An Owl Too Many (23 page)

“Even if we’d had the money, which we sure as heck don’t,” Bill finished for her. “Then what’s this letter all about?”

“I cannot imagine. Mr. Debenham, of all people! I—I’m shattered. Excuse me.”

Winifred sniffled and searched frantically in the pocket of her slacks. Dodie handed her a box of tissues.

“Thank you, Dodie. I do beg your pardon. It’s just that we’ve been so—tell them, Peter.”

Winifred buried her face in a tissue. Peter cleared his throat, wishing to blazes he knew what to tell. Now that he’d met Bill and Dodie on their own turf, he found it hard to believe they were masterminding some evil plot; but why should he take them at face value when so many others were turning out to be shams? For all he knew, Tiger might not even be their dog.

Well, what the hell? If this pair were running the show, there was no point in not telling them what they must already know. If they weren’t, then it was only decent to cue them in. One way or another, they were surely involved; those little compote sketches among Emmerick’s effects, not to mention the sleeping beauty on the lobby floor out there, clinched the matter. He began with Emmerick.

A few minutes later, Bill was scratching his ginger mop like a cat with a flea. “Godfrey mighty! You mean to say this bird Emmerick just went up in the net
alive and kicking
and came down
dead?
Just like that?”

“Exactly like that. And next morning, when we telephoned to notify the company he was supposedly working for, they’d never heard of him.”

“Or said they hadn’t.” This was Winifred’s show and she wasn’t going to be left out of it. “At this point, I feel disinclined to believe anything about anybody. However, it does seem unlikely that the Meadowsweet Construction Company would lie about having employed Mr. Emmerick just because he’d been killed in a bizarre fashion. One does hear rumors of strange doings in large corporations. Protecting their image, I believe it’s called. But Meadowsweet isn’t all that large a corporation.”

“Size doesn’t matter,” said Bill. “We had a mighty strange thing happen right here in Briscoe a few months back.”

“Now, Bill, Winifred doesn’t want to hear about that silly business at the hardware store,” Dodie interrupted. “What happened next, Professor Shandy?”

Peter did feel some curiosity about what happened at the hardware store, but what he wanted most was to get out of here and back to Balaclava. He plugged on, with a good many contributions from Winifred: through Fanshaw’s appearance, his arrest, his hypnotic jailbreak; through the temporary abduction of Viola Buddley, the doodles that appeared to implicate the Compotes in one fashion or another; he thought they might as well realize they weren’t being taken automatically as the good guys. Finally he got to Winifred’s kidnapping, the return of Fanshaw in a different guise, and the smashing grand finale that had led to their mad ride down the Clavaclammer and this morning’s visit to Golden Apples.

“By gorry,” said Bill when they got through. “If that isn’t the darnedest! What are you going to do now?”

“Good question,” said Peter. “We’ve sent a message to the Clavaton police to come and collect the tugboat, which contains some interesting evidence, including a number of fake passports allegedly issued to Fanshaw under various names and guises. Unless he had another lot of passports stashed somewhere else, and assuming that he did in fact manage to break away last night as I’ve surmised, this should limit his ability to get out of the country.”

Peter shrugged. “Not that it’s going to make him any easier to track down, I don’t suppose. A chap with his moxie could take some finding even in a phone booth. The big question, of course, is whether Fanshaw’s actually the ringleader or just one of the crew. As to what in Sam Hill it’s all in aid of, your guess is as good as mine.”

“WELL, BY JINGO, I
bet I can give a pretty good guess.” Bill Compote was hopping mad. His eyes flashed green as a cat’s, his ginger hair flopped in the air as he leaned over the desk, pointing one long knobby finger like a pistol. “You been talking to anybody about dumping your Lackovites stock, Winifred? Before that meeting, I mean.”

Winifred considered. “Now that you mention it, I suppose I may have hinted at it, in a way. Not in so many words, of course. But we’ve had people coming to the field station for classes on natural foods: what to pick, how to prepare them, their nutritional value, and all that. Inevitably we always get around to which of the packaged brands on the market are worthwhile and which aren’t, and I’ve expressed my opinions freely on the merits of Golden Apples versus Lackovites. As I mentioned, I’ve also made a good many inquiries about the two companies, mainly by going around to different stores on my bicycle and pumping the clerks. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if some of the Lackovites salesmen had got wind of my nosing around, and had some of my comments repeated to them. Anybody who knows or suspects that the Binks Trust has been holding shares in Lackovites must surely have brains enough to realize I was getting ready to dump them. Why do you ask, Bill?”

