The Fitzgerald Ruse (7 page)

“I’m good for now,” Calvin said.

“You carrying?”

“Oh, yeah. I checked a bag just so I could bring some friends.” He lifted his pant leg and showed me a snub-nosed .32 pistol in a calf holster. “I left my serious girlfriend in the car. A little too warm to wear a jacket over my shoulder holster.”

I thought about the permit to purchase a handgun that lay in the desk drawer of my bedroom. I’d gotten it a month ago from the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Department after filling out the application and going through the five-day waiting period. I’d also been issued a permit to carry concealed. Tomorrow I’d put both of them to use.

“How will we stay in touch?” I asked.

“If I need you, I’ll get to you. If you need me” —he paused, looked around the room—“you mind if I check the bedroom?”

“Go ahead.” I followed him down the short hall.

He left the light off and pointed to the two windows overlooking the front of the apartment building. “If you want me, put those blinds halfway down. If you’re in the car, park and leave the windows halfway down.”

“And if it’s raining?”

He laughed. “Then you’ll get wet.”

We walked back to the kitchen and living room area. “Have you let anybody in the Detachment know about the threats?”

“Yeah. I wired a report Saturday after I spotted my tail, and the word came down to consider it part of the hazards of the investigation. A couple of new men are working the Baghdad side, but I’m the only one in the states. We’re stretched so thin nobody else will be assigned, unless I wind up dead.”

“Not a good way to get new help.”

“But now I’ve got the Chief on my side. You’re still the best.” He gave me a bear hug, and then slipped out the door, closing it before I could follow him into the hall. He left me with a lot to think about.

My first concern was for Nakayla. She could be a target just because of her close association with me. Late as the hour was, I called and woke her. I gave a condensed version of my conversation with Calvin and warned her to be careful. I promised to meet her at the office as soon as I finished with Ethel Barkley.

The other person I trusted was Nathan Armitage. He not only knew everything about Nakayla and me, he also ran western North Carolina’s largest protective security firm. If Calvin and I were going up against Blackwater-trained operatives, I wanted more than the Asheville Police Department on my side. But, it was late and Nathan was still recuperating from a gunshot wound. He’d have to keep till morning.

I deadbolted my door and closed the blinds. Calvin’s signal was like something out of an old spy movie. He must still be keeping his cell phone inoperable and untraceable. I’d be careful with what I said on mine.

I removed my leg and stripped to my underwear, too tired and sore to bother with pajamas. I slid between the cool sheets and hoped to fall asleep quickly.

Two images kept tormenting my mind: the body of Amanda Whitfield crumpled on my office floor like a child’s discarded doll, and the swastika stamped on the lockbox, a symbol of death and destruction that made the Ali Baba conspirators look like shoplifters.

Sick or well, Ethel Barkley was going to give me the information I wanted.

Chapter Eight

I asked Ruth, the clerk on duty at the Golden Oak’s front desk, to ring Ethel Barkley’s apartment and tell her I’d arrived. Ruth had called at seven to let me know Ethel was being released from observation. If the woman thought my seven-thirty appearance to be a little early, she didn’t comment, but immediately made the call. She probably knew Ethel well enough not to be surprised by anything the old lady might be up to.

My working day had started when I telephoned Nathan Armitage at six. He was awake, drinking coffee, and reading the Asheville
Citizen-Times
account of Amanda’s murder. I’d told him I’d been attacked but I didn’t want to get into it over the phone because some very sophisticated players were involved. He agreed to meet me at my office at ten.

I found Ethel Barkley standing outside her door waiting for me. The previous afternoon, she’d been wearing a housecoat. This Wednesday morning, at a time when most of her neighbors were probably still sleeping, she had on a lavender dress my great-grandmother would have called “Sunday-go-to-meetin’.” She didn’t look like a woman who had fainted the night before. I could see the welcoming smile fade from her face as she realized I was walking toward her empty-handed.

“Are you okay, Mrs. Barkley?”

“What happened?” Her voice shook. “Wouldn’t they give it to you?”

“We need to talk.” My harsh whisper frightened her.

“Do you want your money first?”

“The police will be here in less than an hour.”

Her magnified eyes behind the glasses seemed to double in size. “The police? You went to the police?”

“They came to me. Now let’s step back inside before someone else hears your business.”

I gently took her arm and guided her into the apartment. Her weight, light as it was, fell against me, and I feared she might stumble before I could get her seated. My blunt statement about the police shocked her more than I’d intended, and I decided to proceed more delicately. I didn’t want her fainting again.

