“It was a part of my checkered past, dear Reuben,” Robyn said, in her best grande dame manner. “I was married to a dull but very decent auto-parts maker.”
“Do I know him, or know of him?”
“His name was Bernard Weldin. You see ads for Weldin Parts on television all the time. Mufflers, exhaust pipes, glamorous things like that.”
“This was before the Principe, obviously.”
“Obviously. I was a Chicago matron from 1951 till 1958.”
“My, my. You never cease to surprise, Robyn.”
“Honey, you don’t know the half of it,” she said, changing to a mock Mae West tone. “And I’m not about to tell you.”
Frost stood up to leave when Robyn called him back.
“Reuben, while you’re here, there’s something I’d like to ask you about.”
“Of course.”
“As you probably know, I’ve never had anything to do with the Bloemendael Foundation. Now that Tobias is gone, there’s no representative of the family on the board, unless you count Bill Kearney, which I don’t. For that matter there isn’t any family left except me. Do you think I’d be crazy to ask for a seat on the board?”
“Not at all, if that’s what you want to do. It would be perfectly appropriate.”
“Specifically, I’d like to be Chairman of the Board. Wayne Givens is now the Chairman as well as the President. One job is enough for him, and I want the other one. He could still run the show and sound off to the world about drugs, but there’d be a little more control over him than there is now.”
“You think he needs that—to be controlled?” Frost asked.
“The answer is yes. When Hendrik Vandermeer set up the Bloemendael, it was supposed to concern itself with drugs, alcohol and black education. Wayne got the directors to concentrate solely on drugs—including Tobias, who was always uneasy about the alcoholism part, for obvious reasons.”
“So you want to become Chairman of the Bloemendael and steer it into things other than drugs?”
“Things in addition to drugs, Reuben.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“You asked me and I’ll tell you—illiteracy among blacks.”
Frost was momentarily surprised at Robyn’s determined answer, then realized that of course he should not have been, given Robyn’s almost fanatical interest in literacy.
“Well, Robyn, the Foundation should hear what the family’s wishes are. And, as you say, you’re the family. Just don’t be surprised if Wayne Givens and his captive board try to give you a hard time.”
“I’ve thought about that. I’ll be prepared for him and them.”
Frost hurried home and called Cynthia at her office to tell her the tidbits he had unearthed, knowing that she would be intrigued.
“Three down, one to go,” Frost said to his wife.
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve identified three of Robyn’s four husbands.”
“That’s very titillating, my dear, but what does it mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“And how about Wayne Givens? Poor fellow! First he doesn’t get his hands on the rest of Great Kill, and now he’s going to have Robyn poking around in his backyard!”
“I wouldn’t worry about him if I were you,” Reuben said. “He can take care of himself.”
That night, Frost told his wife that he had an idea. Why didn’t she go to see Byron Hayden, the owner of Bright Lights? Perhaps, unlike Robyn Vandermeer and Miss Boyle, he could supply some useful—or at least tangible—information about the elusive Pace Padgett.
“I have a sneaking feeling our gumshoe friends didn’t get as much out of Hayden as a social butterfly like you might—a charming social butterfly, I mean. The police have probably scared him to death and made him tongue-tied.”
“I’ll call him tomorrow morning. We haven’t had a dinner party in ages. There’s no time like the present to plan one.”
“Just what I was thinking.”
Byron Hayden’s ever growing catering business operated out of a basement kitchen-office on East Fifty-fourth Street. The Frosts had used the Bright Lights agency several times with success ever since it had first been recommended to them by Robyn Vandermeer. It was not cheap to hire Bright Lights, but the food it prepared was always good, and less trendily aberrant than that of many of its showy competitors, and the service was impeccable.
After lunch the next day the caterer was waiting in response to Cynthia’s call; he sat down with her at a butcher-block table amid an array of large-size cooking pots and pans. Hayden was now in his forties and slowly losing the battle to keep the button-faced cuteness that had won him his fame as a juvenile actor. With wrinkles and jowls threatening, his manner had become less grown-up and more adolescent, as if to compensate for what was happening physically.
