Murder on Lexington Avenue (21 page)

Eavesdroppers seldom hear anything good about themselves, but Sarah doubted either of them would be discussing her. As casually as she could, she moved toward the door they had closed behind them.

“I really haven’t decided anything,” she heard Leander say.

“Your father would want you to finish your education,” Young said.

“I really don’t care what my father wanted anymore.”

“Don’t be a fool. There’s no reason for you to get involved in the business just yet. You’re young. You should enjoy yourself as long as you can and leave the business to me.”

“So I should just let you and Terry run it into the ground?” Leander asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mr. Young said gruffly.

“Don’t you? I know what my father thought about you, and Terry’s no better.”

“Your father and I had our differences, but I would never do anything to hurt the company. It’s half mine, you know.”

“I don’t know what I know,” Leander said. “Look, this isn’t the time or the place to talk about this.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry, but I wanted to know what your plans are. Maybe we could meet later . . .”

“Mrs. Brandt! There you are!”

Sarah looked up to see Minnie hurrying toward her.

“Mrs. Wooten is asking for you,” she said.

Sarah sighed. She couldn’t very well tell Minnie she had to stay where she was so she could finish listening at this door. She followed the maid upstairs.

Mrs. Wooten had been awakened by her hungry infant, and she was demanding to hear a report from Sarah. Sarah gave her one, including every detail she could recall but neglecting to mention Mr. Oldham’s appearance. No sense in worrying her more than was necessary. Sarah was becoming concerned. Mrs. Wooten’s color was high and her manner agitated, even after her nap.

“Mrs. Wooten, I think perhaps we should ask your doctor to pay you a visit, just to make sure everything is all right.”

“No, I don’t want to see him! I feel perfectly well. There’s no reason to call that old busybody!”

“Then you must agree to calm down and rest. You’re going to make yourself sick if you don’t.”

“I don’t need a doctor,” she insisted. “You’ll stay, won’t you? At least for another day or two? Until the wet nurse comes. I’ll pay you twice whatever your normal fee is. Please! Don’t leave me all alone, at the mercy of my family!”

In the end, Sarah agreed to stay for another day, not because of Mrs. Wooten’s pleas but because she thought she might yet learn something that would help Malloy.

 

 

M
ALLOY FIGURED HE’D PROBABLY WASTED HIS ENTIRE day attending the Wooten funeral. Nobody acted at all strangely, unless you counted Oldham, who really had no business showing up at the Wooten house at all. You couldn’t really blame him, though. If he wanted the girl, he’d be a fool to miss an opportunity to see her again. The next time he came to the front door, he might not be admitted.

The next morning Frank decided to return to Wooten’s office. He’d been thinking about Sarah’s theory that Wooten had been killed by somebody he was in business with. Not that Frank had any reason to believe that was true, but her remark had gotten him wondering. He’d looked at Wooten’s appointments for Saturday, the day he’d been murdered, but it wasn’t very likely his killer had scheduled the deed ahead of time so Mr. Wooten would write it neatly in his appointment book. The killer might, however, have visited Wooten earlier in the week and gotten into an argument with the man or received some bad news that made him come back at a later time, unannounced, to confront Wooten.

The clerk at the front desk wasn’t happy to see Frank again.

“Mr. Young isn’t in today,” Peters informed his unwelcome visitor.

“I came to take another look around Mr. Wooten’s office,” Frank said.

“Didn’t you already search it?”

Frank gave him a look that usually sent criminals running for cover.

“I . . . I’ll check with Mr. Snodgrass,” he decided and scurried away.

Frank remembered the head accountant from his previous visit. The older man had the dignity of a respected and valued employee, and he also wasn’t happy to see Frank.

“Peters says you want to see Mr. Wooten’s office again.”

“I especially want to see his appointment book. I need to know who he met with last week and what they talked about.”

“What could that possibly have to do with his death?” Snodgrass wanted to know.

Frank managed not to lose his temper. “I won’t know that until I see the book, now will I? Now if you aren’t interested in helping the police find Mr. Wooten’s killer . . .”

Snodgrass sniffed, but he said, “Come with me.”

