He got up and wiped sand off his clothes. “You think I’d be walking around out here, alone at night, no weapon, nothin’? Man, guys with bombs were looking for me, I’d be in goddam Australia. Yeah, I’m sure. You got the wrong guy.”
I believed him. As I had with the logic puzzle, I’d rejected the obvious. Only this time I’d made a mistake. The bomber had gotten the right man.
The cops released the contents of Earl Kessler’s apartment to his brother. I picked Luther up and we drove over there.
Earl Kessler had lived modestly. There were the bare necessities and not much more: a television, a few prints on the walls, a couple of dozen books, mostly on fishing and nature related topics.
I don’t know what I expected to find, but I gave the place a thorough toss. I even checked the undersides of the drawers, dumped out the coffee and the sugar, and unrolled the toilet paper and looked inside the cardboard tube.
“You reckon there’s a clue hidden there in the bumfodder?” Kessler’s voice dripped with sarcasm.
“You got an idea, maybe?”
“That’s what I pay you for,” he snapped. “Bright ideas.”
“Well, I’m fresh out. There’s no loose end to tug on here. Your brother lived like a monk: no vices, no girlfriend, no close friends at all. He didn’t even play cards or belong to a club.”
“He fished. He loved the outdoors. Always did.”
“Well, he loved it alone, looks like.”
“Never understood it myself.”
“What?”
“Fishing. Damned silly waste of time, and cruel besides. Fishing, hunting, trapping — cruel.”
“What’s the difference between raising deer and raising cows?”
“I got no livestock, mister. Corn and soybeans. No animals, save for my dog and a couple of barn cats. I couldn’t live with an animal only to send it off to slaughter. No, sir, I couldn’t.”
“Corn and soybeans?”
“Yep.”
“No endive?”
“What’s endive?”
“Never mind. It’s a bad Massachusetts joke.”
“We left no closer to Earl’s killers than when we came, but I liked Luther rather more than I had before.”
We drove to the industrial park and found the offices of Four-Lane Trucking. Kessler waited in the car. A receptionist passed me in to Ralph McIntyre without delay.
McIntyre’s office was functional: no chrome or leather or exotic wood, just a steel cubicle with a steel desk. A piston served as a paperweight, a miniature truck tire as an ashtray. The owner of Four-Lane Trucking was a large man with a military haircut. He lit a Camel and I asked my questions.
“Nah. Earl never mentioned anything about any problems. But then he was pretty quiet. Good bookkeeper, and naturally, we’re sorry as hell about what happened.” He took a long drag on the Camel, reducing fully half of it to ash.
“Any idea as to who would conceivably want to kill him?”
“Nobody’d want to kill Earl. It had to be a mistake. They were looking to clip someone else, way I figure it.” Another drag, the cigarette was gone. He saw me looking. “Filthy habit. I been trying to quit for years.”
“It wasn’t a mistake.”
“What wasn’t?”
“The bomb. Kessler was the intended target.”
McIntyre squinted at me. “You prove that?”
“Not yet,” I said, getting up, “but I will. Something smells in this whole thing. I intend to find out what it is.” I hoped McIntyre wouldn’t ask me how I planned to do it. I didn’t have an answer.
“Yeah, well, if I can help let me know, Stubblefield. Anything I can do, you know.” I thanked him and saw myself out. The receptionist flashed me a dazzling smile with all the sincerity of a campaign promise.
“You have a nice day now.”
“How well did you know Kessler?”
“Well, I’ve been here a little over three years, so that long.”
“He strike you as the kind of man who might have a secret life?”
“Mr. Kessler? No way.” She smiled at the suggestion.
“I get the impression the man was a saint. Didn’t he, say, ever make a pass at you?”
She did something you don’t see too much any more. She blushed.
“Go on! He never.”
“A perfect gentleman. Never even lost his temper, I’ll bet.”
“We-e-ll, I’ve seen him lose his temper a few times.”
“At the boss?”
“Oh no, never that. It was whenever there was an oil spill or something like that. He was savage over that big Exxon thing in Canada.”
“Alaska.”
“Yeah, Alaska. Whatever. And that business with the loggers and the little owl. That kind of thing made him very upset. He used to say that we had no right to do those things, that they were crimes against nature.”
I wished her a nice day and started for the door.
“Oh, Mr. Stubblefield, maybe you should know, being a policeman and all.”
“Private investigator.”
“Right, whatever. Anyway, Mr. Stoller, the man that owns the camp up in Maine where Mr. Kessler got — where he died — he called while you were with Mr. McIntyre. He wanted to know what to do about Mr. Kessler’s car. He seems to think it might be valuable.”
