11
The next morning, the Frosts had a leisurely breakfast and then got ready for Flemming Andersen’s memorial service at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. Reuben put on what he chose to call his “funeral uniform,” a gray, almost black, flannel suit, with a white shirt and dark blue-and-gray striped tie.
“I’m getting to wear my uniform more and more these days,” he told his wife. “But I guess that’s part of the price of getting old.”
Cynthia replied noncommittally.
“This is a memorial service, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“When was the funeral? Flemming is scarcely dead.”
“It was yesterday in Connecticut. Just the immediate family. Sally had the body cremated. Of course, that didn’t take much. The poor devil was already half cooked.”
“Reuben, really.”
The service itself was mercifully brief. Casper Robbins gave a short eulogy that all agreed was both felicitous and apt. The crowd at the church was relatively small, though Reuben noticed substantial representation from all the service organizations that did business with Andersen Foods: Chase & Ward, of course, but also AFC’s trademark lawyers and Washington counsel; the Company advertising agency; its accounting firm; the leading banks in the syndicate from which AFC traditionally borrowed; even the insurance agency through which the Company placed its insurance. How comforting to be remembered by one’s friends, Frost thought.
Frost had spoken with Sally Andersen at the church, but did so again at her apartment, where she had invited close friends to come by for lunch. The Andersen residence was only two blocks up Fifth Avenue from Jeffrey Gruen’s quadruplex, but the difference between the two apartments was profound. The Andersens had only two floors, not four, and while the works of art on view were not as plentiful as those at Gruen’s, they were uniformly of better quality, among them an early Braque assemblage, two blue-period Picassos and two large, dramatically ravishing Jasper Johns oils from the 1950s. No heroic portraits of total strangers and no hand-carved ducks.
Two waiters, not regular staff but hired for the occasion, moved among the guests with trays of glasses of orange juice and white wine. Given the early hour, surprisingly little of the orange juice was taken up, and several requested even stronger spirits than the white wine being proffered. Indeed, there seemed to be a move toward Bloody Marys that kept the waiters busily running to and from the kitchen.
“Reuben, dear, can you stay for lunch? It’s important to me that you be here,” Sally Andersen said, as he expressed his condolences once again.
“Of course.”
“And will you have some time after? I want to get the family together for a few minutes once lunch is over, just to evaluate what’s going on,” she said. The widow was already greeting another guest before Frost could reply, so he moved on into the large living room.
“How are you, Reuben?” a voice behind him asked. He turned to find Laurance Andersen facing him.
“How are you?” Frost said. “You must have been spending most of your time on airplanes the last couple of days.”
“Yes, it seems that way. No time to finish up my business in L.A.”
“I’m very sorry about your father,” Frost said.
“Thank you. I just hope they catch the wacko who killed him soon, so the publicity will stop.”
“You don’t have any ideas, I take it?” Frost asked.
“None. I don’t think Dad had an enemy in the world.”
“It’s certainly puzzling,” Frost said and then, changing the subject, asked about the St. Martin.
“St. Martin?”
“The hotel in L.A. I understood the other night that you were staying there.”
“Oh yes. It’s not great.”
“That’s my impression. I was stuck there once last spring. It’s that fancy British outfit that runs it—high prices and all that—but an absolute minimum of service.”
“Yeah, I agree,” Laurance said, before flagging a waiter to get a second Bloody Mary. As he did so, a signal was given that lunch was being served, and the group moved toward a buffet in the dining room.
Frost, carrying a full plate, was about to join his wife and Sorella Perkins in the living room when Billy O’Neal slipped into the chair next to Sorella. Reconnoitering, Frost could only see a seat next to Diana; he sighed and went toward it.
“Here we are again,” Frost said, trying to be jaunty.
“Yes, well, if you can stand it I guess I can,” Diana replied.
They ate in silence for a bit, and then Diana asked what Frost thought Jeffrey Gruen would do.
“Unless he keeps going and raises his price sky-high, the Board will still turn him down,” Frost guessed. “And I think it’s more than likely that the directors will make a self-tender. That’s what they were going to do before your father died, and I haven’t seen anything that would change that.”
“Let me ask you a question. I think I know the answer, but let me ask you anyway,” Diana said.
“Go ahead.”
“Is there any reason I can’t sell my stock to Gruen, if his price is right?”
“No legal reason that I know of,” Frost said. “But I think your mother and the rest of your family would be pretty annoyed.”
“There may be more important things than the annoyance of my family.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the group I do a lot of work with. Concerned Women. Have you heard of it?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“And I suppose you don’t approve.”
“You want an honest answer?” Frost asked.
“Of course. I’m a big girl.”
“I suspect I approve of almost all of Concerned Women’s goals. But I’m not sure I always approve of their methods, or their rhetoric.”
“Your answer doesn’t surprise me, though I’m grateful you support our goals—even if you’d deny us the means to achieve them,” Diana said.
