Murder for Lunch Page 13

  “And that was enough to sway the vote against Griffith,” Bannard added. “Maybe you should put him down, Keith.”

  “With an asterisk?”

  “What do you mean?” Bannard asked.

  “Remember, an asterisk means reason to think the person could have had access to poison,” Merritt answered.

  “No reason for an asterisk as far as I know,” Bannard said.

  “Aren’t we being a bit hasty?” Coxe asked. “Sure, Donovan spoke out against Griffith—twice, in fact. But our partnership election meetings are secret. Nobody knows what goes on—”

  “Oh, Fred, how naive can you be?” Tyson broke in. “Sure our meetings are secret. So are the meetings to select a pope, but eventually the world knows what politicking went on among the cardinals. Besides, Graham Donovan was such an open person that he himself probably told Griffith what he had done.”

  “Even if he hadn’t,” Merritt said, “Griffith has to have known that someone was against him, and it shouldn’t have been too hard to figure out that Graham was the one.”

  “Who does he work for now?” Tyson asked.

  “Austin Culin,” Bannard said.

  “Was he ever told he would not be a partner?” Merritt asked.

  “No, he wasn’t,” Bannard said. ‘You remember we decided he should have another chance because of the divided opinion about him. Culin is supposed to be giving him really close scrutiny this year. But he has to have known that things aren’t going too well, since his law school classmate, Artie Dawes, became a partner this year.”

  “And you’re right, George, he must have known what Graham felt about him. So, knowing he realistically only had one more shot at becoming a partner, perhaps he thought with Graham out of the way …” Merritt’s voice trailed off; he was appalled at his own logic.

  “You’re much too suspicious, Keith, but put him down,” Bannard said.

  Merritt did so, as Tyson asked the group if they shouldn’t have another drink. “I know we’re going over our limit, but this is a special occasion of sorts.”

  “Hell, why not,” Bannard said, signaling Arturo.

  “I’m going to switch to white wine,” Bannard said. “If I keep on with gin, I’ll be putting everyone I know on Keith’s list.”

  “Which isn’t getting much longer,” Merritt noted. “Who else? Who else joins the elect?”

  “What about Donovan’s son?” Tyson asked.

  “Bruce. Yes, I suppose he could be a suspect. God knows he seems to have hated his father enough,” Bannard said. “But how could he have gotten into the office?”

  “I should think that would have been pretty easy,” Tyson said. “He must have known his way around there pretty well from times past; surely he used to come and see his father when they were on better terms. And you know as well as I do that Dorothea Cowden isn’t efficient enough to log in everybody that comes in here, even though it’s her job to do so.”

  “All right, put him down,” Bannard directed. “Without an asterisk, right?” The others nodded.

  “Anyone else? Or are we down to the last group we haven’t considered?” Merritt asked.

  “Which is?” Coxe asked back.

  “Ourselves, dear Fred, ourselves. Which one of us, which of our brethren here at Chase & Ward might have killed Graham?”

  “I suppose there is the obvious,” Bannard said with a sigh.

  “You mean Roger Singer?” Merritt asked. “I’ll put him down.”

  “Let’s remember that this is all hypothetical,” Bannard said. “But having said that, I think you’d better add an asterisk, Keith.”

  “Why?” Coxe asked, a puzzled look on his face.

  “CIA, Fred,” Bannard replied. “It never would have occurred to me, but Officer Bautista pointed out that Roger may well be familiar with poisons—and murder—from his CIA days.”

  “Good God, George, I never thought of that,” Coxe said.

  “Okay, who else?” Merritt asked. Then, when there was silence and no more nominees emerged, Merritt, smiling, asked, “What about me?”

  “Oh, Keith, I don’t think so,” Bannard said. “You couldn’t hurt a fly—I don’t think.”

  In some odd way, Merritt seemed relieved at this reassurance. “So are we through with the list?” he asked.

  Again there was silence, which was finally interrupted by Fred Coxe, now on his fourth martini.

