Murder Keeps A Secret Page 10

  “No, I’ll wait till Francisca gets here.”

  “You want to hear about Trenton?”

  “Of course.”

  “No surprises. I learned that Nancy Rowan is pretty bitter—not without cause, I might add. She seems to be totally unaffected by David’s murder. I did pick up one thing, though. The son, Alan, is being treated for drug addiction.” Frost related what he had been told about the boy’s drug bust and his treatment at Fair-haven Gables.

  “You’re up with us again, Reuben,” Bautista said. “We got the same information from the Nashville Police. It seems the kid was quite an operator. He got off on condition that he go to Fairhaven. Where, you should know, he failed to show up for his therapy session the afternoon before his father was taken out.”

  “Did Grace Mann say anything to you about Alan’s problem?” Frost asked.

  “No.”

  “She didn’t mention it to me, either. But according to the boy’s mother, Grace Mann is the one who got him into Fairhaven.”

  “Funny. One of the things I wanted to tell you was that we’ve learned some more about her and Giardi. I talked to the Feds again. They’ve had Giardi under surveillance for like three months. Grace Mann’s been his constant companion. Only in the daytime, of course.”

  “Anything else?” Frost asked.

  “Couple of things. We’ve had a guy going through Rowan’s personal files. Nothing unexpected that we could see. Copies of lots of correspondence between his lawyer and his wife’s over the divorce. He managed to get away with paying her a grand a month, plus half the kids’ education expenses. The rest seemed routine—correspondence about both his Congress book and the new one, old book reviews, clippings, that sort of stuff. Some bitchy letters about other professors, but nothing threatening.

  “We also got a call yesterday from the University of Tennessee. A Miss Wyecliffe from the library. She’s all hot and bothered about the Ainslee papers and wants them back right away.

  “The thing is, we don’t really have anybody that could go through them—you saw what was involved the day we went to Rowan’s office. We wouldn’t know what we were looking for, or how to find it. Except of course what we already know, that Ainslee’s engagement calendars are gone.”

  “I agree,” Frost said. “Besides, if there’s anything significant about the papers, it’s what’s missing, not what’s still there.”

  “I’m with you on that.”

  “The catalogers down there are the only ones who can figure out what’s not there, what might have been taken. That is, if anyone can figure it out. I’d get them back down there right away—put them in boxes and Federal Express them even. And have Miss Wyecliffe and her staff get to work on them.”

  “Great. We’ll do it tomorrow.”

  “I’d like to talk to this Miss Wyecliffe, by the way.”

  “Sure. I’ve got her number right here.”

  While Frost was copying the number, the downstairs bell rang. It was Francisca Ribiero, who appeared wearing purple lipstick and a bright purple dress.

  “You look like a beautiful spring iris,” Frost said, kissing her on the cheek.

  “That’s okay, isn’t it? It is April, after all.”

  “My dear, you know you can wear anything you like as far as I’m concerned. I just meant you looked especially ravishing tonight.”

  “I love you, Reuben. Why can’t you flatter me like that, L-L?” she said to Bautista, kissing him.

  “L-L?” Frost asked. “That’s a new one.”

  “Oh, just my pet name for Luis Lopez.”

  “I didn’t know Lopez was your middle name,” Frost said.

  “Most people don’t,” Bautista replied, pleased, but slightly embarrassed, at Francisca’s teasing.

  “How about a drink?” Orders taken, Frost disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Have you boys solved the case?” Francisca asked when Frost returned.

  “I’m afraid not,” Frost said. “It gets more complicated by the day.”

  “I don’t understand it. Luis—L-L—” she said, pinching Bautista on the cheek as he smiled weakly. “You told me there was good solid evidence—blood and skin under the dead man’s fingernails. All you have to do is match your samples up with the murderer’s. Right?”

  “It’s not that easy, Francisca,” Bautista said impatiently.

  “Why not? Line your suspects up and give each one a blood test. Simple.”

