Swan Dive

By Roxanne Hunter

Molly Babbitt is back in New York, enjoying the good life with her Times reporter husband when prominent business financier Sam Harland decides to take a dive from an 18th floor of the Swan Building, right above the Azalea Woods Estates sales office where Molly's good friend, Candy Barry, works as a secretary. Always happy to see an old friend, and hoping to get the inside details of the suicide, Molly invites Candy to lunch and learns there might be much more to the suicide than the police know.

The media is reporting that Sam Harland was part of an investment pool coming up short millions of dollars, and Raleigh Winship, another investor, has gone missing, accused of looting the pool. Candy' employer, Carol Whitehall, had relationships with both men and had met with each of them on the day of the tragedy. Why would Harland, a man who seemed to have everything to live for suddenly take a dive out his office window? Why is Winship in hiding? What is the relationship between the two men and Carol Whitehall and did she have a role in the death of Harland or the disappearance of Winship?

Molly knows there's more to be learned and when she finds out that the law firm of Whitney and Whitney has been retained by the other investors to search for the missing millions and Winship, she knows she has to tell the Chief what she learned from Candy. The Chief quickly assigns Molly an undercover role on the switchboard of the Swan Building so that she can keep tabs on Carol Whitehall. It isn't long before evidence reveals that the suicide was really a cover for murder.

Meanwhile, Whitney's key investigator and Molly's best friend, Jack Reddy renews an old acquaintance with the beautiful and mysterious Carol Whitehall and regrets not getting to know her better when they were neighbors. Is it too late now? The Whitneys have deduced that she is a prime suspect in a murder conspiracy and it appears that she is getting ready to flee with her lover, Raleigh Winship, as soon as he sends for her, an act the Whitneys intend to stop. Not a good time for Jack to realize he has fallen helplessly, hopelessly in love with her. Jack will do anything to clear Carol, even as Molly helps to close the net around Carol and seeks to protect Jack from his own emotions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roxanne Hunter
• Release date: Mar 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370946983

Roxanne Hunter

Roxanne Hunter lives on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. After spending way too many, many years working at a job she didn’t really like, she realized she could do what so many other people her age have done – retire on Cape Cod. She now spends her days taking long walks on beaches, riding her bike, traveling to warmer climates during the winter and searching for enjoyable but forgotten old stories. Best of all, it’s not work!

Book preview

SWAN DIVE

AN OLD FASHIONED STORY

BY

ROXANNE HUNTER

Swan Dive

By Roxanne Hunter

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2017 Roxanne Hunter

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual event, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording or electronic transference without written permission from the author.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I MOLLY TELLS THE STORY

CHAPTER II MOLLY TELLS THE STORY

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV MOLLY TELLS THE STORY

CHAPTER V MOLLY TELLS THE STORY

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII MOLLY TELLS THE STORY

CHAPTER VIII MOLLY TELLS THE STORY

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI MOLLY ENDS THE STORY

AFTERWORD

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BOOKS BY ROXANNE HUNTER

CHAPTER I MOLLY TELLS THE STORY

Good morning, said Babbitt, looking up from the pages of his newspaper.

I’ll call him Babbitt because that's the name you remember him by. I generally call him Sweetie, the nickname I gave him after our first case. Maybe you'll remember that too? And he calls me Molly. Cute, isn't it?

In case you don't know about the first case I'll give a few facts to get you up to speed. I was a receptionist in Longwood, New Jersey, where I met Babbitt, who he was a reporter for the Times, where he still works, and it wasn’t long before New Jersey lost one of its brightest stars. It was New York City for us, an apartment on West Ninety-fifth Street, near the subway, three rooms on a corner, furnished rather well. If you know about that case, you know how I came by the furniture and came to be able to afford that address, and if you don't you'll have to stay in ignorance; I'm too anxious to get on with this story to stop and tell it to you.

We've been married for two years and we're still - oh, well, there’s no disguising it! Let’s just say we still get it on like a house on fire. I guess in this vast metropolis there's not a woman who’s got anything on me when it comes to happiness. It certainly is wonderful how you blossom out and the ugly parts of you fade away when someone thinks you're perfect.

And so having made this little introduction, I'll come back to Babbitt with his head in the morning Times saying good morning to me.

