“Really? So Phelan was on to something,” Griffith said.
Frost laughed. “He was, but I don’t think he quite knew what was going on.”
Frost recounted the whole story for his associate.
“Needless to say, Perry, I am immensely grateful for your help. You kept your ears open as I asked you to. I thank you.”
“Well, Reuben, I’m glad you feel obligated.”
Frost frowned slightly. Did Griffith think he could parlay his recent help into a partnership?
“Don’t worry, Reuben, I’m not going to cash in in any big way,” Griffith said when he saw the look on Frost’s face. “Alice has been after me for some time to relocate. She’s from California, you know, and she’s got a chance to do some very interesting research at Stanford Medical School next year. I’d been fighting the idea until recent events here, thinking I still had a chance at being a partner. But in thinking about it the last few days and talking it over with Alice, I don’t think I’d have a chance even if I were personally responsible for Graham’s resurrection. The cold fact is Graham didn’t like me, and nobody in the firm is going to go against the judgment of their murdered partner.”
“I’d have to say I think you’re right,” Frost said.
“So I’m going to try and get a job at a good firm in San Francisco.”
“That should be easy enough,” Frost said. “You’ll be the smartest lawyer in the whole city.”
“I don’t know about that. But I’ll probably be asking for recommendations to firms out there fairly soon.”
“That’s easy, Perry. I’m sure things will work out, and we’ll do anything we can to help. Keep me posted and let me know what I can do.”
While Frost was tying up his loose ends, Bannard talked to Grace Appleby.
“Miss Appleby, I have three things I want to talk to you about,” he said after the woman had seated herself in his office.
“First, I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that Graham Donovan’s killer has been found. Dwight Draper was arrested for the murder earlier this morning.”
“Mr. Draper! I can’t believe it! He was devoted to Mr. Donovan. They had been friends for years!” Miss Appleby said, clearly surprised at Bannard’s announcement.
“That may be, Miss Appleby. But Graham’s devotion to the law was greater than his loyalty to Dwight Draper. And Draper, when pushed to the wall, couldn’t accept that.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Bannard? I don’t understand.”
Bannard told the Draper tale, in somewhat abbreviated form. Then he turned to another subject.
“Now let me get to my second point. I was wondering if you’ve come to any decision about your future here?”
“No, no, I can’t say that I have, Mr. Bannard,” Miss Appleby replied.
“Have you thought about early retirement?” Bannard asked, in a seemingly casual way.
“I would like that, but I’m only fifty-eight and the firm’s retirement plan doesn’t provide for early retirement until sixty.”
“Well, suppose we were to bend the rules in your case, Miss Appleby, and let you take early retirement right away. Would that interest you?”
The woman was silent for a moment. “Yes, I believe it would,” she said finally. “It would be very hard for me to start afresh with a new boss at my age. And a cousin of mine has been after me for at least two years now to come and live with her in Arizona. But are you sure this can be done?”
“Miss Appleby, the Pension Plan Committee is an independent group of partners, but I think in view of your service”—he almost said “loyal” service—“they will be willing to waive the age requirement in your case.
“There are only two conditions, Miss Appleby. One I’ll get to in a few minutes. The other is that you must promise us that you will never work for another law firm, or any business or financial organization, ever again. Retirement must be full retirement.”
“Well, it would be, of course. But what a strange request! What do you mean by it?” Appleby assumed an air of almost girlish perplexity.
“You bring me to my third point, Miss Appleby, which is a very difficult one for me to discuss. You remember the difficulty we had over the Stephens Industries press release a while back?”
“Yes, I remember it very well.”
“I think you probably do, Miss Appleby. Since there is every reason to suspect that you were the one who leaked it to Bennett Holbrook & Company.”
“Me? Why that’s absurd, Mr. Bannard! Why would I do such a thing?”
“For the simple reason that you had sold ten thousand shares of Stephens Industries short, Miss Appleby. To make sure the word got out as soon as possible about Stephens’ problems. You thought the leak of the press release would send down the price, so you could cover and take a quick profit.”