  “I wish it were,” Bautista said, sighing. “But there’s something called ‘due process.’ You just can’t go around taking blood samples from people unless you’ve got reasonable cause. It’s like searching your pocketbook, Francisca. I can’t do that unless I’ve got a good reason.”

  “You do it all the time!”

  “Not true! I may have borrowed a dollar once or twice, but I certainly do not make a habit of it.”

  “Luis is speaking like a lawyer now—which of course he almost is,” Frost said, referring to the detective’s pursuit of a night law school degree. Then he did not continue the thought, but sat upright in his chair and announced that something had just occured to him.

  “Some detective I am!” he said. “When I was down in Washington, that man Fortes was wearing an ascot, covering up his neck. Do you suppose …”

  “Let me make a note of it. Fortes sure gets more interesting,” Bautista said.

  “Fortes? One of us?” Francisca asked.

  “Cuban,” Bautista said.

  “A Cuban with scratches on his neck. Sounds good to me,” Francisca said. “And now that I’ve solved everything for you, let’s go to the movies. Where’s Cynthia, Reuben?”

  Frost again explained his wife’s absence.

  “Then you’ll come to the movies with us, won’t you?”

  “He’s got a date,” Bautista said.

  “Now, now. Just an old friend from fifty years ago. We’re going to have a nice, simple dinner.”

  “I think I better tell Cynthia about this,” Francisca said, playfully.

  “She knows.”

  “Tell her I’m going to call her for lunch. I want to talk to her anyway. Besides, at the rate you two are going, we may have to solve the Rowan case for you.”

  “Fat chance,” Bautista said as the three went down the stairs to Seventieth Street.

  13

  Emily

  The evening was warm, so Frost left Bautista and Francisca to walk to the Colony Club, at Sixty-third Street and Park Avenue. Emily Bryant Sherwood, resplendent in a silk dress in a bold floral print, was waiting for him.

  “You feel like walking?” he asked her. “It’s a beautiful night.”

  “Absolutely. All it has done is rain in the country, so let’s enjoy your wonderful city weather.”

  Picking up his old friend at the sedate, Georgian women’s club, and meeting her in its proper lobby, gave Frost a great sense of déjà vu as he remembered calling for her at her Wellesley dormitory, also a Georgian building, almost a half century earlier. He took her arm as he savored the memory and they strode together down Park Avenue.

  “As I told you, your call was heaven-inspired,” Emily said. “And what a treat! I haven’t been to Grenouille in years. Barton was a meat-and-potatoes man and didn’t care much for Frenchified food.”

  At the restaurant they were welcomed by a smiling Charles Masson, the co-owner, and shown at once to a banquette in the front dining room.

  “Why don’t you sit inside and I’ll face you,” Frost said. “The better to have a good look at you after all these years.”

  “Ideal.”

  “I’m going to have a daiquiri. They make them very well here, with real lime juice and not too much sugar.”

  “Heaven.”

  “It is a pretty place, isn’t it?” Reuben said, gesturing to the huge and elaborate floral displays that graced the room. “One sits a little too close together,” he added, lowering his voice so their neighbors on either side could not hear, “but it’
s damn attractive.”

  “It certainly is. Let’s drink to our everlasting good health.”

  “You beat me to it,” Frost replied, raising his stemmed glass.

  “How are you both, anyway? Cynthia’s where?”

  Frost explained his wife’s absence in Cleveland and what she was doing.

  “Does she know about us?” Emily asked playfully, touching Frost’s arm across the table.

  “I’ve made full disclosure.”

  “I wish she were here. But I can’t say I’m sorry to have you all to myself for an evening.”

  Memories flooded back to both of them as they sipped their daiquiris.

  “You look wonderful, Emily. Are you well?”

  “No complaints. I’d never pass for a Ziegfeld girl—I weigh much too much—but, yes, I’m passably healthy. You’re never sure how long you’re going to go on—I don’t buy green bananas at the store anymore—but I’m optimistic that I’ve got a few good years left. How about you?”

