Right on the Money Read online

  Scrupulously Frayne confirmed that was how things stood when Conrad had left.

  “But by the time I was through, Hunnicut was back in his stall and Ives was about to tackle him.”

  When Giorni switched to Tina Laverdiere, she was no help.

  “I did my stint at the display this morning,” she explained. “Since then I’ve been looking at the other exhibits, so I missed all the excitement. Bob was just telling me about this little dust-up with Victor Hunnicut.”

  Giorni accepted this statement with reservations. A wife might wish to minimize her husband’s hostile encounter with a murder victim. But it was also possible that it was the husband doing the minimizing.

  “And now suppose you tell me about it, Mr. Laverdiere,” he invited.

  Apparently Bob Laverdiere asked nothing better.

  “I tell you, Hunnicut must have been crazy,” he said eagerly. “After taking a bunch of swipes at us, he went on to his own people. Wiley Quinn had obviously had a bellyful of his snide remarks about Pepitone and Sam Bradley. He said they all knew how Victor spread dirt. And Ken Nicolls told me afterward that Bradley was planning to do something about it. They were just as steamed with his dirty tricks as I was.”

  “So you admit you were steamed,” Giorni asked placidly.

  “Sure I was. He was sounding off in front of a bunch of customers. That’s why I complained to Conrad.”

  “And I told Ives to put a leash on the kid,” Conrad growled. “I don’t know what he was up to at ASI. I just didn’t want him around us.”

  Thus far the honors were even. ASI claimed that Hunnicut was harassing Ecker. Laverdiere claimed that Hunnicut was harassing ASI. There remained, however, a piece of material evidence.

  “Mr. Laverdiere,” said the inspector, “I want you to come and look at something for me.”

  Leading his unwilling witness toward the office he was using as a command post, Giorni maintained a flow of distracting questions. Had Hunnicut advanced any instances of Laverdiere’s supposed incompetence? What form was Conrad’s senility supposed to take? How precise was the accusation of arson?

  He did not relent until they were standing beside a large desk. Then, with the smoothness of a conjurer, he whipped away a towel to reveal a skewer still thick with a dark-red deposit along its shaft.

  “Oh, God, is that how it was done?” groaned Laverdiere, looking white and sick.

  Giorni nodded. “They tell me you were carrying a skewer when you left your booth to find Ecker.”

  Bob swallowed several times, as if his throat were suddenly dry.

  “That’s right. I told you I was starting a demo. I’d already begun filling the skewer.”

  “Is this the same one?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Laverdiere snapped with a sudden flash of defiance. “This is a kitchenware trade show. The place is stiff with barbecues. There must be skewers at twenty displays.”

  For the first time Giorni relaxed the pace of his questions. “Let’s stick with the one you were carrying. What did you do with it after you had your session with Conrad Ecker?”

  “I took it back to the booth.”

  “To give your demonstration?”

  “No. I was just filling in while the regular man took his lunch break. He was due back in a couple of minutes anyway, so I dumped the skewer and went off to look at the show.”

  Bob Laverdiere was no longer mounting a show of resistance. His voice had become a thin thread and his final statement, instead of ringing with conviction, was lackluster.

  “But I never used that skewer to stab Victor Hunnicut. It never crossed my mind.”

  Giorni sounded almost sympathetic. “We’re going to want your fingerprints, Mr. Laverdiere.”

  On the principle of tidying up as he went along, the inspector did not wait for the fingerprint results. Instead he proceeded to the Ecker booth, where he found the regular demonstrator still hard at work.

  “There wasn’t anybody here when I got back from lunch,” he replied to the first question. “But the skewers are all right. See, there they are.”

  Giorni looked at the tangled heap.

  “Do you know how many you start with?”

  “Of course. I get them myself, and I always bring two eight-packs. That’s more than enough.”

  “Suppose you count them.”

  The demonstrator had to begin by unsnarling the tangle. Then he ticked each one off with his finger.

  “One . . . two . . . three . . .”

  But when he came to the end, he gave a cluck of dismay and began again to make double sure.

