One Fearful Yellow Eye (4 page)

"From what?"

"When her father brought her back here, Mrs. Trumbill thought it would be wise to... have her stepmother investigated. She got a report on what had happened to Mrs. Geis' first husband and her two children in Buffalo over six years ago." He hesitated, looked troubled, and said, "I have a lot of respect for Gloria. I like her a great deal. And I do not like Heidi Geis Trumbill. Mrs.

Trumbill suggested to me that perhaps Gloria in a jealous rage had killed her neighbor and her first husband, and the two children who witnessed it, and then someone who could prove that's what happened showed up and the doctor was paying that person to keep silent."

"Heidi seems to have a nasty mouth."

"She thinks Gloria had her father hypnotized. I felt duty-bound to check out her murder theory.

Nonsense, of course. According to the Buffalo police reports, a neighbor saw Gloria turn into the driveway and get out of the car with a bag of groceries about two minutes after the woman had phoned the police about hearing the shots. When I told Mrs. Trumbill about that, she gave me a strange little smile and said perhaps if we kept on digging we'd probably find something sufficiently nasty in Gloria's background to account for where the money went. And, if not, it was obvious that she had talked the Doctor into putting his estate into cash and turning it over to her. How could we be sure, she asked, that Mrs. Geis hadn't already taken it out of the country?" He sighed. "I suppose I shouldn't let it bother me. Estate work gives you a chance to see people at their worst."

"How much would Heidi have gotten?"

"The way it was set up, and you must understand that there were insurance policies cashed which would have built the estate up to over seven hundred thousand. Once the estimated taxes and expenses were paid, Gloria would have gotten three hundred thousand, and his children a hundred and fifty thousand each. Three trust funds. Heidi's was the most restrictive. She was limited to the income only, say seventy-five hundred a year, and at the time of her death the principal amount was to be divided equally among her children, if any, and her brother's children. Roger was to be given the right to withdraw in any year up to ten per cent of the amount originally placed in trust for him. Gloria was to have the house and all physical property, and the right to withdraw all or any part of the monies in trust at any time. When he learned of this provision, Roger said it proved that his father was not of sound mind at the time the instruments were drawn up, because it did not make sense to give a woman untrained in the handling of money complete freedom of access to three hundred thousand dollars, while restricting the son, who was in the business of handling money, access to not more than fifteen thousand a year of the principal amount."

"Great kids, those two."

"Unfortunately I'd say they're about average."

"If nobody ever finds out where the money went, what happens? Can Gloria lose that insurance
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money?"

"No. There'll be no estate taxes at all. The governrnent can't merely assume she has the money, and procede against her on that basis. I imagine they'll keep careful track of her, and if she seems to be spending more than her income, they would ask awkward questions."

"She thinks she's being watched now."

"She might be. If it bothered her too much, I'd arrange to find out who is behind it. Oh, there was something else I discovered when I was asking Mrs. Geis about the possibility of blackmail.

She said that there was a clumsy attempt to blackmail the Doctor over two years ago, nearly three years ago in fact."

"On what basis?"

He looked uncomfortable. "I think it would be more proper if Gloria told you about it."

"Sure. I understand."

"Mr. McGee, I think it would make sense if you would advise Mrs. Geis to close this house and let us put it on the market. I think we might be able to clear fifteen out of it, possibly a little more. I hate to see her run through what she has in her own checking account so quickly."

"She said Fort's attorney, Mr. Waldren, advised her to stay put."

"It was my impression he meant she should stay in the Chicago area. Well... I have other reports here, but they don't help us much. He died on October seventh. It wasn't until early November we began to realize most of the capital asset value had disappeared. By then the trail was cold.

He'd wound it all up four months earlier, in July. If he was turning the money over to someone, we have no way of telling when or how or who."

"Gloria said he seemed happy that last year-as happy as you could expect a man to be under those circumstances."

"That's puzzling, Mr. McGee. He would have had to be under strain no matter what the reason behind it was."

