Murder Times Two

by Haughton Murphy

  Both Cynthia and Bautista agreed.

  “And with that broken drinking glass gone, we may never have the answer.”

  Again Reuben’s listeners agreed.

  “Now, Luis, you have all the information we have, and all the information your colleagues have. Who did it?”

  “Let’s make sure I do know everything. Let’s see if I understand the setup in the living room.”

  Bautista opened his notebook and started making a sketch of the death scene. Reuben and Cynthia offered comments as he did so.

  “This is correct?” he finally asked, tearing out the sheet and handing it to the Frosts.

  “Yes,” they both agreed.

  “One or two more questions. I’ve heard conflicting things about the widow. I know her public reputation, like everybody else—one of our great benefactors. Happy and benign. But maybe not so happy, and maybe not that benign. Is that fair?”

  “Yes, it is,” Reuben said. “We thought we knew her pretty well, but there’s a lot we don’t know. Hell, we’re not even sure who all her husbands were.”

  “Okay, to go back to your question: Who did it? I haven’t seen any of the suspects. I think, though, I’d put her at the top of the list. A real motive and of course every chance to plant the poisoned capsules. I wouldn’t rule out Deybold, either. He’s on both your upstairs and downstairs lists. And the waiter.”

  “What about him?”

  “They’re still looking for him. The address he gave the caterer he worked for was a fake.

  “Then there’s this Kearney,” Bautista went on. “I’d like to have a better line on him.”

  “That raises a question, Luis. Are you going to be involved in this case, I hope?” Reuben said.

  “That’s not possible,” Bautista answered. “Springer and Mattocks caught the case, and it wouldn’t be copacetic for me to try and horn in on it.”

  “Surely you can help in the background—at least help me in the background.”

  Bautista did not respond for a moment, as if collecting his thoughts. “Reuben, I’ve got to be frank with you,” he said finally. “I know that you had nothing to do with Vandermeer’s murder. It’s inconceivable to me, and I’m one of the most suspicious guys around—cynical enough not to be shocked at almost anything. But let’s face it. You’re still a suspect. Until the dust settles, it’s best for all of us that we don’t talk together. For old times’ sake, I checked out what Springer and Mattocks were doing and came here today. But for your good and mine, we’ve got to operate at arm’s length in this thing.”

  “Luis, I’m sorry,” Reuben said, shocked at the turn of events. “The last thing in the world we want to do is get you into trouble. But if you’re convinced I’m innocent, where’s the harm?”

  “It would look bad, Reuben,” Bautista said, himself upset by the drift of the conversation. “I regard you both as real good friends. So does Francisca. It’s just that for the moment we shouldn’t be doing things out of friendship. You don’t want anybody saying you’ve unduly influenced the police’s investigation. And I don’t want anybody saying I was meddling to cover up for a pal of mine.”

  “There’s nothing to cover up!” Reuben said sternly.

  “Sorry, that wasn’t a very good choice of words. I meant—”

  “No, Luis, I understand.”

  “Look, if you get in a real jam, I’ll be there. But I can’t be second-guessing my buddies behind their backs. I’ve told them, and I’ll tell Joe Munson when I see him, that there isn’t a chance in hell you had anything to do with the murder. You had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m damn sorry, but I’m convinced that’s the way we should leave it.”

  Bautista got up and buttoned his blazer across his barrel chest.

  “Does this prevent you from having a drink before you go?” Cynthia asked.

  “Can I take a rain check? I’m still on duty.”

  “Of course you can have a rain check. Just tell us when you want to redeem it,” Reuben said.

  “And give our love to Francisca,” Cynthia added.

  “Okay,” Bautista said. “I’ll certainly do that.”

  “I only hope this is over soon,” Reuben said.

  “Me, too,” Bautista answered. “Take it easy.”

  “You know the way out, Luis,” Reuben said.

  “Sure thing.”

  Bautista made an awkward exit, leaving a devastated Reuben and Cynthia behind.

  “Well, he learned something in that night law school of his,” Reuben said quietly.

