I glanced at George. He looked smug. He should have been. He was sitting here (he thought) listening to the other side explain everything to her own lawyer. He had to be gloating over how well he was going to make out.
I turned back to Betty. “I’m sure it must have been hard on all of you.” I gave her a sad smile.
Ignoring me, she crossed her legs, tugged her skirt down and went on crisply.
“They’re flying in this afternoon, Roger and Maureen. I was hoping we could come to an understanding on the terms of sale this morning, so that we’d have something to discuss with them this afternoon and tomorrow. Of course, as Laura’s heirs, they have the right to turn down any deal we strike.” She gave me a cold smile. “But they’ve told me they’ll go along with whatever I recommend. Within reason, of course.”
Betty was making preparations to smoke while she talked. She’d pulled the heavy crystal ashtray toward her, got a pack of cigarettes and a silver lighter from her purse, removed a cigarette and flipped the package onto the table next to the ashtray. She now lighted up and inhaled deeply.
“Now if we’re to get together on terms,” she continued in a more relaxed tone, smoke drifting from her nostrils, “we’re going to have to look at the overall value of the company, not just at last year’s earnings. What George is buying is not earnings, it’s earning potential. Frankly, Mr. Goldman, your client has been acting as though —”
“Excuse me, Miss Donovan,” I cut in quickly, as smoothly as I could but loud enough to shut her up. Both my clients frowned at my interrupting, each no doubt thinking the other had hired a real horse’s petunia for his/her attorney.
I opened my mouth, hoping whatever came out would have the right effect. On both. I smiled brightly at Betty as I launched into…whatever I was about to launch into.
“I’m sure you both have your own opinions about how much the company is worth. But I really don’t see that as the main problem. For me, the main problem is bringing me up to speed.” I swung around to McClendon. “My client has given me some of the background, but I’d like to hear it from your perspective. Can you just fill me in, as you see it? Especially what’s changed since the unfortunate and tragic death of Miss Penniston.”
“I’d say that it —” said McClendon, simultaneously with Donovan’s “You mean you —?”
They glared at each other and at me. I’d done my job perfectly. Betty was eyeing me through a cloud of smoke with an exasperated look that told me she’d had about enough. I used a coughing fit — not totally faked: her smoke was starting to get to me — to buy a little time, and smiled apologetically.
“I’ll tell you what, Miss Donovan. Why don’t you go ahead, and I’ll try very hard not to interrupt. But I’d like to hear it from your side, if you would. From the very beginning of the negotiations.”
Betty’s lips tightened and, for just a moment I thought I was about to get the heave-ho. Then she seemed to decide she’d give me one more chance. I’d just damn well better listen and not interrupt any more.
She reached for another cigarette and lit it from the first, which she stubbed out. Inhaling deeply, she readjusted herself in the chair and rolled her dishwater eyes in resignation.
“All right, Mr., uh, Goldman. I’ll indulge you. For now.” She glared at McClendon. Whether he reacted to that, or even saw it, I don’t know. I was keeping my eyes on her respectfully, the way an attorney of my stature should. She flicked ashes nervously and went on.
“I’m sure George must have told you. Laura — Miss Penniston — and I first contacted him in the early part of this year. It must have been — when was it, George?”
McClendon stroked his beard, eyes closed tight. He opened them. “Umm, the third of March, I believe, um, yes, that was a Monday. Laura called me. Said Lee Stubbs wanted us to meet.”
“Okay.” Betty sent a plume of white smoke ceilingward. “That sounds right. In any case, Mr. Goldman, we got hot and heavy into negotiations shortly after that. As you know better than I, George wanted to be a partner in Penniston Associates. We’d finally come to agreement on all the major issues but one: price.”
I smiled at her and, surprisingly, she smiled back. It was the first time she’d smiled and it helped a lot. Not that it brought her within a thousand miles of beautiful, but the deepening of the crinkles around her eyes established some facial definition. Plus, her eyes almost disappeared, which had to be an improvement.
“And what did you and Miss Penniston consider the substantive issues to be, Miss Donovan?”
