Green Grow the Dollars

by Emma Lathen

  To the grief in this particular house, there was added rage. Dombrow took no offense, even when Norris turned on him. “Are they making any progress, finding out who killed Barbie?”

  “They’re working on it,” Dombrow responded.

  Suddenly, Phil Norris seemed to crumple within his bandbox-fresh clothes. Stammering something indistinguishable, he blundered toward the kitchen. Ellie started to follow, then stopped.

  “He’s taking it hard,” she said simply.

  Dombrow had seen pictures of the murdered woman, and he found himself looking at the same face. There were fine lines around these eyes, the lips were a little thinner. But the same sweetness was there.

  “Phil was so proud of Barbie,” she said, trying to smile. “You should have seen him at the wedding. She was so beautiful. And Tim was so handsome in his uniform. They were too young, both of them. But—”

  She broke off, pressed a handkerchief to her lips. When she spoke again, she turned to the present. She did not trust herself with the unshadowed days of the past.

  “And everybody’s been so kind. That Mrs. Pendleton came out here yesterday, just to tell us how fond they were of Barbara in Puerto Rico. And her husband would have come if he hadn’t had a meeting.”

  Sorrow could break a man down, Dombrow thought, but women bent. The weight of this tragedy, from care of a granddaughter to comfort of a husband, was falling on Mrs. Norris’s shoulders. She would fix her eyes on the sustaining forces, the universal affection for her daughter, the good will of strangers, and somehow she would find the strength.

  “Mr. Ackerman’s been wonderful, too,” she was continuing. “Imagine, he said his wife could put together a case of Tracy’s things and drive down from Wisconsin over the weekend. Just to spare us the trouble. There are a lot of good people in the world.”

  This time when she wavered, she merely gripped the handkerchief tightly. “But you didn’t come for that. . . .”

  “They want to know if you’ve talked to the lawyer in Madison yet,” he said.

  It had already been established that the Norrises knew very little about their daughter’s daily life. They had met Scott Wenzel and Ned Ackerman when they drove up to Madison two summers ago for a visit. Otherwise Barbara’s life was a closed book to them.

  “. . . didn’t realize what a good job it was,” Mrs. Norris was saying. “Of course we knew that Barbie was smart.”

  For a moment, Dombrow was afraid he had missed something. But Mrs. Norris was talking about what he had come to explore, what Barbara Gunn had left behind.

  “$25,000,” said her mother. “That’s a lot of money for a young girl who’s supporting herself and a baby to save.”

  “It sure is,” said Dombrow.

  With touching pride Barbara’s mother read off the details that had been telephoned from the lawyer: the bank, the amount, the dates.

  “Of course, we’re not going to touch it,” said Ellie Norris. “It’s all for Tracy’s education.”

  Dombrow nodded approvingly, like the solid family man that he was. But he was a policeman too. Even as he nodded, he was two steps beyond Mrs. Norris.

  $15,000 in one deposit five years ago did not sound like the result of steady saving to him.

  Chapter 18

  Remove Faded Flowers

  IT took police specialists less than 24 hours to establish the damning facts about Barbara Gunn’s nest egg. By the next day, with a little judicious assistance from Captain McNabb, the news had percolated into the board rooms, hotel lobbies, and convention halls of Chicago where it unleashed a torrent of speculation, accusation and counteraccusation.

  The one place where the subject was not being discussed was a suburban cemetery fifteen miles west of Bridgeport where early arrivals were forced to wait for the long cortege of cars. To those who had known her as a grown woman, whether as naval wife, recent widow, or working mother, Barbara Gunn had been a transient, a bird of passage, never putting down roots. That was not the way she looked to Bridgeport. Phil and Ellie Norris had lived in the community for their entire marriage and, on this sad day, they were supported by relatives, neighbors, lodge brothers, and fellow workers. But Barbara herself for many years had been a permanent fixture there, and she was young enough to be a living memory for her own generation. The crowd was swelled by her high school classmates, the boys she had dated, the young people she had once taught in Sunday School. Her funeral was a local event, so much so that the two outside parties, one from Puerto Rico and one from Wisconsin, were almost forced into each other’s arms.