  “What’s that?”

  “How to protect himself. Or, not to put a fine point on it, how to cover his ass.”

  “I’m not sure that’s fair, Reuben.”

  “He washed his hands of us, that’s what he did!”

  “You mustn’t get excited, dear. Luis is doing what he thinks is best.”

  “Oh, I know. He’s absolutely correct. Even if it leaves me right up a tree.”

  “Well, you’ll have to try and climb down,” Cynthia said.

  “Without falling. Well, we’ll show him, and Springer and Mattocks and everybody else. It’ll be easy. All we have to do is figure out who killed Tobias. Simple, heh?”

  “We’ll do it, Reuben. We have to do it!”

  14

  A Surprise for Some

  Tobias Vandermeer’s funeral was conducted without incident late Wednesday morning at “the Marble,” the Marble Collegiate Church, home of the Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of the City of New York, to which the Vandermeers had belonged for generations. Television and still photographers clogged the narrow sidewalk in front of the Gothic Revival entrance on Fifth Avenue, but inside all was calm and decorous.

  Reuben and Cynthia arrived early and were seated in a pew (at Reuben’s choice) toward the back. No churchgoer, Reuben winced inwardly as the small door at the end of the pew was shut behind him, heightening the feeling of claustrophobia he usually felt in holy places.

  Frost observed that most of the assembled crowd were friends of Robyn’s, fellow veterans of the society-benefit wars, interspersed with small multiracial groups that Reuben took to be teachers from, or perhaps even beneficiaries of, READ. Also Norman, the Mayor, who sat all by himself in the front pew on the left-hand side.

  Reuben did spot several directors of the Bloemendael Foundation. But, aside from a few men he guessed were jazz musicians, there were very few present who could be said to be Tobias’ friends.

  Robyn, clad in the obligatory black, was ushered from a side door to a front pew just before the service began. To Frost’s initial surprise, she was accompanied by Bill Kearney, to whose arm she held tightly. Then he realized that the widow had no known relatives, other than former husbands, so Kearney had probably been pressed into service out of necessity. In any event, the Great Kill executive’s austere appearance was totally in keeping with the morning’s solemnity.

  As the service proceeded, Reuben’s mind wandered as he glanced from the green palm trees at the altarless front of the church to the red-and-gold fleur-de-lis panels along the side walls. He could not decide whether the minister reminded him more of Jimmy Carter or Richard Nixon; he overused the word “superb” like the former, but had the slightly false gravity of the latter.

  The minister eulogized the deceased elaborately; there was no hint that the man who had “crossed to the other side” had in many respects not been very attractive. Instead he was depicted as a caring man who had “gone the last mile” more than once, most probably a reference to Tobias’ financial contributions to “the Marble.”

  Reuben was relieved when the minister asked the congregation to rise and sing the “Old Hundreth,” followed by a prayer of dismissal and seemingly endless choruses of “Faith of Our Fathers.” Then the dark mahogany casket was wheeled out, and Robyn, her face sheathed in a black veil, went down the aisle on Bill Kearney’s arm.

  Reuben broke away from Cynthia as they left th
e church to talk to Bob Millard.

  “Didn’t you say Monday that the Bloemendael Foundation was meeting tomorrow?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And you’re going?”

  “Oh, yes. A command performance, as I told you.”

  As they talked, a television camera crew swept by and almost knocked the two men over. They had been photographing the Mayor’s exit from the church and were now hurrying to focus in on Robyn as she entered her black limousine. Millard put out his hand to steady Reuben and they continued their conversation.

  “I’d like to go to that meeting,” Frost said. “Do you think it’s possible?”

  Millard looked surprised. “Why on earth do you want to do that?”

  “Bob, there’s precious little in the way of clues to Tobias’ murder. We’ve got to search everywhere we can, look for every angle we can. A meeting of the Bloemendael directors probably won’t produce a single lead. It will most likely be a total waste of my time. But I’d still like to go. I’d like to get the feel of how that board operates. What do you think?”

