Murder Keeps A Secret Read online

  “I went down and bought one at the newsstand in Cynthia’s building—the guy looked at me like I was crazy. Mega-Muscle, it was called.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Bautista said.

  “Shut up. So we got Marietta Ainslee’s number from directory assistance and I called. Fortes answered the phone. I said I was a reporter from Mega-Muscle, talking real Hispanic, and said we were doing an article on blood—how it relates to bodybuilding, AIDS, the whole business. Could he, Mr. Celebrity Bodybuilder, help little me out by telling me his blood type?”

  “And he did? To a woman reporter from Mega-Muscle?” Bautista asked incredulously.

  “As I say, I laid on the Spaneesh accent,” Francisca said. “With half the readers of the magazine Puerto Rican, he didn’t seem surprised. And he told me his blood type was O.”

  “So you’re telling us Fortes is in the clear?”

  “It looks that way,” Francisca said.

  “Jewett and Fortes were pieces of cake,” Cynthia said. “Stanley Knowles was more of a problem.”

  “I’m not sure I want to hear this,” Reuben said.

  “It was our best move,” Cynthia replied. “I called the public relations person at Hammersmith Press and said I was a freelance reporter doing a piece for New York magazine. I told him I was writing about the blood types of famous and prominent New Yorkers and asked him …”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Reuben said. “He believed you?”

  “Darling, if you were as desperate for publicity that’s not unfavorable as I gather Hammersmith Press is at the moment, you’d believe anything! To be very crude about it, I have an idea I could have told him I was doing a piece on which famous men-about-town were circumcised and which were not and he would have found out about Stanley for me.”

  “So what is Knowles’s blood type?” Bautista demanded.

  “This nice young man called me back—half-an-hour this time—and said that Stanley was type A.”

  “So we can scratch him from the list,” Reuben said. “But now, what about Giardi?”

  “There we failed. Neither Francisca nor I could think of a way to get to him.”

  “So you did the three—Jewett, Fortes and Knowles?” Frost asked.

  “And one more,” Cynthia replied. “The Honorable Wheeler Edmunds. You remember he made a big deal about turning his medical records over to the Times when he declared. Through a mole over there—never mind who—we got his blood type as well. Type B, just like under David’s fingernails.”

  “Perfect,” Reuben said. “Do you really think a man running for President killed Rowan and Jenkins?”

  “I didn’t say that. All I’m saying is that his blood is type B.”

  Both Frost and Bautista bowed their heads and massaged them with their hands.

  “You did quite an afternoon’s work, Cynthia,” Bautista said after a long pause. “All I can say is, thanks.”

  Frost was suddenly tired, as he remembered his appointment with Dine Carroll the next day. He was amazed at what Cynthia and Francisca had accomplished. His guests, noticing his fatigue, got up to leave.

  “Good night, Miss Mega-Muscle of Nineteen Eighty-Eight,” Frost said to Francisca as he kissed her good night. “And, Luis, I’ll let you know right away what if anything I find down in Princeton. And I’d let the Amherst police know about Jewett’s blood type. Just in case they find him and question him again.”

  “Okay, Reuben. The girls have done great work, but we’ve still got a shitcan. And maybe a deeper one than we realized.”

  23

  Gold Mine

  Friday morning, Frost arrived at Penn Station just in time to take the Trenton local to Princeton Junction. He had drunk the fresh orange juice Cynthia had prepared for him, and carried in a brown paper bag the cup of coffee purchased at the Greek luncheonette around the corner from his home.

  As he opened the wax-coated container on the train and sipped its contents with some distaste, he thought of the countless times he had made the train trip to Princeton over his lifetime—as penurious undergraduate returning from magical excursions to Manhattan, as jaunty alumnus going back to his major Princeton reunions, as Princeton trustee going to endless meetings of the Board and its committees. But never had he made the trip—which had changed almost not at all over the many years he had made it—to ferret out clues to a murder.

