by Emma Lathen
McNabb believed in letting cooperative witnesses establish their own pace. “Now why would that be?”
“We knew Scotty from way back. He and Howard had actually discussed the desirability of a biennial tomato years ago when he was working for us. It was perfectly possible that they had gone out and achieved the same result independently. It wasn’t until we got to Vandamia and saw both sets of lab books that we realized it couldn’t be.”
“Everybody seems agreed that we’re talking about outright theft,” said McNabb, venturing onto delicate ground.
Fran sighed. “I know, I know. But the point I’m making is that we were so furious at having been kept in the dark it never occurred to us that other people were getting last minute surprises too. Barbara realized the mess we’re all in just as late as we did. That may seem incredible to you, but that’s because Barbara was the kind of girl she was.”
“Look, Mrs. Pendleton, no matter what kind of girl she was, you can’t get away from the fact that Barbara Gunn ran the office at Wisconsin Seed. The two partners must have talked things over, hunted for the right kind of lawyer, decided whether or not to go to court. If they were all such good friends, she heard a lot.”
“Of course she did. But it wouldn’t mean anything to her,” Fran said confidently. “When she was with us at IPR, Barbara was very conscientious about typing and filing, but basically she never knew what we did there. She liked working for us because she liked the people. And the same was probably true at Madison. Oh, in a vague way she’d know that Scotty was planning to sue Vandam’s. But she would never realize that had anything more to do with her than a new experiment. And Vandam’s has been just as stupidly tight-lipped with the opposition as they were with us. Even Scotty didn’t know about our involvement until we all got together in Illinois. So the implications came home to Barbara very late. That’s why she acted so strangely.”
“Tell me about that,” McNabb prodded.
“It was yesterday afternoon. We bumped into Barbara in the lobby here at the Blackstone. She was terribly upset and I chose that moment, of all moments, to be impatient with her. You see, I was still thinking of us as the only victims of last-minute surprise. Besides I had to go and deliver a paper and Howard had run out on me, so there simply wasn’t any time. It ended with Barbara bolting out of the hotel like a scared rabbit.”
“What do you mean, the implications had come home to her?” McNabb asked, deferring another question.
Fran had done enough thinking so that she could itemize her points. “First, she was overwhelmed by the sheer commercial value of Numero Uno.”
“So was I,” McNabb muttered.
Fran paid no attention and swept on. “Then, she realized she was going to be a key witness. You know, she was a target for all the gossipmongers at the meetings. I remember she told me everybody was circling around her the minute they saw her name tag. But, most important of all, she knew that her deposition was going to have terrible consequences for at least one of the people she was fond of.”
McNabb nodded appreciatively, allowed the Pendletons ample time to relax and then, almost casually, said, “What was that about your skipping out on your wife, Dr. Pendleton? Didn’t you want to talk to Barbara Gunn?”
“No, I didn’t,” he said shortly. “The gossipers have been giving me the full treatment, too. I wasn’t particularly anxious for them to see me closeted with a star witness for the opposition. I didn’t know how Barbara was going to testify, and I wanted to keep it that way until it all came out in court.”
Instead of continuing the conversation, the police captain leaned back and waited. Under his calm expectant gaze, Pendleton shifted uneasily, then clamped his lips shut. It was Fran who broke the impasse.
“For heaven’s sake, Howard. Barbara was poisoned last night. This is no time to worry about telling tales out of school.”
McNabb decided to take them off the hook. “You hadn’t by any chance heard of certain overtures by Milton Vandam, had you?”
Howard Pendleton reddened angrily. “If you already knew, why didn’t you say so?” he demanded. “Yes, Jason Ingersoll overheard Milton making some kind of proposition to Barbara.”
“Come on, Doctor, you can do better than that. Exactly what kind of proposition?”
“Jason didn’t know.” Pendleton paused, then reluctantly continued. “But he did catch a phrase about making her a nice present if she did something.”
“Quite a few people heard that one.”
