Frost hesitated to interrupt, but finally did so, whereupon he was told that Homer Matthewson could be found in an office down the stairs in the basement. He was indeed there, attending to paperwork.
“Oh, Reuben, you’re wonderful to do this,” he said. “Let me tell you what I’m going to do. Brothers is here. He’s working upstairs in the kitchen. We’ll go up to the dining room and then I’ll call him out and introduce you.”
“What on earth are you going to say?” Frost asked.
“Just that you’re a friend of Sally Andersen. I’m going to use her name because Brothers doesn’t seem to have anything against her. Then you can ask him about the notes.”
“Thanks,” Frost said. But he was ready; after a lifetime of legal-strategy sessions he knew that it was invariably the lawyer who was tagged with asking the unspeakable, or at least the embarrassing.
“You wait here a minute. I want to position my two ‘bodyguards,’” Matthewson said.
Soon he returned and took Frost up to the dining room, a grim affair with institutional green walls, long tables covered with shabby cream-colored oilcloth and uncomfortable-looking metal chairs.
“There’s your protection,” Matthewson whispered, nodding at two young—and strong-looking—men sitting at a corner table drinking coffee. “Wait here.”
Matthewson returned with a stocky man—pretty strong-looking, too, Frost thought—dressed in a cook’s white pants, shirt and paper hat and black army combat boots. The man had an even tan, and did not at first glance look the derelict Frost had expected to find. As soon as he was introduced and began talking, however, Frost noticed that most of his upper front teeth were missing. And, when he removed his paper hat, there was an ugly scar along his forehead, a vivid reminder of some past violence.
Frost guessed that Brothers had been handsome when younger, but the absence of teeth, the scar and the deep lines in his face certainly indicated that life had not been very kind to him. He seemed uncertain as to why Matthewson, hovering nervously between them, had brought him together with Frost.
“Haven’t I seen you before?” he asked.
“It’s possible,” Frost answered, though he had no memory of the man.
“Connecticut? The Andersens?”
“Yes, that’s very possible. They are friends of mine.”
“Dinner. You came to dinner with your wife.”
“How do you remember that?” Frost asked.
“The fish. Laurance Andersen flew in with a fish. Big goddam striped bass he’d caught off Long Island. We had to stop everything and cook his goddam fish. You were a guest.”
Frost could not recall the event. He and Cynthia had been guests in Greenwich so many times that the occasion the man recalled did not stand out.
“Striped bass. Boiled potatoes. Asparagus soup to start—just regular, this was before SUPERBOWL—and peach cobbler for dessert.”
Who was this idiot savant, Frost thought, able to recall a menu from a generation ago? He probably could remember the date and the day of the week, too.
“Well, sir, I’ve no reason to doubt you,” Frost said. “But I don’t remember the dinner you describe.”
“Too bad. It was a nice meal,” Brothers said. “Now, what can I do for you?”
Frost plunged ahead to the matter of overriding interest.
“Mr. Brothers, I’m sure you’ve read about the deaths of Flemming Andersen and his daughter Sorella,” Frost said.
“Sure. He fell in his hot tub and her dogs ate her.”
“Yes. But that’s not quite the way the police see it, as the newspapers have said. They think he was pushed and that someone let her dogs loose and egged them on to kill her.”
“Can they prove it?”
“By the time they get through, I’m sure they’ll be able to.”
“It’s justice,” Brothers said. “No question about it.”
“That’s quite a strong statement, sir,” Frost said.
“I meant it to be. Twenty years ago that woman and her father did a terrible wrong to me.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Frost asked.
“Sure. I’ll tell anybody who’ll listen.”
“Then please do,” Frost said,
“I never wanted to work for the Andersens in the first place,” Brothers began. “I was very happy working in the test kitchens at Andersen Foods. Then Mrs. Andersen—Flemming’s wife—suddenly needed a cook in a hurry and I was sent off to Connecticut.
