Murder Makes the Wheels Go Round

by Emma Lathen

  “For God’s sake, Di, do you have to yell?” Dunn complained.

  “I am using normal conversational tones. And what’s more, I don’t have anything to be ashamed of. I’d be only too delighted to settle this right here,” his adversary replied.

  “I don’t know what there is to settle,” Dunn exploded unwisely. “So I am leaving. I have got every right to leave. In fact you ought to be able to see that I don’t have a choice.”

  “I’m not talking about your leaving,” Di snapped. “I’m talking about this federal agent, this Riley, stirring everyone up, looking for the tipster. He has been out at the plant every day this week, Buck tells me. And I want to know what you have been up to.”

  “Di, you have got it all wrong,” Dunn retorted hastily. “Come into another room and I will explain,” as he grabbed her elbow and started to steer her to the nearest doorway.

  “If this is just another rigmarole,” she said in a warning tone.

  “No, no,” he said soothingly. “Just come on. But don’t say anything more here,” he pleaded.

  Arnie broke the silence occasioned by this interesting departure. “A forceful woman.”

  Eberhart frowned in thought. “Yes, she is,” he said abstractedly. “Tell me, did you get the impression that those 2 might know something about...our informer to the DOJ?”

  “I don’t see how one could avoid that impression,” John rejoined.

  Arnie had reduced himself to an almost inhuman stillness as he willed Eberhart to prolong his confidences. John could feel the tension. Was it too much to hope that this might be the breakthrough?

  Meanwhile Eberhart continued: “You know, I’ve often wondered about those 2. You have to admit that it is, ah, odd.”

  “Ohhh?” Arnie crooned invitingly.

  “I have never agreed with the company decision to ignore the spy we have in our midst. That sort of thing,” Eberhart continued with heat, “should be Rooted Out!”

  “Absolutely,” added Arnie to keep him going.

  “Do you gentlemen realize that it is almost certain the tip came from someone in the confidence of senior management?” The ex-president had lowered his voice to an appropriate level of horror.

  Arnie kept his support going for more confidences, by saying, “Unbelievable.”

  “But in that event,” interjected John, “you would expect it to be someone who gained something from the trial.”

  Eberhart was inclined to quibble, saying, “Unless it went wrong. That’s what I have always wondered, you know. What I mean is that somebody might have been behind the tipping who knew a lot but not quite enough.”

  “In fact a company wife?”

  “Or a wife in collusion with somebody else?”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Eberhart said.

  “You would think that if Mrs. Holzinger wanted to collude with somebody it would be her husband,” Arnie said, baiting Eberhart to keep going with his comments.

  Eberhart shook his head. “No. Buck wouldn’t touch this kind of thing with a 10 foot pole. But it is just the sort of thing Di would think of doing. She is ambitious for him, you know, very ambitious, more so than he is in fact, I think. But she would need someone to work with, someone who had inside information and Dunn was aching for Ray’s job.”

  “But surely if Dunn were in on it, then he would have worked things out better,” Arnie said.

  “I think,” said John, “that what Mr. Eberhart is driving at is this. Di can plan, but doesn’t have the data. Dunn has the data but can’t plan. Between them they might have flubbed the whole thing.”

  “Exactly right,” Eberhart beamed. But then, as the implications of this extremely plain talk came home to him, his satisfaction faded. “Of course, this is all guesswork. Probably some other explanation entirely. You mustn’t let this imaginative effort of mine mislead you. No doubt Di and Orin have many things to discuss. Ah, Miss Price, not leaving so soon are you?”

  Susan smiled at them in a slightly fuzzy fashion. Everyone seemed to be doing a good deal of drinking, in relief, John wondered?

  “Good evening Mr. Eberhart. No I’m not leaving. Mr. Dunn brought this model of last year’s Planty. He is cleaning house and it belongs to the company so I said I would take it back. I’m just going to put it in my car now.”

