The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man (22 page)

“How’s that?”

“Professor Ossmann was a serious scientist. He tracked assiduously every last tittle he contributed to any project. I doubt very much he would have been involved in something he couldn’t put his name on.”

“But it’s not inconceivable?”

“No …”

The lieutenant looked up, glanced at me, and said, “I think
that’s enough for now, Dr. Penrood. I’m going to have this typed up, and I would like you to sign it.”

“But …”

“It won’t be under oath. If, later, you want to add or subtract something, we’ll understand completely. People often leave out things, details.”

“Is it really necessary?”

“No, not really. But it will look a lot better for you if …”

By the time Dr. Penrood left he had lost that air of superiority that mantles so many British of a certain class.

I tackled, and that is the operative verb, Celeste Tangent next. Lieutenant Tracy suggested that I speak to her alone. He was of the opinion, and I agreed with him, that, given her background, Ms. Tangent might open up more with me, say things she might not say in the presence of the police.

So this afternoon, when Doreen ushered Ms. Tangent — “Oh, please, Celeste” — into my office, the dear girl showed all the awed deference she might have held for a movie star. I was a little awed myself, frankly, with the way Ms. Tangent’s rich blond hair swept up from a regal neck, the sudden, brilliant smile lighting from behind the cornflower eyes, the formfitting slacks and how she sat herself just so into the chair I held for her in front of my desk.

She was instantly alive with throwaway chatter in an accent I couldn’t quite place, Oklahoma, perhaps, with an overlay of Brooklyn. “Oh, but I do love this part of the museum. I mean parts of it are creepy, you know, but really fascinating.”

I nodded, half hypnotized not so much by the way her turtleneck of fine wool molded her ample bosom, but by her eyes and voice and how they played off each other, the effect like some exquisite sonata. A lab assistant, indeed.

I cleared my throat. “Ms. Tangent …”

“Oh, please, Celeste.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to call you Ms. Tangent.”

She smiled. “Actually, coming from you, it sounds really nice. But then call me Miss Tangent. Ms. always sounds like someone who wears heavy shoes.”

I cleared my throat again. “Miss Tangent, as you probably know by now, we have a somewhat compromising tape of a person we know to be you with Dr. Penrood and the late Professor Ossmann involved in …”

She gave a tut of mock self-reproval that, as she leaned toward me, turned into a kind of confiding embarrassment. “Oh, our little threesome. It was all my fault. I know you think Pen — Dr. Penrood, isn’t that a silly name — told me to tell you that. But it’s true. Sometimes, Mr ….”

“De Ratour.”

“Mr. de Ratour, now, that’s a name. Anyway, there are times when I feel lonely with just one guy. But not with every man, Mr. de Ratour. There are men who are up to it. I can sense it in them. Even some older guys …”

“Miss Tangent …”

She smiled, gave a laugh. “So they have it on tape. Oh, my God, I hope my mother never gets to see it. She’s born-again. She has Jesus for breakfast. Can I get a copy? I could have been a porn star …”

“But instead you became a lab assistant.”

“Yes. Isn’t life amazing?”

“Why?”

“Why is life amazing?”

“Why did you become a lab assistant?”

“It’s where the action is, isn’t it? I mean the men doing this work are the modern giants, aren’t they? At least I thought so. There’s a lot of teeny-weenies out there.”

“What are your connections with organized crime, Miss Tangent?”

She did miss half a beat on that one. She shook her head.

“You can talk to me, Miss Tangent, or we can involve the Seaboard Police Department directly. I’m sure you know the drill, the interrogation, the fingerprinting, the surveillance …”

A different Celeste looked at me, as though with a loathing that had been there all the time. “What do you want to know?”

“What was Professor Ossmann working on that would interest Moshe ben Rovich?”

“Moe? Big Moe? Moe Rovich? You gotta be kidding. Nobody’s seen Moe in years. They say he sleeps with the gefilte fish.”

She was a good actress, but I didn’t find her convincing. I had to conceal the sudden excitement of having hit a raw nerve. She overplayed it. She went on, elaborating when she didn’t have to.

“Big Moe. Yeah, he used to hang around the Crazy Russian all the time. You’d think he owned the joint.”

