Generous Death

by Nancy Pickard

  “The guard actually saw Simon?”

  “Yeah, on his outside rounds. Every time he walked by the window, there was Simon bent over his desk, working. And that’s where he was all last night, too, and I mean literally all night. I guess he’s got a special photographic show coming up and he spent the night there working on it. If he’s the workaholic you say he is, I can believe he’d do that.”

  I was happy to hear it; at least that let one of my friends off the hook!

  “Lucky for him, too,” Geof said as he poured more juice from the pitcher. “Because if you gave me half a chance I could come up with a real good motive for dear old Simon.”

  “Tell me,” I said, although I didn’t really want to hear it at all.

  “Well,” he said a little too eagerly for my taste, “what if Culverson had a spasm of remorse when he went to the Martha Paul that night? Remorse about leaving the money to his daughter? And what if he worked up the courage to tell Simon the news?”

  “This is pure conjecture, Geof,” I said sternly.

  “Sure.” He raised an eyebrow in challenge. “Want to conject with me?”

  I didn’t, but I couldn’t chicken out at that point.

  “Okay,” I said unwillingly, “we all know that Simon has the emotional control of a spoiled brat…”

  “… and he’s a fanatic about his museum …”

  “… and we know he views the loss of Arnie’s money as the death of his dreams. So you’re thinking that maybe they got in an argument and Simon was furious and hurt—he would be, of course—and, and what?”

  “Well, by this time, Culverson’s pretty upset, too, right? So maybe he starts getting one of those migraines he used to get …”

  “So he pulls out his pill bottle and takes a couple ...”

  “And Simon sees his chance for revenge against the old man who was cheating him.”

  “I don’t know, Geof,” I said doubtfully. “That’s pretty cold-blooded. I mean, I can see Simon grabbing a lamp and bringing it down over Arnie’s head in pure rage, but I can’t see him cold-bloodedly taking the time to get hold of Arnie’s pills, dump them in whatever Arnie was drinking …”

  “Wine, from a bottle in Simon’s office.”

  “So Arnie would have to drink the drugged wine. And then maybe before it knocks him completely out, Simon suggests they take a stroll around the Chinese Gallery…”

  “You’re very good at this,” Geof grinned. “And when Culverson finally keels over, all Simon has to do is lift him onto the testered bed, run down for the comforter and then tuck the old man in.”

  “Simon’s little joke.”

  “Ha ha.”

  I shook my head violently. “But he didn’t do it, Geof! This is cruel and absurd to pretend he did! Simon is the one with the alibis, you said so yourself. And it doesn’t sound like him anyway—if Simon got mad enough at you to kill you, you’d be dead in a minute because he’d act impulsively, and not so coolly as we’ve imagined.

  “I don’t like this exercise,” I said petulantly. “Let’s stop now, please.”

  “Yeah,” Geof said with regret in his voice and face. He slid his back down the side of the hot tub until he was flat on the floor. “Damn.”

  “Who else has alibis?” I said to change the subject and relieve my sense of disloyalty to Simon.

  “Okay,” he sighed, “call up your WHEN category.”

  I did that.

  “Now,” he directed, “we’ll enter the names of those people who cannot adequately account for any one of the time frames of the attacks, excluding the one today on your house, since we haven’t talked to everyone about that yet.”

  “What do you call adequately?” I wanted to know.

  “Two reliable witnesses who are not alcoholics, drug addicts, felons, devoted wives or mothers or boyfriends.”

  “Is that the official way?” I was curious to know how the official police mind operated.

  “No,” he laughed, “that’s the Bushfield way. This is a small town, Jen, and I am not the FBI. We catch more crooks by using common sense than by the application of criminology, to tell you the truth.”

  “I won’t tell anyone,” I promised. “I do believe I like your style, Detective Bushfield.”

  He laughed again. It took all my willpower to keep my body seated and upright and not let it tumble to the floor where my weary head could rest so snugly in the crook of his shoulder.

