Murder Saves Face

by Haughton Murphy

  “Speaking of which, I think we’d better bring this to a close,” Frost said. “Our friends are going to be here in a few minutes, and I want to talk to Beth Locke before that. So will you excuse us, Mr. Lovett? You can wait down in the conference room if you like.”

  Beth Locke apologized for being nervous when she was ushered in to see Frost and Bautista. “Julie and I worked together very closely, and I’m still in a state of shock,” she explained. “It scares me that her killer’s still out there.”

  “We’re doing our best to find him, ma’am, and so are the police,” Bautista said.

  “You knew Ms. Merriman pretty well, didn’t you?” Frost asked.

  “Oh, yes. I worked for her on a project when I first came here, six months ago. We got along just fine. I think she liked me. She tried to talk me into going to law school, so she was always pointing things out to me, trying to get me as fascinated as she was in legal practice. She was like a big sister to me. Gave me advice about everything, including a lot of pointers about getting along here at Chase & Ward.”

  “Do you need pointers for that, Ms. Locke?” Frost asked. “I would have thought this was a pretty easy place to work.”

  “Oh, it is, Mr. Frost, don’t get me wrong. I just meant that she gave me good advice—who the real incompetents are in word processing, who’s hard to work for, that kind of thing.

  “People who’re hard to work for? I can’t believe it!” Frost said, laughing, in his most avuncular manner, trying to put the sad and frightened young woman at ease.

  “It was more I guess who it’s hard for a woman to work for.”

  Frost’s interest perked up, as he asked, “Oh? Can you be more specific?”

  “Nothing serious. She just warned me about a couple of associates who think they’re God’s gift to women. And one of the maintenance men who’s been known to pinch once in a while. By accident, of course.”

  “Pinching by accident? That’s an interesting concept. And if somebody is doing that, he should be reported.”

  “It never happened to me.”

  “Did she warn you about anyone else, Ms. Locke? Other than the two Lotharios among the associates?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “No partners?”

  “Oh, no. Nothing like that.”

  “You’re sure?” Bautista asked.

  “Positive.”

  Bautista and Frost looked at each other. Then Reuben asked Locke to give her account of Thursday’s events. Her description tallied with what they had already heard about the afternoon meeting. She also said that Merriman had left at five-thirty, telling Locke she was going off to eat.

  “Where?”

  “At her apartment. She called me from there just before seven, to check that I’d set up the conference call.”

  “You were here the whole time, between five-thirty and eight?”

  “Yes. I ordered the conference call and spent the rest of the time checking out things in the conference room.”

  “Did you eat?”

  “Yes, I ordered out for pizza for me and a paralegal who was around working on another deal. As a matter of fact, when Julie came in for the eight o’clock call, she kidded the two of us about eating too much. She said we were pigging out while she’d only had a tuna fish sandwich.”

  “Did she mention Marshall Genakis?” Frost asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “So you didn’t have the impression she’d had her tuna fish sandwich with him?”

  “No,” Locke said, thinking. “I don’t remember anything like that.”

  “Were you present when the call to Tokyo was made?”

  “I was there when it started and talked to the conference-call operator. Once everyone was on I left to work on some other loose ends. But again, I was in and out.”

  “The call was amicable?”

  “As far as I could tell. But it wasn’t so amicable afterwards. Julie really gave it to Harvey Rawson.” Her account of the final face-off with Rawson, and the departure of Rawson and Lewis, checked out with what Lovett had said. Like Lovett, she could not be sure Rawson or Lewis had left the building when they had stormed out of Conference Room B, though she thought that she and Merriman eventually were the only two people left.

  “What happened then?” Bautista asked.

  “Julie and I sat in the conference room and had Cokes. She had her checklist with her and we decided everything was done, except for the consent. She told me to go home and get some rest.”

  “What about her?” Frost asked.

  “She said she was going to do a couple of things in her office and then come back and look over the closing papers one more time. She was in a real good mood, I think because she’d told Rawson off. And also because everything was falling into place. She was real proud of the deal—which she’d done all by herself—and said she was pleased it was going to happen, and happen on time.”