  This commingling was all the easier because Fran and Ned Ackerman had already bumped into each other during their condolence visits.

  “Hello, Fran,” Ackerman said somberly. “I think Barbara’s parents are looking a little better, don’t you?”

  “They’re over the first shock,” Fran agreed. “But I honestly don’t see how her father would have gotten through it if it hadn’t been for little Tracy.”

  Scott Wenzel was looking resentfully at the clear blue sky and the clean white drifts lining the roadways through the cemetery. “God, it’s as if nothing had happened,” he said, with all-too-human frustration at the bland indifference of nature.

  When a young person has died, the heavens should weep and the trees should array themselves in long grey tendrils. It is indecent that the sun should shine and a buffeting breeze should toss the bare branches in playful abandon.

  “It’s hard to believe she’s really dead,” Howard Pendleton said more temperately.

  “And before this damn suit blew up she was so happy,” Ned Ackerman recalled. “She really was looking forward to going back to school. I think she felt she was making a new beginning.”

  Sadly Fran continued the theme. “Yes, it took her a long time to find her feet.”

  Scott was puzzled. “I didn’t know it was such a big deal for her. She didn’t say that much about it.”

  Fran and Ned exchanged glances. They both knew that Barbara had spoken; Scott simply had not been listening.

  “What difference does all that make now?” Pendleton reminded them. “Her death is the tragedy.”

  It was left for Hilary Davis to strike a new note. “The real tragedy was that she didn’t get out a year sooner.”

  “What’s that?” Taken off guard, Ned Ackerman was betrayed into asking a question, the answer to which he did not want to hear.

  “If she hadn’t been around, she wouldn’t have been involved in the lawsuit,” Hilary relentlessly expanded, “and there’d have been no reason for anyone to kill her.”

  She had spoken in the tones of a lecturer, without the slightest tincture of any emotion other than the desire to impart information. Nonetheless, such a heavy cloud of self-accusation enveloped the isolated band that she might have been denouncing them from the pulpit.

  Eric Most was the one who broke under the strain. “Well, it was her own fault,” he burst out.

  This appalling truth first reduced everyone to silence, then impelled them into feverish conversation.

  Howard Pendleton resorted to an old standby. “I saw you at Maxwell’s seminar yesterday, Scott. What did you think of his findings?” he asked.

  Scott was a good deal more fluent at picking apart a colleague’s work than at dealing with the verities of life and death. As if a button had been pushed, he was soon in full flight, ably seconded by the Pendletons. Ackerman was content to stay on the sidelines, a few alternate subjects at the ready. Hilary, composed and aloof, was contemptuous of this universal failure to face facts. But Eric Most was the chief sufferer. His outburst had sounded childish even to him, and he was mortified by his lack of control. He could not redeem himself with a display of professional bravura because he had skipped Maxwell’s seminar. Above all, he was present under protest. His first reaction to Howard’s proposal of a mass attendance at the funeral had been that he barely knew the girl. His second was that he could scarcely be expected to put on a big show
of grief for someone who had stolen his work.

  “Her parents won’t know what you’re thinking,” Pendleton had rejoined roughly, “and I assume you’ve got enough sense not to air your views at the side of her grave.”

  By degrees the conversation modulated from Maxwell’s mistakes to the future of Tracy Gunn.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Fran told Ackerman, “but Ellie and Phil let me know what you’ve offered to do. If there’s any difficulty, Howard and I would like to contribute. It can’t be easy for a young firm, in its first years, to start a fund like that.”

  “We’ll be able to swing it,” Ackerman said confidently. “God knows it’s little enough, but it gives them a sense of security for the little girl.”

  Fran was moved to clasp his arm warmly. “I know it was your idea and I think it’s a wonderful thing to do.”