  Abruptly, he got up to pull a thick notepad from the inside pocket of his sport coat. He flipped through it until he came to the pages he wanted, then dictated names while I entered them in the computer.

  When we were through, I looked at the screen.

  “Well, that’s a mixed bag of nuts,”I said. Maybe Geof could make sense of it, but it looked to me as if we had plenty of nothing. There weren’t many holes, the holes that existed were not very big and there wasn’t a single person among the twenty-four who could not account for more than two of the time periods. Plus, since so many of us knew each other-served on the same committees, attended the same parties, etcetera—a lot of us alibied for each other.

  “Chummy lot,” Geof said, halfway through.

  “You’re the one who said it’s a small town,” I countered.

  Derek Jones had alibis for three of the pertinent time frames—“I think he was with a woman he’d prefer not to name,” Geof smiled; Faye was quoted as saying she “couldn’t for the life” of her recall what she was doing the night Arnie died—it was, after all, several days later before anyone thought to call it murder and begin inquiries; Marvin, of course, had everything but an annotated diary and five notarized witnesses to account for his well and constructively spent time.

  Like Simon, all the other directors of the charities had alibis for one, two or even all of the times in question. That held true for the relatives of the victims too. As for my trustees, they were well alibied, mostly by each other. Michael had been at the cocktail party along with most of the other suspects the night Moshe died, but he could account for the other times, having spent them on dates with women who were not me.

  “Hmm,” I said to that information. “That’s interesting, not that it matters to me of course.”

  “You didn’t expect him to be celibate, did you?” Geof sounded amused.

  “Don’t be so bloody fair-minded,” I said huffily.

  “Having known you, shall we say, intimately, for a time, Ms. Cain, it surprises me that you were chaste for all those months you dated him.”

  “I don’t recall saying I was.”

  “Oh.” He sat up and took a drink of juice. “Well, I guess that just because you never slept with him doesn’t automatically mean you never slept with anyone.”

  “I don’t recall saying that I never, to coin a euphemism, slept with him.”

  “God damn it, Jennifer, don’t be so bloody honest.”

  “It’s not supposed to matter in this day and age,” I said and smiled at him. I wasn’t talking about honesty.

  “Do you like to think of me sleeping with other women?”

  “Not on your life, buster,” I said, widening my grin. “But neither do I blame you for having done so. Heck, if they contributed to your present level of expertise, I’m grateful to them!”

  “I don’t blame you either,” he said crossly. “I just don’t want to have to hear about it.”

  “You brought it up,” I said gently. “Sexist porker.”

  He grinned back at me.

  I leaned over and kissed him.

  “You’re a sweet old hypocrite,” I said.

  “Let’s go to bed,” he murmured. He held up his wrist so he could see his watch, but he seemed to have some difficulty in focusing on what it told him. “Good grief, Jenny, do you know what time it is? Let’s get some sleep and start fresh in the morning.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” I huffed. “Your life doesn’t depend on what we might be able to find out tonight.”

  His
eyes focused and he sat straight up. “Right,” he said dutifully, but a good deal more alertly. “Where are we?”

  “WHY.”

  “Why what?”

  I started to giggle. “Not WHAT,” I said, “WHY?”

  The silliness was contagious.

  “When?” he, I swear, giggled back at me, “Now?”

  “Not WHEN, dummy, I said WHY!”

  “Why not?” he said and we fell on each other in hysterical, after-midnight, tears-roiling, helpless laughter. It felt wonderful. We let it roll over us until the last guffaw died and the final giggle trickled down and out.

  “Oh, Abbott,” I gasped, “my stomach hurts.”

  “Me too, Costello.”

  We lay like that for several more minutes and then—by another of those silent accords—sat up again and began to discuss motives. It didn’t take much time because there weren’t any to speak of. We couldn’t figure out why any of my staff or the trustees might wish to harm The Foundation; we didn’t think my sister hated me enough to kill several other people just to establish a camouflage for killing me; I doubted that Michael wanted to ruin The Foundation just so I’d lose my job and be persuaded to leave town with him; and none of the victim’s relatives had anything to gain from the other deaths.

