An Owl Too Many (7 page)

“But you can’t do that!”

Winifred drew herself up and looked down her nose like a grand duchess laying out a miscreant footman. “I’d like to know why not.”

“It’s impossible!”

“I think what Mr. Sopwith means, Miss Binks,” Lawyer Debenham interrupted, “is that you pretty much own Golden Apples already. You see, the company has never gone public, which is why you’ve never seen their stock listed anywhere in the reports. What happened was that about twenty years ago—I’d have to look up the exact date—a penniless young couple named Compote approached your grandfather with an idea. They wanted to start a food-packaging enterprise that would produce and market only naturally grown, nutritionally sound, highest-quality products. At that time, as I probably don’t have to tell you, the general public was much less aware of such things than people are today, and so-called nature foods were often dismissed as being only for crackpots and faddists.”

Winifred smiled. “But Grandfather was himself a crackpot and faddist, so of course he jumped in with both feet, as they’d been wise enough to expect he would. I’m sure he’d have thought theirs a splendid idea even if they’d been as nutty as he, only it just so happened they weren’t.”

Mr. Debenham smiled back. “I might remind you, Miss Binks, that while your grandfather was of an—um—adventurous nature, he was also a very shrewd businessman. He agreed to finance the new company on condition that he was to hold seventy percent of the stock. The remaining thirty shares were to be held by the Compotes, who would have the option of buying back twenty-one percent of his shares should they desire to obtain controlling interest in Golden Apples. As of this date, they have not seen fit to do so.”

“Couldn’t if they wanted to,” Sopwith grunted. “They don’t have the money.”

“I have no information on that point,” said Debenham. “However, it does bring up another angle of which you should be aware, Miss Binks. You and the Compotes each have first option on all the other party’s shares, which means that if you should decide to sell, you’ll have to give them first chance to buy. And vice versa, of course. This may pose a dilemma.”

“I don’t see that it does,” said Winifred. “All we have to do is pump in some fresh capital to beef up the Golden Apples’s sales force, redesign its packaging, and do some aggressive advertising ourselves. We’ll have a major advantage over Lackovites there, because we’ll be telling the truth. Since I’m really the senior partner in the enterprise, the Compotes can’t object to my taking a hand, can they? Please make an appointment with them for early next week, Mr. Debenham, and explain that I want to discuss our new sales program. Will you be available to accompany me?”

“Of course, Miss Binks. You know you always come first with me.”

Peter hadn’t thought Lawyer Debenham much for looks, till he smiled at Winifred Binks. The old coot was in love with her, by gum! And Winifred was blushing, though she tried to pretend she wasn’t.

“How kind. I’ll expect your call, then. And you, Mr. Sopwith, must let me know the minute it’s sold how much you get for the Lackovites stock, so that I’ll have an idea what else we should sell in order to make up the balance of our advertising budget. Now is there anything else anyone wants to talk about? Mr. Sopwith? Mr. Tangent?”

Neither answered.

“Mr. Debenham? Peter? Dr. Svenson?”

“Fake figures.”

While the others talked, Thorkjeld Svenson had been poring over the Lackovites report, jotting down calculations in the margin in his surprisingly small, precise handwriting. Now he was showing Mr. Debenham what he’d written.

“Why, bless my soul!” the lawyer exclaimed. “Mr. Tangent, how could you have overlooked such glaring discrepancies?”

“I—I didn’t have time to check the figures,” stammered the accountant. “Mr. Sopwith—that is, I was handed the folder just as we were leaving the office. I wouldn’t have—I can’t imagine why they—” Catching his superior’s wrathful eye, he faltered into silence.

“Please don’t distress yourself, Mr. Tangent,” said Winifred. “Those figures don’t matter a bit, since we shan’t have anything more to do with Lackovites anyway. I trust this convinces you, Mr. Sopwith, that I did in fact know what I was talking about when I called them a pack of opportunists. A pack of rogues would have been an apter epithet.”

“I—ah—”

“Yes, Mr. Sopwith, I quite understand. You’ve been in charge of the trust only since your predecessor’s retirement, and I’m sure you had a dreadful mass of paperwork to cope with in the process of transferring Grandfather’s holdings to me. One could hardly expect you to be thoroughly familiar with all the details. So what we must do next is have you and Mr. Tangent sit down with Mr. Debenham and Mrs. Chilicothe, who’s our own accountant, and make a thorough check of every single item that pertains to the trust.”

