Frost would never have acknowledged that he took a nap in the afternoon. But as often happened nowadays, he fell asleep soon after he sprawled out on the bed, dropping the Press to the floor as he did so. (Unlike a couple of his club-mates, he did not fall asleep while sitting around the Gotham after lunch; he napped only in the dignity—and privacy—of his own home.)
He was awakened more than an hour later by a ringing telephone. Before he could answer it, the ringing stopped, which led him to think that Cynthia had returned and picked up on one of the extensions downstairs.
Several minutes later, his wife came into the bedroom.
“I didn’t realize you were here,” she said.
“Yes, I must have fallen asleep. I got back from Holt’s place—oh, my God—two hours ago.”
“That was Teresa. She’s back from California and wants to talk to you whenever you’re available.”
Reuben groaned. “Can she come over here, or do I have to traipse over there?”
“We didn’t discuss it,” Cynthia replied.
“She’s a very lucky woman,” Frost said.
“What do you mean?”
“I started the day having a long talk with Melvin Lincoln,” Frost said. “Clifton was about to cut Teresa out of his will, but he was murdered before he could sign the new version that tried to do it.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Cynthia said. “How long has it been since they stopped living together? Seven years? At least that, I think.”
“Holt wanted to set up a foundation with Melvin and me as trustees.”
“To do what?”
“Dance education, basically. And funding for developing choreographers.”
“And you and Melvin Lincoln were to run it? I love you dearly, Reuben, and Melvin is a sweet old soul, but do you think that would have been wise?”
“Cynthia, I do know a fair amount about the dance—thanks in large part to you. So I think we would have done just fine, thank you,” Frost said. “Besides, we could have gotten expert help,” he added defensively.
“I know, dear. I was only joking. You and Melvin would have been fabulous. But Teresa gets all the marbles instead?”
“Except for one or two of the ballets. And five million to Jack Navikoff.”
“That’s pretty hefty! How much did Clifton leave, for heaven’s sake?”
“Melvin estimates about fifteen million. Plus whatever royalties are earned from now on on the ballets …”
“And the old movies?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Pretty good for an ex-chorus gypsy from Idaho,” Cynthia said.
“That’s where he was from? I’d forgotten.”
“Yes. I remember him well. Lucia Chase at American Ballet Theatre had seen him dance somewhere and hired him on the spot. He showed up at ABT wearing cowboy boots—a totally unsophisticated hick.”
“I remember all that.”
“He never was the greatest dancer in the world. But then he got the choreographing bug and turned out to be really good at it. After that, Hollywood and finally dear National Ballet. Quite a record, when you think about it.”
“Indeed. But right now I must go see the widow. Don’t you envy me?”
“I can’t say that I do.”
“Oh, I almost forgot. A little bit of information that will please you,” Frost said. “Let me get it.” He went to the library and brought back the copy of Holt’s letter to Mattison.
Cynthia read the letter and its attachments avidly, smiling at first and then hooting.
“Why that big, fat fake! I’ve always known he was a phony—but it’s never been proved in such a delicious way before,” she declared. “Do you think I can use this to shut him up about the Foundation?”
“I’m not sure you can go that far,” Reuben said. “But I thought you’d be interested.”
“Interested! It’s the best thing I’ve read in weeks. And I’m sure there’s a way I can use it.”
“Now, now, my dear. What you just read is confidential, something I learned as Holt’s executor. I wouldn’t have shown it to you at all if I thought you were going to make trouble.”
“Oh, Reuben, don’t worry. Have I ever told one of your lawyer’s secrets out of school?”
“No, you haven’t,” Frost admitted. “And I suggest you treat this tidbit about Mattison the same way.”
“Yes, dear. You don’t want to have Teresa over here for dinner, do you?”
“I don’t think so. Let me go see her, and then we can go out. I don’t think I should be very long.”
“Call me when you’re ready,” his wife replied.