  “No complaints at all. Getting old and grouchy and enjoying every minute of it.”

  “Are you still practicing?”

  “Not really. I go down to my little cubbyhole now and then, but for all intents and purposes I’ve retired.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  “Of course. You don’t just erase fifty busy years from your memory.”

  “I’m interested. Barton died with his boots on, of course, and vowed he’d never retire.”

  “Most lawyers are like that.”

  “How about Cynthia?”

  “She’s busier than ever. The Foundation keeps her hopping all the time. She loves it, though, and wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  The captain interrupted their conversation to announce the day’s specials. After much deliberation, and a thorough quizzing of the captain, Emily decided on saucissons chauds as an appetizer and frogs’ legs, while Reuben selected clams Corsini and roast leg of veal.

  “How much wine do you think we can put away?” Frost asked his companion.

  “I love it, but if I drink too much it keeps me awake.”

  “I hate half-bottles, but we really do need both red and white. I’ve got it. I’ll simply have a glass of white with my clams and we’ll split a bottle of red. Unless you’d prefer white with your frogs’ legs.”

  “No, red is always fine with me.”

  Frost chose the Chateau Giscours 1979 and, decisions made, the two diners returned to conversation.

  “You know, Reuben, I’ve been thinking how odd it is, how strange that people who were once so close can disappear from one another’s lives. Look at us—you and me and Harrison—we were inseparable way back when. Then we went our own ways and didn’t see each other for almost half a century!”

  Frost did not mention the barrier tiresome Barton Sherwood had been to the continuation of their collegiate friendship.

  “You were never very active in the bar association, were you?” she went on.

  “No. I’ve always been a member, but I never got active.” Frost did not spell out his generally low opinion of organized bar activities.

  “Barton loved it. He went through that long process by which you become president of the American Bar Association, you know.”

  “I remember.”

  “I can’t say I was ever too happy with that. Traveling all around the country going to banquets, wearing silly big corsages and being nice to the ‘ladies.’ And as much as I loved Barton, I did get sick of his basic speech for those dinners. ‘The Living Law,’ it was called.”

  The very thought of listening to Barton Sherwood delivering a canned speech sent shivers up Reuben’s spine.

  “Oh, this looks wonderful!” Emily exclaimed, as her pink sauscissons and warm potato salad were served. Both started eating with gusto, Reuben savoring the garlic-parsley-white-wine sauce in which his clams were served, sopping up the extra sauce with bread.

  “Seeing you eat those clams brings back memories, Reuben. Remember the spring of what? Nineteen thirty-one? You and Harrison came up to Wellesley after you finished exams at Princeton. I got my father’s roadster and we went to Marblehead. Do you recall it? We ate nothing but lobsters and shrimps and clams for three days.

  “I don’t think I’ve thought about that weekend since, till I saw you eating just now. No, I’m wrong. There was one time when I did think about it. When that wonderful French movie came out years ago, Jules et Jim. Jules and Jim—you and Harrison. And I was of course the glamorous Jeanne Moreau, caught in the middle.”

  “A difficulty you eventually resolved by running off with Barton.”

  “But not before we’d had some pretty swell times. Remember after I’d moved to New York and you came down from law school at Harvard—I think to have an interview at Chase & Ward? We got standing room for Anything Goes—the original Anything Goes. I’ll never forget it. Nineteen thirty-five.”

  The two main courses were being served but Emily, in her enthusiasm, continued talking. “We were standing in the very back of the theater, but you could see and hear absolutely everything Ethel Merman did and sang.”

  “Yes, I recall it very well—that part of the evening anyway.”

  “You may not remember the rest. Afterward you took me to a piano bar down in the Village, I forget the name of it, and you had the piano player do all the songs from the show.”

  “And got drunk in the process.”

  “Yes, and got drunk in the process and sang most of the songs yourself.”

