Brewing Up a Storm

by Deaver Brown

  Again Charlie approached on a tangent. “Benda’s been in the brewery business all his life, and according to George Lancer, was everybody’s pick for Kichsel’s next CEO. Then Alec Moore comes sashaying along and within two years wants to muscle Benda out. If anybody pulled that on me, I’d let him stew in his own juice.”

  Thatcher went further.

  “Or possibly,” he suggested, “even turn up the heat?”

  Chapter 21.

  Under the Influence

  The growth of anxiety is a familiar phenomenon to police interrogators. Inspector Reardon had seen hardened criminals progress from arrogance to blubbering terror, wife murderers from simulated grief to shocked foreboding, youthful gang members from macho confidence to tearful cries for their mothers. Alexander Moore’s emotional course should have followed a well-charted path. Initially he had been unconcerned. The first dents in his alibi for Madeleine Underwood’s murder had produced only stubborn stonewalling. With the break-in at NOBBY, mounting tension had begun taking its toll. By now, with a whole night for an active mind to swirl frenziedly from one fear to another, he should have hit bottom and become a mass of exposed nerve endings screaming for relief. It was at moments like this that confessions were often forthcoming.

  As soon as Moore entered the office Reardon knew that something had gone amiss. True, the assumption of superiority and the air of impregnable confidence had vanished. But so had the incipient twitching and the brittle hostility. Alec slumped in the chair facing the desk, totally motionless, his hands hanging from limp wrists, his rib cage collapsed onto his hips. He looked as if he had not only lost all hope, but half his skeletal structure as well.

  “This time we’re covering everything,” Reardon began menacingly. “Underwood’s threat to expose you, her murder, the break-in.”

  “Why not?”

  It was more a sigh than a verbal comment. Alec Moore had hit bottom all right, but not in any form anticipated by Reardon. At first the inspector cursed his timing. Had he missed the critical moment? Had the delay been a mistake?

  The expert in Reardon knew better. This dull animal acceptance was undeniably one way of relieving pressure. But it only surfaced with the born losers. The clever successful types didn’t go this route, not when it meant admitting defeat by a dumb cop.

  “Let’s get one thing straight, Moore. You’re in deep trouble. And,” continued Reardon, punching a button sure to work, “you thought you were so smart.”

  “Smart?” Moore repeated tentatively, as if he had never heard the word before. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “It means you were too stupid to clean the phone right. You left a fingerprint, something a fourteen-year-old punk wouldn’t do.”

  The gibe made no impression.

  “I didn’t clean the phone. I used it before I left the hearings.”

  “Oh, sure. You made a call to someone but you can’t tell us to who. Then you went off for two hours but you can’t tell us where. You’re wide open.”

  Moore’s gaze had drifted away from the inspector and seemed fixed on some distant prospect beyond the grimy window.

  “But there’s one easy explanation,” Reardon went on, trying to wrench back Moore’s attention by brute force. “You called Underwood and she hustled back early to meet you. Hell, she could even have taped your call, which is why you had to break into NOBBY.”

  Slowly the gaze refocused.

  “Why would anyone want to talk to Madeleine Underwood?” Moore asked blankly. “She wasn’t important.”

  “So I suppose it’s all just a big coincidence. She threatens you, she gets knocked off, her office is rifled for tapes.”

  “What does any of it matter? Some things just happen.”

  “Like hell they do.” Then, abandoning shock tactics, Reardon became persuasive. “Why don’t you try doing yourself some good? If you told us who you called, if you had some verification of the time, that would take the heat off.”

  “No.”

  Moore did not even have the energy for a physical display of resistance. There was no shaking head, no set jaw, no clenched lips—only the same slack inertia.

  Once again Reardon changed tactics. Deliberately he prolonged the silence, suggesting that he and Moore were joined on some dreamy voyage through outer space. Then he suddenly barked:

  “What did she have on you that she was ready to spill?”

