Banking on Death

by Emma Lathen

  Thatcher wished he could see her face. “It’s a question of Robert Schneider’s holdings of your common stock,” he began, but Michaels interrupted him with a slap on the desk.

  “I knew it was a mistake,” he grunted in a spurt of anger. He talked to his daughter’s back. “I told you and that smart husband of yours that we shouldn’t have let the stock out of our hands."

  “How would you have kept Bob otherwise?” the daughter said, turning to face him. “How far could we have gotten without him during the last few years? Who was going to get us the Wisconsin Paper and Novelty Contract?”

  Michaels looked at his daughter with an unreadable expression on his face; then his features softened and he shrugged.

  “O.K., baby, O.K.” He again turned to Thatcher who responded to the dumb inquiry in his eyes, rather than any spoken question. “I think we may be at cross-purposes,” he said. “What I want to do is find out your interest in acquiring the stock that the boys ...”

  Jeannie Novak cut him off again and gave a strangled snort. Thatcher went on with some severity, “Robert Schneider’s children will, presumably, inherit ...”

  Again, Jeannie Novak interrupted him, this time with a sharp question. “Presumably,” she snapped. “What does that mean?”

  Thatcher looked at her with a grave courtesy that hid his growing interest. Her vague sluttishness, her petulance, and selfishness were very much what he had been led to expect of the “mystery woman,” the woman who deceived her husband and betrayed an obviously doting father—with Robert Schneider. What he had not expected was the vein of shrewdness blended, he would guess, with acquisitiveness. She showed a good grasp of the business; she had instantly appreciated his guarded reference to the confusion that surrounded Robert Schneider’s estate. She was obviously in a state of suppressed hysteria; but her mind was working at top speed.

  Aloud he said, “Apparently Robert Schneider died intestate, Mrs. Novak. Without a will,” he added in response to an interrogative rumble from Michaels. “At least, Captain Self tells me that the police haven’t been able to find one. That means that the courts are going to award his estate to his wife and his children ..."

  “It isn’t fair,” Jeannie again cut him off saying, this time between clenched teeth. “Oh damn him, damn him.”

  “That’s no way to talk,” her father said reprovingly; then, in a clumsy attempt to divert Thatcher’s attention from this outburst, he added, “He’s just doing his duty when he comes around and asks a lot of questions.”

  “You know I don’t mean that stupid cop,” she said furiously. “And don’t pretend that you don’t. I mean that bastard Bob. Robert Schneider,” she added in what Thatcher took to be a humorless parody of his own precise voice.

  “Jeannie!” her father shouted in an agony of apprehension.

  But she was not to be stopped. “After all we did for him,” she spat. “Took him off the line. Made a big man out of him. Gave him his big chance. Then he leaves things so that his kids, his lousy kids ....”

  Thatcher watched the performance. Jeannie Novak might have been having an affair with Robert Schneider, but she certainly gave no sign that she was deeply moved by his death. Or rather, that his death had left her with a sense of loss. On the other hand, she did seem to feel the loss of certain material advantages keenly. She was continuing her shrilly pitched lament. “My Lord, you can’t trust anybody. After all we did for him.”

  “Maybe too much, huh Jeannie?”

  Thatcher and Michaels, who had been staring helplessly at Jeannie, both jumped at the new voice. In the doorway was a tall thin man, who put down a suitcase, carefully shut the door behind him, and entered.

  “Roy!”

  Stan Michaels lumbered to his feet. “Roy,” he repeated thankfully. “My Lord, it’s good to see you. I’m going crazy.” He glanced at Thatcher, and hurriedly added, “Paul Reardon and I have been on the phone to Beloit half the day. Oh, this is ...”

  Again John Thatcher identified himself. Roy Novak exchanged salutations with him; he did no more than glance at his wife with a cold “Hello, Jeannie.” She watched him through narrowed eyes as he turned back to Thatcher.

  “Of course I’ve heard of you, Mr. Thatcher,” he said in a level voice. “What’s your interest in BIP?”

  Again Thatcher explained that he was acting in the interests of Robert Schneider’s children.

  Roy Novak heard him out in silence, exchanged a long look with his father-in-law, and said, “I think we’d have to say that we want a little time to think it over, Mr. Thatcher.”

