Murder for Lunch Read online

  When Bautista had stated his business, she called George Bannard and was surprised when he came out personally to greet the visitor. The encounter struck her as funny. Both were tall men, but there was at least one contrast that amused Miss Cowden—Bannard had an off-the-rack body in an impeccably tailored and well-fitting suit, while Bautista clearly had a custom-made body (the product, she was certain, of careful workouts at a gym) in an off-the-rack suit that simply did not flow with his muscular contours.

  Bannard, too, was surprised. When he had called the Police Department less than an hour before, he had assumed that he would be delivered into the hands of an Irish—or possibly Italian—cop. He had not expected someone this young—he correctly guessed that Bautista was about thirty—nor had he expected a Puerto Rican. And one of his own height at that.

  “Come along, Officer, let’s go to my office,” Bannard said, after being introduced by the receptionist. Whereupon he led the policeman down the hall, leaving Miss Cowden to wonder what a police detective—and a damned handsome one at that—was doing seeing the firm’s Executive Partner.

  Bannard asked Bautista to be seated once they were in Bannard’s office with the door shut. Bautista sat down in the burnished antique chair opposite Bannard’s desk.

  “Thanks very much for coming so promptly,” Bannard told his guest. “Needless to say we’re pretty upset around here just now, so I’m glad to enlist your support.”

  “Not at all, sir,” Bautista replied, as he pulled a notebook and ballpoint pen from his pocket. “I gather from what you said on the phone that you suspect your partner Graham Donovan was murdered?”

  “That, unfortunately, is the case. But before I go further, I’d like to ask my partner—colleague—Reuben Frost to join us. Mr. Frost used to have my job at this firm as Executive Partner, and he’s much more familiar with recent developments than I am. Do you mind?”

  “Whatever you say, Mr. Bannard. Anything that will clarify the situation is all right with me.”

  “Good,” Bannard answered. He buzzed Mrs. Davis and asked her to tell Frost to join them. Mrs. Davis buzzed him back almost at once. “Mr. Frost will be here right away,” Bannard explained. “His office is just down the hall.”

  “Fine,” Bautista replied.

  An awkward silence followed as they waited. How did one make small talk with a homicide detective, Bannard wondered.

  “Mr. Bautista, how long have you been on the police force?” Bannard finally asked. As he did so, he realized that his question was not unlike the question clients, meeting him for the first time, had asked of him in younger days: “Mr. Bannard, how long have you been at Chase & Ward?” He had resented the question then, and realized that Detective Bautista might resent a similar question now.

  “Eight years, sir,” Bautista answered, with no visible sign of resentment.

  “And are you from New York?” Bannard asked, realizing too late that he was implying that Bautista was some sort of parvenu immigrant.

  “More or less, sir,” Bautista replied evenly. “I was born in Puerto Rico, but came here with my mother and dad when I was three. I went to Stuyvesant High School and John Jay College before joining the department.”

  “I see. And murder is your specialty?”

  “Yes, I guess you could say that. I’ve been on the homicide squad for two years.”

  “Interesting,” Bannard responded noncommittally, while thinking that the man across the desk was probably all right, having graduated from a good high school (Bannard thought it was good, on the basis of his dim knowledge of such things) and the city college where (Bannard was almost sure) police officers were trained.

  Bannard ran out of conversation at this point and stared impatiently at his door, waiting for Frost to enter.

  During the ensuing silence Bautista looked about him and marveled at the contrast Bannard’s quarters presented to the usual sort of lawyer’s office visited by homicide detectives—dimly lit, dirty-walled warrens with fly-specked windows looking out on air vents. Not aseptically clean offices with breathtaking views of the city’s harbor. Bautista reflected too that this was not exactly the type of office he could aspire to once he completed his night law course, now in progress, at St. John’s Law School.

  Then Reuben Frost entered Bannard’s office. Bannard did not stand up but Bautista did.

