“Were Bill Kearney and Tobias getting along?” Reuben asked.
“Oh, yes. Kearney was Tobias’ only real confidant. Tobias was also grateful not to have to spend any time on the business. Even though he’s a pain, Kearney ran Great Kill very well. And if he wants to be, he can be very helpful. Like today, when he took complete charge of the funeral arrangements.”
“What are they, by the way?” Reuben asked.
“If the morgue releases the body in time, it will be at Frank Campbell’s tomorrow. The funeral will be Wednesday at Marble Collegiate, downtown. Tobias was never a churchgoer, but he gave them money, so it’s the obvious place to go.”
“One more thing, Robyn. What’s your maid’s name—Miss Boyle?”
“Kathleen Boyle, yes.”
“You think there’s any chance she might have poisoned Tobias?”
“That little mouse? Preposterous! She can complain and be sullen, but she’s much too holy to commit murder.”
Thinking of the religious artifacts in the maid’s room, Frost was inclined to agree. Now, deciding that he could only absorb so much information at one sitting, and being eager to talk over what had been learned with Cynthia, he decided it was time to leave, though he did ask Robyn if she wanted to join them for a quick supper.
“No, Reuben, thank you,” she said. “Mr. Obuchi has prepared a nice light meal for me here. But thank you both for coming over and hearing my troubles.”
The Frosts insisted that they had been glad to listen to her, and hoped that their exit to a private table in a nearby restaurant where they could talk was not made in unseemly haste.
11
A Working Supper
Cynthia and Reuben, tired and very hungry, headed immediately down Lexington Avenue to the City’s newest stylish Italian restaurant (new French restaurants being almost unheard of), Sette Mezzo, owned by their old friends Nino Esposito and Gennaro Vertucci, and efficiently precided over by Oriente Manìa.
True to their usual form, the Frosts each ordered the simple grilled chicken, accompanied by glasses of the superior house Trebbiano.
“What a weird story,” Reuben said, when they turned to the subject preoccupying them.
“It’s clear she’s going to have a good bit more than a hundred dollars a week to spend.”
“By about two thousand times,” Reuben said. “Which just might have been a sufficient amount to make a murder seem worthwhile to her. Not that Tobias’ conduct wouldn’t have been motive enough, without regard to the money.”
“That was a real tirade,” Cynthia said. “I had no idea what that woman has been going through. Tobias had become a monster. That business about her dog was horrifying.”
“Absolutely, though her plans to get rid of that poor little speechless creature are pretty cruel, too. And how about checking up on her deed of appointment at the bank before his body’s even cold?” Reuben asked, enthusiastically carving up his half-chicken as he spoke.
“Okay? Everything okay?” Alfio, their favorite waiter, inquired solicitously.
“Perfect, as usual,” Frost replied.
“I’m afraid, my dear,” he said, turning to Cynthia, “that Robyn Vandermeer doesn’t drop off our computer list.”
“I’m glad you said it first. Can there be any doubt, Reuben, after what we heard?”
“I don’t think so. She had both the opportunity—to put poison in Tobias’ bathroom—and the motive.”
“I do believe we can get rid of Miss Boyle, though.”
“I agree,” Reuben said. “But getting back to Robyn. I wish I had more of a fix on her. Hell, I don’t even know where she comes from, do you?”
“I believe the Midwest somewhere. She’s never said, but I’m sure I read that once. By the time we first knew her, she was already the Principessa Montefiore del’Udine—correction, the former Principessa.”
“It sounded like she may have left a pig farmer or some such out wherever it was.”
“You mean the miscarriage business?”
“Yes.”
“She certainly was definite about never wanting children.”
“I’ll say. Which makes that memo on adoption—remember I told you about that, the memo Bob Millard found in our files—even more curious.”
“I suppose Tobias could have had some passing thought of adopting a child at some point—part of his ‘romantic streak.’ He probably dropped the idea fast when he got her reaction.”
“Very odd.”
