Fear is a Killer
WITH HIS HEART POUNDING, WALTER WINGBEAT SAT AT the boardroom table half listening to what Clay Fetterson was telling the client. “Nor do we usually formulate an advertising plan before the product is developed and tested. But in this case, at your request—”
As the head of R&B Advertising continued his preamble, Wingbeat glanced from face to face around the mahogany oval. The client, Norman Imrie, president of Metro Distillers, was looking noble. Sensing Wingbeat’s attention, Imrie returned an encouraging smile. Tough, but fair and decent—that was Mr. Imrie.
“So—we have prepared, among other exhibits,” Fetterson continued, “a media plan. But before I ask our media manager to take us through it, may I voice anxiety over the name of the new product. A liqueur distilled in America is a great idea. Using the flowers of an indigenous desert plant gives us something to talk about in the advertising. But for a drink, the name Yucca...”
Wingbeat was turning his pages. He remembered what it was to breathe deeply but the technique had escaped him for the moment. The imaginary iron strapping around his chest was at maximum clamp. Pinprick bubbles of light fizzed around the periphery of his vision.
A hand touched his. A voice murmured, “Are you all right?” It was Penelope Good, the girl from England. He had hired her as his assistant three months ago. The department was in need of people but Wingbeat was afraid to hire. What if he chose the wrong person? In Miss Good, it looked as if he had brought in somebody very good indeed. And now he was a afraid of that.
He managed a smile, glazed eyes and sick lips that would have stampeded nurses in an intensive-care unit. “Butterflies,” he whispered, fluttering a flat hand. “Okay once I start.”
She made a kissing face at him. It was way out of line, he hadn’t even taken her to lunch yet. Her honey hair was much too smart for the money she earned. How did she manage? Her suit looked expensive. Her blue eyes were calm. Penelope Good fitted in around the executive table like the maroon-leather armchairs themselves.
“Not to worry,” she mouthed silently, “I’m with you.”
Apprehension about the new brand-name had been expressed to Norman Imrie before. “Be assured, gentlemen and lady,” he said, “the name Yucca has been thoroughly tested. I went around my office and spoke to twenty people. Told them my wife had come up with a concept and a name for a new liqueur. Yucca. What did they think? Not one negative reaction. One hundred percent in favor.”
Clay Fetterson’s grin became brighter than a thousand suns. Wingbeat had to avert his eyes as the boss said, “Can’t argue with research as conclusive as that. On we go. Let’s take a look at the media plan. Everybody got a copy? Fine. Wally, will you lead us through this?”
“Uh, sure, Clay.” Wingbeat was alone, terrified. “These are rough figures, guesstimates, because I was told I wouldn’t see budget until after the taste-testing, which I understand is not happening until—”
“Could you just take us through it, Wally?”
“Sure, Clay. Uh, page one is a summary of the major markets, with some additional weighting in—” The iron bands tightened. Wingbeat’s breath was reduced to a flutter. “Oh, wow,” he said, as panic took over.
“Everything okay, Wally?”
Elbows on the table, Wingbeat put a flat hand on either side of his face, shutting out witnesses to his humiliation. To die like this in public—Trouble breathing. Just a minute.”
“Is there pain?” The observers were riveted. They were not callous people but if the media manager went in mid-presentation—would that be a story to dominate drinks this evening.
“Not a lot of pain,” Wingbeat said. He was coming out of it. It was stress, tension. “Have to get my breath.”
“Should the man try to continue?” Norman Imrie asked. He was less entertained than the others. “Give him a rest.”
“Exactly right,” Fetterson said. “Can you take over, Miss Good? Wally, slide over to the couch. Put your feet up.”
As Wingbeat left the table, Penelope Good unbuttoned her jacket to reveal a nicely rounded white silk blouse. Placing a fist on her hip authoritatively, she said in a voice worthy of the Royal Shakespeare Company, “The summary requires less than a glance at this time. May I direct your attention to the following pages, where, market by market, we see the media breakdown. Forgive the word ‘breakdown’, Walter,” she said and everybody laughed, including Wingbeat.
