Natural Causes (21 page)

"Sorry," I said.

He smiled. "Oh, it's all right. I'm quite used
to being considered an ogre or an automaton. It's part of the job. I
can't say that it's a part I enjoy. But every businessman has to make
hard decisions. Otherwise there wouldn't be any business to run. I
wouldn't have acted on the rumors I'd heard if I hadn't thought they
were grounded in fact. Facts that I'd personally observed."

"What exactly did you hear?" I asked him.
It was one of two questions that I'd wanted to ask for days.

"That Quentin wasn't doing the job he was hired
to do," Glendora said. "That he was taking a lot of pills
and drinking a great deal. That he was depressed, possibly suicidal.
That he'd lost his way and grown desperate."

I asked the second question. "And who did you
hear this from?"

Glendora took another sip of his drink. He put the
glass back down on the table and folded his fingers beneath his chin.
"I heard it from Quentin," he said.

I stared at him. "I beg your pardon? You heard
it from Quentin?"

"Yes. Oh, I heard other things from other
people, too." He tossed one hand out, as if the other things
didn't matter. "From Walt and Helen and Jack. But then you
always hear these sorts of things in this business. You get used to
it after a time. The constant placing of blame. The scuttling after
dollars. You get used to it." But he sounded as if he hadn't
quite gotten used to it yet. "Walt called me three weeks ago.
Helen sometime before that. And Jack ... well, I talk to Jack almost
every day. Each of them had his own reasons for complaint--some
better, some worse. Quentin had a reason, too, I suppose. In a way, I
was hoping that you'd find out what it was. It's been bothering me
since last Thursday."

"Quentin's mother said you had a meeting with
him on Thursday."

"Yes. I saw him that afternoon. Here, as a
matter of fact. In this room. We had lunch together."

"What was the purpose of the meeting?"

"Quentin wanted to talk to me."

"About what?"

"I thought he was going to talk about 'Phoenix,'
about the problems he'd been having completing a document. That's
what he'd said on the phone, when he arranged the meeting on Thursday
morning. You know he'd promised Helen three weeks before that he and
Walt would deliver a document by this Monday. Helen, Jack, and I
discussed it in New York, and we'd agreed to give him one more week
if he asked for it. But no longer than that. The show simply couldn't
have survived any longer without a workable story line. To be frank,
I don't know if it will survive anyway--a lot of damage has already
been done. That was what I was going to tell him on Thursday--that he
had one more week to deliver or his job was in serious jeopardy."

Glendora unlocked his hands and dropped them heavily
on the table, as if he were done using them for the day. "As it
worked out, I didn't have to say that to him. I didn't really do much
talking at all. Neither did Quentin. It was a very odd meeting.

"When he arrived I could see that he was in a
bad way. He'd been in a bad way for months; but that morning he
looked like he was going to die. He kept taking pills. Pacing
nervously around the room. Once he phoned his doctor. I was seriously
afraid he was going to have an attack. I'd never seen him like that
before. He'd always seemed so much in control. So unflappable. It was
very upsetting. Jack, Walt, and Helen had said that he was in a
decline, but this was worse than I'd thought. The first thing he said
to me was that if he couldn't produce the document by Monday, he was
going to resign. Under the circumstances, I was grateful that he'd
said it."

"Better than leaving him in the room with a
loaded gun," I said.

Glendora frowned. "I don't like kicking someone
when he's down, Harry. You're quite wrong if you think I do."

"Sorry," I said.

"We had a few drinks. Quentin had more than a
few. Then he told me a peculiar story--one that has stayed with me.
He said that he'd spent most of that week visiting places from his
past, just as if he knew he was going to die that weekend. I didn't
know whether to believe him or not. But when he did die on Monday, I
called one of the people he'd mentioned--a school teacher. And she
told me that he had, in fact, come to see her on Wednesday. I asked
her what they'd talked about, and she'd said that he'd wanted to know
what he'd been like as a boy-what she'd thought of him."

Charles knocked on the door and rolled in a cart with
our food on it. He served the meals and left, but neither of us
touched our plates.

"He said other things," Glendora said.
"About drugs and liquor. And then he told me if things kept
going the way they were, he was going to take his own life. That's
why, on Monday, when I heard he was dead, I thought . . ."

"That he'd killed himself," I said.

Glendora nodded. "I didn't know what to say to
him at the time. You know, we liked each other but he'd never been
intimate. He wasn't a warm man. I suppose I'm not either. I said
something feeble--the sort of thing you always say in the face of an
unexpected collapse. That it would be all right. That we would work
with him. I think I even said that he could have more time to finish
the document. But I don't think he was disappointed at my loss for
words. In fact, before he left, he regained his composure and told me
not to worry about him--that he'd be all right. Later on, after he
died, I had the terrible feeling that I had been part of that tour
he'd been making. Perhaps the last stop. That I was just one more
person whom he had visited--to find out what we'd thought of him."

Glendora shook his head sadly. "Can you imagine
that? A man like him, with that much experience and personal charm,
coming to me--a virtual stranger--to find out who he was?"

I didn't say it out loud. But I wondered where else a
man like Quentin Dover could have gone.
 

24

Talking about Quentin's last days didn't do much for
our appetites. Glendora picked through his salad and I stared at mine
without interest. What I really wanted was another drink. But since
Charles seemed to come at discreet intervals, I had to make do with a
glass of ice water.

