Murder for Lunch by Haughton Murphy

Author:Haughton Murphy
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781504028141
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road

THREE INTERVIEWS

14

Despite the bombshells that had burst about him on Thursday, Frost slept soundly when he finally got to bed after leaving Keith Merritt and did not wake up until nine o’clock Friday morning, an hour later than usual. He woke up relatively well rested, if slightly hung over from Thursday’s drinking with Merritt.

Cynthia had already left for ballet class when Frost got up. He was just as glad. She was a patient, shrewd and understanding woman, not an empty-headed showgirl; she had been a valued confidante over the years. But he could barely get the facts of recent events straight in his own mind, let alone sort them out with sufficient coherence to enable his wife to understand them.

Drinking the orange juice and coffee she had left for him, he quickly discarded the Times and reviewed Thursday’s events once again in his mind: the god-awful funeral service for Donovan; Doyle’s report of the laboratory findings; Detective Bautista; and then, just to complicate everything, Tyson’s irrational outburst at Fred Coxe and Merritt’s tax problem.

Frost also recalled Merritt’s suspect list, asterisks and all:

Grace Appleby*

Perry Griffith

Bruce Donovan

Roger Singer*

Since Tyson wasn’t around to berate him, Frost mentally added Tyson’s name. And, with a good deal more reluctance, Keith Merritt’s as well. Confronting this unpleasant reality, he broke off his speculating and left the apartment for the office.

Once he had arrived at Chase & Ward, Frost decided to call in Perry Griffith, in part to discuss the Frontier Utilities mortgage, but more importantly to look him over in a new light—as possible murder suspect.

Griffith was a source of wonderment to many at the firm. Since one could not be admitted to the bar in New York before age twenty-one, Griffith had to be at least twenty-eight years old. Yet he looked barely sixteen (within the past year he had been asked in a mid town bar for proof that he was of drinking age). A blue-eyed towhead, he had caused more than his share of sighs among the firm’s female employees—sighs because he was so youthfully handsome and sighs because it was known that he was happily married.

Griffith’s looks were deceiving, however. Many an adversary across the bargaining table, sure that the open-faced Griffith must be inexperienced, had ended up, if smart, with new respect for him, and if not smart, taken to the cleaners. He was both tough and stubborn—qualities that, when taken together with his appearance, formed a disconcerting combination.

Frost had “borrowed” Griffith to work on a hurry-up merger transaction just before his own retirement as a partner but otherwise knew him, except for his recent contact with the youth’s mortgage draft, only by reputation. His earlier brief encounter—the whole transaction had been signed up over the course of a long weekend—had led Frost to respect Griffith’s abilities, if not necessarily to like him. There was just a bit too much of the blood lust for Frost’s taste, just a shade too much competitiveness and desire to devour an adversary.

Of course, the

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