Тимоти Уилльямз - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

Auburn tried to reach Mulreedy’s widow again by phone, without success. It was a little after 7:30 and still broad daylight. He decided to see Jerry Welbeck face to face in an effort to get some tangible information about Mulreedy’s background, associations, and recent history.

It took him almost a half-hour to get to the Welbeck farm, where Calthrop Road dipped into a valley to end abruptly at the river. The inscription “RIVERDALE FARM. SIMON WELBECK. 1897” was emblazoned across the front of a big red barn in black letters. Auburn followed a graveled driveway between a field of tall standing corn on one side and the sloping riverbank on the other.

Beyond the barn, about a dozen cars and trucks were parked helter-skelter under widely spaced mature trees. All the trucks were identical — charcoal-gray panel trucks belonging to Welbeck Heating and Cooling, with flamboyant lettering and striping in canary yellow, each with a rack on the top bearing a red fiberglass extension ladder. Auburn parked his car and got out.

Welbeck’s description hadn’t quite prepared him for the size of the crowd down on the riverbank. He estimated that at least forty people, mostly men in work clothes but also a few women, were gathered on a level stretch of turf around a stone fireplace and picnic benches. Some were eating and drinking, and a few were pitching horseshoes. Three canoes lay inverted on a moss-grown stone landing.

It was ten degrees cooler here than in the city. As Auburn made his way down to the level of the water, four or five mongrel dogs came sniffing and whimpering around him. Somebody whistled them back and called reassuringly, “They won’t bother you, buddy, they’re just kind of stupid.”

Under the trees the evening light shimmered like swirls of green and gold dust. The air was spiced with the smell of wood smoke, roast meat, and barbeque sauce. A radio was playing softly, barely audible above the steady chirping of crickets and locusts. The mood of the crowd seemed somber. Most of them wore gray work uniforms with shoulder patches bearing the company name. A man in a short-sleeved shirt with a clip-on bow tie came forward to meet Auburn.

“I’m Jerry Welbeck,” he said. His manner was suave but he didn’t offer to shake hands.

“Sergeant Auburn. We talked on the phone.”

“Sure.” Welbeck glanced with a perfunctory nod at Auburn’s identification. He had broad shoulders, smooth features, and prematurely white hair. He held his elbows out from his sides like a wrestler getting ready to pounce. He pointed to a galvanized steel tub full of melting ice. “Pull up a brew. Plenty of food left. Do you like hot wings?”

“Thanks, I just had dinner. I still haven’t been able to reach Mrs. Mulreedy. I thought I’d come by and talk to you personally if you’ve got a minute.”

“Sure, sure. All the time in the world. This is our guys’ weekly happy hour. Only thing is, everybody’s a little down tonight after hearing about Roger.” The lower part of his face kept changing shape, as if he were trying out one type of smile after another before deciding which one he would finally adopt. “You find out anything more? About how it happened, I mean?”

“No, sir, but we feel it may not have been an accident.”

“You mean maybe this truck driver ran him down on purpose?”

The other men were watching and listening with unconcealed curiosity. Eight or ten of them drifted close around Welbeck and Auburn. They showed their boss no particular deference, and seemed disposed to allow him no privacy.

“Not exactly that,” said Auburn. “But there are some unanswered questions about exactly what caused him to lose control of his motorcycle.”

“Like maybe somebody tampered with the brakes, the steering...?”

“Possibly that. Or somebody may have done something at the time of the accident.”

“But who? How?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out. I asked you on the phone about any problems he might have had recently...”

“And I weaseled out of answering,” Welbeck admitted frankly. “Any of these folks here will tell you Roger was kind of a prickly pear. As a service technician he was second to none, and he never missed a day of work. But whenever I could, I had to have him work alone, because he couldn’t get along with the other guys. Estimates and sales — forget it. Sooner or later he’d get in some stupid argument with the customer, and then the whole deal was off.”

“Had he had any trouble with anybody in particular lately?” Auburn directed his question to the whole group of Mulreedy’s coworkers, fully aware that this might be like asking the kindergarten class who spilled the Kool-Aid. “Any threats, open confrontations, fist fights...?”

There was a general shaking of heads. “Roger wasn’t about to use his fists,” observed a wiry, sharp-featured man who was nearing retirement age. “He had a tongue on him like a rattlesnake, but that was about the only kind of fighting he was into.”

“I understand he was separated from his wife.”

Most of the men suddenly looked at their shoes, and Welbeck fidgeted uncomfortably. “Like I told you on the phone,” he said, “Patty’s been back living with her folks for five or six months now.”

“I know it’s a ticklish thing for you to talk about, but — were there lots of hard feelings there, on either side?”

Welbeck nodded rapidly, as if he were eager to dismiss the subject. “Lots, I’d say. On both sides. Some of the girls could tell you better.” The women were busy tending the fireplaces, collecting the garbage, feeding the scraps to the dogs. None of them had ventured to join the tribal pow-wow.

“Were you expecting Mulreedy here tonight?” Auburn asked Welbeck.

“Frankly, I wasn’t. Roger’s been here a couple times over the years but, like I said, he didn’t really mix very well, and he didn’t drink. I still can’t figure out what he was doing out on the Interstate this afternoon.”

“I can tell you that,” said a burly youth with blond hair cut in a burr. He stepped forward with the ungainly strut of a bodybuilder. Unlike the others, he was wearing a set of camouflage fatigues, spattered and smeared with red, blue, and green paint. “I was at the shop cleaning out the bins like I do every Friday afternoon,” he said, addressing both his boss and Auburn. “Roger came in to make a long-distance call to Dooley’s about the specs on that air handler at the rink. After that he got another call, and about five minutes later he took off on his cycle.”

“Who called him?” asked Welbeck.

The man drank noisily from a can of beer before answering. “I don’t know. I was in the back. He answered the phone himself.”

“Left his truck at the shop?”

“Sure. It was still there when I left at six.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“Him tell me anything? Go figure.”

“What time would that have been?” Welbeck was asking Auburn’s questions for him, and doing just fine.

“Maybe four. Little after.”

“Did you see which direction he went?” asked Auburn.

“No, sir, I didn’t.” There was something vaguely military in the way the man answered.

“Is there any way to trace that call?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” said Welbeck, “unless it was a collect toll call.”

“This rink you mentioned...”

“The new Roundhouse Rink up in Wilmot. We’re doing the climate-control system.”

Auburn recognized the name because the owner of the rink, a sleazy local real-estate developer named Chuck Fibbiger, had aroused the wrath of two or three citizens’ groups by applying for, and getting, a liquor license. The people of the suburb of Wilmot, descended from English and Scottish settlers, had a largely undeserved reputation for stodginess and conservatism. But their indignation over the liquor license was understandable, in view of the expectation that at least three-quarters of the patrons of a roller-skating rink would be under drinking age.