[Maggie Sullivan 02.0] - Tough Cookie Page 3

  He was on the telephone, patting the fingers of one hand impatiently on his desk. He nodded a greeting.

  “At what time do I expect my standards?” he was demanding. “And how many days a week does that mean? Yet still I don’t see them. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that Mr. Wildman wants his daily report by eleven? You haven’t? Good. Please tell me how I’m to accomplish that if I don’t receive my standards on time.”

  The receiver he held smacked into its cradle. He rationed out a lifeless smile.

  “Do sit down, Miss Sullivan. I apologize for the unpleasantness. Some employees simply cannot absorb the concept that time is money.”

  Today he was wearing a fine Harris tweed, subdued but suitable for any setting required by his role as Wildman’s assistant.

  “You have a nice view,” I said. “I kind of thought you might be all the way at the top.”

  “Mr. Wildman prefers not to be ostentatious,” he said with only a hint of smugness.

  I’d have to use that to explain my lack of a secretary. A four-bit word sounded more impressive than pleading privacy.

  I took the chair Hill offered and got to the point. “Mr. Wildman has filled you in on why he sent for me?”

  “Yes. I’ve prepared a list of other men we know of who invested in Draper’s project. I suspect there are others, but these names are certainties.”

  The papers on his desk were aligned at the edges. The pencils had fresh points. He slid me a file folder. I left it for the moment.

  “What’s your opinion of this interest of his in finding Draper?”

  “My opinion?”

  Hill hadn’t anticipated the question. He considered as if a single wrong word might precipitate earthquakes. The position he’d risen to probably came from a life of such caution. Or maybe he was just pompous.

  “I think it’s uncharacteristically foolish of him,” he said at last. “Harold Draper’s gone, and the money with him. But while Mr. Wildman asks my advice about many matters – indeed, that’s a large part of what he pays me for, analyzing demand for commodities, risk assessment, investment possibilities – he didn’t seek my advice on this.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “I think perhaps he perceives it as a personal matter rather than business, so no. In any case, despite the many things which Mr. Wildman confides in me and relies on me for, I am still an employee. If Mr. Wildman wishes to indulge himself, it’s not my concern.”

  Maybe not, but the exclusion stung. I’d heard resentment when he called himself an employee.

  “And this bunk deal took place about six months ago?”

  Hill furrowed his brow. “Yes. That sounds about right. When it first came to our attention and we started looking into it pursuant to an investment, anyway.”

  Six months seemed like a lot of time between getting swindled and coming to me. Still, it probably took awhile before people put money up, and longer still before they found out they’d been taken. I filed the thought for further exploration.

  “Does anyone have enough of a grudge against Mr. Wildman to want to injure him?”

  “One doesn’t become a success without making enemies. But no, I can’t think of anyone.”

  “Wildman’s son–”

  “Stuart.”

  “Where’s his mother?”

  “Dead, I’m afraid. Ran off with a musician shortly after the boy was born. Mr. Wildman divorced her, naturally. She killed herself within a year. His first wife lives in Europe. She receives quite a nice allotment. They’re on cordial terms.”

  “His sister doesn’t seem to like him very much.”

  He almost laughed outright. “No. But she generally nurses her grudge with a bottle. As far as I know, she’s never waved any sort of weapon around until last night. Are you thinking about the accident with the car en route?”

  “Yes. Who besides you knew Mr. Wildman sent for me yesterday?”

  “Rogers, certainly, since he was driving. I suppose any of the servants might have, if they were given to eavesdropping. Are you suggesting ... what? That someone meant to frighten you away? Prevent Mr. Wildman from talking to you?”

  “Something like that.”

  He gave a patronizing smile.

  “Perhaps it was simply an accident.”

  A feverish knocking interrupted.

  “Yes? Come in.”

  The young man in shirt sleeves I’d seen earlier hurried in. He pushed a narrow cart whose upright panel held pegs with small loops of ticker tape wound around each. The man didn’t look at Hill, and backed up several steps before turning.

