by Emma Lathen
After ten days of sustained effort, Winstead’s chief investigator took a deep breath and prepared to confront his superior.
“What the hell have you been doing?” demanded Bernard Stillman.
“Tearing the place apart. And we haven’t come up with one damned thing.”
When he unleashed the dogs of war, Stillman had become a general ordering the saturation bombing of an enemy city. Now he was being presented with aerial photos of an unscathed target. Like most generals, he assumed his troops had been attacking the wrong town.
But not according to his subordinate.
“We’ve checked purchases and sales, taxes and payroll. My God, I had boxes and crates opened so we could actually count inventory. The boys have talked to everybody who does business with the company, and they’re all happy. Ecker is so clean it squeaks.”
Conveniently forgetting that he himself had initiated this draconic probe, Stillman said swiftly, “Well, Dan, we already knew they’d been vetted a couple of months ago. So it has to be a recent scam.”
Dan looked at him more in sorrow than in anger. “If you’re thinking somebody looted a couple of million, forget it, Bernie. The Sloan showed us all the records. Nothing’s gone missing.”
“What about an enormous liability of their manufacturer’s warranty?”
Dan shook his head. “No way. We’ve talked to most of their major customers. The story’s the same everywhere. Ecker products don’t have defects.”
“You haven’t talked to all of them.”
“Be reasonable, Bernie. Maybe one Ecker food processor did turn into a grenade. If so, the victim’s been damn quiet about it.”
“Pollution!” Stillman cried desperately. “They’re sitting on a giant toxic waste dump.”
“Ecker isn’t into chemicals. And neither was the outfit that was on the site before them. All their waste is accounted for, and it isn’t the lethal stuff anyway.”
“Who knows what’s lethal these days?”
Even to his own ears, Stillman sounded as if he were flailing. But he stubbornly persisted.
“Half these poisons they didn’t know about years ago. Maybe everybody at Ecker has some rare form of cancer.”
“OSHA inspects regularly. It would have to be so rare the government doesn’t know about it, the union medical people don’t know about it, and the victims don’t know about it. In which case, how come the Eckers know about it?”
Stillman’s jaw suggested that he was silenced but not convinced.
“Look, Bernie, it’s not impossible that there’s a cute wrinkle somewhere,” Dan conceded. “For all I know, a supplier could be playing a straw man for one of the Eckers. But then the company is even stronger than it looks, if it’s absorbing that kind of cost and still doing so well.”
Stillman thought he saw an opening.
“You think somebody might be afraid Hunnicut tumbled to this scam?”
“Not a chance. If we can’t find it, he sure didn’t,” said Dan, on his professional mettle.
“But if there’s nothing wrong there, why are they setting fires and killing people?”
“Maybe they aren’t. Maybe someone else is.”
At the Sloan Guaranty Trust they were pleased to learn that their client had been given a clean bill of health, but they reserved their professional appreciation for one particular aspect of the final report.
“Good heavens! Have you seen this summary on their credit union?” Everett Gabler exclaimed.
Two negative grunts were his only reply as Thatcher and Charlie Trinkam continued to study different items.
“Fiscal responsibility of the highest order!”
Bursts of commendation from this quarter were so rare that both of the others abandoned their own documents to move behind Gabler and read over his shoulder.
After a cursory examination, Trinkam went further. “They could sure teach a lot to some of those bozos up in Rhode Island,” he remarked, referring to some spectacular failures.
John Thatcher delayed responding to complete his mathematical calculations.
“Don’t be so niggardly, Charlie. Proportionately speaking, you could say they’re doing better than most New York banks.”
A moment later he regretted his impetuous remark. On this subject Gabler could go on forever. Charlie and Thatcher, both instinctively moving to avert the familiar lecture, collided in mid-air.
“Their real estate valuations are so conservative that . . .”
“Ecker’s been booming. Instead of laying off, they’ve actually been hiring, so the credit union . . .”
What was good news at the Sloan was bad news at New York City Police Headquarters.
“If everything’s on the up-and-up at that company, then all we’ve got is opportunity and means,” the captain grunted when Inspector Giorni delivered the results.
“That’s right.”
“The DA isn’t going to like this.”
“It was his idea to charge Laverdiere so fast,” Giorni pointed out diplomatically. “You wanted more time.”
“They always flake out when there are big headlines,” the captain said, freely libeling prosecutors around the country. “I suppose now they’ll try to claim that Laverdiere flew into a rage when he found out Hunnicut set the fire.”
Giorni was shaking his head with solemn deliberation.
“They may try, but it won’t get them anywhere. I haven’t told you the worst. We’ve been monitoring Hunnicut’s credit-card charges and one of them was for gas up in northern New Jersey the day after the fire.”
“Who cares where he bought gas that day?”
“That’s what I thought, so I didn’t give it any priority. But Sergeant Knudsen used his head when he saw the charge. He already knew that Hunnicut had been at work all day and at his fencing club all evening. There didn’t seem to be enough free time for a hundred-mile round trip, so Knudsen drove over to check it out.”