Cynthia and Byron compared calendars and decided that Bright Lights could do a dinner for twenty on May first. “A May Day dinner is a fabulous idea, Cynthia. It reminds me of the old rhyme … Oh, it’s too dirty to tell you,” he said, giggling.
“I’m a grown woman, Byron.”
“Oh, all right. It’s very silly. ‘Hey, hey the first of May! Outdoor, um, screwing begins today.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Byron. Our guests will be charming, but I’m afraid they’re a little too sedate—or a little too old—for fun in the grass.”
“Oh, Cynthia, you’re a sketch. You really are.”
Hayden was prepared to discuss the menu for the May Day fete at length; Cynthia made her decisions quickly in order to get to her real business, which she casually introduced, once the food was picked.
“Byron, what do you know about Pace Padgett, the waiter you sent the night Tobias Vandermeer died?”
“I forgot. You were there, weren’t you? I read that. It must have been gruesome.”
“It was.”
“Poor Cynthia! As for Pace Padgett, I’m sorry I ever heard the name.”
“I gather he’s disappeared. What happened, exactly?”
“Well, he came in here about, oh, a year ago, looking for work. He said he was an actor—my dear, who isn’t?—not having too much luck, and wanted something to tide him over. He said he’d had experience with Marvelous Meals, my biggest competitor—all that icky California food. Naturally, I didn’t want to call them to check up—they’re appalling people, Cynthia—so I tried him out on a couple of big charity jobs. Mrs. Fastner’s birthday dance at the Met was one of them. Were you there?”
“No, Byron. We don’t travel in those circles.”
“Too bad. It was fabulous. The flowers! I’ve never seen such flowers! Baskets and baskets—”
“Byron, what about Padgett?” Cynthia interrupted, eager to keep Hayden on the subject.
“Oh, okay. He worked the Fastner dance and two other parties and was just fine. I was glad to have another reliable name for my list.
“He was different from the other boys, Cynthia. Most of them want you to believe they’re so busy in show business that you have to call and call and call to get them. And then they act as if they’re doing me a big favor by working, when I know the only money most of them earn is right here. Padgett wasn’t like that. He used to come in and ask what was available. You didn’t have to chase him.”
“Did he ever ask to work for the Vandermeers?”
“You know, Cynthia, I can’t honestly say. He might have. I’m sure he knew we did her work, with all the delicious publicity we always got for the READ ball. I do remember that he was here one day when we were trying to get someone—just a server—for Robyn. She’d requested Raymond, one of our best—and absolutely dreamy-looking, Cynthia, dreamy—but he said he couldn’t do it. I remember being upset—Raymond was so ungrateful—and Padgett said he’d take the job. So I said to myself, why not?
“Anyway, he got along famously with Robyn. She always asked for him after that. He did her reading club dinners.…”
“That I know.”
; “And last fall, for the ball, Robyn had a real house party for about three days. It was wild for us—we did the whole thing. She had a houseful of Eurotrash, if you’ll excuse the expression. All those contessas and principessas and barons that she’d known in Europe and brought over to dress up the ball. Padgett worked the whole thing, for which I was very grateful.”
“How about his disappearance, Byron?”
“He vanished into thin air. A ghost. Everything about him turned out to be phony. The social security number he gave me was somebody else’s. He must have pulled it out of a hat. The police told me the number he used turned out to belong to a schoolteacher on an Indian reservation in New Mexico. Can you imagine? He had a post-office box for his mail—not that he ever lived at the real address he gave us—and if you called him on the phone you got an answering service—not the answering machine most actors have.
“Now he’s gone,” Hayden concluded. “And good riddance.”
“That’s quite a story.”
“Cynthia, do you think he—he killed Tobias? I’d never forgive myself if he did.”
“Anything’s possible, Byron. All I can say is, if he turns up, call the police. And please don’t send him around on May Day. I don’t want Reuben falling over the way Tobias did.”
