Feast of Murder(40)

“I get seasick,” Julie Anderwahl said suddenly. “I get seasick all the time. Even just sitting in port like this.”

“Why did you come?” Gregor asked her.

“They’re my husband’s family,” Julie said, “and my bosses on top of it. I had to come. Did you know I worked at Baird Financial?”

“I’d heard it, yes.”

“My husband works there, too. It’s a very odd situation. Mark is the son of Jon and Calvin’s only sister. The sister wasn’t part of the partnership, of course, so Mark doesn’t have any direct stake in the business, at least not yet. Tony does, of course, and so do Calvin’s daughters. He has a pack of them and they’re each more mindless than the rest. They’ll probably inherit anyway. It makes me very nervous. Mark has never worked for anyone else and neither have I.”

“If they’re as mindless as you say they are, I don’t see that they’d fire you or your husband once they did inherit—which wouldn’t be for some time yet, would it? I haven’t met Calvin Baird, but I have met Jon Baird and he seems to be in perfect health.”

“He is in perfect health. He’s going to bring Tony into the business right after the first of the year.”

“Ah.”

“And he doesn’t have his mind on his work any more,” Julie said. “Sheila. Everything that goes along with Sheila. She takes him to parties. And if you want to know the truth, I don’t think he’d have gone to jail if it wasn’t for Sheila.”

Gregor considered this. “Do you mean he did something for her he wouldn’t have done for anybody else? Or are you trying to suggest that she turned him in to the Feds?”

“Neither.” Julie tapped her foot in agitation. “I just think he didn’t have his mind in gear, that’s all. She—unfocuses him. When she’s around him, he can’t think.”

“Somehow, I can’t picture that,” Gregor said.

“I know,” Julie admitted. “I can’t picture it either. But it’s the only explanation I can think of. That conviction made absolutely no sense, you know. His pleading guilty. His going to jail. People like Jon don’t go to jail for insider trading.”

“What about Michael Milken?”

Julie waved it away. “Milken was a maverick, taking on the establishment. From what I hear, his conviction will probably be overturned anyway. Jon Baird is the establishment and he always was, even though he was from a rundown branch of it. And besides—”

“What?”

“Well, it was dumb, wasn’t it, and Jon isn’t dumb. He didn’t admit to doing a single thing here that wouldn’t have been legal half a dozen other places, including Paris, where he keeps a huge apartment and spends three months a year. I suppose people have told you that before?”

“Constantly,” Gregor said solemnly.

She turned away from him, resentful at his tone. “Well, it’s true. It’s more than true. I know you’re supposed to be here to investigate all this. I know you’ve probably been told to be fair and impartial. I don’t really care. If you’ve got any sense, you won’t look any farther than Sheila Callahan Baird.”

“Any farther for what?” Gregor asked, a little desperately. When this conversation had started, he had thought he was being treated to a simple recital of information—too freely given, perhaps, but then Julie Anderwahl was, if he remembered rightly, in public relations. Those people did give information too freely. Now Julie Anderwahl was anything but free. She was screwed up tighter than a vacuum-sealed jar and biting her lower lip so hard she was making it bleed.

“I’m not going to tell you what to do,” she said. “I’m not going to interfere in your investigation. I have no interest in any of this except the kind of interest any sane person would have in seeing justice done. I’m just telling you, I know what Jon wants and I know he’s used to getting what he wants, but this time he’s just out of luck. That little bitch is as crooked as they come.”

Gregor was about to protest once again—what had happened here? what was going on?—but two things happened at once to shut him up. First, new people began to stream into the area, including a frail man in a three-piece suit, Jon Baird, and an older man who looked more like Jon’s son Tony than Jon ever could. Gregor was just about to decide that this was the mysterious and as yet unmet Calvin, when the men parted to let a pair of women through. One of them was an older lady in regulation boating gear, right down to the canvas shoes, but so unsteady on her legs Gregor’s first thought was that she belonged in a hospital. The other was Bennis Hannaford.