by Dorien Grey
He smiled. “That’s nice of him to say. I do what I can.”
“Well, knowing how much Jonathan enjoys being in the chorus, I think I can understand how you must feel about it. I envy you both for having something outside your workday lives you can relate so strongly to.”
I got the distinct impression that I was being very subtly stonewalled, though I hadn’t a clue as to why.
*
The two Js returned shortly after noon, effectively ending my conversation with Eric. I think I’d expected to get more out of him than I did, but he had given me some things to think about, and whether intentionally or not, it raised a bunch of questions I wanted to take up with Booth. How much did he know about Grant’s little games with other chorus members, and what did he think of them? Might there have been tension between them? Might Booth be the jealous type? Without really knowing either of them, I suspected that there had to have been some pretty rough waters in that relationship.
I definitely wanted to talk to Booth next. My problem there was, how forthcoming could I expect him to be?
We waited only long enough for Joshua to make a bathroom stop and a Jonathan-supervised wash-up—that kid could find a way to get dirty if he were tied to a chair—before heading off for brunch. We never went to totally gay restaurants when Joshua was with us, not because we couldn’t but because we realized some guys might feel uncomfortable having a five-year-old in close proximity in what was primarily an adult social setting. Instead, we opted for the Cove, a family-type restaurant whose clientele was almost totally gay but, because liquor wasn’t served, covered a much wider spectrum, including a lot of gay teens.
It was a pleasant brunch, and Joshua, if not exactly warming to Eric, at least showed signs of a spring thaw.
*
First thing Monday, after my morning ritual, I dialed Central Imports and asked to speak to Mr. Booth. After being asked my name, there was a pause so long I was beginning to think I’d been cut off. I was contemplating hanging up when I heard a click and, “What can I do for you, Dick?”
Maybe I’m getting jaded in my old age, but I found it interesting that he called me by my first name—we’d only been introduced briefly and had not exchanged more than ten words—and took it as a subtle attempt to wield control over the situation from the start.
“First, I apologize for not having called earlier to express my condolences over the loss of your…nephew,” I began, the pause deliberate. If he wanted to play “who’s in control,” I was more than happy to go along. “But I have several questions in regards to his death which I’d appreciate your answering for me.”
“Well, frankly, Dick,” he said, “I have to be honest in saying I’m not really quite sure what you might be able to do in all this. I have already told the police everything I know, and I have every confidence in their ability to handle the investigation. I see little point or benefit in duplicating their efforts.”
“I understand your concern,” I replied, “but I’ve worked closely in conjunction with the police in several instances in the past in cases involving the gay community, and I’m often able to see things from a perspective they don’t have. Would you have some time to meet with me this morning? I’ll be happy to come by your office.”
There was a slight pause. “Well, this morning I’m rather busy—I just got back from a business trip, and I have a noon meeting with some Mercedes people in from Germany.”
I was dutifully impressed but wasn’t about to let him off the hook. “Well, then, how about this afternoon? I really do want to get started on this, and since I’m on the board’s clock, I’d like to move quickly.”
His sigh conveyed his attitude more clearly than words.
“Very well. Three o’clock, then. But I’m afraid I won’t have too much time to give you.”
“Whatever you can will be fine,” I said. “I’ll see you at three.”
He hung up without waiting for an exchange of good-byes.
*
I checked the list of chorus members Rothenberger had given me. I knew Jerry Granville wasn’t on it, but Tony Breen was. I called, not expecting to find him home but hoping to leave a message, only to find that he apparently didn’t have an answering machine. I let the phone ring eight times then hung up, making a mental note to call from home after dinner.
As long as I was on the phone, I thought I might as well call Marty Gresham at police headquarters to see if by any chance he might have been assigned Grant’s case. He wasn’t in—hardly surprising—but I left a message asking him to call me when he had the chance.
I wanted to start calling some of the other people from the chorus but realized that it was, after all, a workday and my chances of finding anyone in were slim. I hated taking my work home with me, but when it came to reaching people by phone, I had little choice.
I ordered lunch from the diner and ate at my desk, scribbling thoughts and notes and questions on a yellow lined notepad. The problem with my scribbling anything is that when I look at what I’ve written five minutes after writing it, I can’t decipher my own handwriting. I print well and always print (in ink) my crossword puzzle answers, but with regular writing, my mind works far faster than my fingers and trying to block-print even a sentence would take me far longer than my patience would allow.
I left the office around two thirty not having heard from Marty, and took my time getting to Central Imports. I found a parking space across the street from the main showroom. Luckily, it was a slightly overcast day, or I’m sure I’d have been blinded by sunlight glinting off the chrome and mirror-sheen polish of the ten or so new vehicles on the showroom floor, even though they were inside. There was, I knew, a separate “pre-owned” showroom—luxury vehicles are never “used”—and service center on the next street behind the main building.
I walked in the front doors, casually and vainly looking for a single fingerprint or smudge on the glass. I at first saw no one. Then I noticed, in one corner of the back wall of the showroom—the only wall that wasn’t solid glass—an elegantly simple chrome desk behind which sat an elegantly groomed gentleman in a perfectly tailored blue blazer. He smiled and got up as I walked toward him.
