Breaking Point (8 page)

             
Now that I had all the information I was likely to find about the night Charlie died, I decided to look back through the boxes that held his things and see if the missing photograph was there. It sounded like it may have been the one that Charlie took to Matt Barr to get a negative made. I didn't know what to make of it, but if Charlie had had a negative made, there was a reason. So where was the eight by ten now and where were the negatives? I dragged the cartons and his leather case over near the couch and pulled everything back out and laid it in stacks on the footlocker.

             
He had six full sets of underwear plus three extra tee shirts, eighteen pair of socks, two belts, a brown and a black, seven sweat shirts, all navy blue, twelve long sleeved dress shirts and another dozen short sleeved ones, all still in the laundry wrappers. There was five dollars and thirty seven cents in loose change.

             
It took a long while to go through each catalog and magazine, page by page, making sure the missing black and white photo wasn't in any of them. I turned the wallet inside out and checked every crevice that could conceal a negative or a folded photograph. I turned up nothing but the usual insurance cards and lint. The leather covers on both his sales and personal address books had no hidden items stuffed inside either. I was running out of options and might have to fly out to California to have a look at the newspaper photo after all.

             
Tomorrow was Friday and I had a nine o'clock appointment to see Mayor Petrick in West Fork. On Monday, Matt Barr would be back at work at Hawkeye Lens and Scopes. Maybe I'd be able to jog something loose about that photo he'd used to make a negative. In between maybe I could figure out a way to approach Frank Goodwin at his store in Keokuk, without having to first immobilize him with a tranquilizer dart.

             
Keokuk was also where I'd seen Talmadge and his blonde friend on Wednesday night. Maybe I could drop two birds with the same stone for once. I felt like I was running out of time. I still hadn't gotten up the nerve to speak with Caroline and I had a feeling I'd better do that before Woody arrived on Wednesday. He wasn't one to sit and ponder the alternatives for very long.

             
I fell asleep quickly that night and was surprised to awaken refreshed and well rested. I had a lot of ground to cover in the next few days and I was ready to get at it.

Chapter 9

             
The mayor's office was in a four story brick building along the Cedar River in West Fork. The town, several times larger than Oak Grove, was located about fifty miles northwest of us, in Benton County. I pressed four in the elevator and was quietly whisked up to the office, which seemed to comprise the entire top floor of the building. Most of the area was surrounded by windows, and light came in from all sides of the large room. There was a natural oak desk to my right where the receptionist sat and a matching door at the back of the room with the word "Mayor" stenciled in black about halfway down.

             
To my left was a long table set in the middle of an empty area, piled high with what appeared to be the red, white, and blue of campaign materials.

             
Seated at the oak desk was a strawberry-blonde haired lady who looked about ten years older than I was, fifty maybe, but very attractive. I was glad I'd left my parka in the car and was wearing my soft corduroy sports jacket. The tan color went well with my beige chinos and pale blue shirt. Her voice sounded even nicer in person than it had over the telephone on Wednesday. The wooden placard on her desk identified her as Ms. Anne Gable. The matching clock read 9:01 AM. She smiled at me as I exited the small elevator and approached her desk.

             
"Good morning, Mr. Murdock." It made me feel good to be addressed by name, as if she remembered me. The fact that she had my name written in her office datebook didn't dampen my pleasure at all. I managed to sneak a glance down at her left hand, an old habit and we all know how long-lived those are. I quickly noted that no ring was in evidence there.

             
"Wow, this is a beautiful place. Was it always the mayor's office?"

             
"Yes." Her smile was dazzling in the sun swept space. "As a matter of fact, the mayor had it built and donated it to the city. The first two floors are for public use. There are meeting rooms and a recreation center for the senior citizens on the first level. The entire second floor is dedicated to single mothers, with classroom settings where they earn their G.E.D., as well as learn parenting skills. Plus there's a free daycare where they can leave their babies while they work." I was impressed and said as much. "Mayor Petrick is very involved in the community," his secretary added. "And he loves children." I asked about the third floor and was told that it housed the city offices.

             
"And the mayor had this place built?" I kept my thoughts to myself, but I wondered how many votes that would have drummed up when they blasted it across a campaign poster.

             
""Well," she said with that smile again, "he's quite a man." MS Gable advised me to have a seat and the mayor would be right with me.