As was his habit, Wingbeat worked a couple of extra hours after closing to give the Friday-evening traffic a chance to clear. By the time he drove home and parked his car in the driveway that separated his cedar-and-stone bungalow from the brick-and-stucco cottage next door, his wife and son had finished their supper. Corliss was in a deckchair on the back lawn under one of the stately poplars, holding a depleted glass of gin and tonic in her hand. A glow and babble from the television room showed where young Philip was hiding.
“Cold plate in the fridge,” Corliss said as she accepted her evening kiss. There was a book opened face-down on her lap, something heavy from the non-fiction bestsellers list. Corliss Wingbeat was never seen without a book, but she seldom read anything clear through. Her last conquest dated back several years—Jonathon Livingston Seagull.
Wingbeat ate his salad standing up in the kitchen. Taking food out-of-doors in view of the neighbors gave him a queasy feeling. After rinsing and stacking his plate, he wandered through to change this clothes. On the way past the TV room, he looked in on Philip, who smiled tenderly at him as he reduced the sound.
“Evening, Pip,” Walter said to his eleven-year-old. “Shouldn’t you be outside enjoying the glorious fresh air?”
“Same air in here, Father.” The boy indicated the open window.
“You have a point.” Wingbeat lingered.
“Is everything all right?” Pip was watching his father’s face.
“Just fine! It’s the weekend!” The distressed adman clapped his hands and executed a buck-and-wing. The step was not badly done. A generation ago, he had sparkled as one of the policemen in a high school production of The Pirates of Penzance.
“You look sad, Father.”
“The mature face in repose, my son. Nothing to be alarmed about. How’s this?” Wingbeat hooked an index finger in either side of his mouth and dragged his lips upwards into a manic smile. At the same time he let his eyes go crossed. Philip fell over, laughing and rolling on the carpet and Wingbeat walked away feeling good for the first time in days.
When he appeared on the back lawn ten minutes later, dressed in slacks and T-shirt and his recently whited tennis shoes, the sun was setting. Its last rays picked out the awkwardly sporty figure and made him glow. The raucous voice of Wingbeat’s neighbor, Larry Boxer, filled the silence.
“Hey, Wally,” he bellowed, “dim your shoes!”
As Wingbeat dragged a chair across the grass and sat close to his wife, she muttered, “Why don’t you tell that oaf to shut his big mouth?”
“He’s only kidding.”
“You let people push you around, Walter. It isn’t good for you. What are you afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid.”
“You are.” Corliss raised her voice just enough. “You reek fear.”
“I’ve never seen the sense in contention. Why argue with people? Cooperation is more productive.” He had not played his trump card in months. Tonight it seemed risky but he threw it down anyway. “It works for me. I’m the head of media in one of Canada’s leading ad agencies.” Secretly, Wingbeat knew why they kept him in the job. Because he worked all the hours God sends, not employing extra staff, keeping the department budget low. He would never say this to his wife. He was afraid to.
Corliss finished her third drink. She was feeling comfortably aggressive. “How is the smarmy limey?” she asked.
He knew she was referring to Penelope Good. There had been bad blood between the two women since an office party a couple of months ago at which the English newcomer mistook Corliss Wingbeat for catering staff, handing her an empty glass. “Who?”
“You know who. Penelope Put-down. I’d keep an eye on her. She wants your job. And God help her if she takes it.” Corliss modified her threat. “God help you.”
“We can help each other,” Penelope said, glancing at Clay Fetterson for confirmation. The hotel dining room was medium busy for two o’clock. It was unusual for Walter Wingbeat to be lunching in such surroundings at such an hour. His normal lunch was tuna salad on whole wheat taken at his desk along with yet another mug of company coffee.
“My idea exactly,” the managing director said. “You obviously need relief, Wally. We don’t want a repetition of the seizure episode last week. Bad impression in front of the client. I know it’s illogical but it could make him think R&B Advertising is not healthy.”
“It hasn’t happened before,” Wingbeat said. “Shouldn’t happen again.” Fear flooded his belly.
“We’re seeing to that,” the boss said. “Penny will take on the executive responsibilities. She will confront ferocious clients in their dens. Meanwhile, the wealth of Wingbeat experience will still be ours to tap when and as we need it.”
