Imperfect Strangers

CHAPTER 12

Sandy entered his Madison Avenue shop with a fresh sense of proprietorship. He greeted his employees and took the stairs to his second-floor office overlooking the street. His secretary handed him a number of telephone messages, and the first one read: Call Bart at 4.00 p.m. eastern time. A number preceded by the San Francisco area code followed. Sandy ground his teeth. There was no avoiding this, he supposed; best to get it over with.

At a quarter to four he left his desk, asked his cashier for some quarters and left the shop. He walked over to Lexington Avenue and found a pay phone. At four o'clock sharp he dialed the number and fed in a handful of quarters.

"Well," Peter Martindale's voice said immediately on being connected. "Nice to hear from you; I said I'd wait a month."

"You didn't," Sandy said. "You called my home."

"Sorry about that," Martindale said. "I thought it best to inject a note of reality early on. By the way, congratulations on your business transaction; I read about it in the Wall Street Journal this morning. I expect my little contribution improved your position."

"I specifically asked you not to do it; I changed my mind, and I left the required message, as specified by you."

"Sorry, old fellow, didn't get the message in time," Martindale drawled.

"That's a bald-faced lie," Sandy said; he was trembling with anger. "The concierge told me that he handed it to you personally."

"A little white lie," Martindale admitted. "I thought it best to proceed as planned. Now it's time for your part of our deal."

"We have no deal!" Sandy nearly shouted. "I called it off, and you violated my instructions! I feel no obligation to you whatever! Is that perfectly clear?"

"My friend, you are very ungrateful," Martindale said. "Don't you understand? I've set you free! Now all you have to do is set me free! You'll feel better when you entirely understand your position."

"Position? What position? I have no position!"

"Oh, but you do, dear man, you do. You now have a personal obligation to me that must be satisfied, and if you do not satisfy it soon and in the required way, I will bring you badly to grief."

"I don't really see how you can do that," Sandy said, but he felt less confident.

"I think it's best not to explain it to you on the telephone," Martindale said, "but until I can make it clear to you personally, please believe me when I tell you that it is in your interest to believe me. I can pull that very soft rug from under you very quickly, and I will do it, if I have to."

Sandy thought for a moment. "You want to meet?"

"Yes, and in San Francisco," Martindale said. "Be here by the end of next week; make the call as agreed, and I will give you further instructions. Do you understand?"

"I hadn't planned to be in San Francisco."

"Be here by the end of the week," Martindale said, then hung up.

Sandy stared at the phone for a moment, then hung it up and walked away. He was damned if he'd communicate further with that man, not in any way.

Sandy walked slowly back toward Madison Avenue, numb with dread and oblivious of his surroundings. He had gone little more than a block when something struck him, hard, in the right kidney. He fell to his knees, gasping with pain, and he was yanked sideways into a loading dock and forced onto his belly. His left arm was wrenched behind his back, and something struck him in the back of the neck. Sandy lost consciousness.

"Mister!" someone was shouting at him. "You all right?" Someone turned him onto his back.

Sandy blinked at the face hovering over him. A black man in coveralls was holding his head off the cement floor. "What?" he asked, rather stupidly.

"Can you talk to me?"

"Yes, I can talk. What happened?"

"I dunno; I came out of the john, and you was lying on my loading dock. Hang on, I'll get an ambulance, or something."

"No, no," Sandy said, struggling to get to his feet.

The man helped him up, then leaned him against the wall. "You want I should call a cop?"

"No, don't do that. I don't really know what happened; I wouldn't know what to tell a cop."

The man began dusting Sandy's clothes, and Sandy noticed that the left knee of his trousers was torn. Damn! he thought; a good suit, too! He felt for his wallet and his checkbook; both there. "Nothing seems to have been stolen," he said to the man. "I'll just be on my way; thanks for your help."

"Well, if you're sure you're okay," the man said.

Sandy stepped back out into the sunlight and started toward his office. His back and neck hurt like hell, and he was a little lightheaded, but he seemed to be walking all right. He glanced at his watch; there was no watch. He went back to where he had been struck and looked on the pavement, then it dawned on him: He had been mugged for his wristwatch. And he'd owned it for less than a day! He hadn't even added it to his insurance policy yet. Fifteen thousand dollars, right down the drain!

Back in his office, he told his secretary to hold his calls, then he took off his jacket, loosened his tie, and stretched out on the sofa under the windows. What had he gotten himself into? Now he was locked in with Peter Martindale. What was it the man had said on the plane? There were two flaws in Strangers on a Train-only one of the two men had agreed to the plan, and one of them was crazy. Well, he hadn't agreed to the plan, and Martindale couldn't be entirely sane.

He had to go to San Francisco, anyway; he'd lied to Martindale about that-he'd already postponed the trip for a month, and he had to buy wines. He was going to have to face the man and persuade him to drop this madness. He closed his eyes and dozed for a moment.

