Murder Times Two

by Haughton Murphy

  “Had he talked with his client?” Frost asked.

  “He said that was privileged information,” Bautista answered.

  “I think that means he had,” Frost said. “Sorry, Luis, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “Anyway, Hammil suggested I try Rourke’s agent, guy named Irwin Decker. I did, and Decker told me that Rourke’s just started rehearsals for a play, something called Marble Balls …”

  “Good God,” Cynthia said, before she could stop herself.

  “Yeah, great title, right?” Bautista said with a grin. “Anyway, the play’s supposed to open at the beginning of May, off Broadway. Rehearsals began Monday, and they were rehearsing yesterday in a loft down on lower Broadway. I rushed down there and found him. I waited for a break and we had a good talk.”

  “What does he look like?” Cynthia asked.

  “Medium height, five feet eight or nine. Brown hair, very blue eyes. He’s getting bald, which makes him look older than he is.”

  “It doesn’t sound like Pace Padgett to me,” Cynthia said. “Remember those green eyes, Reuben? Not to mention the black hair and the mustache.”

  “Let’s hear the rest of the story,” Reuben said, slightly irritated at his wife’s interruption, although Padgett’s appearance had been the question foremost in his own mind.

  “Rourke was friendly and polite. Very relaxed. I told him why I wanted to see him and he didn’t seem surprised. ‘I figured you guys would be around,’ he said. I had one of our new detectives with me, by the way.”

  “Shillaber?” Mattocks asked.

  “Yeah,” Bautista said. “When I told Rourke what I was interested in, he admitted right away that he was Tobias’ son. He said he didn’t know anything about the killing, only what he’d seen on TV and read in the papers. He claimed he hadn’t heard about Mrs. Vandermeer’s death. ‘I’ve been concentrating full time on this play,’ he said.

  “He says he remembers reading about Tobias’ death in the Post the Monday after it happened. The day before, he said he was home in his apartment all day, except for brunch with his girl, name of Terry Hartley, and dinner with her that night. He said he’d gotten the script of Marble Balls, and was busy studying it to get ready for a casting call a couple of days later.”

  “Any corroboration of his story?” Springer asked.

  “I’ll get to that. He says he and Hartley had brunch at the Chelsea Central, a restaurant near his apartment—I had the feeling Hartley had slept over Saturday night. She wanted to go to a movie uptown that he’d already seen, so he left her to go back home. Said this must have been around two-thirty, because he remembers that she was going to the three o’clock show. He says he told her to give him a call when she left the movie, and maybe they could go out to dinner. He also says that he talked on the phone that afternoon, or early in the evening, he couldn’t remember exactly, with his agent, Decker, and his acting teacher, Guy Gunther.”

  “What about Tuesday?” Frost asked.

  “He seems to be in the clear on that. They started rehearsals at one and went right through till seven, except for coffee breaks. I had Shillaber stay around and check that out. Everybody agreed Rourke had been there the whole afternoon.”

  “You said rehearsals began Monday, Luis?” Cynthia asked.

  “Right.”

  “So yesterday was only the second day the actors had been together?”

  “Right again.”

  “That means the cast wasn’t yet a close and intimate family where everyone knew everybody else.”

  “I suppose that’s true. But Shillaber was very diligent, and I don’t see any reason to doubt what he found out. Anyway, after I left Rourke, I tracked down—”

  “Just a minute,” Reuben said. “I’m sorry to interrupt you again, but I have one question before I forget it. Did Rourke say he’d ever met his father?”

  “I asked him that. He said he didn’t know who his father was until just before his mother died, when she gave him a letter from Vandermeer in which he owned up to being his father. He said he’d gone to see Tobias once. It was apparently a brief meeting, and once his curiosity was satisfied, and it was clear his father had no interest in establishing a relationship, that was it.”

  “Even though Tobias was colossally rich? That didn’t interest a struggling actor?”

  “He was very calm about that. Said Tobias had his life and he had his own, and that was fine with him. He seemed sincere enough, though I grant you he’s an actor. Now, let me go on. I got hold of Decker again, and Gunther. And first thing this morning, Hartley, the girlfriend. Just to prick up your ears, she works at a clinical lab downtown.”