“But that would take weeks,” Sopwith protested. “Or even more. Maybe months. Even years!”

“Time is what I pay you for, Mr. Sopwith,” Winifred replied serenely. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to get off on the wrong foot with the Internal Revenue Service over somebody’s faulty arithmetic. Dr. Svenson, I know you have many demands on your time, but since you’re so expert at managing the college finances and since the success of our field station depends at present on my personal solvency, perhaps you’d consent to oversee the checking committee?”

“Pleasure.”

Even at his most benign, Thorkjeld Svenson was an awesome figure. Sopwith looked more than a bit taken aback, Tangent was openly terrified.

This one slipup didn’t necessarily mean the pair had been cooking the books, Peter told himself. Maybe Sopwith suspected his predecessor had been up to shenanigans and was afraid of making waves lest he lose the account for his bank. Maybe he was just a lazy bastard who’d been loafing on his job, assuming that a woman unused to handling large sums of money would let herself be hornswoggled into believing whatever he told her. He knew better by now, by George. Peter wondered how much overtime Sopwith and Tangent would be putting into the Binks account over this weekend.

“I’M AFRAID MR. SOPWITH
may be rather put out with me.” Winifred Binks was trying to act repentant. “I wasn’t awfully tactful, was I?”

“Can’t be tactful to a yackass,” growled Svenson.

“You handled him just fine,” Peter added. “Of course Sopwith’s upset at being made to look like a fool, but it’s not your fault that he happens to be one. I expect what really got to him is your starting to whittle away at your stock portfolio. The Binks Trust is no doubt his bank’s biggest account and he’s going to catch some flak if he doesn’t keep it that way. You’ve already committed yourself to a major expense with no chance of return by underwriting the field station. Once you start bankrolling Golden Apples, you’ll be putting another big dent in the pile, at least for the time being.”

“And what if I do? My own wants are minimal. I have no dependents to think of, so I’m quite at liberty to have some fun with my money. That’s how Grandfather always operated, and it worked for him. Until that last venture, but I’m not quite far enough around the bend for anything like that. At least I don’t think I am.”

“But you’re sure Golden Apples is a sound proposition?” Peter asked somewhat nervously.

“As sure as one can be. I went into their whole situation most carefully with Mr. Debenham and Mrs. Chilicothe. We figure to invest roughly three million dollars in seed money. Counting tax breaks and so forth, we should be able to recoup the entire sum over a period of five to six years. It’s not going to be difficult to get Golden Apples rolling because they have so much going for them already. And we don’t intend to squander the money recklessly. For instance, I’m planning to give the company lots of free time on our television station once we get cracking. Not advertising per se, you know, but subtle touches like using empty Golden Apples tins to stick wild plants in and making sure the labels show on camera. That sort of thing is done all the time on commercial shows, I’m told. Peter, you have such a charmingly devious mind, you won’t mind thinking up a few schemes in a good cause, will you?”

“Not at all,” Peter assured her. “How long should it take to get a squirrel out of a bird feeder?”

“What? Oh, you mean Viola and Knapweed, I’d forgotten all about them. They do seem to be taking their sweet time, don’t they? Heavens, you don’t suppose they’ve been netted?”

“I sincerely hope not. An alternative explanation might be that they’ve found themselves a comfortable nest of leaves somewhere and are engaging in—er—pastoral pursuits.”

“How astute of you, Peter. That possibility, I confess, would not have entered my mind. The disadvantage of having been reared by a maiden aunt, I suppose. Perhaps we should stroll over to the edge of the woods and converse in raised voices on the beauties of nature.”

Thorkjeld Svenson offered no conjecture, he was already out the door, galloping toward the woods. Winifred was startled.

“Does he really think they may be in danger?”

“No,” said Peter. “He’s afraid he himself is. Sieglinde Svenson has—er—decided views about canoodling on campus, and the field station counts as part of the college.”

“I see. So if Knapweed has succeeded in getting Viola on her back, Sieglinde will soon get on Thorkjeld’s. Dear me, how Rabelaisian. Come on, then, we’d better chaperone.”

The two hurried out past the bird feeder, noting that it was now squirrelless and not much the worse for wear, though empty of seed. A little way into the woods, they came upon the president hunkered down beside a stump. On the stump sat a downcast young botanist, sniffing dejectedly at a sprig of fragrant bedstraw.

