Murder Saves Face

by Haughton Murphy

  “Super. Have a great evening, Reuben. Good luck with Melody. She’s dynamite.”

  Reuben dutifully called Cynthia, at the Brigham Foundation, to let her know that he might be late for dinner.

  “What’s happening? Have your cronies at the Club abandoned their New Year’s resolutions already?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. I have to have cocktails with someone. It’s business.”

  “Business?”

  “It’s about Juliana Merriman, if you must know. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Reuben, this isn’t something dangerous, is it?” Cynthia asked.

  “Absolutely not. Safe and discreet, I believe would describe the situation.”

  “Well, be careful, dear,” Cynthia said, puzzled.

  Reuben checked his coat at the Royalton a few minutes before six, commandeered a table in the cocktail area and ordered a martini. He prominently displayed a copy of the latest Time next to his drink.

  The postmodern decor of the refurbished Royalton lobby was surreal at best; now it seemed totally so to Frost. Was he really sitting here waiting to have drinks with a hooker? For which she would get paid?

  At the dot of six a young woman, wearing a mink coat and with an outsize purse draped over her shoulder, appeared. She removed her beret and rearranged her short, auburn hair. Scanning the recessed area below her, she spotted the red Time cover and smiled at its owner.

  Frost rose, and shook hands with her when she approached the table.

  “Mr. Frost? I’m Melody Teabury.”

  “Yes. Do sit down, Miss Teabury.”

  “Melody.”

  “Yes. Melody.” (What if Charlie Parkes sees me here, talking to Melody?)

  Melody draped her fur over the back of the Philippe Starck chair opposite Reuben; the task was easy, since the back of the chair closely resembled a chrome-plated coat hanger. When asked, she ordered a whiskey sour. Frost, who had half-expected a buxom, dyed-blonde chorus girl of uncertain age, was surprised. The only vulgar thing about his new hired companion appeared to be her first name. Certainly her clothes were chic, a wool skirt and a checked wool jacket, both of which could have been Armanis (and at four hundred dollars an hour probably were, Frost thought). And the brown jacket nicely complemented her brown eyes.

  Frost was also surprised at her accent. It was British—not Oxbridge exactly, but not early Eliza Doolittle, either. Her voice was, to tell the truth, modulated and sexy. And she was adept at small talk, of the sort often heard among strangers at a cocktail party. Where do you live? Have you always lived in New York? Reuben answered her questions reasonably truthfully, though he shaved ten years off his age when she asked him how old he was.

  “I must say you don’t look sixty-seven,” she said. Frost thought he had been caught out in his lie, then realized, pleased, that she was at least pretending he appeared even younger.

  “How about you?” he asked.

  “Twenty-eight.”

  More details followed, and Frost learned that Ms. Tea-bury had been in the States for three years. She had started as a receptionist in an advertising agency but had given that up for the more “interesting” opportunities with the escort service.

  As they talked, Frost recalled Charlie Parkes’ reference to “Dutch courage” when they had talked recently, and now signaled for a second martini. When it and a new whiskey sour had been brought, Ms. Teabury asked where they were going to have dinner.

  This was not the way Frost had hoped the conversation would go. “Um, I’ll get to that. Before I do, I think there’s something I should tell you.”

  “You have AIDS,” Melody said, smiling through her dark, beet-red lipstick.

  “Nothing like that, thank God. But I am afraid I’ve gotten you here under false pretenses.”

  Melody appraised Reuben carefully. “You’re gay?”

  “No, no, no.”

  “Married?”

  “Well, yes, as a matter of fact I am.”

  “Don’t worry, dearest, I can handle that.”

  “That’s not, um, what I was getting to. The point is, I’ve invited you here in the hopes of getting some information.”

  “I see. Are you a detective?”

  “Good heavens, no.”

  “A solicitor—lawyer, I mean. Looking for a missing heir?”

  “I am a lawyer, yes. But let’s stop fencing. I believe you know Harvey Rawson.”

  “Rawson?”

