Gregor waited until Linda had refilled his coffee cup and bustled off toward the kitchen. Then he waved at the mess on the table and said, “Well?”
Howard Androcoelho sighed. “I was one of the detectives in charge,” he said. “When this whole thing first started. When Chester went missing.”
“He was somebody you knew? Somebody you’d call by his first name?”
“Well,” Howard said. “It’s not like Mattatuck is a small town anymore. We probably have fifty thousand people. But the Mortons are sort of, I don’t know—what would the newspapers call it?—locally prominent. Like that.”
“Locally prominent as what?”
“They run the largest trash collection company in the country,” Howard said. “And don’t laugh. They were the first, and they’ve got most of the business in town, and most of the business in all the towns around us. They’re good, and they’re cheap. You’ve got to have trash collection in Mattatuck. We’re too big now not to insist on it, so we’ve got a city ordinance. But most of the towns around us let you do what you want. A lot of people just pile their garbage in the back of their truck and then haul it on out to the dump. Morton’s is good enough and cheap enough so that a fair number of them pay to have them haul it instead.”
“All right,” Gregor said. “I assume they therefore have money.”
“Hard to tell,” Howard said, “but, yes, I’d guess so, too. Best guesses in and around town are that they’re worth about ten million dollars, between the business itself and investments. They’ve got a bunch of kids, and the kids are going into the business. Even the daughter is doing bookkeeping. Hell, okay. They insist that the kids go into the business.”
“And the kids don’t want to?”
Howard considered this. “It’s hard to say. You’d have to know Charlene. That’s the mother. The woman is a lunatic. It’s like she had these children, they came with umbilical cords attached, and she’s never going to cut them. If you know what I mean.”
“Sort of,” Gregor said. It sounded like half the Armenian immigrant women he’d known in his childhood.
“So,” Howard said, “Chester didn’t want to. Go into the business, I mean. And there’s probably another one of those coming up, because the youngest one? Kenny? He’s got two Internet businesses going, he’s got his own business cards. I don’t know how she’s keeping him at home. He’s got to be making more than she’s willing to pay him already. Whatever. Chester didn’t want to go into the business, and he didn’t want to live at home.”
“So did he do something about it?”
“He did,” Howard said. “He wasn’t any Kenny, that’s for sure. He didn’t have that kind of drive. But he did get an outside job, at some convenience store, I think, and he got himself a trailer at the most white trash trailer park in Mattatuck and he moved out. Oh, there was a girl. Did I tell you there was a girl?”
“A girl the mother didn’t like, I take it,” Gregor said.
“Exactly,” Howard said. “Darvelle Haymes. I didn’t make that up. That was really her name. There’s a go-getter, if you’re looking for one. And I think maybe that was the problem. Charlene thought Darvelle was only after Chester for the money.”
“And was she?”
“Hard to tell,” Howard said again. “I’m not good at motive, Mr. Demarkian, I never was. Darvelle got her associate’s degree and then she got her real estate license and now she’s something of a big deal. She does a lot of business. She’s got her own house, and it’s not a trailer. So, I don’t know. Maybe she was. Maybe that was her first idea for making something of herself. Maybe it wasn’t and she already knew she was going to do all right on her own. I can’t tell you. Just that she and Chester were a thing, and when Charlene tried to put her foot down and break it off, Chester quit the family business and moved out. And that was that for about six months.”
“What happened after six months?”
“That depends on who you want to believe,” Howard said. “If you believe Charlene and Stew—that’s the father—Chester and Darvelle showed up at the Morton house one Sunday afternoon with Darvelle visibly pregnant, saying they were having a baby and they were going to get married. If you believe Darvelle, she’s never been pregnant and the only thing they went to the Morton house for was to tell the parents they were getting married, because Chester didn’t just want to spring it on them. They were going down to elope to Vegas. According to Darvelle.”