“You’re not having dessert, are you?” Cynthia asked, knowing that Reuben usually passed it up.
“No, but you go ahead.”
“I can’t resist the tartufo.”
“I’ll have coffee. Against my better judgment, but I will.”
Frost placed the order and returned to the subject of Robyn.
“How are we doing on the husband count?” he asked. “There’s Tobias, of course, and the Principe. And now the pig farmer, we think. Who was the fourth?”
“I have no idea. You sure there were four?”
“So Bob Millard says. He claims she told him that.”
“And what are we to make of Tobias?” Cynthia asked. “She made it sound as if he went from Cary Grant to Boris Karloff overnight—in the middle of their anniversary trip to Paris. Their twentieth, no less.”
“It could be as simple as his alcoholism getting progressively worse. But I agree it was a strange tale. Giving her a life estate worth millions and ten years later begrudging her any money at all.”
“You’ve always said the Vandermeers were tightfisted,” Cynthia observed.
“Yes, that may be part of it. But I can’t help thinking there’s more to the story than we know.”
“Do you suppose there could be another man involved?”
“Like Becky Sharp’s Lord Steyne, you mean? But look what happened to her—her husband threw her over when he found out. Difficult as her life was, I don’t believe Robyn would have run that risk.”
“I had Wayne Givens in mind,” Cynthia said.
“Doubtful. Givens’ fly is open more than any philanderer’s in New York, but I don’t see him messing around with Tobias’ wife. The Bloemendael Foundation is too important a base of operations to him for that. Never dip your pen in company ink.”
“Oh, Reuben, please, not that old chestnut. I must have heard that four hundred times when that partner of yours, Tommy Rabb, went off the deep end with his secretary. It was a stupid expression then and it still is!”
“I’m sorry, dear. But however you want to phrase it, I think your suspicion is wrong. Dare I have more coffee?”
“You’ll be awake all night.”
“I will be anyway,” Frost said, gesturing for more.
“Where do we go from here, my dear?” Cynthia asked.
“I wish I knew. I also wish damned Bautista were back. I could talk to him, tell him our feelings about Robyn. I can’t do that to Mutt and Jeff.”
“He’s due back tomorrow, isn’t he?”
“That’s what they told me.”
“What else?”
“Just one other thing. On the theory that Robyn may not be Lucrezia Borgia, I just may pay a visit to Mr. William Kearney, Tobias’ Sunday caller.”
“Now there’s a nugget you could pass on to Mattocks and Springer and get points for doing it.”
“The thought has occurred to me. But I want to talk with him first. Now, finish that appalling dessert and let’s go home.”
12
Bill Kearney
The offices of Great Kill Holdings were in a refurbished office building just north of Grand Central Station. Reuben had made an appointment to meet Bill Kearney there at eleven o’clock on the Tuesday morning after Tobias’ murder.
The day was unseasonably warm for March, so Reuben set out from his townhouse half an hour early to walk to his destination. He was proud that his speed was still a city block a minute and calculated that thirty minutes would be right to get him to
Kearney’s office on time.
As he went down Park Avenue, dodging several dogs being exercised and the occasional errant child (“Roscoe! Roscoe! Come back here this minute!”), he tried to assemble in his memory what he knew about the man he was on his way to see. He concluded that it wasn’t very much.
As long as he had been involved with the Vandermeers, Kearney had been the President of Great Kill. In the old days, before Hendrik Vandermeer’s death, he had distinctly been the dutiful subordinate, Hendrik himself being the unquestioned number one up to the day he died.
The old man, whenever he had mentioned Kearney to Reuben, had praised him elaborately, yet always with the scintilla of condescension establishment Protestants like Hendrik could convey by adding an ethnic tag to their descriptions. “My good Irish right arm” Hendrik often called Kearney, in straightforward admiration, but nonetheless with an implication that it was perhaps surprising to find an Irishman capable of functioning so well. (Democracy did progress, Reuben thought. Hendrik’s words of a generation ago would probably now be “my clever black assistant,” emanating from the mouth of a not necessarily Protestant, and maybe even an Irish, boss.)
