A Child's Garden of Death

by Forrest, Richard;

  “The photographs are much more interesting … shall we say, graphic?” she said, turning to him. “A great deal more interesting than times and places.”

  “And numbers.”

  “Does it shock you that the lady likes to copulate, that the lady fucks on Friday and stores up screws like coins in a piggy bank?”

  “Yes, to be honest. It did shock me.”

  “You’re a prude, Mr. Wentworth, and you look at me like some ancient schoolmaster.”

  “You were crying when you left his office that day.”

  She pulled up the sleeve of her dress to reveal long welts along her upper arm. “He could be very nasty,” she said without self-pity. “You should see my breasts, Mr. Wentworth; they’re a mass of bruises—would you like to see my breasts?”

  Lyon realized with a shock that he would, but thrust the thought out of his mind. “Where did you go when you left the office?”

  Her hand rested on his thigh and Lyon moved slightly. “Women do different things when they’re upset. Some shop, some drink, I fuck.” She tapped the glass divider behind the chauffeur. “Henry is very accommodating for those quickies. And, I must admit that in retrospect I received a perverse pleasure in knowing I was getting laid while my husband died.”

  Her hand moved farther across Lyon’s leg, and he shifted in his seat until his back was against the door and further retreat was impossible. “His death came at a very convenient time for you,” Lyon said.

  “Very convenient,” she said as her hands made little flicking motions along his inner leg.

  As it slowed for a traffic light, Lyon jumped from the limousine and strained his ankle. He heard her cool laugh as the car gathered speed and turned the corner.

  “If you don’t leave I’m calling the police,” Miss Florence Reed said, with her aquiline nose touching the door’s safety chain.

  “We are the police,” Rocco replied.

  At a loss for a reply, she hesitated and then took the chain off the door. Rocco and Lyon entered the small apartment, to be overwhelmed by chintz and cats. Chintz curtains, upholstery and wall paper, with an Angora, Persian, Manx and alley cat covering most of the furniture.

  She sat primly on the edge of a small divan, her legs pressed tightly together. The pose was slightly reminiscent of Helen Houston’s posture in the limousine, and Lyon reflected with guilt on his temptation to stay in the car with the very attractive nymphomaniac. In bed, the previous night, Beatrice had turned her back with a small snort, still angry over Rocco’s intrusion and the shattering of their day. Lyon knew this was not Bea’s usual form of domestic punishment, and that after tonight he might once again be removed from possible temptation.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked.

  “Just a few questions, and your help with something,” Rocco said.

  “Does he have to be here?” she asked, pointing at Lyon.

  “I’ll try to keep him from attacking you,” Rocco said. “Miss Reed, on the morning of Mr. Houston’s death, you heard a shot. Can you tell me what happened then?”

  “I … I ran to the door of his office.”

  “It’s important to us that you remember exactly what happened next.”

  She thought a moment. “Well, nothing for a while. I began to pound on the door. I could hear the men in the board room pounding on the other door, then the splintering of wood when they broke it in. In a minute or two someone opened my door and let me in … it was horrible.”

  “I see,” Rocco said and went on in a quiet manner. “Now, you mentioned to us before that Mr. Houston was very fond of recording devices, that he insisted that all his executives have devices like his.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And he had directors’ and committee meetings recorded.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Where would those tapes be kept?”

  “In the file room next to my office.”

  “Would a great many people have access to them?”

  “Yes, anyone authorized to be in the executive wing. Someone couldn’t just walk in off the street and get them.”

  “Miss Reed, we’d like to borrow a few of those tapes overnight.”

  “I couldn’t do that without a court order.”

  “Miss Reed,” Rocco said, “what I’ve asked from you would be a great aid to us. I am sure Mr. Houston, if he were alive, would want you to cooperate.”

  She looked at him for a long moment. “Do you know, I believe he would.”

