“It got dicey,” Kearney went on. “Tobias was furious and said absolutely not. He felt he’d discharged whatever obligation he had by taking care of Grace Alice. As Tobias told it to me, Stephen said he’d go public with it and announce to the world who his father was. Said it would help his career and look great in People Magazine—son of multimillionaire struggles as starving actor.
“Tobias was beside himself, but he had second thoughts. I believe he consulted your firm about getting the kid adopted, which your colleagues said would cut him off from any rights to the Vandermeer Trust or Tobias’ estate. When Tobias learned this, he made Stephen an offer—two million outright if he’d agree to be adopted.”
“Who was going to adopt him?”
“Who do you think? Me. All Stephen had to do was consent and it could’ve been done. I was willing. It was purely a paper transaction. It wasn’t as if I’d have to bring him up. He was a little old for fatherly advice.”
“What happened?”
“The offer was a huge mistake. I really believe Stephen did just want a monthly allowance. But when he heard that two million figure, he must have realized there were bigger stakes to be had. He got that lawyer, Hammil, into the act and asked for four million—then changed his mind and upped it to eight.
“Tobias went crazy. He hated the idea of having Stephen go public, but he hated parting with eight million even more—this would have been his money, remember, not the Trust’s. So he turned him down.”
“What did young Rourke do then?”
“He told Tobias, fine, he’d wait him out. He said he was young and could afford to be patient. Tobias wouldn’t live forever. And with Hammil’s advice, he knew that there wasn’t a thing Tobias could do to change the terms of the Vandermeer Trust, so that he would ultimately inherit the entire fortune.”
“Obviously he never did take his story to the press,” Frost said.
“That’s right. Tobias was so adamant, Rourke probably decided the publicity wouldn’t do him any good.”
“Can I ask you one more question?”
“Sure.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before? Or tell the police?”
“Why should I have? From what I knew of the situation, there was no way Stephen could have killed his father. So why desecrate Tobias’ memory, or cause even more pain for Robyn? I’m only telling you now because things have changed. I don’t see how, but you certainly suggested that Stephen might have killed his father and Robyn.”
And the police are breathing down your neck, Frost thought, but did not say. “Any other surprises that I should know about, Bill?” he did ask.
“Nope.”
“Was this quarrel the reason for Tobias’ increased drinking?”
“It was a combination of things, starting with Grace Alice’s death. As I told you, the woman had a drink problem. Tobias was very sympathetic, even if he never would face his own difficulties with the bottle. I also suspected that he may still have been in love with her, at least a little. Tobias was a bit of a romantic, you know.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“Anyway, Grace Alice’s death set him off. He started drinking heavily after he got the news in Paris and never stopped after that. The son’s escalating demands made things worse. Unlike what he felt toward Grace Alice, Tobias didn’t have any romantic feelings toward the son. He had never had a chance to experience the joys of real fatherhood, and was not going to try with a stranger in his thirties—especially one who seemed to get more and more greedy for money.
“Robyn’s increasing eminence didn’t help. He thought everyone regarded her as a paragon of civic virtue, and him as a drunken bum. His perception was pretty much right, and it didn’t help a whole lot in the self-esteem department.
“And he had lost the one weapon he might have had—control of the family money. His father, when he set up the Vandermeer Trust, denied Tobias the ability to decide how the family fortune would be disposed of. And he’d lost the only authority he had over the income when he’d given Robyn that deed ten years earlier.
“So there he was, a rich man with no power. And a son and a wife waiting for him to die. He tried to buy off the son and to coerce Robyn into surrendering her life estate. It didn’t work. All he could do was cut Robyn out of his own will—even if that wouldn’t have been effective—and torture her over her living expenses. And, of course, drink.”
“It’s a sad story,” Frost said, thinking back to Tobias’ last words at the reading club, condemning old man Osborne in Vanity Fair for using the power of money against his daughter-in-law.
“Tobias was a totally difficult man,” Kearney said quietly. “But he was not all bad. If he’d gotten on with his father, or if Robyn had been a different kind of woman, things could have been different.”
“Bill, I’m glad to hear the whole tale at last.”
“Does it help you any?”
“We’ll have to see,” Frost said as he prepared to leave.
Once back home, Frost read though the chronology of Tobias’ actions that was a part of his computer “index.” With Kearney’s revelations, it now all made sense. So did Tobias’ shouting the night he was killed. In some eerie drunken clarity, hadn’t he seen through Pace Padgett’s disguise, hadn’t he seen his demanding illegitimate son when he shouted, “What do you want this time?” Frost and the others had been wrong when the lurching figure of Tobias had appeared to be addressing Deybold; he was railing instead at the retreating figure of Pace Padgett. And now there was no doubt in Frost’s mind who the “prick” was.
Frost did want to check one thing—the conclusion in the Chase & Ward memo that an adult could legally adopt another adult and that such an adoption would terminate any rights the adoptee had against a natural parent. He was sure the memo was correct, but he wanted to be absolutely certain.
