by Barbara Paul
“No, I didn’t know. Where—”
“Five of them. Four accountants and a computer man, looking for irregularities in the books or hidden files or whatever. Tying up five computers and wasting everybody’s time … as if the answer to why Conrad and his team were murdered can be found in a data base.”
Marian asked for directions to Elizabeth Tanner’s office; Quinn’s vice president in charge of production would probably say the same things her boss had said, but her name should go on the no-stone-unturned list. On her way Marian mulled over what Quinn had said … or had not said. He’d seemed more concerned about the possibility that one of his men had sold him out than he was about the murders themselves. His insistence that the tension in the company was understandable considering the circumstances—well, that was entirely reasonable, Marian had to admit.
The sight of Elizabeth Tanner made Marian sigh with relief; she hated having her favorite preconceptions about big business demolished all at once. Elizabeth Tanner was one of those people who at first glance could be anywhere between thirty-five and sixty; second glance put her in her early to mid-forties. But more importantly, she looked exactly the way Marian somewhat cynically thought a woman business executive had to look: fashionably anorexic, carefully made up with not one hair out of place, and wearing a suit so expensive that it went past sinful into some unique monied realm of its own. Tanner looked like a movie star playing a businesswoman.
Also, she fairly oozed self-confidence. “Sergeant Larch? I hope you can tell me the police are close to finding the killer. It’s been a day and a half now.” Taking control of the interview from the outset, just the way she’d been taught in management seminars.
“We have a few leads,” Marian answered noncommittally. “Ms Tanner, Edgar Quinn—”
“Mrs. Tanner.”
“Mrs. Tanner.” Whatever happened to Ms as the catch-all female honorific? “Edgar Quinn tells me you’ve been in on the Defense Department project from the beginning. I know you can’t tell me what the project is, but did any of the liaison men come back from Washington with anything unusual? Any kind of information at all that you weren’t expecting?”
She didn’t have to think about it. “Nothing. I wondered the same thing myself, so I went over all my notes of our meetings, looking for some clue as to why they were killed. There was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.”
“What about outside the meetings? Casual talk, something mentioned in passing?”
Tanner pursed her lips. “I believe Conrad Webb was the only one I saw outside a meeting. He and Edgar and I had lunch on Thursday. It was casual talk mostly. The only Washington-related bit I remember is a rather naughty story Conrad told about a certain senator from the Midwest.” She closed her eyes to think. “No, there was nothing.”
“Edgar Quinn thinks one of them may have sold him out,” Marian suggested.
The other woman shot her a sharp look. “Does he, now? I suppose you mean selling industrial secrets to a competitor?”
“To anyone willing to pay, I imagine.”
“That widens the field of suspects considerably, doesn’t it? Do you think he’s right?”
“You’re in a better position to know that than I am,” Marian pointed out.
“Then I’d say he’s wrong. Sergeant Larch, none of those men would have sold the company out. It just wouldn’t have been smart. They all owned a piece of Universal. It was a policy Edgar’s father started, to assure loyalty. Nearly half this company is owned by its employees.”
“Including you?”
“Of course. Conrad held the largest number of shares, Herb Vickers and Sherman Bigelow less but still sizable amounts. But even Jason O’Neill was given the opportunity to buy in, six months after he was hired—an opportunity he took advantage of immediately, I might add. Selling company secrets would have hurt each one of them, in varying degrees. No, whatever’s behind the murders, it isn’t that.”
Marian thought that over. “So if the killer isn’t someone outside the company trying to buy privileged information …?”
Elizabeth Tanner turned her head away. “Then perhaps you should start looking closer to home?”
“The killer is inside the company?”
“I didn’t say that.” Cautious.
“Why is everyone here so afraid?”
“Are they? I hadn’t noticed.”
Nothing there. “I have to ask this. Where were you Saturday night?”
