Desert Winter (23 page)

Larry nodded. He'd seen the rear bumper in Monday's security photos from the estate.

As we entered the bank lobby, I noticed that it had been decked out with a few seasonal touches since the previous morning. In keeping with the severe, minimalist style of the building and its furnishings, the Christmas decorations consisted of nothing more than a bowl of silver balls on the receptionist's desk, a few crystal icicles hung from the overhead light fixture, and a strand of clear lights spiraling around the trunk of a potted palm. Happy holidays.

Larry introduced himself, the receptionist recognized me from Tuesday, and a moment later, Merrit Lloyd's secretary came out to greet us. “Good afternoon,” said Robin, heels snapping at the granite floor.

We stepped forward, greeting her in turn. Was it my imagination, or had something changed in Robin's manner since our sighting yesterday at lunch? Though she had never been the vivacious sort, she now seemed downright mousy, as if I'd caught her in a compromising position—keeping company with an older man. Who was I, after all, to judge the May-December thing? With Tanner and me, the sexes and ages were reversed, but otherwise, we were in the same brow-raising boat as Robin and Atticus.

“Mr. Lloyd is expecting you,” she told Larry. If she found anything unusual in my presence, she didn't voice it. “I understand you also wish to meet with Dawn Chaffee-Tucker, Mr. Chaffee's niece.”

“Yes, has she arrived?”

“Some time ago. She and Mr. Lloyd have wrapped up their business and are ready to see you. This way, please.”

Larry and I followed Robin toward the back of the bank, past her own desk, and into Merrit Lloyd's office. “Detective Knoll and Miss Cray,” she announced us, then left the room.

Merrit stood to greet us, as did Dawn. Though the banker had not expected to see me, he welcomed me warmly and introduced me to Dawn as a recent acquaintance of her late uncle, adding, “Stewart graciously lent Claire a clock from his collection, to be used on the set of her play at Desert Arts College.”

Dawn blinked. “Claire Gray? The director?”

“Guilty,” I admitted. It was an insipid acknowledgment, but seemed to fit the tone of our conversation, which was curiously light.

Larry brought it down a notch, telling Dawn, “I'm so very sorry for your loss.” He shook her hand.

“Ah”—the woman nodded—“Stewart's death did come as a surprise. And from what I understand, he died under the most lamentable circumstances. But the truth is, I hardly knew him. We were never close.”

I studied her as she spoke. Dawn looked some ten years younger than me, in her early forties. She stood with perfect composure and spoke with quiet, unemotional precision. I knew from previous discussions that she had a background in the arts and ran a gallery in Santa Barbara, which brought to mind the role of Iesha Birch at DMSA. But the two women bore no resemblance to each other. While Iesha projected the image of a free-spirited bohemian, Dawn looked every inch the businesswoman. Her skirt and jacket were finely tailored, probably Chanel, accented with a single strand of gray pearls. She even wore a hat, a pert pillbox, lacking only gloves to complete the Jackie-esque picture. Her handbag was indeed Chanel—no mistaking the large gold clasp—with a long gold chain instead of a strap. She was an articulate, educated woman of refined bearing and classic good taste. I liked her.

“I met Stewart only once,” she was saying, “when I was very young. I don't think I was walking yet; I don't even remember the encounter. I was always
told
I'd met my uncle, and the family lore stuck.”

“Just last Sunday,” I said, “your uncle recounted the same story. Yes, you'd met. It was forty years ago, when you were a toddler.”

Confirmation of this detail from Dawn's early life cast a pensive pall over her features. The room was momentarily silent.

Breaking the lull, Merrit suggested, “Let's all sit down.” He gestured toward a round conference table occupying the side of his office away from the brutally chic concrete desk. Conveniently, the table was surrounded by four chairs; disquietingly, each of the chairs sprouted three legs. We settled in.

Larry began, “Mrs. Chaffee-Tucker—”

“Please, Detective, call me Dawn. The hyphenated name once seemed so important to me. Now it's just cumbersome.”

Larry grinned. “You're welcome to call me Larry, as well. First, Dawn, I want to thank you for being so cooperative with the investigation. It was good of you to supply your fingerprints so quickly.”

