by Deaver Brown
Looking down at a sister who was little more than a pathetic bundle beneath the white coverlet, Christina had to bite back an acid retort. Then Iona stirred, opened her eyes, and smiled weakly. “Still here, Tina? You don’t have to hang around.”
“I’ve got nothing better to do, kiddo,” said Christina blithely. “How do you feel?”
Iona inventoried herself. “Okay. Just kind of woozy.”
Between shock and sedatives, that sounded reasonable to Christina.
“What happened?” asked Iona, frowning unhappily.
“Somehow you busted your—”
“No, I mean at NOBBY,” Iona persisted. “I remember opening the door, then there was this dark figure in a mask, then—blank!”
“Don’t worry about that now,” said the doctor, beaming heavy calm at his patient while he motioned Christina from the room.
Five minutes later he joined her at the nurse’s station, pen already uncapped to supplement the paperwork. “I don’t want her exciting herself,” he explained. “And you look as if you could use some rest too.”
“It’ll take more than rest,” said Christina. Grateful as she was that Iona’s injuries were not life-threatening, she remained haunted by the vision of a brutal attack in a darkened building. If one of NOBBY’s fellow tenants had not been using his Manhattan office for purposes other than accounting . . . if. . .
Then came another reminder of the dangers outside the controlled certainty of the hospital corridor as the elevator door hissed open, disgorging two large men. One wore policeman’s blue, and Christina bristled protectively.
“Oh, no,” she cried. “You’re not going to pester—”
“It wouldn’t do you any good anyway,” said the doctor. “I’ve already explained to Reardon that it isn’t a question of jogging Mrs. Perez’s memory. There’s no memory to come back. She got banged on the head and after that she doesn’t remember a thing.”
Their spontaneous indignation made the detective blink. “That figures,” he said mildly. “We were just double-checking down in Emergency to see if anybody caught anything when they brought her in. But it was a no-show. And as long as we were here, I thought we’d drop by to see how she’s doing.”
This disingenuous explanation made Christina narrow her eyes, but the doctor merely shrugged. “Whatever,” he said, returning to his records, “but I’m not letting you guys in to disturb the patient now. If more details come back to her, we’ll call you.”
“Anything you say, Doc.”
Orders to tread warily extended only as far as Iona Perez. At NOBBY, the police were back in force. This time, besides the auditors, a full technical crew had moved in, dusting every surface for fingerprints, photographing the jimmied lock on the hall door. Two specialists, on hands and knees, were collecting the contents of a cabinet that had been tumbled to the floor, marking and bagging each item.
“He must have been going through that cabinet when Iona interrupted him,” said Sean Cushing dully.
The yellow tape that sealed NOBBY from the idly curious kept him imprisoned, under instructions to remain available and to avoid getting underfoot. This limbo left him huddled at his desk, nervously playing with the coffee cup that Cheryl insisted on refilling. She had been allowed in because of the common sense that real people bring to real-life situations. Who else would keep the percolator bubbling?
Peggy Roche, on the other hand, had brazened her way into NOBBY under the false colors of moral responsibility and inside information. Both of them were put to the test.
“But what was there in that cabinet that anybody would want?” she asked.
“Mostly, it was the tapes that Madeleine made last week,” said Cushing, clearly wishing she would leave him alone.
Peggy struggled with irritation. The attack on Iona was horrifying, but the aftermath still had to be dealt with. Relapsing into morose silence, as Cushing showed every sign of doing, struck her as counterproductive.
“What kind of tapes?” she continued.
But Cushing was preoccupied, not defeated.
“How should I know?”
“But surely they were classified somehow.”
“You know how Madeleine operated,” he replied. “She taped everything under the sun, then dumped it on the girls. All they could do was file by date.”
“Maybe we should ask Cheryl if she remembers . . .”
Realizing that Peggy would continue to probe, Sean reluctantly explained. “The guy was probably looking for the tape the cops already took, the one about the press conference.”