  “So you left her in the conference room?”

  “No, the last time I saw her, she was heading upstairs to her office.” Locke’s sad expression returned. She looked as if she might weep and Frost hastily brought the interview to a close before she did so.

  CHAPTER

  16

  Recollections: II

  The veterans of the On-Line closing made themselves at home in their familiar surroundings in Conference Room B. By 11:10, when Frost and Bautista came in, everyone was present, except Harvey Rawson and Jim Lewis.

  It was not a happy atmosphere. The combination of tension, given the grim reason for the reunion, and impatience at the inconvenience cut the quipping and joking that would have normally preceded a meeting.

  Frost detected this and tried to be as cheerful as was tastefully permitted as he introduced himself and then Bautista, explaining the latter’s role as a detective hired by Chase & Ward.

  “Where are the Schoonmaker boys?” Glenn Wylie asked.

  “Maybe that fellow Lewis was afraid you wouldn’t serve lunch,” his brother, Herb, said.

  “I’m not sure they’re coming,” Frost said. “But let me call and find out.”

  He left the room and did not return until a full ten minutes later.

  “Mr. Rawson wouldn’t talk to me, but referred me to Brendan McLeery, Schoonmaker’s lawyer. He said no purpose would be served by having his client here. If it’s necessary to deal with somebody about the Merriman case, they only want to talk to the police.”

  “I don’t understand that,” Glenn Wylie said. “We’re all busy people, but we came over here because you, Mr. Frost, said it might be useful to get everyone together again. Schoonmaker’s working for us. Can’t I make them come?”

  “You could try, Mr. Wylie, but I don’t think it’s going to work. McLeery sounded pretty adamant.”

  “Maybe they’ve got something to hide,” Skip Wylie said.

  “Or maybe that young man Rawson’s ashamed of the way he treated Miss Merriman,” Herb observed.

  Alan Lovett interrupted to ask the Wylie brothers what they proposed to do about Machikin’s acceleration notice. They had evidently talked to someone at Schoonmaker, since they followed the don’t-get-excited line that Tom Hanford had pursued the night before.

  “I realize Mr. Frost has other things in mind for this meeting,” Lovett said, “and I don’t want to interfere with that. But I’m putting you guys on notice that if this thing isn’t resolved satisfactorily—like today—you may have a litigation situation on your hands.”

  “Mr. Lovett, this thing’s going to be worked out, I hope to everybody’s satisfaction,” Herb Wylie said. “Right now let’s try and help Mr. Frost.”

  Reuben was grateful that the position-taking had been brief and the recriminations minimal. “I agree with Alan. Let’s go ahead,” he said. “What I had in mind was talking to each one of you individually. That is, Mr. Bautista and I would interview you, to get your best recollection of the events of last Thursday and Friday. Is that agreeable
with everyone?” There were some surprised looks around the table; star-chamber interrogations had not been mentioned before.

  “I thought this was going to be a group meeting,” Skip Wylie said. “What you propose could take all day.”

  “We’ll certainly try to do better than that. I apologize for the inconvenience. Who wants to start off?”

  “Reuben, I’ve got a twelve-thirty lunch that I should get to if possible,” Ed Sharett said. “If it’s okay with all of you, I’d like to go first.”

  There was no disagreement, and Sharett was the first to make the trek up to Frost’s temporary outpost. The others followed in no particular order. By one twenty-five the process was complete.

  Sharett, his colleague Jeanne Horan, and their lawyer, Angelica Post, all said they had gone directly home after leaving Chase & Ward Thursday afternoon, Sharett to eat with his wife and five children, the two women to their separate apartments on the Upper East Side for microwave dinners and, in Post’s case, to await a messengered copy of the fax from Tokyo for her review.

