Murder to Go

by Emma Lathen

  Stotz did not have time to listen more so he led Voorhis to more germane matters by flourishing photographs.

  “Absolutely,” Voorhis said, eyes glistening with Rotarian zeal. “I’m sure they’re the same man. And I’ll be glad to view the remains.”

  That, Stotz replied absently, was not necessary. Police officers in Unit Twenty had already found Clyde Sweeney’s union card and a driver’s license—the latter crudely but efficiently altered. Voorhis assumed an expression of solemnity and said that he wanted only to do his duty. If more citizens cooperated with the police, why . . .

  “Sure,” said Captain Stotz. He had been a policeman for many years. He had a fairly good notion of what Mr. Voorhis would now be saying if Clyde Sweeney’s body had come to light at the Chesapeake Bay Motel. “Now, what can you tell me about Sweeney?”

  Voorhis ushered Stotz and Will into a small office leading from the reception counter and switchboard.

  “I jotted down some notes,” he reported proudly. “Once Detective O’Brien told me . . . wanted to get myself organized . . . Let’s see. Oh, here it is, Slattery—that is, Sweeney—registered here Thursday evening. New York plates three-four—oh, you’ve got that? Yes, said he wasn’t sure how long he’d need to be here. I put him down as a salesman of some sort. You know, dealing with the public as I do—”

  Stotz was not interested in character analyses, particularly when they were inaccurate.

  “Did you see him after that?” he interrupted to ask.

  Mr. Voorhis was reproachful at this cavalier treatment of a citizen’s attempt to cooperate with the police.

  “Don’t you want to know about the telephone calls?” he asked smartly.

  Stotz glanced at Will with long-suffering and allowed as how, yes, he did want to know about any phone calls.

  “Sweeney made two telephone calls Thursday night,” said Mr. Voorhis in thrilling accents.

  “Where to?” Will asked patiently.

  That, Voorhis replied, he could not say. He had logged two calls from Unit Twenty on Thursday night, but he did not record the numbers.

  Stotz sighed. “Tell me, Mr. Voorhis, how do you handle long-distance calls?”

  “That’s right! I get the charges on long-distance calls,” Voorhis shouted triumphantly. “That means they were local calls! I knew they were important!”

  “OK,” said Stotz. “Then what?”

  Then, unfortunately, there was little more that the voluble Mr. Voorhis could recall. Sweeney-Slattery had stopped by the office Friday morning to say he would be winding up his business on Saturday night. He would check out early Sunday morning. And that was all that Mr. Voorhis knew, for a fact. When the cleaning woman found Sweeney’s possessions still in Unit Twenty after checkout time on Sunday, when Mr. Voorhis saw that the car was gone, when Detective O’Brien showed him the circular, why, Mr. Voorhis got thinking . . .

  Stotz left Mr. Voorhis still talking and proceeded to Unit Twenty, where three policemen were methodically searching. In the spotless Danish impersonality that would always defeat Mr. Voorhis’ best efforts, Clyde Sweeney’s possessions were pitiful and few: a pair of cheap suitcases, with clothes jammed carelessly into them. A jacket, flung across a chair. A grimy hairbrush and, in the bathroom, bottles of hair conditioner and cologne. A few meretricious objects, and the full pathos of Clyde Sweeney’s dreams stood out vividly.

  “But he could have done better,” commented one policeman, straightening from the suitcase lid he was examining. “He had a roll.” Carefully, holding it by the corners, he handed Stotz an opened registered envelope.

  The late Clyde Sweeney had left turtleneck sweaters, an imitation alligator wallet, some gaudy shirts behind him. He had also left three thousand dollars in fifty-dollar bills, and one thousand dollars in hundreds.

  “Four thousand dollars,” muttered Captain Stotz disgustedly. “A poisoner’s pay.”

  CHAPTER 17

  THICKEN THE DRIPPINGS

  WHILE AUTHORITIES in New York, New Jersey and Maryland were painstakingly re-creating the immediate past, another branch of government was probing the future.

  “It’s a shame that Sweeney is dead,” said Dr. Mosby. “Have they found out who did it?” He asked the question without much interest.