  “He’s an investment banker downtown with a firm called Schoonmaker.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know him,” Melody said. “But I suppose I could have met him. I do meet a lot of people, you know.”

  “Rawson’s a friend of Ian Wylie.”

  “Skip, you mean? Oh, yes, now I remember. Skip goes out with my friend, Lucinda, quite often. If he brings someone else along, she usually invites me. Rawson was with us one night last December.”

  “That’s what I understand. December twenty-ninth, to be exact.”

  “It’s coming back to me. Skip and Harvey, yes, Harvey Rawson, were working on some big deal together. We met them for dinner, I think at the Palm. Or was it Sparks’?”

  “I believe it was the Palm.”

  “Yes, yes, I remember the whole bloody evening. Is Rawson a pal of yours?”

  “I’ve never met him.”

  “Then you won’t mind if I say he was a pig? A rutting pig?”

  “Hmn. I can’t say I’m surprised,” Reuben said. “But what I’d like to know about is the dinner you had. Particularly the time.”

  Teabury hesitated before she answered, perhaps trying to calculate if there was any harm in telling the truth. Then she shrugged her shoulders and said, “Let me see. I think Lucinda and I were supposed to meet them at nine-thirty. Yes. Lucinda had an earlier, ah, engagement and she came over to my flat afterwards. We went to the Palm together, I remember. It must have been half after nine, no earlier. Skip and Harvey were late.”

  “How late?”

  “They came separately, as I recall. Harvey first, then Skip. It was a perfectly dreadful night—there’d been a snowstorm—but the Palm was still crowded. The head-waiter started hassling us a bit when they didn’t show up. I remember looking at my watch and realizing they were already half an hour late. Lucinda and I were very nervous.”

  “So you looked at your watch around ten o’clock?”

  “That has to be about right. Then they both arrived, separately, as I said, and we started eating.”

  “How did Rawson strike you?”

  “As you might have guessed, I didn’t like him. He seemed very tired and complained about how hard he’d been working. But after a few drinks he thought he was the life of the party and became quite obnoxious—all hands, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “After dinner we went over to Mars, where he got even more squished. He was like an overgrown boy, having his first fling after school is over. If it hadn’t been for Lucinda, I would have left him and gone home.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “No, we went back to Skip’s apartment. Rawson was still pawing around like a cat in heat but fortunately he passed out. A most obnoxious man.”

  “Did he say anything about the deal he was working on?”

  “I don’t think so, really. I did gather that Skip was involved because he was kidding Rawson about some bird who’d given him a hard time.”

  “Do you remember what was said?”

  “Rawson said he was glad he wouldn’t have to see her again after the next day. I remember because he drank a toast to that. Two, in fact.”

  “I see.”

  “Is Rawson in some sort of trouble?”

  “I’m not sure. All I can say is that the bird, as you called her, was murdered sometime that evening.”

  “Jesus!” Melody exclaimed, shivering.

  Frost described Merriman’s death, which Melody had read about in the tabloids.

  “Do you th
ink Rawson killed her?” she asked.

  “It’s a possibility. What do you think? You’ve met him, I haven’t.”

  “That man is capable of anything, so long as it’s disgusting,” Melody said, quietly. She shivered again, and Frost noticed this.

  “I’m afraid, Ms. Teabury, that the police may be questioning you about your night on the town with Rawson. I suggest that you be frank with them, as you appear to have been with me.”

  “Should I be frightened?”

  Frost considered the question and finally answered, “Perhaps.” “I suggest that you and your friend, Lucinda, be on your guard. And let me give you this.” Reuben took a sheet of paper from his pocket notebook and wrote down Dave Petito’s name and phone number, as well as his own.

  “Here’s the name of the detective in charge of the case,” Frost explained. “He’s a good fellow and if Rawson threatens you, or you feel in any danger at all, give him a call. Okay? My number’s there, too, if you need it.”

  Melody took the paper, studied it and put it in her purse.

  “Ms. Teabury, I think you’ve given me the information I wanted, so I’m going to beg off from dinner. How do I settle up with you?”