  Arnie offered to carry it out for her. As he prepared to depart, Krebbel bore down on them. He was frowning slightly, though politely welcoming John back to Detroit. “I thought our sales figures might fetch you,” he said as Arnie, before leaving with the Planty model, explained that John was interested in having a second look. “And I see that Dunn is trying to get you to run his errands, Miss Price. You should have told him to call a company messenger.”

  “That’s all right, Mr. Krebbel,” she replied, who was radiating affection and indulgence for the world at large. “Oh, I forgot to tell Mr. Berman which Drake to put it in,” as she laughed up at him. “I will go after him or else we will have you doing Mr. Dunn’s errands.”

  She skipped off in hasty pursuit, leaving Krebbel with a faintly puzzled expression. The sight would have warmed Fabian Riley’s heart. Presidents do not remember chance encounters with secretaries quite as vividly as secretaries remember those with presidents.

  “I think Lionel was looking for you a few minutes ago, Stu,” Krebbel said pointedly. “He is in the other room.”

  John suspected what was coming. As soon as the coast was clear, Krebbel resumed: “I heard Stu blowing off steam about Di and Dunn. There’s nothing I can do to stop him but you might as well know he has a bee in his bonnet about the DOJ getting inside information.”

  “I can see he might,” John contributed.

  “Company policy is clear. We have weeded out our trouble makes and I intend to run such a clean shop that there won’t be any more material for tipsters. As for what happened in the past, I intend to forget it. And I’ll see to it that everyone on the payroll does likewise.”

  Krebbel paused. “Oh, I know Riley’s been haunting the front office. He’s another one who is obsessed. But the point is that’s his business. It isn’t mine.”

  John regarded the new president reflectively. He decided to take a chance. “Tell me, Krebbel, you wouldn’t care to give me your personal opinion as to whether Madsen shot Jensen would you?”

  “No, Thatcher, I would not.”

  Smiling gently, Krebbel, who regarded himself, with ample justification, as a vehicle of company policy rather than personal opinion, drifted off to join another group.

  10 minutes later John had been swept up by the Wahls and had endured an exuberant analysis by Ed of the anticipated earnings of Plantagenet over the next 2 quarters. It was during a lull in the conversation caused by Audrey’s insistence on another drink, that John heard the most illuminating conversation of the evening, although he did not realize it at the time.

  “It isn’t true what they are saying,” Audrey proclaimed. Ed had the job sewed up right from the minute Ray went to jail. Ray was just putting up a good bluff when he told people he was coming back. He was always a bluffer. Big on talk,” as she waved vaguely, imperiling a nearby table. “But he got taken care of, all right.”

  Chapter 19

  High Octane Rating

  It became abundantly clear the next day that the indiscretions had not been limited to Eberhart and Audrey. An early morning phone call from Riley, wanting the Di and Orin story, proved that fertile MM rumors were being channeled directly to the DOJ, presumably by Susan Price.

  And arrival at the MM presidential suite brought John and Arnie face to face with a figure busily generating its own contribution to that channel. “Disgraceful, absolutely disgraceful,” sputtered Lincoln Hauser, his meager body rigid with indignation. He was standing in Krebbel’s anteroom and had seized on the 2 new arrivals as an audience for his grievances.

  “What seems to be the matter Hauser?” John asked benignly. It was such a relief to be spared the PR director’s relentl
ess cheeriness that sympathy for his plight, whatever its nature, sprang forth unbidden.

  “That man Wahl is a maniac. Do you know what he has done?”

  Gravely John shook his head. The stoic calm with which Krebbel’s secretary continued her typing told him that Wahl’s latest atrocity was common gossip in the front office. “He’s distributed a memo to List C saying that all Plantagenets, whether production or design models, are the property of the division and not to be moved without his clearance. To the List C, mind you. Why that’s almost general distribution.”

  The enormity of this transgression rendered Hauser momentarily speechless.

  “Well, now, that’s too bad,” Arnie said, dimly aware that he was not measuring up to the magnitude of the event.