  “You mean like ‘You’re the top! You’re the Coliseum. You’re the top! You’re the Louvre Museum …” Reuben, memories overwhelming him, sang in a low voice, keeping time with his hands. He stopped abruptly when the couple at his right stared at him, their disapproval palpable. Chastened, he began eating, though Emily was laughing too hard to do so.

  “We had such fun, Reuben! Now it’s all sex.”

  “Let’s not forget we knew about sex, too, Emily.”

  “Oh, yes, but it wasn’t a preoccupation. There was so much else, so much to do.”

  “It was a great time, no question.”

  “We’re so lucky, we have memories. What will today’s kids have fifty years from now? Recollections of one long anatomy lesson, with a lot of noise thrown in.”

  “You’re right.”

  The two turned to quiet eating, delighting in the memories that had been brought to conscious recollection.

  Once dessert was ordered—oeufs à la neige for both—Emily again remarked her good fortune in renewing contact with Harrison Rowan and Reuben.

  Frost and Emily had quite deliberately shied away from mentioning Harrison during dinner, knowing that the conversation would slide into a discussion of David’s murder. But Reuben also knew that the topic was inevitable, so he asked how often Emily had been seeing his old friend.

  “Quite a bit. For two old people, one on Long Island and one in Virginia, we’ve done pretty well.”

  “When did this all begin?”

  “Last Christmas. You could have knocked me over with a feather when Harrison called me the first time,” Emily said. “I was so delighted, so excited, I could barely wait till we met in New York. It was just like sitting through the winter months at Wellesley waiting for one of you to call.”

  “You could have used the same feather to knock me over at the Reuff Dinner when I saw you there. I thought at the time, and still think, that Harrison deserves high marks for finding you. How is he bearing up?” Frost asked.

  “As well as could be expected, I guess. That dinner was such a triumph. Harrison was so happy. And then it all got taken away from him a day later.”

  “I know. He was devastated.”

  “He was so proud of David, who really did seem to be on the verge of great things. Not only all those prizes and the new book, but politically. He was going to become a speechwriter for Senator Edmunds, did you know that?”

  “Now that you mention it, I guess there was some hi
nting around about it that night. But are you sure?”

  “Oh, yes. Harrison told me, just bursting with excitement. The only thing …” She paused.

  “What?”

  “Well, at the party afterward—you didn’t go, did you?—the Senator and David seemed to be having a dispute. They went off into a corner and talked very seriously for a long time. It didn’t look entirely friendly to me, and hardly seemed like the way to welcome a new speechwriter.”

  “Did you have any idea what they were talking about?” Frost pressed.

  “No, no. I was some distance away. But I could hear the Senator’s voice rising and saw him shake his finger at David.”

  “How about Harrison? Would he have heard anything?”

  “I doubt it. He was on the other side of the room. And besides, he’s gotten pretty deaf, you know.”

  “Yes, that’s true. Do you want coffee, Emily?”

  “I can’t. And that decaffeinated bilge is just too terrible.”

  “A brandy perhaps?”

  “Reuben, I’d love to. But pumpkin time comes really early for me. Cinderella could stay up until midnight, but I can’t.”

  “Shall we go then?”

  “I hate to, but I must. Before we do leave, though, let me ask you about the police. When on earth are they going to find the man who killed David?”

  “They’re working on it.”

  “Are you sure? It’s been a week now.”

  “There’s a good fellow in charge. Named Bautista. I think they’ll solve the murder. It just takes time.”

  “I pray you’re right. Harrison told me you’re working with them.”

  “After a fashion. Needless to say, I’d be grateful for any insights.”

  “Gracious, Reuben. I didn’t know anything about David, or his life. I guess the only thing I can say is that Harrison was very uneasy—very uneasy—about Miss Mann’s relationship with that Lebanese restaurant owner.”

  “Italian, you mean. Giardi.”

  “Whatever. He was very apprehensive that there was going to be an explosion there. That’s the only thing I know.”

  “We—Bautista and I—have had the same concern. All I can say is we’re trying to make some sense out of what we know. Which I fear isn’t very much.”