“I assume he exercised this power?” Frost asked.
“That’s the problem, Reuben. As far as our records show, he didn’t. He could’ve done it by executing and delivering an irrevocable deed in Robyn’s favor, or in his will. His will is silent on the subject and we don’t have evidence of any deed being executed during his lifetime.”
“So Robyn doesn’t get anything from the Trust? And the Bloemendael gets everything right away?”
“That’s the way it looks.”
“Hmn. So Tobias provided for Robyn in his will, I assume.”
“No, he did not. She gets nothing. The art collection goes to the Metropolitan, and the balance of the estate is divided up among the Jazz Center, whatever that is, the Museum of the City of New York and Marble Collegiate Church. When I took over after Arthur Tyson died, I reviewed all the operative papers in our file and I remember very clearly calling to Tobias’ attention that he hadn’t exercised the appointment to Robyn so that she could get the Trust income after he died.”
“What did he say?”
“He said she’d already been taken care of.”
“But as far as you can see she hasn’t been?”
“That’s right.”
“She can elect against his will, can’t she?” Reuben asked.
“Yes, she could do that. In New York, and since there aren’t any children, she could elect and take half of Tobias’ estate.”
“But that’s not where the big dollars are,” Frost said.
“That’s right. Getting the Trust income would be the most important thing for her.”
“Hmn. What’s Tobias’ estate worth?”
“Well, it’s not nothing. Except for his plunges in the art market, he was very frugal, as you’re aware. And it would’ve been hard for him to drink up the dividends he got from Great Kill, though sometimes I thought he was trying to do that.”
“What’s a rough figure?”
“Probably fifteen, eighteen million after estate taxes, depending on what the paintings are valued at.”
“Hell, that Jasper Johns he owned they say is worth ten million alone,” Frost said.
“Then I may be low.”
“Whatever it is, half isn’t too bad. Robyn could certainly get by on the income from, say, eight million. Maybe not as well as she’d like, but she wouldn’t starve. Did Tobias say anything else when you spoke to him?”
“No. He seemed annoyed that I’d brought the subject up and clearly didn’t want to talk about it. So I dropped the whole matter.”
“It sounds to me like the Bloemendael’s pretty lucky. Wayne Givens will be in pig heaven.”
“He already is. Didn’t you see that Times Magazine article on the ‘Medical Medici’ three weeks ago?”
“Oh, yes, I did.”
“He plays the Bloemendael like an accordion. It’s his soapbox for making all his statements on drug addiction in the press, the testimony in Washington, the television stuff.”
“You don’t know the half of it, Bob. I was the one who set up the Bloemendael for Hendrik. The original purposes of the Foundation were threefold—to promote the education of Negroes, as we said back then, the study and prevention of drug addiction and the study and prevention of alcoholism.”
“That’s a pretty odd combination.”
“Yes, it is. We were curious, and one of my seniors finally asked Hendrik about it at the time. The answer turned out to be simple—in some way he was trying to atone for the Vandermeers’ nineteenth-century involvement in the slave, opium and rum trades.”
“Where does ‘Bloemendael’ come from, by the way?” Millard asked.
“It’s the Dutch form of Bloomingdale, which referred to the area north of Fifty-ninth Street where the family owned considerable property. Hendrik was too publicity-shy—modesty isn’t the right word—to call it the Vandermeer Foundation.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, Givens is the one who got the Foundation zeroed in on drug addiction. It’s his specialty, of course, and he managed to work the trustees around to agreeing to concentrate exclusively on drugs. I’m convinced he’s determined to be the country’s leading authority on the subject—running treatment centers, appearing on television, giving out research grants to others, being a rival of the President’s drug ‘czar’. And now, with the Bloemendael immensely richer, he’ll be able to send up even bigger rockets from his launching pad.”
“The Bloemendael will be richer than you probably imagine, Reuben. Under the Internal Revenue Code, the Foundation’s got to get rid of practically all its Great Kill stock two years from now. Not to be technical, but the stock they owned was ‘grandfathered’ under the IRS’s disposition rules for fifteen years from the time Hendrik’s estate was settled. Now the time’s almost up, and they have to unload it. And I’m sure they’ll get a better price per share if they can deliver all the Great Kill stock free and clear, rather than just fifty percent.”
“Hmn. What’s Great Kill worth, do you suppose?”
“My guess would be somewhere around three hundred million.”
“God, the Bloemendael will be a real heavy hitter.”
“Yes. Not one of the billion-dollar babies, like the Rockefeller or the Ford, but right up there in the top ten or twenty. And certainly the biggest private foundation concentrating on drugs.”
“Going back to something you said earlier, Bob, about Robyn taking a great interest in Vandermeer family affairs. Didn’t she ever ask whether Tobias had exercised his power of appointment?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Certainly she must have been aware of it?”
“I’m sure she was.”
“I think it’s odd she never asked.”
“Yes, it is. There’re some other oddities, too. Tobias made a new will in April 1985. It left everything to the charities I mentioned and cut out Robyn.”
“Had she been mentioned in his old one?”
“Yes, he’d made a will shortly after they were married, and she was to get half of everything Tobias owned.”
