Green Grow the Dollars

by Emma Lathen

  And if Barbara Gunn had not been called to testify, she would have been no threat.

  Charlie was only half-convinced.

  “You may be right, Rose,” he said slowly just as Thatcher’s 11:00 appointment came bustling in.

  Walter Bowman, overhearing, demanded, “Rose may be right about what?”

  He listened critically to Charlie’s rendering of Miss Corsa’s suggestion, nodded, then swept ahead. “That makes sense to me. And you see what it means, don’t you? One way to clarify what’s been happening is to go back and see where the legal surprises came from. And they came from Scott Wenzel, the way I understand it. That means that Vandam’s must have been caught off guard. Despite Everett, they’re still the ones on the spot.”

  Still digesting Miss Corsa’s contribution, Thatcher said, “Actually, Walter, the legal jockeying has been too convoluted for that simple an approach. But I think Miss Corsa has to be correct. The criminal expected events to move less rapidly. Mrs. Gunn should have been off the scene when the fireworks began.”

  “Even so—” Bowman began argumentatively.

  Thatcher was ahead of him. “Don’t forget Vandam’s announced Numero Uno in this year’s catalog. That could be interpreted as the precipitating event.”

  “Which leaves things just as murky as they were, doesn’t it?” said Bowman.

  After a pause, Thatcher said, “You know, I’m beginning to think not.”

  Chapter 20

  Must be Supported

  UNDER Hilary Davis’ critical eye Eric Most seemed almost retarded in failing to recognize the shifting balance in the Barbara Gunn murder investigation. But circumstances had made it possible for Eric to bury his head in the sand. In spite of the fact that he was in the midst of 100s of coprofessionals, he did not share the prevailing camaraderie. Not for him were the enthusiastic reunions of classmates bringing each other up-to-date on who had married whom, who had gone to the Max Planck Institute, who had gotten tenure at California. Not for him were the tete-a-tete lunches between old buddies now separated by 3000 miles. It was no accident that he had ended up on a cafeteria line behind Barbara Gunn, one loner next to another. Since graduate school an unattractive blend of arrogance and obsequiousness had kept him from being a general favorite. In addition, his conviction that he should be leading the defense of Numero Uno made him stick like glue to his own little group. He was therefore spending all his time with a man who refused to discuss the murder, and a woman prepared to go along with that policy.

  No such cocoon of insulation was available to Dick Vandam. Earl Sanders and Cousin Milton, operating from different motives, had maintained such relentless pressure that Dick was forced to keep his eye on the ball every minute he was in Chicago. And with his return to Vandamia, things became even worse. The delay in the Vandam catalog, while personally galling, had merely been a comic feature for television. The patent suit, together with its commercial implications, had been of interest only to the Wall Street Journal and its ilk. But, with the murder of Barbara Gunn, Dick’s troubles became household news, fodder for the national press and in-depth reporting on every network in the country.

  And so, for the first time, word of his plight found its way into the homes of all those Vandams who had washed their hands of the family business. Some of the calls came straight to him. In no time at all he heard from Matthew in a ceramics studio in Vail, Colorado and from Chester with wooden sailboats on Cape Cod, and from Gilbert in repertory theater in Acapulco. Many of the older women in the family, however, followed a time-honored tradition of transmitting their alarms through their nearest male connection.

  Jason Vandam Ingersoll had absolutely nothing against his mother’s present husband and, after five trials on the lady’s part, he was something of an expert. Derek Sommersby was a handsome, lazy, comfort-loving young man with no vices. He was neither over-greedy nor dissolute. Having expended his meager supply of energy on the great effort of his life, finding and marrying a rich older woman, he was now content to sink back and enjoy the good things around him. With his naturally sunny disposition, he found it no penance to run his wife’s little errands, support her in her social life, and enter wholeheartedly into a joint conspiracy that they were members of the same generation. Jason was too grateful for the ensuing peace and quiet on the maternal front to balk at a stepfather three years his junior. His only problem was the speech pattern imposed by the couple’s life style. Jason’s mother, while changing her last name at a rapid clip, had until now stuck with the same first name. With Derek, things were different.