It was a clear, crisp morning in January and we were having breakfast. Babbitt had just got in from Cleveland, where he had been sent to report on the Cheney graft prosecution. It took us a few minutes to get re-acquainted, since he'd been away two whole days, and after we concluded those ceremonies I went into the kitchen to make his breakfast while he sat at his end of the table and dived into the news. His eggs were in front of him and I was setting my coffee mug down at my end of the table when he said, Good morning, loud and startled.

What's up now? said I, looking over the table to see if I'd forgotten anything.

Sam Harland committed suicide, came out from under the paper.

He did, I said. That's awful. I picked up the cream pitcher. Well, what do you make of this? The cream's frozen.

Last night at half-past six. Threw himself out of his office window on the eighteenth floor.

Eighteenth floor? That's some fall. I've got to scrape this cream out with a spoon. I spooned up some, all white spikes and edges, wondering if it would chill his coffee, which he likes piping hot. Sweetie, do you mind waiting a little so I can warm up the cream?

Forget the cream. What rotten luck I was away. I suppose they put Ed Saunders on it. This reads like his uninspiring prose. Listen to this. 'The body struck the pavement with a violent impact.' That's the way he describes the fall of a body from eighteen stories. Damn, why wasn't I here?

But, sweetie, I said, passing his coffee, Saunders would have done it even if you had been here. You don't do the city news.

I would do this one. Sam Harland was one of the biggest corporate attorneys in New York.

Oh, I said, so he's an important person.

Somewhat. A top rainmaker in his profession.

Why did he commit suicide?

Got caught up in the Copper Pool, is what they think.

With the coffee mug at his lips, he went on reading.

Does it taste all right? I asked and he grunted something that would have been perfect if it hadn't dropped into his coffee and been drowned.

My mind at ease about his coffee, I was free to think about the morning sensation.

What's the Copper Pool? I asked.

It’s a scheme to jack up prices and gouge the public, Molly. It’s sort of like cornering the market in shoes. It works like this. Suppose you could buy up all the spring shoes coming into the market. You could pretty much name your own price for them, couldn't you?

They already do that now, I said sadly.

Well, they can't do it in copper. The Pool is made up of a bunch of insiders who have put up millions to corner the copper market and jack up the price for everyone else.

Oh, so he lost all his money, got desperate, and jumped.

Looks like it, from the eighteenth floor of the Swan Building.

That brought it closer to home, the way it does when someone you know is involved.

Why, that's where Candy Barry works, at the Whitehall office on the seventeenth floor.

Babbitt's eyes shifted from the paper to his loving spouse.

That's right, I forgot that. Just one floor below. I wonder if Candy was there when he took the dive.

I don’t imagine she was, she goes home at six. It's a good thing she wasn't. She's a hysterical, timid little bird. Being around when a thing like that happened would have broken her up more than I care to think about.

Candy Barry is an old friend of mine. Four years ago, before I transferred to New Jersey, we had been co-workers in the same office in the city, and although I didn't hang out with her often when I was in Longwood, since I'd come back to New York we had met up several times for lunch. Having the fatality happen so close to her fanned my interest and I reached across and grabbed the laptop. Being in the newspaper business, Babbitt still insists on reading the printed issue of the Times but I find the online version is just as easy, and I don’t have to wait for him to finish reading a section before I can look at it.

Once I was on the right digital page, the first thing my eye lit on was a picture of Sam Harland, a fine looking and smooth-shaven man.

When I saw the two long posts about him I realized what an important person he was and why Babbitt was so mad he'd missed the work assignment. Besides his own photo, there was one of his home, an elegant residence on Riverside Drive, full of art and statuary, and a library he had taken years to collect. The write-up told all about him and his life. He was forty-six years old and although short, he was a fine physical specimen, never showing, no matter how hard he worked, any sign of weariness. In his youth, he had come to the city from a town upstate, and risen from the bottom to the top, climbing his way up, the Times had it, with his brilliant mind, indomitable will, and tireless energy. Three years earlier, his wife had died and since then he had kept to himself, devoting his time entirely to his business.