With a soft shake of her head, she said, “Just trying to be a good citizen.” The words seemed stale, but their tone was sincere.

“The prints were sent to us from Santa Barbara, and there was no match with any found at the crime scene.” Larry, I noted, told these findings without suggesting their significance, which we had found uncertain.

But the meaning of these findings was clear in Dawn's mind. With the slightest shrug, she said, “I wouldn't
expect
you to find my fingerprints at the crime scene.”

I asked, “But you were
at
Stewart's estate on Monday morning, right?”

“Yes, I was there, but I didn't go inside the house.”

“Let's back up,” said Larry. “Tell us what led up to your visit that morning.”

“This.” Dawn snapped open her purse and took out an envelope. “I received a letter from Uncle Stewart about two weeks ago, saying that he would like to see me again. My first reaction was that it was some sort of hoax, a cruel joke.” She handed the letter to Larry.

At first glance, the detective's face wrinkled. He blurted, “What a mess.”

Curious, I leaned past his arm to look at the letter. It was word-processed and laser-printed, but typed without skill and clumsily formatted. The column of type sat tight against the right edge, some lines running off the paper, with an overly wide margin on the left. The sloppy, unprofessional appearance conveyed that little or no care had been lavished on this missive, which purported to bring important tidings from Dawn's past. The opening sentence made reference to Stewart and Dawn's “shared love of the visual arts.”

Merrit, who had already seen the letter, conjectured, “Stewart wasn't much of a typist. I guess that's why he had a secretary. The signature is authentic, by the way. I'd know it anywhere.”

I recalled, “When Larry and I spoke with Pea yesterday, he mentioned that Stewart ‘never quite got the hang' of using their home computer. This letter bears that out. Clearly, he wrote it without Pea's assistance.” As an afterthought, I explained to Dawn, “Pea was your uncle's live-in secretary and houseman.”

“Then why,” asked Dawn, “didn't the secretary help Stewart with the letter?”

Merrit explained, “Stewart didn't want Pea to know that he was meeting you. He specifically asked my office to set up the appointment on a Monday morning, when there would be no one else at the house. Stewart felt that Pea might find the meeting upsetting for some reason, though I don't know the underlying reason.”

I did. Suddenly, a lot made sense. For example, Stewart had made disparaging remarks about Dawn during my visit on Sunday, when Grant and I returned the desk. Pea was present that day, whereas he had not been present on Saturday, when I'd heard Stewart confirm with Robin that a meeting with Dawn had been arranged. Stewart's underlying reason for this subterfuge, I now understood, was that he didn't want to alert his ex-lover, Pea, that he was considering a rapprochement with his next of kin, Dawn. Stewart was doubtless aware that Pea entertained expectations of a substantial inheritance.

Larry had taken out his notebook and had begun writing. He asked Dawn, “If you thought the letter was a hoax, why did you act on it?”

“The tone seemed genuinely conciliatory, and Stewart concluded by telling me to expect a call from his banker's office for the purpose of setting up an appointment. Not long after, I did hear from the bank, and Robin booked the meeting.”

“Tell me about your visit that morning.”

“We were scheduled to meet at my uncle's estate at eleven o'clock. It's about a four-hour drive from Santa Barbara, depending on traffic, so I started out early and arrived early in the valley. I stopped somewhere for coffee, freshened up a bit, then drove over to my uncle's, pulling up to the gate at eleven on the dot.”

Larry looked up from his notes. “Are you always so punctual?”

She allowed, “More or less. Well, no, not always. But this meeting seemed important to my uncle, so I wanted to play by the rules, as it were. There'd already been enough bad blood in the family. I didn't want to contribute to it with the implied disrespect of tardiness.”

“Bad blood,” I repeated. “Your uncle used those very words. What was the source of all that enmity?”

Dawn shook her head feebly. “I never knew for sure. As I said, I had never really known my uncle. I'd only heard
about
him, and it was never very flattering. My father—he's been dead nearly ten years—was Stewart's older brother. Even as a child, I was aware of deep-seated resentment between Stewart and the entire family, but I was never sure of its roots. Now, so many years later, I suspect it was the gay issue, which doesn't concern me in the least.”