  “Say, that’s funny. There are only fifteen here.”

  Inspector Giorni had long since completed his own tally and his attention was now elsewhere. The unused foodstuffs were still in containers. The discards were presumably in the garbage can. Only one item was out of place. Lying on the counter was a single mushroom, its pristine white surface marred by a small brown puncture.

  The demonstrator hastened to explain the disarray.

  “That was here when I got back. It hasn’t been cooked, so I was going to use it the next round with the rotisserie. So far I’ve just done the food processor and the coffeepot.”

  Giorni was still considering the possibilities of that mushroom when his subordinate arrived with preliminary fingerprint results.

  “The top of the skewer was wiped clean. There is one print further down but it’s in the upside-down position. We’ll get the final lab results later, but Mahoney is sure it’s Laverdiere’s.”

  “So it could go either way,” Giorni mused.

  “That’s right. Either Laverdiere stabbed Hunnicut and, when he was wiping the skewer, forgot he’d handled it differently at the booth. Or someone else killed Hunnicut and he knew he hadn’t handled the skewer down there.”

  “There’s another thing,” said Giorni, going on to explain the solitary mushroom. “I’d give a lot to know whether that was still on the skewer when Laverdiere was complaining to Ecker.”

  The subordinate’s voice was tinged with doubt.

  “I suppose you could ask Frayne or the old man.”

  “Somehow I think I’ll do better with someone more impartial. It’s about time I talked with that banker they’re keeping on ice.”

  When the door at long last opened to admit a figure of authority, Ken Nicolls hoped for the best. The inspector did not sit down, he had the air of a man going through the motions and his questions were all directed toward the discovery of the bodies. Had they noticed anyone near the elevator, did they know if the elevator had come from downstairs, had they any sense of how long the elevator had been in motion?

  After a steady stream of negatives, Giorni turned to Ken’s companion.

  “Thank you very much for waiting. I know it’s been a nuisance, but there’s no need to keep you any longer.”

  With a sinking heart Ken felt the atmospherics change even as his friend was leaving. Giorni picked up the recently vacated chair, reversed its position and sat down with his elbows along the upper rail.

  “Now, Mr. Nicolls, I’ve been hearing a lot about this merger and the fight between Hunnicut and Laverdiere,” he began cozily. “Make yourself comfortable, because I think we’re going to be here a while.”

  By the following morning, the NYPD was still not ready to bring charges. The newspaper coverage was regrettable, as well as uninformative.

  “‘Bank Biggies Find Body,’” read Ian Nourse, who masterminded public relations for the Sloan. “I’ve put in a call to Ed already.”

  “Nicolls did find a body,” said the general counsel.

  Before agitation could lead Nourse to point out that Ken Nicolls was not a biggy, Thatcher intervened:

  “This is simply a tempest in a teapot. The Sloan will drop out of the picture once the police start releasing information.”

  “That,” said the general counsel with a predatory look at Nicolls, “is what we want to be absolutely one hundred
percent sure of.”

  Since Denton had already exhaustively reviewed Nicolls treatment by the police, Thatcher considered this entire ad hoc gathering unnecessary.

  “It was just Ken’s misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he observed.

  Nicolls was too tired to be grateful for this vote of confidence. When he staggered home from the Javits Center, he had found a family demanding all the grim details and telephones ringing off the hook. This morning he had not taken off his coat before PR and the law department clapped him into custody and began grilling. Furthermore, he suspected the kindly John Thatcher really envied him for getting in on all the action.

  “. . . no, I was not at the trade show,” Thatcher was saying. “As a result, I didn’t learn what happened until I got home and Ken called.”

  “Well, thank God it was Nicolls, and not you,” said Nourse.

  “Yes, yes,” said Thatcher somewhat testily. If Denton and Nourse insisted on making mountains out of molehills, he wanted them to do so in their own offices. “I’m sure that both of you are keeping on top of the situation.”

  Denton took the hint and rose to depart. “Why don’t you come along with me, Nicolls?” he said from the doorway. “There are a few more things we might talk about.”