“The squirrel tried to bite me,” Knapweed was telling the older man, “so I pulled my hand back and she called me a wimp. So then I grabbed it by the tail and hauled it out but I was trying not to hurt it so it got away from me and jumped on her shoulder and scratched her a little and she started yelling that I did it on purpose. So the squirrel jumped off and ran up a tree and then she—well, she wanted to and I said I wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t what?” asked Miss Binks. “Oh, I get it. Pastoral pursuits.”

“I just don’t happen to believe a person should expect—and anyway, I didn’t want to,” Knapweed muttered sulkily. “I’m practically engaged, for Pete’s sake! Well, sort of, in a way. My girlfriend’s father’s a casket salesman and pretty straitlaced, so I can’t go around getting—but I wouldn’t even if I did because I think such things ought to mean more than as if we were just a couple of squirrels or something. Not that I have any right to be knocking the squirrels, they’re not my field. For all I know, squirrels are just as moral as casket salesmen. But Viola’s so darned—well, I shouldn’t be saying stuff about her, either. Maybe she was just trying to get a rise out of me.”

“M’yes,” said Peter. “No doubt. Which way did she go?”

“I don’t know. I happened to notice this
Galium triflorum
here and tried to divert her interest, but she told me to stick it in my ear and flounced off in a huff.”

“Well, these things do happen.” Winifred sighed. “To some people, at any rate. Why don’t you go back inside, Knapweed? We seem to be having rather a run on visitors today and we oughtn’t to leave the station unmanned. We others may as well see where Viola’s taken herself off to. This way, I think.”

Winifred Binks could track like an Indian; she’d noticed some small derangement of a leaf or a dent in the forest mold and was plunging confidently through the undergrowth. As a rule, neither she nor the men would have been unwilling to let the young woman prowl at will, but today was different.

The spoor was not hard to follow, Viola was no Indian. “She’s circling toward the road,” Winifred announced after they’d gone a quarter of a mile or so. “Thank goodness for that. She ought to be out of the woods by now.”

“Urrgh!”

Dr. Svenson could not have stated the position more succinctly. The trackers were in fact near the road by now, they could catch glimpses of asphalt through the trees. More than that, however, they could see directly in front of them a small area of torn-up ferns, scuffed-up leaf mold, broken twigs, and a wisp of bright green cotton knit caught on the thorns of a blackberry vine.

Winifred was determined not to panic. “She could have stepped on a digger wasps’ nest and got caught in the briers when she tried to run. That happened to me once, and it’s no fun, I can tell you. One can’t help dancing around, which of course is the worst thing to do. See, she’s plunged through the bracken over there.”

“Carrying a hundred-pound boulder?” said Peter. “Look at the depth of those footprints.”

“Viola’s a big girl and she’s wearing heavy boots,” Winifred insisted. “Anyway, those prints won’t tell us much, too many pine needles mixed in. They do look rather ominous—look, they go straight to the road. Oh dear.”

Streaks of black rubber on the asphalt told a story. “She must have been dragged out of the woods and taken away in a car, but why?”

“Phone,” barked Svenson.

“Yes, the police. Hurry!”

Winifred began to run back toward the field station. Peter outstripped her this time, he’d been a miler in his youth and could still cover the ground when he had to.

Knapweed was alone in the lobby, putting his bedstraw in a flower press; he looked up and started to say something. Peter ignored him and rushed to the telephone. By now he knew the state-police number by heart and the officer at the switchboard recognized his voice.

“What’s up, Professor Shandy?”

“I’m at the Balaclava College field station on the Whittington Road. We’re missing a young woman employee named Viola Buddley. About five foot seven, stocky build, weight maybe a hundred and fifty or so, wearing hiking boots, khaki shorts, and a torn green jersey that reads ‘Have you hugged a tree today?’ across the front. Reddish-blond hair and a great many freckles. It appears from the signs we’ve found that she was captured in the woods a short way from the station during the past fifteen minutes or so, and taken away by car. Don’t ask me what car, I haven’t the foggiest idea. We’re guessing that this may have something to do with last night’s murder of Emory Emmerick. He’d been around the field station all last week and she’d gone out with him the night before he was killed. Please notify patrol cars in the area. If I get anything more, I’ll let you know.”