  This inadequacy revived Hauser, who continued, “Too bad? Why he is accusing us of having taken that Super Plantagenet. I tell you, I’m not going to stand for it. If there’s one thing a PR director has to do, it is to stand up for his people. And no one is going to use mine as a convenient scapegoat while I’m around. He thinks we don’t know--”

  “Is there something you want, Hauser?” Krebbel’s ironic tones interrupted his impassioned subordinate in full flight. The president had emerged from his office and was viewing the gathering with a quizzical expression.

  But the Hausers of the world, once their blood is up, are not to be easily silenced.

  “Yes, there is,” Hauser replied with dignity. “Have you seen this?” as he rattled the offending memo under his superior’s nose.

  “I suppose that is the one from Wahl,” Krebbel said wearily. “Yes, I’ve seen it. But couldn’t we go into it some other time? I have”--and he indicated the presence of John and Arnie--“another appointment now.”

  “No, it can’t wait. I want a countermanding memo issued this morning. This ought to be settled right here and now.”

  “If it comes to that, I’d like to settle things too,” said a new and ugly voice as Ed Wahl appeared.

  “So you knew I’d be up here as soon as I saw this,” accused Hauser with a martial gleam in his eye. “No. I didn’t know anything but I could hear you down the hall.”

  Krebbel, resigning himself to the situation, suggested that perhaps they should all come into his office to avoid drawing even more participants to the scene of the combat. There was a brief exchange of glances between Arnie and John. The invitation had been ambiguous enough to be distorted for their own purposes. “Splendid,” John said briskly, marching through the doorway. “We were getting a little noisy.”

  Whatever Krebbel may have thought of these tactics, his attention was instantly claimed by the demands of his division manager. “I’m getting sick of this,” announced Wahl. “I’ve got more important things to do than squabble about who drove that car around with Ray’s body. So PR made a mistake. OK. I can understand that. There was a lot of confusion with changing plans at the last minute and Hauser, here, wanting to make a circus of the thing. But I’m not going to sit still while he tries to weasel out of the whole mess and put the blame on my division.”

  ” We made a mistake. I like that. You were sending the car down to the pool without even letting us know. In spite of the fact that the procedure manual is quite clear on our responsibility. If Winters hadn’t seen your man driving the car away, we wouldn’t even have known where to send the photographers.”

  Wahl laughed nastily. “That’s a good story,” he jeered. “Even I didn’t know anything about the Planty being moved until I saw it stolen. And I notice you have been careful enough to get Winters out of the way.”

  “Who the hell is Winters?” Krebbel demanded testily.

  Wahl was quick to respond. “He’s the PR man who was driven over to the pool in the new Super Planty. Nobody else got a good look at the driver, and now Hauser has shipped Winters off to Canada or somewhere else.”

  “What do you mean by that?” cried Hauser.

  “I mean that you made sure we couldn’t ask him who gave the order for that car to be moved.”

  Opening and shutting his mouth like a seized up mechanical toy, Hauser made several false starts before he was able to give coherent expression to his sentiments. Under cover of the tides of passion swirling through the office, Arnie whispered to John, “Didn’t Riley say the police theory is that the murderer drove the car?”

  “Yes, but I think that fact has eluded Hauser.”

  And indeed both Hauser and Wahl seemed completely incapable of comprehending anything outside of the scope of their quarrel.

  “Who are you to cross examine anyone in PR?” demanded Hauser, irrevocably sloughing off the last veneer of professional cordiality. “We are staff reporting to the front office. The police asked Winters all the questions they wanted before he left.”

  “They don’t seem to have gotten much help from him,” Wahl retorted.

  “What was there for him to tell them? He is new here and he didn’t look at the driver closely. All he could describe was an ordinary looking man in Plantagenet overalls and a visored cap. If you’d let him take a look at everybody in your division, no doubt we would know who drove the car.”

  “Like hell we would. I let him look at every man we have assigned to driving. If you think I am going to close down a whole shift when we are already running behind, just so your fancy Dan can pretend to be trying to recognize someone, you are crazy.”

  “Ah ha. First you say I got Winters out of the way so he wouldn’t be able to recognize anyone. Now you say he is in on the whole thing.”