Frost had said no such thing, but he held both his tongue and his temper. What he really wanted to do was to shout out his bona fides on the subject of women’s rights: his pioneering insistence on fairness to women in hiring and promotions at Chase & Ward, especially during the years when he had been the firm’s Executive Partner; his consistent support of his wife’s career as ballerina, as ballet mistress and now as an officer of the Brigham Foundation. He also thought darkly to himself that a martini at his all-male club, the Gotham, would not be an entirely bad thing at precisely this moment.
“I take it you’re suggesting you’d like to liquidate your holdings in AFC and make a donation to Concerned Women,” Frost said.
“That’s about it. My sisters in Concerned Women and I have lots of projects that desperately need funding.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Frost replied. “But before you make up your mind between your family’s feelings and Concerned Women, can I tell you a story? Do you know about the AFC processing plant in Parkersville, California?”
“No, I don’t believe I do.”
“Let me tell you about it,” Frost said. “AFC has a tomato-canning factory in Parkersville that employs about eight hundred people. It’s an old factory, been around since the thirties. It’s also the principal industry in Parkersville. Many of the workers are the grandsons—grandchildren—of retired AFC workers.
“The Parkersville plant is inefficient. Canning techniques have changed so much in recent years that a new plant, with lasers and robots and all the rest, would pay for itself in no time. But a new plant would be run with about fifty employees.
“Every new M.B.A. that joins AFC, every management consultant the Company has ever hired, says get rid of Parkersville. Your father never did so. He felt an obligation to the workers there, felt an obligation not to wreck the economy of that tiny California town. I heard him say many times, ‘I know it’s inefficient to keep Parkersville, but we’re going to do it just the same. People can criticize i
f they like, can accuse me of not squeezing out every dime of profit that I can. But as far as I’m concerned, those people can sell out anytime and go ride on someone else’s railroad.’
“Now, why do I tell you this?” Frost went on. “I tell you because Jeffrey Gruen, if he took over AFC, would close Parkersville as soon as a new plant could be built. And his bankers would applaud him for doing it. And if he did, I ask you how much closing the plant would do for women’s rights in Parkersville?”
“I can’t comment, Mr. Frost, I don’t know all the facts,” Diana Andersen said sullenly.
“What I’m suggesting is that some of these questions may be more complicated than they seem at first.”
One of the waiters appeared and announced that dessert and coffee were available in the dining room. Frost often did not eat dessert, but he knew he was going to have some this day, and the sooner the better. He excused himself and left Diana’s company with what he hoped was not undue haste.
But not before making a mental note to have either Castagno or Bautista check on the whereabouts of Diana Andersen on the previous Tuesday afternoon.
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
12
As lunch ended, Sally Andersen moved discreetly among those gathered in her living room, asking members of the family to stay behind and meet in the library. Frost watched her in action, and noted that she had also asked Casper Robbins.
When all the other guests had left, the widow came into the library and sat down behind the desk, facing her family. Frost liked the symbolism of the desk, which showed that she was now in charge of events.
“I just wanted to have a few words with you about three things,” she began, speaking deliberately. “The first is the transition at AFC and who’s going to be in charge. The second is the police investigation of Flemming’s death. And the third is Jeffrey Gruen, and what we’re going to do about him. Right now, we can talk about the first two. As for Mr. Gruen, I think we should wait for Randolph Hedley, who called me this morning and said that before we did anything it was urgent that he talk to us about the Foundation.”
“Mother, I’m sorry to interrupt, but what did Hedley have to say?” Sorella Perkins asked.
“Nothing, my dear. I have no idea what he wants,” Mrs. Andersen said.
“He’s probably going to tell you, sis, that the Foundation has to sell to Gruen. He was hinting about that on the plane on Sunday,” Laurance Andersen said.
“Mr. Hedley seems to have broadcast his thoughts about the Foundation to everyone except me,” Sorella observed. “He hasn’t talked to me at all.”
Frost silently agreed with Sorella. New York law required a minimum of three directors; she had been one of them, serving with her father and Randolph Hedley (who did not share Frost’s compunction about board service for clients). Sorella and Hedley, and any director to replace Flemming, if they could agree on one, would have to decide whether or not to sell the AFC stock owned by the Foundation if Gruen—or the Company, for that matter—made an offer. Hedley, as her fellow director and the Foundation’s counsel, should be consulting her, not her mother.
Sally Andersen tried to get the discussion back to the agenda she had outlined. “I understand the Board is scheduled to meet tomorrow morning. Isn’t that right, Casper?” she asked the Company President.
“That’s correct,” Robbins answered.
“I have talked to all the outside directors by telephone and have let them know that I want to go on the Board,” Mrs. Andersen said. “When Flemming was alive, it wouldn’t have made any sense. But now that he’s dead, I feel I must protect what he started.
“I’ve also made it known that I want Casper to be the new Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, in addition to being President. Down the road, I hope we’ll be able to identify someone for the President’s job, but until we do, I think it best if Casper holds both positions.”
Frost listened intently to Sally Andersen’s unquestioned assertion of control over the affairs of Andersen Foods. He also noted the glum looks with which Laurance Andersen and Billy O’Neal, sitting on opposite sides of the living room, greeted her pronouncement about Casper.
