Desert Winter (27 page)

“Tanner,” I whispered. Did I really want him to stop? Hell, no.

The pounding—Tanner's
and
the door's—persisted. Whoever was on my stoop would have to wait. Tanner, I was certain, could not.

“Claire!”
It was Grant, my neighbor. “Are you home, doll?”

Tanner froze, suddenly aware of what was happening. Bug-eyed, he whispered, “What was
that?
”

“I think it's Grant.”

“What does he want?”

“I have no idea.” Sharp raps of the door knocker made it apparent that Grant's visit was urgent.

In a sweat, Tanner slid out of me, uncertain what to do. Still rock-hard, he appeared to be on the brink of nuclear fission.

Poor baby, I couldn't leave him in the lurch like that, so I joined him in manipulating a quick, explosive orgasm. “God,” I said, pecking his cheek, “I love it when men do that.” As he slumped woozily onto his back, I hopped out of bed, slipped on my robe, and traipsed down the stairs to answer the door.

“Coming!” I called. The knocking stopped only when I opened the door, flinging it wide. “Good heavens, Grant, what's wrong?”

He rushed past me, beelining for the living room, where he turned back to me, ashen and shaken. “I was just getting ready to leave for the office, when I discovered something.” His shoulders slumped. “Something dreadful.”

I asked the logical question: “What did you find?”

“I'd rather show you. Can you come over to my place? Please?” He moved toward the door.

“Right
now?
Grant, I just rolled out of
bed.
” He, on the other hand, was preened for the day, impeccably dressed and groomed, fresh from his twenty-minute shave.

He flicked a wrist. “You always look spectacular, doll. I must say, you seem positively energized this morning.”

“What's up, guys?” Tanner interrupted us, descending the stairs with the two full mugs of coffee. He'd thrown on a robe—one of mine, red silk.

“Oh, my,” said Grant, fingers to mouth, absorbing the whole scene. “I hope I didn't interrupt something.”

Tanner winked at me, telling Grant, “We managed to finish.” Tanner gave me a kiss, then retreated to the kitchen, where he dumped the tepid coffee and poured two fresh cupfuls.

I told him, “No time for coffee, thanks. Something's come up, and Grant needs me next door.”

Tanner peered out from the kitchen. Sizing me up, he grinned. “Better dress first.” As I bounded upstairs, he asked, Grant, “What's wrong?”

I heard Grant explain that he'd found something, that he'd rather not say more about it, that he wanted me to have a look. Tanner offered him coffee, but he declined. Within a minute or so, I'd thrown on a shirt, khakis, and sandals.

“This better be good,” I said, meeting Grant downstairs. The front door was still open, and the hall was now chilly.

“I'm afraid,” said Grant with a perplexed sigh, “this is anything but good. It is, however, extraordinarily interesting. Milady will not regret this intrusion.”

I mumbled, “That's easy for you to say,” recalling Tanner's passion. I should have been lying upstairs now, sated, enjoying some rapturous afterglow—but here I was, half-dressed, looking like hell, being dragged out of my home by my hysterical neighbor for some impromptu show-and-tell. I blew Tanner a kiss, waggled my fingers, then went out the door, scurrying to follow Grant's lead.

“You
won't
believe this,” he said, leading me across the courtyard, past the fountain, and through his gate and front door, both left wide open. “In here,” he directed, striding through the hall to the spare bedroom, where Kane's home studio was set up.

The computer was up and running. I asked, “Is Kane here?”

Grant shook his head. “He left early. He put in some late hours here at home last night, working on material for tonight's press reception. I think he had to drop something off at the printer this morning on his way to the museum.”

“He's very industrious. I'm sure you're proud of him.”

Grant gave me a steely stare. “When he left the house this morning, I was fussing in the bathroom, and he asked if he should leave his computer booted up for me. I've been expecting an important e-mail relating to a land deal at Nirvana, so I asked him to leave it on so I could check before going to the office.” With a flourish, Grant offered, “Have a seat, Claire.”

