Pick Up Sticks

by Deaver Brown

  “Don’t forget the Porsche, too,” said Henry grumpily. He followed Thatcher’s gaze. “It’s sure a far cry from that dump in Arlington.”

  Thatcher reminded himself of Henry’s fatal tendency to wax fiercely partisan in any controversy. It was not going to make this visit any easier.

  An overweight golden retriever, lying on the porch, blinked incuriously at them. The owner of The Pepper Mill studied the brass doorknocker before he let it sound.

  “Cheap reproduction,” he muttered. “I’ll bet they paid plenty for it.”

  Thatcher wished that he, himself, were as incurious as the dog. But he was beginning to follow the bad example being set by Henry. There was, in the first place, the question of how Amanda was reacting to the suggestion that ten-year-old Tommy Lester had certain rights. Amanda, no doubt, had always thought that the Lester worldly goods were provided by Providence for her comfort. Whether her husband were dead or alive.

  Then too, Thatcher was wondering about Henry’s immediate tactics. The jaunt to Arlington had been camouflaged in a socially acceptable way—by sympathy for Eunice who shared Henry’s status as police suspect and who had other claims on his compassion.

  But Henry was now going to be hoist by his own petard. He had been much moved by Eunice Lester’s lot in life.

  Just how would a partisan—and transparent—Henry behave here in Weston?

  But when the door was opened by a youthfully middle-aged man, it became clear that Thatcher was not destined to see Henry’s response to the challenge. The play had already begun. He and Henry were, for the time being, only latecomers in the audience.

  For audience there was. Eunice Lester might be alone in the world. Amanda was surrounded by supporters. In the round of introductions, Thatcher identified Amanda’s father, who had opened the door for them, and Amanda’s mother, who was a slightly blurred version of her daughter. Two other men sat on the sofa near the fieldstone fireplace. They looked like official mourners: Thatcher deduced they were lawyers. Reasons for the dourness were not slow to emerge. Amanda was having trouble with her retinue.

  “. . . but of course I understand what you said about Steve not leaving a will,” she assured the sofa emphatically. “What difference does that make? Steve didn’t want her to have his money. He meant for me to have it.”

  This reasonableness touched something obscure in Amanda’s mother.

  “Of course he did, darling,” she said lovingly. “When I think of how happy you both were when you were building this beautiful house together . . .”

  Amanda kept her guns trained elsewhere.

  “So, you’ll have to do something about it.”

  The sofa dwellers, a Mr. Clive and a Mr. Plassey it developed, listened to these commands with admirable self-control. There was, Thatcher reflected, something about the Boston legal profession lacking in New York. That cod-like look of frozen suffering was not something you saw everywhere.

  Mr. Clive, carefully ignoring Mr. Plassey, leaned forward.

  “As we explained to you earlier, Mrs. Lester—”

  Mrs. Lester tossed her head. “Explanations? You explained why you weren’t going to do anything. Even after I’d told you what Steve really wanted. All you say is that you can’t do anything. Don’t they, Daddy? There must be something to do. This isn’t fair.”

  Daddy, otherwise Mr. Trainor, was torn. On the one hand, a man among men, he had to deprecate such feminine illogic. On the other hand, he, too, did not think it was fair. He cleared his throat and, in a grave baritone, said:

  “Now, Mandy, honey, don’t get yourself upset—not on top of everything else.”

  Amanda set her jaw.

  Her father turned to the lawyers. “But, Clive, I admit I don’t see why we don’t have a strong case. After all, Amanda is the widow. Steve hadn’t seen these other people for years.”

  “Oh dear, it’s all so terrible.” Amanda’s mother lapsed into gentle sniffing and dabbed at her eyes. It was not emotional abandon but it was too much for Amanda. She jumped to her feet to get a cigarette from the small china cup on the mantel. If she had said it aloud, it could not have been more emphatic: “Oh, Mother!”

  “There, there, Rosemary,” said Mr. Trainor, patting Rosemary’s shoulder.

  The lawyers surveyed the whole Trainor family with impartial hostility.

  Mr. Plassey, it seemed, had a shorter fuse than Mr. Clive. He eschewed the As I have explained before road.