  We agreed it was theoretically possible that Simon might have killed Arnie in a fit of fury; that Allison might have slain Mrs. Hatch to get funds for the Welcome Home; that the manager of the theater might have murdered Moshe to aid that charity; and that the Reverend Dr. Ian Priestly might have …

  “Ridiculous,” I said in disgust. “And what’s more, none of them has any reason to kill the rest of us.”

  “More’s the pity,” Geof said wearily.

  He reached over me toward Fido.

  “May I turn this thing off?” he said. When I nodded, he flicked the switch. “We’re no smarter than we were, are we Jennifer?”

  “Ugh,” I said, “and arrgh.”

  “Enough scintillating repartee,” he said and yawned. “To bed, woman.”

  Chapter 28

  I woke when Geof did, but I didn’t get up and get dressed and drive in to work with him. Instead. I pulled the phone down beside my head on the pillow and called Faye to tell her I’d be late. She didn’t seem to know about the vandalism of my parents’ house, and I didn’t tell her. Then I phoned Ginger Culverson to ask her to a late lunch at the Buoy. After that, I called my friendly neighborhood Standard station to ask them to tow my car away and fix it. Then I called Avis and Budget to reserve a rental car. But because of the bad weather, other drivers had beat me to the available inventory. Those agencies didn’t have an engine to offer.

  I decided to take a chance and call our local version of Rent-A-Wreck. Bless their battered hearts, they had a ’67 Ford Galaxie with only 150,000 miles, maximum rust, minimum chrome. I could have it, they said, if I picked it up that afternoon. What the hell, I thought, as long as it runs.

  Then I rolled over and slept some more. What’s the use of having executive privilege if you don’t abuse it now and then?

  The Buoy was crowded when I got there at one-thirty. I hung my coat in the ancient cloakroom, hooked my lady executive hat on top of it and squeezed my way through the drinkers at the bar to the eaters in the deli at the back. I have a passion for the Buoy’s lobster sandwiches and homemade cole slaw and fries.

  I looked along the west wall where the tables for two are lined up, but I didn’t see Ginger there.

  “Jenny!”

  I turned at her voice. My smile of greeting must have wavered a bit when I saw that she was seated at a table for four and that mine was the only empty chair.

  I walked resignedly over and sat down.

  “Surprise,” Franklin Culverson said with a smirk.

  “Jennifer, dear,” his mother added.

  I gave them my best gracious-loser smile and said weakly, “Well. How nice.”

  Franklin snorted delicately through his nose. His sister scowled at him and then smiled apologetically at me.

  “I can explain,” she said quickly, causing Franklin to exchange arch glances with his mother. “When I told them I was meeting you for lunch, which was obviously my first mistake—not meeting you, but telling them—they insisted on coming along. I tried to talk them out of it…”

  I was beginning to feel embarrassed. I needn’t have bothered though; neither Franklin nor Marvalene appeared to be in the least offended, at least not by Ginger’s attitude. They were, I would learn, deeply offended by something else she’d done.

  “Go ahead and order your lunch, Jennifer, dear,” Marvalene instructed. She was chic in pale yellow Ultra Suede, with not a drop of dirty slush on her pale yellow high-heeled shoes. I wondered how she did it: boots, maybe, that she took off in the cloakroom? She pushed a menu away from her. “I’m too upset to eat,” she said. “Franklin is too upset to eat. Ginger is upset, but never too much to eat.”

  Her daughter’s mouth, which was closed over a forkful of potato salad, curled into a grin. Obviously hers was a duck’s back and her mother’s insults were only water.

  I ordered the lobster, slaw and fries I’d been salivating for and a diet cola. The four of us made banal and tense conversation until my food arrived. My sandwich was a glorious three-inch high creation of hard bun, pink meat, mayonnaise and secret seasoning. I sank my teeth into it and tried to keep the innards from dripping out the far end of the bun, under Franklin’s fastidious and amused eye.

