Murder to Go

by Emma Lathen

  “Not exactly,” said Thatcher evasively. No use airing phantom thoughts roused by Robichaux’s remarks.

  “. . . loves his job,” she was saying. “Why, Ted lives for Chicken Tonight. That’s the trouble, don’t you see? Ted gets all tensed up about his work—that’s what upsets Iris. Mr. Thatcher, Iris doesn’t really mean half what she says. I know. She’s just—she just can’t keep calm about things.”

  “I recall,” said Thatcher dryly. Was this reading of Iris Young accurate? He had not known in Maryland, and he did not know here. For that matter, did Mrs. Hedstrom know what her good friend had been up to since?

  “But Ted?” Joan Hedstrom went on, gaining confidence. “Why, Ted does live for Chicken Tonight. Honestly!”

  “More than your husband does,” said Thatcher unguardedly.

  Startled, she looked at him inquiringly. “Well, in a way, yes,” she replied. “Frank is a different type altogether. He’s always got so many different irons in the fire that he’s . . . he’s . . .”

  Once again she did not want to put thoughts into words. Out of deference to her loyalties, Thatcher did not do it for her this time.

  “I mustn’t keep you,” he said, rising. “And I should be going myself. I had almost forgotten that I have another appointment this afternoon.”

  Deference to Mrs. Hedstrom’s feelings also kept him from specifying where he was going.

  “Where did you want to go?” Miss Corsa’s voice was frigid. It had. unfortunately, been necessary to revert to her sooner than Thatcher felt desirable.

  “To Willoughby, New Jersey. Have them send the limousine to the Hotel Montrose as quickly as possible,” he said. “I’m in a hurry.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Thatcher,” said Miss Corsa.

  The limousine arrived within ten minutes. Miss Corsa did not stoop to pettiness. She would make Mr. Thatcher pay in other ways.

  The devil with it, Thatcher thought as he settled back for the interminable drive to New Jersey. A costly gift would only make things worse. And, of course, it was impermissible to dream of informing Miss Corsa that he was beginning to piece together some strange fragments . . . casual comments about marriage . . . how men feel about their work . . . loyalty and independence . . .

  It was a long drive, even at speeds well over the posted limits. At its end, however, Thatcher’s mounting impatience received a setback. He had not fully assimilated what increasing sales meant to Chicken Tonight.

  “Two chicken Mandalays and a side order of Apple Rummy,” Dodie Akers was saying happily into the receiver. “Yes, we’ll get them on the six o’clock truck, Mrs. Hunniker. Now, that’s three-six-one Mulberry Lane . . . right here in Willoughby. Fine. . . .”

  Vern Akers was at the gleaming bank of knobs, yanking levers and simultaneously answering the warning bell that signaled the emergence of completely cooked, assembled and bagged orders.

  “Four more ready, Gil,” he said as a gangling youth in orange-and-gold coveralls swung a wire carrier through the serving window. Sue Akers loaded it and the boy pivoted to the truck behind him to begin tucking packages into the heating unit.

  Thatcher had not bargained for a conversation punctuated by chicken-to-go orders.

  “Oh, no,” said Akers, without stopping his swift movements. “No, we’re still below normal business. But . . .”

  At the small table by the telephone, Dodie looked up from the order forms she was filling out. “Oh, Vern!” she said joyfully. “You’re the limit! You really are! It’s just wonderful, Mr. Thatcher. One minute we were dead. Then, all of a sudden, the phones began to ring—” She broke off to laugh as the phone did ring. “Chicken Tonight! . . . Yes, that’s six Bavarians. What about a side order of cranberry wriggle? . . . Fine. . . . Buns? Good. What was the name? . . .”

  For a variety of reasons, Thatcher was sincerely happy at the improvement now unfolding before him, and said so. He added that he did not want to interrupt. But happiness after sorrow is an expansive emotion. Even someone as chary with words as Vern Akers was moved to speech.

  “No . . . no trouble. If you don’t mind that I keep going. Sue, check if the truck will be ready to go after this order, huh? Too bad, Mr. Thatcher. You just missed Mr. Hedstrom. Thanks, Sue. He must have been here, talking with us, oh, at least an hour. Here you go, Sue. All done.”

  Thatcher, feeling rather out of things, took the sheaf of orders that Dodie brandished as she returned to the phone. He handed it to Akers.

