Murder Times Two

by Haughton Murphy

  “Dr. Baxter, thank you for joining me. Especially with so little warning. Will you have a drink?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Frost. Those of us in the foundation world usually don’t drink at lunch.”

  “Not even white wine and soda? Or Campari, which I’ve even seen bishops drink during the day?”

  “You’re a smooth talker, Mr. Frost. Yes, a Campari and soda.”

  Frost ordered Dr. Baxter’s drink and a martini for himself.

  “Being retired, irresponsible and from another generation, I can have a martini,” Reuben explained. “However, I don’t want you to get the idea that this is a frivolous old man’s lunch. It isn’t.”

  “You hinted at that on the phone. I scarcely know you. We met at the Bloemendael meeting the other day, and I know your firm represents the Vandermeers. So I assume there’s something about the Foundation you want to discuss.”

  “I’m glad you were intrigued enough to find out.”

  “Of course, I was intrigued. My whole life is the Foundation, and anything that affects it affects me—at least emotionally.” She gave him a broad, bold lipstickdrenched smile that under happier circumstances would have turned him to jelly.

  “I don’t mean to prolong the mystery, Dr. Baxter, but perhaps we should order.” The two decided against appetizers, with Reuben ordering lobster in a lime-and-sauterne sauce and his guest baked salmon in a horseradish crust.

  “Dr. Baxter, the deaths of Tobias and Robyn Vandermeer have become a preoccupation with me,” Reuben began, wasting no time. “By hook or by crook, I’ve been close to the police investigation of both of them.”

  “I don’t quite understand how that involves me.”

  “A fair question. Let me try to explain, and I’ll try not to be obtuse about it. I want very much for the killer—or killers—of Tobias and Robyn Vandermeer to be found. I want to get this whole thing behind us, to stop the cheap and sleazy speculation we’ve seen in the newspapers and on television. It’s not doing your Foundation any good, and it’s grossly unfair to the innocent parties who’ve gotten enmeshed in it.” Frost did not tell her of his own exoneration; let her think he was attempting to prevent any more New York exposes and pictures.

  “Having said all that, I want the investigation to proceed with as little harm as possible to those who’ve been swept up in it.”

  “Mr. Frost, I’m afraid you’re talking in riddles. I still don’t know why I’m getting a free lunch. Or is this Dutch?”

  “No, Doctor, it’s my treat. Not a Dutch treat. Am I really talking in riddles? You have been questioned by the police?”

  “True enough,” she said nervously, shaking an excess of salt on her salmon. “They wanted to know where I was or, really, where Wayne was, the afternoon when Mrs. Vandermeer was killed.”

  “Yes. And you lied to them.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Frost was grateful for the wide-spaced tables at Aurora as he bore in. The giggling Japanese drinking Johnny Walker Black at the next table were paying no attention, and were not close enough to hear, even if they had been.

  “Dr. Baxter, you told the police that you were having lunch with Dr. Givens on Tuesday at San Felice—”

  “And I was.”

  “But you also told them it was a lunch in honor of your birthday, when in fact you were born on January ninth.”

  “Oh, that! Pardon me if I laugh, this is too funny,” she said, with great confidence. “You must understand that Dr. Givens and I are old friends. We have many little jokes between us. One is my birthday. Which Dr. Givens treats like the Queen’s birthday. In other words, it can go on and on forever. Whenever things get difficult at the office, or whenever either of us has a tough problem, we go out to lunch and celebrate my birthday. It’s an old joke and, believe me, quite innocuous.”

  “Then why did you tell the police you were having a birthday lunch?”

  “It was a terrible mistake. The police officer was so serious. Springer, is that it? I couldn’t resist. Besides, I figured that dumb secretary of Dr. Givens would say it had been a birthday lunch. She’s in on the joke, and she always does.”

  Dr. Baxter, calmly eating away at her salmon and dismissing the birthday matter so lightly, almost threw Reuben off his pace. Nonetheless he persisted, even while thinking that Springer might have missed the joke.