Warily (this didn't sound good), I sat in the desk chair in front of the computer terminal. The monitor displayed some snappy, dancing graphics as well as the icons for dozens of programs, none of them familiar to me. I looked over my shoulder to ask Grant, “So what's the problem? Wrong response on that e-mail?”

“There was
no
response, but that's not the problem. See this?” He tapped his fingernail on a menu that ran down the side of the screen.

I squinted. “It looks like a listing of various categories of projects that Kane has been working on.”

“Correct. You'll note that one of the menu items is labeled
MUSEUM.
Not finding my e-mail, I became idly curious about the materials Kane has been working on for DMSA, so I moused the cursor over
MUSEUM
and clicked on it. Try it, Claire.”

As instructed, I clicked on
MUSEUM.
A submenu appeared beneath it.

“Most of the file names on this sublist made sense to me,” said Grant, “except the one called
HISTORY.
”

I inferred that I should click on it, so I did. The screen blanked for a moment before displaying a new image. When it did, I gasped.

There on the large, high-resolution monitor was Stewart Chaffee's bogus interview as it had supposedly appeared in the defunct
Palm Springs Herald.
Front and back were shown side by side on the screen, with the interview on one side and the car dealer's ad on the other. Peering close, I muttered, “What the hell?”

Grant was saying, “How stupid could I get?
There's
the layout,
here's
the laser printer”—he tapped the gizmo's plastic cabinet—“and right over
there
”—he pointed to the closet that contained the stored remnants of his art-school days—“there you'll find old sketch pads with page after page of blank, brittle, yellowed newsprint. Christ.” He threw his hands in disgust.

Trying to stay objective, I asked, “Can you tell when Kane worked on this?”

Grant leaned over my shoulder, moused around the screen, then clicked open a directory. “The file was last edited on Sunday night. And Stewart—” He stopped himself, not needing to remind me that Stewart was killed on Monday morning.

Befuddled, I suggested, “There must be some reasonable explanation for this.”

“You
bet
there is. There's no doubt whatever: Kane forged the goddamn clipping.” He didn't need to remind me of his brother Larry's words from the previous evening, which now hung in the room as if freshly spoken: Name the forger, and we've probably named Stewart Chaffee's killer.

I shook my head, unwilling to accept the reality of the damning evidence displayed on the screen. “Why would Kane do such a thing? It doesn't add up.”

“But there it is”—Grant pointed at the computer. “And to think I nearly made the biggest mistake of my life. I should have sensed it all along. It was too good to be true.”

Either Grant was getting loopy, or I was too dense to follow. I asked. “What was too good to be true?”

“The
relationship.
The May-December thing. The hasty move-in. And the rush toward a contractual marriage.” Grant muttered, “I
wondered
why he was pushing so hard.”

Okay, I was attuned to Grant's logic now, though I found it specious. He was saying, in effect, that his young lover was possibly a scheming gold digger. It was an arguable assertion, yes, but it struck me as an overly convenient accusation, an easy way to lash out when confronted with the perplexing evidence of the forged clipping. I asked Grant, “What would Kane hope to gain from this—from either Chaffee
or
you?”

“And another thing,” said Grant, on a roll, on a rant. “That bruise on Kane's arm—I was suspicious from the start. I find it hard to believe that he injured himself while unloading groceries from the car. He's hardly a klutz.”

“No,” I agreed, “he's not.”

“
Ughh.
He said he loved me. It's the oldest trick in the book.”

“Now, hold on,” I told him, annoyed, standing. “That profession of love was mutual, Grant. You've been head over heels lately. You've had as much at stake in this relationship as Kane has. You said you've never been happier.”

“That was true—at least I
thought
I'd found happiness.”

“Then what, pray tell, compelled
you
to visit the Chaffee estate on Monday morning? You told Larry and me that you went there to make sure the desk key had been delivered, but come on, that's pretty lame.” I crossed my arms, demanding, “What exactly were you up to?”

Grant eyed me defiantly for a moment, but then the fight—or the anger—drained from him. He hung his head, admitting, “Your skepticism is well warranted.” Looking up, he explained, “You're right. I didn't drive out to Stewart's to check on the key. I went to check on Kane.”

