Murder Keeps A Secret Read online

  “I understand,” Frost said. “At night they have guards and a sign-up register at One Metro Plaza, but I’ve never had to do it coming in or going out.”

  “Of course not,” Bautista said. “You’re old, distinguished looking—and white. But try to get in there without signing if you’re eighteen, black and wearing sneakers and a Walkman.”

  “So you don’t think the pusher—if we can call him that—signed the book?”

  “I doubt it. Or if he did, he probably used a fake name. We’re checking it out, though, just in case. The guard ran out to the street once the decedent’s body was discovered. So anybody could have walked out of there unnoticed.

  “What’s more likely, though, is that the killer went out the fire exit on the Forty-fifth Street side. The burglar alarm on that exit went off a few minutes after Rowan was found. He probably sneaked out the back way.”

  “Hmn. Not too encouraging.”

  “No. But come on, I’ll show you upstairs.”

  The stout but creaky automatic elevator stopped at the tenth floor. The directory opposite indicated that the floor was subdivided into many small offices, including Room 1003, occupied by “Rowan, D.” Bautista led the way down a dimly lit hallway almost to the end, where a patrolman was standing guard outside Room 1003 and a sign warned off intruders:

  CRIME

  SCENE

  SEARCH AREA

  STOP

  NO ADMITTANCE BEYOND THIS POINT

  By order of Police Commissioner

  POLICE DEPARTMENT

  “Afternoon, officer,” Bautista said to the policeman, who was young enough to have a heavy case of acne and whose uniform, badge, service revolver and nightstick were not sufficient to keep him from being nervous. Bautista showed his own badge, which he was wearing inside his suit lapel.

  “I’m from homicide and we’d like to take a look inside. Mr. Frost here is a possible witness.”

  Frost was surprised to hear himself so characterized, but assumed the representation was necessary to gain him entrance to Rowan’s office.

  “The CSU gone?” Bautista asked, referring to the crime scene unit specialists from the Homicide Bureau.

  “Yessir. About half an hour ago.”

  “Good,” Bautista said. He then turned to Reuben, and in a voice too low for the patrolman to hear, explained that he was going to open the door and would only let Reuben see what he could from the doorway. “The CSU boys may say they’re finished, but they never are. They’ll be back, and I don’t want to be blamed for messing up the scene.”

  With that introduction, he asked the guard to unlock the door. He motioned Reuben forward to look inside. What he saw was a large, one-room office with bare walls and three casement windows. Along most of the wall space were metal bookcases extending from floor to ceiling, some still containing the letter-box files that had not been strewn about on the floor. And, at one side, a closed and seemingly untouched four-drawer file cabinet.

  “This is the way they found the place?” Frost asked.

  “Yes. I hope just exactly as you see it. Why, did you think the police made this mess?”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Frost said hastily, though that thought had crossed his mind. “What’s in the file cabinet over there?” he asked, pointing.

  “That appears to have been his personal files—correspondence, newspaper clippings, that sort of thing.”

  “And it was not touched?”

  “Not as far as we can tell.”

  Turning to the letter boxes, Frost read the labels on the backs of those nearest the door. He saw that most of them related to specific Supreme Court cases, though more distant ones, the labels on which he could barely make out, related to legislation dating back to Garrett Ainslee’s Senate days.

  The boxes on the floor had burst open with their contents spilling out. None appeared to be empty—except two almost directly in front of Frost.

  “I wonder what those are,” he asked, pointing to the empty boxes.

  “You mean what was supposed to be in them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s have a look.” Bautista produced a rubber glove, which he put on before reaching out and turning over the two boxes. One bore the label “Desk Calendars, 1952–66,” the other “Desk Calendars, 1966–80.”

  “I don’t see signs of any desk calendars, do you?” Frost said.

  “No.”

  At lunch Frost had told the detective about Ainslee’s sex code, so he now understood Frost’s remark that “It looks like we’re never going to see the famous Os—or anything else those books might have contained.”