  “Where they make cyanide?” Frost asked.

  “We didn’t go into that on our first date,” Bautista said. “I was too busy trying to see if her story checked with Rourke’s. And it did. Brunch, then the movie, then she called Rourke at his apartment and they agreed to meet for dinner at nine o’clock.”

  “Where?” Frost asked.

  “Indochine, downtown across from the Public Theater on Lafayette Street. Going back, when I talked to Decker—on the telephone, I didn’t have enough time to go see him—he at first didn’t remember any phone conversation with Rourke that Sunday afternoon. He said his whole business consisted of telephone calls and he couldn’t remember specifics, though he would try and get back to me if he could recall anything. He did call back, about a half hour later. Says he’s pretty sure Rourke left a message on his machine that day, asking the agent to call him at home. Decker returned early from a winter weekend in the country—Southampton—and is certain he did call Rourke, though he can’t remember the conversation exactly. He said Rourke was real anxious to get the part in Marble Balls and had been on the phone seeking reassurance in the days before he got it.”

  “And he talked to him at home sometime late Sunday afternoon?” Reuben asked.

  “Correct. So did Gunther. Rourke had been trying to get him all weekend, it looks like—same thing, he wanted reassurance from his old coach—and finally reached Gunther a little after three on Sunday. Then, Gunther remembered very clearly, Rourke had said he had another call waiting and could they talk later? Specifically, he asked if Gunther could call him back around four-thirty. Gunther did so and Rourke told him then that he wanted to meet with him in person, that he wanted to go over some things in the script with him. Rourke had said they could meet any time, but Gunther and his wife had a dinner party to go to that night, so they agreed on Monday morning.”

  “And that meeting took place?” Frost asked.

  “Yes, first thing Monday morning.”

  “Anything else, Luis?”

  “No, that’s it. The bottom line is Rourke’s clean as far as last Tuesday’s concerned, and seems to be on March fifth as well.”

  “Can we come back to that?” Frost said. “Let’s hear about the others. What about Sherman Deybold? Where was he Tuesday afternoon?”

  “Open and shut,” Mattocks said confidently. “There were three important buyers here Tuesday from the Cincinnati Museum: the director, a curator for modern art and a lawyer who’s chairman of their acquisitions committee. They were interested in looking at the stuff the Deybold/Costas gallery’s showing, a painter named, wait a minute, I’ve got it here …”

  “Vitalia Ashley,” Frost said.

  “Yeah. Right,” Mattocks replied, put off balance by Frost’s omniscience. “The deal was important enough to get Deybold himself into the act, not just the young guy, Costas. They had lunch around one-thirty at the Manhattan Bistro on Spring Street in Soho, shot the breeze for a while and then went to the gallery. I contacted the Cincinnati crowd at the Regency this morning and confirmed this, and also found out that Deybold had brought the three of them uptown and had a drink with them at the hotel.”

  “Which takes us beyond four o’clock?” Frost said.

  “Right.”

  “What was the lawyer’s name, by the way?”

  “
Daniel Babson.”

  “Oh, hell, I know him from way back,” Frost said. “He’s not the sort who’s apt to lie to the police. Unfortunately, he is exactly the type to put his museum’s funds into Vitalia Ashleys. But that’s neither here nor there. What did you find out, Springer?”

  “I have two easy ones and a hard one. Mrs. Givens and Kearney are the easy ones. She does volunteer work at New York Hospital and was there all Tuesday afternoon. As for Kearney, he had lunch at his desk that day and never left his office until six or six-thirty. Unless, of course, he got everybody there to lie for him. If the bookkeepers sitting in that bull pen outside his office are to be believed, he was there the whole afternoon.”

  “I’m familiar with the setup,” Frost said. “I don’t believe there’s any way he could’ve snuck out without being seen.”