She squinted at me through the smoke. “Oh. Just all the things that went with giving George thirty-three percent of our business. Really, the only thing we still had to thrash out was the right price. And we’d even come to an agreement in principle on a formula, when that horrible thing happened to Laura —”
As she tried to get out the name of her late partner, Betty’s voice caught. She quickly turned away, and flicked ashes into the ashtray. I caught sight of a tear glistening on her plump cheek. If the smile had helped, the tear helped even more.
McClendon’s reedy voice came from behind me. “Uh, I don’t know if I agree, Betty,” he said. “All we’d agreed on was to get three evaluators. Who’d do the evaluating was still way up in the air.”
“Well, all right, George, I’ll concede that,” she answered, dry-eyed again. “But we were making progress. You’d picked Art Baker, and Laura and I’d agreed to him. We already had an audit from Bob Theodore, but you didn’t like him. So —”
“It’s not a question of like or not like,” McClendon snapped. “Bob’s an okay accountant, at least I thought so at the time, but face it, you tried to pull a fast one. You don’t hire someone practically engaged to one of the parties in a deal to do the valuing. Laura may have been that naive, but my God, Betty, you had to know better than that.”
Betty’s face was pink as she stubbed out her cigarette. “There was no attempt to cover up, George,” she said calmly.
“Anyway, the death of Miss Penniston intervened,” I said, looking at McClendon. He immediately dropped his eyes. Rubbing his mouth nervously, he answered in a muffled voice.
“What a tragedy! We were all simply bowled over. God! She was so alive, so…” He looked at Donovan. “Well, I can tell you, Betty here was just devastated.”
I turned back to her. She was looking at the two stubs in the ashtray, eyes distant, hands shaking a little as they tried to find something to do. I could barely hear her.
“Yes, I was. Laura and I had been business associates for three years. And friends eight. She was the finest —” She turned away. To my dismay, she absently reached for the pack and took out another cigarette.
“It was the night,” McClendon ruminated, “of the masquerade ball at the agency.” He chuckled sadly. “Well, that’s what Laura insisted on calling it. It was actually a small Halloween open house. For maybe fifty people. They had it every year. People were encouraged to wear costumes and lots did, so they called it their masquerade ball.”
“A masquerade ball?” This sounded interesting; it was about the first thing they’d said that seemed to have anything to do with why I was really there.
My question was aimed at McClendon, but Betty answered. “We had it every year. Invited all the girls to attend, with their boyfriends — or husbands, those few that had them. And the whole office staff. This year Laura brought Bob — that’s Bob Theodore — and I came alone as usual. I don’t date much.”
“I can imagine,” almost slipped out, but for once I kept my big mouth shut.
“I guess I was the only outsider there,” McClendon put in. “I was going to bring a friend, but she had a headache.” He chuckled through the beard. “Women’s favorite excuse — the ever-popular headache. Fact is, she didn’t want to compete with Laura; no woman did. No woman could. I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of women in this town who didn’t shed too many tears when Laura got it.”
I looked at him, surprised. He
just stared back blandly, his expression unreadable through the beard. I didn’t expect Betty’d let him get away with it, and she didn’t. “George, you’re a miserable son of a bitch, do you know that?” She viciously ground out her just-lit cigarette.
McClendon shrugged casually. “Well, if that’s what telling the truth means, okay, I’m a miserable son of a bitch.” He sighed and went on.
“Laura was elegant as always. No Halloween costume. Just an absolutely ravishing cocktail dress. And jewelry to match. She wore her red cross earrings, and they were something to behold. You’d never have thought they were paste.”
“You were obsessed with those earrings, George,” Betty sniffed. “They were just gaudy, not beautiful. I told her that many a time. But she wore them every chance she got. Said it was because they were a gift from her parents.”
McClendon smiled. “Even you, Betty? God, even you were jealous of Laura, weren’t you?” Betty sputtered something, but George had already turned to me.
