Murder Times Two

by Haughton Murphy

  “Oh, God,” Reuben groaned, as he thought about the wife of Dr. Wayne Givens, both the Chairman and the President of the Bloemendael Foundation and another member of the reading group. “How can anybody be so plain?”

  “She must work at it,” Cynthia said. “Those prim Laura Ashley dresses, no makeup and that straight hair that looks like it was cut in a barbershop. And she sounds as if she’s going to strangle when she finally gets to say anything.”

  “Well, her popinjay husband talks for both of them.”

  “‘Dr. Wayne,’ as he now calls himself on television.”

  “America’s leading expert on drug addiction, or so everybody says—including himself,” Reuben observed. “I guess he’s good, but he certainly can be insufferable.”

  “I still remember his psychoanalysis of Joseph Sedley as a repressed homosexual last month.”

  “One of the reading club’s high points, no doubt about it.”

  “Enough. Maybe it will be fun, after all. Becky’s money troubles are pretty interesting. But we still have the unanswered question, as we always do at these things.”

  “Do you mean what I think?”

  “The unanswered question—how drunk will Tobias get?

  “He’ll have to go some to beat the last time.”

  “Yes, but he’ll be on his home turf. It won’t take two people to carry him home,” Cynthia said, recalling with distaste the untidy conclusion of the February gathering at their house. “We’ve talked it over a hundred times, but after all those years spent getting plastered so quietly, why is he now drinking so violently?”

  “I haven’t a clue. Something must be bothering him terribly, but I have no idea what.”

  “His finances are all right, aren’t they?”

  “As far as I know. Maybe Dr. Givens—Dr. Wayne—should psychoanalyze Tobias.”

  “I’ll be ready in ten minutes. Let’s hope it’s an uneventful literary evening.”

  Cynthia left to go upstairs, and Reuben, his joints creaking slightly, stood up.

  “I hope so. I hope so,” he said quietly to himself, as he followed his wife.

  4

  Drinks and Dinner

  Robyn Vandermeer and Helena Newcomb had devised the rules for the reading club at its inception. They were simplicity itself:

  1. Members should not attend meetings if they had not read the assigned selection.

  2. Biographies and criticism relating to the selection could not be consulted beforehand. Helena, as the discussion leader, was the only one permitted to introduce secondary material.

  3. Meetings would be held on the first Sunday of each month, alternating among the homes of the members. Drinks were at six, supper at six-thirty and the reading discussion at seven-thirty, or as soon as the meal was over. The members were urged not to discuss the day’s selection until after supper.

  There was general agreement on the ground rules, with some exceptions. Sherman Deybold, the art-gallery owner, invariably cheated, although usually not too obviously, by citing outside sources. Tobias Vandermeer thought the cocktail hour too short, though it really didn’t matter since he drank constantly through the evening. And both of the Frosts would have preferred to start discussing the reading at hand over supper, which would have achieved the double result of limiting the small talk and shortening the evening.

  This March Sunday, the Frosts walked from their own townhouse on Seventieth Street to the Vandermeers’ apartment building four blocks north, each with a Penguin copy of Vanity Fair in hand.

  Robyn Vandermeer greeted both with kisses. She looked elegant, wearing what Cynthia Frost knew to be a Givenchy silk dress that matched her dark eyes. Standing beside her in the living room were Wayne and Barbara Givens. As usual, Wayne, Dr. Wayne, looked deeply tanned. A real tan, Reuben wondered, or the product of one of those carcinogenic tanning parlors? Or was it all makeup from the TV studio? Frost couldn’t help thinking sourly that the tan, natural or artificial, was to let the world know that Dr. Wayne was a television personality. Or perhaps it was simply a beauty aid to advance his activities as a notorious skirt-chaser around Manhattan.

  Mrs. Givens, predictably, was wearing one of her school-marm print dresses, projecting a severity accented by her lack of makeup and straight brown hair.

  “Hello, Reuben, ready for Lord Steyne?” Dr. Wayne asked jauntily. His wife dug in her purse for a cigarette and lit it with a Bic lighter.

  “Oh, let me get you an ashtray,” Robyn Vandermeer said.