The captain was frowning. “And?” he demanded impatiently.
“Knudsen says he knew he was on to something the minute he saw where the gas station was. It’s right off the George Washington bridge on the Jersey side, and it’s one of those all-night deals. The owner said Knudsen should talk to the kid who comes on duty at ten o’clock at night. Knudsen hung around and, sure enough, the kid remembered the whole thing. It was snowing when Hunnicut pulled in, driving one of those Audis with automatic all-wheel drive. The kid’s father is thinking of buying one, so he asked Hunnicut how it handled and they gabbed some about the car.”
The frown was beginning to carve deep trenches across the captain’s forehead.
“Wait a minute,” he objected. “Are you talking about the night they had the fire at Ecker?”
“That’s the night it snowed. The kid says he’d been on for at least a couple of hours when Hunnicut arrived. According to the weather bureau, the snow started there shortly after midnight. It all fits in with the date on the charge slip.”
“Then that would mean Victor Hunnicut left that Thai restaurant in Bridgeport, got into his car, and drove home. What about the identification? Is it solid, or does the kid just want to get his picture in the papers?”
Giorni reluctantly shattered this hope. “The kid mentioned it to the station owner as soon as Hunnicut’s murder was on TV.”
“Then why the hell didn’t he mention it to us?” the outraged captain demanded. Veering in his assessment of the station attendant as a notoriety seeker to indifferent Joe Citizen, he proclaimed: “That’s what’s wrong with all these kids.”
“He didn’t know trips to and from Bridgeport were important.”
“He should have read more thoroughly!”
Moved by some obscure compulsion to defend this particular member of the younger generation, Giorni said mildly, “The kid goes to college all day and works all night. I don’t suppose he’s got a lot of free time.”
“All right, all right. What does the fire marshal up in Bridgeport say?
Any chance of a timing device?”
“Nope. This was a real simple job. No fuses, no timers, nothing beyond a lit match. Victor Hunnicut had nothing to do with that fire. He didn’t see who set it and he didn’t do the job himself. He was home in bed.”
The captain groaned.
“Wait until the DA hears this one. That leaves him without a shred of motive for Bob Laverdiere.”
“Not to mention that there’s a whole slew of motives at ASI, and their people were all at Javits, too. Besides, I’ve got another goodie for you. The guys manning the booths at the trade show were all wearing badges, which has been a big help tracking Hunnicut. That is, until we came across a security guard who remembered an ASI badge by the right freight elevator but claimed it wasn’t Hunnicut. So we flashed a bunch of pictures at him and guess what? Wiley Quinn was there at just about the right time.”
“Quinn?”
“He’s the one Hunnicut was putting down when Laverdiere charged in.”
Both policemen silently contemplated what an adroit defense attorney could do with that.
“If you ask me,” Giorni said dispassionately, “I don’t think the DA can get past a preliminary hearing.”
“And yet Laverdiere has been covering something for all he’s worth. In fact, he’s been lying his head off.”
The captain scrubbed his bald spot in vexation as he reached his conclusion.
“And there’s got to be a damn good reason why.”
Chapter 20
WHITE KNIGHT
Institutions invariably favor other institutions. As a result, the lowly mortals caught up in critical situations are often the last to be apprised of significant information. After the Winstead Group had chewed over the results of its investigation, after it had honored its obligations to the Sloan Guaranty Trust and the New York City Police Department, after its adjuster had held a long discussion with Bridgeport’s fire marshal, Bernard Stillman finally realized that a certain courtesy call might be in order.
Tina Laverdiere did not exactly overflow on the phone.
“Thank you for letting me know,” she said formally.
“And of course we’ll be sending you a copy of the final report.”
“I’d appreciate receiving it as soon as possible.”
Then she cradled the receiver. After days of nerve-stretching anxiety, she should have been conscious of relief. But the overwhelming sense of constriction was still with her. There was only one way to end it.
With sudden decision she rose.
“I’m going over to see Bob,” she told her secretary. “It may take a while.”
Her husband, instead of being in his office, was floating around the plant, and the production area had never been Tina’s natural home. Adding to her difficulties was the prevailing din. The high ceilings of the old mill echoed back the clank of equipment and the whir of motor belts so effectively that every question had to be shouted. And wherever she went, the story was the same.
“I’m looking for Bob,” she yelled over the stamping presses.
“He was here a couple of minutes ago,” someone shouted back. “I think he was heading over to toasters.”
As her search continued past the clangor of milling machines and metal lathes, every exchange was audible to dozens of people. Even in the comparative calm of a wiring room, the women at the long bench were so intent that there, too, normal volume was useless.
“Edna.”
No answer.
“Edna! Where’s Bob?”
The longer her trip lasted, the more edgy Tina became. From floor to floor she trudged, her progress rousing considerable curiosity. The Ecker line was familiar with a cool, efficient Tina. They had heard talk from the accounting department of brief flare-ups. But cold or hot, she was always punctilious. This Tina was barely in control, confining herself to jerked-out phrases because she could not trust herself to say any more.
“Bob’s gone?”
“He just left.”