I was rather surprised, as I passed a silver Jaguar convertible with its black top raised, to see there was a price sticker in the rear window. Glancing toward a Rolls Royce town car, I saw it had one, too. I had rather assumed that the old rule I’d heard once would certainly apply here: “If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it.” Probably a state law that the sticker be displayed. I didn’t waste my time looking at the price.
The entire place smelled of new car, leather, and money.
We met at the rear of a sleek sports model I didn’t recognize but knew, without looking at the sticker, that if I saved every single penny I earned for the next sixteen years I still couldn’t make a down payment on it.
“Mr. Hardesty, I assume?” the man asked pleasantly.
And why, I wondered, did he “assume” that? I didn’t think I looked that out of place, though I felt it.
“Yes, I have an appointment with Mr. Booth,” I said, totally unnecessarily, since if he knew who I was he knew why I was there.
“Mr. Booth is expecting you,” he said, indicating with a nod a hallway I had been too busy looking at the cars to notice. “His office is the first door on the right.”
I thanked him and headed toward the hall as he turned back to his desk. Since the only thing on the desk was a telephone, I wondered if he just sat there, like a spider on its web, waiting for customers.
The hall was considerably longer than I’d thought, with perhaps ten identical doors along it. I knocked on the first door on the right and was greeted with “Come in,” which I did.
Booth’s office was like his showroom—clean, uncluttered almost to the point of being Spartan, heavy on chrome, and unquestionably elegant. White windowless walls were daubed with the bright colors of chrome-framed paintings. A white carpet, two
white file cabinets, white chairs in front of a white desk that was obviously the big brother of the one in the showroom. Booth’s own desk chair, however, was black and, therefore, the main focal point of the room.
Booth himself stood by the file cabinets, closing a drawer as I entered. When I’d first seen him, he reminded me of a middle-aged Orson Welles, and I’d pictured him as a latter-day Citizen Kane. Kane’s empire was newspapers; Booth’s was luxury auto dealerships. I wondered briefly if he might have a sled named “Rosebud.”
After we shook hands and exchanged smile-less greetings, Booth gestured me toward the white chairs and moved behind his desk to his own.
“My time is a little limited today,” he reminded me, getting right to the point, “so what can I tell you that I haven’t already told the police?”
“Since I wasn’t here when you spoke to the police, I’m afraid there might be a little duplication of questions. I’m sure they asked if you knew anyone who might have reason to harm…” I wasn’t going to even pretend to go along with the “nephew” ruse. “Grant? Or you?”
His eyes widened. “Me?” he asked incredulously, though I can’t imagine the police not having asked it.
I shrugged. “It’s just a thought,” I said. “But what better way to get back at you than by taking away something you cared about?” I asked. “And the Porsche was yours, I assume?”
He nodded. “Yes, but while every successful businessman inevitably makes a few enemies over the years, I can’t think of anyone who might go to such extremes.” He paused. “Yet now that you mentioned it, I can see what you say might have some basis. It’s more logical that someone would have a grudge against me than against Grant. Certainly, no one had any conceivable reason to harm him!”
“Grant had no enemies that you know of?”
“No. He’d not been in the city all that long, for one thing, and other than his involvement in the chorus, he was seldom out of my sight.”
An interesting choice of words, I thought. “What about the chorus, then?” I asked. “Any problems there?”
“None. He was very popular and very devoted to the group. There was some minor tension between him and Roger Rothenberger—”
“Over what?”
“I’m not sure. I suspect it was somehow related to Roger and I having had our own disagreements and Roger taking them out on Grant. But Grant was merely the brunt of Roger’s hostility toward me.”
I chose to let that one slide for a minute and instead said, “You say Grant was devoted to the chorus?”
“Totally. As I’m sure you know, in addition to the Tuesday night general rehearsals, the chorus has frequent sectional rehearsals. Because we have occasion to go to Las Vegas regularly on weekends, Grant was unable to attend those held on Saturday, and Roger was obviously unhappy that he missed them. But whenever we were in town on a Saturday, Grant always attended, and he never missed a weeknight sectional.”
Chapter 5
Excuse me? my own mental chorus of mind-voices asked. Surely, he couldn’t be that dumb, or assume I am.
“So, he never indicated any problem with anyone from the chorus?”
He shook his head. “Other than Roger, no. I’m sure some of the members were jealous of Grant’s talent, but I still can’t conceive of that possibly relating in any way to his murder.”
Okay, enough pussyfooting, I decided.
“And what about Jim Bowers?”
He managed a puzzled look. “A tragic accident, but what has that to do with anything?”
“Other than that Jim had a solo part Grant wanted, that Jim was the victim of a hit-and-run, that you visited him immediately after he regained consciousness, that he was subsequently unable to remember details of the accident, that a baby-blue Porsche came into your repair shop that same night for ‘emergency repairs’ and that the mechanic who worked on it has suddenly moved to Tulsa—nothing.”