  “Thanks.”

  Orders started moving down the line again.

  “Yeah, Mr. Hedstrom sounded real good,” said Akers, watching an instrument panel with an array of lights and meters. “I guess you’ve heard about what’s happening up in New England?”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Thatcher, watching an almost human steel claw press tops on cardboard cups.

  “Looks like it’s just reaching us,” Akers said in a burst. “Boy, if only this upswing isn’t a flash in the pan!”

  “Vern!”

  “Dad!”

  The Akers ladies, Thatcher could see, were fighters.

  “That’s what Mr. Hedstrom says,” Akers replied with a chuckle. “He says that this Public Health thing is going to help us, not hurt us. It’ll show how carefully everything is handled.”

  “I’m sure it will,” said Thatcher. Since the phone rang at that moment, and a warning bell sounded, it was unlikely that Akers would detect anything but courtesy in this sentiment.

  “. . . and a big publicity campaign, he says. Television! And maybe sponsor a football game or two. Boy, would that be something! That’d be worth a couple of hundred orders every Sunday, at least. And Mr. Hedstrom says they’re going to beef up their inspecting systems so guys like Gatto don’t keep giving us a black eye. You know that guy buys his onions on the sly? Me, I told Mr. Hedstrom we got enough people checking on us. What the company’s got to do is to crack down on these guys who don’t cooperate. But Mr. Hedstrom says no, he’s going to really go all out—”

  “You see, Mr. Thatcher,” said Dodie, flushed and bright-eyed. “All of a sudden, Vern Akers is giving Mr. Hedstrom advice on how to run the business!”

  “Dodie! There are just some things they don’t see up there. What, Sue? . . . Oh, tell him to turn up at six. We’re gonna need two trucks out tomorrow night. I’m sure of that!”

  He had arrived at Chicken Tonight, Thatcher saw, at a moment to be remembered. Here was authentic happiness, pervasive as the exotic aromas filling the kitchen.

  “. . . introducing two new flavors next month and giving us a volume discount,” Akers said. “Hey! I’ll bet Chicken Tonight would be a big success down where you work.”

  He looked at Thatcher. So did Dodie and Sue. Hungrily. Thatcher himself was taken with the number of Chicken Tonight orders lunchtime Wall Street could generate.

  “Of course, the big trick is a low rental. I expect you know all about that.”

  If he didn’t escape soon, Thatcher was in some danger of becoming silent partner in the Akers take-over of lower Manhattan.

  “How is your organization of franchisees doing?” he inquired hastily.

  “Yes . . . four-three-two Morton Avenue,” said Dodie into the phone.

  “The organization? Oh, we’re having a lot of meetings—Hey, Dodie, does this say Tropicali or Tripoli? Sorry, Mr. Thatcher. Well, we’re still meeting. As a matter of fact, we’re supposed to meet tomorrow, but, like I told Mr. Hedstrom, I don’t know if I’ve got time.”

  Thatcher retreated. The Akerses were not particularly curious as to why he had come in the first place. They were filled with the wonder of it all, and assumed that the whole world would want to be witness.

  For that matter, Thatcher was pleased he had come.

  And, more important, he had learned what he wanted to know. Without asking.

  Thatcher went home with the deep sense of satisfaction that comes to a man who has solved an abstruse mathematical problem. Nor did he have any diffic
ulty falling asleep. All that he needed now was confirmation.

  He knew where to find it.

  “Good morning, Mr. Thatcher.”

  “Good morning, Miss Corsa.” Thatcher’s buoyancy was proof against the prevailing chill. “Miss Corsa, I have a few things that I want done immediately. . . .”

  Almost immediately they were done.

  In very short order, Thatcher was reading down a list of the stockholders of Southeastern Insurance and Chicken Tonight.

  These held no real surprise for him.

  Frank Hedstrom and Joan Hedstrom, jointly, were Chicken Tonight’s largest stockholders. Farther down the roster, after several institutional investors, came the names of Ted and Iris Young. And, just as Thatcher had expected, at the very end of the list, still accounting for a large holding in her own right, was Iris S. Young.

  “Tom Robichaux,” said Thatcher to himself, “would never believe it.”

