Feast of Murder(82)

“It fits him,” Gregor Demarkian said. “He didn’t seem to me to be the kind of man who could have a real hobby, something he didn’t mind doing half-well because it made him relax.”

“He certainly wouldn’t like doing anything half-well,” Fritzie said. “I don’t think Jon could tolerate doing anything even ninety-nine percent well. He’s not like that.”

Mr. Demarkian slathered his scone with butter. “I suppose that made him very different from Charlie Shay,” he said. “The general consensus I get, asking around on the boat, is that Mr. Shay wasn’t exactly a high performer.”

The butter on Gregor Demarkian’s scone was at least an inch thick. Fritzie was sure of it. It was so yellow and thick and strong, she thought she could smell it, even though she knew you couldn’t smell butter unless it was cooking or until it went bad. It smelled like salt.

“Well,” Fritzie said again, turning her head away. “Charlie Shay.”

“Mmmm.”

“Charlie Shay was sad, really. I’d known him all my married life, of course. He was a friend of Jon’s from college or prep school or somewhere. And there are people who say he was better in those days, when everything first started, but he wasn’t. He was always—sad.”

“By sad do you mean ineffectual?”

“I don’t know.” Fritzie couldn’t seem to remember what “ineffectual” meant. The definition had got caught up in a river of butter. “I mean he was always a gopher, as they put it these days,” she said. “He was always the someone who ran errands. It wasn’t as bad as it got after Jon went to prison, of course, but it was always true.”

“Why ‘of course’?” Gregor asked curiously. “Why should Charlie Shay have turned into more of a gopher just because Jon Baird went to jail?”

“Because Jon wasn’t at the office to protect him, for one thing,” Fritzie said. “But the real reason was Jon himself and the way Charlie felt about him. Charlie always idolized Jon. And once Jon went to jail, he needed a lot of help. He was stuck in that cell and he couldn’t just jump up and do things by himself. So he asked Charlie to do them.”

“And Charlie didn’t mind,” Gregor Demarkian said.

“Charlie thought the mere fact that Jon Baird asked him to do something made that something important.” Fritzie smiled wanly. “Aren’t you wondering how I know all this? After all, Jon and I have been divorced for a while. He’s married to that woman now, although I must say I don’t know for how long. Doesn’t it seem odd to you that I know all this?”

“Should it?”

“It shouldn’t if you really knew Charlie Shay, but you didn’t.” Fritzie got up, walked slowly and deliberately to the kettle, and made herself more tea. Then she walked just as slowly and deliberately back to her chair again and sat down. “Charlie would call me up and tell me all about it. All the things Jon had asked him to do. All the errands he had run. He was so proud of it all, and so much of it was humiliating.”

“What was humiliating?”

“Well,” Fritzie said, “for instance, Jon made one of those ships in bottles in prison. Charlie trotted back and forth getting him all the things he needed, the glue, the string, the bottle.”

“That could have been affection,” Gregor pointed out. “Here was Charlie Shay’s friend, in prison. Here was Charlie Shay, in a position to make that prison time pass a little more easily. After all, everything Charlie Shay was asked to do wasn’t humiliating. I’ve been told by half a dozen people that it was Shay who delivered the final McAdam contracts to Jon Baird so that Baird could give them to Donald McAdam.”

“Three copies of the contract and a stamped, self-addressed envelope to bring it all home to Baird Financial,” Fritzie recited. “Yes, I know. I’ve heard all about how it worked. But you know, even when Charlie brought the contracts in, Jon didn’t let him get any ideas about his place. It was the same day Charlie brought the contracts in that Jon made him bring in the bridge.”

“The bridge?”

“Jon has this bridge for the lower left-hand side of his jaw,” Fritzie said. “Because of the way it’s made it’s very delicate and it breaks. Jon was very worried about that when he was going into prison, so he had a spare made. And sure enough, right around the time McAdam was supposed to sign his contracts, Jon broke his bridge. So he sent Charlie Shay to get the spare and to deliver it, and Charlie never once thought what an awful thing that was for Jon to do.”