by Archer Mayor
But their hostess appeared unfazed. Glancing over her shoulder, she smiled brightly and suggested, “You get used to it.”
This was neither insightful nor comforting to her two visitors. Nor did it lessen Lester’s feeling of having dropped into some futuristic fantasy.
Their destination, however, when they reached it, turned out to be not much different from similar offerings downstairs. Rather than ushering them into an office befitting both her outfit and the corporate surroundings, their guide took them into a small break room equipped with microwave, fridge, sink, several tables, and one man in worn jeans and a soiled T-shirt who was halfway through a cup of coffee. The walls were covered with bulletin boards, safety notices, and those painfully sincere framed posters advising people how to properly spell “team.”
“Hey,” the man said in a friendly voice, lightly kicking an empty chair with a booted foot. “Take a load off. Want some coffee?”
As the two newcomers looked around, the woman in the suit mysteriously vanished.
Sam spoke first, crossing to the coffee machine. “Sure.”
Lester took his cue from the casual greeting and dialed down the official standard approach. “You Philip?” he asked instead, sitting down and stretching his legs.
“Yup.” Beaupré took a sip of his drink. He was almost self-consciously good looking, Sammie thought, dressed as if he’d thrown on whatever had been littering his bedroom floor, but with what she recognized as a two-hundred-dollar haircut, carefully tousled, and—she suspected—highlighted to complement his green eyes.
Lester jerked a thumb at her. “Sam Martens. I’m Lester Spinney. Thanks for meeting with us.”
“Don’t thank me,” Beaupré said. “I happened to be here; somebody mentioned you were hot to talk. I figured it couldn’t hurt.”
Sam turned with a mug in her hand and asked in a hard voice, “What couldn’t?”
He smiled. “You the bad cop? He’s certainly the nice one. I thought that was just a TV thing.”
“How could talking to us hurt you?” Sam continued, ignoring the comment. “We’re here to find out who’s trying to shut you down.”
Philip’s expression didn’t change. “It’s an expression. People say it without thinking. But if you want to get into it, I’m old school, Detective. I figure everybody’s up to something they won’t admit. Cops, especially.”
“Ouch,” Lester reacted. “That mean you’re going to be evasive with us?”
“No, it’s just human nature,” Beaupré answered. “Some avoid being straightforward more than others. It’s no big deal, at least most of the time. I’m just assuming you got more on your minds than catching a firebug.”
“Who’s killed several people,” Sammie reminded him, staying at her station by the counter. “This isn’t a parlor game.”
Beaupré shrugged. “Could be to the guy you’re after.”
“You have insight into that?” Lester wanted to know.
The man chuckled and sat back, cradling his drink. “Ooh. Very crafty. Give me a break. This is psychology one-oh-one. It doesn’t make me a suspect to imagine that whoever’s doing this has an ax to grind. And if that’s true, then he must be enjoying both the fruits of his labor and your lack of success in catching him. It’s what kids do, and psychotic fuckups. That’s all I’m saying.”
“How bad is the company hurting?” Sammie asked, grateful that Lester had asked for her to be here. Philip Beaupré was turning into one unusual interview.
“You can cross-examine Brad about that,” was the quick response.
“No one at corporate is being exactly forthcoming,” Lester told him.
Philip shook his head. “I’m shocked. Shocked. Imagine: a bunch of suits who don’t like cops poking into their business affairs.”
“So?” Lester persisted.
“It’s hurting,” Beaupré conceded. “How could it not? People think it’s all insurance covering the losses and fat cats taking a slight hit at the end of the year, but the margins in this business are pathetic, and competition is literally cutthroat. Have you looked into that, by the way? It’s where I’d go to find who’s out to get us.”
“Anyone in particular?” Sam asked.
“Nope. It’s just what I’d do.”
“What’s your job at the company, Mr. Beaupré?” Sam continued after a pause.
“Call me the special projects man.”
