Lively Game of Death (14 page)

“I haven’t proved it to myself one hundred per cent,” she explained. “There’s a bad loophole I haven’t filled. But the other two problems, now—there’s Tom Lasker’s death, which, I’m afraid, has to be intimately connected with the Goetz killing. That’s what worries me. Finally, we have the mystery of the Trim-Tram spy.”

“But you’ve solved that,” said Scott.

“Have I? I’m not so sure. If Lasker were the one selling secrets to Goetz, who but Goetz would have a motive for killing Tom? But Goetz is already dead, so he’s out as a suspect.”

I pointed out that, to make things even knottier, Lasker could have murdered Goetz, but Hilary waved me down.

“That would be convenient, but it’s far more probable that we’re dealing with one murderer and one spy,” she told me. “Now who do we have as candidates? Saxon, of course, has the most likely motive for doing in Lasker. By the way,” Hilary added, turning to Scott, “Lasker lied, didn’t he, about needing money for what you labeled a poor-boy/rich-girl relationship?”

Scott nodded. “Looks like he did.”

“When did he approach you about it?”

“Some time ago, I forget when.”

“It had to be prior to his promotion, didn’t it?”

Scott nodded his head. “Definitely ... it was a good while before that. As I remember, I was having a session on an ad campaign and Tom begged to interrupt for a minute.”

“That sounds as if it were urgent.”

“Not really. I had just stopped off at Dean’s office, nothing formal, and Tom was walking by. He told me he was having romantic problems, was wondering whether there was any chance of a better position.”

“What did you tell him?”

Scott shook his head, ruefully. “That’s the trouble. I knew we might promote him eventually. And I thought I’d just spring it on him as a surprise. I’m afraid I was pretty noncommittal.”

“I can see the whole bit,” Hilary nodded. “Scrooge, converted, arriving early to put a scare into Cratchit before saving him. That kind of act, right?”

Scott said she was correct.

“I’d bet,” she continued, “that it was shortly after that interview that Lasker began blackmailing Saxon for his support.” She turned to me. “You’re going to have to get to Penny Saxon and find out her side of the story.” Then, readdressing Scott, Hilary added that she would have to see Saxon and Harrison once more.

“They’re both in the other room. Anything else?”

“Yes,” Hilary replied. “There’s one loose end we haven’t yet picked up ... assuming you still want me to pick up loose ends?” She looked at Scott quizzically, and I could sense the importance of his answer to her in the too-calm way in which Hilary folded her hands on her lap.

“How can I answer you? You know we’re working against time.”

“Certainly I know it. But time is what I want—just a few more hours to get to the root of all this.”

“More charts?” Scott asked.

“It’s beyond that for the moment—though maybe I’ll have to do some more scribbling once I have the rest of the answers.”

Scott sat for a moment, mulling over the insufficiency of facts Hilary had granted him for making up his mind. Finally, he shrugged in resignation. “Okay, I don’t have any reason to think you know where you’re going, but I trust you, Hilary. I’ll keep quiet for a few, more hours, anyway. At least until we close at six. Then—”

“Then,” Hilary supplied, “I’ll tell the police whatever I know up to that point, whether I’m ready or not. All right?”

“Okay, then. Till six.”

I looked at my wristwatch. It was a quarter to three.

T
HE ONLY THING HILARY
wanted to see Saxon and Harrison for was to find out where they’d been the night before, as well as that afternoon. Their answers were terse: both had been involved in company business at an after-five sales strategy meeting in the FAB showroom; immediately afterwards, the pair had gone out with Scott and a few other executives and salesmen for a few drinks. From there, Saxon went home and Harrison accompanied Scott to his house, where he was temporarily staying. (Harrison lived way out in New Jersey, and it would have been inconvenient to commute every night during late Toy Fair hours.)

Lasker, they’d pointed out, was not at the meeting. There was no reason for him to be, since his duties only tangentially concerned the sales department.

Alibis were not as promising for the lunchtime slot, when Lasker was probably killed. Both men had dined alone and could supply no immediate corroboration for their stories.

After she was done with them, Hilary addressed Scott once more. “I said there was one loose end to be picked up, but I don’t know how to get hold of it.”

“Something I can help with?” he asked.