  Stockholders of Southeastern Insurance included fewer Wall Street institutions and more of the Philadelphia Social Register, with the Ogilvie family represented by Buell Ogilvie, that mainstay of the U. S. Lawn Tennis Association for the last fifty years. Apart from him, Thatcher found no one else of interest.

  He was still reading when Miss Corsa rang through with another item he had requested: a name Robichaux had mentioned yesterday.

  “Thank you, Miss Corsa.”

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Thatcher,” she replied punctiliously.

  “Oh, just a minute, Miss Corsa. I want you to make another call.”

  The intercom was elaborately patient while John Putnam Thatcher did a little fast thinking. He had the quarry. But before he could call out the hounds, he needed an accomplice. He reviewed the people he had met and would meet again. Then, in a determined voice, he said, “Miss Corsa, I want you to put me through to a Mr. Denton who is associated with the U. S. Public Health.”

  That, he knew, would be enough for Miss Corsa.

  And what he had, he was equally sure, would be enough for Mr. Denton.

  CHAPTER 22

  STIR THE BATTER

  PYROTECHNICS ARE not a standard weapon in the armory of the United States Public Health. Great conflicts over great issues occupy arenas from the U.S. Supreme Court to the Bureau of Standards. Even traffic courts in Georgia get their share of homely drama. Public Health hearings, however, rarely rise above chagrin. A contest, after all, needs adversaries. And no one is seriously opposed to public health on principle. Partisans of the spread of disease and contamination can be numbered on the fingers of one hand.

  Even when vigilance unmasks a miscreant, does the villain fight like a trapped rat? Does right vanquish wrong? Does society exact its price for sin?

  “Fat chance,” as Mr. Denton once put it in a low moment.

  The Public Health isolates the guilty party, and the guilty party, nine times out of ten, is more horrified than anybody else. Fish filleters in Gloucester, frozen turkey purveyors in Pennsylvania, even bakers selling custard pies in July, react the same way—with stunned disbelief, with horror at what they have unknowingly done, and with touching gratitude to the Public Health for bringing them to their senses.

  The Public Health, in short, does all the work and gets very little of the fun. Unless, of course, you count grave editorial commendation from The New York Times or approbation from Consumers’ Union as fun. And who does?

  It is, therefore, doubly admirable that the U. S. Public Health is as dedicated and indefatigable as the FBI.

  Naturally, at the barest suspicion of genuine malice aforethought, the Public Health turns giddy. The Chicken Tonight case had held out the intoxicating prospect of a criminal for the Public Health to smite. But Clyde Sweeney’s emergence—and, even more, his departure—had put those enticing aspects of the case into the hands of the police. Hopes blasted, the Public Health was again falling back on “a hearing to ascertain whether vendors of precooked chicken products maintain adequate standards . . .”

  But the meek are blessed. A day before the Public Health hearings were scheduled to open in the Federal Building in Trenton, Mr. Denton was summoned from a conference.

  “Yes,” he told the phone. “Oh, Mr. Thatcher. . . . Yes indeed, I remember. . . . What? Ye-es? . . Ye-es?”

  Rapt, Mr Denton listened for twenty-five minutes without once interrupting. When Thatcher asked his final question, Mr. Denton’s answer held the reverence of a knightly pledge to the Holy Grail.

  “You can rely on us. Absolutely! I assure you—we can and will do it!”

  Mr. Denton looked straight into the Promised Land. Then, recovering, he added, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Thatcher. There’s a good deal that I’m going to have to do.”

  “Why are there so many people here?” asked Ted Young, looking around the hearing room, which was filled to capacity.

  Young and Hedstrom studied the chamber. They did not like what they saw.

  “My God,” Young continued. “What kind of hearing is this going to be?”

  Hedstrom did not bother with reassurance. “I don’t know,” he said in an odd tone of voice. “Ted, something must be up. They’ve got everybody here.”

  He was very nearly right. Across the aisle from the Hedstroms and the Youngs sat Vern Akers. Beside him was Dodie, her hair for once brushed into place. Farther along sat other Chicken Tonight franchisees: the Horvaths, Mr. and Mrs. Gatto, the Zabriskies from Buffalo. Mr. and Mrs. Chester Brewster, she in a mink stole, sat four rows ahead. They were not franchisees, they were prominent business people.