  “What the hell, Keith, if we really want to play your game, don’t you think we should add Arthur’s name?”

  “What the hell did you say?” Tyson shouted back, his face twisted in fury. “What the hell did you say, you son of a bitch?”

  Coxe, who had been grinning at his own drunken jest, abruptly stopped when he saw—as even a drunk could see—Tyson’s rage.

  “Only a joke, Arthur,” Coxe said lamely. “Don’t get excited.”

  “Well, I am excited, you miserable little souse. How dare you insinuate such a thing!”

  “Arthur, Arthur. Forget it,” Merritt interjected nervously.

  “Keith, you stay out of this,” Tyson barked. “I goddam well want to know what’s on Fred’s pickled brain.” He started to lunge toward Coxe, but Bannard restrained him.

  Coxe was breathing heavily, a look of great hurt on his face. Then he spoke, slowly and deliberately. “Okay, Arthur. What I said was a joke. But let’s face it, everybody knows you want George’s job when he retires. And the biggest obstacle standing in your way was Graham Donovan.”

  Tyson stood up and addressed the group. “I’m not going to stay here and put up with this crap. If the rest of you want to listen to this silly little drunk, go ahead. Be my guest. But I don’t. Goodnight, gentlemen.”

  Tyson was out of the room before his stunned colleagues could respond.

  “George, should we go and bring him back?” Merritt asked.

  “No. I think enough damage has been done for one day. Let him go,” Bannard answered. “And as for you, Fred, whatever possessed you to bait Arthur like that?”

  “I’m sorry, George. But it does us all good to see the old brute jock in Arthur occasionally.”

  The remaining group continued to drink in silence. Merritt sat with his pen poised over his handwritten list. “Shall we review the bidding?” he asked. “Here’s the list,” he said, turning it around for all to see:

  Grace Appleby*

  Perry Griffith

  Bruce Donovan

  Roger Singer*

  Coxe and Bannard stared at the list of names.

  “And what about Arthur? Should we add his name?” Merritt asked.

  “Yes, Keith, put it down,” Bannard said after a lengthy pause. “And on that note, let’s all go home.”

  A SIMPLIFICATION AND A COMPLICATION

  13

  Bannard was both disturbed and depressed as he returned to the Chase & Ward offices to pick up his briefcase. A new stack of papers had arrived that afternoon from Bernard Sussman’s army of MBAs in Chicago and had to be reviewed that evening, even though Bannard’s thoughts were of his murdered partner and the disarray within his Executive Committee—disarray he saw spreading to the firm as a whole if Donovan’s homicide was not solved promptly.

  As he went down the hall, he was surprised to see a light still on in Reuben Frost’s office. It was after seven o’clock and Frost, however active he remained in the firm’s practice, was rarely around after five. Bannard poked his head inside Frost’s office. Frost was sitting at his desk with a voluminous typewritten document and an open Securities Law handbook in front of him.

  “Reuben, what the hell are you doing here at this hour?” Bannard asked.

  “Oh, just catching up,” Frost answered. “Austin Culin asked me to look over a draft of a revised Frontier Utilities mortgage that young Perry Griffith got up.”

  “Why?”

  Frost ignored the implication of Bannard’s question—why was a gone-to-pasture retired partner being asked to do active work?

  “
I guess, Reuben, because I am thought to possess some drafting ability,” Frost replied evenly, concealing his real reason for staying late—to talk to the night maintenance crew about Graham Donovan’s water carafe. “The mortgage is one of Charlie Chase’s dinosaurs, so archaic it should have been laid to rest long ago. Run-on sentences, endless subclauses, unwieldy cross-references—all the curses of nineteenth-century scrivening. But the damn thing’s open-ended, so Frontier still issues bonds under it. But now they want to sell bonds to the public, so they decided it was time to do a little modernizing.”

  “How is Griffith’s draft?”

  “Not bad, but it’s discouraging, George. To go public, as you know, the mortgage has to be qualified under the Trust Indenture Act.” Frost took a small delight in belaboring what he knew was obvious to Bannard, giving him a small dollop of his own medicine.