  “They’re keeping us informed,” said Mr. Denton in equally desultory tones. “Seems they’ve tracked him from New York to Maryland. Who knows what it all means?”

  The Public Health was not interested in the murder of Clyde Sweeney, per se; far less, in attempts to apprehend his murderer. Clyde Sweeney, to them, had been a grave health menace, like infectious hepatitis. Until the investigation unearthed medically useful facts, it would receive only tepid attention from the Public Health. And as yet, Sweeney’s movements had shed no hard light on the introduction of zinc salts to chicken Mexicali.

  So it was only right and proper that the Public Health should be planning a more relevant investigation. And, as Dr. Mosby put it, Sweeney alive would have been a good deal more useful than the entire police forces of New Jersey, New York and Maryland combined were proving.

  “Until now,” said Denton. “They may still come up with something.”

  “They may,” Mosby replied militantly. “But we would be remiss in our responsibilities if we did not take steps.”

  In short, the Public Health was forging ahead with plans to subject the Chicken Tonight episode to searching scrutiny. The scope of the forthcoming hearing was very broad. In fact, a captious critic might have claimed it exceeded the powers of the Public Health. For there was no real question about the actual source of the threat to public safety: for a price, Clyde Sweeney had introduced an alien substance into a commercial food product.

  “Although there seems to be some question about whether he knew how dangerous it was,” Mosby began.

  Denton waved this aside. “Let Hedstrom—or the police—worry about that. No, our interest is . . .”

  Dr. Mosby listened, although he already knew that the Public Health grew fanatical over the possibility of food sabotage. Clyde Sweeney’s success had opened a terrible vista. After all, one Cuban hijacks a plane to Havana and soon whole air fleets are detouring past Miami. How easy was it for madmen or criminals to poison American food?

  The Public Health was going to find out.

  “Now,” said Denton, warming to his subject, “we’ve got a list of the people we’ll want to summon to the hearing. Do you want to look it over?”

  Dr. Mosby did look it over, mentally coming to a conclusion that John Putnam Thatcher had reached before him. Mr. Denton was an enthusiast.

  Enthusiasts sometimes go too far.

  “Why on earth the sixth and seventh grades from the Englewood School?” he inquired humbly. “Don’t think I’m criticizing, Denton. But what can forty-two schoolchildren—”

  Denton waxed eloquent. Those forty-two schoolchildren had taken the guided tour through Chicken Tonight’s test kitchens. Could they have dropped bubble gum into a gleaming cauldron? Mrs. Collins, the dietician, said no. But could they be sure? And, indeed, what made people think that the mask of danger could not be worn by a pre-adolescent? Had Mosby read . . .?

  If Denton had his way, Chicken Tonight was in for the investigation of all time. Already, teams of Public Health authorities (with aides co-opted from the Department of Agriculture) were readying questions for every single firm who sold supplies to Chicken Tonight, which included broiler producers like Pelham Browne, and the Morton Salt Company.

  Furthermore, analysts from many agencies were peering into Chicken Tonight’s business activities. Did the Sloan Guaranty Trust, one of Hedstrom’s creditors, harbor an unscrupulous desire to use that power unworthily? What had Southeastern Insurance discovered when it was studying merger proposals? Could any Chicken Tonight stockholder slip past security . . .?

  (“You know, Denton, you may be overdoing it.”)

  Then, what about outsiders? The schoolchildren? The garden club f
rom Leonia, New York? What precautions did Chicken Tonight erect against owners, employees, creditors, debtors, visitors?

  Or their relatives?

  The Public Health’s press-relations officer was a man who knew how to transform molten lava into pure lead:

  . . . announced today an impartial study of standards obtaining in major U.S. food processors. Among the firms cooperating in this venture is Chicken Tonight . . .

  Chicken Feed, house organ of the Chicken Tonight organization, was not due for three weeks. This was just as well. These were hard times for the relentlessly cheery. Moreover, Chicken Tonight’s franchisees were not, on the whole, particularly happy to be part of the great Chicken Tonight family.

  Unfortunately, their common plight was generating news items in other places. There was still much time for reading in most Chicken Tonight franchise kitchens. On most tables in such kitchens were newspapers and magazines that held a dreadful fascination. (Mr. Chet Brewster, would-be doyen of the area’s franchisees, took one look at Time magazine and thought of libel actions.)