Byron Hayden laughed nervously all the way to the door as he showed Cynthia out.
16
Sherman Deybold
It was the Ides of March, and ten days had gone by since Tobias’ death. Sitting at home in the late afternoon, Frost turned on the local television news. The day’s lead stories were two murders: the rape-slaying of a young Wall Street secretary in her Lower East Side apartment the night before and a predawn rubout of a “major” crack dealer in Harlem.
Depressing enough in themselves, these murders meant, Frost was certain, that the police would have still less time for the Vandermeer case. This realization left him immobilized. What could he do? How could he unravel that Sunday night’s events? He stared at the books that lined the walls of his library, then idly watched the passers-by on the street below his window. Finally he fixed his gaze on his new computer. Could it help?
He knew from past experience that seemingly unrelated facts and impressions had a way of coming together in revealing ways. He knew, too, that his own memory was not what it once had been—pretty damn good, yes, but there were notable lapses, like the failure to tell Springer and Mattocks about the drink he had poured for Tobias.
What if he put everything he had learned on the machine? And added in his own perceptions and opinions? Might not a solution burst forth, if not now, then at a later time when there was more information in hand (though Frost, for the life of him, couldn’t imagine what this new information might be)?
It was a worth a try, he concluded, and booted up his PC.
An hour later, Cynthia found him typing away earnestly at his Compac.
“What are you up to now?” she asked.
“I’m making an index of everything we know concerning Tobias’ death—and about Tobias, and Robyn, and Wayne Givens, and Pace Padgett and everyone else connected with this mess. And a chronology of events, past and present.”
Reuben seemed so enthusiastic about his new project that Cynthia left him to go and prepare supper. Later, at the dining-room table, he seemed discouraged.
“So far it’s a jumble. Nothing connects up to anything else.”
“I think it’s a fine idea, Reuben.”
“We’ll see,” he said dubiously.
Reuben worked at his “index” off and on for the next few days, feeding into his computer a miscellany of facts as they occurred to him. He was not pleased with the result; as far as he could tell, all he had done was assemble a hodgepodge that simply did not fall into any clear pattern. “Garbage in, garbage out,” he told Cynthia, who urged him not to give up.
As he read over the electronic file he had created, Frost realized that a significant gap existed concerning his knowledge of Sherman Deybold, who was on both his “upstairs” and “downstairs” lists. He had put down such details as Deybold’s cheating at the reading club meetings and Tobias’ shouting at him before he died, but they didn’t add up to very much. How could he fill in the gap? He searched his mental index of names and decided that Wilkes Mobeley, the auctioneer, might be able to help. He called him and made an appointment to see him first thing Monday morning.
Wilkes Mobeley had made a recent splash around Manhattan as the very visible head of Hawkins & Co., an art auction house that had begun in its small way to challenge the giants, Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Through an energetic public relations apparatus, glossy ads and a subtly xenophobic appeal to American collectors, it had attracted attention, and the quality of the works it offered for sale at auction was steadily improving.
Hawkins’ chief executive was a cheerful, outgoing forty-year-old who had bounced around the New York art scene from the time he received his Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale, writing for little magazines, dealing privately in contemporary art and then taking over at Hawkins. He was a member of the Gotham (a “youth” movement a few years earlier had produced a dozen or so members under forty, including Mobeley), where Frost had met him over lunch at the common table.
Mobeley had responded willingly when Frost called him, and now Frost, in mid-morning, was sitting across from the younger man in Hawkins’ antique-filled quarters on Seventy-ninth Street.
“So what’s this hush-hush matter?” Mobeley asked, running his hand through his poorly cut hair. (Frost was convinced Mobeley went to a cheap barber, not out of stinginess, but to get an unstyled haircut that looked distinctly boyish.)
“I didn’t mean to overdramatize it, Wilkes. I’m trying, on a more-or-less confidential basis, to get a line on Sherman Deybold. I’m going to impose on our friendship and not tell you why, unless you insist.”
“Maybe someday you’ll be able to tell me?”
