by Dorien Grey
“And how did Witherspoon react to being fired?” I could easily see why Witherspoon might be really pissed at Taylor, but I couldn’t easily stretch being pissed like that into a motive for murder.
McGill looked at me oddly. “How does anyone react to being fired? He was not happy, I’m sure. Nor was I, frankly. Dave is an excellent cataloger, and any library will be lucky to have him. I wrote him a letter of recommendation, and he was, in fact, at the opening.”
“How long before Taylor’s death was he fired?”
“Maybe a week and a half. Dave approached me at the opening to ask me to consider rehiring him. I was sorely tempted, given all the work to be done, and I do believe he learned his lesson, but considering the tensions between him and Taylor, putting the two of them back together just would have been too counterproductive. He left and I’ve heard nothing from him since—though I am giving strong consideration to rehiring him now that Taylor is…gone. And assuming he’s not already found another position.”
“And Taylor had no little flaws—his perfectionism aside—of his own?”
McGill paused a moment before saying, “Taylor’s only flaw, if it can be called that, was that he had the training and duties of a cataloger but the heart of a researcher. While he never would have admitted it, I noted that he had a tendency to become occasionally distracted from his cataloging by his desire to know more about the work being cataloged. He, of course, didn’t see the difference. He was constantly sending me notes on interesting bits of trivia he found in the works he was cataloging. It got to the point I simply didn’t have the time to read them all.”
“Did you get the impression that he was being…distracted…at the time of his death?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. He was cataloging the work of Jeremy Butler and his son, and seemed to have become fascinated by it.”
The name rang a bell. “Jeremy Butler?” I interrupted. “The ‘Fires of Hell’ evangelist of the twenties and thirties? What would his works be doing here?”
McGill allowed himself a small smile. “Well, of course his works would be here. Chester Burrows collected anything and everything, positive and negative, on the subject of homosexuality. And since for puritanical religious fundamentalists, the subject of homosexuality is high on the list of things to rail against…. If, to Oscar Wilde’s generation, homosexuality was ‘the love that dare not speak its name,’ to Jeremy Butler and his ilk, homosexuality was a sin so heinous the word itself was almost never directly used.
“Interestingly, it was the Butler papers that Taylor had wanted to work on from the moment he learned we had them. But I’d already assigned them to Dave Witherspoon. After Dave left I turned the Butlers over to him.”
“Any idea why his particular interest in Butler?”
He shook his head. “Not really, other, perhaps, than that Butler was a well-known public figure. Taylor seemed particularly fascinated by the fact that in addition to Butler’s vitriolic public writings—books, sermons, and religious tracts in which the subject of homosexuality comes up frequently if obliquely—there are apparently a rather large number of more personal papers…particularly letters to his son, Morgan, his only child and the apple of his eye. There are also a sizeable number of Morgan’s own papers included with those of his father, and it was Morgan who donated the papers to Chester Burrows shortly before his own death.
“In this case, Taylor’s distraction produced something of a coup which will have to be left to researchers to explore further…Morgan Butler married and had a son, but was apparently gay. He killed himself in 1953 at the age of 31.”
I just shook my head. “Interesting,” I said, and meant it.
McGill gave me another small smile. “I’m glad you think so. Contrary to popular belief, librarians do not lead lives of unremitting dullness.”
“Wasn’t Butler from here, originally?” I asked, mentally rummaging through the stacks of trivia scattered around the shadowy alcoves of my mind.
McGill nodded. “He was, yes. Morgan died here, and Morgan’s son still lives here, I understand. He has been threatening suit to have Butler’s papers removed from the Collection. He has a snowball’s chance in hell of doing so, of course, but he can try.”
“Well, I can understand him not wanting it made general knowledge that his father was gay…”
“If he even knew,” McGill interjected. “First of all, there is no concrete proof that he was, and he was very young when Morgan killed himself. It well may not have been the kind of thing that would even have been mentioned to him.”
