Authors: Michael Murphy
“It was from where I’m sitting.”
I reassembled the cane and drove toward the front gate. “Dalrymple’s scheduled to return when?”
“This afternoon.”
I checked my watch. Ten a.m. “That’s cutting it close.”
“Don’t worry, darling. He’s always late.”
“The
late
Spencer Dalrymple. I like the sound of that. What about guards?”
“Usually a half dozen or more during the day.” Laura smiled. “Don’t concern yourself. I’m always welcome. You’ll be a bigger challenge, but if all goes well, I won’t have to worry about whether the staff tells my fiancé I’ve been seen with another man.”
“If all goes well, you’ll never see Dalrymple again … unless you want to pay him a visit in prison.” I stopped alongside the security hut.
A uniformed guard tipped his cap to Laura. In spite of his thick jaw, broad shoulders, and the crisp starched uniform of a dedicated professional, he couldn’t quite hide a longing for the woman in the passenger seat. “Good morning, Miss Wilson. What a pleasant surprise.”
A nod and a pat of her dark curly hair changed her from my detective partner to Dalrymple’s dutiful fiancée.
Like a jealous suitor, he checked me over then tipped his cap to Laura. A moment later the gate swung open.
I parked in the circular drive in front of the house, determined not to reveal my apprehension. I grabbed my cane and escorted Laura up the steps to the front door.
She straightened my tie. “You look like you’re about to rob the place. Act like you did
when you played Tom Sawyer.”
“I was a teenager.”
“Exactly. Happy and carefree.” She opened the door without knocking and greeted the butler with a bold wave. “Reggie, have you come across a gold watch with the letters JD engraved on the back? Mr. Donovan may have lost it at the party.”
The butler’s eyes widened, as if he expected me to be in Florida. “No, ma’am.”
Like a thirty-four-year-old Tom Sawyer, I clapped him on the back and held out a five. “You sure?”
He ignored the bill. “Quite sure.”
I stuffed the bill into his suit coat and patted his pocket. “Well, in case you find anything of mine, let’s just keep it between you and me, okay, Ronald?”
“Reggie, sir.”
Laura smiled. “We’ll just have a quick look around.”
“Yes, ma’am.” With a flicker of disapproval, he took my hat, gave us a quick bow, and disappeared through a door off the lobby.
We hurriedly climbed the stairs. I glanced behind me as an armed guard entered from the deck outside. The same one who’d tracked Stoddard and me through the woods the night of the party. With a holstered gun visible through his unbuttoned jacket, he presented far more of a threat than the suspicious butler.
At the top of the stairs we slipped inside Spencer’s study. I resented nearly everything about Dalrymple, including his office being far more organized than mine had ever been. The desk was old, and the lock looked easy to pick.
I set the cane on the desk and took a pin from Laura’s hat.
“You used to have a special case for situations like this.”
“I could use it now.”
Before I could begin, footsteps approached outside the door.
Laura’s face blanched. I grabbed the cane, took her hand, and rushed us through the door behind the desk. As the door to the office opened, I held my breath and listened. I pictured the guard looking around to see if anything had been disturbed. Getting caught pilfering Dalrymple’s office couldn’t be answered with bluster or acting ability. The guard, most likely, stepped back into the corridor.
The minute the door closed, Laura and I reentered the office. She squeezed my hand as doors opened then closed in the corridor. She relaxed her grip only after footsteps passed Dalrymple’s office and hurried down the stairway.
I went to work on the desk lock with Laura’s pin. “How do you know Dalrymple didn’t take the appointment book with him?”
“I don’t. But isn’t this fun?”
I shot her a look to make sure she was kidding. A moment later the lock tumbler clicked. I slid open the drawer.
“Bingo.” Laura grabbed the appointment book, unsnapped the latch, and flipped through the pages. She pointed to a list of names. “All but one member of the Golden Legion confirmed they’d attend the gathering at the hunting lodge.”
“One man with a conscience.”
She pulled the article from her bodice and compared it to the appointment book. “Averill Cornwell. Hardly a man of conscience.” With a nervous glance toward the door, she snapped the book closed.
“Wait. Look for a meeting before the assassination attempt against Roosevelt. Perhaps they held a similar gathering before going through with the plan.”