  “Mr. Bautista—do I have that right?” Bannard asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mr. Bautista, this is Reuben Frost. Mr. Frost is a former partner in this firm, was formerly the head of this firm, and has been involved with this whole Donovan matter.”

  The two men shook hands, each one sizing up the other.

  “Glad to meet you, Mr. Bautista,” Frost said. “You’re a homicide detective, I assume?”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “Good. I’m awfully afraid that’s what we need here right now.”

  “How do you wish to proceed?” Bannard asked.

  “Well, sir, I’d begin from the beginning, or what you think is the beginning,” Bautista said. “But before you begin, you gentlemen should understand that the autopsy on Tuesday showed that your Mr. Donovan died of a cardiac arrest. I was at the precinct when the call came in about Donovan and I caught the case. I was upstairs at that club with your partner …”

  “Arthur Tyson,” Bannard prompted.

  “Tyson, and was actually present at the autopsy. Cardiac arrest is what the M.E. said. There was no mention of homicide.”

  “Tell me, Officer, in your experience has the medical examiner always been right?” Bannard asked. Both he and Frost waited intently for the reply.

  “Well … the fact is I’d rather not answer that one. Why don’t you just go ahead with your theory,” Bautista said.

  “I’m afraid it’s more than a theory,” Bannard replied. Then, at Bannard’s prompting, Frost again told the tale of the poisoned carafe, ending with Doyle’s report that morning.

  “So you see,” Bannard interjected when he thought Frost had finished (or more precisely, when Bannard thought he should be finished), “my partner Graham Donovan didn’t have a heart attack but was murdered. Poisoned.”

  “Mr. Bannard, it sounds plausible to me,” Bautista replied. “But just a few questions, sir, if you don’t mind.”

  “Fire away.”

  “Mr. Frost, what was the name of the private detective you called?”

  “Ross Doyle. D-O-Y-L-E. Office at 24 Water Street.”

  Bautista wrote this information down. “And any particular reason why you gentlemen didn’t call the police earlier?”

  Both men fumbled for an answer, with Frost finally replying. “Yes. We simply didn’t want to get the police involved—or for that matter to bother the police—until we were absolutely sure of what happened.”

  “I see. Mr. Doyle said death was due to digitalis poisoning?”

  “No, he said the water carafe in Donovan’s office contained digitalis, or some derivative or concentrate of it,” Frost said, with a lawyer’s precision. “We inferred the cause of death from that.”

  “Mr. Donovan was, let’s see, fifty-seven, is that right?” Bautista asked, consulting his notebook.

  “That’s right. Fifty-seven,” Bannard said.

  “And when is the funeral?”

  “It was this morning.”

  “And what was to happen to the body?”

  “It was to be cremated. But I’ve already called the funeral home to try and stop that,” Frost explained.

  “Good. We’ll probably be too late, but it’s worth a try,” Bautista said. “I asked Mr. Tyson this, but let me ask you again. Was there any family?”

  “Only a son, and he and his father weren’t even speaking. His wife died a couple of years ago,” Frost said.

  “He lived alone?”

  Frost hesitated and looked across at Bannard. Did Donovan live alone? He supposed so. Certainly Anne Singer did not live with him—he was almost certain—but c
onsidering the possibility caused him to pause before saying yes.

  “You are sure of that?” Bautista asked, noting the hesitation.

  “Yes, yes. Quite sure.” This interrogation was not going to be easy, Frost thought, and judging by the stern look on Bannard’s face he seemed to agree.

  “What about suspects, gentlemen? Any idea who might have done it?”

  “None whatsoever,” Bannard replied quickly.

  “I don’t,” Frost echoed.

  “None at all? Your partner was poisoned in the same office as you and you don’t suspect anybody?”

  “To be frank with you, Mr. Bautista, the last few days have been so upsetting that I don’t think anyone around here has really thought about suspects,” Bannard said.

  “No one? You haven’t thought of anyone who might have killed your partner?”

