“Please, Frank and Margaret,” Wilkes said.
“Thank you. I’m here, on Thad Shames’s behalf, to inquire about a Mr. Paul Bartlett, of Minneapolis. You know him, I believe.”
“Yes, of course,” Wilkes replied. “For several years.”
“May I ask just how many years?”
“Well, let’s see: He had a design business in Minneapolis, and he and his partner made a presentation to us, oh, a little over two years ago. That’s when we first met. We hired them to redesign all our paper products—plates, sandwich cartons, the hats for the counter people, that sort of thing. Why do you want to know about Paul? Is he in some sort of difficulties?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. It’s just that he bears a resemblance to someone I used to know and that Thad is interested in. We only want to know that he’s who he says he is.”
“I see,” Wilkes said. Clearly, he did not. “Who did you think he might be?”
“Did you meet Mrs. Winston Harding at Thad Shames’s party?”
“No.”
“Mrs. Harding is a close friend of Thad’s. The man we’re interested in was someone she knew in the past, who dropped out of sight a few years ago. No one knows what happened to him, but there are indications that he might be in Palm Beach. Someone noticed that Mr. Bartlett resembled this man, whose name is Paul Manning.”
“Well, why don’t you ask Paul about this?”
“I did, last night, but he pretty much denied being Manning.”
“But you’re not convinced?”
“Thad has asked me to investigate the possibility that Bartlett and Manning are the same man.”
“Then why don’t you arrange for Paul and Mrs. Harding to meet? Surely that would answer the question.”
“I had hoped to do that, but Mrs. Harding doesn’t wish to see him. Also, Mr. Bartlett checked out of his hotel this morning.”
“That’s news to me,” Wilkes said.
“I just wondered if you had any knowledge of Bartlett’s background before you first met him.”
“I saw a résumé at the time,” Wilkes said. “He had a broad background in advertising and graphics design, worked for several places in New York, as I recall.”
“Did you check with any of his former employers for a reference?”
“No. We would ordinarily do that with a prospective employee, but we dealt with Paul as an outside contractor, and frankly, we were more interested in the presentation he prepared for us than in what he had done in the past. We were very enthusiastic about the work, and that was all that mattered.”
“Do you know anyone who has known Paul Bartlett much longer than you have?”
Wilkes thought about that for a moment. “No, I don’t believe I do.”
“Did you know Mr. Bartlett’s wife?”
Margaret Wilkes spoke up. “Oh, yes. In fact, we introduced them. Such a shame about Frances.”
“I understand she’s deceased?”
“Yes, in an accident last year. Terrible thing.”
“How did it happen?”
“She and Paul were out driving on a Sunday afternoon, and they swerved to miss hitting a deer. Frances was thrown through the windshield and killed instantly.”
“Who was driving?”