THE FOURTH WATCH (17 page)

"Whenever you like," Whorley said expansively.
"1 suppose you'll want to talk to

Fernando. Do you speak Spanish? I suspect not
from the look on your face." He laughed to himself. "No matter, his
wife speaks English, she can translate for you. What
else?"

"Well, I'm not sure I'll be spending any time
with your gardener at this point. Like I said, I'd like to meet
your Father's wife and just look around a little. Quite frankly,
Ted, I don't know what I'm looking for."

"Alright, when would you like to
come?"

I thought about it for a moment. I couldn't
think of a good reason to put it off any longer. "How about
tomorrow sometime?"

"Splendid, what time? No wait, cocktails, say
three-ish?"

Cocktails at three, Michael Knight, socialite.
"Fine," I said.

"Good."

"How about you, Alex? Care to come by as
well?"

"An enchanting offer, Teddy, but I'm afraid
I'll have to decline in favor of an office full of expectant
clients."

"Well you know you're welcome, if you change
your mind."

"I do," Alex said.

10

BY THE TIME I LEFT THE
STOCKYARD
the humidity had dropped, and
the overcast sky had turned a soft blue, and there were wispy white
clouds sailing along in it. A light, cool breeze was now blowing
and the sun was pale. The season was changing. I could feel it as
New Englanders can. In my bones, as if they were the branches of
the trees. The summer wind had lost its softness and found an edge.
The foliage had not yet begun to turn but the leaves had taken on
an olive hue, their shiny surfaces dull and dusty as life giving
sap retreated from them. The day was still warm, close to eighty
degrees in fact according to the Jeeps digital display of the
external temperature, but the nights had turned cool. Autumn was
rapidly approaching.

I had written the telephone number of The
Torrid Tymes on my notepad, and as I drove I punched it into my
cell phone. The man that answered the phone was in the middle of a
conversation with someone else when he picked up. I waited
patiently.

"Torrid Tymes," he finally said.

"Adam Lynch, please."

''Um ... hold on a sec." I could hear him
calling Lynch. "He's not in yet. Should be here anytime though.
He's on three to close."

I looked at my dash board clock. It was
2:40.

"Any message."

"No, thanks," I said, "I'll catch up with
him."

"Okay," he said and hung up.

I thought about my lunch with Ted Whorley as I
rode west toward Worcester. He turned out to be a friendly man,
aware of his shortcomings. There were no airs about him. He knew
that he was rich through no fault of his own. He made his money the
old fashion way - he inherited it. Before Red's death, he had a
wonderful income from what amounted to a no-show job. He loved his
father, who he said never seemed to mind that he didn't quite grasp
the finer points of business. He knew that Red hoped that he would
come around, as was evidenced by the fact that he left the business
to him. He guessed that the father expected to live a lot longer
than he did. Now that Teddy had it all, he and Sam that is, he felt
an obligation to do a good job with the company. Too many people's
livelihoods were at stake and he felt the crush of it
all.

Samantha Whorley knew less than he did, he told
me. She wanted nothing to do with the operation of the company.
Technically, she now owned the house they were all living in. Teddy
supposed he and Ellie would start looking around for a place. He
didn't know what Carolyn was planning. He figured that Sam would
sell the house eventually. He didn't think she would be able to
stand it there with all of him surrounding her like that. I knew
that feeling well. She loved his father, he said, despite the
disparity in their ages. Red was fifty-seven when he died; Sam
thirty-four. Red was an adventurer in the Hemingway mold, Teddy
told me. He loved his planes and helicopters and race cars and
speedboats. He was an avid outdoors-man and loved to fish and hunt
and travel the world. She was intoxicated with him, and an eager
partner in his lifestyle. There was no doubt in Teddy's mind that
his father could satisfy any, well ... needs ... she might have and
in fact, he guessed that if anyone was running to keep up with
anyone else, it was Sam trying to keep up with Red! She adored him,
Teddy insisted, a blind man could see it in her eyes when she was
around him. She was inconsolable when he died. Still grief ridden.
Blamed herself for not being home that night. She was in Paris.
They should have been there together. Red had some last minute
business that he had to take care of and so he sent her on ahead to
be with her mother. Red was going to meet her there in a few days.
He never made it of course.

I asked Teddy where his father had been the
night he died, but he didn't know. He said that it was a Wednesday
night, and that Red usually played golf Wednesday afternoons and
then hung around for a game of cards and a few beers, before coming
home. Red never felt the need to tell anyone where he was or what
he was up to. Teddy said that, at the wake, he spoke to the guys
Red usually played with, but they said that he begged off that day.
Teddy admitted that once they found his father dead in the pool,
from what appeared to be an accidental drowning, it really didn't
seem all that important to him where Red had been that night. Now
it seemed more relevant. He gave me the names of the men in Red's
usual foursome, and I wrote them into my notebook.

It was starting to look like Red
Whorley had his ticket punched for him that night. My mind had
already switched from if to why. Why was he murdered? Why did the
killer want it to look like an accident? Maybe Red was himself
involved in the smuggling of whatever it was that was being
smuggled, and got himself double-crossed. The killer wanted to hide
the fact that there was a murder. Avoid having the police digging
too deep into his business dealings during their homicide
investigation and uncovering ... something. I didn't like that
though. If Red were in on the thing, someone would have found
something after his death. Maybe not Teddy, but maybe someone like
Archer, or the accounting weenie's, or maybe Alex, who I suspect
would poke around a little when he lost a cash cow like Red. No.
Red wasn't in on it. I thought that Red had suspicions about
whatever it was that was going on, and when he got too close, he
got burned because he was going to spoil a good thing. Viewed in
that light, making it look like an accident to deflect the
investigation made more sense. An accident would also make sense if
the killer were a beneficiary of the estate. When a rich guy is
murdered everything slows down. The insurance companies don't want
to payoff, and the cops start peeling the skin off all of the major
players in the Will, looking for a motive. Things go a lot smoother
if it looks like the decedent died of natural causes, or in a
tragic accident. I didn't like Carolyn for it, and now I didn't
like Teddy for it, and it didn't sound like either of them liked
Red's wife for it. I wondered if the Whorleys
did
have a Butler.

