by Emma Lathen
“It’s called youth,” said Thatcher, leading the way. “Come along, Ev.”
The Beefeater, which they reached ten minutes later, was a welcome change from Olympic Village and its distractions. The menu was severely limited and, even under the pressure of incessant crowds, the atmosphere was sedate.
There was, however, the unavoidable wait for a table. Thatcher was idly inspecting the glass shelves of the lobby gift shop when he was reminded of an obligation.
“What I’d really like to take back to Miss Corsa is an Oswego war bonnet,” he mused. “But perhaps I can find something in here.”
Everett held his peace. He himself belonged to an older and perhaps better school. Each Christmas he presented his secretary with an extremely expensive gift of impeccable good taste and dullness. This annual rite was sufficient for him, but not for Thatcher. Each year the whole transaction struck Thatcher as about as pleasurable as a second mortgage.
So he had fallen into the additional habit of bringing Miss Corsa souvenirs of his various travels. And, as witness the Oswego war bonnet, he allowed himself considerable latitude. This practice afforded him much innocent enjoyment.
Gabler, who did not have a playful bone in his body, followed Thatcher into the gift shop, recoiling slightly under the lethal fumes of massed scented candles.
“It doesn’t look promising,” said Thatcher, agreeing in spirit. Besides scented candles, there were innumerable small carved animals, whimsical aprons and pot-holders, jars of misguided jams and ornamental baskets. None of these fired Thatcher’s imagination, and he was about to leave brass paperweights behind when he was accosted.
“Mr. Thatcher! This doesn’t mean something’s wrong after all, does it?”
Her hair was white, her eyes were blue and her smock was bright green. She dropped a raffia placemat and projected enough fluttering anxiety to unnerve Thatcher.
“I mean about Eurochecks,” she said as he stooped to retrieve her stock. “Oh, thank you. I’m Mrs. Talley. Of course, I know who you are. I guess just about everybody in Lake Placid does. But I’m afraid . . .”
Smiling piercingly, she gazed at Everett. The high social manner was so overpowering that Thatcher found himself performing introductions.
“I’m so glad to meet you,” Mrs. Talley said graciously. “But I do hope this doesn’t mean that charming young teller of yours was wrong. I can’t tell you how we’ve been crossing our fingers since we heard that counterfeit checks have been circulating. Because we’ve been doing quite a lot of business with people from overseas. They all love the Beefeater, and I must say, I think it’s one of the better restaurants in the area, don’t you? But there’s always a wait and a lot of people don’t care to sit in the bar—particularly at lunch . . .”
This flow might never have ended if Gabler had not taken a hand.
“Eurochecks? And our charming young teller?” he said, with his talent for separating wheat from chaff.
“Oh yes, she’s really delightful,” Mrs. Talley trilled right back at him. “You must be proud of your staff here in Lake Placid. They’ve all been so helpful and polite.”
“I’m delighted to hear it,” Thatcher murmured, but Gabler was made of sterner stuff.
“Do I understand that one of our tellers told you that something was wrong with the Eurochecks you’ve been accepting?” he asked suspiciously.
“Oh no!” she cried. “She came in just about an hour ago. And she told me that you’ve looked over all our receipts, and they’re all good. I was simply overjoyed. That’s why I was so worried when I saw both of you gentlemen. Because, as I said, I knew that you have a very important position at the Sloan, Mr. Thatcher. I’m afraid I didn’t recognize you, Mr. Gabler. Because, if there’s one thing we don’t need right now, it’s all this aggravation. Oh, the Olympics have been wonderful for all of us, but it’s been hectic as I’m sure you can see. Why, would you believe . . .”
Drastic measures were called for, and Thatcher unhesitatingly took one.
“Mr. . . . er, Gabler and I have to be getting on to lunch. But before we go, I believe I’ll take this salt-and-pepper set.”
“I’m sure your wife will adore it,” said Mrs. Talley instantly, naming a price. Exorbitant though it was, it got them out of her clutches and back into the lobby. But before they could proceed into the dining room, Thatcher halted.
“Would you mind postponing lunch, Ev?” he asked.
“Not in a good cause,” said Gabler stoutly. “What did you have in mind?”
