Murder Times Two

by Haughton Murphy

  “What do you think this means?” Cynthia asked.

  “How do I know?” he snapped back at her.

  “Can we talk about Mrs. Amarante while we’re waiting?”

  “I’d rather not. This fax has thrown me for a loop and I want to be as clearheaded as I can be when Millard calls. There’s the phone now.” Reuben picked it up and began talking with a very agitated Bob Millard.

  “What the hell’s going on, Bob?” Reuben asked.

  “Plenty. Tobias Vandermeer apparently had a son, for God’s sake.”

  “By who?”

  “Someone named Grace Alice Rourke. Remember that name?”

  “The woman mentioned in Tobias’ old will.”

  “That’s right. They had this kid back in 1952.”

  “Bob, why don’t you start at the beginning.”

  “Okay. I’ll try. I got a call yesterday morning from a lawyer named Drew Hammil. Never heard of him before so I checked him out. He seems to be a pretty-well-known show-business lawyer. He said he’d found out that I represented the Tobias Vandermeer estate and he wanted to talk to me regarding a matter involving the estate. I asked him what it was and he refused to tell me on the telephone. I asked him if he could at least tell me who his client was, and he said Stephen Rourke. He wouldn’t identify Rourke any further. Said he preferred to discuss the matter in person. So we made an appointment for the first thing this morning.

  “I didn’t know what to expect. Hammil turns out to be a perfectly gentlemanly fellow who started out by asking about the terms of Tobias’ will. I asked him why he wanted to know, and he dropped the bomb. Said his client, Rourke, was Tobias’ illegitimate son and he was wondering what rights he might have under the will.”

  “Can a bastard inherit in New York?” Reuben interrupted.

  “This is the twentieth century, Reuben. The law is clear and the answer’s yes. As long as he was recognized by the father, he can inherit just like a legitimate heir.”

  “So if this Rourke is on the level, he will get what’s in the Vandermeer Trust when Robyn dies, and not the Bloemendael Foundation?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Has anybody told Wayne Givens this cheery news?”

  “I haven’t talked to anybody except you, Reuben.”

  “Good. Cynthia’s on the line, by the way. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Hello, Cynthia. Of course not.”

  “Sorry to sidetrack you, Bob. Keep going.”

  “Hammil says that Grace Alice Rourke was a struggling singer in New York back in the early fifties. Somehow she met Tobias, and one thing led to another and …”

  “Yes, yes, you don’t need to draw me a picture. When was the kid born?”

  “Hammil had a birth certificate. He was born in Saint Vincent’s hospital on September 22, 1952.”

  “Who does it say his father was?”

  “Tobias.”

  “Hmn. I don’t know how these things work, but couldn’t this Grace Alice have said Tobias was the father?”

  “That’s right. But Hammil has a handwritten letter from Tobias to the mother, acknowledging that the kid is his.”

  “What does it say?”

  “I’ve got a copy here,” Millard said. He read from the document, which said “how sorry” Tobias was over what had happened, how he regretted that marriage was out of the question—citing the objections he knew old Hendrick would have—and saying that he would “always take care” of Grace Alice.

  “That’s all there was, this letter?”

  “Apparently so. But if it’s real, I think it’s enough. Hammil left me a Xerox, and I must say it looks like the stuff in Tobias’ handwriting we’ve got in the file.”

  “Where’s the mother now?”

  “Hammil said she died in December 1984.”

  “And Tobias was supporting her till the end?”

  “So Hammil said.”

  “Have you talked to Kearney? He might know.”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “How did the conversation go once Mr. Hammil dropped his bomb?” Frost asked.

  “It turned out he knew quite a bit about the Vandermeer setup. He said he’d represented Rourke for several years and was very frank that he’d searched Hendrik’s will in the probate records.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “Sure. Once a will is admitted to probate it’s a public document.”

  “What about Robyn’s life estate? Did he know about that?”

