Scent of Evil

26

The Hillwinds Development on Upper Dummerston Road, also known as Country Club Road, was an unsentimental farmer’s dream come true. For all those exhausted tillers of the soil, rich in land and poor in cash, bruised by climbing taxes and falling milk prices, the erstwhile Hillwinds Farm was an inspiration. Located on a high ridge overlooking the West River valley between Brattleboro and the county seat of Newfane, twelve miles away, this prime acreage had been gracefully converted into one of the highest-priced exclusive pieces of real estate in the area.

The houses placed along the winding ribbon of road that ran the length of the ridge line were, for the most part, rural architectural showpieces, natural wood and glass confections, most often seen and envied in the pages of Fine Homebuilding and at the back of the New York Times Magazine.

It was not a place to find a surfeit of resident native Vermonters.

It had, on the other hand, managed to avoid looking too much like a wealthy suburb, despite an unnatural absence of free-growing trees and a preponderance of overly manicured lawns. The saving grace was in the setting, for no matter how Aspen-like the buildings or Greenwich-like the grounds, the politely distant trees, the sense of the river far below, and indeed the entire valley was pure, unadulterated Vermont.

I turned off and drove up the steep, clean macadam of the main entrance road, emerging from a shielding line of trees onto the ridge. At the stop sign, I had a choice of going left, back into the trees and the older, more modest section of the development, or right, where the overpriced prima donnas had been placed for all to see. Following Jack Plummer’s directions, I turned right.

I wasn’t sure whether Wentworth would be back yet, but I figured I would take my chances in the hope of catching him by surprise.

Crawling north at ten miles per hour, craning my neck like some visiting rube, I found the hilltop broadening and dipping slightly, until I came to a gentle crest, below which the ridge concluded in a soft, rounded promontory. On either side of me were two stone pillars guarding the road, one of which carried the warning: Dead End, Private Road. Ahead, commanding a vista of the entire valley, was a cluster of outbuildings arranged admiringly around a central main house of truly regal proportions. Two days earlier, Jack had described the view from Wentworth’s house as a jawbreaker. It had not been an overstatement. Whatever else Tucker Wentworth might have been, he was obviously not one either to ignore his creature comforts or to hide his means of begetting them. Seeing this estate from above, and identifying what had to be Blaire Wentworth’s two-thousand-square-foot “cottage” off to one side, helped me to better understand some of the guarded, patrician undercurrents that I’d noticed in my conversation with her the day before.

I rolled down the driveway and parked in the traffic circle before the main house. It was Greek Revival in mimicry, with white clapboards, corner pediments, and a porticoed entrance, but it yielded to modern tastes with its skylights, huge windows, and a gigantic down-slope deck off the back-all highlighting a style meriting its own architectural label: Ostentatious.

My knock on the door, however, was not answered by the expected female domestic in an aproned uniform, but rather by a tall, thin man, dressed in worn gray slacks and an open-necked, button-down shirt with frayed cuffs and collar. His eyes were bloodshot and he needed a shave.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Wentworth?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Joe Gunther; I work for the Brattleboro Police Department.”

His face was unchanging. “I was wondering when you’d come around.”

“I’d like to talk to you, if I may.”

We stood there, eyeing one another for several seconds, a cool, air-conditioned breeze sweeping past him and pleasantly drying the warm sheen on my forehead.

He moved aside. “All right.”

I followed him inside, through a grandiose lobby, across an immaculate, almost sterile living room with a breathless view of the West River valley, and into a book-lined, mahogany-paneled office with overstuffed leather furniture and antique lamps. He settled, indeed almost collapsed, into an armchair placed beside a pair of French doors, and fixed his gaze on the scenery outside, ignoring me completely.

I looked around for a moment, analyzing the contrasts I’d witnessed so far. The house, as much as I’d seen of it, had been store-bought from very exclusive sources. The drapes in the living room matched the fabric of the furnishings; the wall-to-wall carpeting was ankle-deep and softly off-white, tastefully highlighted with carefully placed, small Oriental rugs. The paintings on the walls were ersatz, expensive Impressionist, the light fixtures ran to either fake-antique brass or modernist cutting-edge. It was as if someone had taken ten of the most expensive catalogs available and had organized the contents of this house from their pages. Looking at this disheveled old man, with his eyes fixed on the distant hills, and remembering his cool and elegant daughter, I had no doubts as to the designer.

I sat in the armchair opposite him, enjoying the tangy odor of the leather that enveloped me as I leaned back. It was a chair of almost womblike comfort. “I gather you’ve been away for a few days.”

