The Prodigal Son (23 page)

Jim looked enthusiastic. “Oh, Davina fixed that up! C.U.P. will give us an advance against royalties. Some thousands.”

“She’s a wonder. Is there anything she hasn’t thought of?”

His laughter was spontaneous. “Not a thing! She even says we ought to have a baby on the way to vindicate our years of pain and struggle.”

Millie’s eyes glazed, as if the brain behind was so swamped with new ideas that it couldn’t cope with more shocks. When Jim mentioned the baby her lashes fluttered, moisture dewed them, and she swallowed convulsively. “A baby?” she asked.

“Yes. Is a baby okay with you?”

The dew became rain; Millie wept soundlessly, tears pouring down her face. “A baby is the only answer,” she said clearly.

He leaned back to stare at her, brow furrowed. “I never realized …” he said, trailing off.

“Why would you until an outsider pointed the way?” She got up and began to clear the table. “You don’t see beyond your work, I’ve always known that. I guess even Davina noticed.”

“Where do you think we ought to live?” he asked as he took down his coat, squeezed his huge feet into rope-soled boots.

“East Holloman, near my parents.”

“Can I leave it to you to look?”

“How much rent can we afford?”

“Whatever the market says, sweetheart. Davina says we’ll get whatever we need from C.U.P. For clothes and things too.”

And he was out the door, leaving a dazed Millie to shower, put on some clothes, and head for the bus stop. Oh, typical Jim! Things sorted out to his satisfaction, he hadn’t paused to wonder if she was going to the Burke Biology Tower too. A ten-minute wait, and he could have driven her. As it was, the bus. He didn’t mean it, and under normal circumstances she would have hung onto his jacket and told him to wait for her. Today had been such a huge shock, she was completely off-balance.

Her growing anger roared to the surface as she was trudging to the bus stop and stopped her in her tracks. The next moment she had turned on her heel and walked in the direction of the tired little park the city had put adjacent to Caterby Street.
Shaking with rage, more tears pouring down her face. Not that there was anyone to see. At eight o’clock on a Saturday morning, the district was still recovering from the night before.

She found a bench and her handkerchief — they couldn’t afford tissues, so she still washed handkerchiefs — had her cry, then mopped up.

It was, she thought, exactly like awakening from a very long and not unpleasant dream. Before this morning, she was Millie Hunter, adoring companion and wife of eighteen years; now she was Millie Nobody, citizen of a world she didn’t know, could not yet begin to assess.

A glamorous, selfish, sophisticated old acquaintance of Jim’s had sat him down and told him what was wrong with the life he was living, then given him explicit instructions how to fix it — before April second, if you please! A really nice apartment or house, nice things in it, nice food on the table, and a baby on the way. If they were presented with that background, the media sharks would glide off to other feeding grounds.

And Jim had listened. Listened with respect and obedience. Just who was Davina Tunbull? What slot did she fill in Jim’s frantically busy life? Was she just a professional acquaintance, or was she something more? Wonderful Jim, for whom Millie would have died, whose integrity was infinitely above all other men’s, had listened, seen the logic, decided to obey. The big question was, if it had been she, Millie, to issue these ultimatums, would Jim have listened, understood, obeyed? In the aftermath of this morning, Millie had to ask herself why she hadn’t got in first.

The next spasm of rage was directed at herself, at all those lost chances. This time she didn’t cry, she simply endured it, felt it burn out, sat empty, hollow, vacant. The baby she had been planning for the moment prosperity arrived was now implanted in Jim’s mind as the concept of Davina Tunbull. Whenever Jim looked at their first-born child, he would thank Davina for its existence. Millie’s moment had gone, snatched from her grasp, and she could never get it back. When Jim thought of Millie and motherhood, he would first have to think of all those childless years together, and how she had agreed they couldn’t possibly have children. No matter that it would be Millie carried the baby; it was Davina’s idea.

She knew too that she wasn’t being reasonable, that what really lay at the base of her anger was the intrusion of another — and particularly offensive — woman into matters that were no one’s business save hers and Jim’s. But how dared Davina? How dared she! Just when I’d taken myself off the Pill and was dreaming of telling Jim that there would be a baby at last, Davina — how did he put it?— sticks her oar in. He can’t have liked her interference, despite which, he took her advice. Oh, it wasn’t fair! While she, Millie, waited for the perfect moment to speak, Davina Tunbull, having no perfect moment, spoke anyway. Not fair, not fair!