“Harry Whelan ... Sid Goetz’s salesman. What the hell has happened to him, that’s what I want to find out!”

Scott spread his hands in an I-don’t-know gesture.

“You hired him in other years. Don’t you know where we might be able to get in touch with him?”

“Search me ... my association with Harry was not on a personal basis. He was hired by advertising, and accounting handled his paychecks. But that’ll take a while, tracing down his old card. It’s in inactive records, and somebody’ll have to dredge out that reel and run it through the 360.”

Hilary shook her head. “Forget it. If I can’t get to him immediately, I won’t have time enough ... forget it.” With a decisive gesture, she turned, motioned for me to follow, and started out of the showroom. Scott wanted to know where she was going, but she just told him to stick around the Trim-Tram suite, and keep Saxon and Harrison there, as well.

Out in the hall, the determination she’d been showing for the last several minutes slipped from her like a silken robe. She drooped a little, began to wander in the direction of the elevators without paying attention to the foot traffic.

I wasn’t glad to see her looking defeated, neither for empathetic nor for egoistic reasons. It was almost three o’clock, and she didn’t have a hell of a lot of time left to solve any of the riddles or clear us of the potential charges of obstructing justice.

I caught up with her as the elevator doors opened. We stepped in, and I asked why she’d placed us in such a spot. She shrugged; there was a wry-sad expression on her face.

“God knows,” she said. “The way it’s turning out, I’ll never be able to prove anything to him. And, even if I did, what the hell makes me think he’d care, anyway?”

I knew who she was talking about, and I started to say something consolatory, but she withdrew rather icily and stared in another direction till we got off the elevator.

We were back on the ninth floor, and I asked her where we were going—though I already saw Hilary was headed for the bridge to 1111. She said she wanted to sit in Goetz’s showroom for a while by herself, think about the problem without interruption.

“Before you do,” I said, “I’ve got something important to talk over with you.”

“Yes,” she replied frostily, “I
imagine
you do.”

I didn’t know what to make of that, but it didn’t improve my relations with Hilary. Her attitude was pushing me away from the transient pity I’d been feeling for her and toward the opposite pole of profound pique.

But when we reached the front door of Goetz Sales, I lost the priority on Hilary’s time. Coming up the stairwell as we had done that morning, I felt a strange chill of “I-have-been-here-before,” because there was something wrong. ...

The door, which Hilary had locked earlier, was standing ever so slightly ajar.

W
E CREPT UP CAREFULLY
on the open door. Hilary took one side, the one nearest the knob. I stood next to the hinges and very cautiously pushed the door farther into the showroom.

Hilary peered around the edge, just enough to see inside. She looked in as many directions as the position would permit; then, apparently not seeing anything or anyone, edged farther in.

Hilary straightened suddenly. Eyes narrowing, she gestured for me to follow, then strode into the room, leaving me to pull the portal shut behind us.

“What are
you
doing here?” she called across the room. “How did you get in?”

There was a gasp from the far corner where the body lay. A fat little man with a camera slung over his shoulder whirled around to face us.

It was the Trim-Tram ad manager, Dean Wallis. His face was positively gray, and his many chins were sagging in an expression of sick horror.

“My God,” he whispered,
“who did this?”

And he collapsed.

It took a couple of minutes to bring him out of it and get him deposited on a chair. When he was sufficiently revived, Wallis explained that he’d been en route to the Little Missy photo session Hilary’d been concerned about. He got the brilliant notion of looking in on Sid Goetz (not only didn’t he know about our earlier mission, but Wallis was apparently unaware of Lasker’s death); his idea was to try bullying Goetz about the Tricky Tires knock-off.

“I didn’t know if I could do Trim-Tram any good,” he coughed, swallowing some water the wrong way, “but I thought as long as I was in the area, I might as well try what I could do. I stopped up here—couldn’t figure why the brown paper was still on all the glass—”

“How did you get in?” Hilary interrupted.

“The door was open.”

“Unlocked?”

“That’s right. Nobody around, but the door was unlocked. It was really strange! So I walked in, and then”—he shuddered, his fat cheeks wobbling repulsively—“then I saw Sid. And right afterwards, you walked in.”