He didn’t answer at first but just sat there, staring. Finally, he turned his head and looked at me. I was struck by the pallor of his blue eyes, which made them look almost blank, and also by the fatigue etched into his heavily lined face.

“You left the morning Charlie Jardine’s body was found. Is his death the reason why?”

He lifted one long, thin, patrician hand and rubbed the side of his nose with his index finger. “Yes,” he said, after a pause.

“Where did you go?”

A small crease appeared between his eyes. “What?”

I knew he’d heard me. The house was quiet as a tomb. I decided to take his lead and remain silent, forcing him to pick up the conversation.

He merely sighed gently and went back to gazing out the window. It occurred to me then that we were not playing power games, nor was he recovering from a hangover or a bad night’s sleep. What I was witnessing was a man with little regard for his surroundings, no interest in idle chat, and, perhaps, no hope for the future-a man in deep mourning.

“Charlie meant a lot to you, didn’t he?”

This time, he just barely nodded.

“Can you think why someone would murder him?”

He still didn’t look at me, but at least I got a full sentence out of him. “No. That’s what I keep asking myself; I don’t understand.”

“What did you know about him?”

“Know about him?” He hesitated, scratching his forehead, as if realizing for the first time who and what I was. “You mean his past?”

“Sure. That’s a start.”

“He was from around here; went to school here; was orphaned here. He was an only child, like Blaire… I don’t know; I guess he’d been unruly as a teenager, a little aimless, trying to find his way. He was very bright… Quick to learn; eager.”

“Was he ever involved in drugs?”

Wentworth’s expression blackened with both pain and anger. “Oh, my God. Is that what you think? He had long hair once, so that makes him a drug user? I am not unaware of the pressures being brought against your department; that one of your own policemen might be involved in Charlie’s death. Wouldn’t it be convenient to drag in a drug connection and write the whole thing off as just another turf battle?”

I kept my voice calm and assured. “Mr. Wentworth, there is something you may not know, since we withheld it from the press. Charlie Jardine was first rendered helpless, tied to a chair, and then slowly strangled to death over a period of some minutes. That technically categorized his murder as torture/execution. It was not a crime of passion.”

Wentworth persisted in trying to depersonalize his friend’s violent death. “There are lunatics everywhere. Look at Ted Bundy, or that poor woman who was assaulted in Central Park.”

I leaned forward in my chair to make my point. “Your friend was not the victim of a spontaneous crime. He was killed because of who he was and what he’d done. He was a specific target. If we could find out more about him, we might also find out why he was killed, and by who.”

Wentworth was breathing fast, his mouth partly open, making him look even older than his age, which I guessed was somewhere in his late sixties. “I never knew him to have anything to do with drugs,” he finally answered, calming down and faking a strong voice. “On the few occasions the subject came up, he had only scorn for both users and dealers.”

“When did the subject come up?”

He waved his hand impatiently. “On the news; it was nothing personal.”

“What do you know about his private life?”

Again, there was a slight scowl of irritation, although I sensed it was less directed at me, and more at his own ignorance being exposed. “I knew enough, Mr. Gunther. Charlie was not a very complicated man. He was neither old enough nor well traveled enough to have become overly complex. He was still driven by his ambition and his desire to learn. If someone did target him, as you say, it was not because of some deep, dark secret in his past. It would seem to me your best suspect is the policeman the papers wrote about; isn’t jealousy the standard stimulus for violence?”

I ignored the question. “Did he have a lot of girlfriends?”

Wentworth was becoming increasingly restive, or maybe embarrassed. “I wouldn’t know. He was an attractive, engaging individual, fully capable of appealing to any woman.”

Or man, I thought, but kept my mouth shut. “You were a great help to Charlie.”

He was quiet for a moment and then smiled slightly. “I don’t know how helpful I was. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Charlie’s time had come. Indeed, he sought me out, full of questions. I never would have noticed him otherwise.”

“But there was more to it than just helping a guy on the fast track; you took a liking to each other, didn’t you? Wasn’t it your friendship that fueled your sponsorship, rather than the other way around?”

He chuckled, his face lighting up for an instant, before the wear lines, the pain, and the loss redescended. “You’re right, of course. Had it not been for his personality, I wouldn’t have much cared about his ambitions. It didn’t hurt, though, that he was so keen and that he focused so much attention on me.”

“And he was a quick learner.”

“Extremely. He had an amazingly analytical mind, which is imperative in this business. He didn’t get sentimental about many of the issues that slow other people down.”

