by Dorien Grey
“I understand you’re not going to be in town more than a day,” I said.
“That’s right, honey. I have to be back in Atlanta Sunday night. I’ve got another two weeks there at Priam’s Palace before I move on to Chicago, then Palm Springs, then…well, I do keep myself busy. No moss growin’ under this girl’s shoes.”
I laughed. “So it seems,” I said, then had an idea. “Is anyone picking you up at the airport here?” I asked.
“No, I usually take a cab.”
“Well, I’d be happy to pick you up. We could talk on the way into town.”
“Well, darlin’, aren’t you sweet? A true gentleman! That would be real nice of you. Delta flight 444 at two o’clock.”
“Great,” I said. “I’ll see you then.”
There was a pause, which I expected preceded a “Good-bye,” but instead I heard, “That fall that killed Taylor…it wasn’t an accident, was it?”
That caught me a bit by surprise, wondering why he might think so, but I didn’t want to get any further into it until I could talk with him in person, face to face.
“I’m still not sure,” I said. “But I’ll find out.”
CHAPTER 6
Well of course T/T was far from stupid, and having any P.I. want to talk with him about a friend who recently died in a supposed accident would give him a clue that somebody suspected something out of the ordinary. But I wondered if he might have had another reason for his comment.
I made a note to call Glen O’Banyon’s office when I got back from lunch with Dave Witherspoon. I did want to know more about Collin Butler, more for my own curiosity about the Butler family dynamics than out of any thought that Butler might be involved in Taylor’s death. Normally, I probably would have just called him myself, but since he was already an open enemy of the library, I didn’t want to give him any more fuel for his drive to have the Butler papers removed.
And I realized as I left the office to head to The Central that I still hadn’t talked with Evan Knight, Zachary Clanton, or Marv Westeen about what they might know about Taylor Cates. Of the three, the only one I thought really might have some idea of what was going on with Taylor was Evan Knight, and given our recent run-in, I wasn’t overly eager to talk to him.
And why in hell did I keep thinking of Fate’s Hand?
I was tempted to try to contact either Clanton or Westeen next, but realized I’d just be forestalling the inevitable, and that I might as well get Evan Knight out of the way first. I felt fairly sure that my having punched him out at his own party and in his own swimming pool might make approaching him on Taylor’s death just a tad awkward, and I probably shouldn’t have done it. But it sure seemed like a good idea at the time. And while I might have chosen a more private time and place to punch him, I wasn’t about to apologize just to get him to talk to me. Well, I’d work it out somehow.
*
Coffee & is one of those places that really doesn’t have much to recommend it other than its location—in this case on the main drag in The Central. Its okay food and service were matched by its almost total lack of what some people call “ambiance.” But because of where it was, it was always busy.
I’d have been, as usual, early, had it not been for a slight confrontation between a bottled water truck and a city bus, which caught me in the middle of the block and held up traffic for a good ten minutes. When I walked into the diner, I spotted a black guy and a white guy sitting across from one another at a booth looking at menus. The black guy looked up as I came in, said something to his friend, then gave me a heads-up nod. Trusting this was not merely an across-the-room cruise, I went over. “Dave Witherspoon?” I asked, not sure which one might actually be Witherspoon.
“Hi,” the white guy said, scooting over to make room for me to sit. “I’m Dave. This is Ryan.”
I shook hands with both of them and sat down. A cute young waiter I’d seen before appeared with menus, a place mat and a set of silverware wrapped in a paper napkin, which he set in front of me. “Coffee?” he asked, and I nodded.
“So what can I tell you about Taylor?” Witherspoon asked as the waiter went off to get my coffee.
I like a guy who gets right to the point.
“I understand you two didn’t get along too well,” I said, deciding to follow his lead.