For the second time that morning, Bannard saw the look of a person defeated. But this time the reaction was that of a cornered animal.
“So you nosy bastards found out, did you?” The girlish visage had disappeared and the woman’s face was contorted with hate. “Well, so what? It’s very easy to be sanctimonious and pious when you make as much money as you make! If I took home half a million dollars a year, I’d play the market fair and square too. But I took care of a sick father for seven years—kept him at home, paid for his care on my salary. No dumping him in a nursing home for me. I paid his bills! Not the State of New York! Not Uncle Sam! Me! Fifteen-thousand-dollars-a-year Grace Appleby, loyal legal secretary!
“Well, when he died and I realized I was fifty years old and had no money, no real estate, nothing, I decided it was time for little Grace to come into her own. I took a course in the stock market and began investing what few dollars I had—five thousand dollars from my father’s insurance, a couple thousand of my own. I took risks, but I used common sense. I did very well until the downturn a year ago, when everything I had went down, down, down. So I needed a sure thing or two and I found them—the Stephens transaction and two before that that your snoopers presumably haven’t figured out yet.” The woman stopped speaking, hoarse and out of breath.
“Miss Appleby, I was afraid we’d have a scene like this. Needless to say, your conduct is inexcusable and I would have fired you without any question this morning if you had not elected to retire. But I’m going to stick by my offer of early retirement and strongly suggest you take it.”
“You said there were two conditions to my retirement. You told me one. What’s the second?” she asked, her calm returning.
“That you donate your profits from the Stephens transaction and the other two you mentioned—which I don’t even want to hear about—to that hospital you do work for, St. Blaise’s. And I guess there’s a third condition too.”
“Yes?”
“Be out of here by the close of business today.”
LUNCH WITHOUT MURDER
24
Rumors at Chase & Ward often spread like wildfire. But Detective Bautista and his fellow officers had apparently been so discreet in removing Dwight Draper that his arrest was not generally known. Thus there was great surprise at the weekly Thursday firm luncheon at MacMillan’s when champagne glasses were produced at the end of the fish-in-peanut-oil main course. (A couple of the more astute partners had already figured out that something was up when they saw that Reuben Frost was present. When one of the bolder ones asked him why he was there, he answered simply that “George Bannard invited me.”)
The idea of a drink of any sort at a Chase & Ward luncheon was unprecedented. Bannard kept his counsel until the champagne was served.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you don’t think we’re setting a precedent today. The champagne is for this day and this day only. But there is reason to celebrate. Graham Donovan’s murderer was arrested in my office earlier this morning.”
Bannard paused for effect—and got the response he desired. Audible murmuring arose from the group seated around the U-shaped table. “Who was it?” someone cal
led out.
“Graham Donovan’s client, Dwight Draper, confessed the murder to me and a police officer.”
Frost, having not been in on the denouement, wondered how much Bannard had had to do with the confession. His guess was very little.
“We have been through a very trying few days here at Chase & Ward. The death of our partner and friend, Graham Donovan, tragic enough in its own right, was made even more so by the fact that it was murder. I am sure that Graham’s murder raised doubts and suspicions with many of us—doubts about some of our employees, some of our associates and, frankly, about each other.
“But the murderer was, thank heaven, not one of us,” Bannard went on. “Graham, as Draper’s lawyer, had insisted on a standard of conduct for Draper and his company that Draper was not prepared to live up to. Instead he put poison in Graham’s water carafe the afternoon before Graham died, and murder was the result. It’s a complicated story, which I will ask Reuben Frost to tell. Reuben has once again performed a great service for this firm. His assistance to me—and to the police—was vital in solving the case. Reuben, will you tell us about it?”
