Murder Keeps A Secret Read online

  “Mr. Frost, your request is highly unusual and my schedule is absolutely packed on Monday,” Edmunds said, returning to the conversation. “However, I’m supposed to fly in and go to the Waldorf Towers for an hour before I have any public appearances. Can you come there at five-thirty? It’s the one hour I have to rest all day, but I could see you then.”

  “That would be fine, Senator.”

  “Come to my suite and I’ll make arrangements for you to be let in.”

  “Excellent.”

  “You’ll be alone?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  Reuben and Cynthia went to Elaine’s that night, where Reuben asked his final question of the day.

  “I understand Senator Edmunds and his party were here Wednesday night,” he said to Elaine Kaufman, the owner.

  “Oh, sure. He comes here all the time when he’s in town. They all do. Secret Service guys all over the place.”

  Frost posed his question. The answer pleased him, and he and Cynthia ate and drank more than was their custom. It was almost a celebration, though Reuben realized full well that the end of the line had not been reached.

  25

  Confrontation: I

  Frost met with Bautista Monday afternoon, after spending a Sunday that his wife later described as “the worst ever.” Normally calm and equable, he had been short-tempered and edgy about his prospective encounter with Wheeler Edmunds. His only defense, when Cynthia upbraided him, was that confronting a nationally-known politician with evidence of homicide was not an everyday occurrence.

  Bautista, who met Reuben at his townhouse, was insistent that he be present at the meeting with Edmunds. Frost said no, telling the detective, “I gave my word that I would meet him alone.”

  Reluctantly agreeing, Bautista gave Frost an electronic signaling device to put in his pocket.

  “I’ll be in an unmarked car down on Fiftieth Street, outside the hotel,” Bautista explained. “If anything happens, all you have to do is poke the switch on this.”

  “Good God, Luis. You must know how hopeless I am with gadgets. If I use this thing I’ll probably end up with Waldorf room service—or bring in half the Police Department with drawn guns by mistake.”

  Bautista painstakingly showed Frost how the device worked, and assured him that it could not be triggered by accident.

  “I’m surprised you don’t want to wire me up,” Frost moaned. “Isn’t that what they do in the movies?”

  “Forget it, Reuben. You said you wanted to be one-on-one with this guy.”

  Shortly before five-thirty, Frost identified himself to a hotel functionary in the discreet lobby of the Waldorf Towers. He was turned over to a husky man with a plug in his ear and told that it was best that he wait in the lobby. As he did so, press photographers, autograph seekers and curious bystanders gathered outside, all under the watchful surveillance of the Secret Service.

  Flashing red lights outside heralded Edmunds’s arrival. He hurried through the lobby, oblivious of Reuben and the functionaries who had gathered there, and was shown immediately to an elevator that had been blocked off by the security detail.

  When nothing happened for five minutes, Frost approached the Secret Service agent who had told him to wait.

  “What should I do now?” he asked.

  “What’s your name again?”

  Frost told him and could not help overhearing the agent describing him on a two-way radio “as an old man named Frost who claims he has an appointment with Stardust.”

  I wonder what my code name would be if I were running for office, Frost asked himself. It would not be “Stardust,” but more likely “Geezer” or “Gramps,” he thought bitterly.

  “You can go up now,” the agent announced. “Take the elevator to thirty-one and someone will meet you there.”

  When Frost alighted from the wood-paneled elevator, another Secret Service operative showed him to an empty sitting room. After just enough time to allow him to become uneasy all over again, Edmunds emerged from an adjoining bedroom.

  “Mr. Frost? Good afternoon,” Edmunds said. “We have met haven’t we? The Oatsmans, you said?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “What can I do for you?” the candidate asked noncommittally as he sat down, looking directly at Frost and giving him his full attention.

  Reuben had rehearsed his speech carefully. He told the candidate how he had gotten involved in the dual murder investigation, how he was David Rowan’s godfather and how “investigating murders is not my normal line of work—I’m simply a garden-variety corporate lawyer, Wall Street lawyer, I suppose—but for better or worse I can’t seem to avoid getting mixed up with the NYPD.” To show that he wasn’t just a rank amateur, he told Edmunds about the other investigations in which he had become embroiled.