  “Dr. Baxter, I don’t mean to seem offensive. Obviously I’m dealing in secondhand information, and I shouldn’t even be confiding it to you, but there seems to be some indication that the Queen’s birthday—yours—is celebrated by you and Dr. Givens on a regular basis at least once a week. On Tuesday or Wednesday, usually. After which neither one of you returns to the office.”

  “Oh, that woman!” Baxter exclaimed, in great anger.

  “Who?”

  “Givens’ secretary. Meddling, stupid woman! There’s no privacy anywhere in this City.”

  “I can attest to that, Dr. Baxter.”

  “All right. So what can I tell you? That Wayne Givens and I have had a matinee or two? I don’t think, Mr. Frost, that that makes us ax murderers.”

  “Or even poisoners, Dr. Baxter.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I do think it would be very helpful if you told me exactly what happened Tuesday afternoon, leaving out, if you like, the details of the last couple of hours at your apartment. My concern is that the police have a complete and accurate account of how you and Dr. Givens spent Tuesday afternoon. It will be best for all concerned if they do. I know the police. They are suspicious and dirty-minded. Without going into it, I know that better than most. And I can tell you, as sure as God made green apples, that if they don’t have a straight account from you, they will triangulate their targets—you and Dr. Givens—in ways that will be unfortunate.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “By ‘triangulate,’ I mean by asking questions in quarters that you may not like. By trying to zero in on you in ways that will make the privacy you seek disappear utterly.”

  “For example?”

  “Like seeing what Barbara Givens knows about your ‘birthday parties.’ Or like finding out what the other members of the National Academy of Sciences think about your good moral character. Or the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, or, not to be confused with the foregoing, the American Society for Chemical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. Or your old colleagues at Rockefeller University. One might well ask all of them if they thought you had slept your way to your present eminence, after a series of Queen’s birthday parties.”

  “Mr. Frost, that detective who questioned me has never heard of the National Academy of Sciences or any of my other organizations, I can assure you.”

  “But I have.”

  “I believe, sir, there are libel laws that prevent what you have in mind.”

  “Slander, Dr. Baxter. I would never put anything in writing. And I can assure you that any discreet inquiries I made would be well within the law. Which isn’t to say that your colleagues, if they are like most other academics I’ve ever encountered, wouldn’t draw nasty conclusions that will spread around like a brush fire.”

  “I don’t have to sit here and listen to this.”

  “No, you don’t. But if you don’t, you’ll miss out on Aurora’s saffron ice cream, and either I or that plodding young detective you mentioned will be asking questions all over America, as I described. Isn’t it simpler to tell me what happened last Tuesday? On the understanding, by the way—and I mean this—that I will reveal anything you say only as and when necessary to the proper authorities.”

  “Wayne Givens is my friend,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt him.”

  “Yes, I understand that. If he’s innocent, whatever you tell me will be irrelevant. If he’s not, the truth will come out eventually, I have no question about that. And in ways that may hurt you and your eminent professional standing.”

  “Could I have a glass of wine?” she asked.<
br />
  “I’m sorry. Of course. I assumed the Campari was all you wanted.”

  “It was until now.”

  Dr. Baxter did not speak until she had taken a deep sip from the white wine the waiter brought her.

  “All right, Mr. Frost. Dr. Givens and I had lunch last Tuesday. We had many things to discuss, the food was enjoyable, or at least I thought so while I was eating it, so we lingered. We left about three-thirty. I know because I looked at my watch when we went out the door. Once we got out into the street, I began to feel a little queasy. I’d had mussels for lunch and they must have been bad. So I asked Dr. Givens to take me home, which he did. I still wasn’t feeling well when I got home, so he stayed with me until—”

  “Dr. Baxter, I don’t think this conversation is getting us anywhere. You’re repeating the same lies you told the police.”

  “You have a nerve, Mr. Frost,” she answered, half rising as if ready to stalk away.

