Too Many Murders by Colleen McCullough Read Free Book Online Page B

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.”
    How long was it going to be before these children realized their mother really was dead? That if dinner had been irregular over the past eighteen months, it was going to become far more so in the future? They were so wrapped up in themselves, in what they perceived to be intolerable injuries. Keeping his face impassive, Carmine pressed on.
    “Did you sleep at all, Grant?”
    “Oh, sure! I watched some stupid movie on WOR—black-and-white, yet!—and I must have gone to sleep around midnight with it still on. Then I woke up feeling sick, but I figured it would go away. It didn’t, it got worse. I raced to my bathroom, but I didn’t make it. Splat! All over the floor. I felt better after that, so I went back to bed and went to sleep.”
    The boy’s demeanor had changed, become uneasy. All truculence had fled, and the brown eyes that had been fixed on Carmine moved suddenly away, refused to return. The truth had come out, but not all of it. And now, while a fraught silence persisted and Gina endeavored to melt into the wallpaper, Grant was trying to manufacture a story that a police captain might swallow.