With this in mind, he picked up his Chase & Ward directory and found Bob Millard’s direct-dial number. I wonder if I’ll get the baby on the phone again, he asked himself as he dialed. With a jolt, he slammed down the phone. The adoption question could wait; his own query to himself had given him a flash of insight that had to be pursued immediately. He must find Bautista at once.
Frost was trying feverishly to track Bautista down when the detective appeared at the front door.
“I’ve got them!” he said to Frost, as he came in. “Cynthia was right. Decker, the agent, had three different glossies of Rourke.”
“Never mind that,” Frost said, deflating Bautista’s enthusiasm. “What kind of records does the telephone company keep of local telephone calls?”
“Hell, they keep everything. Every call is recorded on the computer and then they keep a microfiche of the computer records.”
“How long do they keep them?”
“I don’t know. Years, I think.”
Frost then asked another question about the telephone records that Bautista said he couldn’t answer without contacting the phone company. He also passed along to Bautista the conclusion he had come to minutes earlier.
“I like it,” the detective said.
“And I hope you like it enough to get on it right away.”
“I do. And I will. I’ll call the phone company now and get them to work. I’ll have to have a subpoena for the records, of course, but your friend Munson can get one tonight. But don’t you want to see the pictures?”
“Yes, of course I do.”
Bautista took the glossies from an envelope and showed the three pictures of a balding, middle-aged actor to Frost, who studied them carefully. “My visual imagination isn’t the greatest,” Frost said, “but I’d say that if you drew a mustache and some black hair on these, you’d have a pretty good likeness of Pace Padgett. Cynthia would be better at this than I am, though. I think she’s upstairs.”
He called to his wife, who had been resting in their bedroom. Shown the pictures, she was even more positive than her husband. “I remember his high cheekbones,”
she said. “I noticed them at the time. They were like Igor Youskevitch’s, my old colleague at NatBallet. And there they are—Igor’s cheeks.”
“I have another surprise,” Bautista said. “Decker gave me a biography of Rourke. His biggest success till now has been a one-man show for kids called—are you ready?—A Man of a Thousand Faces.”
“Great!” Frost exclaimed. “Now, will you pursue the phone business?”
Bautista made several calls and reported back to Reuben. “They’re going to start digging tonight, and Munson’s getting the subpoena. And, amigo, there’s other good news. The phone company does have a record of calls that are forwarded from one number to another.”
Frost was jubilant, instinctively confident that the phone records would show that the calls Rourke claimed to have received at home that fatal Sunday had been automatically forwarded on to the Vandermeers, where “Pace Padgett” had answered them. Rourke may have triumphed as “The Man of a Thousand Faces,” but his performance as Pace Padgett had almost certainly outdone that.
“Now, since there’s no rest for the wicked,” Frost told Bautista, “will you please double-check what your man Shillaber found out about Rourke’s whereabouts Tuesday afternoon?”
“That was the next item on the agenda, Reuben.”
“Well, do it!”
“Okay, chief, you’re the boss.”
“Don’t tell your colleagues that. Besides, it isn’t true.”
“Let’s say it is,” Bautista said. “That means you’ve got a decision to make. Should Springer and Mattocks be taken off what they’re doing and help me put a full-court press on Rourke and his friends?”
Frost pondered for a moment. “That’s a hard one,” he finally said. “No, let’s wait a bit. Let’s wait to see if NYNEX comes through.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Cut it out, Luis, and get to work.”
After Bautista had hurried out, Reuben asked Cynthia to dinner.
“We still have the problem of Robyn’s murder, but how about a little celebration? I’m sure as anything we’re at least halfway home.”
Cynthia, who had been given a full explanation, agreed with him.
“The Sign of the Dove okay?” he asked. “It’s such a pretty place, and I’m told they’ve done something about the food after all these years.”
“I’ve heard that, too.”
Reuben was happy and contented as he sat with Cynthia amid the flowers and plants and bare-brick walls at Sign of the Dove. The roast baby pheasant with lentils was very good, the Château Giscours ’82 even better. But as the end of the meal approached, the celebratory edge wore off, and Reuben was beset anew with doubts. The case against Rourke looked promising, but the telephone company might prove to be a dead end. And there was the matter, still untangled, of his alibi for the afternoon when Robyn had been murdered.
“You know, Cynthia, if Rourke somehow had a double to cover for him at that rehearsal, that gives our friends a better chance to crack the case,” Frost said. “There’s no honor among thieves, and Rourke and his co-conspirator will be found out. I’m sure of it.”
“Have you considered another angle, dear?”
“Like what?”
“We’ve been assuming that the same person killed both Tobias and Robyn. But is that necessarily so? Even if Rourke murdered his father, couldn’t someone else have strangled Robyn?”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing. That’s why I didn’t want Bautista’s sidekicks to stop what they’re doing.”
“Take Sherman Deybold, for example. We now know what a slippery character he is, but we’ve never figured out why he might have killed his best customer. But killing Robyn for the Jasper Johns is different. He may have thought he could sell it in one of his far-off parking lots, not for ten million, perhaps, but for a lucrative price. To a reclusive Brazilian who would never show it, for example. And I suspect people haven’t called him and Michael Costas S & M just because of their first names. He might even have enjoyed killing Robyn.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“So is everything else about this muddle. But do you see what I mean?”
