Sweet and Low_An Emma Lathen Best Seller

by Emma Lathen

  “45 years!” Nagle choked.

  Extracting a coherent account was not easy. Nevertheless, with valuable assistance from Helen, Thatcher finally got the picture. A routine invoice error, uncovered by Fred over the weekend, had sent him to Dreyer’s billing department. To his amazement, Dreyer’s billing department flatly refused Arrow Jobbers either refund or credit.

  “Those dumb slobs!” Fred sputtered. “We’re their biggest customer, except for the U.S. Army! What kind of way is this to treat me—”

  “Maybe Dreyer is simply running out of money.”

  Thatcher’s comment was intended to lighten the atmosphere. But, as Charlie Trinkam sauntered into the office, he saw that levity was misplaced. Charlie’s eyebrows rose to new heights. Fred took it seriously, too. . . .

  “Then let Dreyer declare bankruptcy!” he raged. “Until they do, if they think they’re going to pull this sort of thing—over a lousy 800 bucks—they’ve got another think coming.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Helen broke in. “Don’t encourage him, John!

  We all know this is just one of those mistakes. And it will get settled. There’s no use getting so excited! As for suing—”

  Thatcher was anxious to second her efforts and redeem himself.

  “You’re right, Hellen. I wouldn’t be premature, Fred. You know how these computerized systems botch credits and refunds. Why, Miss Corsa was busy for days coping with Abercrombie & Fitch about their double charge on a tennis racket I bought . . .”

  Fred Nagle, still seeing red, obviously itched to tell him what he could do with Abercrombie & Fitch, let alone his tennis racket. Hastily, Helen cut him off:

  “Absolutely. And, John, you do agree that Fred should wait for at least a few days, don’t you?”

  “I’m calling my lawyer—”

  “What about a cooling-off period?” Thatcher inserted. If Ziprodt & Ziprodt were any example, Fred’s lawyers would be drawing up attachment papers before lunch. “Say, until the end of this week.”

  This was too eminently reasonable for Fred to dismiss out of hand, much as he would have liked to. When Helen finally led him away, he had grudgingly agreed to four days’ grace.

  “That’s true enough,” Charlie ruminated. “About how credits and refunds foul things up. But the billing department must be breaking down at Dreyer. Everything else seems to be.”

  As if on signal, Miss Corsa rang through. “Governor Yeoman is on the line,” she reported. “I’ve told him that you’re in conference . . .”

  This was not a graceful bow to Charlie’s place in the great Sloan hierarchy but Miss Corsa’s concession that, in some instances, Thatcher could decide for himself which calls to accept.

  “Put him through, please,” he directed, while Charlie shamelessly prepared to eavesdrop.

  Yeoman came on abrasively. “Do you know where Vandevanter is!”

  Thatcher hoped it was not Brazil.

  “He’s in his office at Dreyer—that’s where he is!” Yeoman said, inviting Thatcher to share his outrage.

  “What did you expect?” Thatcher rejoined. “He got out on the material witness charge, and the police weren’t willing to charge him with murder, I assume Vandevanter had a satisfactory explanation for that meeting with Amory Shaw—”

  “You may assume that, but I don’t!” Yeoman snapped. “He certainly hasn’t taken me into his confidence!”

  He was trespassing beyond the limits of Thatcher’s patience. “That’s understandable, isn’t it?”

  There was a pause, then Yeoman modulated his voice and his position.

  “This is a very serious situation here at Dreyer. Of course, if Howard had remained in jail, we would have done everything we could for him.”

  Charlie, who could hear every word, chortled aloud. If Yeoman’s weekend performance constituted wholehearted support, Vandevanter was well advised to keep his own counsel.

  “Nevertheless,” Yeoman pressed on, undeterred by the lack of response, “with Vandevanter in jail, there was a de facto vacancy in the office of president . . .”

  He let this dangle enticingly, so Thatcher obliged with an unfriendly: “Go on.”

  At last, he was getting through. Yeoman was growing defensive: “I’ve been in touch with several Dreyer directors. Most of us agree that the board is going to have to take steps.”