  Since Barbara Givens chain-smoked—her husband’s clinical expertise in treating addiction not seeming to extend to her smoking habit—Reuben was sure that the absence of ashtrays was an oblique and hostile comment by the hostess. Pace Padgett, Bright Lights’ contribution to the party, appeared, and Robyn asked him to bring an ashtray.

  “I’m sorry, Robyn,” Barbara said. “I should give up smoking. It’s become so difficult, everywhere you go.” The woman’s global observation did not exclude the Vandermeer living room.

  “Think nothing of it,” Robyn said sweetly.

  “You know, it must be awful running a restaurant these days,” Reuben said. “Smoking areas, nonsmoking areas, and everybody getting angry when the lines are crossed.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Givens replied, “restaurant owners must be ready to kill Norman, our dear Mayor. But I guess if you can’t solve the big addiction problems you go for the little ones, and regulate smoking in restaurants.”

  “Now, now,” Robyn said. “Let’s not be too harsh on Norman. He’s giving me an award for READ a couple of weeks from now.”

  “Yes, we got an invitation to the ceremony,” Cynthia said. “What are they going to give you, Robyn?”

  “It’s all very muddled. They said they wanted to honor me, but I don’t know whether it’s a scroll, the keys to Gracie Mansion, or something else.”

  “Maybe a free Chinese dinner with the Mayor,” Dr. Givens said.

  “Oh, Wayne, it wouldn’t be that,” his wife contradicted, as usual missing the point that her husband had been making a joke.

  “I suspect, my dear, you’ll get a crystal apple,” Reuben observed.

  “I hope so, Reuben. I have so many plaques and scrolls now I don’t know what to do with them. A crystal apple would be fine.”

  “Who is this?” Cynthia interrupted, having spotted in a corner a dog that she had not seen before.

  “Oh! My goodness, you haven’t met Neil. My new baby darling!” She picked up the dog and stroked his back. He responded with pleasure. Yet he did not make a sound.

  “He’s very well-behaved,” Reuben marveled, always expecting the worst from pets.

  “He’s a basenji,” Robyn explained. “He doesn’t bark.”

  “He what?” Reuben said.

  “He doesn’t bark. Basenjis don’t, you know.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Reuben said.

  “Well, you have now. Just the strong, silent type, aren’t you, Neil?”

  “What happened to your retriever? Dolly, wasn’t it?” Cynthia asked.

  Robyn looked stricken. “It’s a long story that I won’t bore you with. We had to get rid of her.”

  “She was a beautiful dog,” Cynthia said, trying not to make an invidious comparison with the much less prepossessing Neil.

  “Yes, she was. But she’s gone and I must forget her.”

  “Robyn, have you been away?” Cynthia asked, tactfully changing the subject.

  “Yes, I have,” Robyn answered. “A tremendously interesting trip to Duke University. A conference on rural illiteracy and what could be done about it—three days and very stimulating. And they gave me an honorary degree!”

  “That’s wonderful,” Cynthia said.

  “So you are now Dr. Vandermeer,” Reuben said.

  “My dear, I’ve been that for eons. This was my sixth honorary degree. The Duke hood, white with blue piping, made me feel like a bride again.”

  As they talked, Reu
ben took in the familiar room, covered with Dutch genre paintings of all sizes, collected by Tobias Vandermeer under the tutelage of Sherman Deybold. He knew that Tobias’ collection was distinguished, though it was in sharp contrast to the tough and solid contemporary works that had graced the same walls when Ines Vandermeer had been the collector-in-residence. That collection she had taken with her when she decamped for Brazil in 1964.

  Deybold, a specialist in seventeenth-century Dutch painting, had regarded the blank walls Ines had left behind as an opportunity to be seized. He had persuaded Tobias that it would be appropriate for one of his Nether-landish heritage to collect works of the sort that Deybold, just by coincidence, specialized in. And he didn’t have to point out that the paintings he had in mind were about as different from the abstracts Ines had assembled as one could imagine.

  A clattering noise on the stairs to the floor above, followed by heavy, unsteady footsteps, diverted Reuben from his visual tour of the room. Robyn, who had been laughing over her new doctor’s degree, turned away to talk to Pace Padgett, asking him to heat up the meal Mr. Obuchi had left and get ready to serve supper. She was not panicked, but she was nervous.