Reuben called Teresa Holt and arranged to meet her at her apartment in the Dakota, at Central Park West and Seventy-second Street. She had lived at her fancy address, surrounded in her cooperative apartment by glamorous show-business neighbors, ever since she and Clifton Holt had broken up.
Frost considered himself a good but not intimate friend of Holt’s widow. Holt had married her in the mid-1960s in Hollywood and had lived with her there until the couple returned to New York in the early 1970s. Teresa had been around during the time when Cynthia and Clifton had had endless conversations about NatBallet, often with Reuben and herself present. They came to like each other as they patiently indulged their spouses’ almost uncontainable enthusiasm for the NatBallet project. And several years later, when it became known that the Holts had separated, Reuben had felt great sympathy for Teresa as the wronged woman.
Getting out of his taxi, Frost went to the entrance of the Dakota, identified himself, and then walked to the corner of the interior courtyard where Teresa’s apartment was located. Ever since John Lennon’s death, he had become uneasy walking through the Dakota entrance—it was where the unsuspecting Beatle had been gunned down—and this evening—only a day after Holt’s violent and unexpected assassination—he felt even more apprehensive than usual.
Frost took the elevator to the fourth floor. Teresa was waiting for him and after an affectionate kiss, escorted him inside. As always, Frost was struck by the woman’s irredeemable plainness. It was not only that she didn’t use makeup; her face was just not interesting. And her slightly drawn-down mouth and the horn-rimmed glasses she wore made her look forbiddingly prissy.
What had Holt seen in his wife? She was barely twenty-one, a recent graduate of Bryn Mawr, when he had married her. She had gone to Hollywood right after college and taken a job as a production assistant at American Pictures, where she was assigned to the second of Holt’s musical productions. Fresh from the smash success of his first movie, Holt was king of the roost (or cock of the walk, as one gossip columnist had mischievously expressed it at the time) at American.
To those who thought of Holt as a hyperactive Don Juan, his marriage to the plain Teresa Graves came as a great surprise; so did it to those who had known Holt in the gay underground in Hollywood.
For a decade after their marriage in 1966, Clifton and Teresa at least acted the part of husband and wife—despite Holt’s insatiable desire for sex with those who attracted him, male or female. But, to the outside world at least, Teresa appeared oblivious to her husband’s exploits, and their friends, taking their cue from her, did likewise.
“Reuben, dear friend, come in,” Teresa said, propelling Frost by the arm toward the large, high-ceilinged living room of the apartment. “I got all the papers at Kennedy on the way in. Is there anything to add?”
“I don’t think so. The whole thing is a depressing, outrageous New York saga—vital, successful citizen murdered by desperate, no-account junkie.”
“I know, Reuben, that’s what you said last night. And it’s what the newspapers and the TV say today. It’s just that I find it ironic.”
“Ironic, Teresa?”
“Yes, ironic. You read the Press, Reuben. You know that every night there is a stabbing, or a garroting, or a shooting, or some terrible sort of violence, as if the underside of the City times its violence for t
he convenience of that creepy little Limey who owns the Press. And the victim is always innocent—hardworking teen-age student, diligent laborer and father of ten, nun about to take her final vows. Clifton really didn’t fit that category of innocence, Reuben, so I find it ironic that he is the Press’s unsullied martyr for the day.”
“Teresa, Clifton was a difficult man and was not very nice to a lot of people. But he had done nothing to the young punk who murdered him.”
“True enough. I guess I was thinking in more poetic terms.”
“Did you hate him, Teresa?” Frost asked.
“Hate? Yes, I suppose I did, in some ways at least. Being constantly assaulted with Clifton’s sexual infidelities was pretty hard to take. I did hate him for that. Hated him profoundly. But while I despised the nasty little sex rat, I always remained in love with the genius, with the brilliant choreographer. Can you understand that?”
“I think so,” Frost replied. “I’m not so sure a lot of others didn’t feel the same way—myself included.”