Penelope could only repeat what she had said before. “We can help each other.” But her grin was tight and she swallowed without drinking or eating anything.
“And now,” Fetterson said, “we’d better get back to the office. At four-thirty, we taste-test Metro Distillers’ newest product, Yucca Liqueur.”
“Yeeuch!” Penelope said, pretending to recoil as the managing director landed a playful punch on her arm.
Testing a client’s product was almost like being let out of school. Opinions were so widely sought that every member of the agency staff, from Clay Fetterson himself on down to the lowliest filing clerk, was welcomed into the boardroom to join the party and put forward an opinion. This product being made with alcohol, the session was scheduled for late in the working day. By five o’clock closing time the room looked and sounded something like happy hour at a neighborhood bar.
Several bottles of Yucca stood open on the mahogany table, protected now with a linen cover. Almost everyone punctuated the first sip of the liqueur with the spontaneous reaction—“Yeeuch!”
“That name has got to go,” a copywriter on the account would say and the crowd would laugh.
But the sober truth was, the stuff did taste vile. Nobody wanted a second glass of it—except for Penelope Good. The English import swilled the liqueur down and became merrier by the minute. “Jolly nice,” she commented. “Not finishing your sample, love? Waste not, want not, I’ll just tip your glass into mine.”
Wingbeat was among those who abominated the mickey-mouse booze. But, a solid agency man, he appreciated the fact that Yucca was the brainchild of the client’s wife and he knew they would have to sell it.
Wife. Watching Penelope getting high, he brooded. Here was his replacement as head of the department. Soon it would be made public and Corliss would have to know. Staff might accept the change and forget about it but his wife would not take it easily.
“Cheer up, Wally,” Fetterson said, his overfed face florid with good-fellowship. “It may never happen.”
“It already has.”
“You hate presenting to clients. You’ll be happier out of the rat-race.”
“There are others involved.”
Fetterson, a married man, knew what his former media chief was getting at. “Explain to Corliss. Tell her the job was killing you.”
Wingbeat left the session. He fled to the safety of his desk, lost himself in pages of figures which demanded nothing of him except that he arrange them in columns that added up. Never mind the job killing him. Robbed of her prestige as wife of a manager, deprived of the extra money that went with the responsibility, Corliss would make his life not worth living.
The idea entered Wingbeat’s troubled mind without preamble. Kill or be killed. It was preposterous, but perhaps it was the only way. Not Corliss—he would never murder his wife. But if he could find some safe way to terminate Penelope Good’s stay on the planet, his problem would disappear.
Wingbeat was so shaken by the possibility that he left the office earlier than usual and drove home in rush-hour traffic. His street looked different at a quarter to six, with men getting out of cars and wives greeting them. Larry Boxer was opening his front door, jacket off, shirt sleeves rolled, bulging briefcase hinting at problems the jovial salesman faced like anybody else.
“What happened, Wally?” he called. “Fired at last?”
“Not yet, Larry.” Wingbeat was so harassed, he let fly an answering salvo. “But when they drop me, I’m coming over to live off you.”
Inside the house, he took his wife and son by surprise. They were playing dominos at the kitchen table. Corliss had her first gin and tonic beside her. Philip was getting through milk and cookies.
“Good Lord,” Corliss said, as if a game-show host had climbed out of the television set.. “What are you doing here?”
“I live here. Hello, dear.” He kissed her and ruffled the cornsilk hair on his son’s giant head. “Evening, Pip.” As he moved off to change his clothes, he said, “Think I’ll do a little gardening. Not hungry yet.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“Taste-testing. Metro’s new liqueur.”
“Is it as bad as it smells?”
Ten minutes later, wearing an R&B sweatshirt and the trousers he was proud of because of their grass-stained knees, Wingbeat hurried down to the gardening shed and brought out clippers, rake, work-gloves, and a plastic bag for rubbish. The tin of weed-killer was almost full. He took it to the light and began reading the copy on the label. It certainly carried enough warnings about the danger of swallowing the stuff.
“Father?” Philip was watching him.
“Hello again, Pip.” He felt uncomfortable, caught in the act. “Nothing on the box just now? Aren’t they rerunning Dr. Who?”
“Can I help you? I want to help.”