• • •

When Sandy woke the clock on the wall said nearly seven o'clock. He got gingerly to his feet and went to his desk. His secretary had apparently tiptoed into the room and left a Federal Express package there. He sank into his large leather chair and picked it up; he wasn't expecting anything from anybody. He tore it open and found another envelope inside, a padded one, the sort that books were mailed in. He opened that envelope and shook the contents out onto the desk. His wife's stolen jewelry lay before him.

There was a note, neatly printed in block capitals:

I DON'T NEED THIS, I JUST THOUGHT IT WOULD LOOK BETTER IF I TOOK IT. TO PROTECT YOUR POSITION, YOU SHOULD TELL THE COPS HOW YOU GOT IT BACK. DON'T WORRY, THERE AREN'T ANY FINGERPRINTS, AND THEY WON'T BE ABLE TO TRACE THE PACKAGE.

There was a good four hundred thousand dollars in jewelry on the desk. Sandy groaned.

Duvivier stood before Sandy's desk and stared at the pile of jewelry. "Is it all there? Everything?"

"Everything."

"And it came by Federal Express?"

"Yes," Sandy replied, "the package is on the desk; I'm afraid my fingerprints must be on it, but I haven't touched the jewelry."

"Well, my guess is we won't find any fingerprints on the pieces or the package." Duvivier poked at the envelope with a pen. "And the return address is likely to be fiction. It was sent yesterday from a Federal Express office on Sixth Avenue in the forties, a busy one, so it's unlikely that any of the counter people will remember who brought it in."

"I don't understand," Sandy said. "Why would he return all the jewelry? Wasn't it the reason he attacked Joan in the first place?"

"I can only speculate about that," Duvivier replied. "I suppose he could have had a bout of conscience, but I doubt it. More likely, he realized he couldn't unload it without greatly increasing his chances of getting caught."

"He could have just dumped it in a trash can somewhere," Sandy said. "He didn't have to send it back."

"It's odd, I'll grant you."

"To tell you the truth, I wish he'd kept it," Sandy said. "A month had passed, and I was becoming reconciled to what happened, and now this comes along and dredges the whole thing up again."

"Well, I'm sure the pieces would bring quite a lot at auction," Duvivier said. "Especially the ones formerly owned by the Duchess of Windsor."

Sandy shook his head. "I don't want to go through that. I'll put them away, and maybe someday, when my son marries, he'll I want to give them to his wife."

Duvivier nodded. "And what has happened to you in the past month?" he asked.

Sandy shrugged. "Most of my time has been taken up with the business."

"I read that you'd bought the company."

"No, my father-in-law left me the wine division and my wife a part of the rest of the company. I sold her inheritance to her brother. That will give me the capital I need for expansion."

Duvivier frowned. "My information was that Mr. Bailley had left you half a million dollars and nothing else."

Sandy shook his head. "No, it turns out that Jock Bailley made a new will a couple of days before his death. We didn't know about it at first, because it was done by a lawyer in the legal department, not his personal attorney."

"I see," Duvivier said. "And what is the attorney's name?"

"Walter Bishop."

"Friend of yours?"

"No, I didn't know him. You see, for the past few years I've worked almost entirely out of this office and London. I've spent little time at the company headquarters; I only know the top executives there."

Duvivier regarded him solemnly. "You've been very fortunate the past few weeks, haven't you?"

"If you think my wife's being murdered was fortunate-"

"My apologies; I simply meant that out of that tragedy have risen a number of strokes of luck: Your wife's jewelry is stolen, but it is returned; your father-in-law mostly excludes you from his will, but then a new will turns up. Suddenly, you own the business and you're a very wealthy man."

Sandy was suddenly angry. "And you think I've somehow engineered all this? You think I hired somebody to kill my wife, and I forged a new will?"

"It seems a possibility, doesn't it?"

"Well, I want you to investigate the possibility, Mr. Duvivier. I want you to delve into everything I do, question everyone I know, find the answer to every question."

"Do you?"

"I certainly do. But let me tell you something else; if, while you're investigating me, it suddenly turns up in the press that I'm a suspect in my wife's murder, or if anything else untrue, but derogatory, is published, I'm going to hold you and your department responsible. I will answer every question you have, cooperate in any way I can, but if you defame me or cause me to be defamed in the process, you will find your department facing a very serious lawsuit."

"Mr. Kinsolving-"

"You've mentioned that I'm newly wealthy; well, it's true, and I will spend whatever part of that wealth is necessary to protect my good name."

"Please, Mr. Kinsolving."

"I mean it; I have nothing to hide from you or anybody else, but I will not become a Claus von Bulow for the nineties, do you understand me?"

"Mr. Kinsolving, I have no intention of making that happen."

"Good. Now take that jewelry and that package and start investigating. I'm exhausted, and I'm going home to bed."

"Mr. Kinsolving, are you quite all right? You seem to be moving rather stiffly."

"I slept on the sofa for a while; I woke up with a stiff neck."

Duvivier wrote out a receipt for the jewelry and left. Sandy got into his coat to home, tired, depressed, and angry.

All the way home he kept looking over his shoulder, wondering if another mugger was there. He couldn't stop himself.