“Perhaps.”
“I’m intrigued, but I won’t press you. What do you want to know about him?”
“Anything regarding his character, his business dealings, that sort of things.”
“Well, he’s queer, for starters. You knew that already.”
“Yes, I’m even acquainted with his friend.”
“Michael?”
“Yes.”
“Anyway, being queer’s no obstacle in the world Sherman travels in. May even be a help. But you didn’t come here to find out that he’s gay.”
“No.”
“You also know, I’m sure, the kind of work he deals in. Dutch genre painting. The kind of art you used to be able to buy for twenty-five dollars a square yard and now pay six figures for. With the prices for Impressionist and modern works out of sight, it’s coming into vogue with people who have an itch to collect but not enough money to compete with the South American drug dealers and the Japanese. Sherman’s very adept at his business. He’s got branch galleries in London and Amsterdam, where a lot of the stuff comes on the market. He’s very smart, very knowledgeable. He’s written a lot on Pieter de Hooch.
“You’ve got to hand it to him. He did the right thing at the right time. Started his gallery—the big one, I mean, not that trendy outpost downtown—oh, fifteen years ago. Started on a shoestring, I think, though he became friendly with a lot of rich collectors.”
“Like Tobias Vandermeer?”
“Yes. His biggest customer, I’m willing to bet. You’ve seen the collection. Some of it Tobias got at auction, but most of it was assembled by Sherman.”
“Is there any, um, scandal involving Deybold? Involving his art dealings, I mean.”
“That’s a delicate question. He’s not a member of the Art Dealers Association. They’ve a funny, exclusive bunch, and they do have standards. Not just anybody can get in. I have a feeling that they think he’s just a little bit …”
“Untrustworthy?”
Mobeley considered Frost’s characterization. “Yes, I guess that’s
it.”
“I see he’s been put up for the Gotham.”
“Not through any of my doing,” Mobeley shot back.
“In other words, Wilkes, you find him slightly untrustworthy, too?”
“Reuben, you’ve trapped me. Look, I deal with Deybold all the time. He’s started to give us business, so I don’t want to knock a good customer.”
“I understand what you’re saying. Let me add two things. There is an important reason why I’m asking, and I’ll never reveal the source of anything you tell me.”
“You’re a gentleman, Reuben. So, okay. Besides, this is only the rawest suspicion. A guess on my part, really.”
“I’m all ears.”
“You may or may not be aware that one of the biggest, if not the biggest, gold mines for the sort of Dutch pictures Sherman deals in is the U.K. Lots and lots of them were bought generations ago for next to nothing. There are treasures in country houses all over England.
“You also probably know about British taxes. Even with Mrs. Thatcher’s reforms, they’re damn high. Death duties of forty percent, a capital gains rate of thirty-some. And you know about the Waverly Rules?”
“You’ve got me there.”
“Those are the rules governing the export of U.K. art treasures. If a work is important artistically, worth more than thirty thousand pounds and imported into England more than fifty years ago, you have to apply for an export permit to take it back out. If the powers that be then find that the work is important enough, they can delay its export up to six months to give British museums a chance to match the purchase price. At best, it’s a pain in the neck, and even if your application is granted you can be damned sure Inland Revenue will be around to collect the taxes you owe on the sale.
“With all these complications there’s a temptation for Lord Hardup to do things differently,” Mobeley went on. “Once he’s decided to fiddle, this is what I think happens. He sells the work to our friend Deybold, taking in return a promissory note for the purchase price.
“Deybold, or his operative, then spirits the object out of the U.K. and parks it—not at the Deybold Gallery—that would be too dangerous in case the authorities ever started nosing around. He’s got a legitimate business of his own in London to protect, after all. No, what he does is ‘consign’ the work to an obscure gallery somewhere, Switzerland maybe, and lets it sit for, say, three years. Then he ‘buys’ the work from the foreign dealer and has that dealer pay off the note Lord Hardup’s holding, let’s say to an account in Zurich.
Murder Times Two Page 14