  “Well … you’re too old and distinguished to be my bag carrier, Reuben. But what the hell, why not? I’ll just bring you. If anybody asks why, I’ll simply say you’re the senior lawyer in charge of Vandermeer family matters.”

  “That’s stretching things a little, Bob. After all, I am retired.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I doubt that the directors will know the difference, or would care if they did.”

  “It won’t embarrass you?”

  “Lord, no. In fact, I’ll be glad for the moral support.”

  “Okay, then. What time?”

  “Two-thirty at the Foundation’s offices.”

  “Shall I meet you in the lobby at two-twenty?”

  “Good.”

  “You talked to Robyn yesterday?”

  “Yes. She’s in good shape.”

  “That deed of appointment does the trick?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Bill Kearney knew all about it, by the way. Tobias had given him a copy of the deed.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Millard said.

  “Have you talked to Mark Small?”

  “Not yet. I put in a call to him this morning.”

  “Duck him,” Frost replied cryptically. “It’s be time enough for him to find out about it tomorrow.”

  The next afternoon Reuben met Bob Millard in the marble lobby of the office tower where the Bloemendael offices were located, on First Avenue in the not-for-profit enclave surrounding the United Nations. Millard had been caught in traffic downtown, so they were already two minutes late by the time they went up to the thirty-third floor and were shown by one of the two attractive receptionists to the boardroom, an impressive space with a panoramic view of the UN buildings, the East River and Queens on the other side.

  As they approached the double doors leading to the boardroom, Wayne Givens, followed by two women, came up behind them. He greeted Frost amiably but managed at the same time to convey his surprise at seeing him.

  “Reuben! Nice to see you. I hope this is a calmer occasion than the last time we met,” he said, then added, “I didn’t know you were still in harness.”

  Givens didn’t wait for a reply and introduced his colleagues, Dr. Marguerite Baxter, the executive vice-president for research at the Bloemendael, and Lois Jordan, Givens’ own secretary and an assistant secretary of the Foundation, who would keep the day’s board minutes.

  It was hard to tell which woman was prettier. Dr. Baxter was older and taller, but she had a distinctly unscholarly, outdoorsy blond look and a glittering smile. Frost was sure he had seen her before, but could not recall where. Her colleague was a petite black woman who was, to Reuben’s eye at least, very comely. He wondered if it had been an accident that these two women, and the two receptionists seen earlier, had all been what he in his old-fashioned way would term “knockouts.” Were they all handpicked by Givens? Did the notoriously lecherous Dr. Wayne have a harem within the Bloemendael Foundation?

  “Do you want us to wait out here?” Bob Millard asked.

  “No, no, no, come on in,” Givens said. “We don’t have any state secrets here.” He took them inside the boardroom, where the other directors were scattered around in groups, all talking animatedly. Since the talk ceased when he and Millard entered the room, Frost assumed (correctly) that at least part of it was speculation over Tobias’ death—and quite possibly the disposition of the Vandermeer fortune.

  “You two can sit there,” Givens directed, pointing to the single chair against the wall. “Oh, we need another chair. Here, Pete Gonzalez isn’t coming today, after all. Take this one.” He moved a chair from the table and put it against the wall, next to Reuben.

  “You can take Pete’s agenda, too, so you can follow our momentous deliberations,” he went on, handing the green folder at one of the places to Reuben.

  Frost and Millard looked at the agenda at the front of the folder while Givens made his way to the head of the table, shaking hands as he did so. They noted that “Robert Millard, Esq., Chase & Ward,” was to address the meeting on the “Legal Status of the Vandermeer Trust.”

  The room was dominated by a large, impressive marble table at which fourteen places had been set, each marked by a green agenda folder. With the afternoon sun coming in the window and lighting the neatly arranged table, the effect was one of tasteful prosperity. The room and its furnishings were not quite opulent—the watchful eyes of Hendrik Vandermeer, looking down from the oil painting on the wall, would never have countenanced that—but they were certainly grander than the utilitarian, humdrum offices of Great Kill Holdings.