  “Well, there is one person. But I find it absolutely impossible to believe she is guilty,” Bannard said.

  “She?”

  “Graham Donovan’s secretary, Grace Appleby.”

  “Why do you suspect her?”

  Bannard told the detective what he knew about Miss Appleby’s stock market activity, adding his own personal judgment that she was not acting alone and describing his instructions to Doyle to have her followed.

  “I think you did right,” Bautista said. “She sounds like a prime suspect to me. Motive? Maybe Donovan had caught on to what she was up to. Access to the victim? Couldn’t be easier.”

  “But where would she get the poison?”

  “Sir, you’d be surprised how easy that is. Not as easy as dope, probably, but getting poison is easy, easy, easy.”

  “I still say I can’t believe she committed murder,” Bannard said.

  “And I suppose you didn’t believe she was playing around in the stock market either?”

  “You have me there,” Bannard answered.

  “But if it isn’t Miss Appleby, who else might it be? Any of your partners? Did any of them have any reason to kill Donovan?”

  Bannard was not going to be caught hesitating again. Distasteful as it was, he told Bautista about Anne Singer.

  “And I’m sure you’re going to tell me that there’s no way you’d believe that this woman’s husband would commit murder,” Bautista said.

  “Damn right,” Bannard answered with some heat. “I’ve worked with Roger Singer on an almost daily basis since he returned ten years ago from his tour of duty with the CIA—”

  “CIA? What was he doing in the CIA?”

  “I don’t know; none of us does. In the late sixties—isn’t that right, Reuben?” Bannard asked.

  “I think that’s about right, yes.”

  “About fifteen years ago, Roger Singer went to work for the CIA. He had been working on a number of South American matters for us and he told us that he was going to be involved in some long-range planning and study projects for the agency. He took a leave of absence and was gone for about fourteen months. He’s been a fulltime partner since then, though everybody suspects he’s kept his hand in at the agency. He often goes off for a week or two on mysterious trips that we never learn anything about.”

  “It sounds to me like he’s on the black side of the CIA, the undercover part.”

  “I’ve never thought of it that way, but I expect you’re right,” Bannard replied.

  “The part where murder and poisoning are sometimes real important.”

  “Are you suggesting that Roger—,” Bannard started to ask, again with some anger.

  “I’m suggesting nothing. I just point out that your Mr. Singer had a motive to kill your Mr. Donovan and that he’s probably encountered murder before.”

  “I refuse to believe it.”

  “Mr. Bannard, I’m not asking you to believe anything. I’m only trying to figure out who the suspects may be. You mentioned a son. What about him?”

  “I don’t know him, though I’ve met him several times over the years,” Bannard said. “He’s an archaeology professor at NYU and would appear to be a complete shit, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

  “I’ve heard the word.”

  “I was the one who told him his father died,” Bannard continued. “For my trouble, I had to listen to a not very coherent story of how cruel Graham Donovan had been to his wife before she died and how bitter the son was about it. He said he had no intention of coming to the funeral—and he didn’t—and that there was ‘nothing in it for him,’ meaning, presumably, that his father didn’t leave him anything. Which was in fact the case.”

  “You’ve seen the will?”

  “I have,” Frost said. “Everything is left to Columbia University—except for twenty-five thousand dollars to Miss Appleby.”

  “What’s the son’s name?”

  “Bruce. His number is in the book.”

  “Fine. Now, is there anyone else who might be a suspect? Any other partner?” Bautista emphasized the other, but Bannard let it pass.

  “Or retired partner?” Bautista pressed, looking squarely at Frost.

  “Absolutely not,” Bannard said, this time without hesitation. Frost, meanwhile, could barely suppress a smile at the idea of one of his retired colleagues being a murderer.

  “How about the young lawyers? Associates, don’t you call them? Any of them have a reason to do in the deceased?”

