“True enough.”
“And as for Sally and Casper … I’m afraid you’re imagining things because of the old rumors about the two of them. The family that plays tennis together plots together, is that it?”
“Look, I don’t know whether the rumors about Sally and Casper are true—I never have known, and neither have you. What I do know is that Sally was worried about Flemming continuing on, and certainly Casper has always been ambitious for the top job at AFC. I was just linking those two things together. And if they should happen to be lovers, that makes their joint scheming even more plausible.”
“What about Sorella? Her murder certainly had nothing to do with Casper succeeding Flemming,” Reuben said.
“That’s why I say perhaps it was a trio—Casper, Sally and Gruen.”
“That one I’ll have to sleep on,” Frost said, announcing that it was time to go.
“You’re right. We’ve both had a long day and our nice little inconclusive conversation has made me very tired,” Cynthia said.
The couple left the restaurant with some haste. Their dinner conversation may have been inconclusive, as Cynthia had said, but it had managed to upset them both.
Frost spent another restless night, during which he decided that he must call Sally Andersen the next day and arrange a meeting. He must tell her about his newly acquired information that Casper Robbins and Jeffrey Gruen were friends (and, also, after hearing his wife’s hypotheses, study Sally’s reactions). She was also entitled to know about her daughter’s poisonous book. He was not especially eager for the encounter, but Cynthia urged him on and he knew that she was right.
When he called Sally the next morning, she invited him to tea that afternoon. Frost had hoped to see her earlier—with her permission, he planned to challenge Robbins outright about why the AFC President had lied about knowing Gruen. But she said she was busy until five and there seemed no way of expediting their meeting.
He was at Sally Andersen’s front door at the dot of five. When tea had been requested—Frost loathed both tea and the custom of it, but suffered in silence out of deference to his hostess—he began his business gently, telling the widow about the demented Oscar Brothers, author of at least two of the murder notes. Once reminded, she remembered both Brothers and his unpleasant departure vividly. But she also agreed, while conceding that he would have been completely familiar with the Andersen estate in Connecticut, that it was just too unlikely that he would have committed the crimes.
Frost then ventured into more treacherous territory and told Mrs. Andersen what he had learned about Robbins and Gruen.
“I don’t believe that, Reuben!” the woman said, with obvious, flaring anger. “That son of a bitch! That slippery, nasty man! My friend! My tennis partner!” The pitch of Sally Andersen’s voice rose as she talked, ending in a near-scream. “The man I picked to run the Company! A traitor! A bastard!”
“I can’t argue with you,” Frost said. “Though his disloyalty completely baffles me. Unless you object, I’m going to confront him squarely with what I’ve found out.”
“By all means. Just so long as I don’t have to be present.”
“Could he have killed your husband?” Frost asked.
“Casper Robbins a killer?” Sally asked rhetorically. “I don’t think so. Casper may have taken risks over the years, but being sneaky is different from killing. That’s too risky.”
“I hope you’re right,” Frost replied.
“What about the great Jeffrey Gruen himself?” Sally asked. “Why couldn’t he have killed Flemming and Sorella?”
“I’m afraid that doesn’t make sense,” Frost answered. “He’s never been at the Connecticut place, has he?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Then how could he possibly have committed the two murders?”
“Maybe someone told him what to do and where to go.”
“Most unlikely. Jeffrey Gruen is much too wily to get his hands dirty directly. If he were involved at all, it would be behind the scenes. He would be the one giving directions.”
“With all that money of his, maybe he hired somebody,” she said.
“Possible, but there’s not a shred of evidence of it,” Frost said.
“It’s just a thought. Don’t you have any good news for me?” Sally asked.
“I’m afraid not. And I’m also afraid I have some more bad news,” Frost replied. Hesitating no longer, he outlined the gist of her daughter’s forthcoming book. As he talked, the straight and upright Sally Andersen seemed to melt. By the time he had finished his synopsis, the tanned, determined and leathery woman sitting across from him seemed much more vulnerable.
“Did you know about the book?” Frost asked, as he concluded his account.
“Absolutely not. She’s never mentioned it,” Sally told Frost. “But I’m not surprised. Over the last few years, I’ve very often learned what my daughter’s thinking by reading the newspapers or the magazines. So, finding out what a wretched mother I was from a book wouldn’t be out of the ordinary.”
“I’m sure it can’t be very pleasant.”
“No, it isn’t. It hasn’t been.”
“So the degree of her hatred doesn’t surprise you?”
“Good heavens, no. Diana has been a horrible girl since she was eight years old. Not the Bad Seed exactly, murdering pet cats and stray relatives, but very nasty just the same.”
“I’m sorry, Sally,” Frost said, trying to be comforting. “But to come right to the point—could she have killed her father and her sister?”
Sally Andersen did not answer immediately. She rubbed her tan face, as if to convince herself she was awake and not dreaming.
“Not alone,” she finally replied. “Diana could never have done such a thing alone, however demented her views or however bitter her attitude. No, Reuben, it’s just not possible that my daughter would do such a thing. But …”
“But what?”