  “What do you propose?” Thatcher was fair-minded enough to recognize some merit in Yeoman’s position. No corporation wants its letters to stockholders signed by a man out on bail.

  “Howard has to take a leave of absence!” Yeoman was emphatic.

  “Unless he prefers to resign outright!”

  Thatcher scented a plot to force Vandevanter out for good. “How long a leave of absence do you have in mind?”

  But even while he asked, he knew what the answer had to be. “Until all taint of suspicion is removed,” Yeoman retorted instantly. “It’s the least Dreyer has a right to demand.”

  “And what if the police never solve Amory Shaw’s murder?”

  Yeoman pointedly let the question stand. Then: “I’m still trying to get in touch with the other directors. I’ll be in contact with you later, John.”

  “A trial balloon,” commented Thatcher after he had gotten rid of Yeoman. “Yeoman was delighted to see Vandevanter in jail. I’m beginning to wonder if he doesn’t want to see him hanged.”

  “You know,” mused Charlie, “I’ve always thought Vandevanter was a pretty cold fish. But if he didn’t kill Amory Shaw, well, you’ve got to feel sorry for the guy. He’s got Leo Gilligan making noises like Amory Shaw. And Yeoman is doing his damnedest to shaft him. Now Fred Nagle is gunning for him, too. On top of all that, he’s got nature boy taking pictures of him with Amory Shaw, just ten minutes before the murder.”

  Before Thatcher could comment, Miss Corsa again had a bulletin from the outer world. This time it was the Avis car rental company. They too wanted Mr. Thatcher’s testimony in connection with a lawsuit they were mounting against the Checker Cab Company.

  “Refer them to the Law Department,” said Thatcher, automatically.

  Both Miss Corsa and Charlie knew him well enough to be suspicious of his abstracted tone. Miss Corsa, after one look, departed to revise the day’s schedule. Charlie, however, drew nearer.

  “What’s made you stiffen like a bird dog, John?”

  There were many ways for Thatcher to answer this.

  Bartlett Sims, and one minor traffic mishap . . .

  Fred Nagle, and a botched shipment of Old Glory . . .

  Or even Charlie Trinkam, and a connoisseur’s account of strange doings at the Cocoa Exchange . . .

  Instead, Thatcher said: “You and Yeoman both reminded me that I’ve never seen this damning photograph by Phibbs.”

  “And you want to,” Charlie supplied, rising to accompany him. “Don’t tell me why—let me guess.”

  Chapter 22

  The Police Get Their Man

  Few people find visits to police headquarters so rewarding.

  “Well,” Charlie commented an hour later. “You can see why they arrested Vandevanter. Phibbs may not be any Karsh of Ottawa, but that’s one helluva picture.”

  John Thatcher, still studying it, had to agree. Craig Phibbs had his deficiencies as a social commentator. He was a master of the camera.

  “It’s a shame to waste skill like this on that pretentious juvenilia of his,” Thatcher murmured. “There aren’t many photographers technically equipped to catch anything with such fatal accuracy.”

  Phibbs’ pinpoint focus had etched in every detail. Yet, at the same time, his total field projected its own balance and tension. Amory Shaw was just exiting from an office. He was half-turned, so that a forbidding frown showed almost full face. Howard Vandevanter, on the other hand, could be recognized only by his distinctive yellow hair, and the barest suggestion of his profile. These two figures, in the forefront of the photograph, were the critical mass, but Shaw’s arm was st
retched back, his hand still resting on the doorknob. The viewer’s eye was led hypnotically to the door, the office number, then to the wall clock overhead, with its hands recording minute and hour for all time. This was a portrait of Amory Shaw minutes before he stumbled onto the floor of the Cocoa Exchange with a knife in his back.

  “You were right, John. If that doesn’t spotlight a murderer, I don’t know what does,” Charlie observed.

  “The police certainly thought so,” said Thatcher dryly. “Let’s see if they’re willing to look at this picture from another point of view.”