“Trust me, Mr. Goldman. Laura did plenty for those earrings and they did plenty for her. They were perfect for her. And they weren’t gaudy. Elegant, tiny diamonds and rubies. And if she hadn’t sworn to me they were fake, I’d have bet they were worth a king’s ransom.
“I’ve seen a lot of speculation in the papers about the fact that Laura was the only victim whose earlobes weren’t torn by the killer. Well, I’m convinced he must have recognized their value and didn’t want to risk damaging them. She was wearing them that night; no doubt about it. That’s probably the main thing the police questioned me about. I told them the murderer’s got them. The paper hasn’t said, but I’ll bet that’s how they nailed Fanning.”
Betty glared at him. “No way, George. If they’ve got earrings that need identifying, I’m the one they’d be talking to, and the cops haven’t said boo. This Fanning guy is a psycho. I don’t think he cares anything about jewelry.”
“Then how do you explain why none of the victims were found with any jewelry on them?” George objected. “And why did he rip the earrings off those other three?”
“The police have explained that, George,” Betty said in an exaggeratedly patient tone. “It was his way of further humiliating and punishing them for their sins.”
“Anyway, that party was the last time either of you ever saw her alive,” I said, bringing them back to the subject.
Betty nodded yes, then shook her head. “Things weren’t right that evening. I told her that when she came back from that phone call, but she wouldn’t listen.”
McClendon nodded and jumped in. “It happened all of a sudden. Laura’d been having a great time, up till about ten o’clock. Then someone told her she had a phone call. She, Betty and I were standing there talking. She was away about five minutes. When she came back, her mood had changed.” McClendon stopped, lost in thought. “She was in a different frame of mind,” he said at last. “Still in a good mood, but more serious somehow. And kind of excited. Said she had to go.
“We asked her what was up, and she said something like, ‘Good news. For all of us. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning. But I’ve got to go now.’ We tried to get her to tell us, but she wouldn’t.”
Betty took over. “I’ve talked to George about it, Mr. Goldman, and we just can’t figure out who that call was from. I had a sinking feeling about it at the time in a way I just can’t explain. I even told her to be careful.” Betty was weeping openly now.
I tried to sound sympathetic. “Did you tell the police about how you’d felt?”
Betty dabbed at her eyes with a Kleenex. “Oh sure,” she said shakily. “Tell him what they told you, George.”
I turned to McClendon. I was sorry I’d promised I wouldn’t take notes. My head was starting to ache, trying to remember all this.
“They said not to worry about it,” McClendon muttered. “They told me lots of people get feelings like that. They say most of it’s hindsight. That the person remembers feelings they didn’t really have…” His voice trailed off.
“That’s not true,” Betty said, her voice back to normal. “I did have those feelings that night, George. I even told you about them then.”
McClendon nodded but without much conviction.
“So she took right off?” I resumed, looking at George. “After that phone call?”
He shook his head. “No, she wanted to tell Sandy something.” He glanced at Donovan meaningfully. “That’s the girl who used to manage this beehive. And did a damn good job of it, if you ask me. But no one asked me. Just fired her.” He was glaring at Betty. She avoided his eyes.
“Anyway,” George went on, having made his point, “Laura was in Sandy’s office for several minutes before she left. I walked to the elevator with her. The police tell me…” He smiled complacently and smoothed his beard. “…I was the last one to ever see her alive.” Dramatic pause. “Except for the murderer, of course.”
“That’s what the cops said.” Betty’s voice was choked. She’d gotten weepy again. “It’s just not right that she left without my even getting to tell her goodbye. I don’t know how she got by me. I saw her go into Sandy’s office. I thought she’d be right back out, but when five minutes went by and she didn’t come out, I ran into my office to get something. And when I came back, you told me she’d gone. I had such a feeling! I almost went after her, didn’t I, George?”
McClendon’s voice was gentle. “You’re right, Betty. You did have a feeling.”
Betty’s spunk seemed to be coming back. Her voice was bitter. “I just hope they fry that son of a bitch, Fanning. If only Laura’d been more careful. It’s just so —”
“Forget it,” McClendon said soothingly. “Laura was a brave gal. She had no more fear of Strangler John than she had of anything else. And you know as well as I, no one was going to change her.”