  Glenn Wylie and Frank Martin both confirmed that they had stayed around for the conference call, drinking coffee and eating sandwiches in the Chase & Ward cafeteria to pass the time from five-thirty until eight; they had not seen Juliana Merriman in the office during those hours. Both had left after the call, and after apologizing to Merriman for Rawson’s behavior. They had gone home to Plainfield in Glenn’s On-Line limousine.

  Herb Wylie said he had left right after the afternoon meeting and been taken to Christ Cella for an early steak dinner by Larry Bonner, the Harrick, Millstein banker. Craig Webber, Frank Martin’s young associate, had also gone along. Bonner and Webber confirmed this, and said that none of them had returned to Chase & Ward when their dinner, extended by a celebratory brandy or two, had broken up around nine-thirty. Herb had given Webber a ride back to New Jersey in his limousine, and Bonner had caught a New Haven train to Rye.

  Skip Wylie’s story was more interesting. He told Frost and Bautista that he had wanted to call his broker in private Thursday afternoon, the broker having liquidated a complicated commodities straddle on his behalf earlier in the day. At the end of the afternoon meeting, Merriman had invited him up to use her office. He said he’d made the call in the office next door to hers and had finished about six, when he went to Mickey Mantle’s for a drink and then to dinner at the Palm with a friend. (It had been a big night for cholesterol, Frost reflected, with everyone off at a steak house.) Who was the friend? Skip at first refused to answer, then allowed that it was a “date.” Pressed further, he admitted that he only knew her first name, Lucinda, and that she had been furnished by the Sugar and Spice Escort Service. They’d had dinner, gone on to the club called Mars and then returned to the On-Line company apartment.

  Frost’s precaution of keeping as much of the group together as possible, so that any contradictions that showed up in what was said could be worked out, proved to be unnecessary. He dismissed them with polite thanks shortly after two. Everyone left quickly, except the Wylies, Frank Martin and Lovett, who stayed behind to confer with Brian Heyworth about how to calm Mr. Hiseo and Machikin.

  “Well, what have we learned?” Reuben asked, when he and Bautista were alone.

  “How to take a pad full of notes without having your fingers fall off,” Bautista replied.

  “I’m sorry, Luis. It seems to me we’ve done a lot of fishing to catch a few minnows. Our round-robin interviews were pretty useless, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah. But ninety percent of the fishing you do on most murder cases doesn’t turn up a bite.”

  “The most interesting part was what Beth Locke told us this morning,” Reuben said. “About the tuna fish sandwich.”

  “Sandwich?”

  “Yes. Tuna fish. Merriman told Locke that she’d only had a tuna fish sandwich for dinner on Thursday. Marshall Genakis has told us both he’d cooked dinner for himself and Juliana. Blanquette de veau, I believe he said. You don’t make that with tuna fish.”

  “Hey, Reuben, that’s good! We ought to be able to pin that down from the autopsy report.”

  “You mean they’d look at the contents of her stomach even though she’d been strangled?”

  “You bet. It’s one of the ways the M.E. tries to fix the estimated time of death. If there were still masticated chunks of food in her stomach—”

  “I don’t need an explanation, thanks,” Frost interrupted. “But will you check on what the report said?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Maybe we do have something to show for the day’s work after all.”

  “I had another thought about Merriman’s dinner,” Bautista said. “Merriman, Genakis and Lovett were supposed to be old buddies from California. How come they didn’t invite Lovett to eat with them? It would seem like the polite thing to do if you have a visiting friend who’s all alone in the Big Apple.”

  “Hmn.”

  “And another thing. When Lovett left the office all by himself later that night, why didn’t he go to Marshall’s? That should have been more fun than having room service at his hotel.”

  “Good point,” Reuben said. “But does it mean anything?”

  “That he didn’t want to be tied down, so he could stay around and strangle Merriman? It doesn’t sound right. Why would he want to kill his lawyer?”

  “Luis, when your practice gets going, you’ll find that a lot of people want to kill their lawyers. Seriously, though, I agree with you. An interesting fact, but I don’t see its relevance.”

  “I’m going down to see Petito,” Bautista said. “His guys can check the autopsy report and everybody’s alibi. And I’ll make sure he talks to Rawson, if he hasn’t done so already.”