I waved my hand at him to interrupt. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Oh, you know. Dealing in the market sometimes takes a hard heart. There are all sorts of people out there, breaking their backs to get something going, pleading for support. You know their intentions are pure, but you also know they don’t have a chance in hell of putting the deal together. You have to be able to steel yourself against making decisions based on sentiment, or on other people’s enthusiasm, which can be just as disastrous. Charlie was good at that; while gentle, he also knew exactly what he wanted. That’s a natural ability, not something you learn.”

I thought back to what I’d learned about Charlie Jardine during the last four days. Wentworth had chosen to admire what he liked in the man, as had Rose, Jack Plummer, Arthur Clyde, and the others, all of whom had held him to the light and been dazzled by a slightly different facet.

But it was that manipulative element that kept tugging at me, the growing conviction that Charlie, he of the “analytical mind,” had only allowed each of these people to see what he’d wanted them to see. Of course, as with any camouflage, the illusion was never quite perfect. Apart from Rose, whose needs were too desperate for clear-sightedness, the others had caught a glimpse of something else, something a little less appealing. The difference with Blaire and Tucker Wentworth, however, was that they didn’t care. They, who had apparently liked him the most, and had understood him the best, had each taken what they’d wanted of the man. Tucker happily embraced the hardhearted strategist, Blaire the artist as lover, while both secretly longed, I suspected, for more of the entire man.

It occurred to me then that there was a perverse symmetry at work in the life of Charlie Jardine, whose complex need for attention demanded he always be part of a triangle, whether it be emotional, as with Rose and John Woll, practical, as with Tucker Wentworth and Arthur Clyde, or a bit of both, as with Tucker and his daughter.

“Mr. Wentworth, did you ever feel that Charlie was using you?”

He actually burst out laughing, throwing his head back and tapping himself on the chest. “Of course he was, as I was him. My God, man, why else do people do what they do? Why else are you in this house, or am I employed by Morris, McGill, or does my daughter live in my backyard, decorating and redecorating this whale of a house? We’re all using one another; that’s how society works.”

My silence following this outburst was misinterpreted as rebuke. Now Wentworth leaned forward in his chair, his face animated by the non-debate. “Come, come, Mr. Gunther, surely a man of your profession can’t be that naïve. Besides, no one says that friendship can’t play a part in it. I love my daughter; why should I care that while she’s loving me back she’s also protecting her inheritance?”

It was an interesting viewpoint, revealing more than I think was intended. Could Blaire, forever attentive to her self-interests, have seen Charlie as a challenger? Did she seduce him to keep him under control? If so, would she have resorted to extreme measures if she felt she’d lost that control?

It did seem that Tucker’s affection for Charlie transcended the mentor-protégé model. I didn’t know yet if their relationship had a sexual side to it, but even if it didn’t, some emotional bonding, almost like a father and son, had apparently taken place. That sure as hell would have given me sweaty palms had I been Blaire Wentworth.

“Did you see something of yourself in Charlie?”

“I guess I did,” he answered slowly. “There were vast differences, of course, more than there were similarities, but I found him so remarkably receptive to ideas.”

“What were some of the differences?”

“Well, he was better with people than I am; he had an uncanny ability to make them open up. Most people, myself included, like to talk about themselves. You know, you ask someone what they do for a living, not because you’re interested, but because you want them to return the favor and allow you center court for an hour or more. Well, when Charlie asked, he was genuinely interested; he did everything but take notes. It made him very easy to like.”

“And hard to get to know.”

The smile of reminiscence stayed on his lips. “Yes. He kept his cards close.”

“Did your daughter ever meet him? What did she think?”

“Blaire? I don’t know that she thought much about him either way. We spoke business mostly, when he came over. She has little interest in that. I must tell you that my daughter and I do not have much in common. We spend a lot of time together, mostly over meals, but I don’t think either one of us is very interested in the other.”

I nodded without answering. I disagreed, of course. From what I’d learned over the past four days, I thought both Wentworths had quite a bit in common.

I decided to drop Blaire from the conversation and concentrate on her father and Charlie again. “So whose idea was it to create ABC?”

He seemed instantly more relaxed. “His. Actually, I should say it was his ambition, and perhaps my idea. He had shown himself so good at the game that I thought it would be a waste to see him disappear down some huge corporate black hole on Wall Street. Communications being what they are nowadays, there was no reason why he couldn’t set up shop right here and be a successful independent. The idea didn’t really take shape until I heard Arthur Clyde was looking to get back in the game.”

“Why was he such a factor?”

