Feast of Murder(76)

“Well, they should, shouldn’t they?”

Gregor agreed they should. In his experience, they rarely did. He said, “Tell me something about Baird Financial. You run their public relations department, is that right?”

“That’s right. I’m vice president for, in fact.”

“Do you know anything at all about the housekeeping functions in your department? How things are filed? How correspondence is dealt with?”

“Some.” Julie bristled. “I’m not a secretary, though, Mr. Demarkian. I never was a secretary.”

“I know that. It’s policy I’m interested in here. In my experience, firms file their correspondence in one of two ways—with the envelope it came in or without. Do you know which Baird Financial does?”

“Oh.” Julie looked confused. “Well, I think it depends. In Public Relations we always throw away the envelopes. There’s no point to keeping them. I have heard that Financial keeps them, though. For tax purposes.”

“What about whatever department handles general firm business? Like the Europabanc deal.”

Julie laughed. “They’ve kept absolutely everything about the Europabanc deal,” she said. “The joke in the typing pool is that after one of our conferences with the Europeans, the secretaries are required to go around and preserve the ashes in the ashtrays. We have an entire separate office suite in the Trade Center that does nothing but hold papers relating to Europabanc. Trust me, we keep envelopes with the correspondence.”

“Would you do that in any other case?”

“I told you. Financial does it. I don’t see why you’re making such a big fuss over this. A lot of firms operate this way. A postmark is very good evidence in the event of a lawsuit where time is an important factor. It’s very good evidence when you have a little trouble with the tax people, too. As far as I know, we keep envelopes of any correspondence having to do with money and we keep them for at least five years. After that, I don’t know what we do with them.”

“Mmm,” Gregor said. “That’s what I thought. About the envelopes.”

“What do envelopes have to do with the death of Charlie Shay?”

“I’m not sure yet.” Gregor looked up into the rigging over his head. The sails were still flat. He wondered how long the ocean could remain untouched by wind. He was worried the answer might be “weeks.” He turned back to Julie. “You said something before I wish you would clarify. I said there ought to be some way to call the Coast Guard in an emergency, and you said there probably is. Do you mean Jon Baird has flares somewhere and isn’t telling us about them?”

“No. I meant everything on this boat is done with fires. I didn’t realize Jon had refused to call the Coast Guard.”

“He made out that it was impossible.”

“I don’t see how it could be. We have fires to cook with and candles and matches. I’m sure somebody must have a cigarette lighter. Your friend Bennis smokes. Tony smokes sometimes, too—”

“I don’t think Tony would be much help.”

“Taking his father’s side?” Julie was sympathetic. “Tony is nearly a fanatic on the subject of his father. It’s upset the hell out of Fritzie since the divorce. I think after Jon married Sheila, Fritzie just expected Tony to take her side. Instead, he behaved like a man.”

“That must have been disturbing.”

“It was worse than disturbing, it was insulting.” Julie eased herself up from the spool she’d been sitting on, gripping the ridge along the inside of the bow, and took a deep breath. “Let’s go downstairs and find Mark,” she said. “I wanted you to talk to him anyway. And he knows all about this kind of thing. He used to go to wilderness camps when he was in high school.”

“What in the name of God is a wilderness camp?”

“It’s a place where you go to rough it in a national forest for a couple of weeks. The most famous one is Outward Bound. They take people out and let them live off rattlesnakes in the desert or roots and berries in the forest with no modern conveniences or ways of getting them. They have guides, of course.”

“Of course,” Gregor said. “And I thought Jon Baird was an isolated eccentric.”

“He’s eccentric enough, all right.” Julie straightened her back, took a deep breath, and seemed to get better hold of herself. Her face lost a shade or two of its green tint and her smile was genuine and unforced. “Let’s go find Mark. He’ll know a way to rig up a flare that won’t blow us up when we use it. Maybe we can rig up a couple and get the Coast Guard to rescue us.”