“You are his executor, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am. I am because he asked me and I had no good reason to refuse.”
“So you’ve seen his will, then?”
“Yes. He sent me a copy years ago, and I confirmed with Melvin Lincoln this morning that the version I saw was still in effect. Everything is left to you, except some of the ballets and five million that he left outright to Jack Navikoff.”
“Are you sure about that, Reuben?” There was the same question, for the second time that day.
“I’m certain of it.”
“I get everything except what the other woman gets?” Teresa said. “Excuse me, that was bitchy.”
“Yes. That’s right,” Frost answered. He saw no reason to tell the woman how close Holt had come to changing his will.
“Lord above,” the woman said, nervously lighting a cigarette. “I need a drink.”
“Let me get it,” Frost said.
“Scotch and soda.”
Frost went to a side table of liquor bottles just inside the adjoining dining room.
“There’s ice in the bucket. I put it there before you came.”
Frost made two drinks—a gin and tonic for himself—and returned to the living room, where Teresa appeared to be deep in thought.
“Do you have any idea how much the estate is worth?” she asked.
“Melvin Lincoln thinks about fifteen million.”
“So that’s ten for me and five for Jack.”
“Correct,” Frost said. Then, after a pause, he asked the widow whether Jack and Clifton had been lovers.
“Oh, yes. Good heavens, yes. I’ll tell you about it sometime.”
“I’m not sure I want to hear.”
“You’re right. But good old Jack can use the money,” Teresa said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, some of my friends in California say he was all but wiped out with that last movie he produced. That awful bomb, Sister Ellen.”
“I didn’t see it.”
“Very few people did. Supposed to be simply terrible. But anyway, he violated Hollywood’s cardinal rule by investing his own money, and losing the nice little fortune he had built up from Clifton’s movies. I just assumed he was living off Clifton.”
“That’s very interesting,” Frost replied, thinking of how Teresa’s version of things failed to square with the impression Navikoff had tried to give Frost earlier in the day.
“Do you want to have supper, Reuben?” his hostess asked.
“I’d love to, but I’m afraid Cynthia and I are already committed,” Frost said, telling a white lie. “Actually, I have to go soon, but before I do we should discuss a funeral.”
“Are you asking me? If so, the answer is no. Clifton had no religion other than the dance, or maybe sex. It would be a mockery to have a religious funeral.”
“But surely there should be a memorial service?”
“No, I don’t think so. Nobody’s going to want to get up and talk about Clifton’s personal life. And you know how he hated people talking about his work. ‘Let it speak for itself,’ he always said. If you do anything, Reuben, I would suggest a performance at NatBallet dedicated to him.”
“That’s an excellent idea, and I think sooner rather than later.” Frost pulled out his pocket engagement calendar. “How about next Tuesday, a week from today? If Arne Petersen wants to do anything special, that should be time enough. You will come, won’t you?”
“I don’t know. What’s the difference? Everybody knows about us. But I suppose, in view of my good luck, that I should continue the charade for one more week.”
“Okay. Is Tuesday all right with you?”
“Fine. I’ll come, Reuben. Having played the dutiful wife for so many years, I may as well play the dutiful widow.”
8
FROSTS’ NIGHT OUT
Frost called his wife from a telephone booth on Central Park West and arranged a rendezvous for dinner. He then strolled leisurely to the agreed spot—Patricia’s Café, on Columbus Avenue. Patricia—no one knew her last name—was the presiding eminence at a relatively new, gentrified storefront that specialized in nouvelle cuisine, California style. Like every other spot of its type on the Upper West Side, it was too small to accommodate the yuppie hordes that had taken it up; its tables along narrow bare-brick walls, closely spaced though they were, were insufficient in number, and the bar at best could accommodate six people comfortably.
Patricia, in common with the other chic new restaurateurs about New York, did not take reservations. Normally this alone would have been enough to put Frost off.