"Strain," I said. "I guess it's relative. I remember a story about him in Time magazine. I can't remember the details. It must have been at least ten years ago. He flew over to some place in the Middle East and took a benign tumor out of some politician's brain. He operated for nine hours, and he could have lost the patient at any minute of those nine hours, and there was a chance that if he did lose him, some of the wild-eyed members of the party would have gunned him down when he left the hospital in spite of the troops they'd assigned to guard him. There was some background in the article on him too. In World War II in Europe he went AWOL

from the General Hospital where he was on the neurosurgical team, and they found him at a field hospital trying out and getting good results with a nerve graft technique that had to be done as soon as possible after the wounds happened. He'd made his request through channels and nothing happened, so he reassigned himself. The only time I knew him was when he was in Florida and married Gloria. Okay, a very mild and gentle guy. But he had that look. The ones who get past the point of ever having to prove anything to themselves or anyone else have that look. We laid on the bachelor brawl bit for him. By two in the morning there were just the three
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of us left, Fort, a friend named Meyer, and me. Fort started telling doctor stories. He talked until dawn. Meyer said it had been a long time since he'd had anything shake him up that much, anything that started him thinking in a different kind of pattern. I have this feeling, Mr. Andrus.

Anybody who tried to lean on that nice mild guy would do better trying to pat tigers, I think."

"So what did happen?"

"Somebody as essentially tough as Fortner Geis found some leverage that would work on Fortner Geis, and they were smart enough to stay back out of range while they squeezed him.

And he was fatalist enough to adjust, to accept a lesser evil. Next step: accepting Fort as the kind of man he was, that leverage had to come from something in the past, some place where their lives crossed. Somebody has a very large and nervous amount of cash. If they were hard enough and smart enough to squeeze it out of Fort, they must have some very good idea of how to get the juice out of it without alerting the IRS computers."

John Andrus nodded slowly. "The more you have, the easier it is to add more without attracting attention."

"And if you can't do it that way, you have to have a lot of patience and control. You have to sit on it and then have some logical reason to pull up stakes and go elsewhere. Then, if you can get to Brazil or Turkey, and move very carefully, you can dig yourself in as a rich man without creating too much suspicion."

"Yes. It could be done," he said.

"Another thing interests me. The man applying the squeeze apparently knew or had some way of knowing how much Fort had. Otherwise I think Fort would have come up with, say, a quarter of a million and then made the squeezer believe he had it all."

Andrus began staring at me with a curious expression. "Mr. McGee, a lot of people have done a lot of wondering about this whole thing. And I've sat in on most of it. So you come along and for the first time I am beginning to get some kind of an image of what the person or persons had to be like. A very vague image, of course. But somehow... things seem to be narrowing down for the first time. Did Gloria tell me you're in the marine supply business?"

"Supply and salvage. Maybe I have a talent for larceny. A great parlor trick, thinking like a thief."

"Are you going to... pursue your theories?"

"I might look around a little, sure. Just as a favor for an old friend."

He put his papers away and snapped the catches cm the dispatch case. "Is there any way I could make things easier for you? Unofficially"

"Did you have something in mind?"

"I don't think any friend of Mrs. Geis' is going to get any casual conversation out of Heidi Trumbill or Roger Geis." He took out two calling cards and with a slender gold pen wrote on the back of each, "Any cooperation you can give Mr. McGee will be appreciated-John Andrus."

"Thanks. Little talent for larceny yourself?"

"If there is, I hope to God they never notice it down at the Trust Department. Or run across one of those cards."

After we'd said good-bye to him, I went walking on the lake shore with Glory. She told me it was turning into a beautiful day. I told her that twenty-five more degrees would make a Floridian happier. Then I told her what John Andrus had said about cutting her expenses by giving up the house.

"Oh, I suppose that's very logical and bankerly," she said. "But Fort built it for us. The happiest time of my life was right here. Fort is here too, when I wake up, in those minutes before I remember he's gone. And he's in the next room, or around a corner, or on his way home. Those things hurt, Trav. They sting like mad. But when I leave here, then he's really gone forever. How else could I... buy the feel of having him near? The first insurance check came December third, last week. One every month for the rest of my life. Four hundred dollars: I'll put that into the kitty to hang on to the house a little longer. I'm not even going to think of what comes next, or plan anything, until I am all packed and on my way down the road. Don't expect me to be practical and logical, dear. Okay?"

"Okay. John Andrus seems fond of you."