“He did own the joint, Miss Tangent.”

“Really. Nobody ever told me.”

“He also owned the Caucasian Escort Service.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me. The guy was always using the escorts, sometimes two at a time.”

“You have something in common, then, don’t you.”

As Mr. Shakur would have put it, she blew her cool at that remark. “Listen, Mr. Little Mustache, I don’t have to take this shit from you. I know guys who could buy and sell you all day long and stick you in a hole at the end of it.”

I nodded. “Perhaps if you would tell me what guys, we could be of help to you, Miss Tangent.”

She stood up. “It’s the other way around, pal. Take my advice. Pretend you never saw that little tape you probably keep around
for jacking off. Pretend we never had this conversation. I’m doing you a favor. You can regard this as a health warning.”

And with that she flounced her admirable behind out of the office, leaving the door open for dramatic effect.

Lieutenant Tracy and I met for an hour in the late afternoon going over each interview in detail. We came up with what might be called “degrees of complicity.” Miss Tangent had indirectly admitted, with her threats to me, that something very untoward was or had been happening in the Genetics Lab. We surmised that Dr. Penrood was in some manner implicated, but to what extent we could not quite determine.

At one level we found it maddening that we had no real evidence pertaining to a solution of the Ossmann-Woodley murders, if that’s what they are. At the same time, we knew for sure that a conspiracy of sorts existed in the Genetics Lab, and we knew at least two of the principals involved in it. I mentioned Diantha’s observation about the potential illegal market for a powerful aphrodisiac. “Exactly,” the lieutenant said. “That’s exactly what I think is happening.”

On another matter, he informed me that the SPD had received a lot of pressure to tell everything it knows about the disappearance of Korky Kummerbund and the reappearance of his column in a way that amounts to a kind of sick parody. Both the SPD and Don Patcher of the
Bugle
have kept mute on the subject, leading to wider and wider speculation. I hate to say it, but I’m grateful to both of them that they have kept my name and the museum’s out of it.

But Celeste Tangent. I must confess that I keep thinking about her. I don’t believe I’ve ever met a woman more palpably sexual. It wasn’t just her looks, but a sense that she is, in her hour-to-hour life, a hair trigger away from amorous initiation or response. I have now watched that video clip with her and the
two researchers several times, telling myself, of course, that I was looking for some detail that might help with the case.

Just last night, when I knew Elsbeth was asleep and thought Diantha had gone to a movie, I was about halfway through it when the latter came into my old study where we have the enormous television. I hit the
STOP
button, and the unmistakable image stayed on the screen.

She took a long look and laughed, “Oh, wow, a real
ménage à twat
. So you’re into amateurs, huh? I do think it’s better than the professional stuff, you know, where the bimbos fake like they’re really into it.”

“Actually, it’s evidence,” I said, regaining my composure. “The man being fellated is Professor Ossmann.”

“The one who got murdered?”

“Yes.” I hit the
PLAY
button.

“Too cool. So you’re not just getting your jollies.”

Or was I? I sat there, my heart in a wringer, reminding myself that Diantha was my daughter, my stepdaughter, it’s true, but still my daughter, as she sat next to me on the couch and as lust, in all its confusing eddies, swirled around in me.

I have had some good news that’s shocking in its own way. Lieutenant Tracy phoned this morning to tell me that Korky Kummerbund, in a state of near starvation and in considerable disorientation, was found staggering along a back road in Worthington State Park, some twenty-five miles north of Seaboard. I called Elsbeth immediately and gave her the good news, although lately she has been in such a weakened state, I’m not sure she understood the import of what I told her.

And what a different human being I found when I walked into Seaboard General, where they took Korky for tests and recovery. He recognized me, lifted his hand to shake mine, and said, “How’s Elsbeth?” His concern touched me nearly to tears, and I sat by his bed, reassuring the nurse that I would not stay long.

“You’re safe now, Korky,” I told him. “The worst is over.”

He nodded. “The worst thing was … the music.”

“Music? I thought you said it was noise on a loop?”

He nodded, and a look of horror crossed his wasted face. “They played it twenty-four hours a day, over and over.”

“What was it?”