  “Scott went right along as soon as I mentioned it, Fran,” said Ackerman, swift to reject the implied criticism. “You know he’s not callous, he’s just not used to thinking in terms of people.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” Fran replied. “I like Scott, I like him a lot, but it’s time he did a little growing up.”

  The process began almost immediately. The final car arrived, the family braced itself, and the simple ceremony proceeded without incident. The Norrises looked drained, their friends looked sad, but when the first symbolic handful of earth fell on the fresh new casket, it was Scott Wenzel who gulped audibly, produced a handkerchief and, with misting eyes, blew his nose.

  As they moved toward the line waiting to say a few last words to the Norrises, Scott tried to explain his latest discovery. “It just hit me,” he said, sounding more surprised than anything else. “Barbara isn’t going to be here anymore and, my God, I’m going to miss her!”

  Hilary was as crisp as ever. “Of course you are.”

  “But she didn’t do anything special,” Scott protested, still trying to puzzle things out. “We’ll get somebody else easily enough.”

  “Barbara was a part of your life for over six years. That’s why you’ll miss her,” Hilary said with kindly authority. “Now, I’m going to peel off here with Eric while the rest of you pay your respects. And Scott, remember to tell her parents how much you’ll miss Barbara.”

  This program hit an unexpected snag the moment the two men from Wisconsin Seed approached the bereaved parents.

  Even in the midst of her grief, Mrs. Norris recognized that she had an obligation.

  “Oh, Mr. Ackerman,” she said urgently, “I want you to understand that when we spoke with you the other day, Phil and I didn’t know that Barbara had left anything for Tracy. It makes a big difference. We’ll be able to manage and—”

  “That doesn’t change things at all,” Ned overrode her hastily, horror-struck at this introduction of a topic best avoided.

  “But it does,” Mrs. Norris repeated with the persistence of simple-minded honesty.

  Ned let her go no further. “We’re glad to do it as a memorial to Barbara. We were so fond of her, and we’ll never forget her,” he said, desperately gabbling a few mandatory condolences while unceremoniously pushing Scott Wenzel past the Norrises.

  Just behind them, Fran and Howard Pendleton were equally reluctant to discuss Barbara Gunn’s unexpected wealth. They too cut their remarks to a bare minimum, and the foursome cleared the line in record time.

  Even so, Hilary Davis and Eric Most had been left alone with each other for far too long.

  * * *

  “That man is a twit,” exclaimed Hilary as she scrambled into the car in a flurry of long, elegant legs.

  From the back seat Scott was not impressed. “I’ve been saying that for years.”

  Hilary paid no attention. “Do you realize he’s talking as if this $25,000 hasn’t shifted the spotlight? He still thinks you and Ned are the prime suspects.”

  “That’s just the way Eric would like things to be,” Scott reasoned.

  “Of course it is. But there’s such a thing as using your head. Now that we know Barbara took a bribe five years ago, most people can figure out what she’s been stealing and from whom.”

  Ned Ackerman hunched himself further over the steering wheel. “Could we put a little distance between us and Barbara’s grave before we discuss it, Hilary?” he grated.

  “You’re going to have to talk about it sometime.”

  “She’s right, you know,” Scott supported Hilary. “The only reason we didn’t do it this morning was because we were in too much of a rush.”

  The Wisconsin Seed delegation had been among the last to benefit from Captain McNabb’s calculated leakage. With Ned Ackerman disappearing into downtown Chicago all day and Scott burying himself in one seminar after another, they were a long way from the central grapevine. It had been Hilary, of all people, who brought back the latest gossip just as they were about to set forth on the long drive to the Bridgeport church.

  “All right, all right. So we talk about it,” Ned yielded. “What is there to say?”

  “Quite a lot,” snapped Hilary. “For starters, you two have just been taken off the hook for a murder charge. I don’t say I expect dancing in the streets, but you might explain why you’re acting as if it’s bad news, not good news.”

  Ned was every bit as irritable as she was. “Just think about it,” he advised. “Barbara was into absolutely everything we did. She could have robbed us blind.”

