Scent of Evil

13

The law firm of Morris, McGill is the biggest one in town. It occupies one of the few wooden structures near the downtown T intersection of High and Main, a long single block down from my own apartment, at exactly the point where High Street’s descent into Main is at its steepest. This geographical detail helps create the unfortunate impression that the building is being crushed between its stalwart brick neighbor below, and the equally heavy but seemingly less surefooted monstrosity above.

No one I knew had any idea who Morris or McGill were. The firm had been a longstanding establishment when I’d first come to Brattleboro in the fifties, so presumably the founding partners were a part of ancient history, if they existed at all. It brought to mind that Brattleboro itself had been named for William Brattle, a Harvard-educated theologist/speculator who died as a colonel for the losing side in the Revolutionary War before ever visiting his namesake.

The receptionist/secretary who greeted me exuded crisp efficiency. I asked to see Tucker Wentworth.

Her expression became professionally crestfallen. “Oh, I’m sorry. Mr. Wentworth is out of the office.”

“Is he due back anytime soon?”

“I’m afraid he’s out of town. Would you like to leave a message with his secretary?”

“No, that’s all right. How about Jack Plummer?”

“Mr. Plummer’s in. Do you have an appointment?”

The sudden inanity of the question stalled me for a second. I pulled out my badge and showed it to her. “If he’s free, tell him Joe Gunther would like a couple of minutes.”

She nodded quickly, got out from behind her desk, and trotted up the flight of stairs along the wall. The building, in keeping with its awkward exterior, was equally odd inside. Like a series of stacked hallways, it was built narrow and deep, which allowed for very few offices with windows, since only the front and the back were free of the two brick behemoths on either side.

The receptionist returned and told me I could go up. Jack Plummer and I had known one another for twenty years. He was a fastidious man, plump and bald as an egg, given to bow ties, French meals, and front-row seats at the nearby Marlboro Music Festival every summer. Our connection, needless to say, was not social. As one of the town’s highest-paid criminal lawyers, which, in truth, wasn’t saying too terribly much, he had gleefully grilled me on many occasions in court, a relationship that had in turn led, paradoxically, to a pretty sound friendship.

His office was on the third floor facing High Street and took up the entire breadth of the building. He was also, this announced, the senior partner of the firm. The door was open, and his secretary waved me in without a word.

Jack was tilted back in his chair with his feet parked on his windowsill-fastidious but not prissy. He was also not one to beat around the bush. “I take it you’re here to discuss Charlie Jardine.”

“Very good.”

He waved it away. “Hardly; the whole town is beginning to hum about your problems. Plus, you’re a little behind the eight ball. Stan Katz has already come and gone.”

That struck a sour note. “Really? When?” Katz would be twice as fired up since McDonald had beaten him to the punch identifying Jardine.

“I don’t know; an hour or two ago.”

“Sent to you by Arthur Clyde?” I wondered how deep he’d dug already.

“He didn’t say. He is an amazingly unappealing little man, isn’t he?”

“Katz? Yeah. What did you tell him?”

“Nothing. He asked if Jardine had worked here. I said yes. He asked if I’d known him. I said no. It went downhill from there. Only lasted a few minutes. He’s probably wining and wooing half my staff by now, looking for the scuttlebutt.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“About Charlie?” Plummer looked thoughtful for a few moments. “Not much, really. Interesting guy in a way. One of the few people I ever met who defied categorization.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, he was like a bottomless pit. You could shovel things into him and never hear it land, but you could never get much out of him.”

“Kept to himself, then?”

“No, no. He was all over the place. The guy was an office boy, for Christ’s sake; that’s a job leading nowhere, generally held by nobodies. They pick up mail, deliver memos, go out for pizza, buy stationery supplies. Their curiosity is satisfied by catching a glimpse down some secretary’s blouse. Charlie attacked this place like it was a natural stepping-stone to fame and fortune-a training ground. He read everything he could, asked questions of all of us, even took me out to lunch once just to grill me about criminal law. And his curiosity wasn’t restricted to just the lawyers. I’d hear him asking the girls about how the computers worked, or how our contract with the Xerox people was set up. I don’t doubt he interviewed the janitor on the merits of Ty-D-Bol.”

“He didn’t show any preferences?”

“Oh, sure, eventually he turned Tucker into his favorite port of call, but even then he didn’t lose sight of the rest of us. Amazing drive. I wasn’t surprised he finally succeeded.”

“By getting Wentworth to sponsor him with Clyde?”

Plummer hesitated. “Yeah, well, I meant before that-by getting Tucker to turn him into a sort of protégé. Tucker’s a pretty private man, and I don’t think at first he liked being hounded by the guy who delivered his morning mail. But Charlie was pretty irrepressible; even Tucker had to finally respect that. Jardine had the get-up-and-go we all have envied in other people at one point or another in our lives. When someone like that asks for help, it’s pretty hard to resist.”

“Did it become a personal friendship?”

Again Plummer paused before speaking. “I sensed they were certainly friendly, given their age difference, but I couldn’t say much beyond that. As I mentioned, Tucker’s pretty private, and I don’t know if any of us ever found out what really made Charlie tick, so what they thought about one another is a little hard to guess. But, like you said, Tucker did sponsor him with Clyde, which isn’t something he would have done lightly.”