  “I have some questions,” Frost said, finishing his introduction.

  “Join the club. That’s all I hear these days—questions. Fire away.”

  “Senator, on March twenty-ninth, I believe you had dinner at Gracie Mansion with the Mayor.”

  “If you say so. At this point I barely know what city I’m in or what day it is—let alone what happened last month.”

  Frost was sympathetic, remembering the candidate’s fatigued confusion the previous week between Syracuse and Utica.

  “But yes, you’re right. I did have dinner with the Mayor. Norman in one of his manic moods. He talked and I listened.”

  “Was Richard Taylor at the dinner?”

  “Richard? Let me think. Normally he would have been, but I don’t think he was. It was just Norman, that lady guru of his who’s always around, Kelley Milke, and me, and my issues man, Steve Weiner. That’s right, it was just the four of us. An early dinner before we left for, let me see, Chicago, I think.”

  “Fine. Now let me ask you about the fundraising party last Wednesday at Monroe Parkhurst’s.”

  Edmunds sighed. “Fundraising event number three thousand four hundred and twenty-two, I think. What about it?”

  “Was Taylor there?”

  “I can’t honestly remember. But Richard is always at them. One of his jobs is to mingle with the crowd, get reactions, meet people who might be useful to us, that sort of thing.”

  “Would it surprise you if I said that he wasn’t there?”

  “Oh, no. Richard’s his own man. But, as I say, he’s usually at our fundraisers. No—wait a minute. I do remember now. Veronica and Monroe took us up to Elaine’s afterward. I remember Richard joining us there later.”

  “I see.”

  “What’s all this interest in Richard? Can I ask you that?” Edmunds said, looking pointedly at his watch.

  “Senator, I realize your time is valuable. I know your schedule is full to overflowing. So let me tell you as frankly and succinctly as I can why I’m asking about Taylor. The reason is very simple. I believe that Richard Taylor murdered David Rowan and Horace Jenkins.”

  “Mr. Frost, I’ve heard many preposterous things in my life, a good many of them in this campaign. But the statement you just made takes the top bunch of bananas.”

  Frost realized Edmunds would get up and leave if he didn’t talk rapidly.

  “Senator, your surprise is understandable. If you’ll bear with me for five minutes, I’ll tell you why I made the statement I did about Richard.” Frost did not give his adversary a chance to reply.

  “Richard Taylor was schedued to go to that dinner at Gracie Mansion. He begged off at the last minute, the Mayor’s assistant tells me. Why? Because he was downtown, on Forty-fourth Street, where he pushed David Rowan out the window and walked off with certain files from Justice Garrett Ainslee’s papers.”

  “What files, for God’s sake?”

  “Ainslee’s personal files about three Supreme Court cases—United States v. Rodriguez, Cleveland School District v. Henshaw and Carrymore v. United States.”

  Edmunds visibly drew in his breath, but recovered quic
kly. “Go on,” he said quietly. The nervous glances at his watch ceased.

  “Then, on the night of the Parkhurst party, Taylor left your entourage and went to Tyler Hospital, where he smothered Horace Jenkins to death with a pillow. Horace Jenkins, as you may or may not know, worked as Rowan’s research assistant until he was hospitalized with AIDS.

  “Can I explain my theory, Senator?”

  “Please.”

  “Last fall, shortly after you announced your candidacy for the Democratic nomination, David Rowan was selected as Garrett Ainslee’s biographer. The story was widely printed, with quotations from Marietta Ainslee, the Justice’s widow, saying that David would be given complete access to the Ainslee papers. Do you remember that?”

  “Yes, I do. I was delighted. I was one of Garrett Ainslee’s clerks, you know. I was especially pleased that Marietta seemed to be doing the right thing by her late husband.”

