“At my father’s. Actually, it’s a separate building, a small cottage, but we usually have breakfast together and lots of dinners. My mother died a long time ago.”
“Did your father know of your involvement with Jardine?”
“No. Does he have to find out?” For the first time, I sensed real distress. She leaned forward in her chair, her eyes fixed on mine, her face rigid with sudden tension.
“I can only say I won’t tell him.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means the media is on the prowl and a lot of people are involved in this investigation. It might get out, even if I bend over backwards to stop it.”
“And you wouldn’t do that.” She sounded both bitter and resigned, already anticipating how to pick up the pieces before anything was broken.
“I can try, assuming I discover you’ve been straight with me.”
“I’ve answered your questions, haven’t I?”
There was an element of the rebellious child in this woman, despite her mature and sophisticated appearance. The revelations that she more or less still lived at home, worked as a volunteer, and went about buying two-hundred-dollar shirts, all helped to reveal a pretty self-indulgent person, free from the constraints of a job, a mortgage, or any worries about money. It made me wonder how free she felt from telling the truth. It also thinned out her natural beauty in my eyes, making it more superficial; no doubt that was partly my working-class prejudices at work.
“I hear your father was a big help to Charlie, training him, setting him up in business. Why did he do that?”
“He liked him.”
“There must have been more to it than that. Your father put a lot of money into ABC Investments.”
“He has a lot to give.”
I didn’t actually know if Wentworth had put a plugged nickel into Jardine’s business, but I’d been hoping for a different reaction than the one I got. Obviously, the father-Charlie part of this conversation was pretty barren land.
“How did Charlie help your father?”
She tossed her head impatiently. “Oh, you know-the father-son bit, I suppose.”
The tone was disinterested, but I wasn’t convinced. From the start, I’d felt Blaire Wentworth was holding more in her hand than she was willing to reveal. Indeed, in a few minutes, she had metamorphosed in my eyes from a cautious mourner to a careful player. I decided to return to what had been a more fruitful topic. “Did Charlie talk about his past much?”
“No. Well, it was selective.”
“How so?”
“He loved to talk about high school. He said that was the most fun he’d ever had. I think it’s because that’s where he discovered sex. He was seriously into that.”
“Did he mention friends or enemies? Any times he got into trouble?”
“Just the usual-the kind of scrapes we all got into. Nothing serious.”
“How about a girl named Rose. Did he ever talk about her?”
“Rose?” She shook her head. “Never heard of her.”
I looked at her; she looked back, her eyes wide and expressionless. Her answer had been immediate, clear, and to the point, and for all those reasons utterly unbelievable.
Abruptly, I decided to call it quits. I rose from my wooden box, thanked her for her time, and left. Blaire Wentworth had plenty more information, but for whatever reasons, she obviously didn’t want to share it with me, at least not yet.
18
"How did it go with Arthur Clyde?”
“I think it surprised the shit out of him,” Klesczewski said. “If there’s anything incriminating in all that junk, I think we’ll find it, ’cause he didn’t strike me as someone who’d swept his dirt under the rug. He looked totally stunned, and got madder than hell.”
“Did you call in Willette to help sort it out?”
“Yeah. Dennis and him are working on it now. Better them than me.”
I looked over at him. He seemed more relaxed than I’d seen him in a long time-in fact, since his elevation to second-in-command. If nothing else, I thought, this double homicide and its attending chaos was going to make him more comfortable with taking the initiative. That was a personal vindication for me, since Brandt had voiced serious reservations about my decision. He’d favored Tyler-an obvious choice and, I’d thought, a perfect opportunity to see the Peter Principle at work.
E-Z Hauling had its truck depot on the Old Ferry Road, somewhat of a no-man’s land on the edge of town where the north Putney Road becomes Route 5 heading toward Putney and Westminster. The area has been taken over by a mismatched scattering of metal buildings, some modest in size, housing conventional businesses like American Stratford typesetters, others so enormous as to defy the imagination, like the seven-acre main shipping and receiving terminal and the four-and-a-half-acre freezer building of C amp;S Wholesale Grocers, arguably the largest business in the whole state of Vermont, and one of the ten most profitable companies in New England. In between were operations like Pepsi-Cola Bottling, Northeast Cooperatives-a health food distributor-UPS, Boise Cascade, and various trucking firms. It was no scenic wonderland, but considering it was designed to keep the majority of the area’s heavy truck traffic away from downtown, I’d always thought both planners and developers had done a halfway decent job.
Nothing could alter a metal building’s basic lack of aesthetic appeal, especially if it approached the Pentagon in size, but site location, lots of trees, and self-deprecating paint jobs helped.
Klesczewski slowed at the traffic light and turned right onto Old Ferry, paralleling the length of the main C amp;S building, which occupied the inside corner of the intersection. E-Z Hauling owned a small lot at the top of a low crest about a quarter mile up the road, also on the right, with a view of the C amp;S freezer building’s roof.
“What’s this guy’s name again?” I asked.
“Cappelli, Mark Cappelli.” Ron checked his watch. “The dispatcher wasn’t too clear on when he’d be pulling in; just said sometime late this morning.”
It was now 11:35. Ron had bumped into me just as I’d handed Harriet my notes on the Blaire Wentworth interview. The chance to get out of the office and play second fiddle while Klesczewski dealt with Cappelli was too attractive to pass up. Not only would it give me a breather and let me see Ron at work, it would allow me time to think over, once again, the growing pile of evidence in both cases.
“What did you learn about that other guy, the one who didn’t have a profession listed?”
Klesczewski drove through the gate and pulled up opposite a battered metal door in a totally windowless corrugated wall. The door was labeled OFFICE. “Jake Hanson. Not much. I found out through the town clerk that he owns a couple of old warehouses on Birge Street. My guess is he lives off the rent.”
We got out of the car. I always felt I should wear a jacket around town, if for no other reason than to hide the gun on my belt, but as I twisted around, trying to pluck the fabric free of my sweat-soaked back, I cursed my sense of etiquette. Ron had no such scruples; he left his coat in the car.
The gum-snapping girl in the office directed us around to the back, where the trucks were parked. It turned out the building was mostly a glorified garage, with three large, open bay doors revealing spaces where trucks could be pulled in for repair and maintenance. About six eighteen-wheelers were parked, side by side, in the rear lot.
We stepped into the slightly cooler shade of the garage, blinking away the sun’s brightness. At the back of the bay, only visible as a shadow, a man’s figure moved back and forth along an extended workbench.
Ron, squinting as I was, spoke up beside me. “Excuse me. Could you tell us where to find Mark Cappelli?”
My vision, adjusting more rapidly now, saw the figure twist around and freeze for a moment, its face pale against the dark back wall. Whoever the guy was, he seemed more focused on Klesczewski than on me, which made me instantly think of Ron’s gun, hanging out in plain view. “Better tell him we’re cops.”