“Al? Sure,” he said, beginning to smile as he remembered. “He was a great talker all right. He was complaining about the quarterly statement from our biggest investment. Said we weren’t getting anything back for our money, that we were speculating instead of saving, and that we were gonna lose it.”
“Do you agree?”
“No,” he said. “Not at all. A union has to do something or inflation will eat up the pension funds before anybody has a chance to use them. You have to put money into things that’ll produce profits in the long run, even if nothing much happens the first year or two.”
“What investment bothered him?”
“Well,” said O’Connell, “we have a lot tied up in an investment corporation called Fieldston Growth Enterprises.”
“Mutual funds?” Elizabeth wrote down the name.
“No. Land, mostly. Resorts, golf courses, retirement places. Al didn’t like it one bit. Said he’d tried to find out about them and couldn’t. There weren’t any resorts or anything that they owned, so he panicked. They’re new, so they haven’t done any of that yet. But I’ve seen brochures with the designs and layouts, and it’ll be big. I’m sorry Al couldn’t live to see it.”
“What else happened that night? Did he argue with anybody?”
“No, not really. He and I went round a little about the pension fund, but it wasn’t personal.”
“Did anything else seem to be on his mind? Was he depressed lately or nervous?”
“Al Veasy didn’t commit suicide,” said O’Connell. “His truck blew up is all. Must have been a leak in the fuel system. Could happen to anybody the way they make ’em now. If I was his wife I’d sue General Motors.”
“So it looked to you like just a tragic accident?”
“What else? Murder? What for?”
“I just have to cover all the possibilities, Mr. O’Connell.”
Elizabeth thanked him and walked back to the waiting police car. Both doors were open and the officer was leaning against the trunk gazing off down the road through his mirror-lens sunglasses. He was probably nice looking, she thought, but you’d have to get him out of uniform to tell. They always seemed to be covered with bits of metal. “Where to?” he said.
“Twenty-seven twenty-four Grove Avenue.”
“Veasy’s house?”
“That’s right,” said Elizabeth. All the stops were routine, she thought—no way to break out of it, nobody new to ask.
The rest of Elizabeth’s morning was just as unproductive. What she got from Mrs. Veasy was inarticulate grief. At least the investigating officers had managed to find out a little about the dead man’s habits. But they did this kind of thing every day, and were probably pretty good at it—ignoring what people were trying to say—their theories, opinions about people and life and death—and listening for what they had to throw in to make it comprehensible to an outsider—specific information about the victim’s habits, behavior, friends, and enemies.
Elizabeth was suddenly tired. She glanced at her watch and saw that it was almost noon. “Let’s go back to the station,” she said. The policeman drove with a special kind of authority, a tiny bit faster than anyone else on the straight, level highway, so the other cars would move aside to let them cruise by. She looked out on the rows of low suburban houses as they slid past, now and then surprised by a squat date palm or a row of towering eucalyptus trees. If it weren’t for the plants this could be Indiana. Or Virginia, anyway. Just about anything seemed to grow here. But not on Grove Avenue. The houses were built so close together there wasn’t even room for a decent lawn.
When they reached the station she asked to use the desk sergeant’s telephone and called Padgett in Washington. “Hi, Elizabeth,” he said. There was something odd about his voice, but she couldn’t identify it. Amusement? Spite?
“Hi, Roger,” she said. “What have you got for me?”
“Precision Tooling isn’t going to help much. They’re purer than Caesar’s wife. Started in 1936 by a couple of master machinists who hired a few friends, then grew when the war came. Made airplane parts, patterns for drop- forged ship fittings, things like that. Been a minor defense subcontractor ever since.”
“Any chance of new stockholders? Unusual loans or anything?”
“Elizabeth, these people have been on our books for thirty-five years. They get a new clearance every time a contract comes up for renewal. If they moved the water cooler we’d know it. They’re in perfect health.”
“Well, save the file for me anyway. What about the union?”
“Clean too, at least so far. They’re part of the file, but we’re still checking with the Department of Labor. All we know at the moment is there aren’t any shady characters hanging around the factory; that was all Defense was interested in. Labor should know something.”
“When they answer ask them for information on the pension plan.”
“The what?”
“The union’s pension fund. And oh, yes. I’m afraid I’ve got a new one. Fieldston Growth Enterprises. The union invested in it.”
“All right, but keep the fishing to a minimum, okay?”
“Sure, Roger. Whatever you say,” said Elizabeth, without conviction. “I’ll call you early tomorrow.”
“Wait a minute, Elizabeth,” said Padgett. “Brayer wants to talk to you.” The irony was back in his voice.
Then Brayer’s voice said, “Elizabeth, have you heard the news about Senator Claremont?”
“No. What about him?”
“He died in his hotel room in Denver last night. It looks like a stroke or a heart attack, but the autopsy will take a while. There’s going to be an investigation, so I’m taking you off what you’re working on. I want you in Denver by late afternoon or early evening.”
Elizabeth couldn’t help herself. She said, “What for? It’s crazy! I’ve been on this case exactly four hours, not to mention the fact that there’s nothing for me to do in Denver when I get there.”
“No use arguing about it, you’re going. It’s orders from the Attorney General’s office. We’ve got to send a field agent, and you’re the closest one that I can spare today. This thing Roger’s working on looks big, and everybody’s tied up.”
“You trying to tell me the FBI doesn’t have a field office in Denver?”
“Damn it, Elizabeth! I’m not going to stand here for the rest of the day justifying my decisions to you. There are reasons, that’s all. Now get moving.” He hung up, hard.
Elizabeth whispered to herself as she hung up the telephone, “Yes, sir!” When she looked up, Hart was coming down the hall with the chief of police.
“Chief, thank you very much for your cooperation,” he said. “We’ll be in touch.” It was all very cordial, but there was an edge to his voice as though he were trying not to sound angry.
As they walked down the steps to their rented car he said, “Was that your call from home?”
“Yes,” she said. “Did you get one too?”
“Of course. A little while ago.” The anger was definite now.
“I don’t understand it.”
“I do,” he said. “Politics. Pure politics. They have to reassure the senators who vote on budgets that we take it seriously when one of them dies. Even if it’s a heart attack.”
“But I’m not even a field investigator. I’m a data analyst.”
“Who cares? There’s not going to be anything to investigate. We’re just there for the roll call.”
“That still doesn’t explain why they pulled us off an actual fresh murder when there must be thirty or forty teams closer to Denver who are better qualified than I am at least—”
“How do you know this was a murder?” he asked.
“Well it is, isn’t it?” she said. “Nothing else makes any sense at all. I was at Veasy’s house this morning. They have a yard you could cover with a bedspread, and he was supposed to be carrying big sacks of fertilizer around in his pickup truck. What for? And the other thing is that you’re really angry and I don’t think you would be unless you thought it was a murder too, so we can at least agree on that even if nobody else does. If you didn’t think the case was important—that is, a murder—you wouldn’t care if they took us off it.”
As she spoke, the words came faster and faster until Hart could hardly follow her. He took his eyes off the road for a second and saw Elizabeth was staring straight ahead with her brows knitted a little, which meant she