  Again Bannard was nonplussed. The thought that one of Chase & Ward’s “best and brightest” might commit murder had simply not occurred to him. But now that it was suggested, it certainly was well known that Donovan had been hard, harder than most, on his associates. He had demanded a great deal of the young lawyers who worked for him and, as he had more than once admitted to Bannard, he was not always as appreciative as he might have been of their work. Nor had he been interested over the years in being a kingmaker, sponsoring the candidacies of associates for partnership. Quite the opposite, in fact; Donovan’s critical judgment had sunk more than one otherwise promising candidacy. But had any of this driven an associate to murder? It was a possibility, though to Bannard’s mind a remote one.

  “I’m hesitating because I would have thought the possibility ridiculous,” Bannard said, taking the hesitation bull by the horns, “but I certainly can’t think of anyone remotely capable of committing a murder. We’ve got a lot of very ambitious young lawyers here, perhaps some that are even ruthlessly ambitious, but I don’t think any of them would murder to get ahead.”

  “Why do you assume that it would be murder ‘to get ahead’?”

  “Well, you got me to thinking about Donovan’s relations with the associates, which were not always the best. He did not always push the careers of the lawyers who worked for him.”

  “Anyone in particular?”

  “I would have to think about that. But as I said, I can’t believe …”

  The conversation was interrupted by a buzz from Mrs. Davis. Frank Campbell’s was on the phone to report that Donovan’s body had, in fact, been cremated. Bannard cursed quietly and relayed the information to Bautista.

  “Damn. Well, nothing we can do about it now. But getting back to what I said earlier, please, gentlemen, give some more thought—a great deal of thought, in fact—to the question of who killed your partner.”

  “Mr. Bautista, we certainly will. We want to find Graham Donovan’s murderer and are prepared to let the chips fall where they may. So how do you want to proceed? I assume you’ll want to question everyone around here that might know something?” Bannard asked.

  “Let me think about that,” Bautista said.

  “We can have anybody you want here at any time,” Bannard said, warming to the subject. “Do you want us to set up a schedule for you?”

  “Not just yet, Mr. Bannard. I want to think this one through before we go all out.”

  “You’re not doubting that a murder took place, are you, Officer?” Bannard asked.

  “No, I’m not. But I do want to talk to that medical examiner and to the laboratory people yo
ur detective hired. Just precautions, but I want to take them.”

  “Up to you, of course,” Bannard answered. “But I must say that seems like an unduly cautious approach. We’ve had a murder here and we may all be in danger. I frankly don’t think this is a time for caution.”

  “I hear what you’re saying, sir, but there are certain rules by the book that must be followed.”

  “Mr. Bautista, I perhaps have seen too many movies, but I thought when a murder occurred an investigation started,” Bannard said, in his best WASPish voice. “And I would have thought that the not inconsiderable taxes the partners of this firm pay to this city would have entitled us to police attention when we need it.”

  “I’m sorry if you disagree, Mr. Bannard, but this is my case and I will just have to handle it in my own way,” Bautista said. “Let me follow up on the things I mentioned and get back to you, but I assure you, Mr. Bannard, that the investigation has already begun,” Bautista said. Frost followed the verbal dueling between the two men with interest, realizing from Bannard’s demeanor that the detective had managed to infuriate the Executive Partner.

  “You speak of procedures, Mr. Bautista,” Bannard continued. “I would have thought the first ‘procedure’ would be to question everyone that might be able to shed some light on what happened.” There was no stopping Bannard now. “I might add that several of us, myself included, are good friends of the Mayor. And I can assure you he will hear about this if the police screw around with this investigation.”

  “Mr. Bannard, I realize you’re upset,” Bautista replied, carefully and without any show of temper. “And if you want to take this up with the Mayor, that’s your prerogative. We’re always glad to have the Mayor reminded that the Police Department does exist. But as I said before, I’m afraid I’ve got to handle this case in my own way. Okay?”

  Bautista remained calm as he finished speaking, but it was clear he expected a compliant response.