Partners In Crime (11 page)

He stepped out into the hushed darkness of
the deserted Personnel Department. Auntie Lil pushed up right
behind him, practically propelling him into the shadows. He bumped
his head on a door jamb. She was anxious to get started with the
files.

T.S. felt along the wall for the light
switch. "You're sure you didn't disturb anything?" The department
slowly flickered to life under the greenish tint of fluorescent
lights.

"Of course not. I wasn't there to rummage. I
merely wanted to observe." She followed T.S. briskly down the hall.
It had been several months since he'd been there on a weekend and
the normally busy work areas suddenly seemed ominous in their
emptiness. He hesitated before he turned each comer, until Auntie
Lil poked him rudely in the bottom with her umbrella.

"Really, Theodore. What are you afraid of?
The boogeyman?"

"There was a murder in the building," he
replied stiffly, tentatively turning another corner. What was the
matter with him? He was certainly spooked.

"Well, the murderer is the last person who'd
be hanging around," she declared, poking him again. Patience was
not one of her virtues.

"Let's go in here," he said quickly, leading
the way into his old office. Miss Fullbright had moved in even more
plants before she had left for the weekend, and entering the room
resembled hacking one's way into the jungle.

''Good heavens." Auntie Lil poked at a
hanging fern with her umbrella. "Who took your place? The Jolly
Green Giant?"

"Felicia Fullbright. And they're only green
because she just bought them." T.S. cleared away room on the sofa.
"They'll die soon enough. I've seen a cactus kick off in her
presence. But she just keeps trying."

"Oh dear, you mean that silly woman with the
short brown hair is the one who took your place?" Auntie Lil had
exhumed Miss Fullbright's memory from her large store of faces met
at T.S.'s annual holiday party.

"Yes, well—I wouldn't put my money on her as
the murderer. She's more the type to psychologically test someone
to death than stab them." T.S. quickly found the partners'
personnel folders in the bottom drawer of the wooden file near the
antique globe. "Here you are." He dumped a handful onto the
cushions next to Auntie Lil. "These are the partners' files.
Abromowitz wants them first."

"Why?"

"He says that if a thief is killed, you look
among thieves for the murderer. If a prostitute is shot, you check
out the pimps. And if a financial whiz is stabbed, chances are good
there's finance at the bottom of it." T.S. was rummaging through
the drawer for the remainder of the files.

"How very narrow-minded of him." She held a
slim volume up to the light. "They aren't very thick, are
they?"

He retrieved the rest from the drawer and
sat next to her, the folders piled between them. "Give me a
Personnel Manager who maintains an eternal vigil on his bosses and
I'll show you the unemployed."

"So these folders essentially end once the
gentleman is made a partner?" she asked. Edgar Hale's folder was
spread open on her lap.

"That's right. Other than the addition of
their official obituary. There are also press clipping files kept
by an outside service, although making the papers is generally
frowned on here at Sterling & Sterling."

Auntie Lil scanned the left side of the
folder. It contained a contents sheet which listed numerous and
various documents with a space next to each for initials and a
date. Many of Edgar Hale's documents had been signed for in a
spidery handwriting using old-fashioned fountain pen ink.

"This is quite an old folder, if I may say
so myself," Auntie Lil said without looking up. "Who is
R.I.P.?"

"That's Ralph Peabody. Mr. Ralph Peabody. He
was the Personnel Manager of Sterling & Sterling before I took
over. He'd been here for years. I thought he'd never leave and give
me a chance at the job. He'd already waited out one Assistant
Personnel Manager. But he finally threw in the towel in 1973 and I
took over."

"I remember. You were quite anxious to push
the poor man out."

"For heaven's sakes—he was ancient!"

"Hmmph. What does the I. stand for?"

"I haven't a clue," T.S. admitted. "We all
called him Mr. Peabody, even the Partners. He was an old-fashioned
sort of fellow. The kind of employee who was so subservient you
called him 'Mr.' to try to lessen the embarrassment to
yourself."