“Everything went okay at first,” he went on. “Mrs. Andersen was a fine woman and very considerate. But her daughter was something else again. Sorella. She wouldn’t leave me alone. She’d taken it into her head she was going to get me into bed, and she tried everything to do it. I was no angel, mind you, and she was a pretty girl back then. But I wasn’t going to put my job in danger for a horny teenager.
“She got more and more obnoxious, bothering me all the time. Finally, I told her to lay off, or I was going to tell her mother. Well, the next thing I knew I was called into the library by Mr. Andersen and fired—for ‘molesting’ his daughter.”
“That was not true?” Frost asked.
“Absolutely not true!” Brothers replied, with some heat. “I never touched her. But her lie, and her father’s believing that lie—he never even asked me if his daughter was telling the truth—meant that I never could get a job again. I say good riddance to both of them.”
“Did you kill them?” Frost asked, his voice slow, even and deliberate.
“Did I kill them? Maybe I did!” Brothers replied, seemingly pleased with the attention he was getting and especially the discomfiture this last statement created.
“What about the notes you sent?” Frost asked. “What was that all about?”
“Notes? What notes?” Brothers asked innocently.
“Come, come, Mr. Brothers. Mr. Matthewson has told me that you sent notes to the Andersens about the two deaths.”
“Matthy, do you tell everyone my business?” Brothers asked, turning to Matthewson, who had been listening silently, but nervously, to Frost’s interrogation.
“Never mind,” Brothers went on before Matthewson could answer. “Yes, Mr. Frost, I sent notes. I wanted the world to know what Flemming and Sorella Andersen had done to me.”
“Your plan hasn’t been a great success so far, has it?” Frost asked. “The police haven’t said a word about them.”
“I know. But I’m sure they will eventually.”
“Where did you leave them, by the way?” Frost asked.
“You know so much, you tell me,” Brothers shot back.
“Why did you risk getting caught? Why didn’t you mail them?”
“Mail them? They were too important to trust to the mails!” Brothers looked at Frost as if he were mentally unstable. “I wanted to make sure they got out and became public.”
“Let me ask you another thing, Mr. Brothers. Have you ever heard of HEART O’ GOLD pet food?”
Brothers’ incredulous stare at Frost continued, but he did answer the question. “Pet food? Nah, I deal in human food, not pet food.”
“You’ve never seen it advertised on TV?”
“Oh yeah, I guess I have. That ad with the cats in skirts. But I tune all that crap out.”
“Do you know who makes it?”
“I’m not sure. Is it Andersen Foods?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Why do you want to know, by the way?” Brothers asked.
“Just asking,” Frost said. He looked at his watch and then told Matthewson he had to leave.
“Before I go, Mr. Brothers, can I offer you one bit of advice?” Frost said. “From talking to you, I now understand how strongly you feel about what happened up in Connecticut twenty years ago. But my advice to you is to forget it. Or at least not to write any more notes about it. What you’ve done up till now is probably not a crime. But getting involved in murder investigations—even around the edges—is not a good idea.”
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“And you want my advice to you?” Brothers asked. “Bug off!” He rose quickly and both Matthewson and Frost—as well as the two “bodyguards”—tensed. But the threat was over as soon as it arose, with Brothers walking quickly toward the kitchen without saying anything more.
Back in Matthewson’s subterranean office, he asked Frost if he thought the police should be notified.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “Brothers is not the man they’re looking for. But he may be if he keeps on sending love letters to the Andersens.”
“So you don’t think he killed them?”
“No.”
“Can I ask why?”
“You can ask, but I’m not going to tell you,” Frost said, thinking it imprudent to tell his old friend about the four notes.
“I’d keep an eye on him, and let me or the police know if anything queer develops. But I don’t think your cook is a murderer.”
“I’m mystified, but I’ll abide by what you say, Reuben,” Matthewson said.
“Good. Let’s get together soon.”