  “Let me see if the CSU found anything,” Bautista said.

  “If not, I think we’d better start finding out where the long arm of Marietta Ainslee’s been reaching lately,” Frost told his colleague.

  Contrary to his usual custom, Frost took a taxi home after leaving Bautista; he had done enough walking for one day. And he had become sufficiently absorbed that he now felt very sad and very tired.

  6

  Murder It Is

  Reuben Frost took his usual nap that afternoon. He was sleeping soundly when Bautista called, shortly after five o’clock.

  “We’ve got the ME’s report,” the detective said. “Murder.”

  “For certain?” Frost asked.

  “No question about it. The Medical Examiner’s pretty sure he was knocked unconscious—hit on the side of the head—before he was shoved out the window.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes. Rowan obviously struggled with his assailant, and it looks like he fought like hell.”

  “How can you tell that?”

  “His fingernails. When they scraped them, they found traces of skin and blood that weren’t his. His blood type was A and the blood under his nails was type B. The skin fragments were probably from the neck of his attacker—a white person, incidentally. Rowan must have struggled like a cornered rat.”

  “Hmn.”

  “Sorry, Reuben. Forget about the rat. Let’s just say he fought back.”

  “So we—you—have got to find someone who matches the blood type and the skin samples.”

  “Yeah. Unfortunately, there are about forty million living white Americans with type B blood. Got any ideas which ones we start with?”

  “No. None at all,” Frost said, though what he really meant was that the confirmation that David Rowan was murdered had temporarily crowded out all other thoughts from his mind.

  “We’re still waiting for the CSU’s report on the office. If we’re lucky, there’ll be a nice, clear, visible print or some other good hard evidence there. Not much we can do until then. But you, meanwhile, might focus on which of those forty million white Americans we look at first.”

  “I’ve got to get my thoughts in order,” Frost said. “Can I call you later?”

  “Sure. But the sooner the better. Meanwhile, just be glad my boys remembered to bag Rowan’s hands at the scene and that Rowan didn’t bite his fingernails.”

  Frost went to the bathroom after hanging up the phone and splashed cold water on his face. The effort brought him fully awake, but did not make his thinking any clearer. Following a pattern set in the earliest days of his marriage, he wanted to talk out this latest crisis with Cynthia. He awaited her return from the Brigham Foundation with increasing impatience.

  “Where have you been?” he demanded when she arrived home shortly before seven.

  “I’m sorry, dear, I didn’t mean to be late. I had to have a drink with the culture man from Exxon about the Pirandello festival I told you about. Exxon may put up some of the money.”

  “Ridiculous idea. North Dakota, wasn’t it? Six Characters in Search of a Pig Farmer.”

  “You’re in a foul mood, I can tell. What can I do to cheer you up?” Cynthia asked, tousling her husband’s gray hair.

  “Nothing. I just want to sit down with you and talk about David’s murder. In case you had any doubt that it
was murder, Luis called two hours ago to confirm it.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Cynthia said, with a sigh. “Shall we eat here? I had a cooked chicken delivered this afternoon. Is that okay?”

  “Fine. That means we can really talk. I didn’t particularly want to discuss this terrible business in a restaurant.”

  “Have a drink and give me twenty-five minutes.”

  Reuben obeyed his wife’s direction, fixed himself a martini and waited patiently for dinner. Then, as Cynthia brought the food into the dining room, he went to the refrigerator and sampled a half-full bottle of Chardonnay. As he feared, it had gone bad. He cursed quietly and pulled out a new, full bottle to open.

  “Someday I’ve got to get that damn nitrogen contraption working,” he told his wife, referring to a device that purportedly kept open wine fresh. He had purchased it several weeks earlier with great enthusiasm but had been unable to get it operating.

  “Never mind, dear. We’ll probably drink a full bottle tonight, anyway.”