  “It is certainly very unfortunate,” he said, closing his briefcase with a snap that made Thatcher wonder how long this consultation had been going on, “that Mr. Lester neglected to take the precaution of making a will.”

  “Better than vaudeville,” whispered Henry. For Mr. and Mrs. Trainor, as well as Amanda, took immediate exception to Plassey’s words.

  “I certainly do not think this is the time to be criticizing,” said Mrs. Trainor.

  “How could Steve imagine that that woman was going to go crazy?” Amanda blazed out.

  “In the prime of life,” said Mr. Trainor meaninglessly but firmly.

  Both lawyers were human enough to glance involuntarily toward Thatcher and Henry. Then, glassy-eyed with control, they launched into a duet clearly performed at least once before.

  “. . . confer with Mrs. Lester’s attorneys on Monday morning . . .”

  “Possible compromise settlement . . .”

  “I will not compromise with that woman,” said Amanda awfully.

  “Look at their expressions,” said Henry softly.

  Thatcher had to do so quickly.

  Clive and Plassey rose as one, delivered another round of instant counsel, then, with more haste than is usual, withdrew.

  They were probably not yet out of earshot, when Amanda spoke.

  “Daddy, I’m going to get new lawyers.”

  “Now, baby,” he said, looking over his shoulder to be sure that the door had shut.

  Fortunately, at this juncture, Mrs. Trainor relapsed into her decorative sorrow.

  Mr. Trainor, the picture of masculine protectiveness, bowed his head over hers, then indicated to Amanda that he would take charge. He led his wife solicitously from the room. Was it base, Thatcher wondered, to suspect that the Trainors, like others, found Amanda rather overpowering?

  Among those others, he decided, he could number himself. About Henry he had no real doubts.

  “It is all so unfair,” Amanda said, virtually ignoring her family’s retreat. “That woman—”

  “You mean Mrs. Eunice Lester?” Henry interjected.

  The lovely young face hardened.

  “Yes, I mean that bitch Eunice!”

  In a world of four letter words, it is no novelty to hear young women use language that would have called forth apologies from their grandfathers. Thatcher was quite certain that Henry, who after all dealt with the public at large, regularly heard far worse. Nevertheless, he was not surprised to see Henry immediately become an eminent divine.

  “Now, Mrs. Lester,” he said, more in sorrow than in anger.

  But Henry miscalculated. Amanda Lester never played audience to anybody else. Ignoring the Vicar of Wakefield, she said, “And—I just realized! That explains it.” Suddenly her eyes shone with excitement. “When the police find out about this . . .”

  Caught between Henry, gathering steam, and a woman obsessed, Thatcher felt bound to intervene.

  “The police probably already know about your husband’s estate,” he said.

  “Are you sure?”

  There was a hungry note in Amanda’s voice that caused Henry to mutter something under his breath. Hurriedly, Thatcher tried to lead her away from this topic.

  “I should think so, Mrs. Lester. Now, we don’t wish to keep you from . . . er . . . your own concerns. We have intruded at this time simply to ask you about one small point. Your husband had an exchange of words with James Joel Finley. It’s a minor thing—but we were wondering if you knew anything about it.”

 
; “That’s right,” said Henry, who had forgotten all about Alec Prohack in the light of later developments.

  Amanda, too, had forgotten. “James Joel Finley?” she repeated, not recognizing the name.

  Understandably enough, thought Thatcher. James Joel Finley, Fiord Haven, indeed the whole distant world before Stephen Lester’s murder, could now seem very remote.

  Except for the fact that Amanda Lester was not visibly numbed by her loss. If she was in the grip of any emotion, Thatcher was not convinced that it was grief.

  “Oh, you mean that architect up there,” she said after a moment or two. “I don’t really know. Steve did say something about the roof up at that lodge. I wasn’t really paying much attention—”

  Henry momentarily put aside his colors as champion of Eunice and became Yankee sleuth, pure and simple. “You see,” he said earnestly, “witnesses have informed the police that Finley and your husband had a quarrel of some sort. Naturally, you can understand that we—they—want to track it down if we can—”

  Amanda had put her money elsewhere.