Wentworth raised his eyebrows at my lack of knowledge. “Oh. Well, Charlie could never have done it all by himself. I mean, he was bright and ambitious and a real go-getter, but he was no magician. No one man can both drum up business and watch the market, not as an independent operator. If you’re a Shearson or an IDS rep, you can do both because those companies supply your research; all you have to do is be a good salesman and have a thorough grasp of the basics. But Charlie couldn’t do it all alone.”

“You were there.”

He smiled, but I could tell there was no humor. “So was Arthur, and Arthur is a born analyst. I’m not. The trick here is to know your limitations.”

It was a straightforward statement, but I couldn’t help feeling it also contained an element of warning. Throughout this latter part of the conversation, I’d wondered how much he knew of our recent activities concerning ABC. Surely his buddy Arthur had called him first thing after hearing of Charlie’s death, and definitely after we’d walked out with all his business files. And yet Wentworth hadn’t spilled a drop of all that.

“Was your involvement with ABC limited to introducing Charlie to Arthur?”

“That was the gist of it. Of course, I was free with any advice I might have had.” He chuckled briefly. “Much to Arthur’s dismay. I’m sure he kept wishing I’d go on a long vacation.”

“You didn’t put any money into setting it up?”

He waved the notion away with his hand. “Oh, no. That would have been just the wrong thing to do, as I saw it. Charlie had an inheritance, and lord knows Arthur is no pauper; I felt it would be best if the two of them put their own money at stake. I’ve always felt it’s the element of risk that makes the real artist in this business. If you’re not betting your own money, then why should you care if you win or lose?”

I kept watching his eyes, which had told me much of his pain and loss earlier. Now they were clear and cool and calculating, his body language relaxed and almost jovial. I couldn’t believe a man could so overpower his own grief, unless he had a dire need to focus on something more important, or more threatening.

Since his guard was now so blatantly up, I felt I had little to lose in the chess game I’d been imagining a while back. “You probably heard we subpoenaed all of Charlie’s business records and correspondence.”

The smile remained in place, but barely. “Yes. I believe Arthur told me. He was quite upset.”

“That he was. He even had a court order issued from the bench, not that there was much point.”

“No?”

“Not really. We’d pretty much gone over what we wanted by the time the order was served. You actually did more than just introduce Clyde to Jardine, didn’t you? In fact, after they set up ABC, you steered quite a bit of business their way.”

“That’s true, I did. Are you saying I did something wrong?”

“No, no. I do feel I ought to warn you, though, that the ABC records we studied will be subpoenaed again, Mr. Wentworth, with an eye toward your involvement in that operation. We don’t for a minute believe it was pure paternal benevolence.”

He rose to his feet, pale, tight with fury, and stared down at me. “I challenge you to find a single scrap of evidence that I benefited from Charlie’s business. He was a friend; moreover, he was the son I never had, unless you find that too maudlin to believe. If you carry this idea too far, I will add to your string of lawsuits, only mine will have the balls of an elephant. It will ruin the police department, the town, and you personally, because it, unlike your insinuations, will be based on facts.”

I too got to my feet. “I never said you’d benefited from ABC. In fact, I think just the reverse. I think ABC’s success was based entirely on your priming its pump. It’s true that Charlie had an inheritance, and that the paper trail indicates he put it all into the business, but I don’t think he did, not really. You didn’t let him. You told him that, win or lose, he wasn’t risking that eighty-five thousand dollars; that even if the business went belly up, the money would reappear in his account.”

He stared at me for a long while, his eyes searching mine. He glanced briefly out the window, a jerky, awkward movement. His voice, when it came, was muted. “There’s nothing illegal in that.”

The decent thing then would have been to leave. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option. Being softhearted had not been Wentworth’s only offense, and I had to tell him I knew that.

“Maybe not, but making money through insider trading is, even if the beneficiary is somebody else. And there’s the matter of the Putney Road Bank’s pension fund, and how it came to be entrusted to the care of a fledgling investment firm, one of the founders of which had until recently been washing cars and waiting tables. And what about Arthur Clyde? He wasn’t fool enough to throw his money in with the likes of Charlie Jardine-Christ, he could barely stand the man. What did his involvement cost you?”

Wentworth didn’t answer. He stood mutely before his expensive armchair, surrounded by his daughter’s taste for opulence, his head turned toward the extravagant view.

I showed myself out. There was no hard evidence of the allegations I had just made, and maybe there never would be. The man, after all, was no novice. But it was clear that Tucker Wentworth, for all his cynical philosophy, had become a sentimental old man and may have broken a few laws to prove it. But I doubted he was a murderer.

On the other hand, I could no longer say the same of Arthur Clyde or Blaire Wentworth.