  “Now, for Wayne Givens,” Springer said, “he’s a little harder. For one thing, I didn’t get to talk to him directly. He went to Washington to testify on some drug thing yesterday and won’t be back until this afternoon. But his secretary said he went to lunch on Tuesday with his assistant, Dr. Marguerite Baxter. She said it was Baxter’s birthday, and they went to celebrate at a place called the San Felice, over on East Forty-fifth.”

  “Never heard of it,” Frost said.

  “Oh, Reuben, it’s very hot,” Cynthia said. “It’s been written up everywhere recently. Big and always crowded, is what I hear.”

  “Anyway,” Mattocks continued, “they left the Bloemendael Foundation offices around one-fifteen, one-thirty and walked over to the San Felice. When I talked to her, Dr. Baxter said she can’t remember exactly when they left—it sounded like quite a celebration—but probably around three-thirty. She wasn’t feeling well, she said, and Givens took her home and stayed with her until she felt better, around six.”

  “So he never left her?”

  “That’s what she said, yes.”

  “What does the restaurant say?”

  “The maître d’ told me on the phone that he knew Dr. Givens and Dr. Baxter, and that three-thirty was probably about right.”

  “So there was a window of fifteen minutes between when Givens left the restaurant and the outside time when Robyn was strangled. Could he get from Forty-fifth Street to Seventy-fourth and kill her in fifteen minutes?” Frost asked. “Not bloody likely. Agreed?”

  There was no dissent, and now the group looked toward Reuben for a variety of reasons, from connubial affection and old friendship to orders from the Police Commissioner. In the discussion that followed, they agreed that Deybold, Kearney and Barbara Givens were out of contention, at least temporarily, though Reuben said the possible link between Deybold and the stolen Jasper Johns still intrigued him.

  “He sounds like the best lead to me,” Reuben said, when Rourke’s name came up. “Sure, he’s bald and blue-eyed, but he is an actor, for Christ’s sake. Pace Padgett’s black hair and mustache would have been no problem for him. And can’t you get colored contact lenses these days? I think so.”

  Cynthia agreed that this was possible.

  “So, can’t we get a picture of Rourke?” Reuben asked.

  “What about that agent, Decker?” Cynthia said. “He must have pictures and would probably be delighted to give them away, even to the police.”

  “Good idea, Cynthia,” Frost said. “Besides, Luis, when you see Decker you can recheck his recollection of his phone conversation with Rourke.”

  “Good.”

  “And while I’ve no doubt your new colleague, Officer Shillaber, did a thorough job with the cast of Marble Balls, that’s worth rechecking. If Rourke was, in fact, clever enough to create Pace Padgett, he may have had a doppelgänger covering for him while he went uptown to kill his stepmother. And he certainly was less than candid with you, Luis, about Tobias. He may have only seen him once, or so he says, but hiring that lawyer, Hammil, which he appears to have done some time ago, shows that he was interested in more than what his father looked like.”

  “I agree,” Bautista said.

  “And I’d go back over the tracks with Gunther, the acting coach, and Ms. Hartley,” Frost said.

  “No problem.”

  “Then there’s Dr. Wayne. I’d certainly go over those tracks, too. In addition to talking to him, of course.”

  “Can I make a suggestion?” Springer asked.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I didn’t say it before, but I detected a slight fish smell when I talked to Givens’ secretary. I had the gut feeling she wasn’t telling me everything. No offense, Mattocks, she’s a dynamite black girl. Maybe you with your obvious charm could do better than I did.”

  Frost was nervous at the racial reference, though he need not have been; the partnership between Springer and Mattocks was thoroughly relaxed.

  Mattocks grinned and affected a slight accent that had not been detectable up until then. “Sure thing, man. If you honkies can’t get to the chick, leave her to me!”

  “I’m probably being obstinate,” Frost told the others. “At this point Rourke looks promising, but I think it’s too soon to give up on the rest, especially Deybold. Those folks from Cincinnati may have been so starry-eyed after seeing those dazzling Vitalia Ashleys that they weren’t certain of the time sequence on Tuesday. If they’re off by an hour, or even less, Deybold could have gotten free in time to kill Robyn. Why don’t you have a go at it, Springer?”

  “All right,” the detective said doubtfully.