All eyes turned to Frost, who was sitting not at the head table but amid the groundlings along the side. Slowly and methodically—and savoring the attention he was receiving—Frost recounted the story from the beginning. It was a complete, if judiciously edited, account, omitting Bannard’s clumsy handling of Bautista, the suspicion that had fallen on Grace Appleby and Perry Griffith, the Merritt episode—and Arthur Tyson’s displays of temper.
As he neared the end of the narrative, Frost was about to cede the floor back to Bannard and then thought better of it. It was obvious that Bannard had in mind making a toast; Frost now mischievously decided to preempt him.
“Graham died for the high principles that we like to think govern the conduct of all of us here at Chase & Ward,” Frost went on. “As I often said when I was one of you, as your Executive Partner, this firm and the principles that guide it are bigger and more important than any of us as individuals.
“My dear friends, you will not be as strong as a firm because Graham Donovan is gone. But Chase & Ward will surely be a more resilient firm for having survived the awful events of the last ten days.
“George Bannard seems to have supplied us with some nice champagne here. I hope it hasn’t gone flat during my long talk,” Frost said. Then the old man rose and raised his glass. “So, ladies and gentlemen, let me end by proposing a toast—to the memory of Graham Donovan and to the firm, to our beloved Chase & Ward!”
Turn the page to continue reading from the Reuben Frost Mysteries
REHEARSAL
1
Reuben Frost walked briskly down Fifth Avenue, between Fifty-fourth and Fifty-third streets. He was quite content, having just finished a companionable lunch of Welsh rarebit at his club, the Gotham. Recently retired as a senior partner of Chase & Ward, the downtown Wall Street law firm where he had worked all his professional life, Frost had made a midday visit to the Gotham a part of his daily routine.
It was a beautiful day, and as he walked, Frost savored the bright April sunshine. It made Fifth Avenue look splendid, he thought. His only regret was seeing the ever-increasing number of Senegalese peddlers along the Avenue hawking their Vuitton and Gucci rip-offs; they made stylish Fifth Avenue resemble the main thoroughfare of a Third World capital. An old friend of the Mayor’s, he had complained in the past about these peddlers, but had been told that the City’s law enforcement resources had to be allocated to the suppression of murder and dope-dealing rather than to an aesthetic cleanup of Fifth Avenue.
Frost understood, though he did not share, the Mayor’s priorities. But in the long view, these priorities were probably correct. After all, the peddlers still could not ruin Fifth Avenue. The distinguished-looking men of affairs and smartly dressed women who crowded its sidewalks this early afternoon—coupled with the open-faced, clean-cut out-of-town tourists who stared in wonderment at it all—made the Avenue vital and attractive. The tourists, especially, were a good sign; New York, after its great fiscal crisis of the 1970s, had regained its élan and was once again a magnet for visitors. The City, like Frost himself, was in good health.
At the corner of Fifty-third Street, Frost’s sense of wellbeing was momentarily interrupted as he lost his footing in one of those sloping indentations in the curb installed for people in wheelchairs. He recovered his balance without falling, but not before thinking, however briefly, that at seventy-five he was subject to the vulnerabilities of old age after all.
As he regained his balance, Frost was aware of a strong, steadying hand on his forearm. He turned to find Hailey Coles, one of the most promising young dancers from the National Ballet Company, at his side. An absolute slip of a girl, weighing at most ninety pounds, she nonetheless held the old lawyer in a firm grip.
“Are you all right, Mr. Frost?” she asked, a look of concern in her large green eyes.
“Hailey! How are you? Yes, I’m fine,” Frost said. “These damned ruts in the curb. I know they’re for the handicapped, but my guess is they create more cripples than they help.”
The young woman smiled, reversed her dance bag of rehearsal gear from left shoulder to right, and put her arm in Frost’s.
“You’re not heading to the theatre, are you?” she asked.
“Well, yes I am. We’ve got a directors’ meeting today and we’re also supposed to see a rehearsal of Chávez Concerto.”
“Oh, yes, I forgot that was today,” the girl said.
