Recipe for Homicide, page 19
“Hello, Ed. Bob Gilmore. It was damned white of you to try to reach me for a denial of that story about my kooch-dancer bride.… No, no. It’s true enough, even though it’s not exactly hot news at this late date.… Look, Ed. I know it’s not ethical for you to divulge news sources, but I have a hunch you couldn’t do it in this case anyhow. It was an anonymous tip by phone, wasn’t it? … Sure, I know you checked afterward, but will you tell me this much: Was your anonymous tipster a man or a woman? A woman’s voice? … Thanks, Ed.”
Gilmore banged down the phone with a gesture that said Barbara was a louse. And yet, damn it, if she should call back to say that she had changed her mind about that weekend in Kentucky, he would probably be ass enough to jump at the chance—unless he called her now and told her that she was a louse and that if he ever saw her again he would put insecticide in her daiquiris. He started counting to ten, so that his voice would be calm and collected when he read her the riot act. When he got to seven, the phone rang again.
Frankie Froley was on the wire, thanking him for the flowers.
Gilmore remembered he had enclosed no card. “What flowers?” he asked.
Frankie giggled. “I know you sent them, Gil,” she said. “They were to me and they were red roses. Everybody else sends white flowers or pale colors—and to Chris. I guess you’d like to know what happened last night.”
“I think I know, Frankie. You were with Bayliss.”
“Gill How did you know?”
“The Great Gilmore knows all, sees all. Where are you, Frankie? In jail?”
“Silly! The police have been very nice. The F.B.I., too. They’re not going to ask any more questions until after Chris is buried.”
“When is the funeral, Frankie?”
“Oh, there won’t be any regular services. Chris didn’t believe in anything. But the local is taking care of everything and they think Chris ought to be laid out for a few days so everybody can say good-bye to him. Everybody’s being very nice. I’m at the funeral parlors now. Aren’t you coming down, Gil?”
“Why yes, I guess so.”
“Maybe we’ll get a chance to talk. I can’t tell you now, Gil, but it’s about last night. It’s important—for you.”
“I’ll come by tomorrow,” Gilmore said.
There was plenty to read in the Sunday papers, and there was no longer any question of skipping paragraphs during breakfast in the garden. Old Mrs. Gilmore had caught the bulletins on the radio and demanded to be kept abreast of latest developments in what the headline writers had now dubbed the GRIM CANNERY MYSTERY, or, when space was tight, SOUP PLANT DEATHS or RED PLOT.
The death of Christopher Froley was of course the eight-column banner on page one. The Coroner had announced—on the basis of Dr. Coffee’s autopsy, which was not mentioned—that there was no doubt about Froley’s having been murdered. The publicity stills of Mrs. Froley as Carrot Queen shared prominence with the revelation that Froley had been a Communist. Furthermore, Washington correspondents had got the F.B.I. to admit that the ex-husband of Peggy Bayliss, “first victim of the Red conspiracy at the Barzac plant,” was also highly placed in the Party’s Midwest Apparat, and was being sought for questioning.
“I’ll bet that was the man who came to see you Friday night,” Mrs. Gilmore interrupted. “I’d recognize his voice, if he ever showed up.”
Gilmore’s gaze wandered about the garden, from the wrecked clump of Matilija poppies to the box hedge in the rear. He asked: “Do we have any carrots in the kitchen garden this year, Victoria?”
“You know very well we do. We—No, that’s right, you weren’t home for dinner Friday night. I had Miss Smith pull up a few that were big enough to eat. She fixed them with a cream sauce. They were tender and nice.… Where are you going, son, on that vacation they moved up on you?”
“Nowhere,” Gilmore said.
“Why don’t you telephone to Blue Lake and reserve a cabin for yourself?”
“Why Blue Lake?”
“It’s cool up there, and the people up there are friendly. People around here seem to be getting downright unfriendly, and they’re making it hotter and hotter for you because you happened to get mixed up with a whirling she-dervish that time your brains went down on you like the mumps. Of course, if you want to hang around and take it flat on your back—”
“I’m not going to Blue Lake,” Gilmore said, “and I’m not lying down for it, either. It’s not too hot for me around here. If you want, I’ll get a cabin for you and Miss Smith. I’m staying here.”
