“No sir, you can’t. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to come here,” Wolfe said as Cramer rose to leave, nodding curtly. His visit was a tribute to Wolfe, as close to an out-and-out compliment as the inspector is ever likely to dole out, and we both knew it. I followed him to the hall and went so far as to help him on with his coat. And he went so far as to say “thank you,” showing just how mellow he was.
But that was okay, because for once, something that made Cramer happy made Wolfe happy, too.
TWENTY-ONE
THE ARNOLD FOREMAN CONFESSION WAS big news, of course. The Gazette got its early jump on the competition, with that assist from Cramer, who also gave Wolfe a lot of credit in newspaper and TV interviews. Arnold’s attorney made a stab at an insanity defense, but medical types testifying for the state shot holes in that strategy, and he was found guilty. The sentence was life, although as of this writing, appeals are being mounted, and the whole business will probably drag on for years.
The morning after the Gazette bannered the confession in three-inch capital letters, Rod Mills came to the house with a cashier’s check for twenty-five thousand dollars. Wolfe was up with the orchids at the time, and Mills wasn’t inclined to wait for his descent, which was forty minutes away. “Tell him thank you from me and my partners,” he said, shaking my hand. “I hope he isn’t angry that I withheld this until now.” I answered that he wasn’t. After all, why not be nice, especially since Wolfe wasn’t there to contradict me?
Mills/Lake/Ryman doesn’t have the Cherr-o-key account anymore. After Arnold’s trial, Acker Foreman lost interest in the company and sold it to a British conglomerate that wanted to use another ad agency. According to the papers, Foreman took his multimillions from the sale and set up a trust that would make the Cherokees gladder than ever he was one of them, if only one-quarter’s worth.
M/L/R seems to have survived the loss of the cherry drink reasonably well. I read this week in the Times that they just won the business of a feisty regional airline in the Southeast that proclaims itself “The Winning Wings.” The reporter noted that this was the third new account the agency had gotten in the last six weeks, and Rod Mills was quoted in the same article, saying the three new pieces of business more than offset the loss of Cherr-o-key. And M/L/R also had held onto the Graffiti’s account, although with a different commercial than the one Lake had shown me.
So Mills was hard at work doing his job—maybe too well. When Lily and I were out dancing the other night, she mentioned that Dawn Tillison wasn’t going out with the adman anymore.
“Why not?” I asked. “Although I only saw them together once, there appeared to these old eyes to be a rather healthy mutual attraction.”
“Dawn said he was a workaholic and she almost never got to see him. Escamillo, I’m glad you’re not like that,” Lily murmured, nuzzling me as we fox-trotted to “Me and My Shadow.”
“Mills wouldn’t be like that, either, if he had a Lily Rowan to look forward to being with after working hours,” I said.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’ve got the knack for saying exactly the right thing at the right time?”
“Never,” I said, giving her my most modest and winsome smile as we took another turn around the floor.
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