"Rather ghoulish initials, wouldn't you
say?" Auntie Lil remarked cheerfully.

"Yes, rather. Is that Edgar Hale's folder?
Aiming high on your list of suspects?"

She nodded, absorbed in her task of thumbing
through the yellowed documents contained within. "I just picked him
at random," she mumbled, annoyed at being interrupted.

"Anything interesting?"

"He took off for several months in 1957 for
a trip to South America with his parents, but only took a week off
for his honeymoon a few years later."

"That sounds like the Edgar Hale I know."
T.S. held up a deteriorating file. The spine was peeling off and
the documents inside were so neatly written they might have been
penned in calligraphy. "Remember old Hobart Cummings? Look at this
first entry—1892."

"Well, he's out as a suspect," Auntie Lil
said in a businesslike fashion. "Give me one more partner and then
I'm ready for Robert Cheswick."

T.S. had never flipped through the partners'
files before, having considered it beneath his dignity to give in
to his curiosity. But now he happily paged through the many legal,
medical and other official documents. Nearly every file contained
some evidence of a school certificate or diploma, a medical
check-up clearing them for proper health before hire, the
background investigation report required before they were allowed
to handle securities, letters of recommendation from clergymen and
headmasters and perfunctory reports on their performance while
employed at Sterling & Sterling. Every file ended with the
brisk notation, "Made Partner," with a date scrawled next to it.
These two terse words literally closed the book on their employment
at Sterling & Sterling and signified their lofty ascension into
the ranks of the ruling class.

Auntie Lil finally snapped the last
partner's folder shut and stared out of the window at length. T.S.
waited, watching her.

"What did you find?" he finally asked when
she made no sound.

"It's curious." she said simply, reopening
the last folder on her lap.

She held up the folder. It was Robert
Cheswick's and it looked exactly like every other partner's folder.
"Did you find something?" he asked.

"It was what I didn't find more than
anything else," she said. She tapped an elegant finger on the back
cover, above the glued pocket. Several documents were stuck in the
back of the pocket, the remainder being clipped in the middle by
metal fasteners. "Look at that," she commanded and handed it
over.

He peered at the inside back cover. The
folder was constructed of heavy brown cardboard, now faded and
yellowed in spots. "Look at what?"

"See the outline of a larger piece of paper
there?"

He peered closely and the outline of a large
brown square emerged. A document had been stuck closely to the back
cover, preventing part of it from yellowing.

"It's been removed," Auntie Lil said. "And
look at this." She leaned over and flipped back to the inside front
cover where the contents list was clipped and pointed at a neatly
blacked-out listing under the category "Other." Someone had
meticulously inked out an earlier entry, and marked out the date as
well. The initials "R.I.P." appeared next to the obliterated
entry.

"Your Mr. Peabody removed a document," she
pointed out unnecessarily.

T.S. scanned the bottom entry and nodded.
"It was removed right before Cheswick was made a partner. Nothing
unusual in that."

"It isn't unusual to remove confidential
documents from official files?" Auntie Lil asked incredulously.

"Not really, I'm afraid. It was probably a
simple reprimand memo from an earlier supervisor. Peabody felt it
would be embarrassing to keep it in the file of a partner and
removed it. I'm afraid it's been done before and since." Auntie Lil
looked so disheartened, he sought to cheer her up. "But still, it
was very observant of you to notice."

She sulked for a moment, but then perked up.
"What about the fact that Cheswick, Hale and that John Boswell
fellow all took a few months off during the summer of 1957? I
suppose that's not unusual either?"

He shook his head and shrugged. "Sorry. It's
been a tradition for some time, it seems, for young men sure to
inherit the Sterling mantle to take off for a few months after
they've been here for several years. To give them a chance to prove
their manhood before they settle into their boring careers."

"How very silly," Auntie Lil observed. "Prep
school boys running around on safaris, expeditions and sailing
trips around the world. I don't imagine they fooled a soul.
Probably took their servants with them."

"Perhaps it's an affectation. I don't know.
But it seems to be expected."