Kearney had started life in real estate in Queens, after graduating from the business school at Fordham University. “I got him and trained him before he learned all the bad habits you can pick up in this racket,” Hendrik had once boasted to Reuben. The elder Vandermeer had obviously been pleased with the results, naming his protégé as his representative on the board of directors of the Bloemendael Foundation and as one of the co-trustees of the Vandermeer Trust, in the latter case to the exclusion of his own son.
Frost’s own dealings with Kearney had been limited. The sort of operating legal problems Great Kill encountered—tax-assessment contests, zoning fights, even the writing of the company’s leases—were handled by in-house lawyers and the firm of Quinn & Kallman, which specialized in the black, esoteric and often political art that constitutes a New York City legal practice in real estate.
He did remember that Hendrik, shortly before his death, had consulted Reuben about drawing up a long-term employment contract for Kearney. He had done so, and now recalled that it had been a financially generous one, guaranteeing Kearney’s job as President of Great Kill for ten years, unless dismissed for cause. There had been little negotiation of the agreement; it had been signed practically as Frost (or more precisely, a Chase & Ward associate) had drafted it.
By his reckoning, Kearney’s contract would have run out roughly five years earlier. Had it been renewed, he wondered? Or renegotiated? It might be interesting to find out.
Then there had been the incident several years back that still rankled with Frost. When Hendrik had established the Bloemendael Foundation, Chase & Ward, hardly surprisingly, had acted as its counsel. Later, after Hendrik’s death, the directors decided to retain the firm of Rudenstine, Fried & D’Arms, and Mark Small in particular, as lawyers for the Foundation, the reason given being that they felt it should have counsel that did not represent the Vandermeers in other capacities, as Chase & Ward most certainly did.
In Reuben’s mind there had not been any conflict of interest, and Wayne Givens had hinted to him privately that Kearney had been behind the switch to Rudenstine, Fried.
All this occurred in the days before lawyers could advertise, though this had not stopped attention-getters like Mark Small, who touted his expertise as an expert on not-for-profit institutions by writing frequent articles in legal periodicals and appearing ubiquitously at seminars where their problems were discussed.
Frost had never liked Small, whom he regarded as a pompous, self-promoting little bantam. He and his partners had begrudgingly, yet gracefully, acceded to Small’s ascension at the Bloemendael, though Frost was sure he, or his successors at the firm, would be less magnanimous if Small ever tried to grab off more of the Vandermeer legal work.
Frost admired the elegant and newly restored Art Deco paneling in the elevator of the building he now entered. (How lucky some real estate barons were, he thought. Twenty years ago, commercial tenants wanted steel and glass; an Art Deco interior like this one would have been considered hopelessly dated. Now old Art Deco spaces were a positive selling point with tenants.) He got out on the twenty-eighth floor and entered the discreetly, even obscurely, marked entry door to the Great Kill offices.
A pretty but overly made up receptionist—one of the little shop girls who delighted the American cosmetic industry—greeted him, called Kearney’s secretary and motioned him through the closed door behind her that led to the active office space. The reception area was paneled in dark oak, not seedy but not exactly luxurious either. The offices behind, ranged around the edges of an open zone of desks occupied by clerks busy at calculators and computer terminals, were utilitarian and decorated without distinction.
Most of the offices had glass windows facing the open work area. Kearney’s was the exception. Larger than the others, it filled the northeast corner of the floor and was reached only through a secretary’s office.
Kearney came out into the public space to greet his guest.
“Hello, Reuben. It’s nice to see you again, even under the sad circumstances.” His greeting was warm enough, but tempered by his austere appearance. Reuben, unlike Kathleen Boyle inexperienced in the ways of Catholic monsignors, thought Kearney resembled an old-fashioned, middle-aged schoolmaster with his unfashionable crew cut and rimless octagonal glasses.