  “Pleased but perhaps worried about what Rowan might find? Specifically, what he might find going back to the year when you were Ainslee’s clerk?”

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

  Frost ignored the Senator’s disclaimer. “Isn’t it true that you wrote to Rowan, telling him that you asserted your copyright in anything that you had written that might show up in Ainslee’s papers?”

  “I don’t remember anything about that.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Mr. Frost, I’m a candidate for President. I write—or at least sign—a hundred or two hundred letters a day.”

  “Hmn. Didn’t Rowan get back to you and tell you that you had no copyright in the things you’d written? That, as an employee of the U.S. Government, you had no copyright protection at all?” Frost carefully refrained from saying whether Rowan had responded in a letter or a telephone call—for the good and simple reason that he didn’t know.

  “Mr. Frost, let’s skip the questions. Just get on with your fanciful tale.”

  “Very well. My guess, Senator, is that you were worried about what Rowan would find. And that you conveyed this worry to Taylor—your ‘indispensable right hand,’ as you described him to me at the Oatsmans’.

  “So, your indispensable right hand decided to help. He managed to make contact with Horace Jenkins and started currying favor. Told Jenkins that you were thinking of taking on David as a speechwriter. And, I suspect, through that ruse, managed to get access to Rowan’s office, where he saw how the Ainslee files were kept.

  “I’m not concluding, by the way, that you ever said anything about hiring David to anyone. But Taylor did. Rowan’s widow, Grace Mann, was convinced that David was going to join you, though she admits that the only approaches her husband had told her about were ‘indirect.’ Through Taylor, I firmly believe. And David’s father and a woman friend of his were also certain you were going to take him on—because Taylor told them so at the Reuff Dinner.

  “You denied knowing anything about the speechwriting matter when I asked you directly about it at the Oatsmans’. You were very convincing—and your denial was also consistent with the fact that we know you and David had some sharp words the one time you met, at the Reuff Dinner. Those who saw you at the party afterward said you and Rowan were quarreling. There’s no question you weren’t talking about speechwriting. What you were discussing with him was the memos you wrote for Garrett Ainslee fifteen years ago.

  “You didn’t resolve anything with Rowan in that argument. Everybody who saw you two together knows that. But Taylor, your faithful assistant, tried to resolve it for you a day later by killing David and destroying the troublesome papers.”

  “I just came from California last night,” Edmunds interrupted. “They talk about La-la Land a lot out there. Meaning, as I understand it, Los Angeles, but also what goes on in some screwed-up heads. Can I suggest, Mr. Frost, that you’re in La-la Land right now?”

  “Let me continue,” Reuben said, ignoring Edmunds’s put-down. “At Lowell Oatsman’s, a week ago tomorrow night, Richard Taylor was present when I asked you directly if David Rowan had been invited to become one of your speechwriters. You seemed not to have any knowledge of what I was talking about and, as I said before, I believed you. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I had tipped my hand to Taylor, letting him know that there were those who knew—and remembered—his invitation to David to become one of your speechwriters. If I had to guess, I’d say that Taylor decided then and there that Jenkins had to be silenced. Taylor could laugh off what he had said to David’s father as a joke and social chatter, but if Jenkins talked, he would be able to tell of pretty explicit promises of speech-writing glory—and historian’s glory later at the White House perhaps.

  “Taylor knew of Jenkins’s illness and where he was from the dinner conversation at the Reuff affair, if not before. So the next night he did not go to the Parkhurst party but to Tyler Hospital, where he asphyxiated him. After which he calmly joined you at Elaine’s.

  “The irony, I might say, Senator, was that Jenkins was so near death that he never could have exposed Taylor. I know that because I had already tried to speak with Jenkins, who was almost incoherent from the ravages of AIDS. All I could get out of him was ‘Look into Elizabeth.’”

  “And what on earth did that mean?”

  “I—we, those of us involved—pondered that often. Then it came to me like a revelation last Saturday. Elizabeth? Elizabeth? Of course, Elizabeth Taylor. The actress who had done so much for the cause of AIDS victims like Jenkins.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “Senator, we are, after all, talking about Richard Taylor. In his extremely confused state, Jenkins had meant to say ‘Taylor,’ not ‘Elizabeth’.”

