Night-Bloom (48 page)

The woman confronting him now was tall and striking. She wore a blue silk peignoir and satin slippers. Her feet seemed disproportionately small for her height. The little apple-cheeked German lady hovered just behind her, smiling hospitably.

“I’m Isobel Quintius. Can I help you?”

Mooney showed his badge again. “Captain Mooney. New York City police. Sorry to barge in like this.” She eyed him with distrust. “You wanted to see my husband?”

“If that’s okay.”

“In connection with what, may I ask?”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to speak directly to him.”

Her tone grew noticeably sharper. “In connection with my son, William Quintius?”

“No, ma’am.”

Her perturbation deepened. “Then it must have something to do with that awful little man who showed up here last week.”

Mooney made a wry face. “What awful little man?” But he knew the answer even as he asked the question. “You mean Charles Watford?”

“Yes. That’s the man.” She caught her breath. “My husband has not been well. We’ve been through a great deal over the past several months.”

“I understand.”

“My son, William …”

“Yes. I know.”

“So far as that other unfortunate incident,” she hurried on in a whisper, “I’m certain that my husband would prefer to drop the whole matter.” Mooney nodded, preferring to let her misjudge entirely the intention of his visit. “Well, then, if I might just see Mr. Quintius—”

“Well,” she continued to watch him charily, “perhaps just for a few minutes. He’s really quite tired.”

“I understand,” Mooney murmured with an air of doglike obedience. “This shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”

A grandfather clock intoned deeply from some distant, unlighted area of the house above them. Suspicion flashed again in Mrs. Quintius’s eye and for a moment he held his breath, certain she was about to withdraw everything she’d just conceded.

“Helga,” she called over her shoulder, “please show the captain out to the greenhouse.”

“Yes, madame.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Quintius.”

“Wait here, please,” the little German lady whispered to him. “I’ll get my coat.”

Mooney nodded gratefully.

“Remember.” Isobel Quintius had once again recovered her icy demeanor. “Ten minutes. No more.”

“I understand,” Mooney replied and watched her turn and quickly vanish between the Coromandel screens.

She’d left him off at the front door of the greenhouse and told him to go right on in. He was to follow the big center aisle, then turn right and go to the very end.

Mooney watched the woman move off across the powdery snow. Waiting outside in the chill blasts gusting off the Sound, he huddled in his overcoat and peered into the greenhouse through one of the wide panes. Then with a sigh of resignation, he stepped in, dosed the door behind him and waited there, listening to the sound of his own breathing in the gloomy half-light.

The place had the feeling of a hot moist cave. A light glowing from some point deep within the structure poured through the thickish air, casting a mottled greenish sheen like that of underwater light against the glass walls.

In the next instant he was aware of the foliage, the sheer profusion of it—plants, trees, vines, fronds, flowers, of every imaginable shape and color, the size of them magnified threefold in that strange demi-light. The fragrance of it all, thousands of huge, extravagant blooms, breathing in the warm moist shadows, was overpowering.

Mooney leaned against the wall, almost dizzy from the suffocating sweetness of it. Then he heard the snipping. He glanced up instantly like some predatory creature hearing the telltale sound of its quarry. It was a clicking sound—rapid, metallic.

Mooney started to walk toward the light. The Mound of his own footsteps banging rudely over the wide-planked floors struck him as the desecration of a kind of holy place.

Where the big center aisle branched, Mooney veered sharply right as he’d been told. He was confronted at once by a long, tubular structure, a glass tunnel at the end of which he descried a broad white circle of illumination. At roughly the center of that stood a figure. It was that of a man who appeared to be working over a long bench.

As he strode up Quintius recognized him at once. “You’re the fellow who was with that crazy man who came to my gallery.”

He removed a pair of mud-streaked rubber gloves, taking the hand that Mooney proffered. There was no trace of surprise or alarm in his face. Not so much as even a hint of uneasiness. It crossed Mooney’s mind with some disquiet that his visit there was not entirely unexpected.

“I take it your being here has something to do with that person [his pronunciation of the word conveyed disdain] who showed up here the other day.”

Mooney reflected. “I just heard about that from your wife. Too bad, isn’t it. He’s a very sick man.” Quintius chuckled lightly. “You don’t have to tell me.”

The blade of Quintius’s trowel glittered momentarily, then plunged deep into the potted soil. He’d been thinning out some of his bushier, more extravagant roses. He had a number of fresh shoots he was repotting. A stream of water drummed hollowly from a tap into a steel basin as he deftly spaded dark rich humus into big terra-cotta pots. “You mind if I just go about my work here?”

“Sure. Go ahead. Don’t let me interrupt.” Quintius took up his trowel again and furrowed deeply into one of the big pots. “Just go on talking. I’m listening.” He spoke with his eyes riveted to the design of new cuttings he was planning for one of the clay pots. “Just what is your connection with this— man?”

“That’s a long, complicated story,” Mooney said. A sharp little grin darted at the edges of his lips. “It has something to do with the fact that he says he once shared a hospital room with you.”

“Yes. I know.”

“At Beth Israel. Two years ago.”

Quintius’s huge rubbered fingers tamped a squirming shoot into the rich soil.

“And obviously,” Mooney continued, “there are some good reasons to believe that you did, or I wouldn’t be here …”

Quintius’s trowel never missed a stroke. “Then what?”

“Then it would be my duty to tell you that you’re a prime suspect in the deaths of six people and to advise you of your rights.”