In Kearney’s office, a glass-topped desk was the only break in the austerity projected by the room and its occupant. The cloth-covered easy chairs and sofa surrounding a plain black coffee table that constituted the “sitting area” could have come from a young bachelor lawyer’s walk-up apartment and been purchased at the Door Store. The Currier & Ives print of downtown New York, behind Kearney’s desk, seemed a purely functional piece of decoration, though conceivably it depicted a parcel or two of Vandermeer real estate.
“Bill, I’m sure you’re wondering what the hell I’m doing here,” Frost said, once seated. “You probably think I’m meddling in something that should be left to the police, and you may be correct. But I do have an interest in finding out who killed Tobias. My wife and I were present when it happened, after all. Which means, until the murderer is found, we are under a cloud personally. While I’m sitting here, the police are undoubtedly out there fishing around about me and Cynthia. I would like very much to put a stop to.”
“I can’t blame you.”
“I also have a purely intellectual interest in seeing this puzzle to a conclusion. Once bitten with the detective bug, as I unfortunately have been, it’s hard to shake off the infection. For better or worse, I’m a curious old man.”
“I understand that, too. Your exploits may not have made the newspapers, but your reputation has gotten around, ever since your partner was murdered at Chase & Ward. I’m not sure how I can help you, though.”
“I have a feeling—and it’s only a feeling at this point—that if I learn more about Tobias some light may be shed.”
“Or Tobias and Robyn perhaps?”
“Why do you say that?”
“God knows I’m not going to cast suspicion on anyone. But she was present when he died, wasn’t she?”
“Indeed. I want to ask about her and several other things as well. Any help you can give, Bill, will be appreciated.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Before we get to Robyn and Tobias, let me ask you how Great Kill is doing.”
“Same as ever. Making money.”
“No downturns? No recent changes or developments?”
“No, sir. Just a steady climb in asset value and income. You know, Reuben, I had a kid from the Harvard Business School in here the other day. Wanted to find out all about us. I told him it was like having a cable-television franchise. When you’ve put it in place, the only thing you need is a girl to open the checks that come in every month. That’s what we have. All our propertie
s except a couple of small ones are leased out. Those people you saw outside my office really do it all—keep track of the lease payments and deposit the checks in the bank when they arrive.”
“Nobody’s agitating to make changes?”
“Change means risk, Reuben. Great Kill has always avoided the swinging part of the business, the developer’s part. That means we haven’t made as much money as the Trumps or the Rudins. But we haven’t had losses or bankruptcies either. We just lease out our land on nice, steady triple-net leases. Our tenants have all the risk and expense—and the big profits, if there are any—and we have our stream of ground rents. Do you realize we have properties that Tobias’ grandfather bought? We haven’t sold a single parcel since the day Great Kill was formed. I don’t like the expression ‘money machine’ but let’s face it, that’s what Great Kill is.”
“How about selling Great Kill?”
“Well, the Bloemendael Foundation’s going to have to sell its part fairly soon, but they think they can do it in a single private transaction that won’t make waves.”
“And they’ll have the other half to sell after Robyn dies,” Frost said.
“I believe so,” Kearney replied, though there seemed to be a trace of doubt in his voice.
“You’re Tobias’ executor and a trustee of the Vandermeer Trust. Is there any doubt about it?” Frost asked, somewhat impatiently.
“No, no. You’ve got it right,” Kearney said hastily.
“Let’s go on to Robyn and Tobias, as you suggested. You must have seen a lot of them. How would you say they were getting along?”
“Actually, you know, I didn’t see a lot of them. Tobias had an office here, but he almost never used it. We got together to talk business at his house once a week and that was it.” Kearney did not mention that the weekly meetings were on Sunday, and Frost let the point go by for the moment.
“How about Robyn? Did you see her regularly?”
“I’d talk to her on the phone when she needed money.”
Murder Times Two Page 10
