Double, Double, Oil and Trouble

by Emma Lathen

  “Good,” said Grimm without pleasure.

  “Because he should not have been driving, alone, in Greece under an assumed name.”

  “History is engrossing, Hummel, but will it retrieve my money?” said Grimm, taking a proprietorial approach to Macklin’s dollars.

  “I think so,” Hummel persevered. “If Wylie was a crook, then the woman who came here to Union Suisse to pick up the ransom was not a terrorist, but Wylie’s accomplice.”

  “And what difference does that make?”

  Hummel reached into the briefcase at his feet. “It may mean much, Herr Grimm. Tell me, do you see any resemblance at all between the woman with the knapsack, and any of these women?”

  Leopold Grimm did not recognize any of the women who had been seen in public with Davidson Wylie during the past three months. But he was astute enough to realize what Hummel’s inquiries meant.

  “The police are finished with Wylie’s activities,” he reported when he called New York later that day. “Now they are concentrating on his accomplices.”

  “His accomplices—and his murderers,” said John Thatcher.

  Chapter 12

  Pumping Stations

  The truth about Davidson Wylie provoked a wide variety of response.

  In London, the upper reaches of the civil service were justifiably horrified. Treasury officials who had personally extended the hand of friendship to Wylie, that is, they had accepted lavish expense-account hospitality from him, looked back on their original impressions with blank disbelief. The man whom they had regarded as a happy combination of American business acumen and European suavity stood exposed as a thief, an extortionist, a master of duplicity.

  No one was more disturbed than Simon Livermore. Being a creature of painstaking habit, he wiped his feet thoroughly and hung his raincoat in the hall before entering the living room overlooking Regent’s Park and bringing his wife up to date. Jill Livermore had enjoyed several nightclub evenings hosted by Wylie.

  “The news from Houston today is even more appalling,” he began somberly.

  But Jill, a promising fashion model five years earlier, belonged to a different world and a different generation than her husband. His first ten minutes home always constituted a decompression stage for Simon as he modulated from the language and values of Whitehall to those of modern Chelsea.

  “Not unless they’re blowing them up in batches now,” she said, her voice preceding her as she glided gracefully into the room bearing a tray of decanters and glasses.

  Any subordinate who dismissed an act of primitive violence so lightheartedly would have earned a sharp reproof. But very few men, Simon least of all, felt impelled to reprove Jill Livermore. Her small, fine-boned head, its delicate modeling emphasized by close-cropped blond hair, emerged like a flower on a slender stalk from the flowing silk caftan that she was wearing. She deposited the tray and, like a ballerina, subsided into a corner of the sofa without a backward glance.

  “Good God, I didn’t mean there had been any more crimes,” her startled husband exclaimed. “I was talking about the police discoveries. It seems they’ve been acquiring details at an incredible pace in the Near East. They’ve traced all of Wylie’s movements.”

  With the frankness of youth, Jill rarely made any bones about her priorities. She liked wearing expensive clothes, going to famous restaurants and clubs, traveling to exotic foreign parts. She was bored by Simon’s job.

  “So what?” she asked, unimpressed. “You said they could tell he’d been in some kind of accident because of the post-mortem. As soon as they realized that he was covering up anything, they must have been sure that he stage-managed a fake kidnapping. That’s what I would have thought. But knowing where he spent the time—that wouldn’t take me any farther.”

  Having poured precisely the correct amount of whisky, Simon carried a glass over to his wife. Then, as he had done countless times before, he mulishly tried to make her appreciate the importance his office attached to trivia.

  “Now that the police have established Wylie as the author of this plot, they assume his death was due to a falling out over the money. If they can establish his actions, they may locate his accomplices.”

  “What a hope! Nine chances out of ten, he hired two boys who were stoned out of their minds for that masquerade in Istanbul. With all the publicity, they’re probably in Afghanistan by now—if they remember anything at all, that is.”