*****

I WENT UP OVER
Bell Hill and down into Lincoln Square. I took a left onto
Worcester Center Boulevard and a right up East Central Street and
another right onto Main and pulled up in front of the Torrid Tymes.
These vehicular gymnastics were necessary because, about twenty
years ago, the City, in order to ensure a steady failure of
downtown businesses, made Main Street a dead end. That's right.
Heading north on Main you eventually arrive at a point where you
can: stop at a wall, or loop around and go back to where you just
came from, or take a right into a snarling tangle of traffic that,
if negotiated effectively, will allow you onto route 290 and away
from the city. Now, it used to be that you could just continue on
along Main and access the north and east sides of the city, and the
suburbs beyond, without difficulty. That was apparently too simple
for city planners to tolerate.

I parked in front of the club, fed a few
quarters into the meter and went inside. It was a little after
three o'clock and the place was nearly empty. It was a big place,
with what looked like about fifty tables scattered around the
perimeter of a large dance floor. A long, blond, oak bar ran the
length of the room. It had brass foot pipes and bar rails, and a
marbled deck made of polished granite. There were half a dozen
draft stations evenly spaced against the wall behind it, and in
between them a dizzying array of mirrors, booze bottles and crystal
glasses. In the far corner of the room, there was a large stage
covered with musical instruments, and to the right of it, a glass
booth that must have caged the DJ on nights when there was no live
music. A waitress was delivering drinks to the only occupied table,
four others were chatting at the wait station and two bartenders
were standing behind the bar with their arms folded leaning against
a stainless steel floor cooler. I sat on a stool in the middle of
the bar.

A young looking guy, with a gold hoop earring
in his left ear and a thick brush of light brown hair shellacked
into sharp points on top of an otherwise closely shaven head, came
down along the bar and stood in front of me. He wore black pants
with matching suspenders over a red short-sleeved shirt. He had the
V-shape of a gym rat. Pinned to his left suspender was a white name
tag that said: Adam. "Hi," he said, "can I get you
something?"

I ordered Wachusett Summer Ale, which he pulled
into a frosted pint glass from the draft farm behind him. He poured
it perfectly, leaving just about a half-inch head on it and put it
down on a Sam Adams coaster in front of me.

"You Adam Lynch?" I asked and took a small sip
from my glass.

A little warning thing went across his
features. ''Um, Yeah," he said. There was a wary question mark in
it. I had seen that look before. The look of someone who was pretty
sure, but not entirely certain, that he hadn't done anything
wrong.

I slid a business card across the bar. "My name
is Michael Knight," I said, "I'm an attorney looking into the death
of Malcolm Whorley. I'd like to ask you a few
questions."

He was holding my business card and looking
down at it as if I had just handed him a road killed woodchuck. He
looked back up at me and blinked. "Sure," he said, "I
guess."

"Great." I gave him a nothing to worry about
smile. "Did you know Mr. Whorley?"

When people talk to lawyers, they answer
questions like there is a right and wrong answer to every one of
them, and that if they answer wrong, a trap door is going to open
under their feet and they are going to drop through the floor into
a jail cell. After a couple of seconds he decided to go with 'no'
as his answer.

"But you know his daughter, Carolyn,
right?"

"I've seen her around," he said.

I smiled at him. "Adam, here's the thing. You
got to figure that if I'm here asking you questions like this, then
I must know that you were out on a date with Carolyn Whorley the
night before they found her father in the pool, am I
right?"

He nodded absently, looking down at my business
card again; I guess checking to see if I had written the answers to
my questions on it.

"And you got to figure, that I know that you
dropped her off at home that night after your date,
right?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Okay, so why don't you just answer my
questions straight, and I'll be out of here in a few minutes and
you can go back to work? How would that be?"

"That would be fine," he said.

"Good. So you know Malcolm Whorley's daughter,
Carolyn, right?"

"Right."

''That's good. Now what did you guys do that
night, you and Carolyn?"

"We went to dinner."

"Where?"

''Tiano's, I think:. Then we went up to The
Sole for a few drinks and then I took her home. It wasn't the best
date I've ever been on, you know?"

"Sure," I said and nodded
encouragingly.

"I got a little buzz on and I think it kind of
turned her off. She didn't even really want to stop at The Sole,
but we did and then I took her home."

"And what happened when you took her
home?"

"Nothing. What do you mean? She didn't ask me
in or nothin'."

"Just dropped her off and went on your way, is
that it?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, I turned the motor off and
tried to make small talk:. I was still working the issue. I gave
her a little kiss goodnight, tried to...you know ... see if I could
get a little something goin'....let my hands wander a little," he
grinned at me " ... she got some fine booty there, know what I
mean? ...but she just pushed me away and hopped out of the car and
that was that."

"And you just went home."

"And so, yeah, I just went home. I tried to
call her ... you know ... like a day later or whatever. I felt a
little bad about how it went, you know? Then I heard about her
father. She didn't call me back though." He shrugged.