From the flickers of expression sparking across his face, he was deciding whether to play injured or offended. He opted for a blend of the two.
“I certainly do not appreciate the implications. You’re trying to make a Frankenstein’s monster out of a bunch of totally unrelated details and situations. If Grant had any minor dispute with Jim Bowers, he certainly wouldn’t have come running to me with it. I went to see Jim out of compassion—I was truly concerned when I heard of his injury.
“Grant’s was not the only baby-blue Porsche in existence. It’s one of our most popular sellers. The owner was in town on business and had a minor accident which he wished to have repaired before returning home. Paul Jellen had made no secret he was planning to relocate, and when one of my friends who owns Tulsa’s most exclusive dealership let me know he was looking for a top mechanic, I put Paul in touch with him. How you could possibly read anything sinister into any of that, I cannot comprehend.”
Silly me, I thought. But all I said was, “My intention was not to insult you but to get at the facts. That’s what private investigators do and sometimes we have to step on a few toes.”
He said nothing, just dismissed my comments with a wave of his hand. “I know you’re doing what you see as your job,” he said, “but I can assure you, you’re looking in the wrong place.”
And where should I look? I wanted to ask, but didn’t.
“How long had Grant been with you?” I asked instead.
He looked at me, obviously displeased and obviously not quite sure how to respond. I’d already made it clear I didn’t buy into the “nephew” story, and I hoped he wasn’t stupid enough to try to give it to the police.
“Eight months.”
“May I ask how you met?”
“And may I ask how that is any of your business and what bearing it could possibly have on the matter of his death?”
I looked at him steadily and spoke calmly. “It is my business only because if I am to do my job, I have to know everything I can about the victim and everything surrounding his death. Grant was killed for a reason, and that reason has to lie somewhere in his past, recent or distant. So…as to how you met?”
He shook his head in obvious disgust, accompanying the motion with a deep sigh, in case I hadn’t gotten the message.
“We met while I was on a business trip to Atlanta this past year, through a business associate. Grant was staying with him after having escaped from an abusive relationship with a true psychopath. When I heard his story, I became concerned for his safety if he remained in Atlanta. So, I suggested that he could come here.”
In other words, Grant had left one rich guy for another.
“Could I trouble you for your business associate’s name?”
“Is that necessary?”
“Yes,” I said simply. “It is.” I was not about to play his little games.
“Bernie Niles.”
“And the ‘psychopath’s’ name?”
“Robert Smith.” His face reflected a look, as though a light bulb had switched on inside his head. “You don’t suppose…”
“I’m sorry?” I asked, my lack of patience showing. “Don’t suppose what?”
“That he might have followed Grant here?”
After eight months? Possible, yes. Likely, no. It was certainly an interesting story, though, and he’d set it up nicely. I had to agree with Rothenberger: Crandall Booth was certainly not stupid. Whether or not I could believe him was another matter entirely.
“And why do you suppose he might do that?” Physically attractive as Grant Jefferson may have been, handsome young men are like that old joke about buses—if you miss one, another will be along in a minute. However, if the guy really was, by chance, a psychopath…
“It’s rather complicated, but Grant was indirectly responsible for his being sent to jail.”
Well, that’d do it. “How did that happen?”
“As I say, it’s complicated. Though Grant said very little about it—it was obviously very traumatic for him. I gather they met in New York. Smith was supposedly
an art dealer but was, in fact, a con artist. Somehow, he coerced Grant into working for him, luring potential victims.”
Coerced? Why did I find that a tad hard to believe? And could Booth possibly have bought that story himself?
“Bernie met them while on business in New York and was drawn into Smith’s web. Grant subsequently came down to Atlanta with Smith to clinch a deal for a couple of paintings supposedly being sold by an Italian count who needed money. It was then Grant decided to break away, and he confessed the whole story to Bernie, who gave him asylum and had Smith arrested.”
My, my! Truly the stuff of high drama. Whether it was also the stuff of truth remained to be seen.
I mentally did a rough estimate of how many Robert Smiths there might be in the Georgia prison system, let alone within a six-block radius of any point in the country.
“Have you spoken to your friend Niles lately?”
There was a slight pause. “As I said, Bernie’s more a business associate than a friend. And no, I’m afraid I haven’t talked to him since we came back from Atlanta.”
In other words, you stole his boyfriend and he’s pissed at you, my mind-voice in charge of stating the obvious observed.
“So, he doesn’t know that Grant is dead?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’d really like to know if anyone has contacted him wanting to know Grant’s whereabouts.”
He squirmed in his seat. “Yes, I can see your point. However, you probably have some specific questions, so rather than me being a middleman, perhaps you should speak to him directly.”
“Do you have his phone number?”
He quickly opened a desk drawer, taking out a sheet of “Central Imports” letterhead and a pen. He wrote down Niles’ name and number and slid it across the desk.
“You mentioned this Robert Smith to the police?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No. It honestly did not occur to me at the time. I was in something of a state of shock. But since you’re now working on the case, couldn’t you look into it without involving the police? Much better a private investigator than the police.”