  “I hope you can persuade Petito to do all this. I’ve got more important plans for you,” Frost said.

  “Oh?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, we’ve got three people to scrutinize—Rawson, Genakis and Bill Richardson. Skip Wylie, maybe. Alan Lovett, maybe. But the big three are the ones I want a look at first. You’ve always told me that there’s a huge volume of information out there about everybody and that the trick is to be dogged enough and clever enough to find it. So let’s try to dig up everything we can on our trio. If we’re lucky we’ll find something relevant. Does that make sense?”

  “It makes sense, but you forget I’m no longer a cop. No badge to wave, no subpoenas, no search warrants.”

  “I’m surprised at you, Luis. I had more confidence in you. With your contacts, I can’t imagine the lack of a badge is going to stop you.”

  Bautista grinned. “We’ll have to see. And I’ll get Petito fishing, too. He can get search warrants and subpoenas if he needs them.”

  “I also think that thee and me should have a nice bachelors’ dinner tonight,” Frost said.

  “Any place come to mind?” Bautista said, still grinning.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. A joint I’ve heard of called Marshall’s.”

  “Sounds good to me. What time?”

  “Let’s say eight-thirty.”

  “You’re on.”

  “Meanwhile, I’ll have somebody in the library get a Dun & Bradstreet on the finances of Mr. Genakis’ restaurant. I don’t like to eat in restaurants in shaky financial shape. They cut corners.”

  CHAPTER

  17

  Marshall’s

  Bautista and Frost had decided to meet so that they could go to Marshall’s together. Reuben was excited; the D&B on the restaurant had been revealing, and he could scarcely wait until they were seated.

  On entering, they encountered a highly polished wooden bar, which was doing a good business. They advanced to the desk in the back where Genakis and a tastefully dressed woman, in a very short skirt, were presiding.

  “Good evening, Mr. Frost,” Genakis said, without a conspicuous show of enthusiasm.

  “Mr. Genakis, hello. I know I said I’d bring my wife here, but I brought my friend Luis
Bautista instead. I believe you know each other.”

  Genakis looked at Bautista again and realized who he was. “Oh, yeah. The detective. Hi. Carrie, would you show the gentlemen to fifteen?”

  Without asking, Genakis had assigned them a free standing table, well away from the banquettes along two of the walls. From one seat, where Bautista sat, it afforded a good view of Genakis’ work station. Both men took in the ambience, which featured roughly plastered white walls, sand-colored upholstery on the furniture and black wrought-iron lighting fixtures overhead.

  “I thought you said this was a California place,” Bautista said. “It looks more like Santa Fe to me.”

  “Suburban Palm Springs, maybe. California desert,” Frost suggested.

  The staff all wore red mess jackets over tuxedo pants. An amusing touch, Frost thought, assuming it was a deliberate send-up of the usual waiter’s uniform in Greek luncheonettes.

  After ordering drinks from a red-jacket, Frost told his companion that the faxed report he pulled from his pocket contained “lots of information.”

  “This place is way behind on payments to suppliers—ninety days overdue. I don’t know anything about the restaurant business, but if it’s like any other, it sounds to me like Mr. Genakis is about to be put on a cash-only basis. Not a healthy development. His restaurant corporation’s also got a big mortgage—four hundred thousand and change. That’s current, and so’s his rent. But he’s obviously in a cash squeeze for some reason.”

  “Anything else there in the D&B?” Bautista asked.

  “He’s got a big payroll—fifty-eight in all. His liquor license is up for renewal March 1. And Juliana Merriman was a minority stockholder in the company—she owned thirty percent of the stock, which, you remember, he gets under her will.”

  Frost decided to have the warm duck salad, followed by seared tuna, a special for the evening. Bautista ordered the salad and a rib-eye steak. After the usual polite duet—white wine to accommodate the fish-eater or red for the carnivore?—Reuben opted for a red Italian Barolo, one of the few non-California wines on a rather long list.