“Take the clippers and go up to the rock garden. Trim the grass between the rocks.”
“What are you going to be doing?”
“Finishing reading this.” Empathy between father and son was intense. Wingbeat had to turn away as his eyes filled up. “Get on with it, son,” he said. “Dad needs to be alone.”
Early next morning, briefcase in hand, Wingbeat left the break-fast table and walked not to his car but across the back lawn to the gardening shed. Inside, he opened the briefcase, took up the tin of weed-killer, fitted it carefully inside between files, then closed the case.
“What gives?” Corliss called from the doorway as he came back and let himself into the car. Pip’s calm face watched from the kitchen window.
“Left my watch on the shelf last night,” he said, raising his wrist as an exhibit. It was no lie. Anticipating such a question, he had taken off his watch and left it in the shed before going after dandelions last night with a rusty knife.
Penelope Good paid him a short visit at half past nine, perching on his spare chair, crossing her shiny legs and swallowing coffee from a mug with “Carnaby Street” silk-screened on it. Then, “Must run, love,” she said. Penny called everybody love, or ducks. “The idiot in the corner office wants to pick my brains about a new-business presentation.”
Her irreverence about Fetterson only made Wingbeat wonder how she talked about him in front of others. “All right, love,” he said. “Did you enjoy the Yucca tasting?”
“Fabulous. I can’t understand why the others were putting it down.”
Wingbeat had smuggled a full bottle out of the boardroom. He opened his bottom drawer and lifted the jug into view. “Play your cards right—” he hinted.
“Yummy-yum,” the girl said, rounding her eyes.
“You never know your luck in a big city,” he told her. “This could be the day!”
When she was gone, he closed his door. He found a sheet of clean paper and folded it crisply. He twisted open the cap on the bottle and removed it. He took the tin of weed-killer from his briefcase and poured a quantity of the white powder into the V of the folded paper. Then he funneled the poison carefully into the bottle, tapping the paper to expedite the flow. Last of all, he capped the bottle, turning it a few times to disperse the powder. The bottle stored away, he opened the door, went back to his chair, and lost himself in a forest of numbers.
At four-thirty, Wingbeat wrapped the bottle in a brown-paper bag left over from one of his frugal lunches. Then he got into his jacket, took hold of his briefcase in one hand and the bag in the other, and walked down the hall to Penelope’s office. She was on the telephone, shoes tumbled on the carpet, stocking-feet propped on her desk. As she spoke and listened, she read her visitor in the doorway, his face, his briefcase, the rounded paper bag. The silky toes crimped and flexed.
“Is this an imposition?” Wingbeat asked when, at last, she terminated her call. “I know it isn’t closing time yet, but this bottle needs drinking. And you do enjoy the stuff. And I used to be manager of this department and you soon will be, so between the two of us we ought to be free to—”
“Say no more, say no more.” The girl got up and slipped her feet into the alligator high-heels. She put on a Charles Boyer voice... “Come wiz me to ze Casbah. I have cheese to go wiz de booze!”
The receptionist performed not a double, but a triple-take as she saw the unlikely couple vanish into an elevator. “Strategy conference,” Penelope called as the door slid shut.
Home from school, Philip Wingbeat raised suspicion in his mother’s mind by not raiding the refrigerator directly. “Are you all right?” she asked him.
“Worried.”
“What about? Damn it, you’ve been sleeping in class again, I’m going to have to pay yet another boring visit to placate the principal.”
“Worried about Father. He seems depressed.”
“He enjoys it. If it wasn’t for me pushing him, he’d be shining shoes at Central Station.”
Philip could not bring himself to mention the weed-killer. His silence on the subject had something to do with preserving his father’s dignity. But he was determined to sound a warning. After that, he would have done everything in his power.
“Mother, it isn’t like other times. I think he may try something. Father needs help.”
Corliss Wingbeat heard something in her son’s voice. An alarm rang inside her head. Walter had come home on time from work the other night. That was definitely odd. The boy’s rapport with his father was close. “You may be right,” she said. Leaving her chair, she went and found her purse, throwing in wallet and car keys. It was one thing to tease Walter in a casual way, but she wanted him secure for quite a few years yet. “I’ll collect your father at the office. We’ll have supper out. I’ll talk to him. Feed yourself from the fridge, darling.”