  Once at Princeton Junction he made the transition to the PJ&B—the “Princeton Junction & Back”—that took one to Princeton. Undergraduates now called it the “dinky,” he had recently learned, but to him it would always remain the PJ&B, the tiny toy train that connected the university to the outside world.

  The spring day was perfect, and Reuben, despite the gravity of his mission, recalled with pleasure Scott Fitzgerald’s rhapsodies on Princeton in the spring. As the rousing song went, Old Nassau was “the best old place of all,” a proposition Reuben devoutly believed.

  He walked through the campus, marveling at the green foliage, and glanced only fleetingly at the ground floor room in Henry Hall where he had begun his Princeton journey—and, indeed, his journey into the world—so many years before. It had been a slum then, and he was sure it was a slum now, but the twinge of memory was both strong and affectionate.

  A new twinge awaited him at the Annex, the Nassau Street restaurant where he decided to have lunch. This vast basement was much the same as it had been in the early thirties, and still served vast quantities of food priced for the undergraduate pocketbook. “Junk food” was an unknown concept back then, but the Annex had served it, cheerfully ignorant of the pejorative name that would later describe it. With great satisfaction he ate a bowl of spaghetti with sauce rendered from canned tomato paste; the refinement of well-made madeleines was most assuredly not there, but the effect on his taste buds was downright Proustian.

  After lunch, he crossed the street to the Firestone Library, which he regarded as the university’s most magnificent achievement. He had become familiar with its light, modern and cheerful atmosphere as a trustee, and had often envied the later generations of students who had the privilege of working and sweating there. He did feel regret as he applied for an admission pass inside the front door. For years, the open-stack library had been open to all, the only constraint a routine and friendly examination of book-bags and briefcases on leaving. But theft and vandalism, both of which scandalized Frost, had made inevitable a barrier that optimistically kept out those who were not serious about using the library’s riches for the purposes intended.

  Pass in hand, he followed instructions and went to the new John Foster Dulles wing, where a cheerful student receptionist directed him to the conference room where Dine Carroll awaited him.

  Frost had never met the Justice before. He was now slightly stooped—a quick look at Who’s Who had indicated he was now eighty-two—but still had a ruddy, patrician demeanor befitting a retired member of the Supreme Court. Frost introduced himself, realizing that this was one of those increasingly rare occasions when the person with whom he was speaking was older than he was. He called Carroll “Mr. Justice,” and there was no suggestion that he should change that to “Dine.”

  “Did you ever argue before the Supreme Court, Mr. Frost?” Carroll asked.

  “No. My partners always had the good sense to keep me out of the courts.”

  “So you were one of those fellows who stayed back at the office and kept people out of trouble—or got them into it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What our British friends call a solicitor?”

  “Yes.”

  “I tried that once. Worked for a big firm in Chicago. Bored silly. I went back to Des Moines and became a trial lawyer. Stayed there until Dwight Eisenhower pulled my name out of the the hat and brought me to Washington.

  “But enough reminiscing. Let’s get down to business,” Carroll said, gesturing toward the three boxes of papers on the conference table. “Frank Norton—a fine young man, by the
way, one of the best clerks I ever had—tells me you’re interested in three cases: Rodriguez, Cleveland School District and Carrymore. He was a little vague about why, but I gather it has something to do with the murder of that young fellow who was writing Garrett Ainslee’s biography.”

  Frost explained the circumstances of David Rowan’s death, and the discovery that three of Ainslee’s case files had been found missing from Rowan’s office.

  “And what relevance do my files have?” Carroll asked.

  “Mr. Justice, Frank told me that you and Mr. Justice Ainslee were good friends.”

  “He’s right. Garrett was the closest friend I had on the Court. For all his faults, which were many, he was a true Southern gentleman. We disagreed more often than we agreed, but we did scrap intellectually all the time. We debated just about every issue that came before the Court. I think Garrett respected my convictions and I respected his, wrong-headed as they often were.”