I had to admit there was a lot more to his business than meets the eye. But interesting as it was to learn that the notorious preacher had skeletons in his closet, I couldn’t see much of anything in it that could possibly get Taylor Cates killed.
“How did you happen to find Taylor’s body?” I asked.
“I was just making a routine check of the building, making sure that everything that should be locked up was…with crowds of people around, I wanted to make doubly sure. And the door to the catalog room was unlocked. It shouldn’t have been. Taylor had been working at a desk near the door. There was an opened box of material on the desk—again, there shouldn’t have been. The door was to be kept locked to prevent just anyone from walking in, and while I knew he would be working to pass the time, he had instructions not to leave materials loose on the desk if he let someone in.”
He looked down at his desk as if in thought before continuing. “Those two facts alone set me immediately on edge. I called to him and there was no answer. I began looking for him and that’s when I found his body.”
“Is there any other reason to think it might not have been an accident?”
McGill leaned forward in his chair, his elbows on the desk. “I’m not really sure,” he said, “but Taylor had no reason to be in that part of the stacks, let alone on a set of steps that led to an unused door. The police apparently assumed that Taylor was going outside for a cigarette, or that someone had knocked on the door and he had gone to answer it. I told them that either assumption was highly unlikely, however logical.”
“How’s that?” Though Glen O’Banyon had already indicated the answer, I wanted to be sure he and McGill were on the same page.
“Because knowing Taylor, even as little as I did, I know that he would never have just left his post, cigarette or no, and that everyone knew that door was to be used as an emergency exit only. Even if someone had knocked—and again there is a sign on the outside of the door directing people to the front entrance—he would not have broken the rules by opening it.”
“Taylor never broke the rules?”
“Actually, no,” he replied. “And he was intolerant of anyone who did. That’s why he reported Dave for taking materials home with him. Some people may see it as being petty, but Taylor did not.”
“What were the papers he was working on at the time of the…accident, if I may ask?” I…uh…asked.
“Morgan Butler’s, I believe. I didn’t have time to look at them more closely than to make sure they were in chronological order and put them back in the box and return the box to the shelf. Looking back on it, I realize that was a rather strange thing for me to do under the circumstances, but I really wasn’t thinking clearly at the time.”
“Were any of the papers missing, could you tell? Is it possible someone might have been trying to steal them?”
He knit his brows and looked at me. “I really don’t know,” he said. “But I’d think it highly unlikely. Morgan Butler had no particular distinction of his own; I’d imagine if anyone were out to steal papers, it would be Jeremy Butler’s they’d be after.
“Jeremy Butler’s papers had already been cataloged, however, and we were just finishing up with Morgan’s. I’ll have both sets gone over again to be sure nothing’s missing. But as for anything of Morgan’s that had not yet been cataloged, I’m afraid we would have no way of knowing if anything were missing or not. Though again, I really
can’t imagine that there would be.”
We talked for a while longer, but I felt I had gotten what I needed to know for the moment.
“Oh,” I said in afterthought, “would you happen to have both Taylor’s and Dave Witherspoon’s phone numbers? I think I’d like to talk with Taylor’s roommate, and definitely with Witherspoon.”
“They should be right here,” he said, opening a side drawer in his desk and bringing out a small metal box filled with 3x5 cards. Flipping through them expertly, he paused at two cards long enough to write something on the notepad in front of him, then tore off the top sheet of the pad, tapped the tops of the 3x5 cards to get them all even, closed the lid of the box, and slid the torn-off piece of paper across the desk to me. “Here you are,” he said.
I folded the paper and put it in my shirt pocket. “Well, thank you again for your time and your help,” I said. “I’ll let you get back to work now.”
He gave me a small smile. “Yes, there is a lot to do.”
We shook hands, and I left.