Toward the end of the article, there was a lot of stuff about the Copper Pool and the names of the other men involved in it. He seemed to have been in it too. There was only one name I'd ever heard before, Raleigh Winship, which doesn't prove much since everybody has heard of him. He was one of the big names of finance, a billionaire, magnate, plutocrat, the kind that one media outlet calls, a malefactor of great wealth, and its ideological opposite praises as, one of our most distinguished and public-spirited citizens. That explains him better than anything else, I guess. He was in the Copper Pool up to his neck, in fact, he was the head of it as far as I could make out.

I had just got through that part, it wasn't very interesting, and was reading what had happened before the suicide when Babbitt spoke.

Harland seems to have had a disagreement with Raleigh Winship in the afternoon.

I looked up from the screen.

I just read about that. It says that Winship came to see him and they had some kind of argument.

Read it out loud, said Babbitt. I want to get the whole picture before I go downtown.

"According to Donna Franks and John Hanson, Harland's administrative assistant and office manager, Raleigh Winship had an appointment with Harland at half-past five that afternoon. The lawyer's office was a suite of three rooms, one room opening from the other. The last of these rooms was used as his private office and Harland led his visitor to this office, closing the door behind them. Ms. Franks was in the middle room working at her computer and Mr. Hanson at his desk nearby. Although they were not trying to eavesdrop, they said they could hear the men in the private office when they began talking loudly. The walls and door of the office obscured the words, but both Ms. Franks and Mr. Hanson agree that the voices sounded angry. Presently the voices dropped and became inaudible and shortly after Mr. Harland came out. Ms. Franks said the time was a few minutes after six, as she had just looked at her watch. Both employees, admitting they were curious, looked at Mr. Harland and described him as pale, though otherwise showing no signs of anger or disturbance. Mr. Harland stopped at Hanson’s desk and said quietly, 'I'll be back in a few minutes. Don't leave until I come back,' and then he left the office.

Ms. Franks and Mr. Hanson remained where they were. Ms. Franks completed her work and then, having dinner plans with Mr. Hanson, she stayed on, waiting for Mr. Harland's return. A half hour passed as the two employees chatted, impatient to be off. It was a quarter to seven and they were wondering what was delaying their employer when the telephone rang. Mr. Hanson answered it and the building janitor reported that Mr. Harland's body had been found on the sidewalk, crushed to a shapeless mass. On hearing this, Ms. Franks uttered a piercing cry, rose and rushed into the hall, followed by Mr. Hanson. They rang frantically for the elevator that didn't come. There are only two elevators in the building, and that afternoon the express was out of order and not operating. Getting no answer to his summons, Mr. Hanson dashed to the hall window and opened it, looked down to the street, which was thick with people. Ms. Franks, who when questioned was still hysterical, stood by the elevators pressing the buttons. In their excitement, both of them forgot Mr. Winship, who was still in the back office.

Um, said Babbitt. Is that everything about Winship?

I scanned the rest of the article.

No, there's some more in another place. Here it is. 'Raleigh Winship, whose meeting with Harland is supposed to have driven the desperate lawyer to his apparent suicide, was not found at his home later that evening. Repeated telephone calls throughout the evening only elicited the information that Mr. Winship was not at home and it was not known where he was.' Then there's a lot about him and his connection with the Copper Pool. Do you want to hear it?

No, I know all that. Pretty grisly business. But I don't see why Winship's lying low. Why the hell hasn’t he turned up?

Perhaps he doesn't like notoriety. Does it say in the paper that they couldn't find him?

About the same. Looks to me as if there is something to hide somewhere in all this.

Maybe he never expected the man would kill himself and he's overwhelmed with the horror at what he's responsible for.

Babbitt threw down his paper and grinned sarcastically.

I imagine it takes more than that to prostrate Raleigh Winship. You don't rise from nothing to being one of the richest men in the country and keep your conscience intact.

I scrolled down the web page and there, staring at me, was a photograph of the man we were talking about.

Here he is, I said, on this page, and then I read to him. 'Raleigh Winship, whose meeting with Sam Harland is thought to have precipitated the apparent suicide.'

Babbitt came around the table and looked over my shoulder.

Did you ever see a harder, more domineering mug? Look at his nose; it’s like a beak. Men with noses like that remind me of birds of prey.