             
Near the desk, three tan leather sofas were arranged in a horseshoe shape that defined the waiting area. Soft music was drifting into the room from somewhere above my head. The speakers were hidden too well for my professional talents to detect. I took a seat and leafed through a periodical from one of the end tables. It was called "West Fork, Iowa, Ready for the Future." The pages were thick and glossy, with an abundance of brightly colored photographs of scenes around West Fork. I browsed through a brief history of the town and noted that Petrick had been mayor here for three years.

             
He was also the owner and developer of Happy Kids Crayons, which the magazine touted as the brightest colored, non-toxic, washable, unbreakable, crayon ever made. Kids supposedly loved them and could probably add twenty points to their SAT's by using them in the first three school years. I made up that last part, but the implication was there in the testimonials. The folks of West Fork seemed to love both the crayons and the factory that sat across the Cedar River and employed a hundred and thirty seven potential voters. Happy Kids Crayons was the name of the manufacturing plant, too. It was in the older section of town known as Westport. From the map in the article, I figured that I should be able to see the factory from one of the windows behind me. My stroll would take me over near the campaign items and I was curious about those, too.

             
A pile of bright red posters was set neatly on the left end of the long table. Bumper stickers, lapel pins, ball point pens and other small items overflowed from shoe boxes in the center of the table, while at the far end, envelopes and address labels covered the surface. I stood over the stack of posters and looked down at the one on top. An oversized picture of a man, who had to be Donald Petrick, covered most of the space on the sign. His name was printed in white, in big block letters beneath his image, which was the only clue I had needed to identify him. Under his name, smaller letters spelled out the words, "Family Values, Ethics, and Trust." Above Petrick's head, printed over an image of the American flag, was "FOR STATE REPRESENTATIVE...SECOND DISTRICT."

             
"When's the election?" I called over to Ms. Gable.

             
Her smile lit up the already bright room. "The Primaries will be in the spring, of course. The mayor is so excited about running. And of course, we all think he would be a wonderful representative for us. Don't forget to...Oh, never mind." She interrupted herself. "You did say you are from Oak Grove, right? That's in the First District. I guess I can't collar you to vote for Mayor Petrick for the Legislature, can I?" She laughed.

             
"You could," I answered, smiling. I was thinking that Ms. Gable could probably prod me into a lot of things. "I could write him in on my ticket. Probably wouldn't really help the cause, though, would it?" I was still toting the magazine in one hand and started to move past the table toward the window. I heard a muted buzz and MS Gable's voice chirped sweetly behind me.

             
"You can go in now, Mr. Murdock."

             
I tossed the magazine back onto the leather sofa and turned toward the mayor's door. He opened it as I approached, his massive frame filling the doorway and just clearing the top moulding by a few inches. Maybe the image on the posters hadn't required much enlarging after all. The man had a great smile, which was probably an asset given his size. I could imagine his constituents running for cover if he campaigned with a frown.

             
"Come in, come in, Mr. Murdock." He took my hand in both of his huge ones and held it through a warm embrace of a handshake. I felt like I was meeting a long lost friend. He released my hand with perfect timing and guided me to one of three leather chairs in front of a cherry desk that matched the mayor's proportions. The chairs were all dark red leather, the same shade as the oversized one behind the desk, where he seated himself rather gracefully for a man of his size.

             
The walls had cherry wainscoting part way up and were topped by an expensive looking wall covering that was beige with little diamond shapes in a forest green shade. The wall to my left held several framed items, two that looked like diplomas and a couple of awards plaques of one type or another. There were also two old photographs, in identical cherry wood frames. One was sepia toned and showed a man and a woman standing outside of a country church. It looked about the right time period to be a picture of Petrick's grandparents. The other photograph was a family portrait, probably taken in a studio, with a young couple and a small boy. The man's necktie was narrow, as had been the style in the nineteen fifties or maybe the sixties. The little boy, who was smiling from his perch on his father's knee, looked like a pudgy miniature version of the man who had just admitted me to his office.