  Nourse, just behind him, indicated that he, too, would like another crack at Ken.

  As Thatcher knew, loyalty is a two-way street. “I’m afraid I’m going to need him,” he said, speeding his zealous subordinates out. When they were off the premises, he continued, “Don’t worry, they’ll simmer down. But just to be on the safe side—Miss Corsa, will you hold my calls for the next hour?”

  When one of his proxies returned from a sensational murder, he felt that some curiosity was defensible.

  “You know I met Hunnicut myself in Princeton,” he said, plunging in without false shame. “He seemed to be playing some obscure game, and playing it rather badly. In his attempt to make Mrs. Laverdiere look incompetent, he succeeded in irritating his own superiors.”

  “I suppose you could say the same thing happened yesterday, except that Hunnicut managed to turn the heat up.”

  Before Ken could proceed further, Charlie Trinkham bounced in. Having brazened his way past Miss Corsa in order to hear the juicy details, he wasted no time.

  “You look pretty good for someone coming off a third degree. Are you home free, or are the cops just giving you enough rope?”

  Under Charlie’s masterful touch, Ken produced his first grin in almost twenty-four hours.

  “Skewers aren’t my weapon, Charlie. I’m into guns,” he said. “But seriously, I don’t see how the police can waste much time on me. They’ve already got a bagful of prime suspects. Almost anybody who had much contact with Vic Hunnicut probably had a motive.”

  “Come now,” Thatcher protested. “You’re not implying that he was killed because of the ASI-Ecker negotiations, are you? He wasn’t even a principal figure.”

  Ken replied by describing the hostilities at the Ecker booth in as much detail as he could recall.

  “Of course at the beginning Vic was aiming his shots at this other assistant manager, Wiley Quinn,” he amplified. “He had no idea that Bob Laverdiere could overhear, so he was really letting himself go. If you ask me, Vic thought Quinn had a good chance of getting that promotion if the merger went through.”

  It was a situation, Thatcher reflected, in which two young men might easily say more than was prudent.

  “And Quinn would be resentful if the gold ring were snatched from his grasp,” he murmured. “So I suppose he defended the Ecker acquisition.”

  “Actually he launched an all-out attack on Vic’s methods. Apparently there are a bunch of rumors flying around ASI, thanks to Hunnicut. Of course I’m not familiar with the setup there,” Ken cautioned with suitable modesty, “and I couldn’t follow it all. In fact, when they began talking about suspicious no-shows from the lab, at first I thought they meant Ecker. But then it turned out that the main targets of the smear campaign at ASI are Phil Pepitone and a guy named Bradley who heads up their research. And he’s the one who barged in at the end of the slugfest.”

  Thatcher shook his head at this further example of Victor Hunnicut’s ability to antagonize the wrong people.

  “And Bradley heard all this?”

  “He sure heard enough. The last I saw of him, Bradley was saying Hunnicut didn’t know how rough things could get.”

  From Charlie’s point of view, things were looking more and more promising.

  “Well, Hunnicut learned the hard way, didn’t he?” he commented as he began toting up a list. “Now that makes Quinn and Pepitone and Bradley, for starters. And God knows how many more at ASI. You may be right, Ken. Maybe to know Hunnicut was to have a motive.”

  “But,” Thatcher remarked, “none of them was waving a skewer around. I assume this point has not eluded the police.”

  “Hell, no. They kept digging at me about it,” Ken remembered grimly. “That inspector wanted to know if the mushroom was still on it when Bob was squawking to Conrad.”

  This was a detail Ken had overlooked in his previous account and he was forced to expand.

  “That makes sense,” Charlie argued. “If that mushroom was still there when Laverdiere left the booth, then he’s got some proof that he returned the skewer to the display. So what did you say?”

  Ken looked unhappy. “That I couldn’t remember. And I still can’t.”

  “Another eyewitness who didn’t notice a thing,” Charlie said censoriously.

  But Thatcher was interested in motive as well as means.