  “You’re the one who isn’t thinking.” Hilary shook her head reproachfully. “The moment that Vandam’s filed for that patent you knew that somebody had stolen the most important thing you had. What difference does it make that the pinching fingers belonged to Barbara?”

  Scott Wenzel was as uneasy as his partner. “We took a lot more security precautions after we knew we were a target, but we never tried to protect ourselves against Barbara.”

  “Yeah,” Ned agreed sourly. “She was already inside the fence we were building.”

  Hilary frowned. She could not help feeling that they were overreacting.

  “I grant you that Barbara could have done more damage than anyone else,” she said on a calmer note. “After all, she had access to all your private conversations, your correspondence with your lawyers, your strategy for the trial. But there’s nothing you can do about it, and there’s no point working yourselves into a sweat. You’ll soon know if it’s as bad as you think.”

  Ned, the one who had not wanted to discuss the situation, had felt free not only to think about it, but to reach a decision.

  “I’m not waiting,” he said bluntly. “We’re going to force Vandam’s into court as fast as we can. I think we’ll just make it under the wire.”

  “You’re right, Ned,” Wenzel said instantly. “It’s the only way to handle it.”

  Hilary screwed herself around in her seat so that she could watch both men. What she saw, Scott sitting with his arms folded and his jaw outthrust, Ackerman relaxing over the wheel as if the suspense were over, caused her to explode. “Look, I don’t pretend to understand what kind of race you two are in, but a child could tell that you’re sitting on something. Now, if you don’t want to take me into your confidence, that’s your affair. I’ve got plenty of other things to occupy myself with. But stop talking over and under and around me. If you can’t come clean, then suppose you shut up about this subject and find another one.”

  There was a thunderous silence, which Ackerman made no attempt to dispel. After several moments Wenzel politely fulfilled Hilary’s last request.

  “I’ll never understand why Barbara was the one who stuck a shiv into me. I thought we were friends,” he lamented. “What the hell was bugging her?”

  Ned decided he had relaxed too soon. He himself knew what had been bugging Barbara. Even worse, he was sure that Hilary did too. All they needed now was for Hilary to indulge her didactic streak by explaining the nature of a triangle to poor old Scott.

  He was doing the lady a considerable injustice.
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  “I can’t imagine what could have gotten into her,” said Hilary in tones of uncharacteristic doubt. “And I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.”

  After their unsatisfactory exchange in the cemetery, Eric Most would have liked to forget all about Hilary Davis, but he fell prey to Fran Pendleton’s curiosity.

  “Of course, I’ve known about Hilary for years,” she said as soon as they were in the car speeding back to the Loop, “but, do you know, this is the first time I’ve met her.”

  “She’s not very feminine,” Eric said primly from the rear.

  Fran had long ago abandoned the notion that femininity and masculinity were like universal colorants, something you could plop into any old bucket and count on for uniform results.

  “She’s feminine enough for Scott and that’s what matters,” she replied reasonably. “But poor Barbara! She must have been driven crazy by the sight of Hilary. I’ll bet that’s why she took that money.”

  Howard had very little attention to spare. Driving in the outback of Puerto Rico had weakened him for the freeways of Chicago, and not until he received assurance that he was in the right lane for his exit could he answer his wife.

  “Honest to God, Fran,” he said in a familiar complaint, “outside the laboratory you don’t have a brain up there, you have a slipped disk. What possible connection is there between the two situations?”

  Fran was too accustomed to the accusation to pay any heed to it. “Well, everybody’s saying that Barbara took that bribe about five years ago. And Scott and Hilary have known each other for over five years.”

  “Known each other!” Eric Most echoed sarcastically. “Ha!”

  “All right then, Scott and Hilary have been living with each other for five years,” Fran corrected herself without much interest. “You know perfectly well that Barbara was a case about Scott. But anyone can see that Hilary is perfect for him in a way that Barbara could never imitate. No wonder the poor girl was aching for a change. I suppose she thought this was the only way to fund it. It would have to be something like that for her to do the dirty on Scott.”