He escorted Frank back to the office. The door was closed, and when Snodgrass opened it, Frank saw that the curtains had been drawn. Someone had worked very hard to clean up the bloodstains, but the carpet would have to be replaced. The room had a musty, unused feel to it now that the former resident was gone. Would Leander use this office when he took over his father’s half of the business? Frank wondered idly.

Snodgrass went straight to the desk, not allowing himself to look at the ruined area of the carpet. He pulled open a drawer and hesitated a moment before lifting out the ledger book and the stack of papers Frank had noticed on Saturday, the pages on which someone had been adding up columns of numbers. Snodgrass set them carefully on the desktop, off to the side, then retrieved the appointment book that Frank had looked at earlier. He laid it on the desk and found the correct page.

“Here it is,” he said, stepping back so Frank could take his place and examine it.

“Tell me who these people are and why they met with Mr. Wooten that week,” Frank said.

Snodgrass began with Monday and gave Frank the barest of information about each appointment. The early part of the week held nothing interesting or sinister.

“What did he and Mr. Young discuss here on Thursday?” Frank asked when Snodgrass tried to skip over that appointment.

“I’m sure I have no idea,” he said, although the color rising in his face told a different story. “You should discuss that with Mr. Young.”

Frank took a stab in the dark. “Is the business having problems?” Frank waited, watching Snodgrass’s carefully expressionless face. “You’d know if it was,” Frank guessed.

Snodgrass didn’t flinch, but his gaze did dart, however briefly, to the ledger sitting on the corner of Wooten’s desk. “I am not aware of any problems,” he lied.

Frank pretended to believe him. He turned back to the appointment book and flipped the page to Friday.

“What’s this?” he asked, squinting at the hurriedly scribbled name entered at the end of the day. “Does that say ‘Oldham’?”

Snodgrass peered at the entry through his pince- nez. “I believe it does.”

“Do you know Oldham?”

“I do not. He wasn’t a client. I believe he was here on a personal matter.”

“Did you see him when he was here?”

“Yes,” Snodgrass admitted reluctantly.

“Was he alone?”

“I believe another gentleman came with him.”

“Do you know the other man’s name?”

“I wasn’t introduced,” he hedged.

“What did the other man look like?”

“Really, I didn’t take any notice of him.”

“An older man?” Frank tried, trying to figure out how to describe Rossiter. “Was he deaf?”

“I believe Mr. Oldham is deaf, yes,” Snodgrass said.

Frank was ready to throttle him. “No, the other man.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Snodgrass said. “Or at least he could speak and understand what was spoken to him. But Miss Electra is deaf, and she can speak . . .”

“Yes, I know, but you can tell she’s deaf all the same,” Frank said impatiently. “Did this man talk the way she does or did he talk like he could hear?”

“I believe he could hear. Mr. Oldham would make signs with his hands, and this gentleman would speak for him.”

“Was his name Rossiter, by any chance?”

“It may have been,” he allowed.

That would have been about right. Wooten would have received the letter from Higginbotham on Thursday evening, and he would have immediately questioned Electra and then sent for Adam Oldham. Wooten didn’t understand signing, and Oldham couldn’t speak, so Oldham would need an interpreter. He wasn’t likely to bring his mother along on a visit like this, so Rossiter was the most logical choice since he’d been involved at the beginning.

Frank would give a lot to know what was said at that meeting. He might be able to find out, too, if he scared Rossiter enough. The man had lied to him about knowing Wooten, so Frank might be able to convince him he’d go to jail for obstructing justice or something.

“Did Mr. Wooten have any other appointments that aren’t in the book?”

Snodgrass stiffened slightly before he said, “I’m not aware of any.”

“I think you are,” Frank said. “If I’m going to find out who killed Mr. Wooten, I need to know everything there is to know about what happened in the days before he died. You do want to see his killer caught and punished, don’t you?”

“I don’t know anything about who might have killed him,” Snodgrass insisted.

But he did know something. Frank was sure of it. He wasn’t going to betray his employer, even his dead employer, but someone else might.