They waited for more, but Beaupré took another swig of coffee instead of elaborating.
“Meaning what?” Lester prompted him.
Philip leaned back and eyed the acoustic ceiling thoughtfully. “You know much about wholesale groceries?”
“More than I ever thought possible,” Lester admitted.
“Then you know it’s not a breeding ground of creative innovators, even though it’s built on the ideas of those exact kinds of people.”
Lester saw an opening. “Like you, and your bringing in motion-sensor LEDs to cut electricity costs. I heard it took forever for you to get that through, and now it’s an industry standard.”
He’d actually heard no such thing, but it sounded right. Beaupré dropped his gaze to stare at him in surprise. “Yeah. Exactly like that.”
Sammie maintained her stance by the coffee machine—distant, purposefully hostile—not that she was having a hard time with that. She didn’t like this man. “Must piss you off, being ignored. It would me,” she said.
Beaupré gave Lester a look. “She always like this?”
“You always avoid answering direct questions?” Lester asked in response.
Beaupré was still pondering Sam’s comment. “Yeah, it makes me mad—sometimes. Same as you, I guess. We all buck the system now and then, if we have any brains.”
“It could make you a malcontent,” Sammie observed, momentarily flashing on Willy in this context.
“That why you’re so grouchy?” he shot back. “Look, how many businesses you know that would take a guy like me—even though I’m family—and create a special slot for him instead of throwing him out or buying him off? Do I get frustrated sometimes? Sure. But it’s never been a deal breaker.”
“Who’s your biggest opposition?” Lester asked.
“We interviewed your dad, Bobby, and Brad,” Sam added. “Not one of them came across as an innovator. Maybe your dad, once upon a time, but your older brother? The heir apparent slash Mr. Grind? And the guy who married the boss’s daughter? Hardly.”
“Don’t sell the old man short,” Philip told them. “He may be laying back more nowadays, but he still calls the shots, and he’s still got the instincts. There was no extra room for something like GreenField when he started it. C and S was already going full guns, as were United Natural Foods and Associated Grocers of New England. People said he didn’t stand a chance. But we’re doing okay. Better. At least until this freight train hit us.”
“Which only tells me it’s Bobby and Brad who routinely throw a wrench in your works,” Lester concluded.
Philip shook his head sorrowfully. “God. You people are relentless. How the hell do you solve crimes? No wonder you been running around in circles.”
“We solve crimes through evidence and interviews,” Sammie told him. “Which means that people like you, in a position to help, do more than hand us crap like you’ve been doing.”
It may not have been textbook interviewing, but she was hoping it would work on a self-professed maverick like Beaupré.
She got lucky. He chuckled and said, “Wow. I like your style after all. Okay. Granted. The problem is, I still don’t know what to tell you. Before this started, I thought we had a happy company. We’re good to our employees, get high marks from our suppliers and customers, play nice with our competitors, and keep the banks happy by meeting our payments. We even make a point of hiring people with backgrounds that other companies wouldn’t touch. And those folks reward us—for the most part—by not screwing us over. There are exceptions. Your homework’s told you t
hat. But somebody with the know-how to do what’s just happened? Beats the hell out of me.”
The tone in the room shifted slightly with this, to something at least sounding more collaborative and less cagey. Sam considered toning down her antipathy, if only to see where it led.
“We’ve also been checking the historical picture,” she said. “Going back a few years, looking for anything that’s been festering. Did you ever know a man named Mick Durocher? He didn’t work here long, but was good enough to rate one of your father’s chauffeur gigs.”
Philip laughed shortly. “God. Spare me. I told him once it was like bringing the field slaves into the mansion for a breather. Not one of our better conversations.”
“Durocher?” Sam repeated.
But he shook his head. “Nah. Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“You don’t read the papers?” Lester asked. “He’s the one we arrested for killing that girl they found on Bromley Mountain.”
Beaupré looked surprised. “He drove my dad around? Damn.”