Laura flipped through the book. A smile swept over her face. “You should be a detective. Averill wasn’t at that meeting either.” She snapped the clasp closed, set the book into the drawer, and slid the drawer closed.
Relocking the desk with a hat pin would prove much more difficult than unlocking it. As I struggled, the butler’s voice came from down the stairs. “Miss Wilson.”
“Go.” I waved her toward the door.
She slipped into the corridor. Her footsteps casually sounded down the steps. I worked the lock with the pin but couldn’t get it closed. I wiped sweat from my brow and tried again. Maybe I’d lost my touch. Time slipped away. I couldn’t wait any longer. I stuck the pin in my lapel and left the room, hoping Dalrymple would think he’d left the desk unlocked.
Laura sat waiting on the terrace, as I’d assumed she would. Reggie stood beside her.
I rolled up my sleeve and displayed my watch. “Found it in the upstairs john. Must have dropped off when I was puking Dalrymple’s cheap booze.”
Laura rose and grabbed her purse. “Splendid.”
“Won’t you stay for lunch?” Reggie asked. “I’m sure Mr. Dalrymple will be back soon.”
I gestured toward the door. “Sorry. I have to run to a bank.”
“Very well, sir. I’ll get your hat.”
Laura and I followed him inside. The butler retrieved my fedora and handed it to me with a flicker of superiority.
“Thanks, Ronald.”
“That’s Reggie, sir.”
“Why can’t I remember your name?” I snapped my fingers. “You remind me of the actor, Ronald Colman. Dashing, sophisticated.”
“Never heard of him. Will that be all?”
I winked at Reggie. “Give Mr. Dalrymple my best.”
“I certainly will. Good day, sir, Miss Wilson.”
Outside Laura and I hurried to the car and climbed inside. She giggled. “That was some performance back there.”
“Maybe I should’ve been an actor.”
“I’d stick to writing if I were you.”
I drove us toward the front gate. We both waved to the guard as I sped past the gate, kicking up gravel on the path. “Tell me about this banker with a conscience.”
“Averill Cornwell. Hard to picture him as a man of conscience. More likely he didn’t go along with the others because he’s a coward.”
“How well do you know him?”
A smile flickered across her face. “Well enough for him to make a pass at me.”
I turned onto the highway back to the city. “Don’t expect me to be nice to him.”
“I’m hoping you’ll be downright rude.”
I hoped Laura’s strategy of dropping in unannounced to meet with Averill Cornwell would be as successful as our trip to the Dalrymple mansion. “I suppose we’re just going to march in there with no appointment and ask to see the owner of one of the nation’s largest banks.”
At a traffic light, Laura checked her look in a mirror and fluffed her hair. “Averill fancies himself a ladies’ man. At a party two months ago he got me alone and … groped me.”
Bastard. “Where did he grope you?”
She grinned. “Right in the middle of the front lawn.”
“I’m not comfortable using your sex appeal against the Golden Legion.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing these past months, darling?”
“I don’t have to like it.”
At the Chrysler Building, we stepped from the Model A and gazed up at the seventy-seven-story building, the tallest in the city until the Empire State Building opened. The elevator took us to Cornwell’s bank’s corporate headquarters on the fortieth floor.
We stepped off the elevator and approached a pretty young secretary at the reception desk. The redhead in a low-neck sweater spoke on a phone propped between her neck and shoulder as she finished painting her nails with purple polish. She hung up and blew them dry. “May I help you?”
“Laura Wilson to see Mr. Cornwell,” Laura said politely.
The secretary glanced over her shoulder at the closed door of a corner office. “I’m sorry Aver … Mr. Cornwell will be in meetings the rest of the day.” She ran her manicured nail down a calendar beside her phone. “If you could come back tomorrow—”
“Pardon me.” Laura’s red face made me realize she could get her way with men far easier than she could with women. “Mr. Cornwell and I are friends.”
Without a hint of respect, she gave Laura the once-over. “I’m sure you are.” She thumbed toward the closed door. “Meetings. Tomorrow would be much better.”
Laura took a deep breath and flashed her friendliest smile. “I’m Laura Wilson, the actress.”
The secretary smiled. “Yes, I know. You were wonderful in
Night Whispers
and last year in
The Scarlet Letter
. What was it like being naked onstage?”
What?
Laura blushed. “I … I wasn’t naked. I was in a tub onstage. It only looked that way.”
