The Odd Job (31 page)

“If you mean me, I understand you perfectly,” Sarah replied with her sweetest smile. “Was there something else you’d like to say, Mr. Turbot?”

What Turbot had to say was not the sort of language that ought to be used in a chapel. Sarah felt a surge of gratitude that Aunt Bodie was not among those present.

“Please don’t bother to run Mr. Turbot in on my account,” she told the lieutenant. “Mr. Turbot’s had such a string of mishaps lately. I realize he’s terribly disappointed that those prankish twins of his muffed his instructions to run me over on Monday. No doubt he still feels that Officer Drummond was taking too much upon himself when he pulled me out from under the wheels of that gray 1989 Toyota sedan, registration number seven-five-three-two KG.”

Turbot had not expected this. “You’re lying! It can’t have been the twins.”

“There were witnesses, Mr. Turbot. Don’t forget this happened right in Kenmore Square, at a busy time of the day. People notice such things, you know. Officer Drummond took down the registration number as soon as he’d snatched me away from the wheels and got me up on the sidewalk. I’d already recognized the car. I’d seen it before, on Sunday afternoon, when I’d left your house and you’d sent your two cowboys to run me off the road because I’d foolishly revealed at the table that I knew too much about stolen paintings in general and the Wilkins Museum in particular.”

Sarah was about as angry as she’d ever been. “You shouldn’t have been so quick to underestimate a dumb little cutie-pants, Mr. Turbot. You must be upset at having both your sons denied bail because of their terrible police records, but I’m afraid you can’t have been a good father to them.”

“I’m not a father at all, damn it! How can you call those two hyenas mine? If you think I’d ever—good God, who’s that?”

There had never been any electricity installed in Madam Wilkins’s palazzo during her lifetime, and according to the terms of her will, there must never be any changes. The only illumination came from gas jets and candles. Here in the chapel, a rack of votive candles was set below and to the left of the altar, but only a few of the cups were alight. Those inside the room could see nothing but a silhouette in the doorway. It was that of a woman who might have been dressed for that sumptuous opening-day blowout when Madam Wilkins first flung wide her doors to the cream of Boston society.

The woman gave an impression of great height, but the illusion may have been created by the huge cartwheel hat that she wore very much to one side. Her face was veiled in a great swath of black net, its ends tossed back over her shoulders. Her gown fitted her tightly down to the mid-thighs, then fanned out in a great pouf that concealed her nether limbs.

Sarah had known for some time that Lydia Ouspenska was going to regild some of the museum’s more decrepit frames when she got the chance. It would not have been beyond Lydia to dress for the occasion, as Peter Paul Rubens had been wont to do; but this outfit was something else, and Sarah knew what. She snatched up one of the paper spills that Dolores had always kept handy to light the votive candles with and went quickly down the line, touching off wicks until there were enough of the small flames alight to see by. Even so, the silence, with that startling figure still poised in the doorway, was eerie.

Sarah was in no mood for any more histrionics. “Lieutenant Harris,” she said calmly, “may I present you to Miss LaVonne LaVerne, who is, I presume, the last of the Wicked Widows? I know you never talk, Miss LaVerne, but aren’t you supposed to flap your veil or something? We’d be delighted to get a better look at that Mona Lisa mask you’re wearing. Your old friend Dolores Tawne did a superb job on those masks, didn’t she? It’s a great shame you felt it necessary to kill her. I marvel that you got those stickpins away from Mr. Turbot without killing him first.”

Sarah had no idea why she was so recklessly taunting a murderess who’d killed four Boston policemen, six Wicked Widows, and heaven only knew how many others, not counting the woman who’d been true to her trust and bragged about it. Right now, Dolores ought to be here in the chapel, dusting the altar and scraping wax out of these votive candle holders that were getting so badly smoked up. As Sarah had anticipated, the housekeeping was already going to pot.

Either the Wicked Widow didn’t hear or didn’t care. Ignoring Sarah, she glided without a sound toward Harris, her black-gloved arms and black-sheathed torso writhing in a sensuous, hypnotic rhythm. The lieutenant stood frozen, his police revolver still in its holster. Turbot was worse than useless, standing there with his mouth agape. For once, no sound was coming out. Sarah stepped out of her shoes, slipped around behind the Wicked Widow, and climbed up on one of the long oaken benches, as close as she could get to Harris and Turbot.