  “On time tomorrow,” Hill reminded the retreating figure. As the door closed he glanced at a clock on the wall. “I have to leave for a meeting shortly, Miss Sullivan. If you wouldn’t mind looking over that list to see if there’s anything more I can add?”

  Six

  There were five names on the list Hill had given me. I went back to the office to set up appointments. I’d see if I could talk to three that morning, then decide if I wanted to follow up anything from them before I talked to the others.

  First, though, I called the Dayton Daily News photo department and asked for Matt Jenkins, disguising my voice when the old guy who ran the department answered.

  “Oh dear,” I sighed upon learning Jenkins was out. “Could you tell him his cousin from Peoria’s in town and will be at the Fox at half past twelve if he wants to have lunch?”

  Jenkins owed me at least a year’s worth of information for the last big scoop I’d gotten him. Not that I expected him to make it easy to collect.

  Propping my feet on my desk I began to set up appointments from the names and numbers Hill had given me. On the second one, when I’d introduced myself to the secretary and was halfway into asking to see her boss, I got a surprise.

  “I’m sorry. I–” The voice on the other end wavered and cracked. “I regret to say Mr. Preston is ... recently deceased.”

  I sat up, startled. Alert, too, though I wasn’t sure why.

  “I apologize for intruding. May I ask when he died?”

  “Just day before yesterday. You’re not the first to call and ask for him, so please don’t worry.”

  I murmured some condolences and then hung up. Preston had been dead before James C. Hill had come to see me yesterday. And hours before I’d heard the first word about Draper’s swindle. That seemed to suggest there was no connection between his death and my investigation. Still, the timing seemed odd. So did the fact that Hill, whose ears were supposed to be pricked for every nugget and rumor in the world of investments, had been unaware of it. Had Wildman been equally in the dark? Surely they’d discussed names when he told Hill to draw up the list and meet with me.

  * * *

  Chatting with two of the men Draper fleeced would keep me busy enough until lunchtime. Most people weren’t likely to see me if I told them my line of work, so I said it was about a business matter when I made the appointments.

  The first was with Ulysses Smith. He was thin and bald and stoop-shouldered. His office wasn’t as fancy as Hill’s – or, presumably, Wildman’s – but two large canvases on the wall took my breath away. One showed a narrow street in an old city where a cobbler plied his trade with a cocked head and a twinkle in his eyes that made him look like the next instant he’d kick into a dance. The other was a mother whose knuckles were red and whose face was weary, her smile one of heart-rending tenderness as she brushed her daughter’s hair.

  “An investigator?” Smith said looking nervously at the card I handed him. “I don’t understand. What are you here about? Who are you with?”

  “A private individual hired me to locate a man named Harold Draper. Do you know of him?”

  “Draper! He’s a disgrace – a bounder!” He colored slightly. “That is to say, I knew him slightly through business. He left town a few months ago.”

  He sank into the chair at his desk. “I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you. We weren’t really acquainte
d.”

  “I’m told he left under something of a cloud.”

  Smith sighed in resignation. A few pale freckles, or maybe spots, decorated the front of his dome. He waved me toward a chair.

  “I suppose that’s more accurate. He ... disappeared, in fact. He was putting together some real estate development deal. I’m told that – that he took his investors’ money. That he swindled them. Now that’s all I know. I really had very few dealings with him.”

  I waited a moment. “I’m told you were one of the men he swindled.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” His eyes faltered. He busied himself with papers on his desk.

  “So when you called him a bounder, that was based on hearsay?”

  The tips of his lips worked fractionally.

  “I ... when you hear the same story from various sources ... trustworthy individuals....” His voice trailed off. All at once he looked at me, his face filling with anger. “One of the men he hoodwinked killed himself. I know for a fact it was because he lost money to Draper. He came to me for a loan and he told me why he needed it. There. Is that proof enough?”