  He had hoped to jerk their exchange into a faster tempo but once again there was that slow, laborious reply, as if Moore were internally translating a foreign language.

  “I’m sorry but I won’t tell you that.”

  My God, now the guy was even turning polite. For one dizzy moment Reardon thought he understood this strange unresponsiveness. Moore had stuffed himself to the gills with downers. But a sharp inspection was enough to dispel this theory. The eyes were clear, the pupils normal, the respiration well above tranquilizer pace. With rising exasperation the inspector acknowledged that Alec Moore had simply taken up residence on another planet. Maybe this was some new form of yoga.

  “Look, Moore, I’ve got motive and opportunity for you, and everybody had means. You’re right at the top of the list, you’re our number-one suspect.”

  “I can’t help that,” Moore said apathetically. “I can’t help anything.”

  If changing the tempo was impossible, then perhaps changing the subject would do some good.

  “I told you to think about that bar crawl you claim you took.”

  “That’s right. You did.”

  Trying to spark some emotion—any emotion—Reardon reverted to his harsh, demanding tone. “So? What have you come up with? This time?”

  Almost to his surprise, he did not receive another flat negative.

  “I don’t remember any names. But after I left the hotel I went someplace a couple of blocks south that had a bright-green awning.”

  Moore’s subsequent recollections were equally vague. All his wanderings had been on foot. At one point he had become entangled with an unusually large group leaving a restaurant.

  “A party, I guess,” Alec said indifferently. “But they were talking German and they were all over the sidewalk. I was heading for the bar just past them, a place with red stools.” Then he actually frowned in concentration, as if he were listening to some inner ear. “There was a guy with a guitar making like Conway Twitty.”

  Everything else was just as fragmentary, a confused jumble of colors and sounds and people.

  “Green awnings and red stools are a dime a dozen in that neighborhood. I suppose all these places were so crowded they didn’t notice you.”

  “I don’t see why they should.”

  Again and again Reardon tried to smash through that dank cocoon without success. The session lasted for an hour and a half, and by its conclusion Reardon himself was a good deal closer to twitching than Alec Moore.

  “I’m done with you for now,” he finally snapped.

  And still the man remained huddled in his chair, as if conserving his strength for some ordeal to which police inspectors were irrelevant.

  “YOU CAN GO!”

  As soon as Moore finally shuffled out, Reardon exploded.

  “I don’t understand it,” he burst out to Dave. “He would have sat here all day without complaining. He just doesn’t seem to care.”

  Dave was having troubles of his own trying to collate reports flowing in from his men in the field.

  “It seems to be working,” he said unsympathetically. “You didn’t get anything out of Moore.”

  “But it’s not natural.”

  “What’s natural with a geek like that? Maybe he’s just paralyzed by the idea of jail. Anyway, things are narrowing down. The audit’s done and the accountant’s waiting outside.”

  “Damn,” Reardon was saying ungratefully five minutes later.

  “If that’s the way you feel about it, I’m sorry,” the accountant chirped. “But facts are facts. Besides, with
everything hunky-dory, you’ve got one suspect less.”

  “I know. The trouble is that embezzlement was the only solid motive at NOBBY big enough to explain a killing. Cushing might have clobbered Underwood to stay out of prison.”

  The newspapers had not been far behind the police in uncovering Madeleine Underwood’s combativeness.

  “I thought she went to the mat with everybody in sight.”

  “Yeah, but she was the only one who got really excited about it. She was involved with a lot of big institutions who could shrug her off. So we’re left with a personal motive, and without leads, that could mean anybody or anything.”

  The accountant cocked his head intelligently, then decided on an oblique approach. “Everything was in turmoil over at NOBBY while my boys were ransacking the place. The people on the board were rushing in and out, the staff was gabbing its head off. And one thing came through loud and clear. The governors kept saying they were lucky to have Iona Perez available during the crisis.”

  He fell silent, as if he had said everything important.