“But working together with some of the monsters in that group of hers, yes, yes, it’s possible—letting them fire her hatred. Yes, Reuben, I’m afraid that would be possible.” The woman began crying as she reached her painful conclusion. “You know, Reuben, I’m afraid I’ve failed in my most important role in the Andersen family,” she said after she had pulled herself together.
“What’s that?”
“I’ve always tried to preserve the family’s privacy. Yes, and Diana’s right, I’ve tried to preserve its respectability and its reputation, too. We’ve never been what used to be called café society. And our wealth has been too old to interest W and the other parvenu magazines. Flemming and I never made public fools of ourselves. We were probably stodgy, Scandinavian and square, but we never swam in the Plaza fountain, or got thrown out of Harry’s Bar, or partied all night on the Île de France. And our children weren’t weaned at the Stork Club or El Morocco.
“But all our efforts were doomed to failure. My husband and daughter have been murdered, and the minutest detail of our lives is available for every subway rider to read about. And now, this afternoon, you’ve told me that one of my dearest and oldest friends is a lying traitor and that my surviving daughter is about to burst forth as the new prophet of the female sex! God help me, Reuben, this is not what I had in mind, not what I had in mind at all! I knew that Jeffrey Gruen would get us a little publicity, but I thought it would be temporary. And when the dust settled, we could go back to leading normal lives.”
“‘When the dust settled’?” Frost asked. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, either Gruen would have been beaten, or he would have taken over the Company.”
“Did you ever think that was possible?”
“Of course. And—God rest my husband—would it have been entirely bad? If Gruen bought AFC out, Flemming could have retired gracefully, and all my ne’er-do-well relatives—son, daughters, son-in-law, drunken nephew—could have been happy with their new bank balances. And so could Casper Robbins.”
“Did you ever say that to Flemming?”
“Oh no. It was a very, very private thought, Reuben. I only tell it to you now because Flemming is dead. Even so, can’t you hear him whirring around—right there, up above your head?” Sally laughed, almost out of control, at her afterlife joke.
“Reuben, dear Reuben,” she continued, “I’ve always done whatever was necessary to keep the Andersens together, to keep trouble at bay. Some of the things I’ve done I wouldn’t dare tell you now, even years after they happened. But what good has it done? I’ve failed. We’ve been conquered, or are about to be, by the Jeffrey Gruens, the tabloids and God knows who and what else. Probably even the National Enquirer. Well, so be it. Which means, dear Reuben, that I have only one request of you.”
“What’s that?”
“That you find the murderer of my husband and my daughter and bring him—or, I suppose, her—to justice.”
Frost left Sally Andersen’s tea with a craving for something stronger. He stopped at the Mayfair on Sixty-fifth Street and peremptorily commanded one of the long-skirted waitresses in the frumpy lobby to bring him an extra-dry Beefeater martini. Straight up, thank you, with a twist of lemon.
As he drank, he reflected on his confrontation with Sally. She had confirmed his conjecture that Diana Andersen was capable of murder. And Cynthia’s intuition that Sally wanted her husband to step down as head of AFC.
Was her rage and anger an act? Or was it real rage? And if real, was it directed at Casper for what he did or for being found out?
Answers to these questions were ambiguous. But there was the undeniable fact that Sally Andersen had been present in Connecticut on both the fatal evenings. And that she certainly was fit and strong enough to overpower her frail husband, or to manipulate Sorella’s dogs.
Reuben Frost was in a foul mood as he finished his martini and headed home.
A SMOOTH ONE
20
Frost’s frustration level was high as the week came to an end. He had been in frequent touch with both Bautista and Castagno, but neither of them was making any progress at all. He was particularly angry with his old friend Bautista. He realized that the detective was very much involved with a series of drug murders, but still he was sorry that Bautista didn’t have more time to spare for him.
Over and over again he had emphasized to the two policemen the importance of pinning down where the acknowledged suspects had been during the hours on Tuesday and Thursday the week before when the murders had occurred.
Friday morning, he exhorted Bautista and Castagno once again, and then turned to the business of cornering and confronting Casper Robbins. Frost thought it would be most advantageous to meet him on neutral ground, outside the confines of the imperial office he occupied as the President of AFC. But he could not think of a fitting way of doing that. He didn’t want him for lunch at home—and Robbins would not at all have liked one of Reuben’s homemade tuna-fish sandwiches—and he didn’t want to challenge him at lunch at the Gotham. (Though such a lunch would presumably not have violated the club’s rules against doing business within its confines; surely accusing someone of murder was social, not business.)
Frost called Robbins at AFC. He held his temper through a substitute secretary’s screening inquiries, though he was tempted to answer her question “Will Mr. Robbins know what this is in reference to?” with the response “The double homicide he committed last week.” But he finally reached the President before insulting anyone.
“Casper, do you have some time this afternoon?” Frost asked. “I’d like very much to come by and see you.”
“Oh, goodness, Reuben, this afternoon’s very bad,” Robbins answered. “Can’t we talk over the phone?”
“I much prefer not to,” Frost said. “I’ll be happy to come to you, and I won’t take long.”
“What time?” Robbins said, trying without much success to conceal his annoyance. “I have a rather full plate this afternoon.”
“Two-thirty?”