“Oh, my God. Do you wonder that I was worried? Barbara was a very straightforward girl, and she would have been fully justified in raising hell. We’ve already got enough problems. If there was going to be a public scandal about the Vandams trying to bribe her, I wanted it absolutely clear that we didn’t have anything to do with it. In all fairness, I should say that Jason was every bit as outraged as I was.”
McNabb sounded amused. “I’ll bet he was. Tell me, Dr. Pendleton, I don’t pretend to know anything about this kind of patent litigation, but doesn’t it strike you that the Vandams are pulling some pretty queer plays? They don’t tell you about the suit, they don’t tell Wisconsin Seed about IPR, and when you all get together, Milton tries some fancy footwork with a secretary from the other side.”
“I am not prepared to enter into speculation.” Dr. Pendleton’s official manner was back with a vengeance. “I have to agree there has been an excess of secretiveness but, in view of their recent merger, the Vandams are probably being overcautious. As for Milton, he has always been an oddity and you cannot extrapolate company policy from his actions.”
“Oh, can’t I? When Ingersoll was overflowing with outrage, he didn’t happen to mention what he talked to Barbara Gunn about, did he?”
Pendleton’s jaw dropped. “You mean Jason pressured her, too? They must all be crazy!” he cried. “No, he didn’t tell me about that, Captain.”
McNabb was grim. “Well, he’d better tell me.”
After the police captain left and the floribunda had been successfully dispatched, the Pendletons settled down for an indignation meeting. Howard was foaming at the mouth about the selective nature of Jason’s disclosures. Fran was loud in her disgust at the attempts either to corrupt or to intimidate Barbara Gunn, attempts which she was certain had led to her death.
But Eric Most, when he joined them, was triumphant.
“Of course it’s too bad she was killed,” he said perfunctorily, “but it solves all our problems.”
Howard, who had been asking the heavens what further insanity the Vandams would inflict on him, stopped in midsentence to stare at his assistant. “You think adding a murder investigation to a lawsuit is going to simplify our problems?”
“I’m sure it is,” Most said eagerly. “Just because you and Fran were fond of Barbara Gunn, you’re letting her death confuse your thinking. It’s plain enough what happened. Wenzel faked up a lot of data to steal our patent and got Barbara Gunn to go along with him. Then she got cold feet at the last minute, and he had to kill her to shut her up. What’s more, everybody is going to see it that way, so it’s really a good thing from our point of view.” He ended in a burst of enthusiasm, his face shining.
“Are you out of your mind, Eric?” Fran demanded incredulously,
Pendleton was more lugubrious than disapproving. “You’ve overlooked quite a lot, haven’t you? If you think anything with the Vandams running around is going to be simple, you’re living in a fool’s paradise, Eric.”
It was not easy to track down Milton Vandam. When Captain McNabb finally ran him to earth in a bar at the Hyatt Regency, he was huddled in a corner with a florid man in tweeds.
“This is my publisher, Fred Harris,” Milton explained grandly. “He’ll be bringing out my memoirs.”
“Fine,” said McNabb and was unable to get further.
“I’m thinking of including a chapter on my being present at Barbara Gunn’s murder,” Milton continued. “I think that will add a note of dra
ma, don’t you?”
“It’ll be wonderful.”
But irony, like so many other grown-up responses, eluded Milton Vandam. “Too many people think that life in the seed business is just sniffing flowers. I intend to show them the real story, international travel, big business deals, scientific breakthroughs, even violence. Properly handled”—here he bent a stern eye on Mr. Harris—”there’s no reason it shouldn’t be a best seller.”
McNabb had a great gift for not fighting the undertow. “Sounds like a sure thing to me.”
“And I’m thinking of calling it My Blooming Life. Pretty catchy, eh?”
Fred Harris was a long way from deciding on titles. “Well, as I said, Mr. Vandam, we’ll be happy to look at the manuscript when it’s ready.”
“It’s the chance of a lifetime for you,” Milton told him with simple certainty. “I could have gone to lots of other publishers, but I chose you people because I liked the way you handled those presidential memoirs.”
