I nodded at Ron. “Any other leads on the homosexual angle?”
He shook his head. “The phone records were all long-distance. If Jardine made local calls, we don’t know about them. The two people who implied Jardine was gay were old high-school connections-but they wouldn’t stick their necks out far enough to actually name names.”
“The obvious choices are Wentworth or Clyde,” DeFlorio said. “The two guys with big bucks.”
“Assuming Jardine was blackmailing anyone,” I added. “I plan to see Wentworth today. He was supposed to have returned last night from a trip out of town.”
“What did you learn from McDermott?” Sammie asked.
I glanced at DeFlorio, who along with me had forgotten McDermott’s appearance at Horton Place. He was intensely studying the bottom of his Styrofoam coffee cup. “On the face of it, not much. It sounds like he was at both Milly’s and the Brooks House through sheer coincidence, or because he was set up. But he could also be lying. J.P., go after him, okay? Check out his background, likes and dislikes, finances, and anything else you can.”
Tyler nodded.
I stood up. “Okay then. I guess we’re all set. Anyone feeling underworked?”
There was a general groan around the table.
“There is one more thing,” I added, “and normally this would go without saying, but I think we have to be especially discreet from now on. There’ve been too many leaks from this department already. Things are tough enough without shooting ourselves in the foot.”
The implication that the source of some of those leaks might be sitting in this room left a sour note in the air, one I hoped they would all take to heart. I wanted not only to put an end to the idle chatter, but to plant a reminder that the heat we were beginning to feel the most had nothing to do with the lack of air-conditioning, or with the complexity of the case we were trying to solve.
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 labeclass="underline" 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?”