On his way back uptown, Frost reviewed his encounter with Brothers. He was sure he was right, that Brothers was the peddler of the second set of notes, designed to take revenge for a festering old grievance, not to explain the double homicide. It was true that he knew of SUPERBOWL—but then, what red-blooded American didn’t?—but his lack of familiarity with HEART O’ GOLD seemed genuine. On the other hand, Brothers had had a violent enough past to arouse suspicion. But Frost was sure—almost sure—that Brothers was not the murderer.
ENCOUNTERS
16
Reaching home, Frost called Luis Bautista to report what he had learned about Brothers. Bautista himself had nothing new to report, nor did anyone else during the Labor Day weekend.
The Frosts stayed in town over the holiday. They obsessively discussed the murders, but did not achieve any new insights or reach any new conclusions. When they still had heard nothing from Bautista, Castagno and Sally Andersen on Tuesday, Reuben called them. The calls produced neither revelations nor evidence of progress; the only thing Frost learned, from Sally Andersen, was that Casper Robbins had somehow negotiated another week’s breathing time with Gruen before his tender offer would be made.
“The hell with it,” Frost muttered to himself, after hanging up on the last inconclusive call. He had to get ready for a busy evening to start the fall season that, he thought gratefully, would have nothing to do with the Andersens: an off-the-record speech at the Foreign Affairs Forum by the new French Ambassador to the United States, followed by the monthly black-tie dinner of the members of the Gotham Club.
The black-tie feature of the Gotham event put Frost in the ridiculous position of hailing a cab on Park Avenue in a tuxedo at four-fifteen in the afternoon. But there was really no alternative, since the Foreign Affairs program did not end until six, and the predinner festivities at the Gotham began at six-fifteen. There was simply no realistic chance of getting back home in the rush hour, changing and reaching the Gotham at a reasonable time.
He probably thinks I’m an off-duty waiter, Frost thought to himself as his driver eyed him fishily after picking him up at the corner of Seventieth Street. Or I guess a prosperous headwaiter, Frost reasoned, after realizing that most waiters do not go to work by taxi.
Headquarters—or “world headquarters” as some said—of the Foreign Affairs Forum were at Fifty-ninth Street and Park Avenue. Known as “FAF,” the Forum consisted of two thousand members, one thousand in New York and the balance scattered judiciously around the country, most of whom fancied themselves as leaders of the American foreign-policy establishment. (The small minority that did not have such a fancy were more than happy to aspire to such leadership.) Formed to combat the isolationism and anti-internationalism of the 1930s, the Forum had a distinguished record of supporting beleaguered Presidents and Secretaries of State in their efforts to conduct sound international relations. (Its record in dissenting from Presidential decisions was much less impressive; in the Forum’s deliberations there was almost observable deference to those occupying positions of national power.)
Membership was by invitation only, and those already members by and large did a cautious job of adding to their ranks. This had led to a large amount of inbreeding, which had the same disastrous effect on organizational reproduction that it did on human: it produced idiots far too often.
Reuben Frost had been asked to join as a young man (that is, when he was in his early forties, which was young by FAF standards) by one of his seniors at Chase & Ward. At the time Frost was engaged heavily in the firm’s international financial practice, so it seemed logical that he should occupy one of the Chase & Ward “seats” at the Forum.
Participating in the Forum supposedly marked one as a person of influence; Frost had been flattered when he was invited to join and had accepted eagerly. Only then was he to discover that its avowed purpose—to provide an assembly for the discussion of important foreign policy issues—was secondary to at least two others.
One was its discreet use as an employment agency for diplomats about to leave the foreign service, exhausted college presidents looking for peaceful foundation havens and businessmen being pushed or falling into early retirement. (Over the years, Frost had come to recognize the telltale sign of an FAF member about to lose or leave a job—frequent and ubiquitous appearances at Forum meetings, wearing a figurative “I’m Available” button.)