“You’re not in it?” Frost asked.
“No, thank God,” Coles said, realizing too late that she was being indiscreet, especially to the Chairman of the Board of NatBallet (as it had been called for short ever since its founding in 1970).
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, Mr. Frost, I shouldn’t be telling tales out of school, but I don’t think rehearsals are going too well. The music’s awfully difficult, and Clifton’s playing cat-and-mouse with Veronica and Laura.”
The young dancer was referring to Veronica Maywood, the reigning star of NatBallet since its founding, and her recent and formidable rival, Laura Russell. And to Clifton Holt, the Company’s Artistic Director and principal choreographer.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Frost said.
“But don’t worry. We artists are very temperamental, but we always get the show on stage.” Hailey Coles squeezed Frost’s arm as she spoke. Frost looked approvingly at his eighteen-year-old companion as they approached the Zacklin Theatre.
“I’ve got to run, Mr. Frost. I’m late for rehearsal. I hope you enjoy the new ballet.”
“Thank you, Hailey,” Frost replied. “And thank you for keeping me upright on Fifth Avenue.”
The girl laughed, dashed off toward the stage door, and waved back at Frost. He entered the theatre, now even more content than he had been walking down Fifth Avenue in the spring sunshine.
Reuben Frost groped his way down the darkened aisle of the Zacklin Theatre and took his seat in row L. From long experience he knew that this row was far enough back to permit him to see both the choreographic patterns formed on stage and the dancers’ feet—exquisite or clumsy—as they performed.
Frost had warm feelings about both the Zacklin and NatBallet. His wife, Cynthia, a distinguished star of American Ballet Theatre in the 1940s and ’50s, had been one of the founders of the Company. Her title had been simply “ballet mistress,” but she had been more than that—one of the subversives who had encouraged others to leave American Ballet Theatre, the New York City Ballet and other companies to join the slate-clean, brand-new NatBallet; one of the group who had defined the Company’s shape and purpose; and, together with her husband, one of the moneygrubbers who had amassed the considerable funding needed to start NatBallet from absolute scratch.
Frost had always been supportive of his wife’s artistic efforts, onstage and off. He had met her on a double date in 1940 when he was a hardworki
ng young Chase & Ward associate and she a young ballerina starting to attract the critical acclaim that was to increase steadily until her retirement from dancing, in 1956. Married at the end of World War II, after as stable a courtship as the War had permitted, the Frosts had, over forty years, become (if possible) steadily more devoted one to the other, notwithstanding the enormous statistical increase in divorce in the very circles in New York City in which they traveled.
Frost had been drawn into the orbit of NatBallet affairs gradually. He had come to love the ballet through his wife’s determined efforts. With Cynthia beside him in the audience or before him on stage, his eyes had been opened to the beauties, the technical secrets and—yes—the tricks of the dance. As his own interest grew and became more sophisticated, he had been gratified to see the public’s interest in dance expand as well. Never a sports fan, he took considerable satisfaction from the fact that the total American audience for professional dance events now exceeded the combined live audience for all professional sports, notwithstanding the Refrigerator, Dr. J. and the rest of the country’s overpaid athletes.
Frost’s interest in NatBallet had grown avuncular as Cynthia introduced him to more and more of the members of the Company. The older ones, who had taken a considerable professional risk in leaving established companies to join the new, untested (and precariously funded) NatBallet, were known as the “domestic defectors,” a title the press derived from the Western flights of Nureyev and other Russian dancers and teachers fleeing the artistic treadmills of the Kirov and the Bolshoi.
Finally Reuben Frost’s attachment to NatBallet had become downright paternal as Cynthia drew him into even closer contact with the Company and its affairs. (Not that putting the bite on his friends and colleagues in the corporate and legal communities had been exactly passive. Anything but. Frost had called in intangible chits, twisted arms and in general performed the gentle extortion that passes in polite New York society under the name “fund-raising.”)
Murder for Lunch Page 23
