn’t yet managed to iron double negatives out of Grant’s syntax. Carmine cleared his throat and leaned forward. “But you were awake at some time. You got sick.”

Grant jumped, astonished. “How do you know that?”

“First, I could smell it. Secondly, I could see the remains of it. You used your peejays to clean it up, they’re still in your hamper. Doesn’t anyone ever do the laundry?”

“Hey!” cried Selma, stiffening. “You can’t poke through our things, you East Shore greaser!”

“You senior Cartwright children are much addicted to that term,” Carmine said gravely. “It’s not general at the Dormer, or my daughter would have informed me. She’s your age, Selma, she’d be in some of your classes—Sophia Mandelbaum.” He watched the girl go crimson and understood a little more about the pecking order at the Dormer. Selma was a would-be, his daughter was establishment. How amazing that it started so early.

He went on. “You must know that your mother and your baby brother were both murdered the night before last, so why are you so obstructive? You watch enough television, you must be aware of police procedure. In a murder investigation nothing is sacred, including laundry hampers. Just settle down and answer my questions in the comfort of your own home. Otherwise I’ll have to take you downtown and ask you the same questions in a police interrogation room. Is that clear?”

Resistance collapsed; the three children nodded.

“So, Grant, you got sick?”

“Yeah,” he said in a whisper.

Some instinct stirred; Carmine looked at Selma and Junior. “Thank you, the pair of you can go. But the lady policeman should have arrived, so ask her to come here at once. I can’t harm Grant if she’s here, can I?”

Obviously Selma wanted to stay, but she wasn’t quite game to say so. After a suggestive pause that Carmine ignored, she sighed and followed Junior out. The woman cop came in quickly.

“Sit down over there, Gina. You’re chaperone,” Carmine said, then turned to Grant. “Okay, Grant, tell me what happened.”

“I pigged out on Twinkies—dinner was so late!” The boy looked indignant. “Mom gets carried away with Jimmy all the time—we don’t get dinner regular anymore. Then it was”—he pulled a face—“spaghetti! Again! I filled up on Twinkies, and when they ran out, I found a Boston cream pie.”