Hilary questioned him further. No, there was nothing unusual about the door or any other part of the showroom when he’d entered. Yes, he repeated, the door was unlocked. But it wasn’t ajar.

“Do you know,” she asked, “of anyone who might want Sid dead?”

“How should I know? I haven’t been on intimate terms with him for years. Ask anyone who knew him, they’ll probably have a reason for wanting him out of the way.”

“Where were you last night?”

That startled him, but he was still too queasy to object. “Last night? We were having a sales meeting downstairs, didn’t you know? No, of course not ... you weren’t there.” He made it sound like an accusation.

“What about afterwards?”

“After the meeting? I had an out-of-town friend to entertain. I met him at his hotel.”

“A buyer?” Hilary asked.

Wallis nodded. “Bernie Parrish. He has a suite at the Prince George. Brought his wife along, several friends. I met him right afterwards, and we all went out to late supper.”

I asked for Parrish’s suite and some of the names of the people at the dinner party. Wallis looked more and more skeptical, but he complied.

“Where have you been this afternoon?” Hilary inquired.

It was as much as he could take. He protested, wanted to know why she was giving him the third-degree. She argued with him for a minute or two. Finally, he grudgingly told her he had taken a prolonged lunch.

“With whom?”

“With nobody! Aren’t I allowed any time to myself?”

She soothed his ruffled feathers after that, and I smiled inwardly, thinking of the odd things it took to win any kind of sympathy from Hilary. In the current case, the fact that Toy Fair pressure had driven Wallis to seek a few seconds of solitude spoke better for him in her eyes than any other past action of his.

Wallis got to his feet unsteadily, asked for his camera. I retrieved it for him. When he passed out, I’d taken if off his shoulder and put it on a nearby table, partly to facilitate bringing him to, and partly to admire the instrument.

As he took it and readjusted it to his shoulder, I complimented him on it, mainly because I used to work with a Minolta myself once. Actually, I would have preferred—in Wallis’ position—a through-the-lens focus, but the old habits die hard, and I still have a sentimental attachment for trying to estimate the parallax at close range.

Hilary gave him a few instructions on what kind of shots to pick up on the Little Missy set. Basically, it was a pose-the-star-with-the-product session, and it was an important one, because the pix had to be turned in to the trade paper by the following morning. He went over it with her point by point, then started out the door, but Hilary was struck by a thought, and she stopped him.

“Doesn’t it impress you as odd that Goetz’s salesman is nowhere around?” she asked.

“Now that you mention it,” Wallis said slowly, “it’s
very
surprising.”

“I understand that this Harry Whelan used to work for Trim-Tram.”

“That’s right. I hired him myself.”

“Do you remember where he used to live?”

“No,” Wallis shook his head. “But I first got in touch with him through the Maggert-Axel Agency. They’re over in the Graybar Building.”

“You’re sure?” Hilary asked, the first trace of a smile I’d seen in quite a while flitting briefly across her face.

Wallis assured her that his memory was accurate. She thanked him, cautioned him not to say anything about Goetz until he’d reported to Scott after the photo session. Then she dismissed him.

Locking the door, Hilary immediately motioned for me to get on the phone and check out his alibi. It took some doing to get hold of Bernie Parrish, but at last I tracked him down at a competitor’s showroom.

“Well?” Hilary asked, after I’d hung up.

“He’s clear,” I replied. “He met Parrish directly after the Trim-Tram meeting broke up. And the dinner party lasted practically till morning.”

“Witnesses?”

“Wallis was in view all the time. And one of the guests is a priest,” I said.

Looking exasperated, Hilary just shook her head.

T
HE DAY BEGAN BRIGHT
and sunny, but by midafternoon, wintry clouds were scudding across the face of the sun, and Manhattan’s marrowless bones stood exposed to the dust swept by the wind down dry streets. Shivering a little, I turned up the collar of my topcoat.

It was just after three. Hilary wouldn’t spare me any time to talk; she wanted me to question the Saxon girl and try to track down Whelan as soon as I could.

I had a choice of assignments, but, from Chelsea, it’s reasonably easy to drive across the East River into Brooklyn Heights. I parked down the block from the Saxons’ apartment, which was in one of the older buildings overlooking the river promenade.