  Cynthia’s prediction was correct. They ate quickly and quietly, then pushed their plates aside and drank up the new bottle as Reuben told his wife the details of his day’s meetings with Harrison Rowan and Bautista—and of his visit to the crime scene.

  “The way I see it,” Reuben said, “somebody came to see David in his office, probably to confront him about something, or to make a demand of some kind. They quarreled, the argument got rough, the murderer got physical and then threw David out the window, conscious or unconscious.”

  “And then messed up the office to create confusion?”

  “Yes.”

  “How about this? What if the murderer was looking for something in the office, probably in Ainslee’s papers? And then was surprised by David and had to kill him?”

  “Perhaps. But Luis said there was no evidence the lock on the door was tampered with.”

  “Maybe the murderer had a key.”

  “This is getting nowhere,” Reuben said. “Let’s figure out who we know, or know of, that might have wanted to kill David, or to burglarize his office.”

  “Well, right off the bat, there’s Marietta Ainslee. You say the Justice’s engagement books are gone—and that’s where his peccadilloes were recorded.”

  “I’ve got to get a line on her, you’re right.”

  “And I would think on her bodybuilding friend whom Harrison told you about. It sounds to me as if he could have tossed David out the window without any trouble.”

  “I know. Ralston Fortes, for God’s sake. What kind of a name is that?”

  “God knows.”

  “I agree with you, he’s the most promising suspect at this point.”

  “But we can’t forget the former wife and the present girl friend.”

  “Not very likely, Cynthia. You remember Nancy Rowan. She’s all of five feet four. She couldn’t possibly have defenestrated David, no matter how angry she was.”

  “Yes, but how about her son, Alan? You told me the other night that Grace Mann said he was under his mother’s thumb.”

  “Alan’s a possibility. And we know he’s been wandering around lately, judging by his mother’s phone call Monday night. But there’s no way Grace Mann can be. She’s pretty slight herself and I don’t believe a TV anchorwoman could sneak about and commit a murder like this without being seen by somebody.”

  “The guards may have been used to seeing her.”

  “Sure, she may have come to the office all the time. But they’d still think of her as a celebrity and remember her.”

  “You’re right. But what about her friend, Tommy Giardi—or Giardi’s friends?”

  “Another possibility, that’s true. But what motive would he have for killing David? If Giardi’s affair with Grace had really steamed up, there wasn’t anything to prevent her from leaving David.”

  “So it seems,” Cynthia said with a sigh.

  “Is there anyone else? No one that’s plausible. Stanley Knowles? That makes no sense. Why would he want to kill off one of his hottest authors? Harrison Rowan? Absurd on its face. Horace Jenkins, the research assistant? He’s dying. But how about that professor, Peter Jewett, whom David apparently disliked so much?”

  “I think it would be more relevant if David had killed him. Besides, I don’t see Peter as a killer. Disagreeable, yes. But not a killer, unless I’m an awfully bad judge of people,” Cynthia said.

  “No, Reuben, the only person I’ve met recently who might be daring enough to commit murder was that cool and clever young man I sat next to at the Reuff Dinner,” she went on.

  “Oh, yes, your new boyfriend, Mr. Taylor.”

  “But it’s unlikely that he had anything to do with David.”

  “Right. He was only at the dinner because Edmunds was speaking.”

  Frost drained the wine bottle, democratically sharing the last few drops equally with Cynthia. “I told Harrison I would do everything I could to find David’s killer,” he said, putting his empty glass down. “I’m going to do that. The only place I can think to start is with Marietta Ainslee. I think I’ve got to go down and see her. And hope Ralston Fortes pops out of the bedroom long enough to be seen.”

  “I have one other idea, which I’m sure you won’t like much.”

  “What’s that?” Reuben asked.

  “Jenkins. He may know something. And since he’s dying, I think you, or you and Luis, ought to see him right away.”

  “I hate the thought. I’m not afraid of getting AIDS, but I can do without seeing its effects. But you’re absolutely right, I’ve got to see him. I’ll call Luis first thing in the morning.”