  “Yes, of course,” Bannard said, taking the chair in front of Frost’s desk.

  “How long has Griffith been here? Seven years?” Frost asked.

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, he’s screwed up the Trust Indenture Act provisions that have to be in a public mortgage. Wouldn’t you think he could get that straight?”

  “Of course. But times are changing, Reuben. Getting the Trust Indenture provisions into a mortgage is strictly a mechanical job, copying out what the Act requires word-for-word. That’s now done by paralegals and proofreaders.”

  “I know, George, but isn’t somebody ultimately responsible for seeing that it’s done right?”

  “Sure. The partner in charge.”

  “How about Mr. Griffith? How much does he make?”

  “I suppose around eighty thousand.”

  “So he’s too high-priced to bother about such petty details?”

  Bannard sighed. “I know what you’re saying, Reuben. But you’re bucking the trend of the times. Word processors, paralegals, Xeroxing. They’re all wonderful—and too often used as substitutes for thought.”

  “In my younger days, when I was making about five percent of what Mr. Griffith makes, I would probably have been fired if I had done what he did.”

  “Everything’s changing, Reuben. And not for the better either. Look at that diffident cop we talked to today.”

  “I know. I do think you were a bit harsh with him, though. He was cautious, sure, but he seemed to be thorough and to know what he’s doing. I’m sure hell swing into action when he’s satisfied that a murder actually occurred.”

  “I hope so. We’ve got to get this thing solved or this whole firm will burst apart,” Bannard said. He then recounted the events that had occurred over cocktails, the making up of Keith Merritt’s list and Arthur Tyson’s tirade.

  “Tyson really does have a vile temper, doesn’t he?” Frost said. “I’ve often wondered why he hasn’t gotten into more trouble because of it.”

  “I know. But if suspicions get more wild, everybody will be at each other’s throats, not just Fred Coxe and Tyson.”

  “Agreed. Let me know if nothing happens on the police front tomorrow and I’ll give our friend Bautista a call. After your outburst, it might be better if I called him.”

  “Sure, Reuben. Whatever you think. I guess I was a little rough with the fellow.”

  “Yes.”

  “George, you mentioned Keith Merritt’s list. Who is on it?”

  Bannard picked up a pad of paper and reconstructed it, asterisks and all.

  “What do the asterisks mean?” Frost asked.

  Bannard explained what they stood for.

  “Well, all I can say is that it’s interesting.”

  “I guess. Well, goodnight, Reuben. Don’t work too late.”

  “I’ll try.”

  With Bannard gone, Frost set about the business he had stayed late to accomplish. He was almost certain that the partners’ water carafes were filled up every night; he recalled from times past that one of the maintenance staff would come around late each night, tug at his forelock, and take away the water carafe to be refilled. But he had to confirm this.

  Frost had tried the water in his own carafe—one of the perquisites of partnership that Bannard had not taken away (presumably because it had not occurred to him, Frost thought bitterly). It had seemed fresh, but his question about the refilling procedure still needed to be confirmed.

  After searching the halls, he found the superintendent of the night custodial crew assigned to the office. She was an amiable woman, with whom Frost had developed a nodding acquaintance over the years. The acquaintanceship was indeed “nodding,” since Frost did not know her name and had never before spoken to her long enough to determine that she spoke in a heavy Eastern European accent and was, in fact, barely comprehensible in English.

  Communicating with the woman about Donovan’s water carafe was not easy. She first thought Frost wanted a drink of water and acted properly puzzled as to why he was making the request of her. Then she thought he wanted the water carafe in his own office refilled, whereupon she promised to send the boy in charge of such matters around to him.

  Frost decided not to undo the second misunderstanding, having all but exhausted his rudimentary knowledge of German, which had seemed to help in establishing contact. Instead he bided his time at his desk with Griffith’s draft of mortgage until a young Hispanic entered his office, excused himself, and announced that he would refill Frost’s water carafe right away. Unlike Detective Bautista, who was all cool and dignity, this boy was charged with nervous energy and made his explanation and his move for the water receptacle into a rhythmic dance; he almost appeared to be responding to the beat of an invisible Sony Walkman.