“Did you suspect him of something?”

“Of course not.” With a sad laugh, he amplified, “I suspected
Stewart
of something—that lecherous old goat. I had misgivings from the start about letting Kane deliver the key. Stewart's interest in him was embarrassingly obvious.”

“I noticed.” Planting my rump on the edge of the desk, I asked, “So you … followed Kane?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. Kane drove over there early, remember, and I tried brushing it from my mind. By nine o'clock, though, I was getting curious, not concerned, so I called the museum to ask Kane how it went. The gal on the phone said that Kane hadn't come it yet, and that's when I started to worry. After checking several times and getting the same answer, I decided to drive over to the estate and check on things myself. As you already know, I arrived there sometime after eleven. There seemed to be no one there at all, which calmed my concerns, so I left.”

I nodded. This all made sense, and it was basically consistent with what he had told us before. “But why,” I asked, “weren't you more forthright about your motive for going there in the first place?”

Grant paused before explaining, “Because I didn't want Kane to feel I was being jealous, suspicious, or overprotective. But now?” Grant didn't finish his thought.

“Look,” I said, trying to gather my own thoughts, “Kane clearly has some connection to the forged clipping, but we don't know the exact nature of his involvement, and we'd be foolish to jump to conclusions. Worst-case scenario: Kane killed Stewart. But why would he do that? More important, why would he
plot
to do that—forging the interview on Sunday and killing the victim on Monday? He stood nothing to gain by all this.”

Calmer now, Grant agreed, “Good point. Kane couldn't have been motivated by greed, which leaves the flimsy speculation that he might have killed Stewart out of self-defense or revenge. But such a murder, a crime of passion, is generally spontaneous, which would provide no connection to the Sunday forgery. Hell, it's even conceivable that someone
planted
the interview on Kane's computer.” In proposing this last possibility, Grant appeared much relieved. His voice softened; his mood lightened.

The notion that Kane had been set up, however, had the opposite effect on me. It was an appealing idea—that someone had planted the forgery to cast suspicion on Kane—but if this scenario were true, who would be in a better position to pull it off than Grant himself? After all, the net effect of the phony will had been to enrich the museum that Grant served as president. I was loath to ponder it, but I had to wonder: Was Grant's “discovery” of Kane's counterfeiting part of some elaborate, deadly scheme?

Unwilling to voice that possibility, I simply asked, “So what'll we do?”

“You mean, with regard to Kane?”

“I mean, with regard to your brother. Larry needs to know about this”—I gestured toward the fraudulent clipping displayed on Kane's monitor—“but when?”

Grant paused to weigh the implications of this question. “I'd prefer to get Kane's side of the story before reporting it to the police.”

“I'm sure you would. So would I.”

“But if we don't tell Larry, are we withholding evidence?”

Probably, I thought. “Who knows? We're not lawyers, Grant.”

“Right.” His voice took on a conspiratorial timbre. “We're only trying to help.”

“Exactly.”

The phone on the desk rang. I jumped to my feet as if it had snapped at my ass. Grant and I glanced at each other, bug-eyed, as if caught in some unseemly machination.

Grant reached for the receiver and answered on the second ring. “Hello? Oh, hi, Larry, we were just—” Grant's eyes slid to mine.

Good God. I'd known all along that Larry Knoll was a fine detective. Was he psychic too?

Grant said into the phone, “As a matter of fact, she's right here.”

Uh-oh. Larry
was
psychic. And Grant and I were probably screwed.

Grant passed me the receiver, explaining, “He called you at home, and Tanner told him you were here.”

“Ahhh.” Not so psychic. I chirped into the phone, “Morning, Larry.”

“Hi, Claire. Listen. I just heard back from that pal of mine at the
Desert Sun.
It seems Bonnie Bahr did indeed write a number of letters to the editor in support of euthanasia. They all appeared during the year prior to her leaving hospital nursing, just before she went to work at the Chaffee estate. It took a bit of digging to piece this together.”