“Is Tucker really so sharp that Charlie would have picked up so much?”

Plummer laughed. “Tucker Wentworth is a natural. Business finance, in all its aspects, is to him what the sea is to a fish: home.”

“So-no offense-but what’s he doing here?”

Plummer laughed. “Oh, shit, he’s just like the rest of us, practicing on-the-job retirement.” The smile faded from his face. “Actually, his stimulus for leaving the fast lane wasn’t so self-serving. Some twenty years ago, his wife died, I don’t know from what. He doesn’t speak of it, but I’ve heard it was a painful experience. In any case, he had a young daughter whom I supposed he’d never really focused on, and I think it hit him that what he’d been working for all this time had nothing to do with reality. So he stepped back, signed on with us, and began paddling in calmer waters. His daughter and he are very close, he lives in a huge, fancy home with a view of the West River valley that’ll break your jaw, and he’s become a kind of distant elder statesman in his field. Life has become heaven on earth, from what I can tell.”

“So he kept up with his past work-I mean, he didn’t lose touch being out here instead of in New York?”

Jack Plummer leaned over and patted his telephone. “Welcome to the twentieth century, Joe. Between this, the computer, and the fax, all Tucker Wentworth missed out on were the power lunches and the attending heartburn. He’d already culled a lifetime’s worth of contacts. All he had to do when he joined us was maintain them.”

I gave him a skeptical look.

He held up both his hands. “He’s an elder statesman. He doesn’t need to earn his stripes in the fast lane anymore; nor does he need to know all the nitty-gritty about who’s screwing who. He can play a more general game now and be just as successful. He can also afford to be generous, which does Morris, McGill good and obviously didn’t hurt our friend Charlie Jardine.”

“So what made that relationship click?”

Plummer shrugged. “Who knows? The son he never had? Some shared interest I know nothing about? Usually it’s a little thing, some initial connection. It grows from there; I don’t know why.”

“What did they do? Spend hours together in the office doing a My Fair Lady imitation?”

Plummer laughed again. “If they did, they kept their singing low. Yeah, they spent time together, but they both had their own work to do. I used to see Charlie doing a lot of reading in his spare time, presumably homework Tucker had assigned him. I guess they spent non-office hours together, too, but I don’t know for sure. You have to understand that Charlie was amazingly bright. He soaked up information like a blotter. I think a lot of his education from Tucker consisted of just being pointed in the right direction. That’s probably what made it so gratifying to Tucker-it was easy and rewarding. The American Dream.”

I mulled over all he had said for a few moments. “I take it Wentworth knows about his death by now?”

Plummer shook his head sorrowfully. “I guess so; everyone else does. He was in this morning, but he’s out of town until tomorrow night on business. I’m sure he heard the news on the radio, though.”

“So Katz hasn’t talked with him?”

“Not here. That doesn’t mean he didn’t drive his car through the poor bastard’s front door before Tucker left.”

I couldn’t resist asking, “What about McDonald? Did he come by?”

Plummer smiled. “Better manners. He called, but I stiffed him, too.”

I got to my feet. “Will you let me know if anything comes up I might be interested in?”

“Sure, if I think it’s fair to Tucker.”

I nodded. “Okay. Oh, there was something else. Do you know if Wentworth helped finance ABC Investments?”

Plummer looked thoughtful. “Finance it? I haven’t the slightest idea. I don’t doubt he steered some business their way, but that would stand to reason. You’ll have to ask him. If he did supply the financing, it’ll be in the public record-by law.”

“And what about Arthur Clyde? Do you know him?”

“Nope. I think I’ve seen him in the building a couple of times, when he was visiting Tucker, but I’m not even sure I’d recognize him if he walked in the door right now.”

“Okay. Thanks, Jack.”

“You bet. Give my best to Gail.”

Jack Plummer’s information had been full, detailed, and enlightening, but all it had done for me was to render Jardine’s portrait even murkier.

Charlie Jardine had come across as a young eager-beaver-bright, a quick learner, full of intelligent questions-a man on the go. Had that jibed with everything else I knew of his past and personality, I really would have been flummoxed by his grisly demise, but the contrasts kept my interest keen. For example, what did a golly-gee, super-motivated gofer have in common with Rose Woll’s portrait of a reckless, irresponsible, sexual sybarite?

And why had a man of minimal education and a dead-end future suddenly shifted gears? Which button had been pushed? Was it the death of his parents and the sudden inheritance? Had there been a bond there that had held him captive, which when severed had allowed him to soar? Or had his apparent aimlessness fresh out of high school merely been the signs of a man finding a foothold? And why the obsession to separate sex from emotion-the manipulativeness implied by all those mirrors and oils and the cocaine? Despite Rose Woll’s appreciation of him, Charlie seemed to me as sensual as an expert lathe operator, producing brilliant, complex results by coldly mechanical means.