  Simon hated yielding points to Jill in this sort of argument. He was supposed to be the expert but, too often, Jill could outpace him and still arrive at the correct conclusion. Like all hard-pressed debaters, he shifted ground slightly.

  “The men in the ski masks are not considered important. Wylie could have hired them anywhere,” he said gravely. “The woman who went to the bank in Zurich is a different matter.”

  “Yes, yes,” Jill interrupted, anxious to get on with it. “You’d have to be loony to think she was a casual pickup. Fancy trusting a stranger with that bank account.”

  “Nobody is thinking in terms of strangers,” Simon retorted sharply. “Colin MacFarquar says that the police are confident of tracing a connection between Wylie and the woman.”

  Jill’s attention was half-centered on a letter she had picked up from the end table. “Oh, the police,” she shrugged. “They’re always confident. That’s what they say every time some IRA bomber runs loose in the West End.”

  “Surely there’s a difference. Here they have one end of a relationship. They can pursue all sorts of inquiries.”

  “And they will for about ten days. Then it will all blow over. When was the last time they did anything about the man who blew up the Birmingham Crescent?” Jill asked the question and continued, all in one breath: “Simon, did I tell you we got a note from the Harrisons? They’re opening their place in Corsica early this year and they’ve asked us to visit. Do let’s run over next month.”

  Even as he agreed, Livermore was blinking thoughtfully. To the outsider it might seem as if he had simply stopped trying to bring his young wife to his way of thinking. Actually, these crucial ten minutes had effected their usual breach in his self-assurance.

  “I suppose you may be right,” he began doubtfully. “Another month and Davidson Wylie will be forgotten by everybody.”

  “Not by me.” A puckish grin briefly ruffled her angelic fairness. “His scheme was a fantastically simple way to make money. I’m surprised no one thought of it before.”

  4,000 miles away, another couple discussed the same topic. Paul and Betsy Volpe had talked of little else for the past three days. This evening, taking advantage of the lingering summer light, they had driven out from Houston to rent horses. After an hour in the saddle they descended to admire a long view.

  “To think of Dave pulling something like that,” said Paul for the hundredth time. “I thought he was all wrapped up in getting contracts for Macklin, and instead he was planning his own million-dollar caper.”

  “He wasn’t planning it for two whole years. Maybe Dave was just the man you imagined when you first went to work for him,” Betsy reasoned. “But you know how it is with people. You get fixated by your first notion of them, and you don’t realize they’re changing.”

  Paul was sitting in the classic posture of deep thought, his back against a fence, his chin propped against the heel of his hand. “I suppose that’s possible. But Hugo Cramer says they’ve proved he did a lot of things in advance—hiring a car in Istanbul, renting a room in Greece. And he didn’t round up that gang of helpers on the spur of the moment.”

  “You’re talking about a couple of months, at the most. And Dave saw to it that you were pretty busy during that time.”

  “Of course you never liked Dave,” Paul remembered, giving credit where credit was due.

  It was perfectly true that Betsy had never cared for entertaining Davidson Wylie in her own home when he visited Italy. After the first few occasions she had suggested they abandon the attempt. Even Paul
admitted the evening had not been a success. Somehow Wylie’s worldly anecdotes had always rung a little hollow, fallen a little flat. And Betsy, whose success as a hostess depended on hearty good will rather than polished skill, always became stiff and formal.

  Nevertheless she denied any talent for prophecy. “I said Dave wasn’t my kind of person. I never said he was a heist artist.”

  Certainly, Betsy had been understanding about the need to be on good terms with Wylie. Paul could not count the times she had stayed behind while the two men dined together or played tennis together, especially after the breakup of Wylie’s marriage had caused him to spend more time on the road.

  “Though now I come to think of it,” Paul continued his reflections aloud, “Dave wasn’t in and out of Rome all the time just because of Francesca.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Betsy asked.