The other extraneous purpose the Forum served was what one might call its nursing-home function, providing a place for the old and retired to go in the late afternoon to socialize and meet acquaintances. The age and state of decrepitude of some of the members were truly awesome—there were three members within comfortable striking distance of one hundred, and all showed up regularly for meetings.
The quality of the meetings had been a major disappointment to Frost. Every important foreign statesman was invited to talk to the group when passing through New York. Most accepted, at least the first time they were invited. Frost’s own theory was that they only came back for subsequent appearances reluctantly, after having addressed a congregation of septuagenarians nodding off to sleep the first time. (He also speculated about the national security implications of the Forum. Was it not possible that a foreign adventurist, after seeing its heavyweight membership snoozing away, might conclude that he had nothing to fear from the United States?)
By tradition, the meetings were off-the-record, though Frost could never understand why; in all his years as a Forum member he had never once heard anything remotely resembling a secret or an indiscretion. And as for the soft-pitch questions to the guest speakers, one could find more trenchancy on “Sesame Street.” (Frost, relaxing in the late afternoon as he often did, was a sometime television watcher and knew this for a fact; Ernie’s questions to Bert were invariably sharper than those of the Forum’s members to their distinguished guests.)
Despite the years’ accumulated reservations about the Forum, Frost had never bothered to resign. And now that he was retired himself, he had to admit that there perhaps was some selfish merit to the group’s pro-geriatric tilt. One did meet there old acquaintances seldom seen otherwise and, as the result of a recent “youth” policy that brought in junior members under thirty-five for short terms, the place was not as stodgy as formerly.
Frost did not come to the meetings often. He rarely attended speeches by ambassadors; as a general proposition ambassadors were the most disappointing, speaking almost always of the warm personal and institutional bonds between their countries and the United States. Exceptions (and ones Frost made in the meetings he attended) usually were the French and British ambassadors, who handled their speaking assignments with wit (and the barely concealed knowledge that their Forum appearances had no practical significance whatsoever).
The Forum’s hour-long programs were always preceded by tea (an ironic British touch for an American foreign policy group, Frost thought). Today Fros
t stood, in his tuxedo, at the side of the room talking with Harry Knight. They were soon joined by Knight’s successor as Chairman at First Fiduciary, an athletic, fiftyish man named Frederick Dawson.
Frost had met Dawson before, but Knight reintroduced them.
“Looks like you’re going out on the town, Mr. Frost,” Dawson said.
“Just a fancy dinner,” Frost replied, wishing to high heaven that there had been time to change his clothes after, and not before, the Forum meeting.
“I’m relieved, Reuben. I thought maybe you’d joined the Philharmonic,” Knight declared.
The three laughed and Reuben took a long sip of his weak tea. As he did so, Knight got sidetracked and Frost found himself talking to Dawson alone.
“Mr. Frost, I remember meeting you when I was a young bank officer negotiating a loan with Andersen Foods. You were their lawyer and you were plenty tough.”
“Well, you seem to have survived all right,” Frost answered, with a laugh.
“Those murders are a tragedy,” Dawson said, looking appropriately grave.
“Mmn,” Frost said.
“What about Gruen? Is he really going to make a tender offer?”
“That’s what he says,” Frost replied.
“I assume all the stuff in the press about hostility is a cover and it will be a perfectly friendly offer,” Dawson said.
“Why do you say that?” Frost said. “That certainly isn’t my reading.”
“I just thought it was all arranged on a friendly basis.”
“How did you get that idea?”
“I was just putting two and two together. Last winter my wife and I were at Gstaad skiing. The great Gruen was there, too. And spending most of his time with Casper Robbins.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I was saying that Jeffrey Gruen and Casper Robbins were inseparable at Gstaad last winter.”
“Are you sure about that?” Frost asked.
“Absolutely. That’s why I thought Gruen’s offer would be a cinch.”
Murders & Acquisitions Page 15