Quintius completed tamping, then glanced up, seemingly unperturbed. “I’m aware of my rights, thank you. What six people?”

“Six people who died as a result of objects dropped from rooftops over the past seven years. Another man has been crippled for life.”

Quintius grew pensive, then took up his trowel once more. Mooney had to give the man credit. If he was playing a part, he was doing it to perfection. There was no discernible lapse, no self-betraying sign of protest or alarm. Not even any attempt to defend himself. Quite the contrary, he now appeared solicitous, even helpful.

“Haven’t I read something about that recently?”

“You probably have. A man by the name of Holmes confessed to the killings. At present he’s in a mental institution up in Wingdale. Too whacko to stand trial.”

“Then why bother me? May I have those shears, please.”

Mooney continued to speak as he passed the shears across the potting table. “I’m bothering you because Holmes is innocent. His confession, I’m sorry to say, was pretty much wrung out of him.”

“I see. And you believe I’m guilty. What evidence have you?”

“Only circumstantial, but in time I’m convinced I can prove it.”

In truth, Mooney was convinced of no such thing.

Even if he could establish beyond doubt that Quintius and Watford had shared a hospital room, it was quite a leap from there to prove in the absence of eyewitness testimony that Quintius was the Bombardier.

“By chance, can you tell me your blood type?”

“AB-positive,” Quintius replied at once. “Anyone who’s served in the army knows that. But that’s hardly evidence.”

“Only of a minor sort. What’s a bit more disturbing is that you registered at the hospital in a name other than your own. And while you were there recovering from surgery, you confessed to Charles Watford that you’d just killed a man by dropping a cinder block on his head from a rooftop.” Quintius’s shears snipped on with no perceptible break in rhythm. “Did Mr. Watford tell you that?”

“He did.”

“And you believe this poor, admittedly”—he cast about for Mooney’s word—“whacko creature?”

“Poor, yes. Unstable, yes. But not entirely whacko.” Mooney watched his expression for the slightest reaction.

Quintius thumbed a fresh young cutting into the rich black humus. “A matter of degree, then, his lunacy?”

“It wouldn’t be hard to puncture his credibility as a witness in a court of law, if that’s what you’re driving at.”

“Exactly.” Quintius nodded. “Is there anything further I can do for you?”

“As a matter of fact, there is.” The detective smiled back directly level into Quintius’s eyes. “Would you mind dropping your trousers so I can see if there’s any recent surgical scars on your butt.” Quintius was neither flustered nor surprised. If anything, he seemed amused. “I’m afraid it’s getting late, Captain. You’d better get back to the city before this snow gets much worse.”

“If you’re innocent,” Mooney pressed harder, “there’s nothing to hide.”

“I have nothing to hide, but you’re quite beyond your authority coming out here. This is the jurisdiction of Suffolk County.”

“If you prefer, I can request that the Suffolk police ask you to drop your trousers.”

Quintius disregarded the facetiousness. “Let me give you my attorneys’ number. Take the matter up with them. In the meantime”—he rose, extending his hand—“my best to Mr. Watford. And good night.”

“You’ll make it easier on all of us if you confess.” Once again there was the wry, likable smile, made oven more so by a kind of noble fatigue. “I wish I could, Captain, if only to get you and Mr. Watford off my back. But if I did, I’d be just as crazy as Mr. Holmes. I’m not a murderer. I’m quite well respected in my business, in this community. And, frankly, I don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s why I’m suggesting that you take the matter up with my lawyers—the way any sensible man would who suddenly found himself accused of murdering six people.”

The calm, unruffled affability of it rattled Mooney.

He’d been expecting something else. He couldn’t say exactly what, but patient, good-natured indulgence was certainly not it.

He had just about played his last card when he happened to glance around at some of the larger potted plants surrounding Quintius. Just behind him, in the uttermost branches of an eight-foot succulent, he noted an enormous white bloom. Easily twelve inches across, the flower nodding from the burden of its own weight appeared to have just bloomed.

“May I ask what that flower is?”

Quintius turned and gazed up at it. “Hyalocereus Grandiflora. More commonly known as nightblooming cereus.”

It was as if Mooney had been punched in the stomach. The fact that he was still able to smile astonished him. “That’s what I thought it was.”

“Are you familiar with nightbloomers?”

“Not really. But I know someone who has one just like that. By any chance do you know a Mr. Anthony Boyd? From Wilmette? He’s an authority on the subject.”

Up till that moment he had failed to get any sort of a rise out of Quintius; this time, however, he knew he’d succeeded. Something appeared to pass across the man’s eyes. It was like a film or a shift in light. So fast it was, so slight, as to be nearly imperceptible. But this time it was there and he’d seen it. For that moment alone it had been worth the trip.

Footsteps echoed hollowly behind him. He turned to see Isobel Quintius materialize out of the shadows. She had tossed a trench coat over her shoulders; the blue of the peignoir trailed well below the hem of it. On her head she wore a yellow rain wimple tied beneath her chin. Beads of melting snowdrops glistened on its broad, floppy brim. She looked apprehensively back and forth from one of them to the other.

“I’m just on my way, Mrs. Quintius.” Mooney buttoned his overcoat and tucked his collar up around his ears. “Afraid I kept him a bit beyond the ten minutes I’d promised. We just discovered that we have a mutual passion for flowers.” Mooney smiled at her, and nodded at Quintius. “Don’t bother to show me out. I can find my way.”