Lively Game of Death (20 page)

B
EFORE HE LEFT, HILARY
amazed Betterman by asking him to keep her name out of the papers.

“Why?” he marveled. “You did a beautiful job. The old man’ll be impressed—”

“I know, Lou, but—well, damn it, I am a PR woman. I mean, I have to eat now with the money I draw from Trim-Tram. And Scott won’t like my getting this kind of publicity. So let’s just forget about it, okay?”

“All right,” he said. “If you want me to take all the credit, fine. It won’t do me any harm.”

And that’s the way they left it.

Once the police were gone, everybody buzzed with relief and started getting their coats. Hilary passed among them, garnering compliments. I wondered why she’d even bothered to drag Ruth Goetz over at all, but a snatch of their conversation made it come clear: Hilary was already starting to apply some pressure on the dragon lady to get the remainder of the money her late husband had owed Jan Astor, Hilary’s PR colleague-friend.

I took the opportunity to have a few quiet words in a corner with Chuck Saxon concerning his daughter. From the look on his face when I finished, I thought he might kiss me on both cheeks.

“You really think that?” he asked. “Not just to make me feel better?”

“Mr. Saxon,” I told him, “she’s your daughter, you should know how you brought her up. All I can give you is my impression, which is that she knows nothing about those pictures. Tom Lasker drugged her.”

“Then the pictures—she didn’t help him take—”

“If I were you,” I interrupted, “I’d forget it, destroy them, and never say a word to her.”

He nodded his head, hand soothing his temples. “Damn,” he said, half to himself, “I know I shouldn’t think it—the poor son-of-a-bitch is dead, after all—but if he wasn’t, and I suspected
that’s
what he’d done!” His fists clenched convulsively.

“Yes,” I replied, “after the promotion came through, I imagine he rather regretted approaching you. And he was probably aware that someone had gotten into his desk that Sunday.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Well, your daughter said Lasker stopped asking her out after the promotion came through. Then, all of a sudden, he started getting interested in her again. He kept calling her until she swallowed her pride and went out with him again, just last night, as a matter of fact.”

“So?” Saxon asked.

“So—he was apparently anxious enough about your attitude to pump her about it—how you were behaving toward her those days.”

Nodding in understanding, Saxon squeezed my hand, again thanked me, then joined Harrison, who was just buttoning up his coat. The two, deciding to stop at the Fifth Avenue Club for a beer, hailed everyone from the door and departed.

Ruth Goetz wanted Frost to take her home, but he begged off, claiming he had some things to discuss with Hilary. She wasn’t wild about the idea of leaving my boss behind to lock up (Hilary had made me replace Goetz’s key on the corpse earlier, first wiping it off carefully), but Frost finally persuaded Mrs. Goetz to give him her key to the showroom.

She still wanted a ride home, though, and Scott came to her rescue—which I’m sure he instantly regretted, for the woman immediately snatched his arm as if she’d just foreclosed a mortgage on it.

Flinging a pink feather boa that matched her dress around her seashell-necklace-circled throat, Ruth Goetz said good night and dragged her quarry away. I uttered a brief prayer to whatever gods may be for Scott’s marriage.

Now there were only four of us: Frost, Jensen, Hilary, and me. As I approached the table where Jensen sat, I noted Hilary and the lawyer in a corner engaged in earnest debate. Coming up behind her, I found, to my surprise, that I was the subject of discussion.

“It’s a matter of discretion,” the attorney was saying, but Hilary wouldn’t permit him to finish.

“He stays,” she said, “and there are no two ways about it—”

Seeing me, Frost tried to shush her, but swinging round, Hilary told me to come closer. I complied, and got a shock, for the lady took my arm familiarly and patted it.

“I made two mistakes about him today, but I’m not about to make a third. Set your mind at ease—he’s completely trustworthy.”

Stunned at her unusual demonstrativeness, I stammered thanks for her vote of confidence, even though I hadn’t a notion of what it was for.

“Well, all right,” the attorney grumbled, “if you insist ...”

All this while, Jensen, still seated at the same place he’d been all evening, was plunged into his own autumnal musings. With bearded chin in cupped hand, the youthful toyman resembled more than ever a wistful old/young college instructor.

“Thou hast nor youth nor age,” I thought, “but, as it were, an after-dinner’s sleep, dreaming on both ...”