“Where to?”
She had covered the entire building by the time she spotted her husband in the farthest corner of the top floor. The mysterious warning system that exists in all workplaces had preceded her, so that the entire shift watched her stiff-legged approach.
Bob was deep in consultation with the foreman for coffeepots.
“I need you,” she interrupted unceremoniously.
“In a minute, honey,” he replied, barely glancing up. “Jed’s got an equipment problem. Why don’t you wait in—”
“NOW!”
Without another word she swung on her heel, to the fascination of all onlookers.
If Bob was slow to read the signs, Jed was not.
“I can take it from here,” he muttered hurriedly.
Forced into a trot to keep his wife in view, Bob pattered down the stairs and followed her into his own office. The door was barely closed before she said tightly, “Winstead just called with the final results and we’re in the clear. There’s absolutely nothing wrong.”
Caught off guard, he replied seconds too late: “Well, that’s great, Tina. Of course we always knew it, but it’s nice to have everyone else know it, too.”
She made no attempt to match his forced gaiety.
“This would be a wonderful time for us to stop lying to each other, Bob.”
“What are you talking about?” Glancing wildly around for support, he saw at least twenty interested gazes following events through his glass walls. “And we can’t have a scene here. Everybody’s watching.”
“Tell them you’re taking a long lunch,” she directed grimly.
His excuses were to no avail. Totally inflexible, Tina was being as hard on herself as on her husband. She only knew that she could no longer deal with the careful omissions that now characterized their life together. By dint of remorseless pressure she managed to sweep him from the Ecker plant to the Laverdiere home.
“All right, you’ve been a Christian martyr long enough, Bob,” she almost spat, plunking herself down at the kitchen table. “Suppose you tell me what’s going on.”
“My God, you know what’s going on,” he protested. “We agreed what I was going to tell the police.”
His reminder was a mistake. “I should have my head examined for agreeing,” she retorted. “We ought to have told the truth from the start.”
“Are you out of your mind? As soon as the police found out you had the skewer, both of us would have been arrested.”
“I went along with that at the trade show. We were rattled then, but at least we were normal with each other. It was afterward that everything went haywire.”
“I don’t know what you mean. And why are you carrying on this way now? Anybody would think we’d gotten bad news instead of good news. Don’t you see this means I don’t have a motive anymore?”
He kept pulling away from the real issue, but Tina would have none of it.
“You thought I killed Victor Hunnicut,” she said dully.
He was appalled. “Don’t talk nonsense. What would make me think that?”
“That’s what I’d like to know!”
“You can’t think of a reason, because it just isn’t so. You’ve been so anxious about the Winstead audit that you’ve started imagining things.”
She ignored his bluster. “But why, Bob, in heaven’s name, why?”
He was trying to avoid her eyes, but every time he turned, she turned. Looking into that bottomless well of misery, she did not enjoy closing his escape routes, one by one. But something told her it had to be done.
“Why?” she insisted.
Finally his defenses crumbled.
“It was when they told us the fire was not an accident,” he confessed wretchedly.
“You thought I was embezzling from Conrad?” She was dumbfounded. “For Christ’s sake, Bob, have you gone stark raving mad? What was I supposed to be doing with all this money?”
Shamefaced, he shook his head. “It wasn’t that.”
&n
bsp; She had clutched his hand during his string of evasions. Then it had been to prevent escape. Now it was to promise sympathy and understanding.
“You see, I got real shook up by what that bastard said at the trade show,” he began.
“Go on.”
“He claimed I was lousy at my job, and he said it as if it was obvious. Then the other guy from ASI didn’t seem to think it was unreasonable. But I’ve always thought I was pretty good.”
For once Tina was not interested in his self-esteem. “You’re a fine production manager,” she said perfunctorily.
“And the company’s been doing so well, which seemed like proof positive. I was hanging on to that when the fire marshal told us the boiler house was torched. And you’re the one in charge of the records. So I thought . . .”
Tina felt as if the weight of years had been lifted.
“You thought I was cooking the books to make you look good,” she finished for him.
“Well, you’re the one who knows what goes on there,” he defended himself belatedly.
In moments of extreme emotion, human features become distorted. For once Tina Laverdiere did not look like a handsome woman. Her skewed smile made her seem more like a stroke victim than an affectionate wife.
“Oh, Bob, you’re an idiot. I couldn’t get away with that year after year. Don’t you understand? There’s a limit to what you can do with accounting. You can divert money from one section to another, you can disburse it to fake accounts, you can lose it in the computer, but you can’t simply create it.”
“I’m sorry, Tina, I’m really sorry. I wanted to talk to you but I was afraid, and the whole thing was tearing me apart.”
She recalled an earlier misgiving.
“In Chicago I thought you might have told Virginia.”
“Mother!” he gasped. “When has she ever kept quiet about anything?”
Tina realized that she should have known better.
“While we’re at it,” she said relentlessly, “I suppose I should admit that I was suspicious of you.”
Under different circumstances his expression would have amused her.
“How could I finagle the records? I don’t know anything about what goes on in your office.”