  Michaels nodded approval. “Yeah, we’ve got a lot of things—details and stuff—that we’ve got to settle pretty soon.”

  Thatcher was interested in learning what those details were, but he saw that he might just as well cut the interview short. Roy Novak was not likely to reveal anything.

  “I thought that you would want time to think it over,” he replied, “but I was in Buffalo on business, and I wanted to put the facts before you.” He rose, and then deliberately added, “By the way, is Schneider’s death going to have any effect on your going public?”

  Both Novak and Michaels stiffened with suspicion. Thatcher raised his eyebrows, and then explained the Sloan’s connection with Robichaux and Devane. Novak nodded, but Michaels continued to look wary.

  “I’m safe, Mr. Michaels,” Thatcher said with a small smile. “I’ve heard a lot of confidential financial information in my day. Nobody has ever complained that I can’t keep a secret.”

  Novak expelled a breath, smiled dutifully if coldly, then, after another quick glance at Michaels, said, “Well, that’s one of the things that Stan and I are going to have to thrash out this morning.”

  Michaels capitulated. Deciding that Thatcher was trustworthy he said, in a heavy confiding tone, “Can’t deny that losing Schneider is a blow. We sent Roy here right on from Montreal to New York to talk to those people. We’re all going to have to do a lot of hard thinking about our plans.”

  “You’re right, Stan,” Roy started. “We’re really ...”

  “Well!” The word was like an explosion. Jeannie Novak, cut in again after having been silent, again stood up, trembling with rage. “I like that. You’ll make decisions, will you? And you’ll sit down with Stan and decide what we’re going to do, will you?” She drew a deep breath, sat down, then answered her own questions. “Like hell you will! From now on, Roy Novak, you’re not running the show, ordering me around. From now on, you’re going to pay a little more attention to what I want.”

  “Now, Jeannie,” her father said in a placating voice.

  “We’ll talk about all of this later,” her husband said colorlessly. “We have a lot of things to talk about.”

  John Thatcher could almost feel Jeannie Novak’s contempt for her husband. His clerkish superiority, his cold, authoritative voice, his prim correctness must have been unendurable to her at any time. Now, however, it flicked her into a sort of frenzy. “We have a lot of things to talk about, do we? Well, you old lady, don’t think that you can take that tone of voice with me. Ever again.” She gave a grim smile. “And don’t look at me as though I’m something you wouldn’t pick up in a bargain basement. I know all about it...”

  Roy cut in coldly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but this isn’t the time to bring out ..."

  “You don’t know what I’m talking about,” she crowed. “Oh, no, you don’t. You lousy, two-bit ... murderer!” She confronted her husband and father who stared at her in undisguised horror. John Thatcher stood rooted. He might have been a piece of office equipment for all the attention she paid to him as she swept on. “I know it, do you hear me, I know it. I’ve got the proof that you did it, you lousy killer. You didn’t know that you left proof, did you? Well you did, you smart bastard. No, you were flying straight to Montreal, weren’t you? Well, I happen to know that you stopped by Bob’s apartment. And I can prove it. Do you hear me, I can prove it. So don’t you t
ake that damned smug tone with me.” She stopped, white-faced and trembling.

  Her father recovered himself. “Jeannie, you should be ashamed. Roy’s been a good husband to you.”

  “Good husband!” she mimicked contemptuously.

  He came around the desk and put his great, work-scarred hands on her shoulders and shook her roughly. “Don’t be foolish. The police have cleared him. They know he was in Montreal. He didn’t kill ...”

  “Your lover,” Roy said icily. Michaels looked at him sharply, started to say something, and then thought better of it. For a moment there was silence. Thatcher looked at the three protagonists. Emotion had stripped all concealment from them. Michaels looked agonized, Roy Novak embarrassed and disdainful. But certainly not guilty.

  And Jeannie Novak looked stupefied by emotion. She stared dully at her father; she looked at her husband who met her long look. She was drained—and, thought Thatcher, genuinely surprised.

  “The police cleared Roy?” she repeated mechanically. Then slowly she began to cry; first with tears coursing down her ashen face, then with great racking sobs. Her father cradled her comfortingly against his shoulder.