  With a dubious glance, but reassured by a telephone call from Sergeant Pasquale, the security guard escorted Lyon toward the wire shop in Building Seven. That morning the first selectman of Murphysville had ordered Rocco to run a traffic count on Route 66. This had enraged Rocco, not so much because he feared missing the meeting with Lyon this morning, nor did he dislike making neat notations of the types and numbers of passing vehicles. It was the counter’s inability to chase traffic violators that bugged him. He had finally helped his depression by establishing a speed trap farther up the highway.

  As they entered the wire shop the guard motioned toward a large heat oven where Jim Graves was helping a denim-clad workman feed a metal bar into the carrier tray.

  The guard retreated a discreet distance as Lyon watched Graves. The fire door to the oven opened, and the interior white heat illuminated the man’s face. As the oven door closed, Graves stepped back and made a minor adjustment to the controls. His concentration was so intense that he failed to notice Lyon a few feet to his side until Lyon tentatively grasped his elbow.

  As Graves turned, it took a moment for his concentration to dissipate and for his recognition of Lyon to register. “Wentworth,” he finally said. “Glad you found me. How do you like the wire shop?”

  “I’m not exactly sure what they’re doing.”

  “The Graves tour, then. I’m proud of this operation.” He grasped Lyon’s elbow and led him across the plant floor. “The wire shop is my own creation and a new operation for the company. Diversity is the answer, Wentworth. And I don’t mean buying other companies like the big conglomerates do. We do it ourselves; each year we add a new product. Wire’s only six months old and already we’ve turned the corner and are in the black.”

  With pride Jim Graves led Lyon through the shop, and Lyon observed the man’s childlike glee as he explained the various operations. He demonstrated how six-foot-long metal bars with high gold content were heated in the oven they’d just passed, and showed Lyon where the bar was drawn through water, heat and die-cutting traps until finally a single strand of wire was run through the last series of cutting dies onto a spool, making a thin, nearly invisible wire of high tensile strength.

  “What’s it used for?” Lyon asked.

  “Rocket circuitry, airplane circuitry, anything electrical that requires strength with a high conductive quality.”

  They sat in a foreman’s office where Graves wiped his perspiring forehead with a handkerchief. “It’s very interesting,” Lyon said.

  “If you like this, you should see the automated line we just opened in Building Three. That’s my pride and joy—put everything I know into it and ten years on the plans … the most fully automated line in the world.”

  “I’d like to see it sometime,” Lyon said.

  “Well, Wentworth, I guess you can tell one thing. I’m a shirtsleeve executive. Try and spend at least an hour a day on the plant floor, different department every day. Surprising what you can learn. Now, what can I do for you?”

  “I just have a couple of questions about the morning Asa Houston was killed.”

  “‘Killed’? You mean when he killed himself.”

  Lyon examined the bifocal microscope on the foreman’s desk for a moment. “Possibly. You were in the board room next door.”

  “Yes, I always chair the foremen’s meeting.”

  “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  “It’s all in the police report. We were having our meeting like we
do every other Thursday at ten-fifteen sharp when we all heard the shot from Asa’s office. We ran to the door, and when he didn’t answer we broke it in. That’s all.”

  “Who broke the door in?”

  “I’m not sure, Smitty, Wilson … several of them. It was pretty much of a madhouse.”

  “Do you know anything about the Houstons’ marriage?”

  “Only what’s pretty much common knowledge around here.”

  “You mean about her affairs.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t know about that. I mean about her working.”

  “Working?”

  “Sure. If I had her in here she could run this shop better than any two engineers I’ve got. She’s also one hell of a fine metallurgist.”

  “Yes, you told me.”

  “She liked not working at first. Had a pretty tough time as a kid, I expect, and liked the money. Later on she’d come to me and cry on my shoulder. At first she said it was fine being Asa Houston’s newest possession, but she missed working, and he wouldn’t let her come back. She tried other places, but the competition wouldn’t hire her for obvious reasons, and if she got a job somewhere else Houston would put the word out and she’d be laid off … eventually she gave up … found other interests, I guess.”