  Her guests, certain that Tobias Vandermeer was coming down the stairs, also became tense. Then their host appeared, a glass of whiskey in one hand, the prerequisite copy of Vanity Fair in the other.

  Tobias Vandermeer immediately dominated the room. At six feet four, he was an enormous man, and his bold hound’s tooth jacket made him look even larger. He wore a relatively neat shirt and tie, but there were two cuts on his florid face from a botched job of shaving.

  Given his heavy tread on the stairway, Cynthia was surprised to see that he was wearing velvet slippers, complete with fox heads in silver thread on the tongue over his initials, “TV.” Except for their large size—his feet were huge—the slippers, with their bright colors and tiny animals, might have delighted a child.

  Tobias did not shake hands with his guests nor, as Cynthia noted with relief, did he kiss any of them. Instead he grunted affably and settled into a large overstuffed chair, especially built to accommodate his formidable bulk. The others, who had been standing until now, dutifully sat down around him.

  Soon the doorbell rang once, and then, after a pause, a second time.

  “Where is that young man?” Robyn said, with impatience. “Probably talking to his agent,” she grumbled crossly, before realizing that she had dispatched Padgett to make the last-minute preparations for supper. She herself went to the door to let in Helena Newcomb.

  Reuben noted with approval the woman’s bright-red silk shirt, which nicely showed off her ample bosom, though he had to concede that her silk trousers were less suited to her equally ample posterior.

  “Here comes teacher,” Tobias said, in a heavy, gravelly voice. “Let me get you a drink. I was headed that way myself,” he said, finishing in a single gulp the one in his hand as he went across to the bar.

  Looking around the room, as if taking attendance, Ms. Newcomb asked where the Jeromes were.

  “They’re not coming,” Robyn said.

  “Unprepared?” Reuben asked, using the dreaded word he remembered from long-ago law school classes.

  “I’m afraid so,” Robyn said. “Charlotte said life had been so hectic in Hobe Sound that they simply hadn’t had time to do the reading for tonight.”

  “And how about S & M?” Tobias called over his shoulder from the bar, referring to Sherman Deybold and his young companion, Michael Costas.

  “Tobias! That isn’t nice at all,” Robyn scolded.

  “It may not be nice, but that’s what everybody calls them,” he replied matter-of-factly. His guests did not comment.

  “They’re always late,” Robyn said.

  The unkindly named S & M arrived shortly afterward. All the guests wondered at Sherman Deybold’s appearance. Until very recently, his skin had been as dark as Wayne Given’s, or even darker, the product of diligent sunbathing on Fire Island in the summer and Saint Thomas in the winter.

  Now Deybold’s face was completely white, a condition that had given rise to the inevitable rumor that he had AIDS. The reality was quite different. The art dealer was simply reflecting the new health chic that viewed suntans as dangerous to the skin. He had been unenthusiastic when his dermatologist had lectured him about staying out of the sun (this after removal of a small melanoma from Deybold’s forehead) but then, as many of the brown beautiful people changed their sunning habits, he changed his.

  Michael Costas, by contrast, was as dark and handsome as ever. He was the older man’s assistant in running the traditional Deybold Gallery and its downtown modern offshoot, called Deybold/Costas. Everyone assumed, from the way they behaved together, that he was Deybold’s lover. This was a source of envy among Deybold’s friends of both sexes, since Costas was uncommonly good-looking.

  Today Deybold and Costas looked like versions of Mr. Bibendum, the Michelin man, with their billowing Armani pants and jackets. Except for the difference in their complexions and their similar dress, they could have been father and son, Deybold in his early fifties and Costas not yet thirty.

  Robyn Vandermeer urged S & M to have a quick drink, since supper was ready to be served.

  “Has Mr. Obuchi outdone himself tonight?” Deybold asked.

  “He may have,” Robyn said. She was justifiably proud of her new chef. “Come, we’ll find out.”

  “I’ve got to make a quick stop at the little boys’ room,” Deybold said. “We’ve been at a brunch that lasted all afternoon and I’m floating.”

  “Me, too,” Michael said.

  “Well, hurry up,” Robyn said. “We’ve got to keep on schedule. Michael, you know where the john is down here, right off the hallway. Sherman, you go and use Tobias’ bathroom upstairs. Right at the top to the right.”