“I? Oh, good lord.” Tanner didn’t like the question any more than Edgar Quinn had. “My husband and I spent the weekend as house guests of a friend in Glen Cove. We left the city late Friday afternoon and got there in time for dinner.” She gave Marian the name and address of their host.
The interview had a finished feel to it, so Marian mechanically thanked Elizabeth Tanner for her help and left, and as if on cue her stomach started to growl. It was past lunchtime, but she had one more thing to do before she could leave Universal Laser. She fought down visions of a juicy gyro sandwich with extra sour cream and set out to discover what the FBI was up to.
10
Universal Laser’s accounting department was more crowded than the rest of the offices Marian had seen, and not solely because the FBI agents were taking up so much room; there wasn’t all that much space to begin with. Partitioned cubicles instead of real offices, circling a slightly larger open area filled with desks, computers, and mountains of paper. A worktable had been taken over by the FBI agents, four men and a woman, all tapping away at computer keyboards. One of the men, surprisingly, was Curt Holland.
Marian pulled up a chair and sat down. He didn’t take his eyes from the screen, but he knew she was there. He did have a good profile, Marian noticed. “Feel the tension in this place?” he asked.
“It’s hard to miss,” Marian said. “These people are scared.”
“Understandably so. I might even be a wee bit disconcerted myself, in their place.”
“Are you one of the accountants or are you the computer man?”
The corner of his mouth lifted, briefly. “I’m ‘the computer man’—is that my label here? I’m looking for electronic hidey-holes, if that’s what you’re going to ask. Floating files, coded directories, buried treasure of any species, legal tender or otherwise.”
“Find anything yet?”
“Not a thing. In fact it’s all rather tediously straightforward. Standard commercial software, very little in the way of original programming. Boring. A stupid and unimaginative use of a good system.” He touched a key and the screen changed. “In case you haven’t noticed, Sergeant, I do not tolerate fools gladly. In fact, I don’t tolerate them at all.”
Marian’s stomach growled. “Excuse me. What’s Trevor Page doing in Washington?”
“Checking on the investigation into our four victims’ activities last week,” Holland said, biting off his words. “Tracing their footsteps through the hallowed corridors of power. Sniffing out senatorial indiscretions and probing for shady meetings with Bad Companions. A job Page is eminently suited for, by the way.” His tone was contemptuous. “Sworn to uphold the law, Page is, but much more than that. Committed to seek out sniveling traitors, tired Communists, and all the misguided souls who profess political creeds at some degree of variance with the current criterion of ideological acceptability. Pledged to do his duty to God and his country, to help other people at all times—”
“That’s the Boy Scout oath.”
“Is it? I always did get those confused.”
Marian was amused. “You’re not exactly reverent, are you? You don’t talk like any FBI agent I’ve ever known.”
Holland turned his eyes from the screen and looked at her for the first time. “Why, thank you, Sergeant.” He smiled.
Marian didn’t know what to make of that. “Why do you dislike Page so much?”
“My, you are full of questions, aren’t you? Very well, I’ll tell you. I do not include myself in his cheering section b
ecause Trevor Page is one of the most dangerous men I know.”
“Dangerous? Page?”
“Dangerous. Even after his forty-three years of observing evidence to the contrary, Page still believes people can be coerced into behaving decently. Goodness by force of arms. An immaculate society protected against its own dark impulses by the ever-vigilant among us, of whom Page numbers himself first and foremost. An idealist—and therefore dangerous.”
“I suspect you have a fondness for hyperbole,” Marian said, unimpressed. Her stomach growled again. “All these wonderful things Page is finding out in Washington—of course you’re going to share them with the police?”
The FBI agent raised an eyebrow in mock offense. “Do you doubt it for a minute? After all, we gave you our word. Now if I may make a suggestion, go get something to eat. It’s hard for me to concentrate with that growly stomach of yours only three feet away.”
“Good idea.” She stood up to go, and then remembered Captain DiFalco’s instruction. “Why don’t you join me? There are several good places to eat near here.”
Holland was back to tapping instructions to the computer. “I’m right in the middle of something—I don’t want to stop.”