“Good boy.” Mrs. Gilmore chuckled. “So am I.” She leaned across the breakfast table to touch her son’s forehead. “Go inside and take your shower,” she ordered. “You’re sweating like a nervous bridegroom.”
Shortly after lunch, a police car stopped in front of the Gilmore bungalow to discharge a delegation consisting of Max Ritter, Dr. Coffee, Dr. Mookerji and Professor Treet of the Botany Department, Northbank College.
Dr. Coffee explained that microscopic examination of dustings from the late Chris Froley’s clothing had revealed pollen and fragments of stamens and pistils which Professor Treet had identified as coming from the Matilija poppy. And since the professor insisted that the only Matilija poppies within a thirtymile radius of Northbank were growing in the Gilmore garden, they had come to take a look.
“At least they used to grow here,” said Professor Treet, “although I haven’t seen them since your father passed away, Gilmore. Will it disturb your mother if we putter about in your back garden?”
“She’ll be glad to see an old colleague of father’s,” Gilmore said.
“And while the doc and the professor are making with the flowers, Gilmore,” said Ritter, “the Swami and I will give the once-over to your car.”
“I thought you already gave my jalopy the many-times-over,” Gilmore said.
“That was Friday,” the detective explained. “And today is Sunday. On Sundays we always scrutinize the trunk compartment.”
“Then you’ll want my keys.”
“We got our own resources.” Ritter jingled an assortment of master keys as big as a bunch of grapes. “Come on, Swami. Bring your bottles and your brushes.”
Gilmore accompanied the pathologist and the botanist to the back of the house. Professor Treet went right to the clump of giant poppies, made admiring remarks, and asked permission to clip a few of the big white-and-yellow blooms for comparative microscopic study.
Dr. Coffee had quickly spotted the vegetable patch, just a few paces beyond the poppies, and was soon bending over the feathery green rows of carrots. Gilmore followed him.
“I see you’ve been eating carrots,” the pathologist said. “Mind if I pull one—as a souvenir?”
“Help yourself,” Gilmore said. “Think it’ll match the one that strangled Froley?”
“I’m afraid we can’t match carrots, but if necessary we can make comparative spectrograms of the soil of your garden and the soil fragments clinging to the carrot found in Froley’s throat. The autopsy also revealed soil fragments and pollen in Froley’s larynx. So it looks very much as if the man might have been killed right here in your back yard, Gilmore.”
“My mother,” Gilmore said, “would probably consider it proper retribution for tramping down the canyon poppies.”
At the end of the afternoon Gilmore drove to the Midtown Mortuary Chapel.
Union officials of the Northbank local had spared no expense to give their late shop steward a lush send-off to the Hereafter. Froley lay in state in an expensive casket in Midtown’s second largest chapel (the largest had a religious motif in its stained-glass windows and was therefore unsuitable) while an invisible organist played soft chords continuously. The cloying sweetness of many flowers perfumed the hush, and dozens of men and women filed past the coffin or stood in whispering groups.
Not all the dozens, Gilmore noted, were members of the local or fellow workers from Barzac. He recognized three plainclothes men from the Northbank police force, and he suspected that some of the others were F.B.I. agents. Gilmore was going to have a hard time talking privately to Frankie Froley.
Black was very becoming to Frankie. Some specialist in mourning had done an expert rush job on tailoring a few yards of black voile to her ample curves. She was paler than usual, and the pallor of her face made her eyes seem larger and her bangs darker. When she saw Gilmore, she came toward him with one arm outstretched, took his hand, and led him directly to the flower-banked casket. Her theory, obviously, was that the forces of law and order would respect her grief at least to the extent of allowing her a few minutes in private at the side of her deceased husband.
“About the other night,” she whispered, “how did you know I was fibbing when I said I was phoning from home?”
“Because I talked to the cops who were watching your house. They said nobody had been in or out all night. You went back to the Anchor to meet Bayliss, didn’t you?”