  “Binky and I have been out of touch,” Derek explained breathily from Malibu. “You know we ran over to Honolulu for the opening of Igor’s disco, and we had such a glorious time we stayed on for some surfing. We only got back home last night. As soon as Binky saw the headlines, she wanted to get in touch with you right away.”

  As usual, Jason’s first instinct was to deny acquaintance with this Binky bounding from disco floor to surfboard. Biting down hard, he said only, “The whole family’s concerned, Derek.”

  “Of course they are. But Binky’s always had a special feeling for the company, and the poor girl is really upset about this. She says there’s never been a murder connected with the family before.”

  “I know, Derek.”

  “What’s more, Binky thinks that the outfit we traded shares with won’t like this at all when they find out.”

  Jason knew better than to ask what made his mother assume Standard Foods was even more out of touch than she was. “They already know and they don’t like it.”

  “There!” Derek said triumphantly. “Binky was right. So she wants it impressed on Dick that, no matter what else happens, there can’t be any drop in dividends. Of course, the best thing would have been to see that this never happened. But now that it has, Binky wants Dick to clear it up right away. You will explain that to him, won’t you?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “I knew we could rely on you, old man. That’s why I told Binky it was better to speak with you than to those people at the new company.”

  Until now Jason had been slumped in his chair, drumming on the desk top, waiting for another feather-brained conversation with his stepfather to end. Now he straightened with a snap.

  “What was that?” he demanded.

  “You know Binky,” said Derek with terrible pride. “That girl doesn’t take anything lying down. When she’s got a problem, she goes right to the top, and she says Dick isn’t the top anymore.”

  Jason was afflicted with a sudden vision of innumerable Vandams, all accustomed to taking every complaint to the head honcho, all descending on Standard Foods. It looked as if he really would have to talk to Dick, although neither of them would enjoy the discussion.

  “You did the right thing, Derek,” he said forcefully. “If Mother wants her dividends to stay right up there, this is no time to be emphasizing our difficulties to Standard Foods,” he said, relying on the total business innocence prevailing in the Malibu ménage.

  “I never thought of that,” Derek marveled. “It always pays to talk with you first, Jason.”

  “Thanks for calling, Derek,” Jason said dully.

  But Derek always managed to close his conversation on a social note. “And do give our regards to Sylvia. Tell her we’ve sent a smashing anniversary present.” There was a throaty chuckle. “Binky found it in this way-out boutique, and it will shake you two up back there in Illinois.”

  Poor Jason did not even notice the systematic way he and Sylvia were becoming a pair of old fogies from Binky’s past.

  Dick Vandam and his wife had worked out a division of labor that had operated satisfactorily for decades. He took care of the family business, and she took care of the family social fiefdom. From the day of her marriage, Gloria had constituted herself a willing and able adjutant to her mother-in-law in matters of the Garden Club, the United Way, the Ladies’ Aid, and the Friends of the Library. In the richn
ess of time, she had succeeded in most of these responsibilities, which she exercised without requiring conjugal support.

  In return, Dick was not in the habit of bringing home his office troubles. But, as one glance at the coffee table told him, they were already there. To the uninitiated, the living room, complete with flames flickering in the fireplace, a profusion of cut flowers, and a silver tray bearing a martini pitcher, might have been designed as a stage set for the ideal welcome home. But Dick saw only the copy of the Chicago Tribune lying neatly refolded in its customary position. For all practical purposes, it was as if Captain McNabb and his minions had invaded the house.