“I could use the company.”
“And your captain told you to stick close to us.”
Marian laughed. “Is it that obvious?”
“A lucky guess.”
Since Holland didn’t seem to be one for hellos or goodbyes, Marian left him to his work and went in search of her too-long-delayed lunch.
“Where the hell have you been?” Captain DiFalco roared the minute Marian walked into his office.
“In court,” she said. “The Downtown Queens were arraigned this afternoon.”
“Oh.” He’d forgotten. “What’d they plead?”
“Justifiable homicide.”
The captain snorted. “Fat chance. All fourteen of them?”
“Only thirteen, turns out. One of them was in the hospital getting her appendix out the day Mrs. Alvarez was killed.”
“Which one?”
“Large Marge. Looks to me as if the DA doesn’t want to bother trying to prove prior knowledge. They just kicked her loose.”
“They can always pick her up later if they want. Large Marge? What’s her last name?”
Marian couldn’t think of it. “I can check the reports.”
“Don’t bother. Something came in while you were gone. Webb, Bigelow, Vickers, and O’Neill—all four of ’em went to Universal Laser late Saturday afternoon.”
“No! Why, that’s too good to be true!”
“But true it is. The night guard’s sign-in sheet shows they checked in at a quarter to six, never checked out again.”
“Ah. Didn’t that make the guard wonder?”
“He just thought they were staying all night,” DiFalco said. “That happens a lot there, evidently. Then on Sunday the watchman came down sick and has been in bed ever since. He didn’t even know the four men had been killed.”
Marian frowned. “How did they get out of the building without going past the guard?”
“That’s your next little problem. So how’d it go at Universal Laser? Find out anything?”
Marian brought him up to date, including the fact that Curt Holland was there searching their computers for whatever he could find. “The main thing is that the two people at the top have different ideas as to what’s behind the murders. Edgar Quinn suspects one of the liaison team sold him out and got killed in a screwed-up deal. The others may have been shot simply because they were with him at the time the killer caught up with him. Elizabeth Tanner, on the other hand, isn’t buying any of it. All four men owned a piece of Universal Laser, and Tanner says there’s no way they’d sell themselves out. She thinks no outsider was involved at all.”
“Meaning somebody at Universal Laser is responsible? Who? Edgar Quinn?”
“She isn’t saying.”
“If Quinn thought somebody sold him out … yah, that’s a motive I could live with. Did you check his alibi?”
“It’s being checked now. Elizabeth Tanner’s too.”
DiFalco told her to keep him posted and waved her out. Only one man was in the Precinct Detective Unit room—not one assigned to the East River Park murders. Foley had left a pile of reports on her desk with a note on top: Nobody available to check Quinn’s and Tanner’s alibis, so I’m going myself. Marian found the note heartening; normally Foley wouldn’t bother telling her what he was doing.
The reports wrapped up a lot of loose ends, starting with Mrs. Sherman Bigelow. She’d fled to the seclusion of their weekend place in Connecticut upon hearing of her husband’s death, but had returned to New York just a few hours ago. The Medical Examiner had released her husband’s body and she was now in the process of making funeral arrangements. As for last Saturday, Bigelow had told her he had a meeting with another lawyer representing one of Universal Laser’s clients. They had some contractual matters to be worked out, he’d said, and it had to be done right then because the client’s lawyer was leaving for London at midnight. At the time Mrs. Bigelow had thought it odd that her husband hadn’t given her a phone number where he could be reached; they’d always been quite careful to keep each other informed as to their whereabouts. A check with Bigelow’s secretary indicated no contract meeting had been scheduled, either for Saturday or any other day.
Bigelow’s secretary—that would be Ms North, Marian remembered, the one wearing espadrilles. But the interesting point was that Bigelow too had lied to his wife about where he was going; all three married men had lied. And Jason O’Neill had not confided in his girlfriend. Marian couldn’t think of a stronger indication that the murders had nothing to do with the victims’ private lives than that. They didn’t want the women involved in what they were up to, they didn’t want them to worry, they didn’t want them even to know what was going on. That suggested that what they were doing was either dangerous or illegal, or both. And whatever it was, they had to do it at Universal Laser Technologies.