Everything was so muddled … At fifteen I already knew that Jim’s was going to be the important work, and, loving him, I gave every atom of my being to advancing his career, from my money to my right arm. I never grudged it, never! I never thought of myself as Jim’s inferior, as his uncomplaining
servant, but clearly that is how Davina sees me — as a kind of up-market Uda. I never saw a shred of evidence that Jim thought me his inferior — we were too close, too much a team. That’s what Davina hasn’t understood. If she esteemed me, she would have spoken to both of us together; as it was, she spoke to Jim alone as the arbiter of my destiny as well as his own. It’s not
like
that! How many of our decisions did
I
make? Answer: about half. Jim and I are both biochemists, this has never been about my career versus his, it’s always been about our joint career, even if the name on it is Jim’s, not mine. I always thought Jim understood that my turn would come, now I’m not so sure, and that’s a source of deep hurt. Of anger. When our eyes met at fifteen, it was the exchange of two equals, and all the battling since has seen us equals. Can I honestly be an Uda to my man of eighteen years?

No, I refuse to believe it! Without me, Jim couldn’t have gotten there. He knows it as well as I do. That we’ve never discussed it is immaterial: it’s a core fact. Now here he is, the pawn of an ambitious, utterly self-centered woman who flirts with him or any other personable man she meets — is that all it is, flirtation? Yes, yes! Everything she does is to feather her existing nest, not make a new one, and she’s not privy to any of Jim’s less admirable qualities. I hate her, I hate her! She’s a blowfly lays its maggots in the juiciest substrate, and Jim’s book means a lot to her and Max. Jim’s book, Jim’s book …

The rage was entirely gone. On this Saturday morning, Jim had entirely lost sight of Millie the equal. What was success going to do to him? And, more importantly, to his marriage?
Could she continue to summon up the strength to deal with him? I am the only person who knows his secrets, his insecurities, his nightmares, his ghosts.

She got up and returned to the bus stop. As usual, the bus was late; she caught it by the skin of her teeth at the end of a sprint, and sat, gasping for breath, with a smile for her fellow travelers, all of whom she knew. As she sometimes joked to Jim, she was the only white person on board with an intact brain; the bus was for black people full of intelligence and vigor, and white people who were either physically or mentally handicapped.

By the time she walked through her parents’ back door she was smiling, looked happier than in years.

“Dad,” she said to Patrick, buried in the
New York Times
, “are there any houses for rent in East Holloman, perhaps with a view to buying later on? Jim and I are joining the fleshpots.”

When Val sidled through his office door, Max Tunbull looked up in surprise. Val wasn’t the sidling type.

“What’s the matter? Why the skulking?”

“Chester Malcuzinski is here.”

The pencil fell from Max’s hand; he went pale. “Christ!”

“We’ll be calling on the Name of the Lord a lot. He wants to know why Emily was murdered,” Val said, subsiding into a chair.

“How did he find out?”

“Saw some cable TV news program that’s made a big production out of the mystery poison. You know, undetectable,
sinister, some poisoner on the loose, cops stymied, the usual bullshit.”

“Did Lily stock your kitchen again?”

Val’s face softened. “Yes. Good girl, my daughter-in-law. Never even cheated on the bills for the insurance company.”

“More than you could have said for your brother-in-law.”

“Tell me about it, the bastard!”

“How’s he cheating the world these days?” Max asked.

“He’s in real estate in Florida — the Gulf side, Orlando. More and more northerners are moving to Florida to retire, and Chez helps them spend their money. He builds luxury apartments, so he has people going and coming.” Val shivered. “I bet there are a few corpses in the foundations.”

“How old is Emily’s little brother now?” Max asked.

“Early forties. He adored Em, I have to give him that, but I had a hard time convincing him that I didn’t let him know she was dead because I didn’t have any idea where he was. I guess what made him believe me in the end was that no one in his right mind would offend Chez Malcuzinski.”

“How long is he staying?”