  The Trib could scarcely be blamed for pulling out all stops in its coverage of Chicago’s most recent murder. For them Barbara Gunn was a local girl, just as she was to all those high school classmates attending her funeral, and the Vandam Nursery & Seed Company was right in Chicago’s backyard. But above all there was McCormick Place and the whole convention business so dear to the Windy City. As far as the Trib was concerned, they were dealing with desecration of the temple, and they responded accordingly, with diagrams and maps, “the arrow indicates location of the tomato in the convention hall”, with interviews of hotel personnel, “I was just bringing in a fresh bowl of dip when I heard screams from the restroom”, with photographs of principals, “Mr. Milton Vandam leaving the Hyatt Regency with a friend”.

  Dick’s wife could tell he was upset the moment he entered, but she also knew he liked to set his own pace on such occasions. She therefore held her peace as he carefully poured two drinks, handed her one and sank into his chair with an involuntary grunt. There was silence as he took his first exploratory sip, sighed approval and laid his glass down.

  Then: “I’m afraid we’re in for some bad publicity.”

  But he was going too fast. It was eight hours since Gloria had read the papers.

  “Has Father been at it again?” she asked sympathetically.

  Dick blinked. When he finally made the connection, he was resentful. “No, Gloria, that’s not what I’m talking about. Didn’t you read about the murder?”

  By rights, Gloria was blameless. Dick had happened to use his code words for a recurring peril. Hendrik Vandam II had been a fly in the perfection of the Vandam ointment for years. His emergence as a household name had been accompanied by serious personality changes. After a lifetime of being safe, sane, and stodgy, Dick’s father had blossomed into flamboyance, and worse. Those triumphant tours of Japan and Europe were all very well but plaudits were not the only things filtering back home. There were also lurid tales of geisha girls and the Folies-Bergere. The elder Mrs. Vandam naturally turned to her daughter-in-law, and the two of them, over the last decade, had well-nigh exhausted the theme of to err is human, to forgive divine.

  “I have been reading about it for days,” Gloria replied with dignified reproof. “I simply didn’t realize that was what you were talking about.”

  Dick sighed with exaggerated patience. “I would have thought it was self-explanatory.”

  Not for the first time, Gloria wished that Dick were just a teensy-weensy bit more of a drinking man. With another husband she would have looked to the martini pitcher as all-purpose pacifier. But Dick’s pre-dinner drink was simply another meaningless item in the complex daily ritual with which he liked to surround himself. When it came to soothing the beast, there was no substitute for roast beef and potatoes. Surreptitiously she glanced at the clock. Dinner would not be served for another 20 minutes.

  And sure enough, for 20 minutes Dick carried on about threats to the family’s good name, and how the least he expected was some show of concern from his nearest and dearest. All Gloria could do was play a waiting game. As she expected, translation to the dining room brought a change for the better within minutes.

  “Good roast,” he said, chomping.

  “Yes. I ordered it at Friedlich’s.”

  Silence.

  “I like the way Annie did the peas.”

  “She put mint in them.”

  Silence.

  Before they even reached the weighty question of whether or not he wanted ice cream on his pie, Dick was beginning to unburden himself. As Gloria had never doubted, it was family. She had simply picked the wrong relative.

  “All this aggravation has doubled my workload. I simply do not have time for these idiotic phone calls. This morning alone I heard from Jeremy, Gilbert, and Baxter.”

  Gloria clucked dutifully. She knew perfectly well that Dick rather enjoyed being guiding light to his wayward relatives. There was more at stake than inroads on his time.

  “Then, to top things off, Virginia, I refuse to call her Binky, has been after Jason.”

  This time it was not a cluck, it was a sniff. Gloria and Dick were as one in their view of his sister’s hectic marital career. “I’m surprised she even heard about it.” But Gloria remained true to her ideals of harmony between brother and sister. “I suppose she felt she should express sympathy.”

  “Sympathy, my foot! She instructed Jason to tell me to clean this mess up right away.”

  “Now, Dick, you know better than to let Virginia upset you. I’m sure she means well,” said Gloria, stretching the truth, “but she doesn’t understand your work.”

  “I would certainly not let her silly views upset me if they were going to end with her. She’s threatening to take them to Standard Foods.”