  Mrs. Collins, from the test kitchens, wearing a dashing mauve satin hat, headed a delegation of her staff. Perhaps because of coaching by the Legal Department of Chicken Tonight, the test-kitchen personnel strongly suggested an underdog football team prepared for, but not resigned to, the drubbing in store.

  Among those present was John Putnam Thatcher. Like Frank Hedstrom, he was registering the unusual crowd in the room. As he watched, Pelham Browne strode down the aisle.

  “What was that, Tom?”

  Robichaux repeated his question with some heat.

  “When the Sloan has to testify before the Public Health,” Thatcher said, “I like to follow what’s going on.”

  Robichaux inspected him. “I don’t believe you,” he said bluntly. “Normally you would have sent Maitland. For that matter, I would have . . .”

  It was easy to underestimate Robichaux’s common sense, Thatcher reminded himself. Aloud, he said that the Sloan was reserving Maitland for lost causes.

  “Stands to reason,” Robichaux agreed after thinking it over. “Pretty wet fish, I’ve always said.”

  Thatcher was momentarily diverted from other thoughts. It had not escaped his notice that when Robichaux wanted to hook the Sloan he made a beeline for Maitland.

  “I believe, Tom,” he retorted rather grimly, “that Maitland will be putting in for early retirement.”

  Since this meant retirement early enough to be sensational, Robichaux looked around the room with elaborate innocence.

  “Lots of people, aren’t there? Good God, they’ve dug up Ogilvie. And that’s his Uncle Buell with him. What on earth does the Public Health want with them?”

  He got his answer from a Mr. Levin, a tall and professorial man. After brief consultation with colleagues, Mr. Levin cleared his throat into the microphone. The ensuing detonation silenced the hum of conversation and brought the meeting to order.

  “Good morning—What? . . . Oh, yes. Can you hear me in the back of the room? How’s that? Fine. Er, good morning. We are going to open this hearing of the Public Health inquiry into the food industry, with special emphasis upon those who vend precooked meals and deliver them . . .”

  “Marvelous how those fellows learn all that by heart,” murmured Robichaux, much impressed.

  “. . . complete inquiry into Chicken Tonight from a rather broad point of view. Before we commence our formal hearings, on behalf of the Public Health I want to thank
Chicken Tonight for their frankness in cooperating with our many questions . . .”

  From where he sat, Thatcher could see Hedstrom, rigidly still. Ted Young was rubbing a hand against the back of his neck.

  “. . . all other parties,” Mr. Levin continued, consulting a note, to Robichaux’s disappointment. “Our interest, of course, has been sparked by recent tragic developments revealing that unauthorized personnel could introduce contaminants into Chicken Tonight products . . .”

  “Why doesn’t that fellow speak up?” a cranky elderly voice demanded. Uncle Buell, Thatcher inferred. Mr. Levin pursed his lips, then said, “And our first witness, Mrs. Vera Collins.”

  Bosom uplifted, Mrs. Collins rose and accepted Mr. Levin’s invitation to sit beside him. Whether she made herself comfortable, as he also suggested, was anybody’s guess.

  Mrs. Collins had herself well in hand. If anything, she was tediously forthcoming. With Robichaux growing restive, Thatcher, like everyone else, heard an exhaustive rehearsal of every single process employed by Chicken Tonight, from test kitchen to orange-and-gold delivery truck. Unfortunately, she set the tone for succeeding witnesses.

  The cigarette break came none too soon.

  “Let me tell you, John,” said Robichaux, getting to his feet. “If things go on this way, we’re all going to be asleep.”

  Thatcher was thinking ahead. “I’m sure,” he said vaguely, “I’m sure things will become more entertaining.”

  Again Robichaux projected suspicion, but before he could voice it they were surrounded by spectators, witnesses and officials.

  “You too, Robichaux?” asked a voice from behind them. “And Mr. Thatcher? I don’t know if you gentlemen have met my uncle.”

  Buell Ogilvie exercised the prerogative of extreme age and took charge of the conversation. “First time I ever heard of bankers getting dragged in by the Public Health,” he said with relish. He was blocking the path of everybody behind him with splendid indifference.

  Inevitably, Morgan Ogilvie was diminished by the presence of his relative. “As I’ve already explained, Uncle Buell, we’re simply here because we made inquiries about Chicken Tonight—”