When he'd finished toying with his food, Glendora put
the silverware down gently beside the plate, as if he were setting
the table again, and gave me one of his grave, sad-eyed looks. It was
hard for me to tell what he was thinking since he always wore the
same long-suffering expression. But what he'd said earlier, and the
way that he'd said it, made me wonder if I'd misjudged him. Perhaps
he really had hired me to find the truth about Quentin's death. There
was no telling what might devil a man's conscience, even an executive
of United American. And Quentin had clearly troubled Glendora. And
moved him. It was strange, I thought, how many people had cared for
Dover, in spite of himself.

"Do you think he did kill himself?"
Glendora said as he pushed gently at his fork and knife.

"It's possible," I said.

"Do you think you could find out for sure?"

"For United?"

"For me," he said.

"I can try, Frank."

He nodded. "That's all I want--for someone to
try."

"There's no need to feel guilty about him,"
I said. "He created most of the trouble he was in by himself."

"I'm aware of that." Glendora cleared his
throat, as if to warn me off the subject of his possible guilts. "Did
you want to talk to Seth?" he said.

"Quentin's lawyer?" He nodded.

"Yes. This afternoon if possible."

There was a phone on one
of the sideboards. Glendora picked it up and made the call.

***

Seth Murdock had an office in the Central Trust
Building, a few blocks west of the Maisonette. I walked over to it,
through the hot, sultry afternoon. I found Murdock's name in the
lobby display case. He was high up--2015. A black bellman in a red
cap showed me to the express elevator and a few seconds later I got
out on the twentieth floor.

The hallway, like the lobby, was old-fashioned, all
marble pilasters and plastered walls. But Murdock's office was
surprisingly up to date. It had been rehabbed in a contemporary
style--dry-wall and chrome fixtures, plush carpeting on the floors
and Danish modern furniture in the waiting area. I gave the secretary
my name and sat down beside a woman with a fat, padded brace on her
neck.

After a moment, the secretary told me I could go in.

The inner office was as plush as the waiting area.
Heavily carpeted, dry-walled, and furnished in a variety of dark
glossy woods. The only things that hadn't been redone were the
windows. They were tall, old-fashioned fans with round tops segmented
like slices of orange.

Murdock was standing in front of one of the windows
when I came in--his hands clasped behind his back. He had silvery
white hair, slick with pomade. He turned around as I walked up to his
desk.

"You Stoner?" he said in a raspy voice. I
nodded.

"Have a seat."

I sat down in front of a huge cherrywood desk, tiered
and ornamented like a three-decked battleship. Murdock sat down
behind it in a tall leather chair. In front his hair had been combed
and chopped in a crew cut. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles, cleaned so
immaculately that they flashed in the sunlight coming through the
windows. His face was haggard, hollow at the cheeks, pallid, and
spotted with age. He could have been in his late fifties, but his
pallor made him seem much older.

Murdock coughed hoarsely and wiped his mouth with the
back of his hand. "You're here to talk about Quentin?"

"Yes."

He tented his hands at his lips. "I really
shouldn't be talking about him at all, you know. His estate is still
in probate." He swiveled slightly in his chair and his glasses
caught the sunlight again. "However, since you're a friend of
Frank's, I'm willing to make an exception. With the understanding
that I will not talk about the provisions of Quentin's will. Is that
agreeable?"

"Yes."

"Then you may proceed."

I smiled at his locution. "I'm mainly interested
in Quentin's financial situation."

"And what does that mean?"

"Whether he was having any serious financial
problems prior to his death."

"I guess that depends on your definition of
serious." Murdock pulled a silver case out of his pocket,
flipped it open, and took out a cigarette. He tapped it several times
on the case, then stuck it in his mouth. "He was having
problems," he said as he lit the cigarette. "However with
an income the size of his, such problems were only temporary,
cash-flow things. Within a matter of months he would have
straightened them out."

"Within a matter of days he might have lost his
job," I said.

Murdock plucked the cigarette from his mouth and held
it between his thumb and forefinger, letting the blue smoke crawl
over his hand. "I was not aware of that," he said after a
moment. "The last time I spoke to Quentin he was sanguine about
his prospects."

"When was that?"

"On Friday morning," Murdock said. "He
mentioned a new project he'd become involved in. I had the impression
it was something lucrative."

"Did he tell you anything specifically about the
project?"

"We were supposed to discuss it in detail when
he came back to town on Wednesday. There were apparently some papers
to sign."

"Were you in the habit of negotiating Quentin's
contracts for him?"

"Those that didn't involve show business, yes."

"So you had the feeling that this wasn't a show
business project?"

"That was my impression."

I laughed softly and Murdock gave me an odd look.
He'd had a story for everyone--Quentin. I wondered if I'd ever find
out which one had been true.

"What exactly was the nature of Quentin's
financial problems?" I asked.

"He'd made some poor investments," Murdock
said. "Against my judgment, he'd purchased a condominium for his
mother. I don't suppose I need tell you that the condominium market
is not the place to be buying at this time. Then Connie ran up quite
a number of bills furnishing the place. And Marsha did the same with
his estate house. He also bought a ranch in New Mexico that gave him
nothing but trouble. It was situated near a dry wash and every spring
it was flooded out. Quentin spent a small fortune keeping it in
repair."

"Why didn't he sell it?"

"Why, indeed?" Murdock said. "I urged
him to on several occasions, but he claimed to be attached to the
place. Why, I don't know. I saw no good reason why Connie had to have
her own condo, either. That mansion house is far too big for two
people."

"Perhaps the three of them couldn't get along."
Murdock looked at me as if that were balderdash.

"With thirty-odd rooms they could have found a
way."

I smiled at him. "How long have you known
Quentin?"