The three of us joined Jensen at his table, and he roused himself sufficiently to congratulate Hilary on the work she’d done that night.

“Thank you,” she replied, “but it’s not over yet.”

“I didn’t think so,” he sighed, reaching into his pocket and extracting a billfold. He withdrew a five-dollar bill and held it across the table for Frost. “I’m afraid that I don’t have anything smaller.”

The lawyer chuckled. “I’m not violently opposed, you know, to accepting larger retainers.” He took the proffered bill.

“Now that we’ve settled that,” Hilary said, “and now that you are represented by counsel, Mr. Jensen, would you like to hear why I believe you killed Sid Goetz?”

“Yes,” he answered quietly. “It
would
be rather interesting.”

I
STUDIED JENSEN’S FACE
. No trace of cunning marred its clarity, nor was there any hint of menace in his soft voice as he replied to Hilary.

“I advise you,” said Frost, “to avoid any comment on Hilary’s accusation. Let her do the talking.”

The other said nothing, but inclined his head to her in grave, almost courtly fashion.

Hilary spoke. “The real trouble has been all the subsidiary problems—the spy, Lasker’s fall—that put up a smokescreen around the basic question of Sid’s death. I was aware of your guilt early on, Mr. Jensen, and had set my associate to firming up the case by checking the other suspects to eliminate them. But then, having met you, I wasn’t sure I wanted to make my knowledge known—though I had second thoughts when Lasker turned up dead. I was afraid at first you’d also killed him. But there was no real reason why you would. You had no motive for wishing Lasker dead.”

“Nor Sid,” Jensen murmured. Frost hushed him.

“At any rate, it didn’t seem possible to assume two spies and two murderers. But fortunately for you, I ran into Wallis shortly after leaving the stairwell where Lasker’s body had lain. And everything fell into place. The only things I lacked were corroborative details, which my assistant traced down for me.”

I made a mental note to ask Hilary whether “assistant” was a comedown from “associate.”

“Now,” she went on, “let’s examine the evidence in the Goetz shooting. I saw three basic sets of clues to establish your guilt. The first class concerned motive, means, and opportunity, the second, your manner of behavior today, the third—I’ll get to that in a few minutes.”

Picking up a new chart, Hilary made a series of five pencil checks opposite the names thereon. “All right,” she said, “motive, means, and opportunity—let’s eliminate people. First, forget about the Trim-Tram staff. Neither Saxon nor Harrison have motives. And they both have alibis, because they attended a sales meeting and went straight home afterwards. So, leaving them out, I could only think of five people who might conceivably want Sid Goetz dead: you, his wife, possibly Mr. Frost, Tom Lasker, and his partner, Dean Wallis.”

“I don’t know about me and Ruth,” the lawyer remarked, “but Lasker is certainly out of the picture.”

“Not necessarily—at least not when I was first thinking things through. He could have shot Goetz, then fought with Wallis.”

“One thing disturbs me,” said Jensen. “The police now suspect Wallis.”

“Not for long,” Hilary replied. “He may have had a motive, and we don’t know for sure whether he knew where Goetz kept his gun ... but Wallis has an ironclad alibi for last night, with a priest as witness!”

“So it’s only going to be a matter of time before the police start thinking about other suspects,” Frost stated.

“Correct. Of course, they may well hit on Lasker as the most likely choice. He had a motive—fear of disclosure. Yet I doubt whether he knew of Goetz’s gun. Why would he? And he was out all last night with Penny Saxon. So, whether the officials write him off or not, I certainly did. Which left only Ruth Goetz and you two.”

“I suppose,” the lawyer said, “that neither Ruth’s alibi nor mine hold much water.”

“Why? Where did you go after seeing Goetz?”

Frost gestured with his hands, but said nothing.

“Oh,” said Hilary, shaking her head. “Well
chacun à son goût.
Now that kind of alibi works two ways. Either they believe you both, or neither of you are credited. Well, let’s not eliminate either of you—for the time being—on opportunity. Or on means.
You
didn’t know Sid had a gun here, but Mrs. Goetz did. And she could have told you. So, again, you cancel one another out.”

“From what you’re saying,” Frost laughed, “we’re still suspects.”

“Wrong. You flunk on the motivation test. Not only didn’t either of you want Sid dead, you both had considerable reason for wishing him to stay alive.”

“Oh?” Frost remarked, suddenly guarded.