  “Well, it stands to reason. He had a lot of things to set up in Greece and Turkey, not to mention seeing this woman who was his partner. Do you know that one of the police theories is that she killed Dave after they quarreled about the loot. I don’t understand that at all. They must have planned the whole thing together, and they got away with it all right. So what’s to quarrel about?”

  “Maybe she decided that she wanted the money and she didn’t want Dave.”

  Betsy was lying flat on her back, with her knees lofted skyward and a stalk of grass in her mouth. In her blue jeans and plaid shirt, her curly mop of hair tousled by the ride, she looked absurdly youthful for this cynicism.

  Her husband was inclined to reject it out of hand. “Come on, Betsy. Just because Dave didn’t light you up doesn’t mean he wasn’t attractive to women.”

  “Oh, I can see somebody falling for him, but I’ll bet it wouldn’t last long. He put up a good front but it wasn’t very deep. For one thing, he was always showing off. Look at the way he kept trying to play the old European hand with you.”

  “There was a lot he could teach me.”

  “Not as much as he thought. In fact there was plenty you could have told him about Europe,” Betsy said loyally. “After all, he didn’t know any languages and he’d never been off his little beaten track.”

  Here she was on solid ground. Paul Volpe was an Italian-American, thoroughly bilingual. On top of that, two years as an Army engineer in France had left him with a working command of French and an unrivalled knowledge of building suppliers on the Continent. Unfortunately, Paul could not believe that many professional expatriates envied him his immigrant parents, his second cousins in Naples, or even his ability to lay hands on a freight car of nails at distress prices. In his experience that was not what people meant by knowing your way around Europe.

  “It’s different if you belong to the best squash club in Rome,” he said unanswerably, “or if you’re on first-name terms with French banking families or you have a summer villa on the right island.”

  Betsy jumped to her feet in a frenzy of exasperation. “It’s bad enough that Dave Wylie did a snow job on us when he was alive. Can’t we forget him now that he’s dead? And it was all a fake with Dave anyway. Or he wouldn’t have ended up pulling a phony kidnapping.”

  “You can’t deny it was a good way to get money.” Paul sounded wistful. “And we could use some.”

  “There are other ways to make money. And some of it may be heading in our direction.” She was brushing herself off as briskly as she did everything else. “Don’t forget, Macklin is now missing one director of European operations.”

  In spite of himself, Paul Volpe’s eyes narrowed with calculation.

  In downtown Houston, another couple had not achieved the same degree of harmony.

  “But it’s your duty,” Gwen Trabulsi insisted.

  Vic Trabulsi was standing stock still in his kitchen, his stance a living embodiment of the argument now raging. On the one hand he was motionless, every frozen muscle witnessing his determination not to go anywhere. On the other hand, he was facing the door to the garage, no small tribute to his wife’s persuasion, cajolery, and stamina. She had been at it now for a full hour, never losing her footing under the onslaught of Vic’s varied and ingenious excuses. She knew in her bones that his recalcitrance had only one source—the ingrained reluctance of the conservative male to lend himself to anything smacking of melodrama.

  “Now, honey,” he rumbled, “it’s not as if I could tell the cops anything that would help them.”

  “How do you know?” she challenged. “They’ve put out an appeal for everyone with information about Davidson Wylie’s last week.”

  “I don’t have any information. I keep telling you that, but you’re not listening. Just the way you never do.”

  Strong-mindedly Gwen ignored this attempt to change the subject. Lowering her voice to a throbbing whisper, she said: “You heard him talking to his wife less than 48 hours before he was murdered.”

  Vic winced. It was precisely this sort of overcharged impressionism he was trying to avoid. “The cops already know that Wylie was staying at the Tidewater. They know Mrs. Wylie was staying there. What’s so wonderful about their exchanging words? Hell, Wylie probably did as much with the waiters and the desk clerks.”

  “If that was all you could tell the police, it might not be important. But you heard what they were saying.”

  “Not all of it.”

  “Ah ha.” Gwen was triumphant. “Then you admit you remember some of it.”