"Theodore," Auntie Lil began in a tone of
voice that made him pause. "I just don't know."

"Know what?" He began to gather up the
partners' files and put them in a box.

"Whether Robert Cheswick's file is as
innocent as you say. I still think there's something here. That
missing memo, perhaps."

"Maybe so, but it goes to the lieutenant
today." T.S. looked at his watch. "He doesn't think they'll be much
use but I promised to drop them by so his men can go through them.
Will you wait here while I pull out a few more files from the main
drawers? He wants the top execs and employees who worked with
Cheswick, too."

She nodded and continued staring at
Cheswick's folder. "So long as I can take a peek at the rest of
files."

"All of them?" He stopped and stared at her.
"You said you'd control yourself."

"Just a quick peek,'' she assured him
brightly. "You never know."

T.S. quickly located the other files
Abromowitz had requested. They were fatter and more complete than
the earlier files as Sterling & Sterling had responded to the
challenges of modern life by stepping up employee surveillance.
When he returned to his old office, Auntie Lil was again flipping
through the partners' files.

"Find anything else?" he asked her. Although
she could not have heard him approaching over the plush carpet, she
didn't flinch when he spoke. She was a hard woman to spook.

"I don't really know, Theodore," she
admitted. "I've never actively investigated before. Let's take a
look at those."

He handed over his armful of new files. She
scanned each file with the precision of a machine, devouring every
document at a single glance and flipping pages with a skeptical
snort, as if not believing any of the information contained within.
"What a dull lot," she finally said, and this remark, somehow,
irritated T.S. greatly.

She continued flipping through them and
paused only when she reached the file of Anne Marie Shaunessy,
Cheswick's secretary. "Heavens," she said. "She earns plenty for a
secretary. My mother was right—I should have learned how to
type."

T.S. shrugged. "Very senior employees
sometimes get way out of whack with salary scales. We can't very
well stop giving them raises. They'd complain to other employees
and it wouldn't be worth the bad publicity. Of course, Anne Marie
does make more than most secretaries. It's a real bone of
contention between her and the others. Cheswick is cheap with the
staff, but has always been consistently generous with her."

Auntie Lil stared at him with a raised
eyebrow.

"No," he replied firmly. "Definitely not.
Believe me, I'd have heard. Neither one of them was having an
affair, with each other or anyone else."

Auntie Lil tossed the file back on her pile.
"Not bad for a young girl in the 1950's from Brooklyn coming
straight out of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Secretarial High
School."

"Yes," T.S. nodded. "I always loved hiring
young secretarial trainees from there. The name was so apt. And
they were lovely girls. The school's closed now. Anne Marie was one
of the very first secretaries we ever recruited right from high
school. It was the perfect training ground for Sterling &
Sterling. There's nothing like a Catholic school education to teach
you how to conform."

Auntie Lil seemed lost in thought and said
little as they drove to the First Precinct, ignoring T.S. and
sometimes scribbling short memos in her pocket notebook. She even
volunteered to wait patiently in the car while he dropped the
folders off.

Abromowitz was nowhere to be found and a
busy sergeant took the box from T.S. gruffly, shoving it to the
side of the counter without much enthusiasm.

"Have a nice day," T.S. said sarcastically,
receiving a suspicious grunt in reply.

Auntie Lil remained silent during the ride
to her apartment in Queens, finally perking up when he turned onto
her street. It was a quiet, tree-lined block with large brick
apartment buildings no more than six stories high. Children played
on the sidewalks under the close supervision of their mothers, and
the noise and bustle of Manhattan seemed very far away.

"Did you invite Anne Marie and Sheila to
brunch tomorrow?" she asked as he escorted her to the elevator.

"Yes. They'd be pleased to come. I bribed
Sheila with promises of your famous Bloody Marys."

"Good work. We'll have to get a few in her
mother. Loosen her up. As his secretary, she may know something
without realizing it." Sometimes Auntie Lil displayed a disturbing
familiarity with the less orthodox ways of achieving her means.