"I know. In a very nice and special and, thank God, unsexy way. He has an adored wife and teenage daughters. I think I was a refreshing experience to him because he finally realized I was absolutely sincere in not giving a dang about money, really. Oh, it's kind of delicious to have it.

But too many of the things I like best don't cost a thing. At first poor John seemed to think I was trying to knock the Establishment. We were standing in the yard a month ago. One of the last leaves came off the maple. So I picked it up and made him look very closely and carefully at it. I made him see it. Then I asked him what it was worth, without cracking a smile. I could almost see the light bulb going on in the air over his head, like cartoons. Then, bless you, I fed him that speech you made a lifetime ago on Sanibel Island. If there was one sunset every twenty years, how would people react to them? If there were ten seashells in all the world, what would they be worth? If people could make love just once a year, how carefully would they pick their mates? So now John thinks I am very nice in spite of being quite mad."

"I had to hold the world out to you the way you held the leaf out, Miss Glory, and make you look at it. Question. Does this hotel serve lunch?"

"Anna wouldn't miss the chance. She goes around smiling, she's so happy to have somebody around here who eats."

"What will happen to her when you close the house?"

"From what has happened so far, I imagine you will see the most noted socialite hostesses from the entire lake shore skulking around in the brush and crawling across the dunes, with money in one hand ,and leg irons in the other, wearing fixed glassy smiles. Anna Ottlo can name her own ticket."

It wasn't until cocktail time in front of the fireplace that I got around to the blackmail attempt John Andrus had thought more fitting for Glory to tell me.

"Heavens, he could have told you! He's really very circumspect. But... I'm glad he didn't, really.

Becuuse I think that you might not understand just how it happened. Fort, all his life, was very attractive to women. I guess he made every woman feel... valuable. He listened. He was interested. He liked them.

"Travis, I have to go way back to what life was like for him with Glenna, the things he told me about their marriage. They were very close. They were very important to each other. It was wretched timing for them that as soon as he got out of the army-he was about the same age then that Roger is now-and he and Glenna were just one month apart, they found out Glenna had congestive heart disease, and had maybe had it for some time without knowing it. Let me see now, Roger was eight and Heidi must have been four, because when she died three years later, Roger was eleven and Heidi was seven.

"Because Glenna had some money, they'd been able to marry and have children when Fort was going through the intern and resident thing, and they'd been able to have a nice home in the city, with Fort devoting more time, both before and after the war, to staff surgery and instruction than to surgery for private fees. He came back to find that Anna Ottlo had become indispensable to Glenna, and that her daughter Gretchen, who was fourteen then, had become almost an older sister to Roger and Heidi."

She turned her glass slowly, then held it and looked at the firelight through what was left of her weak highball. She gave me a small and humble smile.

"I'm not as objective as I sound, you know. I'm still jealous of Glenna for having so many more years of him than I did, and I resent her, sort of. That's kind of lousy, isn't it?"

"No. It's kind of nice. It's part of the human condition."

"The human condition isn't very logical. When Fort married Glenna, I was spilling pablum.

Anyhow, as more background, I have to give a little sex lecture. Sex and the doctor. It's something Fort explained to me. There are all those doctor-nurse stories, and there is a certain basis of truth in them, and here is one incident Fort told me about that explains that strange kind of truth. He said that when he was operating in the General Hospital, doing more operations in one day than he ever had before or ever would again, he had the luck to get hold of a great operating-room nurse, a big severe steady tireless girl named Fletcher. First Lieutenant Lois Fletcher. He said you have to acquire some kind of emotional immunity to all that terrible waste, all that young battle-torn meat. He said you get a kind of black humor about it, and a good team, like he and Fletcher were, get in the habit of saying things to each other that would make a layman think they were heartless monsters. Fletcher's husband was a sergeant with the First Marine Division in the Pacific. He said that he and Fletcher were not promiscuous types, even in that permissive and demanding place. But one week they had, he said, a run on paraplegics. A terrible incidence of them, and not one of what he called the happy ones-where you could go in and take out a splinter of metal and relieve the pressure and know that the feeling would return to the lower body. After several days of that he said they finished one night, took off the bloody gowns, and went and sat in silence having coffee. They were both beat. Suddenly he said they were looking into each other's eyes, and they just got up without a word and went off to an empty room and closed the door and with a kind of terrible exhausted energy they made love.