“Was there any provision in that will for a life estate in the Trust?” Frost asked.
“No, Hendrik wasn’t dead yet, so the Trust didn’t yet exist.”
“Oh, sorry. Of course.”
“The other thing about the 1985 will was that Tobias left out two specific bequests that had been in before.”
“Like what?”
“That Jasper Johns you mentioned. He left that to his former wife in the old will. Not in the new one.”
“It’s become so valuable he probably had second thoughts.”
“I don’t know.”
“You said there were a couple of bequests.”
“Yes,” Millard said. “Let me see here. Yes, in the old will there was a bequest of two million dollars to a Grace Alice Rourke. Not a huge amount, but certainly more than a thousand bucks to a good and faithful servant.”
“Who on earth is she?”
“Damned if I know. Arthur Tyson drew up the 1985 will and discussed it with Tobias. Arthur never mentioned her to me. Nor did Tobias.”
“Any other information? An address, for example?”
“Nope. Just the simple statement that he leaves two million to Grace Alice Rourke.”
“Hmn. Let me write down that name,” Frost said, taking out the small notebook he habitually carried. “Rourke, R-o-u-r-k-e?”
“Correct.”
“Any other surprises in the files?” Frost asked.
“Not really. Your superconfidential memorandum on bigamy.”
“A masterpiece, if I do say so myself.”
“Oh, and a memorandum by one of Arthur Tyson’s associates on adoption.”
“Adoption? That’s curious.”
“It’s pretty routine. A bread-and-butter memo that Arthur sent on to Tobias regarding adoption—how a child, when legally adopted, acquires all the rights of an offspring of his adoptive parent or parents, but loses any legal righ
ts against a natural parent.”
“Do you think Tobias and Robyn ever considered adopting?
“I certainly never heard of it. And again, I never heard Arthur mention it.”
“It seems unlikely. Robyn’s always been so taken up with her good works and Tobias was too busy drinking to be much of a parent. When was the memo written?”
“Let’s see here. Hmm, March 1985. Just before Tobias revised his will.”
“That makes it even more unlikely, it seems to me. They would have been too old to adopt by then.”
“It would seem so.”
“Maybe Tobias was thinking of beating the Foundation out of its legacy. It is true, isn’t it, that if Tobias had adopted a child that child would ultimately get the corpus of the Trust—and not the Foundation?”
“That’s right. In New York a legally adopted child has all the rights of a natural heir.”
The two men were silent for a moment, pondering Tobias’ puzzling interest in adoption, before Frost asked another question.
“Bob, I’ve told you the cast of characters that was present last night. Which one poisoned Tobias?”
“Reuben, I’ve no idea. Robyn’s tough, as I said, but just being tough doesn’t make you a murderer. And even if she were homicidal, I would’ve thought she’d have waited until Tobias had fixed her up with a life interest in the Trust income.
“We’ve already decided that the Bloemendael’s good fortune is a big plus for Wayne Givens. But would he kill to bring it about?” Millard went on. “I just don’t see it. I think the butler did it.”
“Cynthia thinks so, too. But why? The only reason is because he’s a stranger to us—if he did it we don’t have to face up to the possibility that someone we know was the killer. It’s too convenient.”
“Well, Reuben, it’s really your department, and I’m sure you, or the police, will come up with the answer.”
“God, I hope so,” Frost replied, continuing to keep from Millard the police suspicions about Frost himself.
“Just to finish, Bob,” he continued. “Will the firm get a big fee now that Tobias is dead and the Vandermeer Trust gets wound up?”
“Oh, absolutely. There’ll be a final accounting for the Trust and the fee for acting as counsel to Tobias’ estate.”
“Who’s the executor, by the way?”
“Bill Kearney.”
“I see. But getting back to our—your—fees. What are we talking about?”
“Hard to say. Three to four million, probably.”
“I’m glad, for the sake of my old partners,” Frost said. Not so glad, he could have added, for what suspicious Assistant District Attorney Munson might make of Chase & Ward’s windfall.
10
The Widow
After a late lunch at the Gotham Club, Frost leisurely walked the fifteen blocks to his house, stopping to browse several times along the way. He knew that the computerized list he had made earlier was still sitting on his library table, and his instincts told him that it would continue to fail to produce any new insight into the identity of Tobias’ murderer.
He was right, and after staring at the list for some time falsely concluded that a stiff martini might inspire him. All the carefully prepared drink did was make him sleepy, however, and he was in a state of semi-drowsiness when Detective Mattocks called. Could he come by? the detective asked. Reuben, with fresh memories of Sunday’s interrogations, was not delighted, but saw no practical way of avoiding him.
Mattocks, now without his partner, turned out to be surprisingly amiable, though Frost continued to have a vision of a giant muscular black man giving him a penetrating stare in the Vandermeer kitchen. Except for the amiability, there was no new thrust to the officer’s questions; he merely wanted to go over once again the movements of those in the Vandermeer living room prior to Tobias’ death.
Mattocks exhorted Frost to search his memory for any additional information. The exhortation produced nothing, although Frost finally gave him the computer list (not before thinking twice about it, given the double inclusion of his own name).
