Death on Deadline - Robert Goldsborough Page 0,18

day. As to prospective buyers, the list was short: the publisher of a chain of small upstate papers and a guy who said he owned a wholesale Hardware business in New Jersey but had always wanted to be a newspaper owner. I told them both they would be hearing from us, but neglected to say when.

The morning was so hectic that I was caught by surprise when I heard the elevator coming down from the plant rooms. Wolfe walked into the office with a raceme of Odontoglossum pulchellum, which he put in the vase on his desk before easing into his chair. “Good morning, Archie, did you sleep well?”

“My sleep ended so long ago I can’t remember it. The last three hours have been a circus. While you’ve been eating in your room and playing with your posies, Fritz and I have held off the Fourth Estate. It was even worse than I expected.”

Wolfe didn’t answer, giving all his attention to his morning mail, most of which was wastebasket fodder. “Okay, ignore me if you want to,” I snapped. “But just so you know, since eight o’clock there have been more than thirty calls, plus TV crews battering away at the door yelling for an interview with you. By the way, the last call that came was from Sixty Minutes. They want to do a segment on the great Wolfe. I said we’d think it over. Let’s face it, you’re hot. I mean really hot. A media darling. The next thing will be the ultimate—a cover story in People.”

Wolfe shuddered. “Confound it, report.”

“Here’s the rundown,” I said, listing the calls and my responses to them.

His eyes stayed closed until I finished. “We’ll see Mrs. Haverhill first, preferably this afternoon,” he said, frowning. “Then Mr. MacLaren, assuming he’s in New York. Ask if he can come tonight; if not, tomorrow.”

“You were right that they’d both call—you said so last night. What made you so sure?”

Wolfe turned a hand over. “How could they not? Regardless of whether Mrs. Haverhill wants to see the Gazette sold, she has no choice but to talk to me. As chief executive officer of the company, she would be remiss if she didn’t find out what I’m up to. As for Mr. MacLaren, I’ve gotten in his way, and he is not the type who takes interference of any kind lightly. He is obliged to meet me, size me up, and determine how to try to deal with me. He thrives on challenges, and I have provided one. You should have no trouble getting either of them to come here.”

For a while, I was close to proving Wolfe wrong on that last statement. I returned the call to Harriet Haverhill’s office, and the same woman who had called me before—presumably Mrs. Haverhill’s personal secretary—didn’t like it when I told her that Wolfe never leaves home on business. “I’m sorry, but Mrs. Haverhill has an extremely busy afternoon, and she really can’t spare the time away from the building.”

“I’m sorry too,” I said. “Mrs. Haverhill requested this meeting, and if she wants to see Mr. Wolfe, it will have to be on his turf. Otherwise, no meeting. Mr. Wolfe is free from two-thirty to four.”

The secretary put me on hold. “All right,” she said frigidly when she came back on. “Mrs. Haverhill says she can come at three o’clock. Please confirm the address.”

She had lost face, something executive secretaries dread, and she was trying to regain some of her honor with the address ploy. I repeated it to her politely and thanked her very much, but she didn’t thaw.

Getting MacLaren to show was no trouble at all. A bored female at his New York number put me through to the same brisk British voice I’d talked to earlier. Mr. Carlton said Mr. MacLaren would be pleased to visit us that evening. I hung up and turned to Wolfe, who was behind his book. “Okay, we’ve got Haverhill at three, MacLaren for nine. That’s two out of two. I assume now that you want me to call Sixty Minutes back and set up a time for their film crew to come.”

I got exactly what I expected: silence.

Six

Wolfe and I were in the office after lunch, a lobster salad with avocado followed by blueberry pie. At two minutes past three, the doorbell rang. I went to the front hall and peered through the one-way glass panel in the door, then returned to the office.

“She’s brought company,” I told Wolfe. “A