Both Witherspoon and his friend…Ryan…grinned, and Witherspoon shook his head. “I’m afraid not,” he said, and didn’t wait for me to ask why, “and it wasn’t just all about working together at the Burrows. We all went to Mountjoy,” he continued. “I transferred in from Eastern at the start of our sophomore year…that’s when I first met Taylor and Ryan. Unfortunately, Taylor was dating Ryan at the time, and when Ryan and I got together, Taylor never forgave me. He never gave up on trying to get him back, either.”
Now that was an interesting comment, I thought, but before I had a chance to follow up on it, Ryan stepped in.
“I don’t know why he took it out on Dave,” he said as the waiter returned with my coffee. “I was going to break off with Taylor anyway. It wasn’t Dave’s doing.” He looked at Witherspoon and grinned. “Though I have to admit, Dave came on pretty strong. He sees something he wants, he goes for it. Taylor was always a little too serious for his own good. He never said much, but you knew there was an awful lot going on inside him.”
The waiter…uh…waited until Ryan finished talking before asking if we’d like to order. I hadn’t even looked at the menu, but ordered an olive burger and fries, and when he had all three orders, he left.
“I understand you were hired first,” I said, and Witherspoon nodded.
“Yes, I’d started sending out résumés the last quarter of our senior year. I sent one to the Newberry in Chicago, and Irving McGill must have seen it, because I got a letter from him saying he had been hired to head the new Burrows Library—I hadn’t even heard that there was going to be one. But he said he would be needing catalogers, and would be interested in talking with me. So when he arrived in town, about two months before the transfer of material from the Burrows estate to the new facility, he hired me, and I started immediately. Then, just before the actual move, they started hiring more catalogers, and that’s when Taylor showed up. He wasn’t happy that I’d been hired first, and I’m afraid I never let him forget it, just because I knew it bugged him. I wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been such an arrogant prude. He was always talking about how rough a childhood he’d had and how hard he had worked to overcome it. Hell, my dad worked in the coal mines, so Taylor didn’t hold the patent on working hard to overcome obstacles.”
“So what did you know of Taylor’s personal life?” I asked. “Friends, enemies, lovers?”
Witherspoon sighed. “Friends, very few. I really don’t know of any close friends, other than a guy from his old neighborhood when he was growing up…a pretty successful drag queen…”
“Teddy Wilson,” I interjected.
He looked at me, a bit surprised. “Yeah, Teddy Wilson. Taylor bragged all the time about knowing him. But other than him, I don’t know of anyone. Taylor wasn’t exactly the easiest guy to like. No lovers, though he did date Evan Knight a few times, I understand. Enemies? Well, apparently he thought I was one, but I wasn’t, really.”
“Did you blame Taylor for losing your job?”
The waiter arrived and we were silent until he’d put down our orders and left.
“Well, I wasn’t happy about it, that’s for sure,” Witherspoon said, picking up the conversation where it had left off. “Taylor confused having a superiority complex with being a perfectionist, and he was always sucking up to Irving, so I wasn’t surprised when he reported me.”
“Exactly what did you do?” I asked, though McGill had already told me he had taken papers home with him. I wanted to get Witherspoon’s version of the story.
I took a bite out of my olive burger while Witherspoon answered my question.
“We were swamped with work as you can imagine,” he said,
“and we just couldn’t keep up with it all. Taylor resolved it by never going home except to eat and sleep. As for me, the only way I could do it was to take some papers home with me every now and then to work on there. Ryan wasn’t too happy about my working so much, but it had to be done. Actually, nearly every cataloger there has done the same thing, but I was the only one to get reported for it.”
“I understand you were cataloging Jeremy Butler’s papers, and those of his son.”
“Mostly Jeremy Butler,” Witherspoon said. “I’d started on him even before the move. I had just started working on Morgan Butler when the ax fell, but I hadn’t gotten very far. And it didn’t help that for some reason Taylor was fascinated with the guy. He was constantly going through his stuff every chance he had—lunch hour, coffee breaks, whenever I wasn’t actually working on it. We had some pretty heated run-ins on that. He wanted to do the cataloging, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he got me fired so that he could.”