  Roy Novak was white-faced too, but characteristically he turned to Thatcher with a ghastly smile. “I’m sorry we’ve subjected you to this,” he stated.

  Thatcher, a man who liked his emotions decently veiled, murmured meaningless phrases aimed at expressing sympathy and understanding as he strode to the door. He looked back for a moment, debating the propriety of taking formal leave of Stan Michaels and his daughter. Then, frankly appalled, he turned on his heels and fled.

  Thus making his second mistake in the investigation of Robert Schneider’s murder.

  Chapter 19

  Chairman of the Board

  Sinking thankfully into the back seat of the Chrysler, John Thatcher expelled a sigh of relief as he watched Ben expertly guide the car out of the yard and onto the road. Away from Buffalo Industrial Products. A lesser man would have mopped his brow. A Senior Vice-Presidents of the Sloan Guaranty Trust is generally out of training for hysterical scenes. It had been at least ten years since Thatcher had dealt with anybody who approximated Jeannie Novak’s uninhibited, coarse vitality. He had been sheltered of late by his position, he realized.

  “Thank Lord,” he murmured aloud.

  “Pardon?” Ben said.

  “Nothing, Ben. I was just talking to myself.”

  Ben preserved a sympathetic silence. A number of the passengers he ferried for the First National talked to themselves. “These big businessmen,” he often explained to his wife, “they got a lot on their minds.”

  It was nevertheless necessary to interrupt.

  “Back to the Statler, Mr. Thatcher?”

  “What? No, Ben. I think we’d better head for the airport. I brought my bag along.”

  While Ben respected the important matters that occupied the minds of the important men he drove around, he had a very low opinion of their common-sense grasp of everyday facts. He rubbed the windshield and peered through it. The skies were still ominously darkened and fat snowflakes were sticking to the car although he had brushed it very carefully as he waited for Thatcher.

  “Doesn’t seem reasonable to expect that the planes will be taking off today, Mr. Thatcher,” he remarked mildly.

  Disturbed in his review of the scene he had just witnessed, Thatcher irritably hitched himself forward and looked out the window.

  “Doesn’t it ever stop snowing in Buffalo?” he asked testily.

  “Only during the heat waves,” Ben replied, wheezing happily at a serviceable joke.

  Thatcher smiled dutifully, sat back and did a little rapid calculating. A return to the Statler would almost certainly entail an evening spent in the company of Bryant Cottrell; a trip to the airport might, at best, yield a plane to New York, and at worst, some hours spent in the terminal. In his present mood, it seemed the lesser of two evils.

  “Let’s take a chance on the airport,” he said decisively.

  Ben nodded, kept his opinion of the wisdom of the decision to himself, and concentrated on finding a turnoff to Genesee Avenue. By the time they had arrived at the airport, however, it seemed that his pessimism had been ill-founded; the sky was lightening, very slightly, and, more important, it was obvious that some planes were leaving Buffalo. Their muffled roar was the only evidence; clouds hid them from the ground.

  Thatcher sent Ben and the First National Chrysler on their way with suitable thanks and gratuities, dismissing Ben’s offer to wait and see what happened.

  “No thanks, Ben, if I can’t get a plane, I’ll get a taxi back to town.”

  The moment Thatcher entered the terminal, however, he wondered if Ben’s head-shaking had not been wiser than his own decision to risk getting a flight. The building was packed tight; small groups of people, gesturing, expostulating, and pleading with languidly bored ticket clerks, were lined against the counters. There were what seemed to be dozens of dirty, small children who were cranky with lack of sleep. The great majority of air-age travelers, however, were either sitting down or standing propped against a wall, in apathetic anticipation.

  Periodically, a grotesque parody of the human voice rose above the din of small noises that filled the terminal, and everybody listened: “Flight 600, SuperCoach from San Francisco to New York, with stops at Denver, Chicago and Buffalo, scheduled to arrive at 5:45 will not arrive until seven o’clock.” “Departure of Flight 302, non-stop to Boston, scheduled for five oh-two, has been delayed until further announced.” “Will passenger Brown, American Airlines Flight 505, please report to the ticket counter?”