The Widow appeared to be in an ecstatic trance, working her serpentine way closer and closer to those two mesmerized males, sliding away, swooping back, stalking her prey like a cobra. Standing on the bench, Sarah had a bird’s eye view of that enormous hat. She could make out the curved backs of the combs that had been sewn inside the brim and anchored in the too-coarse, too-abundant raven hair. A wig, for sure. Good.

Now the Widow was literally chest-to-chest with Harris. He’d be unable to get his gun free of its underarm holster without having to wrestle her for it. Now she was pressing even tighter against him, raising her black-gloved right hand above her head, fishing for the weapon she expected to find there. That was when Sarah shoved the cartwheel hat, wig and all, down over the Mona Lisa mask, grabbed two handfuls of the black mourning veil and crossed them at the back of the Widow’s neck, cutting off a howl the likes of which she hoped never to hear again.

“Shut up, Miss LaVerne, or I’ll strangle you. Lieutenant, get that mask off her.”

Sarah kicked contemptuously at the object which had fallen clear of the wig, a slim blade of polished steel about seven inches long, blunt all around and set into a sphere of black plastic about the size of a golf ball. “Was this the best you could do in lieu of a hatpin, Miss LaVerne? Handcuff her, Lieutenant, and tie her legs with this veil so she can’t try to run off. Just to put your mind at ease, Miss LaVerne, we have all seven of your hatpins, the six that Dolores had kept in the bank and the one you’d already used to kill off the rest of the Widows and goodness knows how many others before poor Dolores inadvertently crossed you up about that safe deposit box she’d been paying your rent on all those years. I’m afraid this is the end of the Wicked Widows, Miss LaVerne.”

M
OST EMBARRASSINGLY, THE LAST
of the LaVonne LaVernes was also Mrs. Elwyn Fleesom Turbot. And crazy as a coot, which came as no surprise to Sarah Kelling Bittersohn. Once Lala got it through her head that she’d been duly trapped and put out of commission, she began to talk. She talked all the way in the police van, at the station, in the lockup. There was no stopping her short of a bullet or a hatpin.

Sarah didn’t get to hear much of Lala’s ramblings firsthand. However, Lieutenant Harris was kind enough to stop by the Tulip Street house when at last he could get away from that human talking-machine to take a statement from Sarah and a well-earned drink from Charles.

“That Mrs. Turbot’s really something else, I can tell you. The Wicked Widows thing was all her doing. She’d got bored with her husband of the moment—she’s a lot older than she looks, in case you hadn’t noticed—and talked a few of her girlfriends, who must have been as crazy as she is, into getting an act together. She could talk anybody into anything, it seems; she was like a witch or something. I don’t know how many poor slobs she married. I figured it as seven verifiables, five probables, about twenty possibles, and the rest doubtful. Some of them survived the marriages, I don’t know how many didn’t. There seem to have been a disproportionate number of suicides that will have to be checked out, not that it’s going to help the poor guys now.”

“What about the twins?” Sarah asked him.

“Oh, Mrs. Turbot’s pretty bitter about that pair. They’re her own sons and they’ve done her wrong. They stole her hatpin and brought it to your husband’s office because they were afraid she intended to kill their stepfather with it and keep them from inheriting his cattle, of which they seem to be quite fond. They didn’t seem to be showing any qualms about having tried to run you down, Mrs. Bittersohn, but their mother’s furious with you for having been so discourteous as to survive after they’d gone to the bother of running your obituary in the paper. Somehow or other, Mrs. Turbot’s decided this mess was all your fault. She made a big scene in the van about the jewels you and Dolores Tawne allegedly stole from her.”

“How so, Lieutenant?”

“This one’s straight off the wall. It seems that when she was a young girl, back in the early fifties, she’d heard her father talking about this man Turbot who’d inherited a lot of valuable stickpins. He kept them in some hiding place where nobody ever got to see them, so I don’t know what good they’d be to him, but there they were and she wanted them, sight unseen. His people were pretty well-heeled and he stood to inherit the family business, so it looked like a good deal all around to—Laura, was it?”

“Could be,” said Sarah. “I’ve only heard her called Lala. Charles, please cut Lieutenant Harris another sandwich or two and make some coffee. He’s had a hard day.”