“If you’re finished here, I have work to do,” Snodgrass said, hastily returning the appointment book, the ledger, and the papers back to the drawer where he’d found them. Then he went to the door and waited.

Plainly, he wasn’t going to leave Frank alone in the office, which was exactly what Frank needed for him to do.

Frank allowed Snodgrass to escort him out. He thanked Snodgrass for his help and then lingered until he had returned to his office before turning back to the young clerk at the front desk. Peters was watching him the way somebody might watch a wild animal that had wandered in off the streets.

“Peters, Mr. Snodgrass said you’d know the name of the man who came in with Mr. Oldham on Friday afternoon.”

Peters seemed relieved to be asked such an easy question. “Oh, yes, he told me his name was Rossiter. He didn’t have an appointment, and I’m not supposed to take anyone back who isn’t on the list, but Mr. Oldham is deaf, you see, and he’d brought Mr. Rossiter along to . . . to . . .”

“To interpret?” Frank supplied.

“Is that what you call it? Mr. Oldham made signs with his hands, and Mr. Rossiter told me what he was saying.”

“Yes, that’s what you call it,” Frank said with a friendly smile, then leaned over and said softly, “I guess Mr. Wooten was pretty angry after they left.”

Peters glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one else was nearby. “Oh, yes. He didn’t get angry often, but when he did . . . He didn’t shout or anything. That wasn’t his way. He’d just get real quiet and cold, like he could freeze you to the spot with just a look.”

“Did he ever get angry at you?”

“Once.” Peters shuddered. “I made sure it never happened again!”

“If he wasn’t shouting, how did you know he was angry that day?”

“He sent for me after they left, to send the telegram. When I saw his eyes . . .” He shuddered again.

“Who did he send a telegram to?” Frank asked idly.

“His son,” Peters said without thinking, then caught himself, unsure of whether he should have revealed that bit of information.

Of course, Frank thought. Oldham would have told Wooten that Leander had hired Oldham to teach Electra. He’d want to deflect as much blame from himself as possible. It hadn’t been his idea to meet Wooten’s underaged daughter secretly. Her own brother had arranged it.

Frank nodded conspiratorially at Peters. “I guess he wanted to see Leander right away,” he guessed.

“Oh, yes,
right
away. He told Leander to take the train up on Saturday morning and come straight to the office.”

“D
ID LEANDER COME ON SATURDAY?” FRANK ASKED.

“Not that I know of, but . . .” He glanced over his shoulder again. “I don’t think he’d dare refuse.”

Now wasn’t that interesting? Leander Wooten had been summoned to his father’s office on the very afternoon he’d been murdered. He’d also never mentioned that to Frank. Frank would have to ask him if he’d kept that appointment and what had happened when he did.

But first he had to check on one more thing.

“Could I use your lavatory before I go?” he asked.

“Oh, certainly,” Peters said. “It’s down the hall on the left, just before you get to Mr. Wooten’s office.”

Frank knew that already. After looking around to make sure he was unobserved, Frank slipped into Wooten’s office, went straight to his desk. and found the ledger and the mysterious stack of papers. He slid the papers into the book, tucked the book under his arm, and made his way briskly back down the hall and past Peters’s desk. The clerk was speaking with another man, and Frank nodded as he went by, not stopping even when Peters said something that might have been, “What do you have there?”

In another moment, Frank had melted into the crowd and vanished into the teaming city streets.

 

 

S
ARAH WAS ROCKING THE NEWEST ADDITION TO THE Wooten family in the chair the servants had brought over from the nursery when Betty Parmer entered the room unannounced. She hesitated a moment, looking to see if Mrs. Wooten was awake, before proceeding up to the bedside.

“Leander didn’t come home last night,” she informed Mrs. Wooten.

Even Sarah needed a moment to comprehend this amazing statement.

“What do you mean, he didn’t come home?” Mrs. Wooten asked, blinking in confusion.

“I mean he went out last night and never returned. I thought nothing of it when he wasn’t at breakfast. He seldom is when he’s at home, but when he didn’t appear for lunch, I decided to rouse him. “None of the servants heard him come home last night, and his bed hasn’t been slept in.”