  “Not surprisingly, it turned out that was what he was most interested in—whether Tobias had exercised his power of appointment.”

  “And you told him?”

  “Sure. There was no reason not to. I gave him a copy of Tobias’ will and the deed of appointment.”

  “That damned deed’s becoming a best-seller.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “How did he react when he found out that Tobias had exercised his power? Surprised? Shocked? What?”

  “No reaction, really. He was very calm, very unemotional. Just interested in what the facts were.”

  “How about the police? Have you told them?” Reuben asked.

  “That’s one of the things I wanted your advice on.”

  “The two cops involved in the murder investigation are a pair of charmers named Springer and Mattocks. I’ve got their numbers here somewhere, if you hold on.” Frost fished for his address book as he continued talking. “Call them up and have them come to see you. Or you go and see them. Tell them I said they should check up on this Rourke. Including where he was on March fifth.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The day Tobias was killed,” Frost snapped.

  “Oh … I see … You don’t think …?”

  “I don’t think anything. Just do as I tell you.”

  “Of course, Reuben.”

  “One other thing. And this is the most important of all. Get hold of Robyn right away, tell her what’s happened and tell her to be careful. She mustn’t find herself in a dark alley with Mr. Rourke.”

  “Do you really think, Reuben …?”

  “Bob, as I said, I have no thoughts at this point,” Reuben said impatiently. “But we’ve had one murder, and I’d as soon not have our problem multiplied by two. What does this Rourke character do, by the way?”

  “Hammil says he’s an actor.”

  “I should have known. Where does he live?”

  “In Chelsea, he told me.”

  “Do you have an address?”

  “No.”

  “Well, get one from your Mr. Hammil. The police will need that. And of course you don’t have any idea what he looks like?”

  “Nope.”

  The line was quiet while Reuben considered the situation. Cynthia was in the living room of their suite, so he could not consult her about the next step he’d decided on. “If it’s possible, Bob, we’ll try to get out of here tonight, on the overnight flight. If we can’t, I’ll let you know. Otherwise, have a car meet us at Kennedy. It’ll be the Varig flight from Rio. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “So unless you hear from me, I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Before then, I’ll expect you to call the police and Robyn. And I wouldn’t say say anything to anyone else—like Kearney or Wayne Givens—until I get back.”

  “Okay, Reuben. Thanks for your help.”

  “Sorry about that, Cynthia,” he apologized to his wife after hanging up.

  “You did the right thing, dear. It’s important that you be back there.”

  “What do you make of this one?”

  “An actor, was he? I wonder if he ever played a waiter?”

  “Funny you should suggest it. I was thinking the same thing.”

  “Maybe Pace Padgett has been found.”

  The next few hours were a tumult of confusion. A lengthy explanation was required for the Herculanos, and Alfredo had to exert his influence to get the Frosts booked on the Varig eleven o’clock nonstop to N
ew York. First class was impossible to arrange, even for him, but he managed to get two business class seats.

  The faithful Delfim was not available to take them to the airport, so the Frosts endured a hair-raising, lane-shifting, tailgating taxi ride through the evening Rio traffic. Then there was the matter of changing their tickets, a shortage of novo cruzados for the exit tax and a painfully slow and methodical security check.

  The pre-takeoff champagne offered to the couple, once they had dragged themselves aboard their plane, was satisfyingly welcome. Relaxing for the first time since getting Bob Millard’s fax, they tried to make some sense of the confusion they felt.

  “Is Mr. Stephen Rourke our man?” Cynthia asked.

  “We’ll have to see what he looks like. It’s probably farfetched. But who can say?”

  “There’s one thing I don’t understand, dear. Even if Rourke, or Padgett, killed Tobias, what good would it do him? He wouldn’t see a dime of the Vandermeer money until Robyn dies.”