The photo did have that look. The face was thin, one of those narrow, lean ones with a few deep lines like folds in the skin. The nose was, as Babbitt said, a regular beak, big and hooked. A sort of military-looking, white mustache hid his mouth, and his eyes behind glasses were keen and dark. I guess you might have called it a handsome face if it hadn't been for the grim, hard expression like it belonged to a street fighter who wouldn't show you any mercy if you got in his way.

It takes a guy like that to make billions these days, said Babbitt.

He looks as if he could corner copper and anything else that got his interest, I agreed.

If he's really flown the coop there'll be hell to pay on Wall Street. He gave my shoulder a pat. Well, we'll find out today and the sooner I get to work, the sooner I'll know. Good-bye, my love. Kiss me and speed me on my perilous way.

After he left I cleaned up the dishes, had a quick meeting with Isabella, the cleaning lady, and then drifted into the living room. The sun was slanting bright through the windows and as I stood looking out at the thin covering of ice glittering on the roofs, it had rained before the freeze, I decided I should go and see Candy. She's a high-strung little thing and what had happened last night in the Swan Building would put a spike in her anxiety for days to come, especially just now when she has worries of her own. Claire, her sister she lived with, had gone into the hair styling business. Not in a full-service salon, just doing blowouts on rich girls’ long locks, and it hadn't gone well, so Candy was temporarily the main support for the two of them. Three years ago she left the telephone company to better herself, studying computer programming and office management, and at first she had a hard time, getting into offices where the men were so sexist they scared her and she couldn't work, or so affectionate they scared her into resigning. Then she landed a good job at Whitehall's. Carol Whitehall had a real estate sales and rental office for a housing development in New Jersey.

Now while you think of me in my rabbit fur jacket flashing under the city in the subway, I'll tell you about Carol Whitehall. She's important in this story. I guess you'd call her the heroine, even though you might think that was me if you noticed all the I’s so far. Think of that letter as nothing more than my fingers on a keyboard.

The first I heard of Carol Whitehall was nearly two years ago from the Cressettis, friends of mine who live in Longwood, where I once lived. She and her mother, a widow lady, came there from somewhere in the Midwest and bought the Azalea Woods Farm, a fine rich stretch of farmland back in the hills behind the village of Azalea. They were going to run it themselves; being, or so rumor had it, independently wealthy and fond of the simple life. The neighbors, high and low, soon got acquainted with them and found them pleasant enough, the mother very quiet and dignified, but Carol a live wire and as beautiful as a model.

They'd been at the place about a year when the public transit authority built a branch line that crossed over the hills near their land. This increased the property value immensely and folks were wondering if they would sell out, for they had several generous offers. They surprised everyone when they announced that they were going to start a land development company to be called Azalea Woods Estates. In the autumn when I was down at the Cressettis, Babbitt and I go there on Sunday sometimes, the Cressetti boys said that the open fields were now all laid out into roads with little spindly trees planted along the edges. There was a train station, white with a tiled red roof, and several houses already built, some stucco like the station and others low and squatty in a cottage style.

It was a big undertaking and there was a good deal of talk, no one guessing the Whitehalls had money enough to take on such a big project, but when it came down to it, nobody had any real information about them. For all Longwood and Azalea knew, they might have been cutting grocery coupons ever since they came.

As soon as Azalea Woods Estates was underway they moved to the city. Candy told me they had a little place on the East Side and the offices were the best she'd ever been employed in. I'd never been in them, although I sometimes went to the Swan Building and took Candy out to lunch. I didn't like to go to her office since I had no business there, so I would call her in the morning and make our plans, then hang around the entrance until she came down.

Besides Carol Whitehall and Candy, there was a managing agent, Anthony Ford. I'd never met Tony any more than I had Carol Whitehall, but I'd heard all about him. After Candy had told me what a good-looker he was and how he would come waltzing in late in the morning, always jolly and full of compliments, I thought she was getting too interested in him. She said she wasn't, but did you ever know a girl who told the truth on that score? And when I asked her point blank, she ruffled up.

Molly Babbitt, haven’t I been working long enough to know to keep my heart locked up in the office safe?

And I couldn't help answering.

Well, don't give away the combination until you're good and sure it's the right man that's asking for it.

CHAPTER II MOLLY TELLS THE STORY

The Swan Building is part-way downtown, not one of the skyscrapers that crowd together on the tip of Manhattan and not one of the newer buildings squeezing in among the mansions of the