I ignored the image of a scantily clad Laura in front of hundreds of onlookers. With Laura struggling to get into character, I took on the persona of Blackie Doyle. I winked at the secretary. “Only a great actress can pull that off. No pun intended.”
The secretary laughed until she snorted.
Laura ignored my interaction with the young woman. “We prefer to wait. If you’d just let Mr. Cornwell know—”
“He made it very clear. No interruptions, but if you’d like to wait …” She nodded toward a couch along the far wall. “We have some wonderful magazines. May I get you some coffee?”
“No, thank you.” Laura stormed toward the couch and sat down in a huff while I remained with the secretary.
She was even younger than Dorothy Greenwoody, but if Laura could use her sex appeal for the cause, I’d give it a shot. “I’m sorry about Miss Wilson. Theater people are so high strung, don’t you think.”
“Are you an actor?”
“I’d make a terrible actor. What you see is what you get.”
“Is that right?” She twirled a curl with her finger. “What do you do?”
She didn’t look like she’d be impressed by a writer. “I go to parties. Some I host aboard my yacht in Florida.”
She leaned forward, flashing more cleavage. “You have a yacht?”
“Two, but then who’s counting?” The
Tess Trueheart
was a small fishing boat my senior poker buddies loved.
She laughed again as Laura peered at us over the top of a magazine. “Are you and Miss Wilson …”
“She’s engaged.”
She lowered her voice. “That doesn’t really answer the question, does it?”
“We’re old friends.” I liked Blackie Doyle even more now that I’d become him. My eyes swept over the pretty woman’s outfit. “If you don’t mind me saying so, that sweater is the prettiest thing I’ve seen all day.”
Her blush spread from her chin to the dark roots of her red hair.
I glanced at her nameplate next to her phone. “Miss Morehead—”
“Honey.” Her eyes danced. “Honey Morehead.”
I lowered my voice so only the two of us could hear. “I don’t suppose you ever get down to Florida.”
“I’ve always wanted to.” She flashed a less than innocent smile. “How long will you be in the city?”
“Until I wear out my welcome at the Carlyle.” I glanced at Laura over my shoulder. She looked irritated at my tactics to get us in to see Cornwell. “If I join Miss Wilson on the couch, it’s going to be a long afternoon.”
She craned her neck and glanced at Laura. “I suspect so.”
“Perhaps if you buzz Mr. Cornwell. We only need a moment with him.”
“What part of Florida?” She was definitely flirting with me.
I winked. “Why, the fun part, of course.”
She hesitated a moment then bit her lip before pressing a red button on a box beside her phone. “Mr. Cornwell, Laura Wilson and …”
“Blackie Doyle.”
“Blackie Doyle are here …”
The office door flew open and a stumpy, toadlike man with a dark mustache slipped into a suit coat. This guy groped Laura?
He ignored me and glanced around the room until he saw Laura holding a magazine. He glared at his secretary, rushed past me, and grabbed Laura’s hand as she rose from the couch. “Miss Wilson, what a wonderful surprise.”
She kissed him on the cheek. “Friends like you call me Laura.”
Three irritated-looking men in three-piece suits poured from the office. When Cornwell gestured to the open door, I saluted the secretary with the tip of my cane. “Thanks, Honey.”
Laura glared at me.
“It’s her name,” I whispered as we stepped inside the spacious office.
Cornwell shut the door and showed us to chairs facing his massive oak desk with a breathtaking sight of Manhattan.
While I abandoned my Blackie role, Laura continued her acting. “I missed seeing you at the cast party, Saturday.”
“Cast party?” The man wrinkled his brow. “Guess I wasn’t invited.”
“Oh well, as producer, Spencer is in charge of those things.”
I put an end to the acting. “You apparently weren’t invited to the hunting lodge either.”
He gave me the once-over. “And you are.”
“A detective.”
Laura continued to be the charmer. “He’s Jake Donovan, writer and former detective.”
Cornwell ran a stubby finger around the inside of his collar. “I have business to attend to here.”
Averill Cornwell might hold the future of the country in his soft doughy hands. Turning his allegiance away from the banking community would take a combination of intimidation and Laura’s charm.
She reached across the desk and patted his hand. “Averill, we know.”
“Not just us,” I added.
He twisted the end of his mustache until I thought it might fall off. “Know what?”