  “Yes,” Lyon said. “I think she found other interests.”

  “You know, Wentworth, I’m not sure I like your innuendoes about Helen.”

  “She did have a motive, didn’t she?”

  “A lot of people did, including me.”

  “You?”

  “Sure. Houston was trying to break my contract and dump me. After thirty years of building production and ten years of work on the automated plant, he tries to dump me.”

  “Why?”

  “Houston Company is a big corporation, public, on the Big Board. We have a bunch of directors who were getting tired of his absentee management. Houston had his hands in a hundred different things, expected me to run the show here for him. There was a movement to kick him upstairs, up to chairman of the board. He thought I was behind it.”

  “Were you?”

  “Yes, Mr. Wentworth, I was. In fact, at tomorrow’s board meeting I will be elected president of the company.”

  Eleven

  After the fifth hour of listening to the tapes Florence Reed had obtained for them, Lyon felt he was learning more about the Houston Company than he really cared to know. A great many of the discussions repeated on the recordings were incomprehensible, and others he found either appalling or surprising. The practicality of convertible debentures and lines of credit pegged to two points above prime were an enigma to him, while interminable discussions of unit production and automation were at least comprehensible, even if many of the terms used were foreign. Most surprising were the often heated discussions among the vice-presidents. He had always assumed that corporate decisions were made in a dictatorial fashion with little room for dissenting opinions, and yet he found that sales was constantly at loggerheads with production and that the comptroller seemed to want to keep every penny of the company’s money squirreled away in some safe haven.

  His mind had wandered and he stopped the tape, reversed it to a section he wanted and stopped the machine. Shuttling forward and backward, he isolated the word he wanted and began to extract it from the tape.

  “MY GOD, WHAT IS ALL THIS STUFF?” Bea stood in the doorway of the study, surveying the mass of recording equipment, electronic gear and scattered spools of tape.

  Startled, Lyon snipped his finger with the X-acto knife and clenched his teeth. “I am working,” he said from the corner of his mouth.

  “Oh my, is Santa Claus broadcasting from the North Pole this year?”

  Lyon answered without turning to face his wife. “It all has to do with a new book, the Eel and the Electron.”

  “What happened to Cat?”

  “You know how it is, hon. When an idea comes to you, you’ve just got to push forward with it. This eel is a vibrant character, but it’s really an allegory concerning St. Thomas Aquinas.”

  Bea pushed two boxes of tapes from the seat of the leather chair and plunked into it. “My dear husband, this afternoon I voted on a budget that is several millions above revenues; somehow they convinced me it was the economical thing to do. Now, maybe I can buy an unbalanced budget, but allegories about St. Thomas and eels I don’t buy.”

  “How about the Raccoon and the Recorder?”

  “I think you’re full of it. You didn’t buy all this stuff, did you?”

  “A good deal of it is second-hand.”

  “HOW MUCH?”

  “I haven’t added it up.”

  “MAKE A GUESS, AN ESTIMATE, TRY ME.”

  “Would you believe twenty or thirty dollars?” He knew from the forbidding silence that she didn’t believe twenty or thirty dollars. He swiveled the chair to face his wife. She had leaned back to look at him with a bemused smile.

  “Try again,” she said.

  “Twelve hundred and eighty dollars,” Lyon said and poured two glasses of sherry.

  Bea pulled her always-present notebook from her jacket pocket and began to jot figures. “Twelve hundred and eighty, five hundred for the Florida jaunt, the case of liquor you bought Rocco for a get-well present, two suits of clothing ruined, your doctor bills, gasoline, the publisher’s advance that you missed. SIX THOUSAND. SIX THOUSAND, LYON.”

  “You forgot the five thousand Houston sent.”

  “Of which you gave half to Rocco. Oh, and I forgot the money you gave that private investigator.”

  “It’s for a good cause.”

  “I’d call it a rather expensive hobby. So, please tell me what you’re doing.”

  “I think I’m getting ready to kill a Wobbly.”