  Moisture shone in his eyes. He got up and went to the painting of the mother and daughter. He touched his fingertips lightly to its frame, patting it.

  “Charles Preston?” I said softly to his back.

  “Yes. I had no idea he was in terrible straits. I thought – he was just somewhat pinched.” He shook his head, still touching the painting.

  “Who were the others? The trustworthy individuals who talked about Draper? Who might have been duped?”

  He turned to face me again. The tips of his lips did their odd little dance.

  “I can’t recall. It’s been some time. Now if you’d see yourself out. I’m sorry I couldn’t be any more help.”

  * * *

  My last stop that morning was a man named Frank Keefe. He had wavy black hair and a chin that made no apologies. He held a cigarette between his teeth with the same flair FDR used on a cigar.

  “Someone’s hired me to track down a man named Harold Draper,” I said as we shook hands and I gave him a card.

  “If you find him, there’ll be a line of men wanting a swing at him, me among them,” he said as he read it. “Cigarette?” He offered a chased silver box and nodded me toward a chair.

  “No, thanks.”

  I sat down, aware of Keefe’s eyes admiring my legs. He grinned when he saw I’d noticed.

  “I don’t suppose you’re likely to tell me who hired you.”

  “Sorry, I can’t.”

  “Worth a try.” He grinned again. It was a grin that was probably worth a lot in business, and it reached all the way to his eyes. He leaned back in his desk chair. “Draper’s a crook. A charlatan. But I figure you know that. I figure that’s why you’re here. That someone’s sore enough about the Champion Works deal that they hired you to run the little s.o.b. to ground. Am I right?”

  “Batting a thousand.” Neither Wildman nor Hill had thought it important to tell me the name of the deal at the center of Draper’s swindle. It wasn’t important. But it was handy.

  “Whoever it is, my hat’s off to them,” Keefe said, checking my legs again. “Draper put one over on some mighty shrewd businessmen. Clipped me for ten thousand dollars. One of the men he fleeced hung himself.”

  “Charles Preston?”

  Keefe nodded and blew out a chestful of smoke.

  “Decent fellow.” He stubbed his cigarette out in an art deco bowl. His light mood had vanished. “What can I do to help you?”

  “Tell me everything you know about Draper.”

  He thought for a minute.

  “Widowed for as long as I’ve known him. No kids. Damn fine tennis player. Used to be on the up-and-up, or at least I’ve had other dealings with him in the past and never got skinned. Got good returns for what I put in. I don’t try to make a killing, just average profits, or a shade above, over the long term. Draper usually put together the kind of deals that gave that. This one promised to do somewhat better.”

  He winced and started another cigarette.

  “A drinker?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Womanizer?”

  “Not sure I make a good judge of that.” He grinned. “But no. He’d talk to the wives at parties. Not many do that, me included. Men go off in clumps and talk business; women are left on their own. Draper would sit down and talk with the ladies. I wondered a couple of times if he might be lonely.”

  “Any pastimes that could have made him need money? Gambling? Racing?”

  Keefe spread his hands. “Can’t help you there.”

  “Relatives?”

  “None I’ve been able to sniff out,” he said wryly. His cigarette jutted up. He studied me through the smoke. “You looking for him ... these questions. You know something I don’t? Is he still in town?”

  “Not to my knowledge. To tell you the truth, I suspect this may be a wild goose chase, as long as it’s been since he took off. But somebody hired me, so I’m looking. I have names of some of the men he clipped in this deal–”

  “That’s how you found me.”

  “Yes. It would help if you told me the names of the ones you know about. Or think might have been involved. If you want him found.”

  He hesitated. I crossed my legs.

  Keefe’s breeziness blew itself out. He studied me carefully. The ash on his cigarette grew dangerously long until he decided and flicked it into a dish.

  “Oh, I want him found all right. I’d like to wring his thieving neck. Thanks to him I’m hamstrung for the next three months at least. No funds to invest in anything new; just marching in place.

