Murder in a Good Cause (3 page)

“If he is so sure that the economy is improving, then why doesn't he wait a little while before going ahead? That sounds like the sensible way to do things.”

“Mamma, you don't understand. He can't wait. These people are just not willing to give him any time to find refinancing. We'll be ruined.” At this, her voice rose in a small shriek, and then she subsided into tears.

Her mother continued to look at her in a detached and interested sort of way. “You'll have to excuse me if I don't find that very comforting, Theresa. I have great confidence in bankers' instincts, even when I don't necessarily admire their intellect. It seems to me that if they thought that their money was safe with your husband, he wouldn't be in this situation. And you two seem to expect that I will be stupider than the banks and will throw my money down the drain with yours.” She turned her head impatiently away from her sobbing daughter. “Will you stop that noise! I will consider the whole thing. Tell your husband I will make an appointment for him to discuss the matter with Frank and the accountant, who will no doubt want to look at his books. If there seems to be a reasonable chance of the business being salvaged, I might do something about it, but this would be the last time—the very last time—that you could possibly count on me to rescue you. I have to think of Nikki, you know, and Friedl and Klaus, as well.
You
cannot expect to get everything for yourself, especially after your father treated you so generously.”

A look of sullen mutiny settled grimly on Theresa's pretty face. “Thank you, Mamma” choked itself out from between her tight lips. “We'll see you tonight.”

“Certainly, my dear. I would appreciate it if you could keep Milan from discussing this tonight. I will have other things on my mind. Give the children a kiss from Grandmamma and tell them I will see them tomorrow.” She made a slight gesture of dismissal, as though to an annoying housemaid, and opened the drawer of the small desk in front of her.

A black Porsche was drawn up in the broad half circle of gravel in front of the house. It lay open to the September sun and breezes, which played on the short dark hair (thinning at the crown) of the man waiting in the driver's seat. But the sun, the birds, the breezes, the spreading trees didn't seem to be bringing him much joy and comfort. His handsome, gently Slavic face was screwed into an expression somewhere between cold rage and furious impatience. Theresa came hurtling out of the house, saw the unpleasant set of his shoulders, stopped, and sauntered over to the car. The slight scuffle of her feet on the gravel cut through his obviously unpleasant reverie, and he turned and snapped a terse “Well?” at her.

She shrugged her shoulders. “I don't know. You know what Mamma's like. Hard as nails when it comes to cash. She said a few nasty things about throwing money away and then that she might consider the idea, but she wants Frank to look at the books with the accountant—her accountant.”

He reached over and flung open the door for her. “Shit! That's all we need.” He nibbled at a fingernail for a second before starting the car. “How good is the accountant?”

Theresa shrugged again. “I don't know. I can't remember who he is. But you won't get much past Frank. He's as suspicious as hell, and he's even tighter than Mamma with her money.”

“Screw Frank,” said Milan Milanovich. “He's a half-assed, stupid bastard. It's the accountant we have to worry about.”

“Maybe. But Frank Whitelaw still figures that he's going to marry Mamma, you know. Then all her money will be his one day, he thinks. So every minute that a penny of hers is invested in the company they'll both be breathing down your neck to see what you're doing with it. But I can't help that. I've done all I can.”

“Did you happen to point out to her,” he said in a low voice, slowly and emphatically, “that when the whole goddamned thing starts coming apart, I could end up in jail?” He eased the car into gear and started down the driveway.

“Good God, no!” said Theresa. “If she heard that, we'd never get a cent out of her. Mamma may look all broad-minded and cosmopolitan to you, but she's just a schoolteacher's daughter who never did anything illegal in her life. That's why Nikki's always in so much trouble with her. But, you know,” she said, shifting to another train of thought, “today she was talking about being fair to Nikki . . . and to Klaus. Klaus! He's just a lousy nephew. And to Aunt Friedl. I wonder what's happened.” Her look of vague sulkiness disappeared in frowning worry. “Damn. I should have spent the summer at the cottage with her; we made a bad mistake there.” She ducked instinctively as the Porsche leaped out onto St. Clair Avenue in dangerous proximity to a moving van and a fast-traveling motorcycle and then went back to what was troubling her. “Six months ago she was talking about disinheriting Nikki, you know. And she had no use for Klaus at all. In fact, I was sure we could count on Nikki's share. Dammit!”