  “Now wait a minute. The crisis didn’t make any difference to her availability. She was there all along.”

  “And doing most of the work,” the accountant agreed. “But I’m not sure Perez would even have been considered if the board hadn’t had to act fast. She was a volunteer and you know how things work. If the governors had forced Underwood to resign, they would have had a month or so to decide on a replacement. There are people making fat careers in non-profit outfits. That’s what the Cushing kid is planning. The normal procedure would have been to look for a professional, particularly after they’d just been burned because Underwood was so amateurish.”

  Reardon had never considered this possibility. To him NOBBY was right up there with the PTA or a local bowling league, something that could inspire people to gather together for an occasional evening. He was ready to admit that Iona Perez believed in the cause and felt it was being imperiled by Madeleine Underwood. But would she kill to secure leadership of NOBBY?

  “All because she doesn’t want Quax sold in supermarkets?” he exclaimed incredulously. “She’d have to be crazy.”

  “Maybe that’s not all. I admit I’m biased in favor of dollars and cents, but she’s gone from making nothing to making a damn good salary. And she negotiated for it, knowing the board had no choice.”

  No one knew better than Reardon that some people murder for ridiculously insignificant reasons. Usually, however, they were people who accepted violence as part of their daily pattern.

  “Besides,” he continued his objections aloud, “Perez is the one who got hurt in the break-in. Are you suggesting that she staged the whole thing and accidentally did too much damage to herself?”

  But the auditor refused to stray beyond the limits of his own province. “I’m not suggesting a damn thing,” he replied jovially. “Just passing along my observations.”

  “Thanks a whole lot.”

  “By the way, I told Cushing we’d let him know our results. That okay with you?”

  “Why not?” said Reardon, sounding almost as fatalistic as Alec Moore.

  Incredulous or not, as soon as he was alone he riffled through the files searching for testimony about the quarrel in the ladies’ room. Iona Perez’s participation had been neither as coolly controlled nor as brief as she wanted the police to believe. She had sworn to see Madeleine Underwood removed by any means necessary. What if Iona had later returned to the committee room in all innocence? Feelings could have escalated during a second encounter.

  Reardon shook his head impatiently. This was idle speculation that could be applied to every single suspect. The mountain of material on his desk established Madeleine Underwood as capable of whipping almost anybody into manic hostility. The miracle was that she had survived as long as she had. She seemed to have been incapable of recognizing that other people had interests just as valid and compelling as her own: that Iona Perez had not structured peaceful protests in order to land in jail; that Leon Rossi was not holding hearings simply to provide NOBBY with an audience; that the Ludlums were not in court to make legal history but to make money. That kind of blinkered vision could be inherently dangerous to its owner.

  “What I need are some facts,” he announced when Dave entered with the first tabulation of reports filtering in from the field.

  “Well, you’re not going to find any in here. Nobody heard any reference to calling a press conference.”

  “What about those clerks in the ladies’ room? Have they been covered yet?”

  “Yes, and the net result is zilch. They were all busy backstage after Rossi adjourned the hearings. Our basic problem is going to be time. If she decided on a press conference after the adjournment, we’re talking about a very short interval. It’s not as if she hung around for very long.”

  Reardon shook his head stubbornly. “But while she was there you can’t tell me she was quiet. That doesn’t sound like our Madeleine.”

  “Hell, no. A lot of people heard her claim the reason for the adjournment was to shut her up. And she said it wasn’t going to work, she was going to blow things sky-high. She was big on windy threats but short on details.”

  “Which doesn’t do us any good.”

  “Right!”

  Having established his own claim to dissatisfaction, Dave tried to be more helpful. “The boys are still out there, running down the list. But if you ask me, the real possibility is the gang you’re reserving for yourself. If she was naming names she’d do it with somebody who was part of the action, somebody who already knew the score.”

  “Yeah, but a passerby who overheard is more likely to tell us the truth.”