Frankie nodded. “I was supposed to keep you there till he came, but you were in such a hurry to rush away that I couldn’t do anything. Bayliss made me promise I wouldn’t tell you that he was going to join us. So I had to go back and tell him what happened. He still wanted to see you, and told me to make a date. But while I was phoning you up, two men came in the Anchor and Bayliss thought they were watching us. We couldn’t move till after they left, and they stayed for over an hour. Then we went to the drug store, but you’d left already.”
“Where’s Bayliss now?”
“I don’t know. He had to leave right after that. He wanted to talk to you, but he couldn’t stay around any longer. So he wrote you a letter.”
“Frankie, are you making all this up?”
“Honest, Gil. He gave me the letter. I got it hidden—but good. He said I should give it to you privately as soon as he has a head start. He’ll send me word when I can give it to you. Then I’ll let you know.”
Gilmore shook his head incredulously. He said nothing, however, because one of Max Ritter’s detectives was sauntering toward him.
He looked down at the coffin for the first time. The undertaker had made a good-looking corpse of Froley. Cosmetics had wiped out the mottled purple of asphyxia. And Dr. Coffee had done an expert job of replacing the top of the skull after the autopsy; there was no dark ridge across the forehead.…
“Hello, Brody,” Gilmore said to the plain-clothes man. “Looks like your man won’t get away from you this time.”
XXIV
During the next forty-eight hours, latest news of the Affaire Barzac seemed to emanate chiefly from Wall Street. F.B.I. agents and G-2 officers in Northbank were singularly uncommunicative, Lieutenant Max Ritter was out of town, Dr. Coffee referred all queries to the Barzac plant, and Barzac officials restricted information to a daily press conference at which queries were channeled through Barbara Wall, to be answered next day at five. But from the New York Stock Exchange the Barzac news was brisk.
The weekend story of the Froley murder did Barzac shares no good, and they opened at 36, a loss of 3½ points over the Saturday closing. By midaftemoon Monday they hit an all-time low of 31, down 4½–almost half their value–from Friday’s opening, but climbed to 32½ at the close as a result of profit-taking. Tuesday’s opening was 32, and the shares remained steady most of the day. There was considerable trading in Barzac, and the stock climbed a few half points during the day as a result of heavy buying. Gilmore found it all very interesting, but not nearly as pertinent as, for instance, a telephone call from Frankie Froley would have been.
Gilmore had not really expected to hear from Frankie. She was, he had decided, an arrant fantasist, pathologically unable to distinguish her own inventions from reality. True, she had led him to George Bayliss’s address, but the rest of her brief relationship with Gilmore had been so festooned with extravagant imagination and downright fabrication, that he could not believe that Bayliss had written a letter to him, or, if he had, that he would have entrusted it to Frankie. He was more than a little surprised, therefore, just forty-eight hours after the interview in the funeral parlors, to pick up his ringing telephone and hear Frankie’s voice.
“Gil, it’s come! I’ve got the word!” Her voice was as excited as on the night she had been crowned Carrot Queen.
“What word?” The tone of oracular exaltation vibrating in the receiver made Gilmore vaguely uneasy.
“From You-know-who,” Frankie said. “The person we were talking about. I’ve got that letter for you.”
“Oh, yes,” said Gilmore. Superman again. Or the Man from Mars. Or Prisoner’s Base. He said, “What must the owner do to redeem it?”
“They’re breathing down my neck, Gil,” Frankie panted, “but I think I’ve out-smarted all of them. I’m in the clear now. I could meet you in twenty minutes at that place.”
“What place, Frankie? The drug store?”
“No, the other place. The place you didn’t like the smell of, but you drank beer.”
Gilmore’s nostrils quivered reminiscently. “Okay, Frankie. I get it. In twenty minutes.”
He reached the Anchor in seventeen. The aromatic qualities of the riverside bar were not greatly different by daylight, except perhaps there were fewer overtones of working corduroys; the smells were more reminiscent of the locker-room of a Turnverein after the special summer classes for middle-aged executives. The same one-eyed bartender was on duty. He snapped his bar towel at Gilmore in wordless inquiry.
“A small beer,” Gilmore said.