             
The top of the desk was covered with glass and very little clutter. There was a small stack of papers and manila folders in one corner and the obligatory "In" and "Out" trays on another. These were highly polished wood and appeared to be cherry also. A few white sheets of paper peeked over the edge of the "Out" tray. Either Mayor Petrick was not busy at all or he was extremely neat and efficient. At the corner of the desk closest to me were several of those winter scenes in a glass ball. The ones that set off a snowstorm when you shake them. Nearest me was one the size of a softball sitting on a base of some type of stone. The scene inside was of a farmhouse with a tree in the yard and two children building a snowman in front of it. I was tempted to pick it up and shake it, but restrained myself. The others were of similar size and depicted other equally attractive scenarios. His office looked like a three dimensional representation of his "Family Values" platform. Behind the mayor's bulk, I could see some framed photographs on the oversized marble window sill. I asked if they were his family.

             
"Yes. My wife, Diane, and I and our three daughters. The first ones were taken when the girls were younger, of course. That one on the right is from last Christmas." Reaching across the wide window sill, he snagged the photo and handed it across the desk. There were five people in the photograph. The mayor and his wife were seated on a love seat in front of a Christmas tree, probably in their living room. Beside them sat two little girls, about four years old, who were dressed in matching red dresses and were obviously twins. Next to the woman stood a taller girl, in a green and red plaid outfit, whose age I estimated at eight. The straight black hair and almond shaped eyes of the three children were in stark contrast to those of Petrick's blonde-haired, blue eyed wife, who appeared to be in her late thirties. According to the blurb I'd read in the waiting room, the mayor was forty-three, and the chairman of a local organization that promoted Korean adoptions. They looked like the happiest family alive. I mentioned it to him.

             
For a big man, he had a soft laugh. "Well, I'm glad it comes through the camera lens. We've been very blessed, Diane and I." He set the framed picture gently back where it had been, probably in precisely the same spot. I was tempted to get up and look for a mark in the dust, but I already knew there would be no dust on the mayor's window sill.  His sunny smile still in place, he turned to face me again.

             
"What can I do for you, Mr. Murdock?"

             
"As I may have explained to Ms. Gable, I'm looking for information about Charlie Wilson. I understand his company donated money to the soccer team here in the city. I was wondering what the connection was between Regis Optics and West Fork." Technically it was a statement, but my inflection slid it over into the question column.

             
"Yes, I can understand your confusion there. Charlie came to town one day a year or so ago, I forget just when, but it must have been in the summer or maybe spring. He was just travelling through I believe, stopping at some of the smaller sporting goods stores to show his line of wares, as it were. Along the way, he stopped to watch some of the youngsters over at Town Park, playing soccer. I was there watching our daughter, Bobbi, play, and Charlie and I got to talking about this and that. I had a pair of Regis binoculars with me and I think that's what started it.  We seemed to hit it off and he took to stopping in when he was in the area."

             
"So he just decided that his company could help with the soccer team?"

             
The gentle laugh again. "Oh, I doubt that Charlie was ever that single-minded." As he went on, the mayor drew a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. "The heat must be turned way up today," he laughed. Leaving his chair, he stepped to the windows behind him, raising one a couple of inches. I could feel the blast of cold air that blew across the room. He returned to his seat and went on. "A lot of the parents at the games are sportsmen of one kind or another and Charlie probably figured he'd use the soccer shirts and equipment as advertising for his company. It helped the kids and I couldn't see that it would hurt anything."

             
"Did you two see each other socially at all?" The mayor's home telephone number had been in Charlie's personal address book.

             
"Not really. He'd call once in a while if he was going to be passing through and we'd maybe meet for a drink someplace nearby, but we didn't really socialize."

             
"So he didn't ever call or visit you at your home?"

             
"Maybe an occasional telephone call. I really can't remember, now. Is it important?" The friendly smile turned quizzical.

             
"Nope. Not at all. I was just wondering what the connection was. It seems like Charlie was just covering all the bases in the sales department." Thanking him for his time, I got to my feet and reached out to shake his hand. I asked him about the crayon factory and he walked me across the room to show me the view of it through his windows. As he pointed across the river, I noticed a dark purplish patch of skin on the back of his left hand. The flesh looked stretched and tight, like a burn scar. I quickly looked back out at the crayon factory. It was a long white building with six oversized crayons painted on the side, fanned out to show all the primary colors of the rainbow. I was impressed.

             
I was escorted to the office door by the mayor and, after shaking hands and wishing him luck in his bid for the state legislature, I headed for the elevators. Behind me, I could hear the retreating tap of his footsteps inside the open doorway to his office.