“Until Em’s killer is caught, he says. He’s moved into Ivan’s old room and taken the spare bedroom next door to it as a kind of office and sitting room.” Val waved his hands around. “He arrived at seven this morning, and by nine the cable guys were giving him his own feed to a huge TV set. They hadn’t gone when the phone guys turned up to give him his own phone line and telex. He moved a table out of the basement to use as a desk — all by himself, can you imagine? He’s fit, Max, very fit.”

“There’s more to it than this.”

“I agree.”

Apparently reaching a decision, Max got up and locked his work away, something he didn’t normally do: with Chez in town, nothing was safe from prying eyes.

“I’ll follow you home, Val. If I don’t warn Davina what kind of man Chez is, things might get out of hand.”

An admirable resolution, but doomed to failure. When Max let himself in the front door he could hear the coquettish peal of Vina’s laughter emanating from the living room, and felt his battered heart sink.

The Chester Malcuzinski he remembered had been a pimply youth and then a pimply man in his twenties, but the fifteen years that had elapsed between the last time he had seen Chez and today had wrought wonders. Today’s Chez was tall, lithely athletic, had a skin free from pustules, and considerably more good looks than his sister, whose early prettiness had not fared well. He was the picture of a fashionable man, from his carefully coiffed, shoulder-length hair to his bell-bottomed hipster trousers and the full-sleeved shirt open to show a hairy chest. In coloring he was dark, yet, despite his reputation as a thug, his appearance was neither vulgar nor greasy. In fact, he would be immensely attractive to the wealthy women who formed his clientele — a very smooth operator, Max saw at a glance. And Vina was responding as Vina always did to personable men; she was flirting outrageously, giving him the
impression that she would be on a bed with her legs open at the soonest possible moment. Oh, Vina, Vina! Not with this man!

All that aside, Max came into the room smiling, his hand extended. “My dear Chez!” he said, shaking the manicured member given him. Then his face saddened. “I wish it were a happier occasion.”

And, Chez being Chez, he turned his back on Davina to give his attention to someone he thought could help him. “What happened, Max? Tell me.”

“I wish I knew, but none of us does, and that’s the truth. My long lost son, John, was poisoned at a dinner here a week ago yesterday, then the new Head Scholar of the Chubb University Press was poisoned at a banquet in his honor a week ago today. Finally poor little Em was poisoned in her sculpting studio last Wednesday, though her body wasn’t found until Thursday afternoon,” said Max in the most conciliating voice he could summon.

Chez stiffened. “You mean Val didn’t miss her on Wednesday night? Is he cheating on her?”

“No, no,” Max said pacifically, noting out of the corner of his eye that Vina was pouting — she didn’t like being ignored. “Emily was right into her sculpting, she often stayed in her studio overnight if the clay was going right — don’t ask me, I’m not a sculptor!— and Val was delighted. Absolutely delighted! She’d found a satisfying hobby now Ivan was a family man. As the only one without printing skills, we suspect Em had felt like a square wheel, so when she took to sculpting, we helped her in every way we could.”

“That’s true, Chester,” said Davina.

He spared her an impatient glance, then focused on Max again. “How was she poisoned?” he demanded.

“In a carafe of water. You needn’t fear there’s poison in any of the food, it’s all been replaced. Lily did that.”

Chez lunged to his feet, fists clenched. “I want to see.”

“You can’t, Chez,” said Max, alarmed. “The shed’s sealed.”

“Fuck that!”

Max hurried in his wake, but not before turning to Davina. “You, madam, stay right here until I get back. I want a word with you.” He encountered a glare from Uda, and glared in return. “That goes for Uda too. Right here, understand?”

He caught up with Chez halfway to Val’s house. “The shed has a police seal across the lock,” he said to Chez, panting slightly from so much effort and emotion.

“Fuck that!” was the only answer.

The piece of police tape was ripped away, Max compelled to tender a small key.

The stench hit them both; Max reeled, refused to enter, but after an angry glance at Max, Chez walked in.

“Who cleaned up?” he asked when he emerged, white-faced.

“Her daughter-in-law, Lily. A wonderful girl. I think she felt it was the least she could do.”

“I’ll do something for her. From the stink, it must have been terrible. You’re right, Max, Lily is a wonderful girl.”

He produced a wad of tissues and ran them over his face. “Emily was amazing, eh? Them —
those
cats and horses’ heads —
clever as well as pretty. Tell Val I want them — all of them,” said Chez, jaw rippling.