  After each announcement, there would be a small eddy of activity; four or five people in the corner would groan, a soldier would get up and stride nervously about, somebody would walk out of the waiting room. Most people, however, would check their watches and continue to wait.

  It was, Thatcher noted, almost steamy in the terminal, in contrast to the intense cold outside. Yet most people still wore coats and scarves. They were prepared, at a moment’s notice, to board a fast-moving vehicle, and soar to distant points; in the meantime, they sat and waited.

  Thatcher edged his way to the tail of the long line that coiled accusingly in front of the ticket counter. Within seconds, the line had lengthened behind him, and he was uncomfortably sandwiched in. He stood patiently; the line did not move—there appeared to be some sort of conflict at its head—but, although his plane was scheduled to depart in fifteen minutes, he could not persuade himself that there was any hurry. He resigned himself to a long wait.

  “It’s all very well, and good for this sort of thing. But why can’t they tell you, when you call up that the planes are going to be this late?”

  “I know, I know. I drove in from Erie, and it would have been much more convenient”

  Thatcher turned idly; camaraderie engendered by common discomfort had drawn two women behind him into vocal attacks on the airlines. The first, a firm-looking middle-aged woman who might have been a nurse, continued with no more than a momentary nod at the contribution of the second, a faded blonde.

  “Of course it’s nothing to them,” she said. “I’ve waited for as much as four and five hours for planes, sometimes.”

  The line shuffled, but did not move forward; battle was drawn at the ticket counter.

  An elderly man with a choleric complexion unexpectedly entered the conversation behind Thatcher. “I,” he said, investing the word with significance, “I have given up expecting anything at all from the airlines. Would you believe it, last Thanksgiving, I was removed from a plane from Boston to Buffalo—although I had gone to some pains to be sure of having a reservation for the holiday. And do you know why?”

  Nobody had any suggestions to offer.

  “Because,” he said with heavy sarcasm, “because on the busiest weekend in months, the airlines ran out of gas in Buffalo.” The audience, eager to break in and describe some outrage the airlines ha
d perpetrated on them, gasped insincerely, and prepared to speak, when he repeated, “Ran out of gas. Would you believe it?”

  But the nurse was not going to be put off. She was, Thatcher saw with some amusement, used to giving vent to her irritations. It was apparent, moreover, that while she was firm she was not a gifted raconteur. Held captive by the line, Thatcher and his fellow sufferers—and he was now convinced she was a nurse, used to dealing with listeners rendered immobile by broken bones—were treated to a detailed, and boring account of her last trip to California.

  The elderly gentleman stared ahead; the faded blonde looked embarrassed.

  Thatcher checked his watch; it was not quite five o’clock. The altercation at the ticket counter had apparently been resolved with mutual recrimination and mistrust; a sharp-featured young woman with a briefcase fairly snatched a ticket and turned away from the desk.

  “So of course I wired my mother—she’s ninety-two, and in really marvelous shape for her age, but ninety-two is ninety-two—and my brother-in-law and sister to meet me at Midway Airport. Since I was going to be in California for at least six months, and wouldn’t be able to go to Chicago with them for Christmas, it was really worthwhile, although they had to drive up from Gary.”

  Thatcher shifted his weight; he let his mind wander over the Schneider case. Had his trip to Buffalo clarified anything? He frowned slightly; at least there was no doubt that Kathryn Schneider was quite innocent—and that of course was the bank’s prime interest.

  “Then this stupid voice talking in the plane—personally I’d be happier if they just flew the airplanes instead of trying to be radio announcers—well, he announced that we were going to land at O’Hare airport instead of Midway. That’s at least thirty miles from Midway.”

  The line gave a little lurch forward, an expression of the dumb impatience of the crowd, a gesture of irritation. Thatcher put his brief case down for the fifth time; he would check it through and be free of the nuisance of carrying it if he had to wait any length of time. His thoughts again reverted to this afternoon’s scene. Jeannie Novak, he was convinced, was perfectly capable of murder. But although it was apparent that her father was terrified that she might have killed Schneider, Thatcher was convinced that she thought her own husband guilty. And Roy Novak was apparently cleared by the Buffalo and Montreal police. He certainly looked self-confident.