Murder Times Two

by Haughton Murphy

  “Was that often?”

  “You could say that. You see, I write the checks. She’d call and say READ or some other outfit was to get such and such and I’d cut the check.”

  “After talking with Tobias?”

  “Oh, yes. We had an understanding. I was never to disburse anything without telling him first.”

  “And her personal expenses? What about cash?”

  “She had an allowance and a credit card.”

  “How did she get her allowance?”

  “We sent it up to her in cash. By messenger.”

  “How much was it?”

  “I forgot offhand,” Kearney said uneasily. “It was nominal. She was supposed to use her American Express card. Tobias always wanted a record of everything, and forcing her to charge her purchases to one card made it easy.”

  “Her allowance—a thousand dollars a month? Ten thousand? More? Less?”

  “Less than a thousand. As I told you, she was supposed to charge things.”

  “Did you and she ever fight over money?”

  “Not to speak of. I was only the bookkeeper.”

  “It appears that she’s going to need more bookkeeping now,” Frost said. “She told me about the deed of appointment Tobias gave her.”

  “A very sore point,” Kearney replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, Robyn Vandermeer is a very clever woman. She’s done a lot of good, no question, but she’s been quite capable of looking out for herself.

  “When she married Tobias, his father was dead set against the marriage, and deliberately wrote his will so she’d never get her hands on anything except what Tobias chose to give her out of his own estate. She went to work on the old man and sweet-talked him into changing that. And then she sweet-talked Tobias into giving her that deed.”

  “Are you saying he didn’t want to do that?”

  “No, he did. He was still infatuated with her when his father died, and she was able to persuade him to execute it very easily.”

  Frost was taken aback at Kearney’s account, which did not square with what Robyn had told him. Had the gift of the deed of appointment been a romantic gesture, as she had said, or a scheme on her part to ensure her future?

  “It was a terrible mistake,” Kearney went on. “When she got that deed in her hands, she started going her own way, with her own friends, her own interests. The same as happened with Tobias’ first wife. Their marriage became a living arrangement, nothing more. Tobias became increasingly depressed about what he had done and finally asked her to give the deed back.”

  “She refused, of course.”

  “Of course. And there was nothing he could do about it.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “I don’t recall exactly. Four, five years ago.”

  Frost reached for a pencil from the holder on Kearney’s coffee table and began doodling on a pad in front of him, uncertain about what he was hearing, uncertain how to proceed with his questioning.

  “Would it surprise you if I said Robyn tells the story a little differently?”

  “No. She knows how to put a good front on things.”

  “You don’t like her.”

  “We get along. But Tobias was my boss, not her.”

  “One thing puzzles me,” Frost said. “You say Tobias wanted to revoke Robyn’s life estate. And from what she says, and I don’t think you’ve really denied it, he kept her on a pretty short string. So why did he continue to give money to READ and the other benefits and charities Robyn supported?”

  “That’s simple. Or maybe it isn’t. You have to understand, you must know this, that a man as rich as Tobias is fair game for every cause going, from the Red Cross to amateur string quartets. We’re not talking boxes of Girl Scout cookies, either, but demands for big money. He was tightfisted in many ways, but he was not against charitable giving. He had to limit the things he supported in self-defense. He had his own charities, the Jazz Center and the Museum of the City of New York, and it made sense to include Robyn’s as well. They were worthy causes, after all.”

  “If he was in a bloody battle with her for her interest in the Trust, why wouldn’t he just cut off everything?”

  “He’d been through one messy divorce and I don’t think he wanted another one. Which he’d certainly have had if Robyn couldn’t play the social lion any longer.”

  “If he was afraid of a divorce, why did he restrict her personal spending?”

  “That’s Robyn’s version. She wasn’t lacking anything. Tobias wanted to keep tabs on the amount she spent, that’s all.”

  Frost characterized Tobias’ behavior as “irrational” and received a noncommittal “maybe” when he asked if Kearney thought drink was at least a partial cause of it. Kearney was equally reserved when Frost raised the matter of the increased intensity of Tobias’ drinking in the years before his death.

  “He drank a lot, there’s no denying that,” Kearney said. “Maybe he was drinking more, I’m not sure. I never thought it was any of my concern.”

  “You never thought of trying to get him into treatment?”

  “Never. He was a grown man, and what he did was his own affair. He wasn’t abusing any children and Great Kill went along very well without him.” Kearney’s unstated suggestion was that Great Kill in fact was better off being run by Kearney.

  “Did Robyn ever talk to you about it?”

  “Not really. A couple of times he forgot to tell me about something he’d told her she could have, something she could spend money on. She’d get mad and say he was too drunk to remember.”

  “Didn’t you find his drinking was making him moodier? More suspicious?”

  “Could be. But I let it roll right off my back.”

  Kearney was not going to speak ill of the dead, so Frost changed the subject. “You had a contract with Great Kill, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I seem to remember the original one that Hendrik had drawn up.”

  “You should. You drafted it.”

  “So I did,” Frost said, embarrassed at being caught out in his own disingenuousness. “It was for ten years, as I recall.”