There was a long silence as both cops eyed Beaupré’s innocent expression.
Lester decided on a long shot. “Since we’re talking ancient history, how ’bout Victoria Garlanda?”
Philip’s face completely switched to what looked like genuine astonishment. “Whoa. You have been digging. That’s amazing.”
“You know her?” Sam pressed, equally caught off guard.
“I know about her, sure,” he said. “She and my dad were an item, back in the Stone Age. I never met her.”
“Give us details,” Sam requested.
“Not much to tell. They were sweethearts in school and things didn’t turn out. Pretty common story, I guess.”
“How do you know about it?”
“By accident. I was in my dad’s office as a teenager, messing around in his desk, looking for something innocuous, and I found a photograph of her, just when he walked in. I gave him a little shit, like a kid’ll do. Something like, ‘Ooh, holding out on Mom?’ or whatever, and he got really worked up. I thought he was gonna hit me. Surprised the crap out of me. It’s probably why I remember her name. Plus, it is a little hard to forget—you gotta admit. Garlanda—crazy.”
“What did he say about her?” Lester asked.
“He got real sentimental. Course, he started with ‘You know I love your mother,’ and all that, but then he fessed up that Victoria had been the love of his life and the one that got away and all the other one-liners.”
“Sounds like you weren’t too impressed,” Sam commented.
“You think I’m cynical now, you shoulda seen me then. Still, I was more impressed than I’m making out. Watching his face and hearing how he talked about her, it was pretty clear he’d fallen hard.”
“How did he explain not marrying her?”
“He didn’t. Not really. I think he said something along the lines that he and Victoria had a falling-out and then he met my mom. I was dubious enough that I did a little math afterwards. You ask me, the old man knocked up Mom with Bobby. That’s why he didn’t marry Victoria. He may or may not have had a falling-out with her, but I figured he was screwin’ around on the side, regardless. That’s much more his style.”
“I thought you liked your father,” Sam said.
Philip couldn’t repress a quick shifting of the eyes before saying in a dismissive tone, “I do, but boys’ll be boys. He was a young man, for Christ’s sake. I can’t hold that against him.”
But to her, it was a tell—something revealing that he’d let slip unintentionally.
A knock on the open door stopped all conversation and brought their attention to a uniformed security man looking awkwardly at the three of them.
“What?” Beaupré asked.
“Sorry to bother,” the man said. “With the heightened security, we didn’t know how you wanted this handled, and we knew you and the police were in a meeting, so maybe you’d be the best to deal with it.”
Philip gave him an unpleasant, indulgent smile—at odds with his friendly hunk physique. “You do realize you’re talking gibberish, right?”
“What happened?” Lester asked more supportively.
“We caught a prowler, maybe trespasser. Don’t know what you’d call her. Anyhow, she claims she’s a newspaper person and said we can’t interfere with freedom of the press and shit like that. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Keep going.”
“Well, we weren’t exactly sure what to do, and like I said, we knew you were all up here, so we thought that since you’re the police and management, combined, we’d ask you.”
“Press?” Sammie echoed, irritated by the interruption. “What’s her name?”
The man checked a small pad he was holding. “Rachel … Renning?”
“Reiling,” Sam corrected him, having sensed as much. “You have her with you?”
The security guard jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “My partner’s got her by the elevators.”
Sam didn’t bother consulting Beaupré. “Bring her here. You did the right thing.”
Their visitor left as Philip ruminated, “Who knew a wholesale grocery business would attract so much attention?”
Sam didn’t fault Rachel’s perseverance. She’d been accused of the same character trait herself more than once. But the girl’s timing could have been better.
Rachel appeared in the doorway, flanked by her escort. She gave Lester and Sam a smile tinged at once with pleasure and embarrassment. “Hi, guys.”
Sam was preparing to chastise her delicately, when Rachel’s gaze settled on Philip Beaupré.