  “Particularly . . .”

  Reardon spelled it out.

  “Particularly if she was talking to the one who killed her.”

  When Roger Vandermeer inflicted himself on his firm’s New York office, the secretarial pool rotated responsibility for catering to his needs. It was widely felt that once a year was more than enough. In addition to being curt and demanding, he was impersonal to the point of offensiveness. To him secretaries were so many identical pieces of furniture, lacking all distinguishing characteristics. The same quality that made him blind to the rotational policy led him to assume that every clerical employee was as familiar with his clients, his contacts, his personal foibles as his permanent handmaiden back in Washington.

  Bernice Marsh knew it was going to be a bad day the minute Vandermeer came striding into the office, issuing directives and omitting any form of greeting.

  “I’ve got some notes here from the Mohawk opening, but you’ll have to get them typed up between other things. I’m already running late. First off, get ahold of Ted Pfeiffer and see if he’s free for lunch. If he is, make a reservation for one o’clock at that place I always take him near his office. Then I’ll need you to pull the feedback on the New England campaign for clean nuclear energy. Get out some kind of rough draft for me and I’ll polish it off. But don’t let me work past ten forty-five. I’ve got an eleven o’clock at Wade and Sullivan. Better confirm that with Paul . . .”

  The beeping of the telephone came as a relief. After sedately announcing Mr. Cushing from NOBBY, Bernice was too busy scribbling notes to herself to pay attention to the conversation. Find out where Ted Pfeiffer worked. Then ask his secretary if she knew the restaurant this jackass was talking about. And maybe the last girl on the rotation had some idea about Paul’s last name.

  In the meantime Vandermeer, receiver in hand, had transformed himself from Simon Legree to lending officer.

  “Hello, Sean. Any new developments?”

  “You wanted to know the latest, Roger,” Cushing reminded him happily. “Well, the police just called. Their audit is done and we’re in the clear, right down to the last penny.”

  “That’s good news.”

  For once Vandermeer was sincere. The financial contributions to NOBBY might be completely legal, but having them
figure prominently in a murder investigation could be embarrassing to the Soft Drink Institute and to himself. These transactions always suffered in the light of day.

  “. . . no longer any doubt we have the resources to go national,” Sean was continuing. “And with increased membership we can become more effective in our campaign.”

  “You don’t know what your resources are until you settle with Rugby,” Vandermeer said bluntly.

  “Iona’s working on that right now and she says things look good.”

  “As soon as you get something definite on that front or from the police I’d like to hear about it. Until then, as far as I’m concerned, everything’s still up in the air.”

  Sean was too exhilarated by the auditor’s report to be anything but optimistic.

  “All right, so there’s one problem left. It’ll be taken care of before you know it.”

  Normally Roger Vandermeer would have brought the younger man to earth with a thud. One problem? What about an unresolved murder? What about that break-in? But this line to NOBBY was intended as a one-way street, providing a flow of information from Sean Cushing and absolutely nothing, not even speculation, from Roger Vandermeer.

  “Let’s keep in touch, shall we?” he said briskly.

  He was then at liberty to return his attention to the unfortunate Bernice, piling on enough work to keep her long after closing time. And, she thought despairingly, it wasn’t even ten o’clock.

  As she half expected when she opened the door at ten forty-five to remind him, in a clear treble, of his appointment with Mr. Paul Thibault, he had a fresh list of instructions.

  “You’d better come downstairs with me,” he snapped. “I’ll want some of this stuff ready by the time I come back.”

  He talked himself across the reception area and into the corridor. Even when the packed elevator received them, he continued in full spate, ignoring the other passengers and oblivious to the fact that Bernice’s arms and notepad were so compacted she could barely insert a pen to write. Throughout their downward journey he continually flexed himself on his toes, as if grudging every second in transit. The lobby provided an opportunity to discharge his pentup energy and he stalked toward the revolving doors with Bernice scuttling in his wake.