  “That’s right. Then the board, at Tobias’ instigation, renewed it for another five.”

  “Which would run out when?”

  Kearney was silent. Silent and nervous. “Roughly two months from now,” he finally said.

  “Had you talked with Tobias about another renewal?”

  “We both knew it was coming up. There wasn’t any need to.”

  “A totally unrelated question. Have you ever heard of a woman named Grace Alice Rourke?”

  “No, sir,” Kearney shot back at once. “Never heard the name.”

  “Tobias didn’t ever mention her?”

  “Never.”

  Despite Kearney’s strong and negative response, Frost couldn’t help noticing his continued nervousness, his slight ankle-jiggling and thigh-patting. Perhaps it was time to make the Great Kill bureaucrat even more nervous.

  “Bill, let me go back to something you said earlier. You told me that you and Tobias had a business meeting every week. When did that take place?”

  Kearney set his mouth, evidently determined not to show any emotion. “Sunday afternoon.”

  “Including last Sunday?”

  “Yes, including last Sunday.”

  “What time?”

  “We always met at two o’clock.”

  “And last Sunday? You saw Tobias at two?”

  “Yes.”

  “At home?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when did you leave him?”

  “Just before four.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual about him?”

  “No.”

  “Was he drinking?”

  “He always did.”

  “A lot?”

  “I think he had two whiskeys while I was there. Maybe three.”

  “Who else did you see at
the Vandermeers? Who else was there?”

  “Only Robyn. And that maid of theirs.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Let me see. When I was leaving they were getting ready for the party where he was killed. There was a waiter type there.”

  “Could you recognize him if you saw him again?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Nope.”

  “Anything else you saw, or want to tell me about?”

  “Nope.”

  “Any bright ideas as to who the killer might be?”

  “Nope.”

  “How about Sherman Deybold? Did Tobias have any kind of ongoing fight with him?” Frost asked, thinking of the dead man’s thundered question, “What do you want this time?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. Tobias was his best customer, judging by the checks that we made out to him.”

  “Would Tobias have ever called him a prick?”

  “He called lots of people a prick, and worse.”

  “My questions are finished.”

  “I’m glad to be of help,” Kearney replied without a trace of irony. “I’ll show you out.”

  “I can find my way.”

  “Very well,” Kearney said, then, hesitating, “Do you think the police will have to know I was at the Vandermeers’ last Sunday?”

  “I’m sure they will.”

  “You mean you’re going to tell them?”

  “I didn’t say that. At least five people know you were there—Miss Boyle, the hired waiter, Robyn, my wife and me. The police probably already know about you.”

  “But I have nothing to tell them.”

  “Then there’s no need to be worried.”

  “I don’t want to get tied up in something that’s none of my business.”

  “I stand by what I said. And I thank you for your time.”

  Frost shook hands very formally, and went toward the door. Then he turned around and asked Kearney another question.

  “Oh, by the way, Bill—did anyone besides you know about that deed to Robyn?”

  “Tobias told me never to tell anyone. So I didn’t. She may have, but I doubt it.”

  “So the people at the Bloemendael weren’t aware of it? They don’t know the Trust will have to be kept in place for her lifetime, and that they won’t get either the corpus or the income until she dies?”

  Kearney, standing behind his desk, still looked edgy and nervous.

  “They didn’t know about it,” he said in a tense voice.

  “Thank you.”

  Back on the street, Frost muttered to himself that if the police didn’t know about Bill Kearney already, he was certainly going to tell them. Stonewalling Detective Springer, under the baleful eye of Detective Mattocks, might not be so easy a performance as the one Kearney had put on for the last hour.

  Frost walked hastily in the direction of the Gotham Club. Only a Gotham martini could improve the foul mood the bureaucratic Kearney had induced.

  13

  Review and Reunion

  Returning from work that evening, Cynthia Frost heard monumental curses emanating from the library.

  “Reuben! What’s the matter?” she said with concern, entering the room.

  “My goddam printer needs a goddam new ribbon!” he barked, hunched in helpless fury over his printer and wrestling with a new ribbon cassette.

  “What language! Here, Thomas Edison, let me see,” Cynthia said, nudging her husband out of the way. Studying the problem, and tentatively easing the cassette around, she soon had it snapped in place.

  “All set to go,” she said.

  “Hmn,” said Reuben.

  “What were you going to print, anyway?”

  “The upstairs/downstairs list. With Bill Kearney’s name added.”

  Frost recounted the substance of his morning interview to his wife, telling her that “Kearney stonewalled me on everything except what might be damaging to Robyn. He was a cold fish, though he seemed mighty nervous about talking to me. And really nervous when he realized the police would probably question him about his whereabouts on Sunday afternoon.”

  “You think he could have killed Tobias?”

  “Well, he was there at the right time.”

  “But why would he?”

  “To be rid of Tobias? And Robyn?”

  “Maybe,” Cynthia said doubtfully.

  “Also, there’s the matter of his contract,” Reuben said. “Old Hendrik Vandermeer gave him a very cushy employment contract. Great Kill renewed it once and—get this—it was going to expire in another two months.”

  “But renewing the contract wasn’t up to Tobias, was it?”