“Fine. But I have to leave for the country at four.”
Truth will out. What Robbins really wanted was to get away to Katonah for the weekend.
Casper Robbins had calmed down by the time Frost was shown in to see him. As he traversed the enormous distance between the entry door and the chairs set in front of the President’s desk, Frost wondered anew what possessed executives to have such offices.
In his palmy days, as the Executive Partner of Chase & Ward, Frost had had what he at least considered magnificent quarters, with a splendid downtown view of New York harbor. But its size was tiny compared with the fascist proportions of the office he was now in. And the furnishings were as expensive and elaborate as the jewelry bedecking the poitrine of the East Side’s latest popsy—an imposing antique desk, a large ship model in a bottle, sporting prints on the walls. The overall effect made no sense whatsoever, other than to convey the message that the room had been decorated at great cost.
“What can I do for you, Reuben?” Robbins asked, as he came from behind the fortresslike desk to greet his visitor. “Let’s sit over here.” He guided Frost to two parallel sofas at the side of the room, sitting down in one himself and motioning Frost to the other.
“I’m here about the murders,” Frost said. “It’s now been over a week and the police have yet to find the killer.”
“So what are you doing, playing amateur detective?”
“In a very modest way, I suppose I am. I happen to be a friend of the detective handling the case here in the city.”
“Well, I can’t help you. The killer is obviously a lunatic. Probably saw too many AFC ads on television and wrote those crazy notes. Don’t you think?”
“Not for a minute,” Frost said. “Whoever killed Flemming and Sorella knew the Greenwich estate intimately—knew about the hot tub and how it worked, and knew about the dogs and their kennel, too.”
“You could be crazy and still know such things,” Robbins said.
“Yes. But not very likely.”
“To each his own. I say it was a nut. And the police will never find him. Too bad, but it looks to me like that’s the way it’s going to be.”
“That would be the most convenient, you mean.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If it’s an unknown psychopath, there’s no embarrassment, just uncertainty. Whereas if it’s a relative, or an employee, or somebody else close to the Andersens, it all becomes rather unpleasant.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Nothing. I just wondered if you had any opinions. You know the family pretty well, after all.”
“Sure. But I don’t think there’s a one of them capable of murder.”
“I must have a dirty mind,” Frost said. “I’m not saying it’s true, or that I suspect anybody, but with a little imagination, I can make a plausible case for any one of them doing it. And I say that even knowing them all as old friends.”
“Sure, they all could have. But why would they? Where’s the motive?”
“I see the murders being related to Gruen’s takeover bid,” Frost said. “Flemming was determined to defeat it. So perhaps someone who wanted it to succeed got him out of the way. Then Sorella took up the battle where her father left off, so she had to be gotten rid of as well.”
“Interesting theory. But I still say it was some stranger who’s mentally ill.”
“Well, Casper, you’re not much help.”
“What do you want me to say? That feckless old Nate Perkins finally got his act together and did in his wife and his father-in-law? I’m sorry, I just don’t have any plausible theories that can help your gumshoe efforts.” Robbins’s fabled charm seemed to be wearing thin as he looked pointedly at his watch; the country was beckoning.
“Just one more question, Casper. I know you’re eager to get away. What do you think will happen if Gruen makes a tender offer?”
“It’s hard to say. I hear that Diana Andersen is ready to sell. And n
ow that Randolph Hedley is in total charge of the Foundation—he never did get around to appointing Sally to Flemming’s seat on the Board—I’d be surprised if the Foundation didn’t sell also. Hedley would be too scared to be as defiant as Sorella. That means the Company will have to buy a helluva lot more stock to defeat a tender than was originally thought. I don’t know what the directors will decide. I don’t know what I’ll do, for that matter.”
“You don’t?” Frost asked.
“No. I don’t know whether it’s the best thing to keep going independently if the price is saddling AFC with a lot of debt. Besides, would Gruen be so bad? I don’t know him. But he’s on your ballet board, isn’t he? What do you think?”
“I don’t know Gruen very well. You don’t know him at all?”
“The only time I ever met him was at our meeting last week,” Robbins said.
“For what it’s worth, I think the man would milk the Company for everything in the till,” Frost said. “And AFC certainly wouldn’t continue to be the benevolent enterprise that Flemming was so proud of.”
“I know, but Flemming’s dead. We’ve got to look out for those who’re still here.”
“Including yourself?” Frost asked.
“I don’t have to worry, as you may recall.”
“Tour golden parachute, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“No, Casper, your parachute is rather hard to forget. It’s made of the finest silk. Two million dollars a year for ten years, isn’t that right? Plus a limousine and driver for that long and an apartment in New York paid for by AFC. And, if I remember correctly, even Blue Cross insurance for those ten years.”
“That’s about it, Reuben. But it’s all contingent on someone firing me. Like Gruen, for instance. Since I don’t even know him, I have no idea whether he’d keep me or not.”
“I don’t think it’s very likely he’d fire you,” Frost said. “First off, getting rid of you and paying you out wouldn’t be very profitable for him. And second, while Gruen fancies himself as being a managerial genius, your expertise in the food business ought to be of great value to him.”
Murders & Acquisitions Page 19