  “He didn’t know that until after his lawyer saw Bob Millard. He almost certainly knows now, and that’s why I insisted Bob Millard warn Robyn. If Stephen Rourke is Pace Padgett, he’s a very calculating fellow who planned to murder Tobias for a long time, going through all that monkey business with Byron Hayden you uncovered before we left. If he could be so cunning and cool about killing his father, I doubt that he’d have any qualms about murdering his stepmother.”

  “It’s funny, isn’t it? We were so sure five days ago that Robyn was the guilty one, and now we’re worried about her life.”

  “Look, she may well be guilty. This Rourke may have had nothing to do with the murder. Or he may be an imposter—who knows?”

  “And what about Sherman Deybold?”

  “After what we learned today, there are at least three possible connections between Deybold—and Costas—and Senhora Amarante. Vitalia Ashley. Those letters you saw. And possibly that picture of a dead fish that I spotted.”

  “So where do those three connections lead, dear?”

  “It’s probably too absurd. But listen to me for a minute. You remember I told you I thought Michael Costas and that elaborate modern gallery downtown might be expensive toys for Sherman. So expensive that a large sum of money from a rich Brazilian woman …”

  “You mean, she might have paid Deybold to kill Tobias?”

  “Possibly. Or remember what Wilkes Mobeley told me about the tax swindles he thinks Deybold is doing? Senhora Amarante may have been running his parking lot. And might have blackmailed him into killing Tobias. If Mobeley is right about what Sherman’s doing, and Ines is in on it, she knows enough to ruin him.”

  “Well, she certainly had a motive. She hated Tobias.”

  “That’s another thing. I had the distinct impression she knew who I was. She knew who you were. And back when she was mud-wrestling with Tobias over their divorce, I can’t imagine Tobias didn’t threaten her with the big, bad Chase & Ward juggernaut—including big, bad me.”

  “So what?”

  “I mean her pity for poor, poor Tobias may have been an act. And she may have been pretending not to remember me, or who I was.”

  “We’re getting awfully suspicious of people, Reuben. It makes me dizzy just trying to sort things out. Let’s try to sleep and nail the killer in the morning.”

  “I’m going to have another brandy. I’m so keyed up there’s no hope of sleeping. Especially in these seats. And with that party going on back there.” He was referring to a large tour group, traveling together in economy class, who were joking and singing at full cry, their voices carrying up into the more sedate reaches of business class.

  “You want to be clearheaded when we get to New York,” Cynthia admonished.

  “I will be,” Reuben grumped.

  Before Cynthia settled in and Reuben tackled a new brandy, they took turns going to the bathroom.

  “I walked back to the rear to see where all the noise was coming from,” Reuben explained, when Cynthia returned. “A tour group from Rochester, New York. John Deere caps, and those funny hats they were selling on the beach, and about three hundred pounds of hand luggage apiece, stuffed all over the place.”

  “They’re harmless,” Cynthia said.

  “Harmless but noisy. You’d think they’d be samba’ed out.”

  “They’re determined to enjoy every minute. You can’t blame them for that.”

  “Just think, my dear,” Reuben said, taking his wife’s hand across the seat divider between them, “if I hadn’t gone to law school, and attracted Charlie Chase’s attention, and married you, I might be right back there with them. Upstate New York meeting Latin America.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Instead, I’m a lucky fellow sitting up toward the front of the plane with not a care in the world. Except being smack in the middle of a murder investigation that gets more complicated by the day. Who could be luckier than that?”

  23

  Not What Was Expected

  The Frosts’ plane landed precisely on time; their suitcases were in the first batch on the luggage carrousel at Kennedy, and they had no trouble getting through customs. (Their premature departure from Rio had meant that they had no shopping items to declare, and ADA Munson did not have a dragnet ready to haul them off to Rikers Island.)

  The car Bob Millard had arranged was waiting, and they were on their way home to Manhattan before eight-thirty. Their driver was from Communi-Car, presumably the dial-car service with which the Chase & Ward office manager was not currently feuding.