  “Not technically, no. It would be up to the directors of Great Kill, of which Tobias was only one. But if Tobias had a mind to, he could make renewing the contract difficult, or at least prevent improving its terms very much.”

  “Do you think the police know about Kearney?”

  “If they don’t, I’m going to tell them. Or at least I’m going to tell Luis—I got hold of him this morning, by the way, and he’s going to stop by at six-thirty.”

  “Good. I’ll feel better having him around.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  Detective First Class Luis Bautista, nattily dressed in a blue blazer, gray flannel slacks and a Bengal-striped shirt, rang the front bell at the Frost townhouse precisely on time. Reuben went downstairs to let him in.

  “Luis! Come in. I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you!” he said.

  Once upstairs, Cynthia added her own welcome, including an enthusiastic kiss.

  “You look marvelous!” she said to the well-tanned detective; there was none of Sherman Deybold’s fashionable paleness here.

  “It must be wonderful to work for the NYPD,” Reuben said. “What was this, about your third vacation since Christmas?”

  “No, Reuben, not exactly. Just a long weekend in Florida.”

  “With Francisca, I hope,” Cynthia said, wishing as she said it that one of these long weekends away would be a honeymoon.

  “Sure thing. You think she’d let me go to Florida alone?” Bautista said, laughing. “Leaving me to be attacked by all those neat Hispanic broads down there? No way.”

  “Where were you, Miami?”

  “Not this time. Going to Miami, for a New York cop, is like a busman’s holiday. There’s crime enough right here in the Big Apple for me. We went to Tampa.”

  “Tampa?”

  “Yeah. Nice hotel there, and Ybor City—lots of Hispanics, even if they are Cubans. They thought our Puerto Rican Spanish was funny, but who cares? The food was great, the sun was great, the …”

  “I can imagine the rest,” Frost said, laughing, and steered Bautista into the living room. “Anyway, we’re glad to have you back. You’ve heard about our mess?”

  Bautista’s face turned serious. “Yes, I have. I know what you told me earlier on the phone. And I spent an hour with Tom Springer this afternoon.”

  “What about the medical examiner?” Reuben asked.

  “Springer and Mattocks just got the report. It was definitely cyanide.”

  “Could they tell how Tobias had taken it? Whether it was a poisoned capsule or in his drink? I told you about the capsules.”

  “Yes, they had been laced with cyanide. But the ME claims you can’t tell whether the poison that killed Vandermeer was from a capsule or was in his drink.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “All I know about pathology is what I learned at the police academy and what I’ve seen since. With the fancy equipment they have these days I would have thought they could trace the means of ingestion. But they say not.”

  “Can’t we get the FBI or somebody else in here to have a look?”

  “Yeah, you probably could. But I’m afraid it’s too late to run some supersophisticated test that might give the answer.”

  “Damn,” Frost said. “Did your Medical Examiner know what he
was supposed to be looking for? That there were two possible ways Tobias might have been killed?”

  “Oh, yeah. He knew all right. Springer made sure of that as soon as they learned about the medicine bottle.”

  “What about Tobias’ drink glass? Or rather drink glasses?” Cynthia asked. “If the poison had been in one of them, wouldn’t that show up in a test?”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Bautista said. “Springer said everybody agrees there were two glasses Vandermeer was drinking from. One of them got broken in the confusion when he conked out. The other one was clean. No sign of poison.”

  “What about the broken one?” Cynthia persisted.

  “I’m almost too embarrassed to tell you.”

  “What do you mean?” Cynthia said.

  “They can’t find it,” Bautista replied glumly.

  “They can’t find it?” Reuben exclaimed. “What kind of nonsense is that?”

  Bautista explained how the fragments of the broken glass had been gathered up, bagged and labeled by the CSU technicians. “They’re reasonably sure the plastic bag was with the other stuff they took away and turned over to the lab. But the lab can’t locate it.”

  “That’s incredible,” Reuben said angrily. His whole life as a lawyer had been based on keeping things in proper order; he could not believe that police technicians operated any differently. He was sure in his own mind that the broken glass had been the one he had handed to Tobias; now he might never be exonerated. “What kind of dunderheads are in the police department anyway?” he demanded.

  “Most of them aren’t dunderheads, Reuben. But there are a lot of guys who go through the motions of their jobs or aren’t very experienced, and they get careless. I can’t excuse it, but that’s the way it is.”

  “That really leaves us in the soup,” Frost said in a very sour voice. “I was hoping the lab tests would tell us that I could tear up either my upstairs list or the downstairs list.”

  “Upstairs, downstairs?”

  Frost produced his sheet of computer paper and explained the two lists to Bautista, filling in what he didn’t already know about those on it, including Bill Kearney, the late-starting addition.

  “I take it there were no fingerprints on the bottle?”

  “None they could read.”

  “Damn and double damn. So we’re left with three possibilities. Tobias took the poison in his bathroom, thinking he was taking his medicine. Or Tobias’ drink was poisoned. Or—this is Cynthia’s idea—his drink was poisoned and the killer left the open bottle upstairs as a diversion. Right?”