I knew the law firm: Morris, McGill. It dealt mostly in corporate and criminal law and represented much of the town’s upper crust-that part which didn’t deal directly with firms in New York or Boston. It was the biggest outfit around and its gloss obviously began to rub off on young Jardine. He started playing the stock market, gently at first, then with increased confidence. He set up an account at a brokerage house. For several years, he kept the same lowly position, but his bank and tax records reflected considerably more ambition and success than the job description implied.
His parents died within six months of one another, and he inherited eighty-five thousand dollars and the house on Marlboro Avenue, free and clear. Now, suddenly situated, financially secure, and filled with an intoxicating sense that the golden ring was his at last, the one-time office boy made a direct leap to entrepreneur: He became founder, part owner, and partner in ABC Investments.
That had been a little over one year ago, which helped explain why the name of the firm had meant nothing to me when Beaumont had first mentioned it.
I sat back in my chair and rubbed my eyes. Despite the fan, I felt sticky and unwashed. The inside of my mouth tasted bitter, and I was sure my breath could wilt flowers at twenty yards.
I wondered what connection these two young men shared, besides possibly the wife of one of them. Had they both known Rose in school? That was likely. Had she dated them both? Simultaneously? If so, had their triangle ended on a sour note, as most triangles do?
I crossed my hands on my stomach and stared at the reams of scattered paperwork covering my desk, much of it highlighted with my large pool of paper clips. Despite John having been at the site of Charlie’s grave, and his wife’s appearance on Charlie’s tape machine, I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions pointing to jealousy. I had dealt with people who sought revenge for infidelity. They fit a general type, albeit with rare exceptions, and John Woll was not of that type. He had none of the insecure and possessive qualities that found an outlet in violence upon others. Aside from the self-destructiveness that had marked his early twenties, his career as a cop had been spurred by his own harsh self-criticism. None of us could ever be as hard on him as he was on himself.
I was brought out of my reverie by a gentle tap on the door. Sammie Martens poked her head in. “Morning, Joe.”
I looked at my watch. It was six o’clock. “Christ, Sammie, I just sent you home.”
“I got some sleep. I wanted to come in early to give you my report. You seemed a little distracted last night.”
I motioned to her to come in and sit. Hers wasn’t the only report I’d stifled. Once I’d connected the voice on Jardine’s machine to Rose Woll, I hadn’t been in the mood to play lieutenant. I’d sent everybody home, whether that had suited them or not. “Let me ask you something, Sammie.”
She sat down with her report folder on her lap. “Shoot.”
“You’re aware of the male stud’s vision of what a woman wants most, aren’t you?”
She couldn’t suppress a little smile. As one of the few policewomen in the department, and the only one on the detective squad, she’d had more than her fair exposure to the convoluted and fragile male libido. “Muscles, macho, and fast fucks?”
I chuckled at that. Her flat-footedness was refreshing, especially coming from a woman as slight and demure in appearance as she. “How about mirrors over the bed and in front of a fur rug?”
She hesitated a moment, gauging the nature of the question. Her gender had also exposed her to an excess of sexual innuendo and outright abuse. I was gratified when she answered me directly, and with less than an innocent glint in her eye. “Depends who’s on the bottom.”
That was half of what I’d been thinking earlier.
Sammie crossed her legs and hooked an arm over the back of her chair. “What’s this all about?”
Leaving out all mention of Rose Woll, I explained to her what we’d found at Jardine’s place, coupled with the assumption that the initials in his calendar belonged to women. She shrugged at that. “They might all be women-some of them might be men, too. Brattleboro would be a good place for it.”
And that was the second half of my little voice’s chorus. Our city’s homosexual population was impressively large, a point I was pleased she’d thought of too. It was helpful knowing I wasn’t theorizing in a total void. There was one point she didn’t mention, however, and which had always struck me when beds and mirrors were combined: To me, the mirrors not only reflected self-made erotica; they could also confirm one partner’s domination over his or her mate, a significantly less sensual but all too human ambition. It put a definite chill on the image of Charlie Jardine as Casanova.
I got up and stretched. That was the downside to the early stages of an investigation: Nearly everything looks plausible. “Okay, what did you find out last night?”
Sammie opened her folder and began detailing her search for whoever might have spent the night under the Elm Street bridge. She’d covered all the obvious bases-the flophouses and the halfway homes, the cheap hotels and the informal rooming establishments the Fire Department hoped would never catch fire. Windham County called itself the “Gateway to Vermont”; some contended that with every gate you get a doormat, which accounted for Brattleboro’s highly mixed population.
Indeed, from retired hippies to sawmill operators, from fancy doctors to drug pushers, and from established gentry to homeless unemployables seeking the nation’s third-highest welfare check, Brattleboro had it all. Considering that it boasted only a meager twelve thousand inhabitants, that deeply varied demography was to me the city’s biggest asset. It had made what might have been a sleepy, boring town just the opposite.
It also, however, made it a good place to hide, and from Sammie’s conclusion that’s exactly what was happening. “I think maybe he’s spooked.”
“Why?” I asked.
“He’d been there a while-you could tell from the junk. The newspapers he used for the bed go back several weeks. So do the expiration dates on some of the food wrappers. Plus there’re all sorts of cigarette butts and gum wads that indicate the regular lifestyle of a single person. A succession of bums wouldn’t have been that consistent.”
“So who spooked him, us or what he saw?”
Her face turned grim. “That’s more than a rhetorical question. Late last night, just before you told us to punch out, one of the people I interviewed told me another guy had offered him five hundred dollars for the same information.”
I sat up straight. “What guy?”
“He never saw him. My informant, Toby, hangs out on Elliot Street. He said he was leaving the Bushnell Apartment block and had ducked down that steep alleyway to the east-the one with the steps leading down-to do a little private drinking, when some man came up behind him, told him not to turn around, and said he’d pay five hundred bucks to whoever would take him to the latest tenant under the Elm Street bridge.”
“The latest tenant? He said that?”
She apologized. “No-those are my words. Toby said he’d look around; the guy said he’d be back in touch, and then he disappeared. Toby told me it’d been like talking to a ghost. He even climbed back up to street level to double-check, although that doesn’t mean much-he’s a pretty slow mover. In any case, to answer your question, it sounds like our bum has all sorts of reasons to make himself scarce.”
I thought back to yesterday afternoon, when I’d stood where our homeless quarry had, on the bank of the river, looking up at the retaining wall. Was he running from us or some killer, or were they one and the same? After all, how did the killer know about the bum in the first place, unless he was in the police department?
Whatever the case, I couldn’t argue the major point. If I was that bum, I’d be hiding in a hole so deep no one would ever find me.