Buyer beware an-1

by John Lutz

  "And he never told you why?"

  "No. You were right in assuming Mr. Manners put more trust in me than in anyone else here, but our relationship was still one of employer to employee. He kept his personal problems to himself."

  "How long before his death did you first notice the change in him?"

  She crossed her long legs primly, folded her arms. "I'm sure I was the one who first noticed a change, about two months… before. Then other people began to notice that he always seemed preoccupied, which wasn't at all like Mr. Manners. Approximately a week before… it happened he became increasingly agitated, depressed." Her eyes took on the sheen of suppressed tears. "I asked him what was bothering him, if I could help, but he said not to worry about him, that things would work out."

  I didn't like wringing her, but I had to. I was getting a lump in my own throat. "Were you here at work when he died?"

  Alice relinquished just enough self-control to brush at her eyes with a long-nailed forefinger. "I was at my desk. Mr. Manners came out of his office and walked past me without speaking, but he seemed quite normal. He must have gone directly to take the service elevator to the roof. Ten minutes later I was told that he'd fallen."

  "Fallen?"

  "Suicide wasn't considered at the time. The police put that theory together later."

  "But you don't believe it?"

  Her entire body seemed to stir in a weary shrug. "I don't know. Something was disturbing him…"

  "What do you think of Mrs. Manners?"

  "I like her. At first I didn't; I thought she was too… pushy. Then I came to realize that she was totally dedicated to her husband's career. I saw her make many sacrifices over the past several years."

  "Were you friends with her?"

  "Not exactly. I think she knew her husband might not want that."

  The low hum of an air conditioner or ventilator fan, which I don't think either of us was aware of, suddenly stopped, leaving a somehow louder silence in the tiny room. Alice Kramer spoke again, quickly, as if to keep the silence from engulfing us.

  "Are you investigating his death?"

  "Only indirectly." '"Then why?…"

  "I'm investigating a disappearance, Miss Kramer. Have you ever heard the name Victor Talbert?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Jerry Congram?"

  No.

  "Gratuity Insurance?"

  She hesitated. "No… not that I can recall." I watched her reach into her purse, which leaned against the leg of her chair, and draw out a pack of cigarettes. She offered me one and I declined. Her lean fingers trembled as she held a dainty gold lighter's flame to the tobacco.

  "Do you think Mrs. Manners would talk to me?" I asked. "You could phone, tell her who I am."

  "I'm sure she'd see you," Alice said, drawing on her cigarette as if trying to collapse it. I could see she smoked for medicinal purposes.

  I stood and held the door open for her, then sat back down and watched through the still-open door as she used the phone on the typist's desk to call Mrs. Manners. I couldn't hear what she was saying, didn't particularly want to. Now and then she'd glance over at me as she talked.

  After a few minutes Alice hung up the phone and walked to the doorway. "She can see you at four o'clock today."

  I stood and thanked her. The expression on her face told me no thanks were necessary. She was still loyal, doing a last service for her ex-boss.

  The four o'clock appointment with Mrs. Manners left me some spare time, but not much. I decided to have a late lunch in the employee's automatic cafeteria I'd noticed down the hall, then drive directly to see Elizabeth Manners.

  The cafeteria was still empty. The center of the room was filled with small round tables and metal-legged plastic chairs, and the walls were lined with vending machines that dispensed soup, sandwiches and desserts. Next to a coffee machine, in a corner, was a small microwave oven on a table under a sign that read keep OUR LUNCH ROOM CLEAN.

  After only a moderate struggle, I managed to coax one of the sandwich machines to accept my money and part with a ham and cheese sandwich. But the soda machine worked with clicking, whirring perfection and winked at me as I withdrew the cup. I sat at a table near a corner and peeled the cellophane from my sandwich. After a few bites I noticed the piped-in music, as bland as the food.

  When I'd finished eating, I dutifully threw my debris into one of the trash containers placed about the cafeteria; then I got a cup of black coffee from the machine near the microwave oven and sat back down to try to relax.

  The coffee wasn't bad for machine coffee, and I lingered over it. Two young office girls came in and regarded me as just another machine while they traded dimes for chewing gum, then left. Other than that I drank my coffee alone; then I leaned back in my chair and idly rotated the empty plastic cup on the tabletop.

  "I did it just the opposite," a female voice said behind me. "I saw Mrs. Manners first."

  A statement like that in a room I'd thought empty wasn't the sort of surprise I liked.

  I turned in my chair.

  17

  She was a tall, auburn-haired woman in her early thirties, clear-complexioned, leanly well built and with carefully penciled, arched eyebrows that gave her a sharp eyed, inquisitive expression. "I'm Alison Day of Business View," she said, "and you're Alan Nudger."

  "Alo," I corrected her, "but how did you come so close?"

  She smiled an all-knowing, sharkish smile that had a curious sexual appeal to it. Her features were of a sharpness that would have been unattractive but for their chiseled perfection. "I'm a feature writer for my magazine, researching for a series of articles on the pressures and unexplained suicides and accidental deaths of top business executives across the country. You came here to Witlow Cable and now plan to go interview Mrs. Elizabeth Manners; I did things the opposite. I've talked to Robert Manners' widow, and now, here I am at Witlow. I was just getting ready to leave Mrs. Manners when her husband's secretary phoned. I asked about the call and Elizabeth Manners told me about your appointment. Though I thought you might be gone from here, I decided to check anyway. And here we are."

