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?