  (Frost knew that Wayne Givens, aware of the plush spaces occupied by many other foundations, notably the Ford a few blocks downtown, had several years earlier toyed with the idea of erecting a headquarters building for the Bloemendael Foundation. Being the good politician that he was, he hastily backed off when there were rumblings on his board. The directors, normally docile and responsive to his wishes, insisted that all its available resources be dedicated to the Foundation’s addiction programs, and not to expensive bricks and mortar.)

  Frost had done his homework and gone over a list of the fourteen surviving Bloemendael directors (Tobias having been the fifteenth), sent up to him from Chase & Ward the day before. The list included Givens, Kearney and Dr. Baxter. Of the others, he had found that he had come across virtually all of them, one way or another, and now recognized most of them as he looked around. He realized the shrewdness with which they had been picked, presumably by Wayne Givens. He was sure there had been a special reason for selecting each one, and could guess what it was in most cases.

  Take Jerry Halpern, for example. One of New York’s most successful real estate developers, and one of the few in the good graces of what Cynthia had once called the “preservationist mafia,” he had most likely been useful in easing the way for the drug-addiction centers the Foundation sponsored throughout the New York area. The exact opposite of the Vandermeers, with their quiet, passive investments in valuable real estate, Halpern was a flamboyant developer, with an exceedingly clever and shrewd public-relations operation behind him. Surely this PR apparatus had been put at the services of the Foundation as it confronted often vehement community opposition to the opening of new treatment facilities.

  Or Dr. Jonathan Persky, a Nobel prizewinner for his discoveries in pharmacology. A prestigious authority for Givens to have on his side—yet one not really expert enough in addiction prevention and rehabilitation to challenge Wayne Givens’ methods and theories.

  A touch of celebrity, if not actual glitz, was added by Gregory Bonner, the new head of television programming at one of the networks. “I’m no artist,” he was fond of saying, and most who saw the shows produced under his aegis would agree. Nonetheless, for three years in succession he had assembled a schedule of programs that put his network first in the ratings, moving from “brash whiz kid
” to “genius” by the time the third season’s triumph was announced.

  And there was Mark Small, the recently elected head partner of Rudenstine, Fried & D’Arms, who had invited Millard to the meeting, and now came across the room to shake hands with Frost and Millard. And the almost obligatory investment banker and accountant: Blair McKenzie, the sixtyish head of the comfortably old-line firm of Hester & Company, and Emory Bacon of Sprouse & Walker, a small accounting firm specializing in not-for-profit organizations.

  Then there were the “balancers,” those who gave the board at least an outwardly democratic cast, without at all disturbing the elitist hegemony that Givens imposed. Eliza Russell, for example, an aging aristocrat from a New York family as old as the Vandermeers—kind, and no trouble. And Glenda Warren, a former administrative assistant (a secretary, really) at the Henderson Institute, who, on the wave of the women’s movement, had emerged as head of the Institute, making her to secondary-education reform what Wayne Givens was to addiction. Her directorships in both the corporate and nonprofit sectors were legion, and if she was sometimes unkindly called a “house woman,” she either did not know, or did not mind, the reference.

  Another master of board service was Alvin Michaelson, head of an office workers’ union in the metropolitan area. When he saw his name, Reuben had wondered cynically if Michaelson could any longer remember how to sit on the labor side of a collective-bargaining table, having so long been a “labor” spokesman in the halls of capitalism.

  Finally, Frost had spotted the names of two minority representatives, the Reverend Henry N. Price, the pastor of a major black church in Harlem and a man of impeccable reputation, and Dr. Pedro Gonzalez, a former National Institutes of Health researcher now working for a commercial drug company.

  “Ah, here’s Bill Kearney,” Givens said as Kearney entered the room, slightly out of breath and apologizing for being late. “That means we can begin. Everyone’s here except Pete Gonzalez, who had an emergency come up, and Jerry Halpern, He just called from his car and said he’s stuck in traffic. He shouldn’t be long.”