“Because they’re trying their damnedest to buy us out, that’s why. They’ve been pulling all sorts of dirty tricks trying to break us down, but we haven’t budged an inch and don’t intend to. What it looks like to me now is that they’ve given up on Dodie and me and started in on you. That would make more sense anyway, you being the principal stockholder.”

“My dear Bill,” Winifred replied, “surely you must realize, as I do, that it’s been your hard work and firmness of principle that has made Golden Apples what it is today, and mere accident of birth that has caused me to become involved. With your permission, I shall this week instruct Mr. Debenham”—she winced—“I shall instruct my legal representative to sign over twenty percent of my holdings to you and Dodie. That will put us on an even fifty-fifty basis, so that we can work as equal partners for as long as I’m able to pull my weight. In the event of my death or incapacitation, my half will revert to you. I realize I’m still taking gross advantage of my position as Miss Moneybags, but I do feel that I have something besides money to contribute and I want my chance to try. Furthermore, if we’re really having a knock-down fight with Lackovites, I jolly well want to be in on it.”

“Oh, Winifred!”

Dodie was hugging Miss Moneybags for all she was worth. Bill was pumping her hand, Tiger was trying to climb up in her lap. Peter realized he himself was beaming like a proud father. If the Compotes were phonies, then he was the lost Dauphin of France.

“Well then, that’s settled.” Winifred nodded briskly to conceal her emotion and settled Tiger more comfortably on her knees. “Now let me explain what I have in mind with regard to our merchandising program.”

She did so, lucidly and concisely, setting forth her plans, backing them up with facts and figures. Bill and Dodie listened as though they’d been hypnotized, interjecting a word now and then only to clarify or amplify. They were entranced by her scheme for free advertising on the Balaclava television station, somewhat flabbergasted by her suggestions for landscaping the grounds of the old brewery in order to project a new, more prosperous image for Golden Apples.

“But that will cost a mint,” Dodie objected.

“I think not. Will it, Peter?”

“Not so you’d notice it. Balaclava has a policy of providing jobs for students. We’ll turn this into a work project for our landscape-architecture students, using shrubs, trees, and seedlings raised in our college nurseries and greenhouses which we’ll furnish you at wholesale prices, the proceeds to go to our Endowment Fund. The kids will do the work at reasonable hourly rates, various faculty members will supervise and grade them on the results. Cronkite Swope will do an ongoing feature series for the
Balaclava County Fane and Pennon,
no doubt your local paper will do the same. You’ll hold a big open house when the work’s completed, Winifred will make a nice little speech. It’ll be a fine publicity boost for Golden Apples and help the participating students get launched into good jobs.”

“Always provided those thugs from Lackovites don’t invite a pack of skunks along to the party.” Bill was too much a Yankee to count his chickens before they were hatched. “I’m a hundred percent in favor of everything you’ve said, Winifred, but what the heck are we going to do about this mess we’re in right now?”

“Find the skunk who’s running the show and put him out of business,” said Peter. “There’s got to be a mastermind somewhere, and I think you must be right about his working at Lackovites. What can you tell me about their operations?”

“Mainly that they’re a bunch of highbinders, but I guess you already know that. Winifred’s right about the merchandising, it’s the only thing that’s kept them going. Dodie and I aren’t much for running down our competitors, but the best we can say about Lackovites products is that most of the stuff they sell isn’t downright poisonous.”

“Provided you don’t try to live on it too long,” Dodie put in.

Bill snorted. “If you did, you’d either starve to death or come down with scurvy. Lackovites is in trouble with the Food and Drug Administration right now, if you want to know, though they’ve managed to keep it hushed up so far. In my opinion, that’s why they’re busting their britches to get hold of Golden Apples. Not to be tooting our own horn, but we do have a reputation for top-quality products. That’s the one thing now that might save their bacon: getting hold of our name and trading on it. Which isn’t to say they wouldn’t drag us down to their own level once they took over. I asked that last bunch of vice-presidents they sent over why they didn’t try using real food and putting in some quality controls instead of just trying to think up new ways to hustle the suckers, and they laughed at me. Cripes almighty, rather than let those vultures get their claws into Golden Apples, I’d burn this plant right down to the ground.”