“What press conference?” she asked sharply. “Nobody told me about anything like that.”
Wearily he said, “Look, all I know is that Madeleine told the relief girl she was planning to call a press conference because the hearings had been adjourned.”
“But that means Madeleine made a tape just before she was murdered,” said Peggy with a sinking heart.
“You got it,” he said, silencing her.
“Want some more?” asked Cheryl, materializing with coffeepot in hand.
“No, thank you,” said Peggy.
Cushing shook his head.
Cheryl prepared to withdraw, then caught herself. “Has there been any more news about Iona?”
“Her husband called me just before the cops did. He says they think she’s going to be okay.”
The sour aftertaste of those early-morning calls made him stop short, but Peggy took up the slack.
“I talked to the sister,” she said. “She told me they’re keeping Iona in the hospital for observation, but she’ll be out sooner rather than later.”
“Great,” said Cheryl. “I mean, she could have got herself killed or something.”
“Just like Madeleine,” Sean agreed somberly.
This was enough to return Peggy to the attack. “What was Madeleine planning to say at this conference?” she demanded.
Before Sean could reply, Cheryl paused in the doorway. “I’ll bet it was a real blockbuster. Rita says Madeleine was breathing fire.”
Whisking herself away, she left Peggy staring at Cushing with horror.
“My God, she could have said anything. I’d better ask the police.”
“You can ask,” Cushing retorted. “But they’re not telling us one word.”
“Do you want to send flowers, Mr. Thatcher?” asked Miss Corsa, depositing his morning mail.
“To whom?” he inquired, eying the in-pile askance. For reasons he appreciated and deplored, topping the heap was a garish brochure touting the latest wonder of commerce. This one was called Mohawk Crossing, a megamall and theme park scheduled to open over the weekend in upstate New York. Since the ceremony figured in Thatcher’s future, he was eager to defer historically accurate log cabins and Iroquois encampments, but the flowers eluded him.
“To Mrs. Perez,” Miss Corsa explained.
Thatcher was still lost. “A pleasant woman and a capable one too, I suspect, but I don’t feel that I’m on candy-and-flower terms with her.”
Miss Corsa’s morning commute often equipped her with tabloid tidbits that Thatcher had missed.
“. . .said it looked as if she interrupted a robbery,” she explained. “I don’t think they would have covered it, except that it happened at NOBBY.”
“Good Lord,” said Thatcher, with more than automatic sympathy for Iona Perez. The poor woman seemed to take a lot of physical punishment for her devotion to NOBBY.
“Flowers by all means,” he agreed, reflecting that he was not the only one to have missed the item. Given all the parties currently resonating to NOBBY, it was significant that he was not already fielding squawks from George Lancer’s tower suite. This had to mean that the Kichsels were still in the dark.
“I don’t know if they’re in the dark,” said Charlie once he had been brought up-to-date, “but they’re back in Chicago. Elmer happened to mention it last night.”
“Good,” said Thatcher, with real pleasure. It was the
Kichsels and their proximity to crime—and George—who posed the greatest threat to his peace of mind.
Then Charlie added, “That’s Dean and Theo Benda. They went back a couple of days ago. For all I know, Moore and the Fentiman babe are still hanging around New York.”
“I sincerely hope not,” said Thatcher.
Reading his thoughts, Charlie supplied some comfort. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “This time around the police are going to have trouble with alibis. They probably don’t know how much time to cover. And you know that kind of building. I’ll bet their security’s a joke.”
All over Manhattan there are guards at the door with sign-in sheets. But, absent vaults stuffed with gold and diamonds, most of these precautions are designed to control the traffic flow. Inevitably there are gaps that let the occasional odd fish slip through. People tape latches to basement garages, they hide in bathrooms . . .
“So somebody broke into NOBBY at a time unspecified, then waited until nightfall to get to work. Mrs. Perez had the bad luck to interrupt him. It’s a plausible hypothesis,” Charlie continued.