“Glad to hear you say so,” said Harris, rising. “And now I have to run along. Nice to have met you, Captain.”
McNabb was already formulating his first question when Harris suddenly swung back with second thoughts.
“Say, Captain, you wouldn’t be considering a book, would you? One featuring the Barbara Gunn case for instance?”
McNabb said repressively that it was early days for that and, not without difficulty, sped Harris on his way.
“Can’t imagine why he should want your memoirs,” Milton grumbled. “If they’re the kind of outfit that will take just anything, I may have to do some rethinking.”
McNabb was more interested in his present work than in future literary greatness. “Mr. Vandam, I’d like you to tell me about your talk with Barbara Gunn yesterday.”
“It was the merest social obligation,” was the airy reply. “We were at the same party, we were next to each other, so I said a few words. Nothing of substance, I assure you.”
Not for a moment did Captain McNabb’s well-schooled features betray that this was the first he had heard of an encounter at the murder site.
“Fine. But I want to start with your discussion yesterday afternoon. You remember I asked all of you to review any meeting with the Gunn girl.”
“Yes, indeed, and you do right to concentrate on those people associating with her,” Milton said with lofty commendation. “I’m sure that the Wisconsin Seed people could tell you a great deal if they chose to. Unfortunately I cannot help you. Aside from those few words last night, the girl was a stranger to me.”
“That won’t do, Mr. Vandam. Your meeting at the ticket desk was witnessed.”
Milton narrowed his eyes and spat one word: “Jason!”
Unmoved, McNabb said persistently, “So, what did you talk about?”
“It was nothing. I just bumped into her,” Milton said stubbornly.
“Mr. Vandam, at least six witnesses saw and heard that conversation. I advise you to stop trying to mislead me,” McNabb barked, sinking the fact that there had been more seeing than hearing.
Sulkily Milton yielded. He had, he said, decided it was only prudent to discover how the only unbiased witness from Wisconsin Seed would testify.
“You sure you didn’t want to write her answers for her?”
“Nonsense,” Milton blustered. “I happen to be a man with an unquestioned reputation for integrity. You have no right to make such insinuations. I have a good mind to protest this harassment.”
McNabb ignored the babbling. “What about the nice little present you were going to make her if she went along with you?”
“I may have said something like that.” Milton gulped. “But in context, Captain, in context!”
Reassured by having found the mot juste, Milton expanded. “She would have been performing a small business courtesy by giving advance notice of what she was going to say. I intended to reply in kind with the sort of present you give a secretary at Lordmas. A box of handkerchiefs or something like that. She understood me.”
The rapidly accumulating dossiers at police headquarters had already informed McNabb that Milton Vandam had been living a self-indulgent and apparently celibate life for the past 20 years. McNabb could readily believe it. When was the last time in America that a man had given a woman under fifty a box of handkerchiefs?
In spite of McNabb’s open disbelief, Milton refused to amend his latest version.
“I had to find out what was going on,” he said over and over again. “It’s important to me.”
“And it was still important in the hospitality suite, I suppose. So you gave it another try.”
Milton had a knack for reliving life’s little pinpricks. “If you can call it that,” he snapped, still sour with resentment. “I barely had a chance to say hello to the girl before Howard Pendleton came over with some damn-fool woman.”
McNabb had only one arrow left in his quiver.
“Let’s go back to the ticket desk in the afternoon. Did you leave that part of McCormick Place when you were through with Barbara Gunn, or did you hang around long enough to see Jason Ingersoll talking to her?”
“Jason spoke to her? Why that underhanded, conniving schemer!” His eyes more bulbous than ever, his cheeks purple with congestion, Milton overflowed. “I knew he’d been up to something with those people in Madison. Do you wonder at my trying to find out what? I have a right to know. In fact, you could say it’s my duty.”
Sowing dissension was all very well, but McNabb would have preferred some hard facts.