“Yes, Cynthia, I do.”
“Or you new pal, Kearney. There certainly was no love lost between him and Robyn. Or Wayne Givens, who was so shocked to find that he’d have to bide his time until Robyn died for the Bloemendael to receive its windfall.”
“All true, my dear.”
“And, speaking of Givens, I’ll bet you anything Robyn got around to announcing her plans for the Bloemendael to him.”
“My guess is you’re right.”
“I’m sorry to dampen our celebration.”
“Not at all. Justice will triumph, I haven’t a doubt. Except for street crime, murder’s going to become obsolete. All the computer records these days—which we hope will trap Rourke—those DNA fingerprints I keep reading about, and so on and so on. Killing someone undetected has become very difficult.”
As Reuben made his pronouncement, the waiter brought the check. Reuben picked it up and examined it.
“Look at this, for example,” he said to Cynthia. “Not only does it tell what we ate and drank, but that there were two of us, sitting at table forty-seven, that we were served by Team One and that they made up our check at 21:13:44. Right down to the second.”
“I wonder if they have a system like this at the San Felice?” Cynthia asked. “It’s a new place, they probably do.”
“My God, Cynthia, you may have something! Come on, get yourself organized. Let’s go home and call Mattocks.”
26
Closer Still
Frost spent more than an hour trying to reach Mattocks. When he did, the detective promised to find out about the San Felice.
“How are things going otherwise?” Frost asked.
“No big news. I interrogated Givens this afternoon when he got back from Washington. He tells the same story as Baxter did. I’m going to prowl around that Foundation tomorrow morning. You’ll be the first to know what I find out.”
Mattocks reported back sooner than expected, appearing at the Frosts’ shortly after eleven on Friday.
“Well?” Frost said expectantly. “Is the San Felice automated or not?”
“The answer is yes. The time the check is made up is recorded. They were pretty cross about it, but when they found out I wasn’t about to leave until they dug out Givens’ check from Tuesday afternoon, they did it. Right there, Reuben, big as life, his American Express receipt stapled to it. Sixty dollars’ worth of chicken paillard and four glasses of white wine.”
“The hell with what they ate. When did the time record show?” Frost asked. Mattocks’ sally was innocent enough, but Frost was in no mood for irrelevancies.
“It showed that Givens’ check was made up at 14:46:22.”
“So it’s not very likely he was still there at three-thirty.”
“No, the maître d’ remembered they’d paid the check when it was presented.”
“So he was wrong when he said earlier they left at three-thirty?”
“Yes, he admits that. His excuse is the place was busy Tuesday. Once he saw the time on the check, he backed off.”
“What does Givens say now? And Baxter?”
“I haven’t gone back to them yet. I just came from the restaurant. I wanted to tell you right away—and also what else I found out this morning.”
“Fire away. I’m liking this,” Frost said.
“Springer was right. There’s some hanky-panky with Givens. I sweet-talked his secretary this morning, and she finally admitted that Givens and Baxter are getting it on. One of their tricks is to go off to lunch, almost always at the San Felice, on Tuesday or Wednesday, every week. The secretary—and Baxter’s secretary, too—has instructions to say they’ve gone off to lunch to celebrate Baxter’s birthday. Except to Mrs. Givens, of course, but the secretary says she never calls.”
“She’s a wise woman. She knows better,” F
rost observed. “Why the birthday story?”
“They don’t come back after lunch. The secretary thinks they go to Baxter’s apartment, though she’s not completely sure.”
“So the birthday part, the celebration part, is to explain to anybody who asks why they’re not back at the office?”
“That’s it.”
“I must say, some adulterers are smarter than others. It sounds pretty dumb to me.”
“Yeah.”
Frost got up from his chair and pulled down the first volume of Who’s Who from the shelf. “Let’s make sure Tuesday wasn’t her birthday,” he said. “I hope she’s prominent enough to be in here.”
She was, with more distinguished credentials than Frost had supposed, including membership in the National Academy of Sciences and several other learned societies. And a listed birth date of January 9, 1950.
“Maybe they were celebrating a little late,” Mattocks said.
“And maybe not. Dr. Baxter told your partner Springer at least two lies—the nature of her lunch with Givens and the time they left the restaurant. I wonder what else?”
“I mean to find out,” Mattocks said.
Frost though for a moment. “I’ve got a better idea. Do you suppose Dr. Baxter would like to have lunch with a charming old man like me? Just lunch, I mean, no ‘birthday’ celebration?”
Mattocks shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s a long shot this late in the morning. Let me try just the same,” Frost said. He called Dr. Baxter and turned on the charm. Was there “any chance” she might join him for lunch? he asked. “I realize it’s very short notice, but I have a matter of great importance to discuss with you.” No, he preferred not to discuss it on the phone, Mattocks heard him say.
The bait worked. They would meet at Aurora at one.
“Come back around three and I’ll give you a report,” Frost instructed Mattocks.
Frost arrived at the restaurant first and was already seated when the long-legged Dr. Baxter, in a chic navy suit with a short skirt, appeared. She smiled and sat down, friendly enough, yet ever so nervous.
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