Ed McBain - The House That Jack Built

They were.

They knew that the birth of Franz Brechtmann had been expected in November of 1906; the ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES file had told them so. And there he was, the little darling, in an article clipped from the Society Page of the Calusa Herald-Tribune for November 19, 1906. Franz Eberhard Brechtmann, to be exact — named after Charlotte’s father, or so the article reported.

“Now try ‘Obituaries’,” Toots said.

There was a flash of lightning very close by, followed immediately by an enormous thunderclap and instant darkness.

“Shit,” Warren said.

They waited in the darkness.

The lights came on again.

And immediately went off again.

“Shit,” Warren said again.

In the darkness, they could hear the rain pelting the windowpanes. Another flash of lightning. More thunder.

“I hate Florida,” Toots said.

They waited.

The lights came on again some three minutes later. It was still raining heavily. The green shades on the lights, the amber spill on the tabletop caused the room to appear protected, safe from the furious rain and the thunder and lightning. Somehow, it made them want to whisper.

Warren went to the uppermost “O” file and yanked open the drawer.

The drawer contained nothing but obituary notices.

As did the drawer below it.

And the one below that.

“We’ll be here all night,” Toots said.

“No, he died five years ago,” Warren said.

“How do you know?”

“The library.”

They found the notice of Franz Eberhard Brechtmann’s death on the front page of the Herald-Tribune for April 19, 1983. The headline on the story was set in the same size type as the headline on the lead story about the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. The juxtaposition of the two headlines was perhaps unfortunate. Side by side, they read:

Joined at the hip this way, the headlines made it sound as if Franz Eberhard Brechtmann had been killed in the attack. Instead, he had died in his own bed, of natural causes. If read yet another way, the combined headlines made it sound as if Brechtmann had been drunk when he died: Bombed Beer Baron Dies. Instead, he’d been cold sober, having retired early after a light dinner the night before.

The subheads, also printed side by side in the same-size type, were equally confusing. They read:

“This is some newspaper,” Warren said.

They turned to where the story was continued on the Obituary Page.

The article gave a summary of his life. Childhood in Calusa, schooling at Choate and later Harvard, frequent trips abroad with his beautiful wife, Sophie, and his daughter, Elise, who had been the inspiration for Brechtmann’s best-selling Golden Girl Beer. A picture of the beer’s label was implanted in the center of the column. Blonde, light-eyed kid, maybe three years old, smiling at all those beer drinkers out there. The story went on to mention the many years of guidance and support Brechtmann had given to the restoration of Calusa’s art museum, the Ca D’Ped. It mentioned, too, his extraordinarily generous contributions to a wide variety of charitable causes. It quoted Jacob Brechtmann, the founder of the company, who in 1934 — when his son took over as CEO — said, “I took it safely through Prohibition, my son can take it from here.”

Franz Brechtmann had indeed taken it from there.

In 1934, when he was twenty-eight years old, and despite his father’s bravado, the company had only barely survived the Volstead Act. In the years between then and 1981, when at the age of seventy-five he turned over the CEO post to his then twenty-nine-year-old daughter, Franz had built six more breweries and had taken the company to its leading position among the world’s top beermakers. The article reported that this hadn’t been a simple task. In 1941, when America entered the war against Germany, anti-German feeling had erupted all over the nation, and anything sounding even remotely German was virtually boycotted. The sales of the Brechtmann company’s beers plummeted until well after the war. In fact, it was not until 1954, when Franz created the new beer inspired by his then two-year-old daughter, that the company’s fortunes took an upswing. Since then, the only serious threat to its stability occurred five months ago, not long after Elise became CEO. It was then that internal problems led to charges and countercharges—

“Here it is,” Warren said.

“Here’s what ?” Toots said.

“The dirt.”

But that’s all there was.

The paragraph merely ended with a seeming afterthought stating that everything was settled satisfactorily out of court and the company rose to even greater heights in the hierarchy of beer-makers. The story concluded with the information that the deceased was survived by his wife, Sophie, and his daughter, Elise, and that services in Calusa would be private.

“Damn it,” Warren said. “Where do we look now ?”

“For what?” Toots said.

“For these internal problems and these charges and countercharges that were settled out of court.”

“Let me think,” Toots said.

Warren watched her thinking.

“How about ‘Legal Notices’?” she said.

Matthew blinked at the bedside clock. Ten minutes to midnight. And the telephone was ringing. Joanna! Something had happened to his daughter up there in Vermont. The school’s headmistress was calling to…

“Hello?”

“Matthew?”

A woman’s voice.

“Yes?”

“It’s Irene.”

“Who?”

“McCauley.”

“I’m sorry, who…?”

“The motel,” she said. “Irene McCauley.”

“Oh. Oh, hi ! Listen, I’m sorry I sounded so…”

“No, that’s okay. You were probably asleep.”

“Well, in fact, I was.”

“Me, too. But then I woke up, and I thought I’d see if you were in the phone book. And you were.”

“Yes.”

“So here I am.”

“So hello.”

“Hello. I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“No, hey, that’s okay, really.”

“How are you?”

“Fine. Just fine. And you?”

“Okay.”

Silence. Then:

“I was hoping you’d call,” she said.

“I was going to. But things started piling up, and I…”

“That’s okay, I’m not one to stand on ceremony.”

“So I see.”

Another silence. Then:

“Shall I come over there?”

“What?” Matthew said.

“Do you want me to come over? I’d invite you here, but really, this place is a dump. Well, you saw it.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, you saw it? Or yes, it’s a dump? Or yes, come on over.”

“Yes, all three.”

“Good,” Irene said. “Give me directions.”

Lying beside his wife Leona at a little before midnight, Frank wondered what she’d been doing in his study. There was nothing in there that could be of any possible use to a woman having an affair. No appointment calendar she could check to find out when he’d be where. No loose cash she could pilfer to buy lacy hooker underwear like the ones he’d found in her dresser. Nothing she could use. So why had she gone in there?

He knew she’d been in there sometime today.

But why?

He knew every inch of that study. The study was his cocoon. Came home from work sometimes to find the house empty, he’d mix himself a silver bullet and sit in the big padded leather chair in the study, sipping at the drink, listening to the palm fronds whispering outside the high windows, surrounded by the books he loved. The cleaning woman did the study every Thursday. She was due tomorrow, it was still only two minutes to midnight on the luminous bedside clock, still today, Wednesday, the tenth day of February. No cleaning lady in there today. But someone had gone in there while he was at the office. And since only two people lived in this house, and since he wasn’t the one who’d been in there, it had to have been his darling wife, Leona.