  Detective Dennis Udall’s good offices had given Thatcher and Charlie access to Craig Phibbs’ handiwork. Thatcher had solid grounds for thinking that Udall would listen to his hypothesis with courtesy. But what would be accomplished by such an audience? Thatcher’s argument rested heavily on his own intuition about probabilities—particularly, probabilities concerning dollars and cents. Detective Udall, understandably, would want hard proof. And that proof, if it existed, was unavailable. It lay buried in the offices of firms too important to let outsiders riffle through files in search of criminal evidence.

  He caught Charlie off base by coming to a sudden halt. “I have a better idea,” he said, wheeling and heading for the exit.

  When Charlie caught up with him, demanding an explanation, Thatcher replied: “Stop to think. True, there is plenty of evidence here in New York. But it will take court orders to dig it up. What we need now is evidence out in plain sight.”

  Charlie protested. “John, you’re not planning an end play around the police, are you?”

  “I am simply going to speed things up by a perfectly legitimate short cut,” Thatcher declared.

  “How legitimate?” Charlie asked dubiously.

  His skepticism was mirrored by Miss Corsa when she obeyed Thatcher’s instructions and placed a long-distance call to Dreyer, New York. It is one thing to set machinery in motion. It is another to sit around, waiting for results. Happily, Thatcher and Charlie were spared this endurance test.

  Charlie came rushing back to Thatcher’s office brandishing the note he had found on his desk.

  “Leo Gilligan,” he said tersely. “He wants me to come down to the Cocoa Exchange as soon as I can.”

  For one startled moment, Thatcher frowned at him. Then common sense reasserted itself. “It has to be coincidence,” he concluded. “It’s far too early . . .”

  Superstitiously, both men checked their watches. Scarcely an hour and a half had passed since Thatcher’s initial call to Dreyer.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” said Charlie mysteriously. “Light a fire and you don’t know how fast it’s going to spread. Anyway I thought you might like to come along with me.”

  Thatcher did want to accompany him.

  “Although,” he said, after informing Miss Corsa that he would be out for the rest of the day, “I don’t really know what I expect to find.”

  Whatever it was, it was not Governor Curtis Yeoman.

  Yet his was undeniably the voice thundering from the late Amory Shaw’s office when Charlie and Thatcher arrived.

  “I wonder—” Charlie began.

  But Thatcher simply straight-armed the door. It was too late for wondering, now.

  “Yeoman, you want to play games in Dreyer, it’s okay with me! But don’t try dragging me into your dirty work—”

  “Gilligan, I’m telling you—”

  “You’re not telling me anything!”

  Leo Gilligan, unlike Amory Shaw, was not the man for retreats to private offices and hushed consultations. This shouting match with Curtis Yeoman was being played out before Gene Orcutt, Russ Martini, and an enthralled Mrs. Macomber.

  Yeoman was already restive at this gallery. When it was enlarged, he swung angrily away from Gilligan to glower at Thatcher and Charlie.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded aggressively.

  “That’s precisely what I was going to ask you,” Thatcher retorted icily.

  “I’ll tell you what he’s doing,” said Gilligan rudely. “He’s trying to take over Dreyer—that’s what he’s doing.”

  Yeoman sucked in his breath. But he was incapable of matching Gilligan’s disregard for witnesses. With a nervous glance toward Martini and Orcutt, he struggled to reintroduce normality by addressing Thatcher.

  “As I told you earlier, Thatcher, we’re in the middle of a crisis. I decided that the wisest thing to do was come down here and talk things over with Gilligan—”

  A contemptuous grunt from Gilligan deflected him.

  “After all, it takes no time at all to get here from Dreyer . . .”

  “No,” said Thatcher evenly, “it doesn’t, does it?”

  Yeoman pressed on: “So I flew down here to consult with Gilligan.”

  But he was getting no support from that quarter.

  “As far as I’m concerned, Howard Vandevanter is the president of Dreyer, and he stays that way until the board tells me otherwise!”

  “We will, of course, be convening the board . . .”

  “Talk to me then!”

  Curtis Yeoman was chafing at the onlookers; he was angered by Gilligan’s unexpected resistance. But, above all, he was single-minded.

  “What about the interim! You mean that you’re going to take orders from Vandevanter—”

  Gilligan’s head went back. “I’m not taking orders from anyone!”

  “You may be doing millions of dollars of trading in the next few days,” Yeoman expostulated.