*
When I got home from work, Jonathan seemed to be in a particularly happy mood. He and Joshua were just finishing up their feeding-of-the-fish ritual. I hadn’t really expected Joshua’s two little fish to have survived as long as they had, due to Joshua’s firm belief that if a little food was good for them, a lot was better. But Jonathan had gotten him slowly used to the idea that goldfish do not require quite the same amount of food as a great white shark.
After our group hug, Joshua went running off in pursuit of whatever it is four-year-old boys always seem to find to pursue, and I followed Jonathan into the kitchen to fix my evening Manhattan.
“So what’s up?” I asked him as I took a glass from the cupboard and he opened the refrigerator for his Coke and some ice cubes.
“Guess what happened today?” he asked, answering a question with a question.
“Something good, obviously,” I said, and he grinned broadly.
“Yeah! I was out on a job, and when I got back, my boss told me he’d gotten a call from Evan Knight, who wants his whole yard landscaped, and he mentioned that I had referred him to Evergreen! The boss was really impressed.”
I doubted the boss had any idea who Evan Knight was, but the prospect of a full yard-landscaping project in the Briarwood area would undoubtedly be profitable.
I was happy for Jonathan’s boss. I was happy for Jonathan getting the credit for bringing in new business. I was not, however, particularly happy with the possibility of Jonathan being drawn any closer to Evan Knight’s little web.
“That’s great, Babe,” I said. “Will you be working on the job?”
I realized that last question was my Scorpio side raising its ugly head.
“I hope so,” Jonathan said. “I’d really like to see where Mr. Knight lives. My boss is going over there tomorrow morning to talk to him about what he’ll want done, and to give him an estimate. I hope we get the job.”
Oh, I’m pretty sure you will, my Scorpio said. Damn it, why the hell was I being jealous? I had no reason to be. Except that I’d met people like Evan Knight before, and I know the games they like to play with people like Jonathan, who tend to take everyone at face value and are sometimes way too trusting. But I realized at the same time that I had too strong a tendency, sometimes, to treat Jonathan too much like a kid who needed constant protection. He was an adult, and he didn’t need me hovering over him all the time.
Yeah, a mind-voice reluctantly agreed. Still….
*
I was a few minutes late getting to work the next morning, thanks to Joshua somehow managing to slosh an entire bowl of cereal and milk over himself at breakfast. So while Jonathan cleaned up Joshua and changed his clothes, I cleaned up the kitchen. Kids can be a real joy sometimes. This was not one of them.
Once at work, I waited until I’d gone through my morning coffee/newspaper/crossword puzzle ritual before calling Dave Witherspoon. I hoped to get a little better idea of what kind of guy Taylor Cates really was, even though I was quite sure that under the circumstances what he had to say would probably be less than flattering. And while I sincerely doubted that Taylor’s having gotten Dave fired would be enough reason to kill, stranger things have happened, and it was always wise to check out every possibility.
And speaking of possibilities, it was still a very real possibility that Taylor Cates had, for whatever reason, simply fallen down the steps.
Uh huh, a mind-voice said. I determined to give Tim Jackson a call. Since he worked at the coroner’s office, he may be able to tell me a little more about the actual cause of Taylor’s death. But that would have to wait until I got home.
I dialed Dave Witherspoon’s number, and considering that it was by now nearly nine thirty, I was not overly surprised to get an answering machine. Witherspoon may have already found another job and was at work—though there aren’t that many libraries in the area, and even fewer research libraries—or he was out looking for work. I left my name and work number. If I didn’t hear from him by the time I was ready to go home, I’d call again and leave my home number, too.
Part of me wanted to talk to Evan Knight next, but the rest of me suggested that it might be best to hold him until last. On the one hand, I didn’t want to be influenced by these little games I suspected he might be playing with Jonathan, and I needed some time to regain my objectivity. On the other hand, of course, waiting would allow me to see how this landscaping gambit—if it was indeed a gambit, as I suspected it was—played out.