  “Sit down, Dr. Baxter. I’ll concede you didn’t repeat the lie about your birthday. But you didn’t have mussels that upset your stomach. You had chicken paillard, as did Dr. Givens. And you left that restaurant just before three o’clock.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The triangulation process has begun, Dr. Baxter. Now, would you like to go back and clean up your account?”

  Frost summoned up the same toughness and fierceness he had brought, if necessary, to the negotiating table when he had been in active practice. It was always a mistake to lose your temper for real; that always gave one’s adversary a gratuitous advantage. But calculated anger was at times a shrewd and useful weapon. This was one of such times.

  Dr. Baxter was, as Frost had hoped, intimidated by his display of wrath.

  “You’re quite right,” she said quietly. “The truth would’ve come out anyway. We left the restaurant at three. I did look at my watch, by the way. Wayne said that he had an errand to do and that he’d meet me back at my apartment, to continue the ‘birthday celebration.’ He left me and I went home.”

  “And he returned?” Frost asked, now attempting to get a calm and soothing tone back into his voice.

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “About four-thirty.”

  “And then the party continued?”

  “You said you wouldn’t ask about that.”

  “You’re right.”

  “But the answer is no. Wayne said he wasn’t up to it, and I took him at his word.”

  “He stayed with you, though?”

  “Yes, until about six. He opened a bottle of wine and we sat and drank it.”

  “He was nervous?”

  “No, not really. He just begged off making love.”

  “Anything else you’d like to tell me?”

  Dr. Baxter sighed and took another long sip of wine.

  “What the hell?” she replied. “When he came to the apartment, he said he’d been shopping. He was carrying something that was rolled up and taped along the side. It looked like a canvas, or maybe a piece of paper. I didn’t look at it very closely at the time. He left it in the back of my closet. He said it was a surprise—for me, I assumed—and that I shouldn’t look at it.”

  “But curiosity got the better of you, and you did?”

  “Yes. I took it out and opened it last night.”

  “And?”

  “And it was a Jasper Johns painting.”

  “Like the one in the Vandermeers’ dining room?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Frost. Dr. Givens only went to the Vandermeers’ with his wife.”

  “Did you tell Dr. Givens?”

  “No, I’ve been trying to decide what to do. I guess, thanks to you, I’ve decided.”

  “You must have talked to him, to concoct your story.”

  “Yes. He begged me to tell the police we hadn’t been separated Tuesday afternoon. And that we’d left the restaurant at three-thirty.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “He said he’d had a meeting with Mrs. Vandermeer, at her request, early last week. They’d discussed her ideas for the future of the Bloemendael and ended up having a violent quarrel about her becoming Chairman of the Board. Dr. Givens didn’t know who she might have told about their meeting, but was sure it would go badly for him if the police found out both about his confrontation with her and his movements on Tuesday at the time she was murdered.”

  “Didn’t you put two and two together and realize he had killed her?”

  “I was in love with him, Mr. Frost. Even after I opened that painting and knew the truth for certain, I didn’t want to believe it.”

  “Weren’t you afraid of him?”

  “Not until now.”

  Frost called for the check and attempted to organize the thoughts swirling around in his head. What should he do? The most important thing was to isolate Dr. Baxter from Givens. And to make sure the Jasper Johns was still in her closet.

  “Does Dr. Givens have a key to your apartment?” Frost asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You stay right here while I make a call.”

  Frost could not reach Mattocks, but did find Springer.

  “There’s a detective coming here,” he explained when he returned. “I want you to go with him to your apartment and show him that painting. It’ll take a little time to sort things out. While that’s happening, I don’t think you should be alone. Stay with Detective Springer.”

  “How long will this go on?”

  “If my plan—which I improvised while we were talking—works, everything will be settled this evening.”

  “Should I thank you?” Dr. Baxter asked.

  “Let’s see if we can keep the birthday parties out of the papers first,” Frost answered, though he doubted that it would be possible.