“I suppose all restaurants will end up like the Eastern shuttle, with no reservations,” he had once told his wife. “But when I go out to dinner, I want to eat. I am not interested in picking up a chic young Citibank vice president at the bar, or sipping Perrier with the upwardly mobile regulars.”
“Meat and potatoes, you mean, Reuben,” Cynthia had said.
“In effect, yes,” he had answered. “If I want to socialize, I’ll do it at one of those countless cocktail parties we, or at least you, get invited to. Drinking is fine in its place. But so is eating, and I still maintain that’s what a restaurant’s for.”
Patricia, however, had taken a liking to the Frosts. Was it their eminence? Probably not; Reuben did not have the feeling that the woman had the faintest idea who the Frosts were. He was terribly afraid that their status at the restaurant, which usually led to prompt seating regardless of any line waiting for tables, was much more prosaic: he suspected that Patricia liked to have the occasional older couple in her dining room so that her restaurant would not be tagged as exclusively a yuppie playpen.
This night the magic worked again, and the tanned but nearly anorectic Patricia showed him to a table as soon as he arrived. Cynthia joined him almost immediately and they ordered drinks, a Kir Royale for her and another gin and tonic for him.
Both were hungry, so they ordered at once. The place’s food was good, despite a tendency to put goat cheese on everything—what is it with these Californians?—from salads to steaks to (almost) desserts. Reuben ordered lamb chops with a creamed mint sauce—“On the side, please,” he demanded—and Cynthia asked for the pasta of the day, ziti with smoked salmon and cream.
“How did it go?” she asked, their ordering completed.
“All right. Not much grief there, not many tears. And the fact that she was going to inherit ten million dollars seemed to cheer Teresa up immensely.”
“I can understand that.”
“We talked about a funeral, and she said it would not be appropriate to have one. Clifton had no religion, according to her.”
“There I think she’s right. As far as religion went, I don’t think poor Clifton could ever quite bring himself to acknowledge the existence of a higher being.”
“Waiter, I forgot, could I see the wine list?” Frost interrupted, flagging one of the young men in th
e standard Patricia’s uniform—pink shirt, bow tie and butcher’s apron—who passed by the table. Cynthia fell silent as her husband looked at the list.
“Thank God, they’re off the California kick,” he said, scanning the handwritten (in italic penmanship) list. “My complaints to Patricia bore some fruit.”
“I know, dear: one vat for red, another for white,” Cynthia said, quoting her husband’s frequently uttered opinion of the California vineyards.
“Well, dammit, it’s true. Here, waiter, let’s have the HautBailly 1981. I assume red is okay with your pasta?”
“It doesn’t matter, dear—whatever you want.”
“Good. That’s what we’ll have. Number fourteen. HautBailly 1981.”
The waiter went away and returned almost instantly to report that number fourteen (he did not pronounce the name) was out.
“Not surprised,” Frost muttered. “Too good a price to be true.”
“How about the Médoc, sir?” pink-shirt said, pronouncing the word “mee-dock.” “It’s very nice.”
“Let’s see, that’s number sixteen. Coufran ’81. Haut-Médoc, actually. Fine.”
“Thank you, sir,” the waiter said as he ran off again.
“Too young, indifferent year, high-priced. But still better than Blue Ridge, or Stillwater, or whatever that dreadful stuff was we had the other night.”
“I’m sure it will be fine, dear,” Cynthia said, temporizing. (She realized that, as lawyers go, her husband was relatively well behaved in restaurants. She had spent years watching Reuben’s partner Harry Brinsley insult waiters, flirt with waitresses, and generally display an impatience that must have made him dyspeptic. She was grateful that Reuben confined himself to low rumbles of discontent, projected neither to the staff nor to the dining room as a whole. And while he knew a good deal about wine, he did not flaunt his knowledge in the all-too-typical wine-bore fashion.)
“So you think there shouldn’t be a funeral?” Reuben said.
Murder Takes a Partner Page 8