  “You from New York?” he asked, giving early warning that the trip would not be a silent one. After a thorough interrogation about where they had been, the length and quality of their flight and other irrelevancies, Reuben was going to tell him to be quiet when he launched into a tirade about the “terrible things happening in New York these days.”

  “Were you here when that rich guy was killed?” he asked before Reuben could cut him off. “Vanderbilt, Vandermeer, one of those names.”

  “Yes.”

  “Awful thing, poisoned.”

  “Yes, we know about that.” Reuben looked at Cynthia and raised his head in silent despair; he did not need this serendipitous distraction on their return home, yet he was intrigued that the driver was still interested in month-old news.

  “And now the wife—imagine, strangled in her own home.”

  “What! What are you saying?” Both Frosts leaned forward, gripping the back of the front seat.

  “Yeah. It just came on the radio while I was waiting for you. Strangled sometime yesterday in her dining room. Can you beat that?”

  Reuben and Cynthia both assaulted the driver with a barrage of questions—who, what, where, when and why?—but he turned out to know only what his radio had told him: Robyn Vandermeer had been killed by an unknown assailant sometime on Tuesday.

  “Probably one of those out-of-control kids from Harlem,” the driver offered. At least he didn’t say “nigger” or “black,” Frost thought with relief, but taxi-driver racism was not what really interested him at the moment. He looked over at Cynthia, both of them bursting to talk over this startling development, yet knowing better than to do so in front of their voluble chauffeur; there was nothing to do but wait until they reached Seventieth Street. Then Reuben spotted the cellular telephone resting in the space between the two front seats.

  “Does that contraption work?” he asked.

  “Sure. Want to use it?”

  “Yes, I do.” He hesitated. Having always disdained car telephones as a particularly vulgar curse of the late 1980s, he hadn’t the faintest idea of how to operate it.

  “Just pick it up and dial,” the driver told him helpfully. “It’ll go on your bill for the car. We’re still in Queens, so dial one, the area code and the number.”

  “Thanks,” Frost said, grasping the portable instrument and poking out Luis Bautista’s home number—the first time he had done so since their last fa
ce-to-face meeting a month earlier. A groggy voice answered, followed by an apologetic explanation that Bautista had been up all night.

  “I’m on this damn drug-dealer case,” Bautista said. “All the people I want to locate only surface in the middle of the night.”

  “Luis, I’m sorry. I had to talk to you. I assume, by the way, that since I was in Brazil when Robyn Vandermeer was killed I’m in the clear and that we can speak without getting anyone in hot water.”

  “What the hell you talking about, Reuben?”

  “Tobias Vandermeer’s widow, Robyn, was apparently strangled yesterday.”

  “News to me. As I said, I haven’t exactly been traveling in Park Avenue circles the last thirty-six hours. But you’re in the clear anyway, old friend.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, I saw Springer a couple of days ago. They’ve had no breaks in the case at all. But he did tell me that the Keystone Kops that lost those pieces of broken glass from the Vandermeers’ found them. Under a shelf in the CSU’s wagon, for Christ’s sake. The lab says they’re clean—no cyanide—so I guess you’re going to walk.”

  “That’s comforting.” In any other circumstances, Frost would have been jubilant and reexamined his upstairs/downstairs list in the light of what he had been told. But he was now preoccupied with pressing his friend into service.

  “So what about this Mrs. Vandermeer? I was out with the night creatures and didn’t hear a thing. Hey, can you wait a minute while I get a cup of coffee? Francisca made some before she went to work.”

  While he waited, Reuben, in the lowest voice possible, told Cynthia of his exoneration. He would have added the new confirmation that their old friends Luis and Francisca were living together, but that could wait, too.

  “Will Springer and Mattocks investigate her murder?” Frost asked, when Bautista came back on the line.

  “That’s the way it would usually work,” Bautista replied. “I’m sure they think they’re looking for the same guy.”

  “Luis, I’ve got to have your help on this. With this second murder, the stakes have doubled. And, not to go into it—I’m not at home—there was another country heard from yesterday, if you take my meaning.”