“Something that woman said, oddly enough,” Thatcher replied. “Come on, and we’ll commandeer transport to Saranac. I’ll explain on the way.”
By great good fortune, they emerged from the restaurant just in time to see a minibus shuttle pulling up. Even better, it was not filled to overflowing.
“The density’s lessening in these last days of the Olympics,” said Thatcher, choosing a seat and carefully placing the salt-and-pepper set beside him where he could most easily forget it. “The Antonellis aren’t the only people who are going earlier than might have been expected.”
“Here, you’d better let me hold that, John,” said Gabler. “Otherwise you’re sure to leave it behind when we reach Saranac. Now, will you tell me why we’re going there?”
“Mrs. Talley told us that a Sloan teller said that her Eurochecks were all right. Well, that set me thinking. Ormsby and I have been wondering who knew that Yves Bisson passed a counterfeit check at Twin Forks. We concluded that it was one of his companions there or somebody he himself told. But before he was murdered, there was somebody else who knew, somebody in the Saranac bank. You recall that the counterfeit surfaced in Saranac. It wasn’t until after Bisson was murdered that Roger Hathaway got busy and discovered what we had in our vaults. Now, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has explored this avenue. It’s an outside possibility, but I think the people in Saranac bear interviewing.”
Gabler listened intently, then nodded. “Better not to leave any stone unturned,” he said, speaking more prophetically than he knew.
Mr. Pomeroy of the Saranac Trust and Savings was granitic in every way. When his secretary ushered distinguished conferrers from New York City into his office, he was studying Thatcher’s card without enthusiasm. “The Sloan, eh? Well, what can I do for you?”
This attitude was not only unpromising, it was unexpected. On the whole, cordiality obtains between one bank and another. Certainly smalltown banks, and bankers, try to keep their relations with money-market giants like the Sloan as friendly as possible. But Mr. Pomeroy could have been considering an application for a dubious loan.
“We would appreciate your cooperation, Mr. Pomeroy, in connection with this counterfeit situation we’ve encountered,” said Thatcher.
Mr. Pomeroy’s office was elderly, well-kept, and conservative. So was Mr. Pomeroy. But despite appearances to the contrary, he had deep feelings. He vented them now.
“The Sloan came up here to the backwoods and ran into a pile of trouble, didn’t it? Now I’ve headed this bank for 42 years, and the worst I’ve encountered was a couple of phoney 100s some dodos tried shipping down from Canada. We put the kibosh on that in a week. That’s because we know our local people and the local territory. You just waltz in, set up shop for a couple of weeks, then go back where you came from. Stands to reason you can’t protect yourself, the way we can.”
Thatcher’s appreciation of period pieces insulated him. But Gabler was a period piece himself.
“The reason the Sloan came in to set up shop for a couple of weeks, as you put it,” he said indignantly, “is that no local bank had the facilities to handle the volume of business generated by the Olympics.”
“Well, you’re asking me for help,” said Pomeroy waspishly, “I’m not asking you!”
Before the simmering Gabler could speed them further in the wrong direction, Thatcher intervened. “Yes, we’re asking your help about that counterfeit check you spotted so promptly.”
“I personally train my tellers to take a good long look at whatever they’re accepting as cash,” said Pomeroy disagreeably.
“The Sloan—” Everett began.
“Obviously you ran a tight ship,” said Thatcher, overriding him. “Now, the teller who did notice that counterfeit—”
“Wasn’t a teller,” Pomeroy crowed.
He enjoyed his stopper for a full minute before continuing. “I caught it. Always check the receipts myself. That’s how to ran a bank.”
The going was difficult, and getting worse. Asking this old tartar if he had chattered was going to be an act of courage. Fortunately, Thatcher was reprieved by Pomeroy’s complacency.
“As soon as I saw it, I put in a call to your manager,” he said.
“Yes, we appreciated that,” said Thatcher. Then, as if it were an afterthought, he began, “I don’t suppose you spoke to anyone else—”
“The police!” Pomeroy snorted. “Otherwise I kept my mouth shut. Except to the tellers, that is. I went out front and took a look, because we’re not in the business of cashing fakes.”
“Aha, the tellers,” said Everett Gabler unwisely.