  “A good deal would depend on the depth of Laverdiere’s reaction to what Hunnicut was saying,” he commented, turning receptively to Nicolls.

  “I think he was in shock. You haven’t met Bob, have you?”

  When Thatcher shook his head, Ken continued: “He’s an easygoing, sort of innocent guy who takes people at face value. He and Vic spent a lot of time together on the inspection tour. Bob thought they got along like a house afire. He was stunned when he found out how Hunnicut really felt about the Ecker operation—or at least what he was saying about it.”

  “But surely when his wife told him about her bout with Hunnicut in Princeton, Laverdiere would have been alerted,” Thatcher objected.

  “I’m not so certain.” Slowly Ken dredged up his impressions of the husband-and-wife team. “Tina’s a little protective about Bob and this was bound to upset him. If she told him anything, I’ll bet she softened it up. Anyway, whatever she said didn’t prepare Bob for hearing that his bitch of a wife burned her financial records because she had her fingers in the till.”

  Charlie whistled softly. “Oh, that’s a good one,” he said with the appreciation of a connoisseur.

  Even Thatcher was blinking. “Hunnicut certainly had a gift, didn’t he? I think you can add both Laverdieres to your list, Charlie.”

  “And I’ve already put the famous Conrad down,” Charlie said, proving that he was no respecter of Sloan clients. “From what everybody says he’s got a unique approach to life’s little problems. Maybe he reacts to charges of senility with a display of homicidal vigor.”

  “Frayne didn’t like that senility bit, either,” Ken reported. “And it didn’t help that Vic was talking as if he’d be the one in charge. The Eckers were already confused about him during the inspection. He made it sound as if he was doing more than an equipment report. And then Pepitone went out of his way to parade Vic’s credentials. I could see Tina having second thoughts right then and there. And by the time Bob was shouting at them yesterday, Conrad and Frayne began to wonder, too.”

  “Did Ives straighten any of this out?” Thatcher asked curiously.

  “I don’t think so. From what Conrad said, they agreed to this formal apology, that’s all.”

  To Charlie it sounded too rich to be real.

  “What does it all boil down to? A kid who likes to spread mud, and the dirtier th
e better. We’ve all met that kind. But nine chances out of ten,” he said regretfully, “it’ll turn out that Hunnicut was sleeping with someone’s wife. Are the cops putting any muscle into that?”

  Ken’s recollection of Detective Inspector Giorni did not suggest a man who overlooked the obvious.

  “I’ll bet they’re working on his personal life right now.”

  Chapter 13

  THE INFORMED CONSUMER

  “God, it’s hard to get a handle on this guy,” remarked Leonard Giorni, standing in the middle of Victor Hunnicut’s condominium in New Jersey.

  The victim’s next of kin had been identified as a widowed mother living in Salt Lake City and a married sister in Seattle. Neither had seen Hunnicut for over a year. To make things more difficult, Hunnicut had been living alone for two months.

  “That was when Peggy Summers left,” said a helpful neighbor. “I’d had them over for a couple of parties and she said good-bye to me when she was moving out.”

  “Had there been a big blow-up?”

  “Hell, no. They were both damn cheerful. Peggy got a better job in Alanta and was moving south.”

  Looking around the living room, Giorni decided that Peggy must have taken the humanizing touches with her. There was not a single decorative object anywhere, not a house plant or a bowl of goldfish. For the most part this home could have been furnished by a motel keeper.

  Even worse, Victor Hunnicut had clearly been a neatness freak. Every book, every compact disc, every video cassette occupied its appointed place. The same military order prevailed in the bedroom, where the only signs of the departed Peggy were several empty drawers. Hunnicut’s system for organizing his socks and shirts was too efficient to spill over into extra space. His financial papers were so well filed it took only ten minutes to establish the basic facts. He lived well within his means, paid his bills regularly on the first of the month, and possessed a slowly accreting portfolio of conservative investments.

  A large address book that bristled with extensive notes held out some hope. But these entries simply represented the painstaking care Victor Hunnicut lavished on his professional connections.