“Hey, this is great!” Mattocks acknowledged, with something almost approaching enthusiasm. The enthusiasm waned, however, when he realized that the piece of paper he had been handed did not contain anything new. And the officer became more guarded as Frost sought to find out from him what was going on.
“Do we know yet how Tobias was killed? Was it cyanide in his drink, or from a capsule, or what?”
“I haven’t seen anything,” Mattocks answered ambiguously, not making clear whether a medical report yet existed.
“What about the others? Have you talked to them again?”
“Some of them.”
“Mrs. Vandermeer?”
“We tried, but she was too broken up to talk.”
“And the waiter? Have you found him?”
“We’re working on it.”
Frost could tell he was not going to find out any news, so he asked Mattocks if there was anything more he wanted to ask.
“No, but where’s Mrs. Frost? Is she here?”
“Speak of the devil,” Reuben said, as Cynthia entered the room, home from her day at the Foundation.
“A nice way to address your wife,” she said, going over to kiss her husband on the forehead, then turning to Mattocks, who had gotten to his feet.
“Good evening, ma’am. I was just asking your husband if I could see you for a few minutes.”
“Good evening to you. Of course.”
There was an awkward pause, during which it became evident that Mattocks wanted Reuben to leave the room, which the latter confirmed by asking the question directly.
“If you don’t mind, sir, yes, I’d like to talk to your wife alone.”
“Still trying to divide and conquer, Officer,” Frost said.
“I’m sorry, sir. It’s Standard Operating Procedure.”
Frost went out, his empty martini glass in hand, and shut the library door behind him.
Cynthia and Reuben compared notes after Mattocks had left, concluding that they had learned nothing and that Mattocks had merely been plowing what was by now old ground.
“I was sorry to hear that they couldn’t speak with Robyn,” Frost said. “We really should call her, don’t you think? I’ve been putting it off all day.”
“You or me?”
“Why don’t you start?”
Cynthia did as she was told, and soon was gesturing to her husband while talking on the telephone. “She wants us to come over,” she whispered to her husband. Reuben extended his arms in a gesture of resignation.
“Fine, we’ll be there in a few minutes,” Cynthia told the widow.
“Before we go,” Reuben said to his wife, “I ought to tell you what I learned about the Vandermeer estate today.” He summarized his conversation with Bob Millard; neither he nor Cynthia could fathom what Tobias’ actions, or his inaction, meant.
Kathleen Boyle admitted the Frosts to the Vandermeer residence.
“Wait in here, please,” she said, gesturing toward the living room. The Frosts entered skittishly, reenacting in their minds the terrible scene of the night before, though the room had been completely tidied up and no evidence of the murder remained.
“The Missus is upstairs. I’ll call her,” Kathleen said.
“How is she?” Cynthia asked.
“Carrying on something terrible,” Kathleen said. “She had a little nap earlier and I hope that calmed her down. Death is a terrible thing when it comes, Mr. Frost.”
“Yes, indeed, Miss Boyle.”
“Think of him being poisoned—and in his favorite chair yet!”
“When did you come back here?” Frost asked.
“Not till this morning. I stayed overnight with my cousin in Astoria and got back here just in time to clean up the mess left by New York’s finest. The living room a mess, the kitchen a mess, and the Missus in hysterics. It’s been a day to test the blessed, Mr. Frost.”
&
nbsp; “Miss Boyle, can I talk to you for a minute before you call Mrs. Vandermeer?” The Frosts sat down on the sofa they had occupied the night before. It was hard to imagine Miss Boyle, the small, almost birdlike woman now sitting uneasily on the edge of Tobias’ “favorite chair,” as a suspect in the crime, but they knew that seemingly innocent and devoted maids and nurses had more than once turned out to be ruthless poisoners.
“Miss Boyle, Mr. Vandermeer’s death was a great shock for us, as I’m sure it was for you. Doubly shocking, because we haven’t the faintest idea of who might have killed him. My question to you is, do you have any idea, any notion of who it might have been?”
“None, Mr. Frost. That’s the frightful thing. Poor Mr. Tobias had his faults, the whole world knew that, but I can’t imagine what worm might have killed him.”
“There were seven people here last night, in addition to Mr. and Mrs. Vandermeer. Eight if you include the waiter. You know who they were, Miss Boyle?”
“Some of them. The Missus mentioned some of them.”
“Let me go through the list,” Frost said. The exercise proved futile. It was clear that Miss Boyle did not take to Dr. Givens or Sherman Deybold, or “the pretty boy who’s always with him,” but when pressed, disclaimed suspicion of any of them.
“How about the waiter?” Frost asked.
“Mr. Padgett?”
“That’s his name?”
“Yes. Pace. Pace Padgett. He’s become an old hand here. He’s all right, as temporary people go. I wouldn’t say he’s the murdering type, myself. And why in the name of heaven would he want to kill Mr. Tobias?”
“If I had the answer to that question, the whole puzzle might be solved,” Frost said. “I take it you can’t think of any reason?”
“None at all. He’s just a poor actor earning some extra money as far as I could see.”
Murder Times Two Page 8