  "Why?"

  She appeared surprised. "What?"

  "Why are we here? Why did you want to see me?"

  "Oh, I wanted to find out about your involvement in this, of course." She spotted my empty cup, then the coffee machine. There was a boldness in her lean-legged stride as she crossed the cafeteria to the vending machine. She reached into her purse and pulled out some change. "Can I buy you another coffee?"

  "Thanks, no. I don't want to make a pig of myself, and a chauvinistic one at that."

  She gave me the knowing, eyes-sideways smile to show I hadn't rattled her. I took an antacid tablet.

  "We can help each other, I think… Aldo, is it?"

  "Alo."

  "Call me Alison. You're a private detective. That's really fascinating."

  "It's all in the eye of the fascinatee. What did Mrs. Manners tell you, Alison?"

  "She said that her husband had seemed worried about something for months before his death, but that he never told her exactly about what. When she pressed him on the subject, he would simply categorize his worries as business pressures. I find this recent trend curious because the suicide rate among top executives is well below the national average. Statistically, six-point-six percent-"

  "Alison," I interrupted her, holding up my palm in the universal stop signal, "I am not a believer in statistics."

  "Really?" She sipped the coffee she'd bought and strode back to my table. "I should think you would be, being in a sense a policeman. Given sufficient and accurate data, statistics are an invaluable tool, in the business world especially. More sales are generated-"

  I held up my hand again. "I'm not interested in sales being generated," I told her. "I've got too much on my mind as it is. Is that all that Manners' widow told you?"

  She stared down at me with amused eyes that were a cattish pale green. "Essentially, ye
s." She smiled. "What did Brian Cheevers tell you?"

  "So we can cross check their stories?"

  She nodded, still smiling. She had a good idea. I gave her most of what Cheevers had told me.

  "There is one thing," I said as she sat across from me, mentally digesting what I'd told her. "I can't promise to tell you everything; I have certain obligations you don't."

  "Sure, I understand that. I never thought you trusted me completely, either. Who are you working for?"

  I had a vision, then, of her descending on Dale Car-Ion, using my name, spouting her Business View facts and figures at him in her crisp, confident tone. Then the questions. I guessed Alison Day might be the last representative of the press Carlon would want to know about his missing daughter.

  "I have to keep that confidential for the time being," I said to her.

  She appeared disappointed but not surprised. I was becoming more wary of her by the minute. I said, "You mentioned something about the deaths of several top executives across the country…"

  "Yes," Alison said, "counting Manners, six, nationwide, in a very short period of time."

  "I wasn't aware of the trend."

  "One would have to be in a position to see the entire cloth to discern the pattern."

  "And your magazine thinks there is a pattern?"

  She lowered her coffee cup from her lips. "That's partly what I've been assigned to discover."

  I wadded my own cup and tossed it neatly into a trash container. I didn't like the idea of becoming mixed up with a reporter, but at this point there was little to lose. She had no idea who or what I was actually investigating, and I could keep it on those terms.

  "Have you ever heard of the Gratuity Insurance Company?" I asked her.

  "No, why?"

  "I wondered if anyone you've questioned in connection with the other deaths mentioned them."

  "No, but on the other hand, I didn't ask. I can check back, though."

  I smiled at her. "That's what I was really asking."

  Alison pulled a notebook from her purse. "Gratuity Insurance," she said, jotting it down as she pronounced it.

  "How about the name Jerry Congram?" I asked while she had her notebook out. The pencil darted again while Alison spelled the name aloud to me.

  She looked at me expectantly for a moment saw nothing else was forthcoming and snapped the notebook shut. "I'm at the Clairbank Hotel," she said, "room four oh seven. That's an invitation only to exchange information after you've talked to Elizabeth Manners and I've talked to Brian Cheevers."

  "I thought you might want to show me your stock market graphs," I said innocently.

  18

  Elizabeth Manners lived in a sun-faded but stately neo-Spanish home not far off the Ventura Freeway. Azaleas were thriving along the wide front of the pastel yellow house, and as I rang the doorbell I could see a curved garden path flanked by rhododendrons, some of them still displaying rosy-purple blooms.

  Mrs. Manners answered the door almost immediately. When I identified myself, she smiled at me and held the door open wider. She was a very thin, graceful woman, somewhere in her sixties, with the sort of beauty that retains its gentle magnetism far into old age. Her face was lined but taut, and her thin frame was draped in a simple but expensive purple dress. If one word were needed to describe her, it would be "gracious."

  She endured my clumsy expressions of sympathy, then led me to a room of pinks and blues that had been blessed by a decorator's touch. After I'd declined her offer of something to drink, we sat to talk.

  "Have you any idea what was bothering your husband?" I asked her.

  Her folded hands, strangely older than the rest of her, lay, withered yet elegant, in her lap. "No, Mr. Nudger, Robert didn't share that problem with me, which was uncharacteristic."