Getting back on track, Larry said, “So you arrived at the estate at eleven, expecting some sort of reconciliation.”

“I assumed that was the point of the meeting, yes. So I pulled up to the gate and tried the intercom, but got no response. Robin had told me I might need to let myself in, so I punched in the code. The gate opened, and I drove to the front door. I got out of the car and rang the doorbell, but no one answered. I tried once or twice again. After waiting several minutes, I left.”

I said, “But you'd driven so far. Didn't you try phoning the bank?”

Dawn shook her head. “To be honest, I was angry by then. Waiting at the door, it was apparent that no one was home, or at least that no one intended to answer. I quickly concluded that my original inclination was correct—I'd been set up for a cruel ruse. I left feeling hurt and victimized.” Wistfully, she added, “Little did I know that my uncle Stewart was the actual victim.”

Larry asked, “How long, in total, were you there?”

“It seemed like forever standing at the door, but it was less than five minutes. Probably less than two.”

“Did you notice anyone else on the premises?”

“No. I'd have asked a few questions if I'd spotted anyone.”

“How about cars? Did you see any other vehicles on the grounds?”

“Not in front of the house. I didn't look in back. I just left.”

Larry tapped his pen on the pad. “And you didn't touch anything—other than the keypad at the gate and the doorbell button. You didn't try the door handle?”

“Certainly not,” she said as if the suggestion were unthinkable. “I wouldn't have entered someone's home without being admitted. Other than a common thief, who would?”

I felt myself slumping in my three-legged chair.

Larry deduced, “And because you didn't touch anything, that's why you assumed we wouldn't find your fingerprints at the scene.”

“I suppose. But more to the point, I was wearing gloves.”

My earlier observation about her attire now seemed premature.

Larry's brow wrinkled. “Do you often wear gloves?”

“When I drive, I do.” She snapped open her purse again and extracted a limp, skintight pair of perforated doeskin driving gloves, plopping them on the table. She concluded, “And I drove straight back to Santa Barbara. I hadn't a clue that anything was wrong till yesterday afternoon, when I heard from the sheriff's department here in Riverside County.”

Larry asked Merrit, “Have you and Dawn discussed Mr. Chaffee's bequest to the museum?”

“Yes,” said the banker, “we discussed it thoroughly before you arrived. I gave Dawn a copy of the interview from the
Herald.
”

Obliquely, Larry asked Dawn, “What did you think?”

With a nascent laugh, she said, “I think my uncle chose a peculiar way to make his intentions known.” More seriously, she added, “I admire his philanthropy. I share his interest in art, and this is a marvelous final gesture. If you're wondering if I feel slighted, no, I don't. Given the history of friction in my father's family, I never expected to inherit a thing from my uncle. Although I must say, his holographic will is bizarre.”

Merrit cleared his throat, assuring Dawn, “The bank's probate team is studying the whole matter, but there appears to be no reason to suspect that the old newspaper clipping is other than what it appears to be, a statement of Stewart's last wishes.”

I recalled, from our meeting at the bank on Tuesday, “Wasn't Robin going to do some research in that regard?”

“She was, and she did. In fact—well, let's have Robin tell you what she found.” Merrit rose from the table, crossed to the door, and asked Robin to step inside.

“Yes, sir?” she asked as they approached our table together.

“The others were wondering about your library research.”

“Ah.” Robin turned to us. “Yesterday afternoon, I went out to the Palm Springs Library Center on Sunrise Way, which has extensive records of local periodicals on microfilm and microfiche. The
Desert Sun,
for instance, goes back to 1934. The
Palm Springs Herald,
however, maintained its own archives for the several decades of its existence, which were always a struggle against the larger paper. The
Herald
folded during the sixties, and its archives suffered some damage when a water line burst in their warehouse shortly after publication had ceased. A few years later, the archives were acquired by the local library, which has done a superb job of cataloging and preserving them. However, due to the warehouse flood, there are a number of gaps in the collection where issues were destroyed or missing. Unfortunately, one of these gaps spans several months in 1954, when the Chaffee interview was published.”