And okay, I admit it, if Jonathan was going to be working in close proximity to Knight, I wanted to keep Knight reminded that I was in the picture.
You’re really weird, Hardesty, an unidentified mind-voice observed.
Guilty as charged.
I decided to go with the least-most-likely-involved board members first, to see if they might by chance have any idea at all of what was going on. It was really unlikely, I knew, but I couldn’t afford to overlook anyone or anything. I decided to start with Thomas McNabb, the realtor.
When I did call, I was informed that he was out of the office showing a property, but would return my call as soon as possible. I left my name and number, and hung up. I thought it interesting that someone who headed one of the city’s larger real estate organizations would still be going out and showing properties himself. But then I realized that might be one of the reasons his company got so big in the first place.
Rather than wait for him to return my call, I next tried William Pearson’s number. I was a bit surprised when he answered the phone himself.
“William Pearson.”
“Mr. Pearson, this is Dick Hardesty, of Hardesty Investigations. Glen O’Banyon gave me your number.”
“Ah, yes, Mr. Hardesty. I was rather expecting your call. I gather you’ve agreed to look into this…unfortunate incident at the Burrows?”
“Yes,” I replied, “and I was wondering if there might be anything you could tell me about Taylor Cates or the Collection that might have some bearing on my investigation.”
There was a slight pause, then, “I’m afraid I really can’t be of much help as far as the Collection is concerned. I don’t have very much direct contact with the day-to-day operations of the library. I did know Taylor Cates, though not all that well. He was a weekend bartender at Steamroller Junction from the time it opened until about three months ago.”
Steamroller Junction was one of the biggest and most popular of the gay dance bars, though the last time I’d been there was, in fact, on its opening night, not too long after Jonathan and I got together. I’m not big on huge crowds or noise, and Steamroller Junction had both.
“Did you happen to know anything at all about his personal life?”
Another brief pause. “No, I’m afraid not. He was personally recommended to me by someone whose opinion I respect. Usually, I’m not all that directly involved with the staff of my various businesses—unfortunately, there just isn’t time to k
now everyone. I do know the manager subsequently thought very highly of him, too, and that he apparently never missed a shift. I wish I had more employees like that. Teddy had told me Taylor was a college student at the time, but had no idea he was working for the Burrows until the night of the…accident.”
“Teddy?” I asked, the name striking a bell.
“Teddy Wilson, one of the performers who’s worked in several of my clubs over the years. He goes by the name of Tondelaya O’Tool. Maybe you’ve seen one of his shows.”
Teddy! T/T! One of the best drag queens in the business! Well, well, what a small world!
“Of course I know Teddy,” I said. “He’s fantastic. I last saw him at the opening of Steamroller Junction, as a matter of fact.”
“He’ll be back in town in two weeks for a benefit for the Hospice Project. He’s performing in Atlanta now, but when he heard of the benefit he wanted to be part of it. There aren’t many people like Teddy around these days.”
“Indeed there aren’t,” I said. “I’ll definitely be there.”
“Well, I’d advise you to get your tickets in advance. It’s going to be a sold-out event. We’ll have a full-page ad for it in this week’s Rainbow Flag, and the box office will be open every day starting Monday.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I said. “Thanks for the heads up.”
Okay, Hardesty…first things first, my mind-voice said. Taylor Cates, remember?
It was right, of course, so I pulled myself back to the moment. “Do you happen to know how Teddy and Taylor Cates knew one another?”
Pearson paused a moment, then, “I don’t know how well you might know Teddy,” he said, “but as I say, he’s truly one of a kind…he’s got a heart as big as all outdoors. As I recall, Teddy told me that Taylor had lived next door to him as a kid, and really looked up to him. In those days, Teddy didn’t have many people looking up to him. He never forgot it. And apparently they stayed close over the years. When Teddy called a day or so after the accident to discuss some details of the benefit, I mentioned to him that Taylor was dead. He hadn’t heard, and it seemed to really hit him hard.”