Corliss drove in the opposite direction to the main flow of traffic, arriving at the R&B offices just as the receptionist was putting things away. “I’m sorry, you’ve missed him, Mrs. Wingbeat,” the girl said. She could hardly believe her luck. Wingbeat’s wife never came to get him. And tonight of all nights!
“I can’t have missed him. It’s barely five o’clock.”
“He left early.” The smile came easily. “Along with Penny Good. They said they were going for a strategy conference.”
By a heroic effort, Corliss managed to conceal most of her fury from this twerpy girl. “Have you any idea where they’re holding their conference?”
“Penny’s apartment isn’t far from here.” The receptionist checked a list in a rare display of efficiency. She recited the address, adding, “It’s the old converted building around the corner.”
Walter Wingbeat was surprised at the smart interior of the apartment, situated as it was in such a grotty old structure. He said so as he cracked the cap on the bottle of Yucca, pretending he was breaking a seal.
“Thanks,” Penelope said. “I badgered the landlord into plastering the cracks and painting. The rest I did myself. But the exterior is not to be believed. I shudder at the thought of a fire.” She produced two tumblers. “Sorry I don’t have liqueur glasses.”
“You’ll buy a nice set of crystal,” Walter confided, pouring a generous measure of the ruby liquid into one of the tumblers,” out of your first pay as department head. Listen, have you got any juice or mineral water? I’m not as keen on this stuff as you are.”
“Hurray, more for me!” She brought him a bottle of fizzy orange. “You’re awfully good about this job change,” she said. “Some men would be homicidal.”
“Truth is, the stress was killing me. You’ve done me a favor, you and Fetterson.” He poured his orange, toasted her, drank as heartily as she did. The important thing, the reason for his being here, would be to get rid of the remains of the poisoned liqueur after she keeled over. Then, to fake illness himself. When she was well and truly deceased, he would come around and telephone for an ambulance. Too late.
“Yeeuch!” the English girl said with delight. She poured the drink down her throat and reached for the bottle. “I don’t care if the public laughs at the name and hates the product. I shall drink all they can produce.”
Nearly an hour had passed and half the bottle of cactus liqueur was in Penelope Good’s stomach when the door buzzer sounded. Wingbeat’s terror had been mounting, drink by drink. He had put in enough poison to fell a rhino. His former assistant was very merry indeed, but she showed no signs even of a mild tummy upset, let alone death by weed-killer. “I’m going to answer the door,” Penny slurred. “If I should return during my absence, please notify me.”
Wingbeat had no place to go. The apartment was of the bed-sitting room variety with kitchenette attached. His alternatives were to hide in the bathroom or a closet or else stay put and face the visitor. When it turned out to be Corliss, with an expression on her face of curiosity mixed with repressed fury, Wingbeat panicked. He had never been so terrified in his life. His mind couldn’t produce a logical assessment. All it could contribute was the idea, “Out, out, out!” His wife was blocking the doorway, flanked by Penelope Good, who was smirking from one shell-like ear to the other. The window! There was no other escape route.
Flinging aside a length of curtain, he hoisted the sash and stepped through onto the iron-barred platform of a fire escape. A paved parking lot lay three floors below.
“I wouldn’t!” his hostess called.
As if to substantiate her warning, the rickety construction squealed, a couple of rusty bolts slipped out of crumbling concrete moorings, and the fire escape swung out and away from the wall. “Hey!” Walter yelled. Now he really had something to be afraid about.
Corliss and Penelope were framed in the open window. His wife did the usual—she demanded something from him that he could not deliver. “Get back in here!” she yelled.
The English girl was shrieking with delight. “You look so funny! I love it! Your wife showed up and you actually—This is fabulous!” And then, having spent a part of her life being pummeled and battered in an English private school, and on her holidays falling out of boats or off of mountains in Europe, the bold young woman said, “Hang on, love. I’m coming to get you.”
Wingbeat watched her kick off her shoes. He stared in fascination as her nylon-clad toes took purchase on the window ledge. “Don’t move,” she said. She tried a step forward onto the platform. It was too far away from the wall. “Give me your hand. And hold on. We’ll drag you back.”