  “Give me your credit card,” Melody said. Frost did so and, to his dismay, she pulled an impressing machine out of her capacious purse.

  “I usually do this in the taxi … or in private,” she said, apologizing. She was so adept in preparing the credit card chit that the machine had disappeared back into her purse before others had seen it. She pushed the chit across the table toward Reuben.

  “I believe the quoted rate for this evening was one thousand dollars, plus tip,” Reuben said.

  “Forget the tip. The thousand is plenty, all things considered,” Teabury replied.

  Frost did not argue, but filled in the chit and signed it, wondering if “Sugar and Spice” would appear on his next American Express bill or if the outfit used a more discreet name for billing. The whole transaction was simpler, if more expensive, than charging a pair of socks at Bloomingdale’s.

  He passed the chit back to Ms. Teabury, who exchanged it for a business card with her name and phone number, but no address. “This is in case you want to reach me. Or if there’s ever anything else I can do for you.” She grabbed up her coat and shook hands with Reuben before hurrying toward the door. “You’re very sweet, you know,” she said as she departed.

  Once she had left, Reuben slowly finished his martini, satisfied that he had kept the door open on Harvey Rawson, but wondering what the Chase & Ward accounting department would say about his escapade. Then he prepared to slope home, to confess all to Cynthia. And to call Bautista.

  CHAPTER

  20

  A Victory and a Visitor

  Tuesday morning at Chase & Ward, an excited Charlie Parkes burst in on Reuben in midmorning, bearing a message from Brian Heyworth in Tokyo. After two tough meetings with the bankers at Machikin, they had agreed to extend the On-Line loan and to withdraw their notice of acceleration.

  As expected, the Japanese had exacted a price for their acquiescence—an increase of a full percentage point in the interest rate and an undertaking to negotiate a new set of covenants and financial tests binding on the combined Applications/On-Line enterprise. The Wylie brothers, in turn, had agreed to pick up out of their own pockets the increased interest cost for the first four of the eight years the loan still had to run. Lovett, not wishing to press his new merger partners too far, had accepted the Wylies’ compromise.

  “Well, Charlie, if we can just find Juliana Merriman’s killer, we can close the book on this whole damned affair,” Frost said.

  “The ball’s in your court, Reuben,” Parkes replied.

  Later the same day, Frost was paid an unusual visit in his temporary office. His caller was Dennis Mackey, a legendary figure at Chase & Ward. Mackey, a rheumy, seedily dressed and overweight Irishman, was the most senior of the firm’s proofreaders. When not on one of his drinking binges, which seemed to occur without warning every few weeks, he was able to proofread with amazing speed, no matter how complex the document being vetted or how messy and incomprehensible the master copy used to check it.

  And Mackey was more than a mere proofreader. Drawing on the rules of grammar, punctuation and composition drilled into him years earlier by the Jesuits in his parochial school, he was a first-rate copy editor. His suggestions, always penciled in green to distinguish them from his proofreader’s markings, had improved many a document prepared by the firm’s young (and some not so young) lawyers. As infelicity, not to mention near illiteracy, had increased among the supposedly educated products of a television age, his discreet green markings had become even more valued. Which meant that Mackey’s spectacular lapses were overlooked and the specter of his messy, Falstaffian frame was tolerated in the otherwise decorous confines of Chase & Ward.

  It was almost three o’clock when Mackey’s bulk literally darkened Reuben’s door.

  “Could I see you for a minute, Mr. Frost?” he asked, as he entered the room, trailing cigarette ashes on the rug.

  “Of course, Dennis. Come in,” Frost replied, searching around for an ashtray. He found one on an empty bookcase and placed it on the desk. Mackey sat down heavily. His ruddy face was flushed and the hand with the cigarette was shaking.

  “It’s been a long time, Dennis,” Frost said, sitting down himself. “But then I don’t have much output that needs your fine touch these days. What can I do for you?”

  Mackey did not answer directly. “I see Mr. Richardson is in Europe,” he said.