“Did you say anything to McGill about it?”
He took a bite of his sandwich and waited until he’d swallowed before answering.
“No,” he said at last. “I wouldn’t give Taylor the satisfaction. It was just another of his cheap-shot ways of getting back at me for Ryan.”
He paused again, to take a sip of coffee and wipe the corner of his mouth with his napkin.
“Did you happen to notice anything unusual about Morgan Butler’s papers?” I asked on a hunch.
Witherspoon shrugged. “Like what?” he asked, then continued before I had a chance to say anything. “Unlike Taylor, I tried to concentrate just on the cataloging and not to be distracted by what was in the papers themselves.”
“So you didn’t get any impression from Morgan Butler’s letters that he might have been gay?”
He shrugged again. “You couldn’t prove it by me,” he said. “I wasn’t looking for anything like that anyway. I know he wrote a lot of letters to somebody named Scot, but as I said, unlike Taylor I just didn’t have the time to do more than my job, which was to skim them for general content and write down the basic information—date written, to whom sent, and maybe a brief note if there seemed to be anything of particular historical interest or importance. I can’t remember there being any of either.”
“I didn’t read every one of them closely myself,” I said, “but I got some definite gay vibes from what I did read. Nothing conclusive, I’ll admit, but enough to set me wondering.”
“Well,” he said as I took the last bite of my olive burger, “I guess sometimes we don’t see what we’re not looking for.”
He had a point.
The waiter returned with more coffee, which we all refused, and left to add up our tab.
“How is your job hunt coming?” I asked.
“It’s over,” he replied. “I’m going back to the Burrows. Irving called me at home when we got back last night and offered me my job back. I’ll be on probation for a while, but I can handle that. It’s pretty obvious they really need me.”
“Congratulations,” I said. Odd how things work out.
Lunch was just about over, and while I knew I’d undoubtedly have more questions for Witherspoon, I wanted to take some time to sort out some of the things we’d touched on in our conversation. So we small-talked through the last of our coffee, divided up the bill when the waiter brought it, and left—after my having left the door open for possible future contact and questions.
*
Not one to waste time, I began the mulling process on my way back to the office. McGill had described Witherspoon as being “laid back,” and that was certainly the impression he gave. But I found it a little hard to imagine his being so casual about the whole thing. His comments about Taylor having kept trying to get Ryan back, of Taylor being a “suck-up,” of having Taylor want to take away one of his projects, and then being fired as a direct result of Taylor having gone to Irving McGill all would have resonated with me a lot more strongly than they apparently did with him. I’m pretty sure if I’d been fired because of a “suck-up” running to my boss, I’d have been a lot more pissed than Witherspoon had indicated he had been. But I guess it all worked out for him, since he now had his job back.
As soon as I got back to the office, I called to leave a message for Glen O’Banyon to ask him to call me when he could. And then I stood there, phone in hand, wondering just what I should do about Evan Knight. I definitely wanted to talk with him, but…oh, what the hell, the worst he could do would be to hang up on me. I put the phone back on the cradle long enough to look up his number, then picked it up again to dial.
The phone rang four times, and then, “Evan Knight.” And since it wasn’t immediately followed by an “I’m not in right now,” I guessed I had the real thing.
“Evan, this is Dick Hardesty,” I began. I wasn’t about to mention our run-in in the pool, and I didn’t wait for a response before saying, “I’m calling in regards to my investigation into Taylor Cates’ death and am talking with everyone associated with the Burrows. I wondered if we might get together to talk about it.”
There was an uncomfortably long pause, then, “I suppose. I have nothing to hide.”
Hide? I wondered. Who said anything about hiding anything?
“I wasn’t suggesting you did. But the board wants me to look into every angle in order to be completely sure Taylor’s death was accidental.”
“Why would anyone think otherwise?”
“Again, just covering all bets.”
Another long pause. “Can we do this over the phone?” he asked.