  They were now well outside Gloria’s field of competence. She had never understood the merger, which she regarded as one of those complicated tax shelters that men were so fond of. Instead she clutched at what she did understand.

  “But surely they’ll see that Virginia is unreasonable. If some secretary has been murdered in Chicago, it’s up to the police to handle it. It’s terribly unfortunate that you happened to be in the same room. But you simply have to grin and bear it. It would be the same if you were unlucky enough to be involved in a hotel fire or a plane crash. What if Henry Kissinger had been in the MGM Hotel? The whole world would know he’d been spending a weekend in Las Vegas. Reporters always jump on the names they know. But aside from telling the police the little you may have noticed about this girl, there’s nothing you can do. And sooner or later it will all die down.”

  For the first time in years Dick Vandam was almost misty-eyed as he looked at his wife. Good old Gloria! Insensibly flattered by her equation of him and Henry Kissinger, he saw nothing blameworthy in her assuming that Vandams could never be more than witnesses in a murder case.

  “But I’m afraid we’re more involved than that,” he began.

  “Yes,” she agreed regretfully. “It’s too bad that girl worked for the company that was trying to steal something from you. But I suppose she’d still be alive if she hadn’t been mixed up with people like that.”

  All traces of pre-dinner testiness had vanished. Partly this was due to his wife’s staunch loyalty. More perhaps was due to Dick Vandam’s innate sense of the fitness of things. Faced with the perfection that was Annie’s pecan pie, he realized this was no time for small emotions.

  Unconsciously his voice deepened.

  “That’s the way it looked at first. But now it turns out that damned girl was bribed to steal some data. So it looks possible, mind you, I’m just saying possible, that someone on our side was crazy enough to buy her.”

  Gloria did not assimilate new ideas readily. When the process was unavoidable, she found it helpful to do her slow thinking aloud.

  “Then, if someone at the company bribed her and it began to look as if she were going to confess the whole thing, then it would be the same person who ...” Her voice trailed away. The logic was impeccable but the conclusion was so unpalatable that she looked at her husband narrowly. Surely this could not be what Dick meant.

  “And these damn women are urging me to clear the whole thing up fast, get the murderer arrested, get the whole thing out of the papers,” he burst out. “They don’t stop to think what the consequences may
be.”

  Now Gloria was certain that Dick was engaged in a familiar marital game. He had a private bugaboo so absurd he could not bring himself to express it. Instead he would induce her to put it into words and then, by pouring scorn on her fancy, exorcise the demon.

  But this time she would not play. “I refuse to believe it,” she said flatly. “You can’t be serious. We’ve known Jason since he was a little boy. Virginia may have lost what little sense she ever had, but that’s no reason to suppose—”

  Dick did not let her proceed. “Virginia isn’t the only one who called.”

  Gloria waited with a sense of foreboding.

  “Charlotte did, too,” Dick said at last.

  “Oh God!”

  Charlotte Halvorsen, a forceful old dowager, lived in seclusion except on those rare occasions when she came out swinging in defense of her little brother, Milton Vandam. Suddenly Gloria realized why she was haunted by a sense of déjà vu. When Milton had been forced, inch by inch, down the painful road to early retirement, he had called in his most redoubtable supporter.

  Neither he nor Charlotte was a respecter of Queensberry rules. During the ensuing conflict they had resorted to every underhanded trick in the book, put merciless pressure on Vandams within and without the corporate fold and, most unpardonable of all, refused to acknowledge the non-belligerent status of the womenfolk.

  “Lorraine still won’t talk to Bernice,” she said musingly, conveying in her own terms the magnitude of the disaster. “She wouldn’t even come to Bonnie’s wedding.”

  “I know,” said Dick somberly.

  “But why is Charlotte up in arms now?” she asked, trying to grapple with these unknown forces once again threatening to rend the Garden Club limb from limb.

  “Milton must have made her,” Dick reasoned. “I’m sure of it. He wants this thing swept under the rug fast.”