  In Willoughby, Dodie Akers was reading aloud.

  “‘. . . no reason for suspicion, said Mr. Larue Voorhis, owner-manager of the Chesapeake Bay Motel. Late police releases confirm earlier reports of money found in Sweeney’s possession. According to informed sources, in addition to undisclosed amounts in Sweeney’s wallet, four thousand dollars cash was found hidden in a suitcase. Police now theorize that Sweeney was paid one thousand dollars as down payment and received three thousand dollars through the mail on the morning of the crime . . .’”

  “Four thousand dollars!” said Vern Akers bitterly, interrupting Dodie’s reading. “That’s what Clyde took to put us out of business.”

  Customers were returning slowly to most Chicken Tonights—except those unlucky enough to have been in the news. Unfortunately for the Akerses, Clyde Sweeney had earned his four thousand dollars in their backyard.

  Dodie put down the paper with a sigh. “I’ll never understand it. Not if I live to be a million years old.”

  Vern looked at her with concern. It was not like Dodie to sound so defeated; for more than twenty years, she had been the one who kept him looking on the brighter side of things. It shook him to see her shoulders sag.

  “I don’t understand it, either,” he said gruffly.

  She smiled gratefully at him, and Vern put a huge paw over her hand.

  They sat in the Chicken Tonight kitchen, alone and in silence. But even silence has its own emotional color, and this was the silence of despair, not anticipation. Tonight would see no noisy jangle of telephones, no rushing of delivery boys in and out, no alarm bells sounding on ovens, no prosperous bedlam. Tonight there would be perhaps six calls for a delivery of Chicken Tonight—perhaps seven.

  Last night there had been four calls.

  Vern Akers, Dodie and Sue, together with Sue’s boy friend, were determinedly cheerful about the business outlook during the long hours when Chicken Tonight should have been humming.

  “You see? I told you people are getting over it!”

  “Sure it’s going to take time. But we’ll be back on schedule in a week.”

  “It won’t be long before we have to get Neil and Peter back on the trucks.”

  It was exhausting enough to display this optimism through the long evenings, to reveal nothing but confidence when only two small orders had arrived by eight-thirty. The Akerses all did it.

  But by day, when Sue was safely off at school, Vern and Dodie Akers were too drained to face events with anything but complete honesty.

  “I never liked Clyde,” said Dodie, resolutely picking up the paper again and letting her eye fall on the thick headlines. “But I honestly would never have believed he could do a terrible thing like this.”

  Vern stared hard at his own reflection in a gleaming oven door. Chicken Tonight was, in many ways, like the Army, he thought. Whenever there was a lull, the troops cleaned the gear. But cleaning up, brushing, polishing and shining did not keep a man from thinking, in Chicken Tonight or the Army. Vern Akers, who was not an introspective man, had had too much time to think recently.

  “You know, Dodie,” he said slowly, “I’ve been thinking . . .”

  She put down the paper and waited for him to continue. Vern had never been one to talk your ear off; Dodie was still interested in what he had to say.

  “I’ve been thinking about Clyde,” he said, unconsciously tightening a pump handle. “You know, what happened to Clyde is kind of like what’s happening to me.”

  Dodie was a kind and tolerant woman. But she knew her own worth and, more important, she knew her husband’s worth.

  “You and Clyde? Vern Akers, have you gone crazy? I never heard anything—”

  Still groping, Vern barely heard her. “What I mean,” he said with furrowed brows, “is that we both got mixed up in this big business. And it’s beginning to look like maybe it was too much for us.”

  Dodie was still a ruffled mother hen, ready to counter any threat to her brood. “Humph!” she said, crossing plump arms pugnaciously.

  Vern took this as skepticism. He persisted.

  “Dodie, from what the papers say, somebody offered Clyde a chance at an easy four thousand bucks. If it had been a question of lifting a couple of cases of beer from the PX or of kiting a check—well, that wouldn’t surprise you at all. Clyde cut corners all his life. But Clyde was a lightweight. This whole thing was too big for him.”