He was not going to get them from Jason Ingersoll. That much became apparent to the police captain within five minutes of trailing his quarry to the flower show, where he found the young man leaning against a pillar, his arms folded and his head drooping.
Jason made no bones about his talk with Barbara, but he had other information to impart. Shifting slightly so that a portion of the pillar was free, he invited McNabb to join him in surveying the scene.
“You may not realize this, Captain, but flower shows for seedsmen are like the Paris collections for the fashion business. They tell us what people are going to buy, and that changes every year. Funny how some things go in and out of style. Take hollyhocks, for instance. Nobody’s grown them for decades, and now it looks as if they’re about to stage a comeback.”
Captain McNabb had been walking past the same yellow flowers to get to his front door for over ten years, and he still did not know their name. Nonetheless, he listened to Jason’s continuing remarks about larkspur and Oriental poppies with close attention. They told him that Jason found it necessary to demonstrate his complete indifference to police questioning. But, in McNabb’s experience, almost all citizens, including quite a few repeat offenders, held it as a God-given right to resent such intrusions. Why was Jason Ingersoll afraid to exercise this right? To do the man justice, he ran down as gracefully as he had begun.
“But I tend to get carried away by my hobbyhorse, Captain, and I suppose that isn’t what you came to hear.”
“I came to hear what you and Barbara Gunn talked about,” McNabb said stolidly.
“I wanted to find out what Milton had been up to. He could do us a lot of harm in our lawsuit, you know. By now you’ve probably heard about his offering her presents.” Jason’s pause for the confirmation that did not come was so slight, it barely broke the smooth rhythm of his remarks. “Somebody was going to have to put the brakes on him. I thought I should find out how bad things were.”
“And what did she have to say to all this?”
Jason shook his head with gentle regret. “Almost nothing. She was so rattled by Milton that she was nervous of talking to any of us, I guess. In fact you could say she was in a cold sweat. I tried to reassure her and left it at that.”
“No curiosity about how she was going to testify?” McNabb asked with polite skepticism.
“If she’d volunteered anything, I’m not saying I wouldn’t have listened.” Jason shrugged. “But I didn
’t push and, Captain, you’re not going to find anyone who says I did.” Unlike his cousin, Jason had not made the mistake of speaking at top volume in the middle of the floor. Whatever he had said to Barbara Gunn, he was rightly confident, had not been overheard. And all that caution, thought McNabb as he closed the unsatisfactory interview, might be some index to the importance of what Jason Ingersoll had been saying.
“I’m afraid we can’t be of much assistance,” Thatcher said apologetically. “But we’ll do anything we can.”
Captain McNabb had not descended on the Sloan contingent until the end of a long and unproductive day. Stifling a yawn, he said that every little bit helped and he was trying to build a picture of Barbara Gunn’s last day.
Thatcher obliged with a description of yesterday’s cocktail hour. “It was apparent to both of us that she was rendered extremely nervous by any discussion of the Numero Uno suit,” he concluded. “But I imagine everybody has been telling you that.”
“Most of them are too busy impressing me with their own innocence to tell me much about Barbara Gunn.”
“Sounds to me as if the Vandams are missing a bet,” Charlie said cheerfully. “In their shoes, I’d be pushing the theory that Barbara Gunn wasn’t worth murdering unless she was going to blow the whistle on Wisconsin Seed.” The same thought had occurred to Captain McNabb and, in this encouraging atmosphere, he decided to seek clarification of a point that had been bothering him.
“I didn’t get half as much of that as I expected. That president of theirs, Richard Vandam, mentioned it in passing, but he was more interested in convincing me that nobody in his company had been trying to bribe the girl. As for Jason and Milton, they seem to spend all their time trying to get a line on each other. I thought they were on the same side.”
“Ah, now there we can be of some help. Milton used to be head of R&D, with Jason as his assistant,” Thatcher explained. “After the merger, Milton was forced into retirement and Jason promoted. No matter how the Numero Uno battle turns out, somebody has fumbled. I expect that’s what’s exercising both of them.”