“Is Nikki still up at the cottage?”

“She's coming down tonight for the stupid reading.” She paused while Milan negotiated a turn that involved ducking around, then cutting off, a cab and a stretch limousine in order to get into the newer, quietly expensive area where their splashy house was located. “I'll take the kids over tomorrow. She'll have recovered by then, and she'll be more in the mood. She's in a foul temper today. It was stupid of me to try, I guess.”

“Well, we can't wait forever for her to be in a generous mood. I have to have something positive to say to Grandy and to the bank by Monday, and this is Thursday.”

“Okay,” she said irritably. “Don't push me. Look what happened today because you got impatient. I'll get around her one way or another in time for that meeting.” She reached for the door before the car came to a halt. “And tonight, not a word about business or money. Just keep telling her how wonderful she was and keep your temper.”

“Christ, how stupid do you think I am?” His wife raised one contemptuous eyebrow in his direction and strode briskly along the path that bisected the perfect lawn and led into the neat and perfect house.

Clara von Hohenkammer set the phone down in its cradle and made a minute note in her desk diary. Then she pulled a flimsy airmail envelope from the narrow top drawer, took a sheet of paper from it, and read it slowly, smoothing the paper several times as she read. She folded it again and slipped it into the centre of a novel lying by her elbow. For a moment, she sat staring at the blank surface in front of her before passing her hand over her brow in a gesture of exhaustion or despair. A young man walked briskly into her line of sight, heading purposefully southwest, across the back lawn, in the direction of a large coach house in the back of the garden. Clara got up and walked over to an open window. “Paul,” she called peremptorily. “I would like to see you.”

He looked up in surprise and changed his course for the main house. “Yes, ma'am?” There wasn't much of the faithful servitor in his bored gaze. “You wanted to speak to me?”

“Yes,” she said irritably. “I was kept awake for hours last night by some sort of party. The noise came from the coach house, and your lights were on. I will not tolerate rowdiness on the premises, whether you think I am going to be here or not.”

“In the coach house?” he said, opening his dark blue eyes wide with surprise. “Oh, no, Doña Clara. Certainly not.” His soft voice throbbed with sincerity. “There was noise last night, yes. Around midnight.” He nodded emphatically. “I went out to look, and I left my lights on while I did my round. But it was a party in the ravine. Kids, probably,” he added, pointing to the fence perched just above the ravine that formed the southern border to her property. “They go there with cases of beer, and sometimes they are very loud, especially on warm nights. It is very noisy in Toronto on warm nights.” He said this almost reproachfully.

“This was not in the ravine,” said Clara firmly. “I heard car engines and doors slamming. It was up here.”

“That could have been the people next door. Was your air conditioner on?” he asked casually.

“No. I had my windows open, and you would think that they were in the room with me. It was not next door. Where were the dogs?”

“They were locked up, ma'am,” he said.

“What's the point of that if there are people prowling around outside? And why weren't the police called to get rid of whoever it was? Do you realize how many houses have been broken into this summer? And how many valuable paintings stolen? You have little enough to do around here for the enormous salary you get paid. I should at least be able to sleep peacefully at night.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said with a nod of his head. “But if you kept your air conditioner on, you wouldn't notice these little noises.”

“Little noises!” she snorted. “I have no intention of using an air conditioner in weather like this. From now on do what you are paid for.” With that she turned from the window and pressed the bell on the underside of her pretty, white-painted desk. The gardener, uncowed, stared at her erect back with expressionless eyes before resuming his interrupted walk.