  “That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “It may be silly. My attempt at word association may have been quite wrong. But silly or not, it started me thinking along the lines I have just laid out for you.”

  “Mr. Frost, my scheduling aide, Jean Selby, said she was reasonably sure you weren’t a nut. I believed her then, but I’m not at all sure I believe her now. I have listened to your libels of my most trusted assistant, and your attempts to link me to them, and I find them unpersuasive. You are more fanciful than a reporter for the New York Press. Let alone the National Enquirer.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve thought of little else but David Rowan’s murder—and Jenkins’s—in the last few days. Perhaps my imagination has gotten the best of me.”

  “I would say it has. And right now I have to get over to the NBC studios.”

  “Just one thing before you go. As it happens, there is a very simple way of determining whether I am justified in accusing your man Taylor. David Rowan’s assailant struggled with him. In the process he got scratched, and the evidence of that scratch was under Rowan’s fingernails when he died. There were traces of a stranger’s blood and a stranger’s skin that the Medical Examiner has analyzed and preserved. I suggest, Senator, that Richard Taylor, if he is innocent, will be more than willing to submit a blood sample and a skin sample to the police.”

  “That’s up to him. If I were in his shoes I would laugh you and your theories out of the room.”

  “Let me put it another way. The police at this point I believe have ‘probable cause’ to get a court order to compel such tests. They can go to court tonight and do that. With no guarantee that the matter won’t be publicized—indeed, if the police are so inclined, they can arrange such publicity. The more discreet path, Senator, would be for you to suggest, as Taylor’s mentor and friend, that he submit to such tests voluntarily—and privately.”

  “I’ll have no part of such a trick,” Edmunds said.

  “So be it. I have only one other thought that might change your mind. I have access to a copy of the memorandum for Justice Ainslee, dated December four, nineteen seventy-two, that you wrote in connection with the Carrymore case.” Frost pulled his notebook from his pocket. “As I recall, in that memorandum you said something like ‘Men and wom
en are different. The legal rules for men are inevitably different from those for women. Under your logic, we could have women firefighters …”

  Edmunds seemed ready to grab for Frost’s notebook. “Let me see that!”

  “I’m sorry, Senator,” Frost said, withdrawing the notebook from Edmunds’s reach as a precaution, “these are only notes. I didn’t bring the full memorandum with me. But it is available to me and if you do not request Richard Taylor to cooperate with the police technicians, I will see that its contents are released to the press tonight.” There was no need, Frost thought, to tell the candidate that the memo itself was in safekeeping in the Princeton Library, subject to Dine Carroll’s control.

  Wheeler Edmunds slumped in his chair.

  “Do I understand you correctly, Mr. Frost? If I persuade Richard to take these damned tests you won’t release that memorandum?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Mr. Frost, you purport to be an eminent Wall Street lawyer. That’s what you told me minutes ago—”

  “Let’s be more precise, Senator,” Reuben interrupted. “I said I was a Wall Street lawyer, a corporate lawyer. There was no mention of eminence.”

  “You are technically correct. That was my spin on what you said. But eminent or not, I can only say that what you’ve proposed to me is reprehensible—not a word I associate with the many Wall Street lawyers I’ve known.”

  “Reprehensible is a cheap word to throw around, Senator Edmunds. There are those, I believe, who might find your Carrymore memorandum reprehensible, and shall we say not entirely consistent with the liberal image you’ve been trying to project in your campaign.”

  “I don’t wish to engage in semantics, Mr. Frost. The blunt fact is you’ve given me no choice.”

  “Where is Taylor?”

  “He’s in Washington for the day.”

  “Is he coming here tonight?”

  “No. An early shuttle tomorrow morning. The eight o’clock, I believe.”

  “So if the police and I were here sometime after nine we could start the process of settling this matter—of deciding how fanciful I am?”