  “Don’t ever order one of those on a first date,” he said. I had to laugh, and that caused one of those now-and-then moments of genuine warmth that I had been known to experience with him. It didn’t last long.

  Marvalene lit a Virginia Slim and blew a thin cloud of smoke toward her daughter. “Ginger, dear,” she said, “tell Jennifer what you told us this morning.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Ginger’s voice was full of wry. But her father’s eyes were dancing with eagerness and happiness.

  “Jenny,” she blurted, “I think I’m going to give some money to Simon—I mean to the Martha Paul.”

  “Some money!” Franklin practiced his snort; it was already nearly perfect. “Some money!”

  “Well,” Ginger amended, “what I think I’ll do is give him enough money to hire the lawyers and go to court to overturn Martha Paul’s will. What do you think?”

  I washed down a chunk of lobster with a gulp of cola.

  “I think that’s wonderfully generous of you,” I said with what I hoped was not a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. She had said she would give “him” the money—no mention of The Foundation as intermediary. Well, that was her choice and her right, but I was instantly concerned about Simon’s ability to manage the funds wisely. It also occurred to me that Ginger had just very clearly answered Geof’s question about whether or not she and Simon had become friends.

  Ginger beamed at my praise; her relatives glared.

  “That’s not all,” Ginger said excitedly. “I’ve also decided to give them the seed money they need to build a new museum! I’m not going to give them as much as my father was, obviously, or I’d have to donate my whole inheritance. But I’ll make it a nice healthy sum—maybe a quarter million—and I’ll call it a challenge grant.”

  “Terrific idea,” I said and wondered if perhaps I should take some lessons from Simon on fund raising. He must have put her up to the challenge grant idea, and it was a good one; I doubted that she’d have thought of it on her own, inexperienced as she was in the field of fund raising. A challenge grant acts as a spur to other donors; in effect, it means the original donor is saying, “Okay, for every dollar you raise, I’ll match you one, up to X amount of money.” As a fund raising device, it’s dynamite. But it’s also one that required the leadership of a superb fund raiser to direct the campaign. Did Ginger know that Simon was probably not that man? I wanted to warn her, but any way I approached the subject it would look like sour grapes and envy. Hell, maybe it was. Maybe Simon
could do the job—God knows he was a driven demon when it came to the preservation of his beloved museum.

  I tried to look wholeheartedly instead, of halfheartedly delighted. Ginger may have wondered why I didn’t have more to say about her momentous decisions, but she’d just have to be satisfied with a “terrific” and a smile. Too many things had been happening to me lately—and too many dramatic bombs had been dropped in my lap. My internal computer was near overload.

  I wondered why Marvalene and Franklin were so upset by the news; it wasn’t ever going to be their money, so why did they care what Ginger did with it? And why had they trotted along to lunch with her?

  “Jennifer says that’s terrific news, Mother,” Franklin said. His eyebrows made twin St. Louis arches over his cynical eyes. “Do you want to tell her the rest of it, or shall I?”

  “I’ll tell her,” Ginger said firmly.

  I waited, as I seemed to have been doing so often in the recent past, for someone to hand me what was sure to be more bad news. But, as with the Degas painting from the little old man, I was wrong.

  “Jenny,” Ginger said and smiled her father’s most mischievous smile at me. “Mr. Ottilini has persuaded me that with so much money at stake, I ought to draw up a will immediately. And that means I’ve had to figure out who to leave the money to. Well, I don’t have any family but these two charmers, and they’re not rotten clear to the core, so I’m going to leave half of it to them …”

  “Them” smiled benevolently upon the prodigal daughter.

  “I don’t know why you’re so pleased,” she laughed at them. “I am the youngest, you know. I’ll outlive you by decades.”

  “There’s always the long shot,” Franklin said pleasantly, and Ginger guffawed. Obviously she didn’t take their nastiness at all seriously.

  “As for the rest of the money,” she continued, “well, my father was a good businessman, whatever else he might have been. I trust his judgment in matters of money. So I’m going to leave the rest of it to The Foundation.”