People do not get themselves systematically executed like Charlie had without having gotten someone extremely pissed off. And despite his business partner, his employer, and one of his girl friends all agreeing that the dead man had been a very nice guy, I couldn’t shake Plummer’s image of Jardine as a deep, dark emotional well.

The paradox was, I found all that strangely heartening. It made me feel that in pursuing Charlie Jardine, I was following the right track.

The mood didn’t last. As I walked down High Street, Stan Katz poked his nose out of the Dunkin’ Donuts. “I was wondering when you’d get back.”

I looked at him incredulously. “You’ve been staking me out?”

He grinned. “Sure. You think you guys are the only ones who do that?”

“I thought you’d have better things to do. Christ, we came up with a fresh corpse for you. Why aren’t you hanging around down there, or did McDonald beat you out again?”

He gave me a sour expression. “I knew about Jardine before he did; I just don’t have a public outlet every hour on the hour. Besides, it’s no big deal-who cares when a body is ID’d? You people would have ’fessed up soon enough anyhow.”

He shifted gears, barely bothering to sound nonchalant. “I heard somebody call the stiff ‘Milly,’ but that didn’t mean anything to me.”

“Millard Crawford, called Milly for short. You can find out more about him in the court records. He was a regular customer. Shot at close range.”

Katz stared at me, his eyes narrowed. “What’re you up to?”

“Meaning?”

“Usually it’s ‘no comment,’ or ‘talk to the SA.’ Why so chatty?”

I turned to cross the street. “Fine. No comment, then.”

He reached out and touched my elbow. “No, no. Don’t get your shorts in a twist. I was just surprised, that’s all.”

“You know, Stanley, I’m not uncooperative just for fun. But you nag and nag and nag like a kid who doesn’t know when to quit. You should learn to win people over.”

He was shaking his head, unconvinced by my contrived irritation: “That’s not it. You want me to chase after Crawford instead of Jardine. Why aren’t you at today’s murder scene right now?”

The clever son of a bitch had me there. That was exactly why I’d given him Milly’s name. “Wouldn’t do any good. Besides, I was the first one there; rode in the ambulance with the guy. Tyler and his boys’re doing the technical stuff now. I’ll get into it later.”

He ignored me, correctly sensing he was on the right track. “In the interest of fair play, I was thinking I should get some comments from you about Jardine before I file my story.”

“Sure.” He’d turned tables on me. Now I was the one wondering what card he had up his sleeve. We may have been natural antagonists, but I had to admit he was tough, determined, and damned good at his job; all qualities I would have admired if he’d been a cop.

“For example, you just went to Morris, McGill, where Jardine was once employed, to investigate the highly unusual connection between that firm and ABC Investments.”

“Really? I thought I went there to hear them laugh about how they told you to take a hike.”

“I also know that you people think Crawford and Jardine were connected, and that you were about to question Crawford before he was killed.”

I smiled at him. “You didn’t even know Crawford’s name two minutes ago.”

He flared. “The name of the guy’s irrelevant; I heard you tell Dispatch you were parked at Horton Place just before all hell broke loose. You were there to interview somebody, only it turns out somebody beat you to it. Crawford and Jardine are part of a pattern.”

I was impressed. Based on a few overheard radio comments, and a knowledge of how we worked, he was close to hitting the nail on the head. It almost saddened me to have to play the charade out to its humdrum conclusion.

“Write what you will, Stanley, but I wouldn’t stick my neck out too far, if I were you. You could end up looking pretty foolish.” Or we could, I thought privately.

One Hundred Main, as the boutique was called, was right where Tyler had said it belonged. The lettering of the sign was pseudo-Art Deco, and the windows picked up the theme, with flapper-clad manikins holding 1920s props. Inside, the decor and the cool air exuded exclusiveness and ritzy class. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would have such a store in Brattleboro.

A tall, gray-haired woman in elegant clothes slid up the counter toward me, her penciled-in eyebrows arched in inquiry. “May I help you?”

“I’m Lieutenant Gunther from the police department. One of my men called earlier about a blouse you sold.”

The eyebrows came down, as did the sophisticated manner and the mid-Atlantic accent. “Oh, yeah. The Riviera-that’s what we call it.”

She walked back along the counter to the cash register. “I dug it out of the files. Wasn’t hard; it’s the only one we’ve sold. Real expensive.” She began pawing through a drawer.

“You do a lot of business?”

“No. I think the place is a tax dodge, if you ask me. Still, it’s a job. Ah, here it is.” She handed me a sales slip.

Attached to it was a credit-card receipt. She’d been right; the blouse had cost one hundred and ninety-five dollars. More interesting, though, was the name on the receipt.

“Did you make the sale?”

“Yeah. She was perfect for it. Looked great.”

“Can you describe her?”

“Sure. About my height, slim, not too much up top-that’s what made the blouse look so good on her-and she had very blonde hair.”

I thought back to Ned Beaumont’s description of Jardine’s last female visitor. “Almost silvery, cut in a page boy?”

“That’s right.”

I looked at the receipt again, studying the signature: Blaire Wentworth. So Charlie Jardine’s interest in Tucker Wentworth included his daughter. Maybe Stan Katz was on to something, after all.