  “It didn’t amount to anything.”

  “It was peculiar. You said so at the time.”

  Vic groaned. This was getting worse and worse. Now he would stand convicted not only of eavesdropping, but also of a spinsterish thirst for sensational domestic detail.

  “I don’t care what you say,” he proclaimed roundly. “I’m not going down to headquarters.”

  The reason the Trabulsis could protract any dispute over an unbelievable length of time was that they had done it so often before. Every combination and permutation in their respective positions had long since been discovered, explored, and filed for future reference. After the historic occasion in their first year of marriage when Gwen had forced Vic to go to the landlord about the call girl in the next apartment, there was nothing left for either of them to learn. They knew every move and countermove before it was made. And they also knew the inevitable outcome.

  An hour later Gwen deposited Vic in front of a tall policeman, saying: “Lieutenant Nash? We’re Mr. and Mrs. Trabulsi. I’m the one who called you.”

  Her manner indicated clearly that she had brought her horse to water and now it was up to Houston’s Homicide Squad to make him drink. Lieutenant Nash did not do a bad job. Entering a silent pact against women, he made sympathetic noises, he nodded understanding, he admitted fellow feeling, and he waited out embarrassed pauses. His reward was greater than he anticipated.

  “Now, let’s see if I’ve got this straight, Mr. Trabulsi.” Nash was as cautious as a naturalist anxious not to frighten a wild animal. “Mrs. Wylie was pressing Mr. Wylie to share everything 50-50. He claimed they were, but she was suspicious and said that, while he was counting all those dollars, he should remember it was her idea in the first place.”

  At this bald summation, Vic Trabulsi rolled his eyes desperately. “When they started, they were talking about some lot in Houston. I missed some of it afterward, but they could have been fighting about their property settlement right along.”

  “That’s always possible,” Lieutenant Nash said without conviction. “Maybe we should ask Mrs. Wylie.”

  The last couple was so far from accord that they had to do their talking on the telephone. At first Klaus Engelhart did not understand the problem.

  “I am sorry we cannot have dinner tomorrow. Shall we make it Thursday then?”

  “No,” snapped Francesca Wylie. “You misunderstood me. I won’t see you at all here in Houston.”

  Engelhart had a rigid sense of decorum himself, but this, he felt, was carrying things to ridiculo
us extremes. “Liebchen, you were already in the process of divorcing Dave. The world will not expect a thick black veil and two years of mourning. Who are you trying to fool?”

  “I’m not trying to fool anyone. That’s not it at all.”

  “I am not asking you to put on red flounces and dance a cancan. Surely nobody could object to a quiet dinner. You have to eat.”

  Another woman might have started to scream. Francesca, instead, assumed a strained sweetness that was as good as a warning bell. “Klaus, dear, I do not require instruction on how widows should behave. If you have any hints on the proper etiquette for murder suspects, that would be most helpful.”

  “A murder suspect!” It was Klaus who was in danger of screaming. “Who gave you that idea?”

  Klaus’s agitation had a tonic effect on Francesca. “An unimpeachable source,” she replied. “The policeman from the homicide squad who has just left.”

  “They must be insane. Even if they thought it was Dave who was divorcing you, when does a wronged woman wire a car with blasting dynamite?”

  “Oh, they are not charging me with a crime of passion. They suspect me of cold-blooded, calculating murder for one and a half million dollars. In fact, they think I arranged that kidnapping with David.”

  At the opposite end of the Tidewater, Klaus Engelhart plucked his lower lip reflectively. “I can see why they think someone did. But why you?”

  “Mostly because of a squabble about the property settlement. When David went to work for Macklin, I insisted that we buy land here in Houston. He was trying to cheat me out of the profit. Some cretin at the Tidewater overheard a few sentences and fabricated a theory that I helped in the kidnapping and David wouldn’t give me my share of the ransom.”

  Klaus carefully considered what she had told him and pounced on one word. “You said ‘mostly.’ What else worries the police?”