  “No, don’t take that,” Frost said. “Sit down for a minute. I want to talk to you.”

  The youth was confused by this—in his line of work one did not often sit down and confer with the clientele—and more than a little nervous. Frost was silent for a moment as he surveyed the youth opposite him—very slight, probably in his early twenties, and rather attractive, but with his looks marred by some lingering adolescent acne.

  “I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions,” Frost said, in a manner designed to be soothing but which did not seem to have that effect. The boy visibly squirmed in his chair and a look of wariness came into his eyes.

  “Yeah? Okay. Shoot.”

  “You work here every night?”

  “Yeah. Except Saturdays and Sundays.”

  “But Mondays? You do work Mondays?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And every night you refill the water carafes in the partners’ offices?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” the youth answered. “Right after I finish vacuuming the halls and the offices, I go around and put fresh water in the … what did you call them?”

  “Carafes.”

  “Carafes. It’s the last thing I do before I go home.”

  “And what time is that?” Frost asked.

  “About eleven, eleven-thirty,” the youth replied. He was properly respectful in answering Frost’s questions, but his attitude betrayed something of what he was feeling—namely, why was this old guy asking him these crazy questions? Was he trying to flirt? Why did he want to know when he went home? Was he going to ask him out? He’d been through this pickup routine before, didn’t like it, and was prepared to bash Frost’s head in if that was what he had in mind.

  Frost was oblivious to the thoughts he was generating, though he did realize the questions he was posing probably seemed inane to one who did not know the reason for them.

  “Were you working here on Monday this week?” Frost pressed.

  The boy did not respond immediately, then answered quickly, “Yes. Yes, I was.”

  “And did you refill all the water carafes Monday night?”

  “Sure. I tell you, I always do that before I go home. So if I worked Monday, I did that,” the boy answered.

  “Did you know Mr. Donovan?”

  “Donovan? No, man, I don’t think so.”
<
br />   “He had the big corner office over on the other side of the building.”

  “Oh, yeah. Is he the old guy that died the other day?” Frost nodded, wincing slightly at the description of his dead and younger colleague as an “old guy.” “I didn’t know him, but I know which one is his office, yeah.”

  “And last Monday you refilled his water carafe?” Frost asked.

  “Look, man, what’s your game? I told you I worked Monday night and I did my job. I always do my job. So, sure, I refilled his water … thing.” The boy was agitated and seemed to take offense at the suggestion that he might not have done his job; he was also defensive about his wrestling with the new word carafe.

  “No offense, young man. I’m sure you did your job. I was just checking.”

  “Is that all? Can I split now?”

  “Yes.”

  The youth got up and headed for the door. As he was about to leave Frost asked, “Oh, one more thing. What is your name?”

  “Carlos.”

  “Carlos what?”

  “Carlos Faghater,” the boy shot back just before slamming the door.

  Frost was taken aback by the reply, then laughed to himself when he realized the false impression he had created. Given the circle of friends he shared with his wife, homosexuals were hardly unknown to him, so he was doubly amused at the inadvertent reaction he had stirred up in young Carlos. All in all, the Hispanics he had encountered had certainly added salsa to his day.

  Frost was just switching the light off in his office when Keith Merritt called to him from down the hall. “Reuben, wait a minute,” he said. “I’ve got to talk to you.”

  As he came nearer to Frost, it was evident that he was in some distress. He seemed to be sweating slightly, though it was a cool evening.

  “Reuben, let’s have a drink,” Merritt said as he reached Frost’s side.

  Frost was surprised by the request. He of course knew Merritt well, indeed had worked with him since the latter’s earliest days at Chase & Ward. But he had never, as far as he could now recall, had an after-hours drink with Merritt.

  “I was just going home, in fact. There’ll be some time before Cynthia has dinner ready, so why don’t you come with me?” Frost said.