“She was pretty reckless?” I asked. “I mean, Laura?”
Donovan narrowed her eyes at me as if seeing me for the first time. “George!” she said sharply.
McClendon jumped, startled at her change of tone and looked at her.
“Where’d you get this guy, George?”
The executive frowned and looked around him. “Get who?”
“This guy. Goldman.”
“What do you mean, get him, Betty? He’s your lawyer.”
“The hell he is!” She was on her feet, her face red. “You idiot, my lawyer’s Goldstein, and he’s meeting us for lunch! I walk in here and see the two of you. What am I supposed to think?”
She advanced on me, gesturing at me with the pack of cigarettes she’d picked up. “Just who the hell are you, mister? And how’d you get in here?”
McClendon wasn’t too swift on the uptake. “But… I don’t see… What’s he doing —?”
“Don’t you get it, George? Guy’s a — a reporter, probably, a snoop. Comes waltzing in here like he belongs, and what do we do? We just let him! Who the hell are you?”
I glanced over my shoulder at McClendon, whose own eyes were widening in dawning comprehension. His hands tightened into fists.
I turned back to Betty. “Oh,” I said wide-eyed, “so that’s why you let me sit in! I was wondering why you were being so hospitable. No, I’m no reporter, just a guy who wants to talk about Miss Norville’s back pay. But if you want to tell me about your private business, I don’t guess you can blame me if I’m too courteous to interrupt.”
“Norville’s back pay?” Donovan’s eyes narrowed. “What about it?”
“She wants it,” I said smoothly. “And she’d like it now.”
“Just a damn minute, Betty!” McClendon had finally decided to get into the act. “Don’t say another word.”
I grinned at him. “That’s pretty good advice, George. Too bad you didn’t take it yourself.” I turned back to Donovan.
“You see, Betty, George and I were having a little talk before you came in…about drugs.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed and fixed on McClendon. “Wh
at’s he talking about, George?” she demanded.
McClendon was furious. “This son of a bitch told me he was your supplier! I told him we —”
Betty slammed her pack onto the table and cigarettes went every which way. “What did you tell him, George? You stupid son of a —!”
“Now, Betty…” George interrupted, hands in the air. I took him off the hook.
“Excuse me, Miss Donovan. I see no need to get into accusations and counteraccusations.” I seemed to have developed lawyer’s mouth. “I’m not really concerned with how you spend your leisure time. All we have here is a simple little problem: the money that Miss Norville is owed. You know this perfectly well.”
I hoped that was the truth. For all I knew, Sandra Norville had stolen the company blind and maybe killed Laura Penniston to boot.
“All we’re asking for is Miss Norville’s back pay. Are you prepared to —? Please, Miss Donovan! Don’t, I beg you, don’t light that cigarette. I’ll be out of your life in a matter of seconds. Please have the decency to wait till I’m gone before you get back to killing yourself.”
She looked at her hand, frozen in its grab for the pack of Pall Malls. She pulled it back.
“And if I do?” she asked sullenly. “Then what?”
I shrugged. “Then nothing. I have no desire to make trouble. So. How about the money?”
“Just who the hell are you?” she demanded in a final show of bravado. “And where did Sandy dig you up?”
“I already told you my name, Miss Donovan. David Goldman. And for your information, Sandy didn’t dig me up. I found her. Now, what about her money?”
“All right,” Betty said through her teeth.
I looked at my Timex, thinking fast. Now that I had Donovan playing ball, I wanted to orchestrate the next move for maximum benefit.
“Tell you what,” I said. “It’s now precisely ten forty-seven. At exactly eleven-fifteen I’d like you to phone Miss Norville at home. I happen to know she’s there waiting for your call. You don’t need to mention my name, but I think it would be nice if you apologized to her for the delay. And even nicer if you could tell her that the check is on its way — by messenger, perhaps?”
The Fundamentals of Murder (Davey Goldman Series Book 2) Page 12