It was a moment of focus. Walter Wingbeat saw his manifold fears now combined in the person of this optimistic girl. She had taken over his job. He was afraid to pass the terrible news on to his wife. The future was unbearable. If only Penelope Good did not exist.
Her arm was extended, her hand inches away. The decision was made for him by a survivor inside, a Wingbeat of whose existence he was only dimly aware. He grasped her hand, took his tightest grip, then gave a sudden, ferocious pull. It was as if he was taking her to him and her face brightened mischievously, but only for a split second because there was no place for her to go but down. She swore, two blunt words he was surprised to discover in her vocabulary. A moment later, she was spread-eagled between cars on the pavement. The building superintendent, who had been watching the drama, ran to examine the body.
Corliss raised her eyes. They met his. The glance asked many questions as it seemed to supply some answers. No heroine, Corliss Wingbeat solved the risky problem simply. “Get in here,” she snapped. And her husband obediently took a long stride forward onto the window ledge and allowed himself to be dragged inside.
The super’s testimony backed up the story of the surviving couple. It was embarrassing for the Wingbeats, but there was no case against them. Fleeing husband, angry wife. Brave mistress accidentally falls to her death. Misadventure.
The Wingbeat case could not be dismissed so easily at the office, however. Norman Imrie was a bit of a prude. Such goings-on between employees of his ad agency were not acceptable. So the offending department head had to be retired early. But the liquor tycoon was nothing if not fair. The man ought not to be penalized financially. Imrie let it be known that Wingbeat should receive his full pension. And it was done.
For the first time in his life, Walter Wingbeat had nothing to be afraid of. His income was guaranteed, his pension linked to the inflation rate. He had nothing to do these days but work around the garden and spend some time handicapping the thoroughbreds at Blue Bonnets. A few days later, Corliss came to where he was sitting on a bench by the garden shed. She had a cup of coffee for him and a suspicious frown on her face. She sat down.
“Spill it, Walter. You were up to something. A philanderer you’re not.”
He decided to level with her. “She was about to take over my job. I wanted to get rid of her. I put weed-killer in a bottle of Yucca liqueur and gave it to her. The poison could never be tasted in that horrible stuff. The reason I went to her apartment was so that nobody else would drink some accidentally. But it had no effect, the powder must have lost its potency.”
“Fortunately for you. You must have been crazy.” She showed him affection over his foolish behavior. “Had she died like that, there would have been an autopsy. They’d have discovered the poison. You gave her the bottle, you’d have been hauled up in court.”
Wingbeat shrugged. “I wasn’t thinking straight. Anyway, it didn’t happen.”
Corliss Wingbeat’s fond mood lasted for the rest of the day. She decided to make her husband a bowl of his favorite vanilla pudding. Nobody else liked it, he could have what was left of the nearly full box of pudding powder she had found inside the pedalbin a few days ago. She asked Pip if he’d thrown it out and he said no, but who else would have done it? Maybe he was afraid he’d be given the hated pudding for dessert one day.
The boy fled that confrontation wondering if he should have spread the weed-killer around the garden instead of substituting it for something harmless. But somebody would have noticed the powder on the ground and he might have been observed had he tried to dig it in. Trust his mother to inspect the trash. Never mind—as long as the stuff was thrown out, it didn’t matter that she suspected him of putting it there. Thus Philip Wingbeat worried the matter round and round. He had noticed that as he got older, he was more frightened of things.
In the kitchen, Corliss got out the pudding powder and the milk and a bowl and a whisk and gave herself a few minutes’ exercise whipping up the mixture. When it was set, she brought it into the garden, where Walter was resting on the lounge swing with a pen and a pad and the daily racing form. “Here,” she said, handing him the bowl and a spoon. “Just to let you know how I feel about you.”
“Hey!” Wingbeat said. He scooped up a spoonful and swallowed it. It tasted odd—milky and bitter—but he was afraid to say anything that might destroy Corliss’s friendly mood. So, with appropriate noises, he wolfed down the entire nasty mess while his wife watched and wondered how much longer she could survive, shackled to this irritating man.