“Hey,” she said to him. “We’ve met before, not that you’d remember. At the GreenField truck crash in Brattleboro. You’re J.R. I took your picture.”
Both cops stared at Beaupré as if he’d suddenly sprouted horns, which, in a manner of speaking, he just had.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“You’re J.R.?” Sam asked, looking hard at Beaupré, the collaborative glow of moments earlier reverting to sudden suspicion.
He shook his head, his semipermanent smile looking pasted in place. “How does that work? Bobby’s the Junior of the family. Not me.”
“It’s what the other guy called you at the truck crash,” Rachel reiterated. “I’ve been looking for you ever since.” She slipped her camera off her shoulder and began manipulating its controls.
“Why?” Lester asked her.
“He was really angry when he found me near the truck’s rear wheels, like I was seeing something I shouldn’t.”
She held out the camera so both cops could peer at the photo of Philip on its screen.
“We’d just lost one of our drivers,” Beaupré protested. “Of course I was upset. Not everything’s a news story. People’s lives are involved. He had a wife and kids.”
“Quiet,” Sam told him before addressing Rachel. “You just said he was angry, not upset. Which was it?”
“Angry,” Rachel affirmed.
“Why do they call you J.R.?” Sam asked Philip.
“They don’t.”
Lester spoke, no longer the nice cop. “We’re in your building, dummy. All we have to do is walk down the hall and ask.”
Beaupré pursed his lips. “It’s a nickname. I don’t like it. That’s all.”
“What’s it stand for?”
“Who cares?”
“What’s it stand for?” Lester repeated.
Philip put on a show of exasperation. “This is stupid. It’s a bad joke. It stands for ‘Junior’ because some of the guys think I’m better to take over from the old man than Bobby, even though he’s the senior executive and the next in line. He’s a cold fish. People don’t like him. So they insult him behind his back by calling me J.R. That’s it. No big deal.”
“And you allow it because you don’t like Bobby either,” Sam suggested.
He started to respond to that, before Sam interrupted him with an upheld hand and ordered, “Hang on.”
She
turned to Rachel and said shortly, “Thanks. You’re off the hook. You might as well head off.”
Rachel stared at her in disbelief. “What? I gave you this.”
Sam remained adamant, feeling the unmentioned presence of Beverly looming up between them—the supportive friend of one and the loving mother of the other. Nevertheless, Sam didn’t yield to favoritism or sentimentality. “It’s not a lead and this is not a story, Rachel. It’s a criminal investigation. We need to do this without a reporter in the room possibly getting cited down the line as a witness. If any of this ever went to trial, the defense would have a field day with it.”
Rachel’s expression went from shock to fury before settling on betrayal, making Sam’s discomfort all the keener. At a virtual loss for more words, Sam maintained her intractable position silently, trusting her body language to substitute for any repetition. Both men in the room merely watched.
“Wow,” Rachel conceded, shaking her head finally. “Who knew?”
Without further comment, she turned on her heel and left.
Shunting aside the guilt with effort, Sam returned her attention to Philip Beaupré, her voice studiously deadpan. “Tell us about Teri Parker,” she told him.
He was flawless. His eyes widened slightly, his chin lifted half an inch, both followed by a thoughtful frown. “Never heard of her. Who’s she?”
“You tried that stunt when we mentioned Mick Durocher,” Sam said. “You claim to be the hotshot special projects guy, fast on his feet and quick with the solutions, and yet you’re totally clueless about the state’s most sensational murder case?”
“You keep up on forensics?” Lester asked, apparently at random.
Beaupré played along. “I guess. As much as anybody. DNA and the rest?”
“It’s getting creepy good,” Lester continued. “Wearing rubber gloves to a scene no longer cuts it. People leave clouds of microbes behind, wherever they go—right here in this room, for example—and now we’re starting to pick them up and backtrack them to their owners. It’s amazing—evidence so small, it stays floating in the air.”
“Cool,” Philip said, unimpressed.