Thatcher agreed. “But there must have been a reason for the burglary. Breaking into Mrs. Underwood’s office and searching it implies that she left some sort of damning record, doesn’t it?”
“A nice scenario,” said Charlie cheerfully. “Something damning enough to murder for, and somebody desperate to get his hands on it. We may be in for more fun and games, John, while the police go through the motions.”
Claudia Fentiman, who had been on the receiving end of those motions, was less carefree.
“Thank God, I had dinner with some friends. Then we went to a concert. We came back here for drinks,” she said to the phone. “Some detective dragged all that out of me before he told me there had been a break-in at NOBBY. Honest to God, Theo, I was ready to scream.”
“That means you don’t have anything to worry about,” he replied, knowing full well that her relief was razor-thin. This call was not a casual exchange but a pooling of anxiety. “What about Alec?”
“He’s been avoiding me,” she said, still brittle. “I haven’t seen him to talk to for the past few days.”
Swiftly, Benda made his calculations. “I won’t tell Dean about this,” he decided. “There’s no use troubling him until it’s absolutely necessary.”
“I think that’s wise,” she said, tacitly joining a conspiracy.
Without saying so, they were in total agreement that what happened at NOBBY mattered. “Another installment,” Benda had complained when Claudia told him about the attack on Iona.
“I wish I knew what Alec thinks he’s doing,” he rumbled ambiguously.
“I can’t imagine,” said Claudia.
This was as close as either of them dared come to admitting that Alec Moore’s behavior was cause for alarm.
The chain of events that had originated with the introduction of Quax had led to murder. In every link, Alec Moore—and by extension Kichsel Brewery—was deeply involved.
“I’ve invested a lot of hard work in Quax,” Claudia said. “I hope to God Alec isn’t throwing it away.”
“That’s a reasonable point of view,” said Benda. His own was somewhat different. “Look, Claudia, I’m glad you told me. I’m coming back east for this Mohawk Crossing shindig. We’d better get together and do some more talking about all this.”
But she had sensed his withdrawal. “Fine,” she said crisply. “In the meantime, I’ll try tracking Alec down. And if I can get anything out of him, I’ll let you know.”
“You do that,” he murmured.
Indulging in speculation and surmise was a luxury denied to the police. Even though Inspector Reardon was hampered by Iona’s inability to describe her assailant, he had to mount a credible search for the criminal. With other options limited, this left him retracing his own steps. Almost immediately he discovered that the roster of suspects left over from the Underwood murder was shorter than it had been.
“So half of the Kichsel crowd went back to Chicago,” he summed up as he scanned an early report.
“They could have hired somebody.”
“In which case we’re up a river without a paddle,” said Reardon. Until technical opinion could prove that NOBBY had been penetrated by a professional, not an amateur, he was sticking to his own gut instinct. By the time he quit NOBBY he had Claudia Fentiman, Dean Kichsel and Theo Benda firmly and blamelessly located elsewhere on the night of the break-in.
Even Sean Cushing had a witness to flaunt. “Sure, she’ll tell you I spent the night,” he said. “Why shouldn’t she?”
Armed with a cast-iron alibi, he had lost some of his defensiveness, but even so his contribution was minimal. Invited to guess the object of the search, he shrugged.
“Beats me,” he said. “Unless it was that tape you’ve been keeping up your sleeve.”
Cooperation on other fronts was just as limited.
“Okay, so who got close enough to Underwood to know what she was planning?” Reardon asked aloud.
His staff was already compiling lists of names, but before they finished, one leaped to mind. Here too, Reardon drew a blank. Alec Moore was not immediately available.
“Honest to God, Dad, you’ve got to clean up your act.”
Moore winced. Lectures from this source always galled; on top of a monster hangover, they were intolerable. Hand shaking, he popped another tablet. With his stomach heaving he did not need Pete to tell him that he looked as rotten as he felt.