  “I understand, Mr. Justice. What I’m hoping is that there’s something in your files on the three cases that sheds some light on what might have been in Mr. Justice Ainslee’s. And just possibly points to the killer of his biographer.”

  Frost further explained that the search was not only for Rowan’s murderer, but the person who had killed his research assistant as well. Carroll had not heard or read about Jenkins’s death; the lines of sadness in his aristocratic face deepened as he heard what Frost was telling him.

  “What do you think my papers might show?”

  “I’m not sure. There’s just a hope on my part that Mr. Justice Ainslee may have sent you some significant document, some message, that duplicates something that might have been in his own files.”

  “My files are organized case by case, just as I believe Ainslee’s were, and just as those of most Justices are. In fact, there’s only one Justice that I know of, and he shall be nameless, who did things differently. This fellow thought that posterity would want to know what he did day by day, so his papers are organized in strict chronology, regardless of subject. I’m told he’s now trying to write his autobiography and having a helluva time. Takes him hours to find things. Total confusion, and all brought about by his own megalomania. Not, I think, that there would have been less mental confusion if his papers had been arranged properly. But I’m being indiscreet about one of my brethren.”

  Frost laughed at the digression, though he was eager to press forward with his quest. “I won’t speculate on whom you’re talking about, Mr. Justice.”

  “Good, because I have no intention of telling you.”

  Frost, despite his impatience, liked his crusty new acquaintance.

  “Getting back to your files, Mr. Justice. Do you think there might be something of interest in them?”

  Carroll did not answer directly. “You know, you’re going back to a period when not everything was Xeroxed. The boys—and that girl—on the Court today drown themselves in paper, I understand. They Xerox everything and pass it around. We didn’t have that luxury, or maybe I should say that curse. Unless things were printed, like our opinions and drafts of opinions, it wasn’t so easy to bury ourselves in paper.

  “But I’m wandering, forgive me. I’ve looked through the case files you asked about. There may be some things of interest.”

  “Maybe I could ask you first if you have any recollection of Mr. Justice Ainslee’s discussing any of the three cases with you.”

  “No, I don’t. Which doesn’t mean he didn’t. I remember the cases, all right—all three were pretty important at the time—but I can’t honestly say I recall any conversations with Garrett about them. So let’s go to the files.

  “Here’s Rodriguez,” he said, picking up one of the boxes before him. “You recall that Garrett wrote the majority opinion, saying the appellee’s conviction should be thrown out. I disagreed—my God, there was no question the man was caught with a load of marijuana, and the border patrol fellows were just doing their job when they stumbled on it. All I can find in the file is a carbon copy of an early draft of Garrett’s majority opinion. There’s a handwritten note on it that I’ll read to you.” He took a bound document from the top of the file and read the note: “My clerks are squabbling over this one. I’d like to have your views. G.A.”

  “I’m afraid that’s all there is that might interest you.”

  Frost was discouraged. An unidentified quarrel, and one not documented, was not what he had in mind.

  “So let’s go on to Cleveland School District,” Carroll said. “That was a hot one. Garrett dissented, but he didn’t write an opinion. He clearly wanted to, because I have here a draft opinion he sent me. With a note, which I’ll let you read.” Carroll turned over a single handwritten page to Frost, who read the text:

  Dine,

  I’m troubled by the Cleveland desegregation case. I can’t overcome being a Southerner, even though I’ll admit the Civil War is long over. Fact is, I think the strong desegregation opinions the Court has handed down since 1954 have been absolutely right. Stamping out segregation won’t solve the race problem, but it’s a necessary start. Lately, however, desegregation has moved into the North and some of our brethren seem determined to make distinctions that will allow Northern school districts to maintain the segregated status quo. I mean the de facto, de jure dichotomy, which just doesn’t cut it with me. If there’s segregation, we should order its eradication “root and branch,” as our late Chief said. I’ve tried my hand at a dissenting opinion in Cleveland attacking the new Chief on this de facto, de jure business. I’d like your thoughts, even though I’m sure you disagree with me. God knows my clerks do. There’s one who writes me a memo every day saying my position, if adopted, would make the Court even more unpopular than it is now, that it goes too far and would punish the innocent.—G.A.