  Pat Pasquale arrived before Rocco and sat sullenly in a corner of the living room nursing a scotch and water. Kim snorted and disappeared to her apartment when the unmarked police car pulled into the driveway, and now Bea sat on the sofa looking thoroughly dejected.

  “I’m on my own time, Wentworth. So, where’s your big friend?” Pat said.

  “He had to go over to the State Police barracks and borrow something.”

  “He borrows and you buy,” Bea said. “I wonder if I can get a state civil service job typing envelopes? It would pay better than State Senator, and at this rate we’re going to need the money.” She turned to Pat. “How’s the incidence of forcible rape in Hartford this year, Sergeant?”

  “Not bad, Senator. We expect a year-end decrease due to more men on foot. Which is where I’ll probably be next week.”

  Beaming, Rocco Herbert strode into the room. “I’ve got my end,” he announced.

  “I refuse to comment on that remark,” Pat said.

  “My wife will never believe what I’m doing,” Pat said.

  “I’ll set things up,” Lyon said.

  Pat was on his feet. “Wait just a minute, you two. Let’s see if I understand this parlor game we’re playing. You guys have two suspects. During the time of the suicide which you call a murder, one was out in the parking lot copulating with the chauffeur and the other was in a meeting in front of fifteen reliable witnesses.”

  “Exactly,” Lyon replied. “And we’re going to show you what happened that morning.”

  The police sergeant looked at them with a skepticism that gradually turned to interest. “You really think you’ve got something?”

  “We do,” Rocco said.

  “Then I’m interested,” the sergeant said.

  “All right, then,” Lyon said. “Let’s imagine that my study is Houston’s office, that the windows can’t be opened, and that this room is either the secretaries’ office or the board room.”

  “I’m with you so far,” Pat said.

  “Good. Now, Rocco, if I can borrow your gun.” Along with his service revolver Rocco handed Lyon a paper bag. “It’s now 8 P.M., but we can imagine it as 10 A.M. It’s the time lapse that’s important.”

  “
Be careful with that gun,” Bea said.

  Lyon left the living room, closing the heavy study door securely. He took a stuffed Wobbly doll from the mantel and placed it in his desk chair and inserted a cassette in the recording machine. Glancing at his watch, he turned the recorder on. He took the silencer from the paper bag Rocco had given him and screwed it onto the barrel of the thirty-eight caliber service pistol.

  Glancing at the sweep second hand of his watch he pointed the gun at the stuffed toy’s head. “Sorry, old chap,” he said, “but you’re repairable.” He fired and the gun went off with a short pop. With stuffing flying through the air, the doll spun upward and landed against the far wall.

  He unscrewed the silencer and slipped it in his pocket and laid the pistol on the desk. He threw the switch of the electrical system he’d attached to the edge of the desk that afternoon, and immediately heard the click of tumblers falling into place at the door. The small, airline flight bag was on the mantel in place of the destroyed doll. He picked it up, its deceiving weight almost forcing him to drop it. At the door he passed the bag back and forth across the lock face as the tumblers clicked open.

  Leaving the room with the flight bag held behind his back, he held it against the door frame until he was satisfied that the door was again locked. Lyon walked across the living room and poured a sherry.

  “Now what?” Pat said.

  “We wait,” Lyon replied. “I’ve got it set for five minutes, but it could be any length of time up to ninety minutes. The murderer has just left Houston’s office, and Houston, supposedly alone, has locked the doors.”

  “I’m with you so far,” the detective said.

  Lyon looked at his watch. “Just about …” The loud shot startled the group in the living room. Pat leaped across the room to the study door and fumbled with the handle.

  “It’s locked,” the diminutive detective said.

  Rocco picked up the flight bag and walked to the study door. He passed the bag back and forth across the door and then opened it. “We’ve got ourselves a portable electro-magnet,” Rocco said.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Pat said as they entered the study.

  Bea stood in the doorway and surveyed the mass of stuffing throughout the room. “My God, Lyon, you’ve made a mess,” she said.