  Bluntly, and quite honestly, Thatcher thought, she said, “But why on earth would anybody quarrel over a roof? That’s just silly.”

  Quite suddenly, Amanda seemed exhausted. Exhausted, in fact, to the point of incapacity. With a quick signal, Thatcher kept Henry from continuing and indicated the desirability of departure.

  Amanda saw them to the door in some private fog that did not altogether blanket her automatic responses to Henry’s courtesies. But even allowing for great emotional strain, thought Thatcher as they strode back to the car, it was striking how indifferent Amanda Lester seemed to everything concerning her husband’s death. Everything, that is, except Eunice.

  “All right, all right,” said Henry forthrightly when they were once again car-borne. “I apologize. It was a waste of time. I admit it. And damned unpleasant, to boot.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Thatcher slowly.

  Henry turned to glare at him. “Good God, John! That selfish, cold-hearted—when I think of a woman like that trying to take Eunice’s boy—well, words fail me.”

  “I agree that it was unpleasant,” said Thatcher, reflecting it was unlikely that words would ever fail Henry. “I meant that it may not have been a waste of time.”

  There was silence while Henry digested this. Finally, finishing his review of the preceding hour, he said: “Exactly what do you mean by that?”

  There are times when it is politic to dissimulate. So Thatcher was not being evasive when he tailored his reply.

  “Among other things, Henry, this roof business. If Lester argued with Finley about a roof—well, I, for one, think it might bear looking into.”

  Henry was projecting hopefulness.

  Thatcher continued. “As long as we’re down here, it might not do any harm to see Fiord Haven’s Boston operation. I think it might be useful to talk with Quinlan about James Joel Finley—among other things.”

  “That’s the spirit!” Henry applauded.

  As Thatcher had feared, Henry thought he had recruited an ally.

  Chapter 14

  WAVING PALMS

  IF ANYBODY stood in need of allies, it was Charlie Trinkam. Charlie, who took charge of the sixth floor of the Sloan Guaranty Trust during Thatcher’s absences, was currently beleaguered.

  The State Banking Commission had forwarded a second communication to the Sloan; the stock market was seesawing up and down wildly; the air conditioning of the Sloan’s magnificent new temple on Exchange Place had developed a kink during one of New York’s brutal autumn heat waves.

  Even Charlie, a congenital optimist, had to concede that the situation was deteriorating.

  While inadequate fans blew documents off desks, the trust officers were showing the strain. Their combativeness was no less exacerbating for remaining perfectly polite.

  “. . . now, Chet, the way I read the situation, there’s a possibility of a sixty percent drop in GGB . . .”

  “. . . no, Mrs. Sibley. We are not recommending major portfolio shifts . . .”

  Unfortunately, here and there, politeness cracked.

  “Now let’s face facts, Bowman,” said Ingersoll in an unwise assault on the research department. “Your earnings estimate for Gloman’s is way off. Have you seen what Barrons says?”

  Walter Bowman, enormous in shirt sleeves, resembled an outraged Kodiak bear.

  “Way off? Let me tell you—”

  Charlie had barely left the ensuing arbitration session when he was waylaid.

  Everett Gabler, tie in place, coat buttoned and impervious to temperature, was a living rebuke to his disheveled colleagues.

  “. . . said it once, and I shall say it again.”

  “What was that, Ev?” asked Charlie, insincerely responsive.

  Everett was at his bleakest. “The State Banking Commission,” he said icily. “You have seen the latest questionnaire, I trust?”

  Charlie groaned to himself. “Sure, I’ve seen it, Ev I can’t waste time on routine. I’ve been pretty busy trying to figure out what’s up with the market. You know, according to the random-walk boys—”

  Everett Gabler was not interested in the randomwalk boys. “I don’t believe I can agree that it is routine,” he said. “I feel strongly that we should discuss the entire matter.”

  “Sure, sure,” said Charlie, swallowing other retorts. The next forty-five minutes were not made easier for him by Everett’s open contempt for the fans and iced drinks showing how Charlie had knuckled under to the environment.

  When Charlie entered John Thatcher’s office a little later, he felt entitled to relax.

  “Whew!” he said, settling himself in a chair. “I feel like a lion tamer.”