In no uncertain terms, Pomeroy set him straight. The staff out front at Saranac Trust and Savings consisted of three tellers, each apparently as old and stiff-necked as Pomeroy.
“Now, what is it you’re after?” he demanded.
“It was a question of who knew about that counterfeit before Bisson’s murder. We thought that possibly somebody here in Saranac might have discussed it,” said Thatcher with intentional vagueness.
But Pomeroy pounced. “You mean you suspected us?”
“Only of loose talk,” said Thatcher before continuing. “And I don’t anymore.” This collection of fossils was not part of the modern world.
Pomeroy was not mollified. “What about Sloan tellers?” he riposted. “I called that manager of yours. He probably shot his mouth off—” He interrupted himself to peer malevolently at Thatcher. “Never thought of that, did you?”
Thatcher could not remember what Hathaway had done after Pomeroy’s first call. Had he talked to any of the tellers? And had any of the tellers talked to anybody else?
“We may have overlooked a possibility there,” he said, more to himself than to his adversary.
“People who live in glass houses . . .” Pomeroy cackled.
This was more than Everett Gabler could endure. “Glass houses?” he sputtered, looking around Pomeroy’s office with disdain. “Do you realize we have a staff of 87 in Lake Placid alone?”
“And I suppose you’re 100% confident of every one of them!”
“That,” Everett retorted, “is not the way large banks are run. It is not a question of knowing every single teller since birth. We will simply ascertain whether the manager did, or did not, mention this counterfeit to any of them. One telephone call will put the matter straight.”
Pomeroy took him up. Thrusting a sturdy black telephone across the desk, he said, “Be my guest!”
Thatcher, who had seen this coming, was not too proud to take advantage of this gesture. “Thank you, Mr. Pomeroy, that’s exactly what I’d like to do,” he said, reaching across Gabler.
But more discomfiture lay in store. Roger Hathaway was not at his desk downtown. And, said the switchboard, he didn’t seem to be at any of the other branches. If Mr. Thatcher wanted to leave a message, she would try . . .
“No, thank you. We’ll catch him later,” said Thatcher, hanging up. “And thank you, Mr. Pomeroy, for your cooperation. Everett, I think we’d better get back to Lake Placid.”
“Yes indeed,” said Gabler. Then, with iron self-control, he said, “It has been a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Pomeroy.”
But his trials were not over. Elated by routing the city slickers, Pomeroy unbent to the extent of rising and accompanying his guests to the door.
“Still, even with all this counterfeit, I don’t suppose the Sloan has exactly lost money here in the Adirondacks, has it?”
Thatcher was beginning to admire this old villain. “Well, Mr. Pomeroy, you’re the man who knows how profitable the area is,” he said.
To Gabler’s disgust, this unscrupulous remark made a hit. Pomeroy chortled with self-satisfaction. “That I do, that I do!”
He opened the swinging door that led to the marble-floored lobby, surveyed his kingdom, and dispensed largesse to those less favored than he. “Reliable help’s hard to come by these days, but I like the sound of that manager—what’s his name?”
“Hathaway,” said Thatcher, seeing that Gabler was grinding his teeth.
“That’s right, Hathaway,” said Pomeroy as if Thatcher could have been mistaken. “You know, when the news carried the story about the murder, I decided I should tell him. To be honest, I didn’t expect to catch him since it was after hours. But he was at the bank, working hard. That’s something to take the sting off all this bad luck you’ve been having. There’s more to running a bank than meets the eye.”
He was almost kindly as he dismissed them.
On the sidewalk outside the Saranac Trust and Savings, under the big old clock, Everett let fly until Thatcher abruptly cut him short.
“Save that until later!” he said.
Gabler stared, and Thatcher nodded.
“Yes, we’ve been a few degrees off all morning. It’s not a Saranac teller we’re after, or a Sloan teller. It’s a teller from Switzerland. And”—he broke off, looked up at the clock, and began to jog toward the bus stop —“we don’t have any time to waste. Tilly Lowengard is going to be racing in less than an hour.”
“Tilly Lowengard?” Gabler repeated, puffing after him. “What does she have to do with this?”
“We started with murder on the Olympic slopes,” said Thatcher, deep in his own thoughts. “Unless we get a move on, we’re going to end that way, too.”