“This is a helluva time for you to tie one on,” said Pete priggishly.
“I’ve got a lot on my mind,” Moore muttered, wondering what evil inspiration had induced him to land up in his son’s apartment, where his welcome had not been warm. Not that he remembered any details. His recall of last night, and of last night’s bars, was so hazy as to be virtually nonexistent. Unfortunately, the same forgetfulness did not encompass the tormenting tension that had set him drinking in the first place. The lesson of every morning after, that the victim had been a damned fool, was unnecessary. Alec Moore already knew it.
“Claudia called while you were still sleeping it off,” said his severest critic.
“You already told me.”
“I wasn’t sure you took it in. It seems that the cops want to talk to you again. Something happened at NOBBY last night.”
In his current state, Moore could barely focus on NOBBY. “As for last night, there’s not a lot I can tell them,” he said with a self-deprecating laugh.
Pete took this badly. “Well, you’d better try.”
“I will, I will,” said Moore. “I just need a little time to pull myself together before I face Reardon. A going-over from the police isn’t a lot of fun, you know. And for God’s sake, will you take that long look off your face?”
He had seen that expression before. Alec Moore’s son bore a strong resemblance to Alec Moore’s cousin, Dean Kichsel.
“It would help,” said Moore, trying to regain lost ground, “if instead of standing there, you’d get off the dime and make me some coffee.”
“He’ll probably ditch this story the way he did last time,” said Reardon, after Moore cleared the door that afternoon.
“Give him a break. After a guy’s hit all the bars in the Fifties, he’s not going to be real coherent.”
“If he hit the bars,” said the skeptical Reardon. “He’d better remember some names next time around.”
“Next time around, he’ll arrive with a lawyer,” predicted Dave.
“Not unless he’s cracking up on his own,” said Reardon, succumbing to pessimism. “God knows, we’re not making enough progress to charge anybody. So far, we’ve got the world’s biggest collection of loose ends.”
Either the problem was intractable, or they were trying to solve it the wrong way. Reardon made himself concentrate on the second alternative. “Maybe that’s because we’ve asked just a few people the wrong questions. Underwood didn’t decide to call a pr
ess conference until the adjournment. I want to see every damned person who could have talked to her afterward. Organize teams to track them down. God knows what kind of results we’ll turn up, but anything’s better than spinning our wheels like this.”
The setback surfaced before his program began.
“Those interviews you wanted?” said Dave later in the day. “They’ll have to wait. Half the people you want are going out of town over the weekend. In fact, a lot of them have already left for upstate.”
Reardon’s face creased irritably. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. NOBBY’s holding a convention that nobody bothered to tell me about.”
But even policemen are consumers. “This has nothing to do with NOBBY,” protested Dave. “It’s Mohawk Crossing.”
“You mean the tourist trap that’s opening in the Finger Lakes?” asked Reardon.
“Sounds pretty nice to me. I’ve been watching the ads on TV and I thought I’d take the kids up over the Fourth, if I get time off.”
Since water rides and shopping courts held no appeal for Reardon, he neglected to ask why they should attract so many individuals who had figured prominently in Madeleine Underwood’s life and death.
Chapter 20.
Firewater
Mohawk Crossing had not sprung, full-grown, from the imagination of one creator. The gigantic complex occupying a stunned corner of upper New York State was the result of spontaneous accretion. It had begun, simply enough, when a small Indian reservation decided to petition the authorities for permission to erect a gambling casino. At the same time a group of investors planning a new theme park finally reached agreement on its underlying concept. The land of James Fenimore Cooper provided exactly what they wanted—history, scenic surroundings, larger-than-life characters. The two forces, encountering each other in Albany, naturally fell into alliance. But the fat was really put into the fire by an entrepreneur dreaming of the world’s largest shopping center. Through some weird process of divination he spied a correlation between acquiring consumer goods and touring the land of Natty Bumppo.