  “I believe that’s correct,” Frost replied. “Let’s see.” He picked up his copy of the list circulated each morning at Chase & Ward showing the names of lawyers away from the City. “Yes, he’s in Chamonix, France, until next Sunday. He’s a skier, you know.”

  “Oh, yes,” Mackey said, laughing softly. “Even if it puts him on crutches.”

  “Why did you ask about Mr. Richardson?” Frost inquired.

  Again Mackey did not answer directly. “Mr. Frost, I’ve known you for over thirty-five years now. You were an honorable man when you ran this firm, and I’ve no reason to think you’ve changed any in the years since.” Mackey paused, and Frost waited, too. “The word around the office is that you’re working with the authorities on Miss Merriman’s case.”

  “I’m doing what I can.”

  “I read a lot of detective stories, which probably makes me too suspicious, makes me imagine things. But I know from my reading that sometimes an isolated fact, an isolated incident, can sometimes be important.”

  “That’s true,” Frost said, more and more curious as to what his eccentric visitor was leading up to.

  “I may have such a fact, but it is so remote, so tenuous—so gossipy, if you will—that I hesitate to pass it on to you.” Mackey nervously lit a new cigarette as he spoke.

  “Dennis, what exactly is it you have to tell me?” Frost asked, gently but firmly.

  “You remember the Christmas party last year?”

  “You mean last month?”

  “Yes. It was on a Wednesday, the twenty-first. I looked up the date. Down in the cafeteria.”

  “I know. I was there,” Frost said, thinking that it was the last time he had seen Juliana Merriman alive.

  “As usual, the party started at the end of the workday, at five-thirty. I didn’t go. I never do. I’m not much on parties. I can do my drinking at home.”

  Frost refrained from comment.

  “Anyway, since everybody was off to the party, I left a little early and went to the movies at the Cineplex next door, the one in the middle of the block between here and the apartment houses.”

  “I know it.”

  “I came out about eight-thirty,” Mackey continued, “and was headed for the bus stop on Eighth Avenue—I live up by Lincoln Center—when I saw Miss Merriman coming down the street, headed toward those apartments, where she lives. Lived.” Mackey hesitated, then
blurted out, “She was with Mr. Richardson.”

  “And?”

  “They went into the apartment house together.”

  “I see. Perhaps he was seeing her home. They don’t call this place Fort Bliss for nothing.”

  “He went up in the elevator with her.”

  “You saw that?”

  “I’m ashamed to say I did. I was being a silly old Nosy Parker and followed behind and watched.”

  “The lobby’s all glass, as I recall,” Frost said.

  “Yes, it was easy to see them. But I’m sorry I was spying. It was none of my business to do that. Now I’m being punished.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, I peeped around and learned something I probably shouldn’t have. And now, with Miss Merriman dead, murdered, I’m frightened. I’d hate to think that curiosity, curiosity …”

  “Killed the cat?”

  “Yes.”

  “In other words, you must think you’ve got sensitive information.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know. Miss Merriman was murdered almost two weeks ago, and no one’s been arrested yet.”

  “Are you saying you think Mr. Richardson killed her?”

  “No! No! I have no basis for saying anything terrible like that. Except …”

  “Let’s put it bluntly, Dennis. You think that Ms. Merriman and Mr. Richardson were having an affair and that he killed her in a lover’s quarrel.”

  Mackey put up his hands as if to stop Frost’s words and vigorously shook his head from side to side.

  “Have you told anyone else about this?” Frost asked.

  “No one.”

  “Good. Let’s keep it that way, at least for now. But tell me this, did the two of them appear, ah, intimate? Were they holding hands, for example?”

  “Nothing like that. They seemed to be talking very seriously.”

  “Quarreling?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Dennis, I’m grateful to you for coming around. Whether you’ve given me useful information, I can’t tell. But useful or not, it’s safe with me.”

  “Mr. Frost, thank you.” Despite his size, Mackey rose quickly and left the room before saying anything more.