Quinn took a long pull of his beer. “Isn’t anything the way it appears with this family?”

“No. And they seem to take some delight—or at least satisfaction—in that. That sort of thing is genetic, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Quinn said. The older he got, the more madness he had seen, and the more he thought people were, at least to some extent, slaves of their DNA. But with this family, blood relationship didn’t seem essential to share the lunacy.

Lido continued: “After Willa Douglass and Mark Kingdom died in a tornado, Ida Tucker divorced Edward, and married Robert Kingdom, Sr. She continued using her former name, Tucker. They adopted sisters, Andria Bell and Jeanine Bell. Also they adopted a son, Robert Kingdom, Jr., who now, for reasons of his own, calls himself Winston Castle.”

“Ah! Anybody else in the family using an alias?”

Lido shrugged.

“Why was this family so eager to adopt?”

“Money accompanied children who were wards of the state. That’s one reason. Another might simply be that they were big-hearted people.”

“Those kinds of people do exist,” Quinn admitted.

“It’s not just you and me,” Lido said.

“Or maybe they do things simply because they are mad.”

“But with purpose,” Lido said.

“Robert Kingdom, Sr. and Ida Tucker,” Quinn said. “Despite the Senior, wasn’t she robbing the cradle?”

“Ida was considerably older. But judging by photos I saw on the net, she was a hot potootie. Maybe still is.”

Lido took a swallow of beer, licked his lips, and continued:

“Willa must have hunted down Edward Tucker after the war. The two families intersected and merged into the bunch we have now. Many of them were adoptees, or the sons or daughters of adoptees. Orphaned or farmed out. Dependent on each other. Maybe more so than in other families. The more I learned about them, that’s what came out. The entire zoo struck me as . . . needy. And I don’t mean just for material things.” Lido lifted his shoulders and dropped them as if they were suddenly burdened by great weight. “I dunno, Quinn. I guess plenty of people are needy. I’m no expert on family life, but it seems to me there are lots of families like this one, the way marriages and parenthood have gone all to hell.”

He looked as if he expected Quinn to agree or disagree.

Quinn had no feel for the subject. He did consider that his ex-wife and daughter lived in California, and he lived with Pearl and the young woman he considered to be like his own daughter, who was by blood Pearl’s daughter.

Was any or all of this bad? Or inevitable? Who knew? The Tuckers and the Kingdoms and their offspring, natural or adopted, did constitute a support system. Perhaps one that filled a greater need than if they’d been blood relatives and belonged to something whether they liked it or not.

Quinn said, “So Ida is making arrangements to claim the bodies of her daughters.”

“Looks that way,” Lido said. He drank some beer and then wiped his foamy upper lip with the back of a knuckle. “Will she be coming to New York?”

“I don’t know.” Quinn finished his beer and placed the bottle precisely in the center of its round coaster. He had to admit he was curious about this “hot potootie.” “Talking about her dead daughters isn’t something I look forward to.” He had discussed the grisly deaths of relatives too often in his life.

“Don’t worry,” Lido said. “That’s why you have me.”

“To worry?”

“To do things like this,” Lido said, and unfolded a sheet of paper and laid it in front of Quinn. “I worked up a sort of family tree.”

Quinn examined the neatly handwritten document

Henry Tucker/Betsy Douglass

Edward Tucker (brother)/Ida Tucker (Divorced)

Willa Douglass & Mark Kingdom

Adopted: Robert (Sr.) Kingdom &

Winston Kingdom (died as infant.)

Ida Tucker/Robert Kingdom (Sr.)

Adopted: Robert Kingdom, Jr. (AKA Winston Castle; takes Winston’s name as family name.)

Andria Bell

Jeanine Carson

Winston Castle/Maria Castle

“What are they,” Quinn asked, “a family of traveling gypsies?”

“Maybe something like that,” Lido said, “but they don’t do that much traveling.”

“They aren’t really that much family. A lot of them aren’t even blood relatives.”

“Maybe they’re even closer than blood relatives,” Lido said.

“How could that be?”

“Need.”

Quinn thought back. “Maybe.”

“They tend to lie a lot. Play roles.” Lido grinned. “You want I should find out more about this family?”

“It would take a load off my mind,” Quinn said.

Wondering why Winston Castle had pretended Ida Tucker, his adoptive mother, was a stranger.

Also wondering how much of Lido’s information was accurate. In various families, for various reasons, subterfuge was deeply ingrained. Sometimes it was for reasons long forgotten, and left behind like a curse.

28

The killer watched from deep shadow as Nancy Weaver emerged to ground level from her subway stop near her apartment. She looked right and left like a good girl and crossed the street. This part of the Village consisted mostly of walkup apartments slightly larger than shoeboxes. And Weaver’s block featured old-fashioned streetlights that, scenic and period New York as they were, cast very little light.

They suited the killer’s purpose.

He crossed the street farther down the block and was directly behind Weaver again. Keeping close to buildings and taking advantage of shadows, he observed her moving from pool of light to pool of light. One psychologically safer island, then another.

Not that she was afraid. Uneasy, maybe. Which wasn’t the same thing. The killer had to grin as he watched Weaver making her way home. Unaware. Unafraid. She exuded confidence. Who did she think she was? Badass cop with a gun in her handbag.

There was a warm fog tonight in the Village, and few people were out walking in it. Those who were would probably have a difficult time identifying other walkers. Vehicle traffic had slacked off, too. Now and then a truck rumbled along the narrow streets. Or a cab, its tires hissing on the damp pavement, not slowing down for pedestrians. It seemed that all the cabs were occupied. A mist and a spritzle of rain could do that in New York. It was as if the cabs had pop-up passengers that were activated by a mere drop of rain.

Weaver was easy enough to follow without being seen. Her buxom narrow-waisted figure was simple to identify in the dim light, and the few men who passed her walking in the opposite direction usually reacted by glancing back at her.

The killer understood how she’d gotten her spotty reputation. A woman like that would always be thought about first in sexual terms. He wondered if she’d decided, since she was going to have such a reputation anyway, that she might as well do the deeds and enjoy life with the proceeds. Let the heads shake and the tongues wag. The killer could understand why a woman would think that way. He fancied he knew a lot about women.

This one, Weaver, for sure. She had quite a reputation in the NYPD and was easy enough to research. Once he’d seen her with Quinn, and coming and going at the offices of Q&A, he had plenty of information to build on.

He was glad she was in the game.

He walked on through light and shadow, his soft-soled shoes making only the slightest scrunching noises on the hard damp concrete. He thought it was time to prod Quinn again. Not by going after Pearl. Or Quinn’s adopted (if she was) daughter Jody, or his daughter Lauri, in California (off the game board).

Nancy Weaver.

Yes, Weaver was the best choice, a woman who for years had been a part of Quinn’s life.