Their journey to Whiteface Mountain seemed endless. But it was just long enough for John Thatcher to outline the terrible replay he saw so clearly.
Chapter 21
High Pressure Area
EVEN as he explained, Thatcher was charting his immediate course of action. According to the Saranac Trust and Savings clock, according to his own wrist-watch, they should reach Whiteface Mountain with a margin, dangerously small it was true, but enough to avert a second tragedy.
These calculations abruptly crashed to earth. A highway department truck on Route 86 had come to grief with a milk truck. The accident was minor, but it produced an agonizing traffic delay that ate up precious minutes. Each sweep of the second hand threw Thatcher’s plans further and further out of kilter.
They were going to arrive too late to cut Tilly off at the base, too late for an orderly appeal to authority, too late for . . .
“No,” said Thatcher with flat determination.
But when they pulled into the parking lot, his heart lurched. His previous visit, he realized, had been misleading. Last Saturday, with the blizzard sweeping in from the west, the peak had been wreathed in clouds, the sky had loomed low in a grey threatening pall, and the snow had begun before the slalom had been well-launched. Today a brilliant blue vault arched overhead, the air was clear and dry, visibility stretched for miles and miles. All this clarity emphasized the difficulty of the task before them.
Whiteface Mountain is not a simple, straightforward site. Towering at the northernmost end of Lake Placid Valley, it has long been a thriving ski area and, because it contains the greatest vertical drop in the eastern United States, a favorite stage for national and international events. Even in normal times the huge bulk is a complex mass of lodges, competition trails, recreational trails, lifts and support facilities. The Winter Games had added yet more ramification to the development. Signposts sprouted everywhere directing the initiate to T-bars, J-bars, chair lifts, all ascending to the intricate world 4000 feet above, with a dizzying array of place names—Cloudspin, Idiot’s Delight, Calamity Lane, Easy Street.
The
crackling of a loudspeaker propelled Everett Gabler into speech. “The women’s slalom has begun,” he said unnecessarily.
Suddenly the enemy had ceased to be a murderer crouched low in the snow, his eye glued to the crosshairs of a rifle sight. The enemy was not even the milling throng impeding movement at the base station. Now the enemy was a formidable pile of rock, throwing out shoulders and ravines, gullies and spurs, in bewildering multitude.
With immense relief, Thatcher spied a chair lift simply labeled: Today’s Slalom.
“I’m going up to stop her,” he said tightly. “Maybe I can catch her in the starting area.”
Everett protested immediately. “But what about the police? We’ll need them.”
“And you’re going to get them, I don’t know how. This is where we split up, Everett.”
Faced with a well-defined problem, Gabler responded automatically. Muttering something about a cruiser, he dogtrotted off to the official end of the parking lot. As he was being clamped into his seat, Thatcher blessed Everett’s feel for organization. He had instinctively realized that if the police were there, a car would be there; if a car was there, a radio would be there; if a radio was there, a man would be there. What’s more, he was perfectly capable of smashing a window and dealing himself into the police frequency. If anyone could possibly locate the police in this maelstrom, let alone mobilize them, Gabler was the man.
This momentary whiff of well-being was promptly snuffed out by the attendant of the double chair lift. Urging Thatcher’s seatmate to make haste, he said, “C’mon, hurry up! You’re going to miss half of it. The women’s slalom has already begun.”
The refrain was the same at the other end, while Thatcher was being unfastened.
“You folks had better step on it. Two of them have already finished. The women’s slalom has begun.”
But there was worse to come. Gliding through the air, Thatcher had formulated a simple program, much assisted by the recollection of Brad Withers’ plans for the day. First there would be attendance at the IOC plenary session, he had said chattily over breakfast, then on to Whiteface for the final alpine event. It was witless, Thatcher recognized, for an outsider to rush around these clogged grounds looking for a contestant. But the hirelings of the IOC had experienced no difficulty plucking Gunther Euler from the middle of the ski jump and hauling him before the bar of justice. The same Draconian efficiency might save Tilly Lowengard’s life. Therefore he would simply speed to Brad’s side and have a couple of IOC stewards dispatched to collar her. If trumped-up charges were necessary, Thatcher never doubted his ability to produce them.