  He paused to see if he had made himself clear.

  “And what does that have to do with the Akerses?” Dodie challenged, tacitly conceding his point.

  Vern rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Somebody slipped Clyde dough to put zinc in the Mexicali mix. Why? Big business, that’s why! Somebody was out to get Chicken Tonight. Not you and me, or any of the rest of the guys, but all of Chicken Tonight.”

  “You mean Mr. Hedstrom?” Dodie asked, interested despite herself.

  “That’s right,” her husband said. “Now, Dodie, that’s big business. I don’t know who did it, or why, but it wasn’t for nickels and dimes. It was just Clyde’s tough luck that his easy money came from someone who has so much riding that a murder or two don’t make much difference to him.”

  Dodie weighed this. “All right,” she said. “But where do you fit in?”

  Vern approached a conclusion. “I’ve been thinking,” he said again, leaning persuasively forward. “I guess I made a mistake. Dodie, when I was mustered out, I could have got a good steady job—”

  “Night watchman,” she said with scorn. “Salesman! Vern, after twenty years in the Army, we wanted to be our own bosses. To have our own business.”

  “Sure we did,” he said, slipping back into an argument they both knew by heart. “But instead we got into big business. Oh, we run this Chicken Tonight—but, Dodie, we’re a little cog in a big machine. God, look at the franchise committee I’m stuck with. That’s a lot of people like you and me, but you add them up and you’re talking about millions of dollars. And I’m supposed to go up to Mr. Hedstrom and bargain with him. Dodie, Mr. Hedstrom is big business. It’s like . . .” he searched for an illustration. “It’s like I should go in and bargain with General Westmoreland!”

  He sat back, looking both troubled and determined.

  She nodded at him. “I see what you mean.”

  Together they sat in silence until Dodie said finally, “But, Vern, you know what the difference is?”

  He waited.

  “We are big business,” said Dodie Akers seriously. “I’m not saying it’s turned out the way we expected. I guess we thought we’d have our own little place and do our own work. But you know what Chicken Feed says. We’re all partners. Sure, Mr. Hedstrom and the company, they’re big business, and they sell on Wall Street and all that. But where would they be without us, Vern? You’re not one of their employees. You’re one of their partners. So you are big business. And when you go in to talk to Mr. Hedstrom—well, it�
�s not Sergeant Akers, it’s Mr. Akers, with a couple of million dollars behind him!”

  He widened his eyes at her, blinking at a new view of himself.

  She gave a sudden warm laugh.

  “What?”

  Dodie gestured around the gleaming empty Chicken Tonight, and in the gesture encompassed the ruined business, the damage done by Clyde Sweeney, even the murder of that insignificant little man. For a moment, Vern sat stolidly; then his heavy features creased into a grin as he too saw the absurdity.

  “There’s always that job as custodian up at the junior college,” he said. “If I have to leave big business, that is.”

  He was giving her a huge, reassuring hug when the tinkle of the shop door caused them to stand apart and look at each other with surprise.

  “A walk-in,” said Dodie, round-eyed. “Well, maybe things are looking up!”

  Even in its palmy days, most of Chicken Tonight’s customers used the telephone to summon the gold-and-orange truck for their chicken Mandarin. Still, each day from three to five o’clock a small band of walk-in customers stopped by on the way from work: blue-overalled men with empty lunchboxes, harried working mothers racing from four-thirty office closings to five-thirty dinners for hungry husbands and sons. Occasionally there was an agitated young wife, desperate over the collapse of some grandiose culinary project.

  With a welcoming smile, Dodie hurried forward, leaving Vern ready to press the buttons that would produce chicken Milanese, chicken Paprika or chicken Jamaican, then tidily box it in an orange-and-gold container to be carried out. He looked around with a surge of irrepressible hope. Vern Akers loved the whole panoply of equipment. And with Dodie beside him—well, maybe they could ride it out. Maybe his talk with Hedstrom would help.

  In the tiny shop, Dodie was gaping at the newcomer.

  The walk-in was a beautiful raven-haired woman with green eyes. Her clothes were not part of Willoughby, New Jersey, let alone Willoughby’s Chicken Tonight. Dodie wished that Sue were here to see her.