  “Charles Preston, the poor soul that killed himself. Ulysses Smith. Arthur Buckingham. Warren Tucker. Those are the ones I know of.”

  They matched the names on the list James C. Hill had given me. I picked up my handbag.

  “And you might try Rachel Minsky. I’ve heard she invested, but that could be a rumor. Rachel doesn’t rub elbows with the rest of us.”

  “Rachel Minsky,” I repeated. “A woman?”

  His infectious grin reappeared.

  “Cute little Jewess. Built like a pigeon. Ball of fire. Runs a construction company out on Springfield Street.”

  It was a name I hadn’t gotten from Hill or Wildman. A woman’s name at that. A woman who ran a construction company, which made it more interesting.

  “Inherited it from an uncle, I think,” Keefe was saying. “Or maybe she bought it. Some scandal about the uncle or cousin or whoever owned it before her going to jail.”

  Most likely she just owned it, then. Had someone running it for her. But women often picked up more than men did, because too many people took them for dim, or forgot they even were in the room. Meaning Rachel Minsky could be exactly the source of information I needed. I thanked him and let him help me into my coat.

  “One word of warning, Miss Sullivan.” He settled the coat on my shoulders. “If you go to see Rachel Minsky, don’t turn your back on her. She’s a tough cookie.”

  Then again, so was I.

  Seven

  “My cousin from Peoria?” Matt Jenkins snorted as I slid into the booth across from him at the Red Fox Grill. “Remind me not to have offspring if there are cankers like you on the family tree.”

  “Figured you’d guess who it was if I said that.”

  “And you didn’t want Stutzweiler to know who you were because you intend to wheedle some kind of information out of me that you shouldn’t have.”

  “Enjoying that bonus you got?” I asked as a waitress set a cup of vegetable soup and a grilled cheese sandwich before him. I ordered a bowl of the soup while Jenkins’ eyes twinkled behind wire-rimmed glasses. He was edging thirty and a halo of red-blonde curls circled the increasingly visible top of his head.

  “Glad you asked, because seeing as how I’m flush, Ione and I thought we might treat you to some music at the Carousel Saturday night,” he said. br />
  He checked to make sure his big Speed Graphic and other camera gear were safely out of range of any spills and bit ravenously into his sandwich. Good thing he was slim since he always attacked food as if he were starving.

  “Ione’s anesthetically boring cousin is going to be in town again and you can’t find another chump to make up a foursome,” I said shrewdly. “Forget it, Jenkins. He rattles on like a jalopy. The rest of us end up needing toothpicks to keep our eyes open.”

  “The Carousel, Mags. Table at the front. I hear the drummer’s really great.”

  I growled and Jenkins knew he’d won. Lance’s Carousel was the hottest music spot in Dayton.

  “Now, what do you want me to risk my job to find out this time?” Jenkins asked.

  “You won’t be risking anything. I just want to know if you remember anything about a businessman named Draper who disappeared about four months ago.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Skipped town, by all accounts. Owing people money.”

  “‘By all accounts.’ You mean it could have been foul play?”

  “That’s what I want to find out. I’ll check back copies at the library, of course, but your pals in the newsroom hear rumors that don’t make it into print.”

  He nodded thoughtfully, his merry eyes now sharp as tacks.

  “These last few years, more than a few men just closed their doors and walked away. Most of them probably owed somebody.”

  We ate in silence, aware some of those men had jumped in the river, or maybe put a gun to their head. The past ten years had been rough. One man in four without work. Families out in the street. Lines a mile long outside soup kitchens. New Deal programs had put people to work, but too many still were in need and too many businesses still were on the skids.

  “There wasn’t an obit,” I said. “But the cops get unclaimed bodies, and your boys on the police beat might remember some around the time in question, or maybe heard hints about someone conning investors and then taking off.”

  “And that’s what he did? Pulled a con?”

  I shrugged. The less Jenkins knew about some details of my work, the better it was for everyone. Among other things, it confirmed this tidbit or that if he got the same information.