  Before the combat could resume, there was intervention from the sidelines.

  “Look,” said Russ Martini with an uncomfortable smile, “don’t get me wrong. But this is none of my business. If you’re going to have a takeover at Dreyer, that’s up to you. But I think maybe I’ll just push off.”

  “Hell, no!” Gilligan objected immediately. “I want to go over the day’s sales. That’s what Dreyer pays me for, not a lot of infighting. Orcutt, have you totaled up the March contracts? And Shirley, get me the folder on our cash position . . .”

  His whirlpool of activity shunted Yeoman aside.

  “Doesn’t he ever work in his own office?” Yeoman complained as Mrs. Macomber nudged him aside to pull out a drawer.

  Thatcher did not bother to reply. Instead, he checked his watch again. By now, he was fairly sure, he was somewhere in a countdown. But where, only time would tell. Charlie, however, was still intent on spadework.

  “Tell me, Governor,” he said chattily, “does Howard Vandevanter know about these little efforts of yours?”

  With a dangerous glitter in his eye, Yeoman answered: “I have made representations to Howard about stepping aside for the duration. When he categorically refused, I felt free to make every effort to have him replaced.”

  But, Thatcher decided, there was a furtive character to Yeoman’s attempted coup that was dissonant with this self-righteous pronouncement.

  If Thatcher’s phone call had borne fruit, the point would be moot.

  “Well, that wraps up the essentials,” Russ Martini said, straightening from the notes spread on Mrs. Macomber’s desk. “I know you want to check out the open interest, but that can wait until tomorrow.”

  “We’ll go over it right now,” Gilligan ordered. “You heard me tell Governor Yeoman we’ve got work to do. You sit down and I’ll send out for coffee . . .”

  Gilligan could not resist this unnecessary slap at Yeoman, even when it entailed a glancing blow at Charlie and Thatcher, too.

  Charlie was not playing along. “Are you offering John and me coffee, too, Leo? Don’t forget, you invited us.”

  Gilligan’s call to the Sloan had argued only prudent wariness in his dealings with the Dreyer Chocolate Company. But now he seemed taut with pressure.

  Before he could reply, Gene Orcutt blurted anxiously: “Do you want me to go out for coffee, Mr. Gilligan?”

  This homely note should have relaxed Gilligan. Strangely enough it did not. “Sure, sure!�
� he said. “But, Russ, I want you to stick around.”

  Whether he was conscious of it or not, Orcutt was rattled by the passions furiously crisscrossing the room. He was bending down to retrieve the pencil he had dropped when Yeoman snapped: “What’s that!”

  Everybody turned to stare at him.

  “I heard something, I tell you.”

  Mrs. Macomber looked puzzled. “That noise?” she asked. “That’s just the elevator stopping.”

  “Are you expecting someone, Yeoman?” Gilligan demanded nastily.

  Yeoman shook his head. But as the footsteps approached, anticipation gripped the entire room.

  The opening door should have punctured the tension. But even Thatcher, who knew what to expect, was taken aback.

  In the small office, it seemed as if Howard Vandevanter had brought an army with him. There were men in uniform on all sides.

  Gilligan took one step forward and froze in his tracks. Russ Martini was rooted where he stood. Gene Orcutt pressed himself against the wall.

  Only Vandevanter was perfectly natural. Ignoring his companions, and the rest of the room’s occupants, he bore down on John Thatcher.

  “Now, look here, Thatcher. I’ve done just what you asked. But I’ll be damned if I go any further without getting some explanation.”

  Vandevanter’s movement revealed the group previously obscured. A middle-aged woman stood between Captain Huggins from Dreyer and Detective Dennis Udall. She swept the room with one searching glance.

  Then: “That’s him!” she said unhesitatingly. “I’d stake my life on it!”

  Chapter 23

  The Arrest

  Russ Martini’s voice was shrill and ugly. “I never saw this woman before in my life.”

  “Then what about the girl at the car rental agency?” challenged Captain Huggins. “She picked your picture from more than a dozen.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “That line won’t get you anywhere. There’s the license number, too.” Huggins was disappointed in his first killer. “You left a trail a mile wide.”