  27

  A Little Meeting

  Once he had left Dr. Baxter in the custody of Springer, Frost rushed home. A message from Bautista was on the machine. He called the detective and was greeted with shouted enthusiasm.

  “Reuben, you’re a genius! The phone thing checked out completely.” Bautista went on to explain how the phone company had gone over Decker’s and Gunther’s records—and the records from the pay box near the movie theater where Terry Hartley had called Rourke on the afternoon Tobias was killed. All three showed calls to Rourke’s number between four-thirty and seven on the fateful Sunday. And the records for Rourke’s phone showed that all three had been forwarded to 288-7173—the Vandermeers’ number.

  “I’m going to pull him in,” Bautista said.

  “No. Not yet. Where is he?”

  “We’ve got a tail on him. He went to his apartment about an hour ago.”

  “Let me explain my plan,” Reuben said, outlining it to Bautista.

  “So you’re going to call him?” Bautista said.

  “Yes. And you and Mattocks should be here around five-thirty.”

  Frost immediately got back on the phone and called both Rourke and Wayne Givens. His voice was now authoritative yet soothing; the anger displayed toward Dr. Baxter was gone. Both conversations were similar. Frost was sorry to be calling so late on a Friday afternoon, but he was, as they knew, the senior lawyer for Tobias Vandermeer’s estate and the Vandermeer Trust. Something had come up that he felt they should know immediately. Could they possibly come over for a drink at six o’clock? He was all apologies and all graciousness, and the Vandermeer bait worked. He even had the nerve to tell Rourke that he was looking forward to meeting him.

  Shortly afterward, Springer called. The painting in Marguerite Baxter’s apartment was still there, and, yes, it was the Jasper Johns. Frost instructed him to remain there or else to get another policeman to stay with Dr. Baxter.

  “You may want to do that and come over here and join the fun,” Frost said.

  “Fun?”

  “Never mind. If you’re coming, just be here by five-thirty. You’ll screw things up if you get here any later.”

  Bautista an
d Mattocks appeared promptly at five-thirty. Springer, disobeying Frost’s warning, came ten minutes after they did. It was all right, though, since there was plenty of time before Frost’s impromptu cocktail party, time that he used to bring the detectives up-to-date.

  Frost said he would receive his company in the library.

  “Where should we be?” Bautista said.

  “There’s a buzzer on the telephone in the library that connects to the one in the kitchen. You can wait there.”

  “What about me?” Cynthia asked, having returned from her afternoon errands to find the generals coordinating their battle plan.

  “Since this is supposed to be a legal chat, I’m going to have to see the two of them by myself. We can’t make it a social occasion. Do you mind staying in the kitchen with the boys?”

  “Reuben, this is foolish,” Cynthia said. “You shouldn’t be alone with these characters, with help way away in the kitchen.”

  “It’s how I want to do it. But if I press that buzzer, Cynthia, you duck, and the rest of you come running as fast as you damn well can.”

  The detectives also had misgivings about Frost’s strategy, but Bautista knew him well enough to back off from dissuading him, and he convinced his reluctant colleagues to go along.

  Rourke arrived first. Ah, the cheekbones! Reuben thought. There was no doubt in his mind that he was shaking hands with Pace Padgett.

  “I’m sorry we haven’t met before,” Frost said apologetically, meaning, of course, not having met him as Stephen Rourke. “I was away when your lawyer called on my partner, Mr. Millard. That was quite an interesting story he had to tell.”

  “Yeah, I suppose it was,” Rourke said, grinning. “So what’s this all about?”

  “If you don’t mind, Mr. Rourke, I’d like to defer that for a moment. I’ve invited Dr. Givens, the head of the Bloemendael Foundation, to join us. When he gets here I’ll explain everything.”

  The mention of the Foundation seemed to make Rourke uneasy. Did he see his legacy being threatened? Frost wondered.

  Frost was going to ask Rourke about the play he was rehearsing, but realized in time that his only knowledge of that had come from the detectives waiting in the kitchen. He was spared inventing more innocent small talk by Givens’ arrival.