He wavered a moment, as though reaching inwardly for courage. “Stockhausen,” he managed. Then, “Cage.” Then, “And the dodecaphonic works of Schoenberg. Over and over.”

“You poor man,” I said. “From the unspeakable to the unfortunate.”

I was still trying to comfort him when Lieutenant Tracy
showed up with Sergeant Lemure in tow. The sergeant scowled at me, but the lieutenant asked me to stay.

He conducted his interrogation with an incisiveness and gentleness I found to be the epitome of investigative professionalism. In a halting voice, Korky told us that he indeed had gone to the White Trash Grill to meet a friend. When asked what friend, he replied, “Any friend.”

“You mean a pickup?” the sergeant put in rather bluntly.

Korky nodded.

“Did you meet anyone?” the lieutenant asked.

Korky nodded again.

“Can you describe him?”

“Yes. But I think he was in disguise.”

“What do you mean?”

“He wore dark glasses and a fake mustache.”

“Yeah but how big was he? What was he wearing?” The sergeant bulked over the bed.

Lieutenant Tracy waved him back. He asked, “Was it anyone you remember seeing before?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then what happened?”

Korky shook his head. His voice was growing weak, as though powered by a fading battery. “I got into his car …”

“Do you remember the make?”

“No. Some kind of SUV … blue or gray …”

“So you got into the car.”

“Yes. Then someone in the backseat put a handkerchief over my mouth and held it there. I think it had chloroform on it.”

He told the detectives that the room he was kept in was as he had described it in his article. The only distinctive detail he could recall was that during the very infrequent times he was fed, the person who brought him his food was accompanied by
one or two large dogs, because he thought he could hear, over the piped-in noise, the clack of their paws on the concrete floor of what he assumed to be a cellar.

When Sergeant Lemure started to follow up, I intervened, saying I thought Korky needed his rest. The sergeant looked like he wanted to punch me, but Lieutenant Tracy agreed. They would be able to be more thorough later on.

Out in the corridor, we held a brief conference. I repeated to the lieutenant that it might be useful to have someone in the SPD go over Korky’s more recent reviews to find out whom he might have offended. At least to the point they would want to wreak this kind of revenge. I didn’t want to make obvious the fact that the Seaboard Police should have already followed up.

The sergeant said he didn’t have that kind of time and, besides, “It’s probably just some kind of fag thing. I mean, they’re weird people.”

Lieutenant Tracy nodded to his man. “Yeah, and you’ve got to fly to New York and run down what you can about Celeste Tangent’s mob connections.”

Still, the sergeant wasn’t very happy when I volunteered to call Don Patcher at the
Bugle
to have him pull copies of Korky’s reviews and send them over to me. I soothed his ruffled feathers somewhat by saying that Korky was a very close friend of my wife, and that I would be doing it as a favor to her. We did agree that we were dealing with someone possessed of a distinctly malicious sense of humor, that we had entered that realm where evil and the darkly comedic batten on each other.

Speaking of which, I had another call this afternoon from Mr. Castor of Urgent Productions. He sounded a very conciliatory note, saying that he understood completely my position in regard to the museum as a backdrop to the film they were making. But not only would they treat any setting with the
utmost respect, they would also clear any perspective with me personally. He assured me as well that the film would be sensitive in every possible way.

I demurred again. But in a like conciliatory spirit, I held out some hope to him, telling him I would shortly be taking the matter up with Professor Brauer.

Bobette Spronger called me yesterday around noon to confess something I had suspected all along. In that contemporary, and to my ears graceless, accent, she went on at some length. “I know I like should have told you sooner, Mr. Ratour, but I did use the soy sauce I found in one of those little plastic tubs someone left in the fridge.”

“Why,” I asked, “didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Because like it was against like my diet and I didn’t want anyone to know I was cheating. And Mosy like likes it with soy sauce.”

“Is there any of it left in the refrigerator?”

“I don’t think so.”

I rang off and called Lieutenant Tracy. He came over immediately, and together we drove to the library. We met in the nondescript little room where we had talked before, and Ms. Spronger and Mr. Jones gave him a full statement. We were in the process of checking the refrigerator with the help of Mr. Jones, who wheeled around the place with admirable mobility, when the Director of the library, a Mr. Dewey Jackson, arrived on the scene.