I didn’t know whether he thought I might decide to punch him again, or what, and I really wasn’t overly enthused about the idea of seeing him again, but I had no doubt that he knew considerably more about Taylor Cates than any of the other board members, so while a phone conversation with them was sufficient, I wanted to be able to watch Knight’s reactions while I talked to him.
“I think we should talk in person,” I said. I was pretty sure we both would prefer it to be on neutral territory. “We could meet for coffee somewhere.”
Yet another pause. Obviously, he wasn’t any more thrilled with the whole idea than I was.
“I think I’d prefer a drink,” he said. “You want to make it today?”
“The sooner the better.”
“Okay, how about four o’clock at the Carnival?”
“That’ll be fine,” I said. “I’ll see you there.”
I hadn’t been to the Carnival in ages. It was a nice businessman’s-type bar that I used to go to frequently when I lived nearby. I was very glad he hadn’t suggested Hughie’s.
*
I called Evergreen to leave word for Jonathan that I might be a little late getting home. It was about two o’clock, and I had the strong urge to go by the Burrows. Dave Witherspoon’s subtle jibe that maybe I was seeing something that wasn’t there had gotten to me. And for some strange reason, I suddenly wondered if the letters I had gone through were all the letters there were. What if some of them were missing? How would I possibly know?
I made a quick call to the Burrows to ask McGill if it was okay for me to stop by, and he agreed…though with just the right amount of hesitation to let me know he hoped this wasn’t going to become a habit. He told me I could go directly to the cataloging room and he’d tell them to be expecting me.
*
I made it to the Burrows by about two thirty, figuring I’d have an hour before I had to leave for the Carnival.
Janice was there at the same table surrounded by what looked to be the same boxes. After exchanging greetings, I picked up Box #12-A and carried it to the far end of the table. Removing the lid, I took the yellow notepad and began looking through it. There were about four and a half pages of closely spaced writing, the last three and a half in handwriting different from the first. Dave Witherspoon’s first, then Taylor’s, I assumed. Just as Witherspoon had explained, it was a list of dates followed by the name of the person to whom
the letter was written and an occasional comment or two regarding any specific references of possible historic interest.
Okay, so if some letters were missing, comparing the list to the letters from the box should show it—at least up to the point the cataloging had reached when Taylor died. A quick thumb-through, comparing the dates of each of the letters to the entries in the notepad showed that every single one of them was there; no letters without a corresponding date on the list, no dates on the list without a corresponding letter. Damn. I noted that beside each of Witherspoon’s entries there was a small check mark, and I’d wager Taylor had gone over every one of Dave’s entries to verify its accuracy.
The catalog list ended with a letter on February 22, 1953—further back than I’d started reading the first time, actually. I pulled out the remaining letters in the box, being careful to keep them in order.
All right, Hardesty, one of my mind-voices—the one in charge of general impatience—said, just exactly what in the hell are you doing? You’re spending all this time on a dead guy and some maybe-missing letters from decades ago. Exactly what do you think you’re looking for? What possible bearing could it have on Taylor Cates’ death?
It does, my gut told me. Trust me.
Like a dog unwilling to let go of a bone, I ignored all the letters not to Scot and started reading the ones that were. Maybe I could pick up some indication that some letters were missing. I wished Scot’s letters to Morgan—if there had been any, and I’m sure there were—had been saved. It would have been easier to pick up a sense of flow. I tried to keep my mind objective, but was pretty sure my eye would have picked up some key words if they were there. Nothing. Just that elusive…whatever. Sentences like, “I was thinking of that little restaurant we found in the hills above Genoa, next to the bombed-out church. Remember how the owner’s wife went to the garden and henhouse behind the place to get us fresh eggs and vegetables for that fantastic omelet?” were really totally innocuous on the surface—but why did I insist on finding something underneath? I’m sorry, but I don’t think many straight guys would remember things like that—or mention them to a straight buddy if he did.