  Miss Corsa waited for something more specific.

  “Still, we may get through the day without anybody actually taking a punch at anybody else,” said Charlie, brightening as he always did. “I defy John to do better. Rose, do we have any idea when they’re going to get that air conditioning working?”

  Miss Corsa, ignoring allusions to Mr. Thatcher and to fisticuffs at the Sloan, was cooperative about the common enemy. The Sloan’s maintenance engineer reported that a flaw in a duct had been located and would be repaired by morning. Then, since she was only human, she added that the U.S. Weather Bureau predicted that the heat wave would break some eight hours earlier.

  “Naturally,” said Charlie. “Just pray that the market doesn’t break, too. You said that John called? Where is he? I thought he was far, far away—on some mountain or other.”

  Miss Corsa had no information on Mr. Thatcher’s whereabouts. “But,” she went on, “he told me to ask you and Mr. Bowman for some details.”

  Meticulously she consulted her dictation book, and Charlie listened to a hodgepodge of items that Mr. Thatcher would like the staff to check: there were inquiries for banks in California; there were the names of New York specialists in second-home building; there were legal opinions concerning the custody laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

  “I’ll start rounding things up,” said Charlie good-naturedly. “But what do you think he wants them for?”

  Miss Corsa could have made a good guess, but she did not feel it her place to do so. Charlie continued:

  “Of course there was that trouble up in New Hampshire, wasn’t there?”

  “Yes,” said Miss Corsa. News of Stephen Lester’s murder had filtered down to the Sloan, but not enough to give it much prominence.

  “I thought John and this Henry Morland only stuck around long enough to call the police,” Charlie muttered, studying his notes. “Oh well, maybe John just got interested. After all, what else can you do when you’re tramping through the woods? He probably just wants something to pass the time. I’ll see what I can dig up, Rose . . .”

  Charlie left behind him a deeply suspicious Miss Corsa. Like everybody else at the Sloan, Miss Corsa respected Mr. Thatcher’s passion for factual minutiae and had
interpreted his telephone message in that spirit.

  But the picture Mr. Trinkam painted brought her to her senses. Experience had taught Miss Corsa it was highly unlikely that Mr. Thatcher would be tramping away from anything that interested him.

  Mr. Thatcher, of course, was not tramping through the woods. He was alighting from a cab in Kenmore Square, Boston. While Henry engaged in complex severance pay negotiations with the cabby, Thatcher inspected his surroundings. Kenmore Square, like most of downtown Boston, had been affected by two great forces. Affluence was evidenced by new façades on old buildings, by a large glass and concrete motor-hotel, by boutiques and coffeehouses. Yesterday’s baby boom, however, had produced the streams of college students now surging in and out of the vast Bauhaus compounds of Boston University.

  “Highway robbery,” reported Henry cheerfully, as the taxi pulled away.

  “Literally or figuratively?” Thatcher inquired, but Henry, hot on the trail, did not dissipate energy.

  “There it is,” he said, hurling himself across waves of mini-skirts, blue jeans, long hair, and sandals.

  Obediently, Thatcher followed. NORTHERN LAND DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION proclaimed a sign in one of the many stores, six steps down. Its immediate neighbors were a liquor store and something called Uhuru, Inc., which seemed to specialize in objects made of wicker, leather or polystyrene—or some combination of the three.

  FIORD HAVEN said a magenta and saffron poster. A NEW CONCEPT IN COUNTRY LIVING.

  Next to it was a large-scale model of YOUR VACATION DREAM HOME, cross-sectioned so that one could study the cathedral-ceilinged living room, the fur rugs, the free-standing fireplace. It was furnished down to a ski rack in the hallway complete with skis.

  Finally, there was an enormous photographic mural with four panels: MAGIC SEASONS AT FIORD HAVEN.

  But Henry was not the man to linger over imaginative renderings of SUMMER FUN ON FIORD LAKE, or WINTRY WONDER AT FIORD MOUNTAIN. He trotted down the stairs, and Thatcher followed him into an office which consisted of six desks, each deep in brochures and folders. The occupants of each desk were either scanning lists, typing furiously, or hunching over a telephone.