  "Why do you think he chose not to confide in you?"

  "I don't know. One of the reasons I agreed to talk to you and the young lady is my curiosity about that matter. Robert and I were close; we worked together for his career."

  "But you agree with the consensus that he was depressed."

  "I would describe it more as anxious, apprehensive." She frowned as she sifted for explanations. "Perhaps he was afraid for me to know why."

  "Do you think it was something connected with his work?"

  "I doubt it. As I said, we worked together for his career." The withered hands in her lap shifted, briefly separated, as if seeking some purpose, then folded back into each other.

  "Do you think, in the week or so before your husband's death, that his apprehension grew, reached a peak?"

  "To the point of driving him to suicide?"

  She was trying to make my tact unnecessary. "Well, yes."

  "I think that's apparent, Mr. Nudger."

  "Then you believe it was suicide?"

  "I know it." Something in her pale eyes turned inward for a second, surveying her thoughts. "I'm going to tell you something I chose not to tell the young lady and I'd like you to keep it confidential unless you absolutely must reveal it. Only under those terms will I tell you, and then I'll tell you only because you are the only representative of the law still investigating my husband's death, and I'd like to know why he elected to die. Miss Day is a magazine writer, and I do not want my husband to become a case in point in some article, an example."

  "I can understand that," I told her, "and I can promise you."

  She looked at me for a long moment, her hands still. Then she stood and walked to a dainty walnut secretary desk near the white-curtained window. She drew an envelope from one of the flat drawers and handed it tome.

  "My husband's suicide note," she said in a voice detached from emotion. "It was delivered in the mail the day after he died."

  I accepted the white envelope, examined the postmark. "Do the police know about this?"

  "No one has known about it but me, and now you."

  Elizabeth Manners sat back down as I drew the neatly typed, folded paper from the envelope arid read.

  Dearest Elizabeth:

  I die by my own hand because I know this to be my wisest alternative-indeed my duty. I have never balked at responsibility, nor would you want me to even now if you could know the circumstances.

  I am grateful for all that you have been to me, saddened to cause you this necessary pain.

  Your loving husband forever, Robert The letter was signed beneath a typed signature, a distinctive black-inked scrawl.

  "Is this your husband's signature?" I asked.

  Elizabeth Manners nodded. "I have no doubt of that, Mr. Nudger."

  I replaced the letter in its envelope and handed it back to her. "Why haven't you given this to the police?"

  She leaned forward in her chair with a strangely graceful, compelling intensity. "I knew if the police learned my husband had definitely killed himself they would stop investigating his death. And I wanted to know why he committed suicide." She leaned back, smiled a sadly resigned smile. "I see now that it made no difference; the police are no longer concerned with the case anyway. They've accepted the theory of Robert's suicide, like everyone else."

  "And it would be pointless to tell them about the letter now," I said.

  "Exactly. You are a private detective, Mr. Nudger. Would you consider undertaking to find the reason for my husband's death? Obviously you already have some interest in doing this or you wouldn't have talked to Brian Cheevers and Alice. So I would like to hire you."

  I shook my head. "That won't be necessary, Mrs. Manners. What you want coincides with what I'm presently investigating, and if I find out anything I'll be glad to let you know."

  "I insist on paying."

  "We'll talk about that if the time comes," I told her. "In the meantime, maybe you can help. Did your husband ever mention the Gratuity Insurance Company?"

  "No, I never heard of them."

  "The names Jerry Congram or Victor Talbert?"

  "Neither of them are familiar."

  An evenly spaced, rel
entless thudding and scraping sound came from outside the window, a sound that seemed to violate the quietly tasteful and orderly room.

  "My gardener," Mrs. Manners explained.

  I recognized then the sound of a hoe being worked in soft earth. "Do you know who, at Witlow Cable, profited the most from your husband's death?"

  "Brian Cheevers, although I doubt that at the time he knew he would profit."

  Unless he'd known something Mrs. Manners hadn't. Cheevers was definitely the close-to-the-vest type. I didn't want to think that Manners' death might be unrelated to whatever his connection was with Gratuity Insurance, but it was a possibility. The problem was that there were a number of unrelated possibilities.

  "Who was your husband's doctor, Mrs. Manners?"

  "Steiner, on Hobart Avenue. I asked him about my husband. He said Robert had been in perfect health except for high blood pressure that could easily have been remedied."

  I sat back, crossed my outstretched legs at the ankles and thought about Robert Manners-a man in good health, near the top of his profession, and with a dedicated wife whom he obviously loved. When a man like that committed suicide, it was usually brought on by something outside his normal sphere of existence, something often impossible to discover. I didn't envy Elizabeth Manners her quest, and I couldn't look with optimism on my own task.

  Outside the gardener continued his toil, each chunk of the hoe like something breaking off and lost forever. Elizabeth Manners seemed impervious to the sound.

  I assured her I could find my own way out and left her there.

  From the Manners home I went to see Dr. Steiner, on Hobart Avenue.

  His office was in one of those quasi-hospital medical centers equipped to do everything but bury the patient. It was a white-brick building with few windows and an arrowed sign explaining that the emergency entrance was around the back.