Sally Andersen’s determination did not surprise Frost at all. While her husband was alive, the woman had always appeared to defer to him. But from many conversations with the late Chairman, Frost knew that Sally followed events within the Company intently and that she was not at all afraid to express her views to her husband, or to lobby him until her objectives were achieved. With Flemming dead, there was no longer any need for modesty or deference.
“Now. Flemming’s murder,” the widow continued. “I talked with the detective in Greenwich early this morning. There aren’t any new developments. No clues. Except that he heard from Reuben Frost’s policeman friend in New York that the two notes—the one left in Connecticut and the one delivered to Casper—were definitely not written by the same person. So it appears we have two lunatics on the loose, not just one.
“Detective Castagno did say that he wants to talk to the members of the family he hasn’t seen already, which means those that weren’t in Connecticut Tuesday night. That would be you, Laurance, and Diana. And you, Billy.”
“What in the name of heaven does he want with us?” Diana asked.
“He said it’s just routine,” Mrs. Andersen replied. “He wants to make sure no one has any information that might offer a clue.”
“It seems pretty unlikely we would, if we weren’t even there,” Laurance said.
“Let’s not quarrel about it,” Sally said. “All I ask is that you give Mr. Castagno your help. And as I said in Greenwich Tuesday night, I’ve asked Reuben to coordinate with the police to make things as smooth as possible.”
“I still think it’s a waste of time,” Laurance muttered petulantly.
“Laurance, I don’t understand your attitude,” his mother said. “There’s a psychopath loose out there, maybe two. One of them murdered your father and I don’t know how you can be confident that he doesn’t want more victims—like you or any of the rest of us.”
“Okay, Mother, okay,” Laurance grumbled.
“On to our final problem—Mr. Gruen,” Sally Andersen said. “Reuben, tell the others about your conversation with him yesterday—and the slight breathing room he’s given us.”
Frost did so, and then reviewed the current antitakeover strategy.
“As you all know,” he explained, “the Board decided two days ago to turn down Jeffrey Gruen’s bear hug. The Board also decided, if Gruen persisted, to make a counteroffer for ten percent of the outstanding stock, but of course excluding the shares owned by all of you, by management and by the Andersen Foundation.
“That was Flemming Andersen’s grand design to thwart a raid, subject to being able to raise the money to do it. Since there is every indication the money can be borrowed, it seems to me that Flemming’s strategy should be followed. If there is any feeling to the contrary among those of you here, the Company should know it now. The fight with Gruen is going to be fought in a very public way, and the press is going to follow every move—the story has all the elements the press loves. So, if there are any surprises, if there is any dissent from the position Flemming took, management should know it right here and now.”
While Frost spoke, Randolph Hedley came into the room and tried to sneak quietly into a chair near the door. Looking over at the new arrival, Frost thought that he was agitated, his face appearing white at one instant, slightly red the next. He was also sweating, possibly from hurrying uptown to this appointment, but possibly also because of the message he was going to convey.
“Does anyone else want to speak?” Sally Andersen asked. “If not, I assume it is agreed that we proceed the way Flemming wanted—that we continue to say no to Mr. Gruen and, if and when he makes an actual offer, to have AFC make the counteroffer that’s been discussed. Laurance? Bill? Sorella? Diana?” She looked at each of the principals in turn; all were silent and none offered
any disagreement.
“I think we’re agreed,” Sally Andersen concluded. “Are we ready to listen to Mr. Hedley?”
Randolph Hedley was unquestionably uncomfortable, as evidenced by his violent sweating and the almost startling changes in his skin coloration. He was trying to project New England take-charge gravity, instead of the fear arising from the inexorable conclusion that he might lose an esteemed and valued client because of the legal conclusions he was about to express.
“Sally, I wonder if we might have a few minutes’ recess,” Hedley said. “I know what I have to say is probably of interest to all of you, but I’d like to talk to Sorella privately for a few minutes. Now that Flemming’s dead, we are the two surviving directors of the Foundation. Will you excuse us?”
Sally Andersen looked at Hedley with impatience, silently expressing her thought that whatever Hedley had to say could perfectly well be said to the entire group. But, having no real choice, she acquiesced. “How much time do you need?” she asked. “Ten minutes? Twenty? You tell us, Randolph.”
“Let’s compromise on fifteen,” Hedley said, laughing weakly at what he thought was a joke. “We’ll be back just as soon as we can.”
Sorella, behind Hedley’s back, shrugged her shoulders and rolled her eyes at the gathering. But despite this subversion, she dutifully followed Hedley out of the library and into the adjoining living room.
When they were comfortably seated, facing each other, Hedley again apologized. “I’m afraid what I’ve got to say is not going to be very popular in there,” he said, nodding toward the library. “And probably not very popular with you.
“I’ve been talking with some of my partners,” he went on. “And I’ve even had a couple of our young associates do some actual legal research.” He looked at Sorella and smiled when he finished speaking, the reference to the rarity of legal research apparently being intended as another jest.
“The long and the short of it, Sorella, is that the Foundation may have to sell out to the highest bidder for its AFC stock—either Jeffrey Gruen or the Company itself, depending on how things develop,” Hedley said.
Murders & Acquisitions Page 11
