Archer Mayor - Scent of Evil

We divided our labor. Ron took the upstairs, Santos the basement, and Mayhew the garage. I took the ground floor, which consisted of a living room, a kitchen, a study which had once been a dining room, and a combination utilities and mud room.

It wasn’t a terribly revealing environment, at least not on the surface. I’m a bachelor, too-a widower, actually-and my Oak Street apartment is like an old dog’s kennel, filled with books and the bric-a-brac of a lifetime’s memories. This home was store-bought, displaying more of J. C. Penney’s current fashion statements than any of Jardine’s character. The furniture went well with the wall paint, the calendar-art pictures, the fake-wool area rugs, and the occasional chunk of decorative antique farm equipment. Looking at it from the entryway, I thought the one thing none of this was designed for was a human being or two; it was perfect just the way it was-tastefully bland, neat, cool, and empty.

It also spoke of some quick money and not a lot of it. None of what I was looking at would have been called “quality goods.” Indeed, I’d seen similar interior decorating in upscale motels. From what John Woll had said vaguely about Jardine’s occupation, coupled with his being “a partner” in ABC Investments, I guessed Jardine had benefited somehow from the 1980s feeding frenzy on Wall Street, albeit in a minor way.

The house’s sterility allowed me to make quick work of the living room and kitchen, both of which were immaculate and lacking in telling detail. I discovered that Jardine should have checked more often under his sofa pillows for his missing change, that the last time he’d watched TV he’d been tuned to the Playboy channel, and that his culinary talents, although obviously not flashy, far outshined my own-meaning he made more of a meal than a pig-in-a-blanket and a can of fruit cocktail.

I’d been keeping my hopes high for what his office might yield, however, and after a quick look through Jardine’s laundry-in which I found a woman’s blouse-I settled in his desk chair to see if at last I could peel back a small corner of the blanket that shrouded this man’s history.

First impressions were not encouraging; the top drawer was empty, a discovery I thought symbolic of the entire house.

The underlying question was, why? Was it that Jardine’s moderate wealth had come so suddenly that he’d leapt from having nothing to a house full of furnishings without passing through those years in which the rest of us accumulate tons of junk? That didn’t explain the parents Beaumont had mentioned. Jardine must have bent over backwards to eradicate all signs of their presence here, making an erstwhile family home into what looked like a weekend condo.

I hesitated before checking the other desk drawers, still lost in thought. There were other possibilities-a man without identification traced to a house without individuality. There was an almost ominous blandness to it all, the way aspects of real life are sometimes portrayed artificially on stage. I put that thought into a mental cubbyhole and began going through the rest of the drawers.

There I found the first signs of life-bank statements, insurance papers, credit-card receipts, utility and oil bills, tax returns. I would immerse myself in all those later, fabricating a life from them as an archaeologist does from debris found in the dust. But at first glance, it all seemed utterly normal. Jardine had an income that averaged out to some forty-five thousand dollars a year. There were no gigantic debts, no large, unexplained deposits.

There was a desk calendar, one of those two-ringed plastic easels you can flip through, day by day. Again, it was mostly blank, barring the occasional cryptic note, like “R 2” or “G 730.” Flipping through, I found concentrations of R’s, G’s, T’s, S’s, and more, with some extending throughout the year and others ending at the tail end of a clump. For the most part, whether bunched or spread out, they usually fell on Fridays or Saturdays. With Beaumont’s appraisal of Jardine as a ladies’ man, I was content to think for the moment that the initials stood for women’s first names, some of whom were regulars, while others had apparently been brief and passionate affairs.

I leafed through the calendar a little more carefully a second time, focusing on a single discrepancy. Without exception, R had a single low digit next to it, usually a 2 or a 3, while all the others rated anywhere from 6 to 11, with the occasional 630, 730, and 830 thrown in for good measure. If these numbers stood for rendezvous times, then R had a fetish for either mid-afternoons or the dead of night.

The phone rang suddenly, causing me to drop the calendar in surprise. It stopped after the first ring, there was a click and a soft whirring sound, and then a gentle, modulated male voice filled the room: “Hi, this is Charlie’s machine. Talk to it like you’d talk to me, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

There was a beep, a pause, then an irritated woman’s voice muttered, “shit,” and the line went dead.

I stared at the answering machine under the phone. A single beady red light was blinking on its front. I leaned forward and read the various labels imprinted in the black plastic. I couldn’t remember if that light had been on when I’d sat down or not. I found a button marked “messages” and pushed it. Again the machine whirred, and I could hear the tape rewinding. There was another beep, and a woman’s voice asked, “Charlie, I can’t find one of my white blouses. Do you still have it? Call me before Thursday.”

I pursed my lips. Why was it friends never identified themselves on the phone? Gail never did either. I was used to it now, of course, but at first it had thrown me for a loop, forcing my brain to scramble through its entire voice catalog in a desperate search for the right one, all while I tried to converse with utter self-confidence.

The machine spoke again-another female voice, hesitant, soft, almost fearful. “Charlie? I was wondering… I’d like to… Call me, okay?”

A beep again and I heard the muted “shit” that had caught my attention to begin with. I thought for a moment, still looking at the machine, and then reached for the telephone book nearby. I picked up the phone and dialed.

“ABC Investments.”

“Hi. Is Mr. Jardine there?”

“The office is closed, sir. This is an answering service. May I take a message?”

“Oh, sure. Actually, it would be for his partner.” I paused.

“Mr. Clyde.”

I quickly flipped to the front of the phone book, talking while I did so. “Yeah, that’s it-he’s the one I really want to chat with.” I found the listing. “Mr. Arthur Clyde.”

The voice on the other end took on a slight edge. “That’s what I said, sir, Mr. Clyde. What’s the message?”

“I changed my mind-it’s a little delicate. I think I’ll wait until I see-” But the line had gone dead.

I smiled to myself and dialed again. A man answered-I could tell I’d woken him up. I altered my voice. “Is this Arthur Clyde, of ABC Investments?”

“Yes.” His tone became slightly wary.

“You around tomorrow? I was wondering if I could come by to discuss some investments I’d like to make.”

The wariness yielded to controlled irritation. “I’m around, but I’d prefer that you called my secretary tomorrow at the office. She’ll set up an appointment. Good night.”

I hung up. Not knowing anything about Clyde or ABC, or even much about Jardine, I didn’t want things to move too quickly. I wanted to learn what I could from Jardine’s records before telling Clyde of his partner’s death, and I knew that task might take me a good part of the night. The phone call had told me I had the right man, and that he’d be available in the morning. I turned to the sound of Ron Klesczewski coming into the office.