But why wait until the afternoon was over? Were they trying to avoid somebody? Marian shuffled through the papers on her desk until she found the photocopy of the night guard’s sign-in sheet. Only one other person had been in on Saturday; someone named Brown had showed up around noon and had left again fifteen minutes later, probably just picking up something he’d forgotten. No Edgar Quinn, no Elizabeth Tanner.
How did the liaison team get out of the building without being spotted? There was only the main exit; no delivery door opened into the alley because there was no alley. No private elevator; the boss rode the same elevators as everyone else. Did the guard take a nap? Was only one man responsible for the security in the building? Marian scribbled herself a reminder to check. The real question, of course, was whether the four men were still alive when they left, whenever and however they did leave. She would have liked to send the Crime Scene Unit to give the place a good going-over, but she knew she’d never get a warrant for that. Universal Laser was just too big, for one thing; she’d need to have a specific location in mind—and a specific reason for thinking so—before she could get the expert help she needed.
The Crime Scene Unit. She looked through her papers for a report and found only notes from a telephone call Foley had taken. The CSU was waiting for lab reports on fibers and hairs taken from Jason O’Neill’s apartment, but the preliminary conclusion was that no murder had taken place there. A little late, Marian thought wryly. The CSU reported finding fingerprints for Conrad Webb, Sherman Bigelow, and Herb Vickers. They were there in O’Neill’s apartment, all right.
Marian got up and went to the wall-mounted map of New York City on the other side of the room. Universal Laser was in the West Fifties, and Jason O’Neill’s place was only three short blocks plus one long block away. An easy stroll. That’s why there’d been no record of anyone’s taking a cab after three; they’d simply walked over.
Marian returned to her desk an
d finished going through her papers. Reports on finances—all four victims were in good shape financially, some more than others. Herb Vickers had perhaps less in investments and savings than Marian had expected, but Edgar Quinn had said Vickers was careless with money. Even so, he wasn’t exactly hurting. Nothing there.
Write-ups of interviews with the victims’ friends and co-workers pretty well scotched the possibility that any of the four had made a private enemy so deadly as to be out for blood. Herb Vickers’s occasional bull-in-the-china-shop ways had been an irritant at times, but on the whole people were fond of the fat man. Sherman Bigelow was too cautious a man to leave any outright enemies in his wake. And Conrad Webb and Jason O’Neill were both professional diplomats, domestic variety. The investigators had turned up a few people who didn’t like one or another of the men, but it was never anything serious.
As far as Marian was concerned, that closed the book on the personal angle of the investigation. Even the Major Crimes people couldn’t pretend there was, say, a domestic motive behind the killings. (If there were, Major Crimes wouldn’t have been interested in the first place.) But now Marian could concentrate her entire investigation on Universal Laser; all the process-of-elimination work was done.
When she next looked up from her desk, she saw she was the only one in the room. Marian glanced into Captain DiFalco’s office; even he had gone home. What a good idea, she thought.
At home two messages waited on her machine. The first was from Kelly Ingram.
“Marian, I’m leaving two tickets for you at the box office for the opening, that’s Friday night, F-r-i-d-a-y, don’t you dare forget it. I’m counting on you, Marian—don’t let me down! And be sure you and Brian come backstage afterwards and say all sorts of nice things to me—I’ll need a friendly face or two by then. But please please please don’t come back before the show because I am going to be a NERVOUS WRECK. Half the people in that audience are coming only to see me fall on my face and I’m already snapping at everybody just thinking about it.” There was a pause. “Well, I guess that’s all, unless you know a good prayer or two. Oh—I meant to tell you, I haven’t said ‘batch watery’ once since you were here! ’Bye, Toots—see you Friday.”