“All that you personally stood to gain from Goetz was a live client. He was worth nothing to you dead. As for coveting his wife, that’s nonsense. Goetz evidently didn’t much care about her fidelity, so why get him out of the way when you had all the conveniences and none of the responsibilities?”

The attorney inclined his head slightly and stated, with a smirk, that he neither confirmed nor denied Hilary’s theories.

“As for Ruth Goetz herself,” she continued, “she stood to lose a great deal if her husband died. Alive, he might eventually be persuaded to cut her in for a bigger chunk of the estate.”

“Ingeniously reasoned,” said Frost. “You’re assuming, though, that she was
aware
of the terms of her husband’s will.”

“Come on, counselor,” Hilary replied, adopting her favorite superior tone, “it’s obvious the two of you must have been working on a way to dig out further cash from Goetz. Divorce proceedings would mean alimony, and a fat fee for you, not to mention what you’d collect under the table.”

Frost began to protest, but Hilary went right on talking. “On top of everything else, there was the question of the Trim-Tram spy, Goetz’s silent partner ... my guess would be that you and Ruth Goetz were trying like mad to crack his identity.”

“Why would that matter to
us?”
Frost asked woodenly.

“Oh, stop playing ‘lawyer.’ It matters very little to me whether you and that woman were trying to wrest control of the business from Sid. The bastard deserved it. If Ruth Goetz could work her questionable charms on the silent partner and gain control of
his
stock ...”

“All right, all right,” the lawyer laughed. “But what does this all prove, Hilary?”

“That Sid Goetz was better off alive than dead, so far as you and his wife were concerned. Absence of motive.”

She turned to Jensen. “Which, by process of elimination, only left you for me to consider as a suspect.” She touched three fingers, one at a time, as she spoke. “Motive. Means. Opportunity. You were the only one to qualify in all three categories. You told my secretary that Goetz threatened to shoot if you followed him into his showroom to get your missing dowel. Assumption—you knew he had a pistol, so you check out on means. Next, you told me that you spent last night in your showroom till about ten P.M., after which you went home alone. No witnesses ... so you can’t be eliminated on the basis of opportunity, either.”

“And the motive,” Jensen said, “is all too obvious”—which gave Frost a stomachache. He repeated his warning for the other to refrain from comment. I figured Frost still didn’t trust my discretion.

“At first,” Hilary answered, “I couldn’t give much credence to the revenge motive. True, Sid screwed you out of his company by using his wife to grab your shares. And he stole your game, Swing Up. But that was a while before, and you’d rallied enough to go into business for yourself. On the basis of my secretary’s impressions of you—as well as my own—I could not believe you would harbor a grudge strong enough to plot murder long after the fact.”

“Then what
did
you think?” Jensen asked.

“I believed that whatever prompted you to kill Goetz was a recent injury which, on top of the old wounds, aggravated you beyond endurance. I later learned that such a new injury existed—the theft of the programmed dowel from your toy auto.”

Jensen pursed his lips. “I thought I’d minimized that when your man asked me about it.”

“It didn’t take much imagination to estimate its real importance. It was in a prominent place in the showroom, with a special advertising display, and even while you were pretending to my assistant that the theft wasn’t important, a customer walked out on you when you couldn’t demonstrate the toy. A lost customer at Toy Fair? I’ve been at Trim-Tram long enough, and believe me, I know! A lost sale is a major tragedy!”

“Yes,” said Jensen, “everything you say is correct.” He turned to Frost, who was throwing a conniption. “I appreciate your concern, Willie, but I intend to tell the lady everything that happened.”

“Be it on your head,” Frost sighed, slumping back, hands dug deep in his pockets.

“One thing, though, Hilary,” Jensen remarked. “You said it had to be a recent incident that caused me to kill Sid—but you made it sound as if you were
already
convinced of my guilt.”

“I was.”

“Why?”

“We’ll get to that soon. But we haven’t discussed the class of clues yet that deal with your behavior this morning and afternoon.”

“I didn’t do anything unusual.”

“Exactly!”

“Huh?” Frost grunted.

“Counselor,” she explained, “when my assistant questioned you and Mrs. Goetz, he had two problems to surmount—first, that he is not a licensed detective, and second, that we did not want to reveal just then that there had been a crime committed. He hedged very neatly with you, while, with Mrs. Goetz, he somewhat riskily took her into his confidence.”