“So have you, Mrs. Bittersohn.” Harris reached for a sandwich. “Thanks, Charles. So anyway, the girl never forgot about the stickpins but she never happened to run across the man who had them. That didn’t slow her down any, she married two or three or four different guys and organized her Wicked Widows troupe to relieve the monotony. That was how she got involved with Mrs. Tawne. Thinking ahead, she got her to rent a safe deposit box to be held in LaVonne LaVerne’s name until such time as she’d need it to hold all those fabulous stickpins she was going to wheedle out of Turbot after she’d got her hooks into him.”

“So she just kept on marrying and tossing out the rejects until the big fish came along, is that it?” Jeremy Kelling asked.

“That’s it in a nutshell, Mr. Kelling. As you can imagine, she had to be out of the country pretty often on account of her peculiar hobby, but eventually she came back and who should she run into at some charity ball or somewhere but Mr. and Mrs. Elwyn Turbot. So she made sure this was the Turbot with the stickpins and sharpened her own trusty hatpin. Two months later, Turbot was a widower. That was kind of a poignant moment,” Harris reflected. “There we all were in the van, her babbling on like a brook and him not saying a word for most of the ride. But when she got to the late Mrs. Turbot, the poor guy lost it. ‘You killed Agnes?’ he bellowed. ‘Damn it, Lala, I
liked
Agnes!’ ”

W
HETHER THE TWINS WHO
had been so effectively brainwashed by their mother could ever be turned into normal human beings had developed into a subject for warm public debate by a covey of psychiatrists. Whether Lala Turbot had ever been or wanted to be anything but a serial killer of a peculiarly seductive type was not even debatable; she had regressed to a howling madwoman, treatable only by heavy sedation and physical restraints.

The death certificates on the six other LaVonne LaVernes that Sarah had suggested Lieutenant Harris look up early in the game were also public property by now and giving the media a prolonged Walpurgisnacht such as the old Hub of the Universe had not experienced since the panic over the Boston Strangler back in the early fifties. Sarah was not interested, she had more important matters on her mind.

Max was home from Argentina, in fine fettle and in time to see the hillside at Ireson’s Landing ablaze with autumn color; to hold his wife and his son in his arms again; to show Sarah the rescued Watteaus and get her somewhat expurgated report on the doings at the Wilkins Museum. Brooks, Theonia, and Jesse were back from a tour that had proved to be both informative and lucrative. Jesse had demonstrated himself able and eager to take some of the traveling off Max’s shoulders and give him more time with his family.

Miriam and Ira, home from the lake, were revving up for Mike’s wedding. Ira’s present to the bride and groom would be a 1956 Ford Thunderbird, magnificently restored by his own hands; Miriam’s, a wonderful set of high-tech cookware and a file of her own recipes to get the newlyweds off on the right foot, foodwise. The Rivkin and Bittersohn grandparents were clubbing together with Sarah and Max to complete the renovations that had been started some time ago on Sarah’s Victorian carriage house. The newlyweds would be at liberty to use the place year-round until such time as they might choose to live elsewhere; which they probably wouldn’t because, as Mother Bittersohn sensibly pointed out, why should they?

Having brought back the missing Watteaus, Max Bittersohn had naively expected this to be the end of his connection with the Wilkins. Instead, he found a shambles. The museum’s chatelaine had been murdered and its just-elected chairman of trustees forced to resign because of his marital ties to her murderess. Titian’s original, unequivocally genuine,
Rape of Lucrece
had been discovered, at the suggestion of Mrs. Sarah Kelling Bittersohn, hidden in Turbot’s barn behind a meretricious parody of a farmyard hoedown painted on century-old boards that had deserved better treatment. Turbot was trying to claim that he’d only been storing
Lucrece
as a favor to a friend, but skepticism was rife.

Turbot ran into another snag when Max came up with a detailed monograph on the Turbot stickpin collection, published privately forty-six years ago and bearing a sad little penciled-in postscript giving the date on which the stickpins had been found missing. The great-uncle from whom Turbot claimed to have inherited them was by now long dead; there seemed to be no proof that young Elwyn had actually robbed his own great-grandfather but neither was there anything to show that he hadn’t. Max foresaw a family wrangle on the scale of the Eustace Diamonds; he was glad he didn’t have to get mixed up in it.