  “If you’re interested,” Carroll said, “I wrote him a note back agreeing with his clerk. On this one, Garrett was just being too radical.”

  “Is there any indication which clerk it was who was writing these memos?”

  “Nope.”

  “And you don’t remember talking with Mr. Justice Ainslee about the case—or the obstreperous clerk?”

  “Nope.”

  Frost was deflated. The trail was getting warm, but there was no document that identified Wheeler Edmunds.

  “You’re aware that Wheeler Edmunds was one of Mr. Justice Ainslee’s clerks during this term of the Court?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “But there’s nothing to link him to the memorandum I just read?”

  “Not in my files.”

  “How about United States v. Carrymore?” Frost asked, almost in desperation.

  “Yes,” Carroll replied. “Here there may be something that interests you.” He produced an aging copy of a memorandum from Edmunds to Ainslee, dated December 4, 1972, with a cover note: “Dine—What do you think? G.A.”

  The brown paper of the copy was cracking and the text fading. Frost handled it gingerly as he read:

  To: Mr. Justice Ainslee

  From: Wheeler H. Edmunds

  I have read your proposed concurring opinion in Carrymore and disagree both with your vote and your reasoning. The majority opinion finds that Sgt. Carrymore, on the facts before it, was discriminated against on the basis of sex, in contravention of the Fourteenth Amendment. I personally don’t see why the Army isn’t entitled to ask whether a woman noncommissioned officer needs a dependency allowance or not. Why should the Government pay such an allowance if the woman’s husband is working and the couple doesn’t require it?

  But whatever the merits of the case, your concurrence strikes out into completely uncharted waters and finds that all sex discrimination is prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment. At a time when the Court is being attacked—legitimately, in my mind—for making new law and changing what had been thought to be solid precedent in so many areas, I don’t think it—or you—needs the abuse sure to follow your concurrence.

  Men and women are d
ifferent. The legal rules for men are inevitably different from those for women. Under your logic, we could have women firefighters and policemen, and employers could be compelled to overlook the obvious fact that women become pregnant and men do not. The country isn’t ready—and probably never will be—for women at West Point.

  There’s no question that women have the right to vote. If they can persuade the Congress to reconstitute the Army or alter the social mores of the nation, more power to them. But I think you are very wrong to advocate significant changes in the status of men and women by judicial fiat. (You might also consider taking your logic to its extreme and speculating what it might do to the status of homosexuals.)

  The memorandum went on for two more pages, but Frost had read enough.

  Carroll had been sitting erect in his chair, his bright eyes shining, as Frost read. When Frost looked up and put down the memo, he asked, “Is that the hand grenade you were looking for, Mr. Frost?”

  “I think it is—or maybe it is,” Frost replied, marveling at the old Justice’s sense of the dramatic in saving the best for last. “Did you know Edmunds?”

  “No. I remember meeting him a number of times, but he was a rather quiet one to meet.”

  “He certainly wasn’t quiet on paper.”

  “So it appears. Not exactly what he’s been saying in this campaign, is it?”

  “Or since he’s been in the Senate,” Frost said. “When did he change his stripes, do you suppose?”

  “When he started running for office in Michigan, I expect.”

  “Do you mind if I take some notes on this?” Frost asked. He was not bold enough to ask to make a copy.

  “I’m not overjoyed, but I guess in the circumstances I can’t object. I’ll expect you to keep what you’ve learned confidential.”

  “That may be difficult, Mr. Justice,” Frost said. “I don’t know where the investigation of David Rowan’s death may lead, but this memo may be very important.”