  Krebbel intervened. “That’s right you know. You can’t have it both ways.”

  “Well, then, why did he send Winters off?” demanded Wahl sullenly.

  “I didn’t send him off specially. The front office wanted someone to cover the Canadian parts procurement. He was the man who got sent.”

  Wahl was recovering from Krebbel’s umpiring. He riposted smartly. “I suppose he just happened to be the man who got picked.”

  “For God’s sake. We have had a murder in our front yard. My best people have more than enough on their hands right here.”

  “Very pat. And as slick a cover-up as I’ve ever seen,” Wahl concluded.

  “Cover-up is it. If you are looking for a cover-up don’t look at us. You know full well the police say that Jensen was stuck in that car because it was supposed to be trucked to New York. We were the ones who stopped that and arranged for the poolside display. And,” said Hauser, his artistic instincts rising to the fore, “it was a magnificent idea.”

  “He must have gotten along great with Withers and Waymark,” muttered Arnie. “Sticks with his ideas through thick and thin.”

  “Banking didn’t have enough, ah, latitude for him,” John whispered happily.

  “If you are implying that it was someone at Plantagenet who was taken by surprise,” Wahl began threateningly.

  “I am not implying. I am saying it. Which division was Jensen mixed up with? Who had the most to gain getting him out of the way?”

  Too late Krebbel tried to play peacemaker. “Now. Linc, you are just talking off the top of your head. Ed, he doesn’t mean what he’s--”

  Why you little pipsqueak,” roared Wahl. “Running around with a popgun, trying to pretend you are selling tanks. You probably held a dress rehearsal in the garage and managed to gun down Jensen through sheer incompetence. It wouldn’t surprise me if your whole gang isn’t running around trying to whitewash a massacre. Ask yourself a few questions. Who knew you were going to state a shooting act as the grand finale to your rodeo? Whose idea was it to take potshots into the backseat of that car?”

  Under this barrage of accusations Hauser was turning an alarming shade of crimson. Krebbel’s injunctions to keep calm went totally unheeded. Arnie’s cigar hung from his hand unnoticed, while John found his head swinging first right and then left as if he was in the gallery at the US Open at Forest Hills.

  So MM’s public posture was that Madsen had murdered Jensen, w
as it? On the contrary, wherever one or more of the senior management were gathered, you would find as many theories about the identity of the murderer. Whether any of this helped, John was doubtful. But certainly the injection of a few grains of irritation would bring to the surface all the subterranean suspicions running riot through the front office. John immediately began to prepare several useful irritants to apply wherever they would do the most good. In the immediate situation, however, he could see no necessity for outside assistance. The roiling was going along splendidly under its own steam.

  “I’m not going to stand here and listen to this sort of thing,” squeaked Hauser in a futile attempt to maintain his dignity. “What kind of fools do you think we are?”

  “Complete ones,” Wahl offered with menacing sincerity.

  “Oh no. I’ll tell you something. Don’t talk about accidents in the garage. Everyone knows Jensen was murdered with a stolen gun. Someone planned the whole thing. Jensen said he was going to track down the tipster. You were scared stiff. You are the one that got Jensen’s job. And even then you couldn’t have held on to it if you hadn’t murdered him. Did you let Winters take a look at you when he was looking at the Plantagenet drivers? You drove that car yourself.”

  John expected Krebbel to weigh in with a firm negative. If one thing in the whole episode seemed proven, it was that Wahl had distinguished himself by racing pathetically after the murder car as it set forth on its journey poolside.

  But Krebbel favored a more expansive approach to the contentiousness of his employees. “Now that’s enough,” he said sharply. “We have too much trouble to have you 2 hurling murder charges at each other. I led you in here so you could blow up in decent privacy.” He looked doubtfully at Arnie and John but still continued without pause. “But I’m not going to have this sort of thing going on in public. I expect some disagreements among management people. There always have been and always will be. But we have gotten along for years without accusing each other of murder, and I don’t see any reason to start now. Particularly now, when it is dangerous to throw this sort of thing around.”