  “And would you do one other thing for me? Ask Kearney to come in for questioning around, say, five o’clock this afternoon. Don’t do anything unconstitutional, but if you could be a bit menacing, a bit threatening, it would serve my purpose.”

  “I don’t understand. Don’t we think he’s in the clear?’”

  “Probably so. But I want to talk to him,” Reuben said. “And I have an idea the more scared he is, the more productive our chat will be.”

  “It’s kind of unusual,” Springer said, hesitating.

  “Hell, Tom,” Bautista said, “you’re entitled to question him again. And it would be voluntary.”

  “Well, okay.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Frost added, “as far as I’m concerned you can call him up at four forty-five and cancel. If the trick works, I’ll have my answers by then.”

  Slightly mystified, the detectives went away, promising to report back, using Reuben as a clearinghouse, as soon as there were developments. Only Cynthia, after they had left, probed to find out what Reuben had in mind.

  “It’s worth a try,” she said, as he went to the telephone to call Bill Kearney.

  25

  Getting Closer

  A very nervous Bill Kearney received Frost in his office Thursday afternoon.

  “Do you know what’s going on?” Kearney asked his visitor. “The police were here yesterday asking all kinds of questions. And now they want me to come down at five o’clock! What do they want with me?” His voice was pleading, and he was almost shaking, as if he had a vision of an interrogation with blinding lights and rubber hoses.

  “Bill, as I told you the last time we talked, I’ve taken an interest in the Vandermeer case—cases, with Robyn’s death. I’ll be very frank with you. The police are scrutinizing everyone who had anything to do with the Vandermeers. That of course includes you. You were, after all, one of the last people to see Tobias alive.”

  “Do you think they suspect me?” Kearney asked in a quavering voice.

  “They suspect everybody. But don’t worry. Truth will prevail.”

  “I hope so. My anxiety level is pretty high right now.”

  Frost did not commiserate further, but got to the point.

  “Bill, what can you tell me about a person named Stephen Hendrik Rourke?”

  “Never heard of him,” came the negative reply, just as it had before, when Frost had asked about his mother.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “I’m afraid I’m goin
g to have to lay my cards on the table,” Frost said. “As you rightly guessed, you are a suspect in Tobias’ murder. And, until the police are satisfied with your alibi, Robyn’s as well. I happen to believe you’re innocent, but the police have to be convinced. The surest way, Bill, to avoid having them make a mistake is to do everything you can to put the blame where it belongs.”

  “What does this Stephen Rourke have to do with that?”

  “Isn’t it just possible that Rourke killed his father and stepmother?”

  “So you know that Rourke was Tobias’ illegitimate son?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Well, since you’ve found out the truth elsewhere, I guess I’m free to talk.”

  Frost did not comment, waiting for Kearney to speak.

  “Yes, Stephen Rourke was Tobias’ son, born out of wedlock in 1952. His mother, Grace Alice Rourke, was an aspiring singer when she met Tobias and had an affair with him for several months.”

  “This was after the breakup with Robyn that Hendrik Vandermeer forced?”

  “Exactly. And before he went to Paris and met Ines. Much against my will, I became his confidant after Grace Alice got pregnant. Should he present his father with a fait accompli? Should he force her to have an abortion? In the end he decided to do nothing, and she gave birth to Stephen.

  “Tobias supported Grace Alice from then on. She never resumed her singing career after the baby was born and was totally dependent on Tobias for support. She had Tobias’ problem, too. Drink. He paid for her to dry out a couple of times. It didn’t work and she ultimately died of cirrhosis.”

  “When was that?”

  “The end of 1984. December. I remember because Tobias was in Paris with Robyn, and I had to break the news to him by phone. Grace suffered a long time, and Tobias paid all her medical bills. Her deal was that she was never to tell Stephen who his father was. Believe it or not, she apparently kept her word until just before the end, when she told him everything.

  “About two weeks after Grace Alice died, Stephen confronted Tobias. Said his acting career wasn’t going too well and he wanted support. He didn’t mention inheriting or anything like that. Just a monthly stipend, like his mother had received.