He nursed his beer for ten minutes, watching the door. No sign of Frankie. When a telephone rang somewhere, he jumped.
The bartender ambled toward a phone booth tucked away between the empty free-lunch counter and a dark stairway that spiraled mysteriously downward out of sight. After five minutes, the bong-bong of dropped coins announced that the oneeyed Ganymede was making another call. It was a good ten minutes before he emerged, dripping perspiration. Automatically he filled the glasses of the regular customers, but hesitated in front of Gilmore.
“The same,” Gilmore said.
Ganymede drew the beer and decapitated the foam with a wooden spatula. He was making change for Gilmore when the phone rang again.
Gilmore spilled his beer and fidgeted while he watched the barman vanish once more into the phone booth. He had time to drain his glass before the second phone call came to an end. Still no Frankie.
The barman’s single eye stared accusingly at Gilmore, as though he were to blame for the temperature and humidity inside the booth.
“The same,” Gilmore said. But the phone rang a third time before the bartender had a chance to reach the spigot.
“Damn,” said Ganymede, diving for the steam-bath cabinet. He re-appeared almost instantly to announce, “Bill Moore I”
Nobody moved.
“You!” Ganymede focused his one glittering eye on Gilmore. “Bill Moore. The phone. A dame. Pick it up!”
The folding glass door shuddered as Gilmore shut himself into the booth. “Hello, Frankie.”
“Sorry,” said Barbara Wall’s voice. “This isn’t Frankie, Gil. But I’ve got a message from your Carrot Queen, so listen carefully. She says it’s important to you, but it sounds like double talk to me.”
“Say, what is this, Barbara—?”
“She says,” Barbara continued, “that she’s been trying to get you at this number for fifteen minutes, but the line’s always busy, and she can’t stay where she is any longer for reasons that she says you’ll understand. Also she can’t meet you where she promised to meet you for the same reasons. So she phoned me to pass on the message. She says she has that letter from You-know-who, and that it’s red hot. So if you can get to No. 1 Warehouse in ten minutes, she’ll give it to you. Just walk around inside, and she’ll make contact. I hope you understand all this, Gil, because I don’t.”
“Look, Barbie, if this is a gag—”
“Be yourself, Gil. I don’t know where you are or whose number I’m calling. Does anybody but your pal, the Widow Froley, know where you’re supposed to be?”
She’s right, Gilmore reflected. Only Frankie knows I’m at the Anchor. Unless Frankie has told someone else—such as Bayliss.
“I’m just doing you a favor,” Barbara continued, “by relaying a message from your girl friend. I’m glad you appreciate it.”
“Thanks, Barbie. I apologize. Will you do me another favor?”
“Anything within reason, Gil.”
“Then wait an hour before you tip off the Tribune about what you’ve just told me.”
“Of course, Gil, for you, dear. You’re so sweet.” There was an icy pause. “I wish you happy contacts,” Barbara said, and hung up.
Gilmore lost no time in starting for Barzac’s No. 1 Warehouse. I should hope not to see you around the plant, Evans had said. The hell with Evans. He could turn his head the other way.…
The late afternoon traffic was heavy, but Gilmore reached the plant in just under ten minutes. He had trouble parking, however. No. 1 Warehouse was right across the street from Barzac’s Main Building, and several minutes’ walk from the employees’ parking lot. Gilmore cruised the intervening blocks without finding a hospitable curb, so he turned back and left his car in a no-parking spot in front of the executive entrance.
He hurried across the street, under the shadow of the covered bridges that spanned the thoroughfare, a twin Bridge of Sighs, housing the mechanical conveyor that carried the soup cartons from the upper floors of the Main Building to the top of the warehouse.
“Evening, Mr. Gilmore.” The guard at the entrance to No. 1 Warehouse had evidently not been told that Gilmore was persona non grata about the plant these days.
Gilmore stepped into the vast dusk of the cavernous interior. He walked down the aisles between pyramids of cartons, toward the cardboard mountains beyond, hundreds of thousands of cans of soup, reaching up into the half darkness, waiting to be loaded into the freight cars that pulled into the railway siding on the far side of the warehouse.