  The two Michelin men went as directed while everyone else headed into the dining room. Robyn arranged the seating and Reuben found himself between his hostess and Helena Newcomb. Sherman Deybold soon returned and sat down on the other side of Helena.

  “Oh, Robyn, you’re trying to torture me again,” he said, turning to his hostess. “Putting me across from that Jasper Johns.” Deybold had been attempting for years to persuade the Vandermeers to sell the painting, a dynamic and colorful oil, mostly bright red, green and yellow, that showed the numerals 0 through 9 superimposed over each other.

  “How much do you think it’s worth this week?” Tobias asked, picking up on the dealer’s remark.

  “After those recent auctions it’s hard to say. Ten million anyway.”

  “Good! It’s going up!” Tobias said. “I can’t stand it myself, but I can’t afford to let it go. At least not till Bush reduces the capital-gains tax.”

  The Johns had a curious history. It had been purchased by Ines Vandermeer in 1961 for ten thousand dollars and had been on loan to an exhibition at the Modern Museum at the time she left Tobias. Later, when she discovered her forgetfulness, she had fought bitterly to have Tobias return it. Although he disliked the work, he had stubbornly refused, and Ines had eventually given up trying to get it back—so that Tobias, with typical Vandermeer good fortune, now possessed a painting of immense value.

  “Let’s have a drink to Jasper Johns!” Tobias thundered. “Kid, are we going to have any wine with this meal or not?” he demanded of Pace Padgett, who was placing a large soup tureen next to Robyn.

  “Yes, sir. Just a moment, sir,” he replied, quickly grabbing a bottle of the Montrachet from the ice bucket on the sideboard and hurrying to Tobias’ place.

  “Kid, you’ve got to hop fast around here. This is a thirsty crowd.”

  “I know, sir. I’ve worked here before.”

  Tobias gulped his wine and was demanding a refill before the hapless Padgett had made the rounds of the table.

  Robyn dished up what she explained was turtle soup, with “calipash and calipee,” as it had been served to Joseph Sedley in Cavendish Square in an ea
rlier episode of Vanity Fair. Her guests’ compliments were effusive.

  “I think Mr. Obuchi’s done very well,” Deybold said.

  “Where did you get him?” Cynthia asked.

  “Straight from the Culinary Institute of America,” Robyn answered.

  “Where does the American part come from?” her husband demanded, from his end of the table. “Pretty damned Oriental, I’d say. But then, everything is. I went to hear this gal stride piano player the other night. Name’s Judy Carmichael and she’s terrific. Really got it. You know where she was playing? A joint called the Fortune Garden, that’s where! A Chinese restaurant. Jazz in a Chinese restaurant! We’ve come to that.”

  The rest of the table listened in silence to their host.

  “You say this woman pianist was good?” Helena New-comb finally asked.

  “Capital! First-rate! Best woman stride player I’ve ever heard.”

  “Are there that many?”

  “No, not at all. Mary Lou Williams years ago. A few others. But this gal was doing ‘Carolina Shout’ as good as Eubie Blake.”

  “I don’t know it,” Helena said.

  “You don’t? James P. Johnson. Nineteen twenty. I’ll play it for you.” Vandermeer edged himself out of his chair and lurched toward the piano in the living room. Robyn was horror-struck and showed it, yet she did not protest.

  Tobias, to no one’s surprise, was too drunk to play. He got hopelessly confused in Johnson’s demanding cross-hand figures—a challenge to a skillful pianist when sober—and finally stopped in mid-phrase. Silence, this time a heavy, embarrassed silence, pervaded the dining room as Tobias made his way back to the table.

  “Out of practice,” he muttered dejectedly as he sat down, reaching for the wine bottle Pace Padgett had left on the table. “I’ll play it for you some other time.”

  “I get the idea,” Helena said generously. “It sounds fiendishly difficult.”

  “It is.”

  Tobias’ disgrace was forgotten as Padgett served the delicious beef stew the versatile Mr. Obuchi had prepared as the main course.

  The red Château Talbot ’78, which Padgett now served, went well with the stew. Reuben turned to Helena New-comb, basking in the double pleasure of the wine’s bouquet and her good looks.