“And I’d be with him, holding the matches,” said Dodie. “We’ve done a little what I guess you might call research on Lackovites ourselves. From what we can make out, they’ve got so many so-called executives over there all running in different directions that most of ‘em don’t have any notion what the rest are up to. Furthermore, they don’t seem to care, long as the money keeps rolling in. When they start losing customers, they just put together another big advertising campaign introducing some new so-called wonder product.”

“Which is the same old stuff in a different box,” growled Bill.

“Yes, dear, but people fall for the catchy commercials and come looking, so naturally the big chains figure they have to carry it, and so it goes. At least it’s kept going so far, but consumers aren’t quite so gullible as those hustlers think they are. The Lackovites gravy train’s beginning to run out of steam, and if those umpty-zillion executives aren’t starting to panic, all I can say is, they darned well ought to be.”

“So Winifred’s dumping her Lackovites shares might very well be a signal to other stockholders to do the same,” said Peter. “In any event, her infusion of new capital into Golden Apples is bound to have a serious impact on Lackovites unless they change their ways in a hurry. How soon do you think you folks can get started enlarging your sales force and improving your packaging?”

Bill smiled. “About twenty minutes from now. We’ve realized for a long time what was holding us back in the market, and we’ve had our contingency plan worked out in case we ever got our hands on some spare cash. First thing we’ll do is get our publicity department, namely me, to draft a news release about company expansion. Then we’ll start scouting around for some more good salesmen.”

“Most of whom will probably be women,” Dodie put in. “Our chief of sales, who’s also a woman, will run a training program so that they’ll know exactly what they’re selling and how to present it. With a big-enough crew and effective advertising, Janice will have us knocking the socks off Lackovites inside a month. As for packaging, we’ve already had a design studio work up some ideas. Want to see?”

Naturally Winifred wanted to see. She wanted to see everything about Golden Apples, right down to the plumbing. Peter did not want to see, he wanted to go. He could not, at the moment, recall many things he had ever wanted more. Neither did he want to leave Winifred alone here with the Compotes. He didn’t know why, he just didn’t.

“Er—Winifred, not to rain on your parade, but hadn’t we better start thinking about getting back? We don’t know who’s manning the field station, or how Calthrop is doing, or where Fanshaw’s got to, among other things.” One of the other things being that crazy letter of Lawyer Debenham’s, though he didn’t like rubbing salt into Winifred’s wound.

Aunt had raised her well, a Binks did not put pleasure before duty. Winifred hoisted Tiger gently off her lap and handed him to Dodie.

“You’re right, Peter, we must buzz off and let Bill and Dodie get on with their day’s work. I’ll speak with Mr. Sopwith again about Lackovites as soon as I get back, and woe be to him if he hasn’t sold those shares. Why don’t I phone you tomorrow morning, Dodie, and set up a time for us to meet with the packaging people and our sales manager? And for me to have my guided tour, to which I’m looking forward with eager anticipation. It’s been delightful meeting my new partners, and I can’t tell you how happy I am to be associated with Golden Apples. I’m sure we’ll have our problems solved very soon. Oh dear, that reminds me, do you suppose Elvira’s still asleep out there? If she’s awake, perhaps she can call us a taxi. I suppose the thing to do is go back to the
Lollipop
and see what’s happened to President Svenson. Don’t you think, Peter?”

“You don’t need a taxi,” said Bill. “We’ve got to make a delivery to Wilverton today anyway; how’d you like to ride back in one of your own trucks?”

“How delightful! I hadn’t realized we owned any, you must be appalled by my ignorance.”

“But you’ll find she’s a pretty quick learner,” said Peter.

Bill was acting just a shade too eager to get them out of there, Peter couldn’t help thinking. Maybe there was nothing in it; except that the employees had got in late today and they’d be running behind schedule, along with having to face whatever other problems might have been caused by the storm and the flood.