A small Buxley office building was adjacent to the refinery. The parking lot was not full and Ben was easily able to find a parking place for his van. He held his breath and dashed toward the front door.
Inside, the air-conditioning was running at high power, presumably to ensure that none of the eye-watering smell outside got inside. Ben opened his mouth and sucked in air in one greedy gulp.
The receptionist at the front desk smiled. “You made it. Congratulations.”
Ben looked embarrassed.
“I’m serious. Sometimes they don’t make it, and I have to call for men with stretchers after they pass out on the steps. That smell is atrocious.”
“Well, I managed to get in without exposing myself to much of it.”
“In your lungs, you mean,” the receptionist replied. “Wait till you get home and smell your clothes.” She smiled. “How can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Grady Armstrong. He’s expecting me.” Resourceful as ever, Jones had tracked the man down and made an appointment.
The receptionist checked her list, then pointed Ben toward the elevators. “Second floor,” she said.
Ben rode up. He didn’t have to search long. Just outside the elevator doors, he saw a wall sign with Grady Armstrong’s name on it.
Ben leaned into the office. “Mr. Armstrong? Ben Kincaid.”
The man behind the desk rose to his feet and gestured for Ben to come in.
Armstrong’s office could only be described as entirely ordinary. It looked like every other oil and gas office Ben had ever seen, and thanks to his brief stint as legal counsel for the now-defunct Apollo Corporation, he’d seen a few. There were tall stacks of paper piled up on the man’s desk and plat maps on the walls—the whole state divided into drilling and spacing units. Photos of recent oil wells hung crookedly on the far wall.
Grady Armstrong was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow.
“Good to see you again,” Ben said. “I’m sorry to interrupt your work. I think my secretary explained that I’m representing Earl Bonner, who’s a suspect in the recent murder of Lily Campbell. Unfortunately, that murder seems to dovetail with the murder of your brother twenty-two years ago.”
Armstrong nodded. “Right. Just makes me sick to my stomach.”
“I can imagine.”
“I don’t know anything about this new murder.”
“I understand. But since there seems to be a connection between the murders—or someone is trying to suggest a connection—I hoped you could tell me what you know about the first murder. Maybe that will give me some insight on the new one.”
“All I know is what the police told me.” His head fell; there was a slight catch in his throat.
“Were you with your brother when it happened?”
“Oh, no,” Armstrong explained. “We’ve always gone our separate ways, ever since we were old enough to leave home. Earlier, really. You may have heard that we … well, we didn’t have the best home life. Neither of us stayed any longer than we had to.”
“Your brother George escaped to the New Orleans jazz world.”
“That’s right,” Armstrong said. He laughed abruptly. “George was the one who had all the talent. I was the boring one. Man, I couldn’t play the kazoo. George tried to train me to beat drums so I could travel with him, but it was hopeless. Just couldn’t keep the beat. So we drifted apart. He went into the glamorous world of entertainment, and I started working my way up in the world of oil and gas.”
“I see you’re now a Buxley senior vice president.”
“Right, right. Me and forty other guys. Believe me, I’m not that big a deal. If I were, I’d have an office in the St. Louis world headquarters, not next door to the smelliest refinery in the Southwest. Oh, I’m not complaining. For a boy who started out as a field hand, this is a pretty cushy situation. For my first four years, I was a roughneck for Esso. I worked the wells, traveled from town to town, working all day every day in the oil and muck. Those four years probably put ten on my face. And look what they did to my hands. Still, I didn’t mind. Kind of enjoyed it, to tell you the truth.”
He leaned back expansively. “I always knew I wasn’t cut out for the kind of life George had. I couldn’t do the things he could do; I couldn’t make people feel the way he could make them feel.” He smiled gently, then shrugged. “But who’s to say which is better, right? He may have had a higher profile, for a while, but I had a lot more steady paychecks.” He paused. “And of course, I lived a good deal longer.”
“Yes,” Ben said, nodding. “Do you have any insight on your brother’s death? Why it happened?”
“Like I said, I wasn’t around. I was on the road most of the time. I was a land man by then, always scouting for new oil or gas properties. Even my bosses didn’t see me often. I got word about what had happened eventually, but not in time to do much about it. Didn’t even come back for the funeral. Made the arrangements over the phone. Always felt bad about that, but I was in the process of changing jobs and moving to another state and—well, we were living separate lives by then.”
“Did you ever hear anyone talk about who killed your brother?”
“Only the police. They were convinced it was your client.”
“I don’t mean to upset you, sir, but I believe the police were wrong. Did you ever hear anyone express any other theories?”
“No, I didn’t. Frankly, given what I knew about my brother, it made perfect sense.”
“It did?”
“Sure. I hadn’t seen George for years, but he was my brother, and I knew him. Specifically, I knew what a temper he had. He was just one of those guys, you know? Calm as an angel, most of the time. But when he got set off—man, he was a terror. Absolutely uncontrollable.”
“Are you saying he might’ve provoked Earl?”
Armstrong shrugged. “I wasn’t there. I’m just saying it’s possible. I know there was more than one time when he made me so mad I could’ve killed him on the spot.”
“Would you mind telling me about it?”
“Which time? I was on the wrong side of his temper more than once. I pity anyone who had the same experience.” He shook his head. “In fact, the last time I saw George, we had a fight that probably registered on the Richter scale. Our father had just died. Turned out, to everyone’s surprise, the SOB had accumulated some money. I don’t know how he got it; some way the IRS wouldn’t approve of, I suspect. Anyway, the point is, he left it all to me. You may have heard—George and our father never got along too well. It shouldn’t have been a surprise but—well, I guess it was. George just went mad, I mean totally crazy mad. Lost all control, all sense of perspective. He ranted and raved—even took a punch at me. It seems silly now, but at the time, I thought the man might kill me if he had half a chance. So I left.” He sighed heavily. “And I never saw George again.”
“Do you know anything about the dispute that supposedly led to his murder?”
“George could be a raving lunatic when it came to women. Absolutely caveman territorial.”
“Earl says that both he and George were … interested in Lily.”