After a long pause, during which Clara von Hohenkammer stood impatiently staring at the plants and hanging pots that filled the room, a short, very blond woman waddled into the room. Her face was round and pale and choked with pinkish powder; floating in the centre of it were a pair of round pale blue eyes. Her hair lay in neat waves grimly secured in place by a hair net. Her round and powerful arms were bursting out of a white uniform. She stared in the direction of her employer, her lips quivering with annoyance at being dragged from her kitchen.

Frau von Hohenkammer scarcely glanced in her direction. “Bettl, there will probably be five for an early dinner tonight. Mr. Whitelaw, my daughter and her husband, Fraulein Nikki and my nephew, if he drives her down from Muskoka. I will take some soup in my room at five-thirty. That is all.” She waved a hand dismissively.

The formidable Bettl did not dismiss that easily. “I am,” she said, “to prepare dinner for five extra people and get ready for a party tonight? I cannot do it.” She turned to go. “They can eat in a restaurant.”

Her employer whipped around and looked at her steadily. “Bettl,” she said in a poisonously calm voice, “I would ask you to remember that I pay you very well and that you have little to do, looking after me and the occasional guest. You can be replaced very easily, and I shall not hesitate to do so, I assure you. You know perfectly well that most of the food for the party is being done by the caterers. I shall expect soup in my room at five-thirty and dinner—a decent dinner, not some warmed-over goulash—for my guests at six-thirty. Fruit will suffice for dessert, since there will be cakes and pastries later at the party. Do you understand that? Because if you do not understand, then my guests can indeed go to a restaurant, and you can pack your bags and go back to Pfaffenhofen on the next plane.”

Bettl's wide expanse of throat and neck turned scarlet as she backed wordlessly out of the room.

Clara lowered herself slowly into her chair behind the pretty desk; the muscles in her cheeks sagged minutely, and a twitching flutter started in her lower right eyelid. In spite of her careful makeup, her face looked slack and gray with fatigue. Once again she rubbed her hand absentmindedly over her forehead, then picked up a folder sitting in the corner and flipped it open. Never taking her eyes off the page, she slowly rose again, moved over to a small couch by the glassed-in south wall, and arranged herself comfortably, with her feet propped up on cushions. Her lips moved soundlessly as she studied the pages in front of her, oblivious to the sound of a car tearing up the gravel drive. She started slightly when the door to the conservatory was flung open by an out-of-breath, smaller and younger version of herself.

“That's where you're hiding yourself, Mamma. Well, we're here, both of us, starving and dying of thirst, but we never stopped a second on the way down. How are you bearing up?” She leaned over, gave her mother a kiss, and stepped back to observe her critically. “You look very white. Are you ill?”

“I'm fine, Nikki, dear. Just suffering from lack of sleep. There seemed to have been rowdy hoodlums partying in our garden last night, and I lay awake until the noise quieted down. I warn you that I am in something of a temper as a result. . . . I almost fired Paul, and then Bettl, one right after the other.” She laughed. “It will do them good.”

Nikki dropped into a white wicker armchair. “Are you sure there isn't something else wrong?” she asked, bending forward and looking more closely at her mother.

“Certainly,” said Clara firmly. “I have things on my mind, but nothing is
wrong.
There are matters to be worked out, that is all. At times, life becomes rather, well, complicated and one needs a certain amount of strength and ingenuity to manage it.”

“Whatever are you talking about, Mamma?” An expression of blended amusement and alarm spread over the girl's face. “Strength and ingenuity? What has happened?”

“Nothing.” Clara suddenly looked deathly tired. “It is always difficult to judge,” she said, allowing hesitation to creep into her voice, “how one should behave in a foreign country. One never knows exactly how seriously certain things are viewed by the authorities. It was foolish of me not to hire a local manager. One forgets that the British are foreigners here, too, even if they do speak the language. That's what sentimentality gets you. And another lawyer. I need someone like Peter Lohr over here.”

“Lawyer? Mamma, what's going on?”

Clara glanced at the puzzled, worried face of her younger daughter and shook her head cheerfully. “Nothing at all. I was considering purely theoretical problems. How was the drive? And did you say ‘we'? Klaus has come with you?”