  7

  Grace

  If Reuben Frost was a walking, well-connected computer, as Stanley Knowles had characterized him at the Reuff Dinner, it was not evident Thursday morning; the wires in his semiconductor were decidedly wet, or perhaps there was a fat sparrow sitting on the lines. Whatever the reason, Frost was unable to reach Luis Bautista at the Police Department. He was “out on a case” and was not expected before early afternoon.

  Frost felt that Bautista should be present at any interview with Horace Jenkins at Tyler Hospital, and guessed that he would probably be unable to arrange to see him alone in any event. But now Bautista’s absence would delay things.

  Frost glanced impatiently at the morning Times, which carried a front-page story of the police announcement that David Rowan had been murdered. Casting the paper aside, he returned to the problem that had bothered him through a troubled night—how to get to see Mr. Justice Ainslee’s widow in Washington. He had decided that his best chance for gaining an audience was through Dotty Sheets, an old friend and a rich Washington culture maven who was a longtime friend of Cynthia’s. He looked up the number on the family Rolodex and called her just before eleven o’clock.

  “Dotty, my dearest, how are you?” he said once he heard the woman’s near-baritone voice (the product of bourbon and Gauloise cigarettes) on the telephone.

  “Reuben, what a thrill! My whole body is weak from hearing your voice again!”

  “Mine, too, my sweet,” Frost said, adapting to the extravagant 1930s movie dialect that Dotty Sheets favored.

  “To what do I owe this delectable pleasure?”

  Frost told Ms. Sheets that he needed an introduction to Marietta Ainslee; that it was very important that he be able to talk to her.

  “Reuben, you old scamp! Chasing after the Widow Ainslee! Why?”

  “A fair question, Dotty. I’m a friend—or was a friend—of her husband’s biographer. He was murdered two days ago, and I’m just doing a little background work.”

  “Reuben, you are a devil! When did you get so nosy?”

  “I’m not really nosy, Dotty, but David Rowan—the biographer—was my godson, and his father is an old friend, so I’m making some inquiries.”

  “He was murdered? My goodness. What on earth could Marietta have to do with that?”

  “I assume nothing. But I’d like to talk
to her. Could you be a dear and arrange it?”

  “I’m sure I can. Marietta is a darling friend. Marietta—and Ralston too.”

  “You know him, then?”

  “Oh, yes. Ralston Fortes, and I do mean fortes! He’s the most gorgeous thing to land in Washington since Senator Kerry.”

  “Hmn.”

  “When do you want to see her?”

  “Just as soon as possible.”

  “You mean today, this very day?”

  “If you could arrange it. But tomorrow probably makes more sense.”

  “Oh, Reuben, I’m so excited. Are you playing detective again?”

  “Just trying to be helpful, Dotty dear. Can you aid and abet me?”

  “I thought aiding and abetting was a crime.”

  “Aid and assist me then.”

  “Certainement. Where are you, at home?”

  “Yes. Two-one-two, seven-four-four-three-three-three-one.”

  “What a lovely number! I think the First Lady’s numerologist would be thrilled. But forget that, I’ll call you. And give my love to Cynthia, if she’s up yet.”

  “She’s up, and has gone to work. But I’ll tell her.”

  “Oh, sweet Reuben, how lovely. I’ll call you. I assume, by the way, I can tell Marietta why you want to see her.”

  “I don’t see any way around it.”

  “Va bene, Reuben. Ciao, carissimo!”

  Frost had to rest for a moment after Dotty Sheets had hung up the telephone. Her trilingual energy always exhausted him.

  When he had recovered, he realized that nothing was likely to happen until the next day, so he decided he might try to talk to Grace Mann. He found her in, awake and willing to see him. They arranged to meet at two o’clock.

  Promptly at the appointed hour Frost waited for Grace Mann in the same living room where he had met Harrison Rowan the day before. Her Irish maid explained that Mr. Rowan had returned to Virginia earlier in the day.