I eased her down on her loveseat. “Would you like some water?”

“No.” She took a deep breath and squared her frail shoulders. Wariness replaced the panic in her eyes. “Why the police?”

“Someone broke into my office last night and stole the lockbox. They murdered the night security guard, a young woman who was working two shifts to support her invalid husband.”

Ethel Barkley shuddered and a sob caught in her throat. “No. They wouldn’t have. Not after all these years.”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know. They never came.” She looked around the room as if seeing things beyond my senses. “Maybe now they have come. How could they have known I sent you?”

She and I may have been asking the same questions, but I for one couldn’t pull the answers out of the air.

“The swastika, Mrs. Barkley. The one on the seal. I saw it.”

“So?” She looked up at me without a trace of guilt.

“So? Well, the Nazis—”

“Nazis? What Nazis?” Then she made a small “O” with her mouth and got to her feet. “No. It’s a good luck omen.”

“Not for at least thirteen million people.”

“
The Great Gatsby
,” she said, as if that explained everything. She walked to a bookshelf across the room.

I was ready to jump up and catch her, but her balance was steadier. She pulled out a green volume and flipped through the pages.

“Here it is,” she said, and handed me the old book. “Read where it’s underlined.”

I studied the yellowed page. “The door that I pushed open, on the advice of an elevator boy, was marked ‘The Swastika Holding Company,’ and at first there didn’t seem to be any one inside.”

“What’s The Swastika Holding Company?” I asked.

“In the story, it’s owned by a Jewish man named Wolfsheim. A friend of Gatsby’s.”

“Jewish?”

“Mr. Fitzgerald said the swastika was just a good luck charm.”

I flipped to the front, turned the flyleaf, and read Charles Scribner’s Sons and a copyright date of 1925. I held a first edition of
The Great Gatsby
that was certainly worth a chunk of change. But I didn’t know history well enough to place the adoption of the swastika by the Nazis with the publication of Fitzgerald’s novel. The symbol was ancient, and before Hitler’s rise to power, it had been used by many cultures. Ethel Barkley’s assertion of its “good luck” power had merit, but the fascist dictator had tainted the symbol forever.

“Did F. Scott Fitzgerald write that in the book?”

“No. He told me himself.”

I couldn’t help but sound skeptical. “You spoke to F. Scott Fitzgerald?”

“Yes. Well, he was talking to some reporter about it when I was in his room.”

I must have looked even more doubtful.

“At the Grove Park Inn,” she said. “I worked on the fourth floor. Mr. Fitzgerald was in 441. A real gentleman. We’d talk sometimes.” She frowned. “When that woman wasn’t with him.”

“His dollar woman?” I remembered Mrs. Barkley’s reference to the woman who’d taught her to read palms.

“No. That was Laura Guthrie, his part-time secretary. I’m talking about that Texas hussy who threw herself at him. She’s the one who sent him the gift he wouldn’t accept.”

“The gift that’s in the lockbox?”

“Yes.”

We’d finally gotten back to the most pressing topic.

“The police will want to know what’s in it,” I said.

“That’s none of their business.”

“It’s part of a murder investigation. If there’s jewelry or negotiable securities, then maybe someone will try to sell them. The police will be suspicious if you’re secretive.”

She seemed to ponder my point for a few seconds. Then, from out of the blue, she asked, “Would you like some tea?”

“No, thank you.” I couldn’t keep the exasperation out of my voice. “I’d really like to understand what’s going on with the lockbox before the police arrive.”

“Yes. Maybe I’d better brew a large pot.” She headed for the kitchen and I had no choice but to follow. “Sorry,” she said, “I don’t have coffee. Upsets my stomach. And I think better with a cup of tea.” She held an electric kettle under the kitchen faucet and filled it. “My son bought me this. I got too forgetful. Left the burner on in my house and the kettle melted. Got so hot the kitchen counter started smoldering. Lord, it would have burst into flames if the cat hadn’t come back in the bedroom wailing to beat the band. I was listening to Rush Limbaugh. You like his program?”

“No. I’ve never really listened to him.”

She set the kettle on the power pad and flipped it on. “Me neither. After that day. I figure he nearly got me killed. My brother Hugh would have liked him. Hugh lived and breathed politics.” She pulled a porcelain teapot and box of teabags from a cabinet. “All I have is green so that will have to do.”

“I don’t care for any,” I repeated. “Are there valuables in the lockbox that can be sold?”

“Hugh was the one who was so excited when he heard I met Mr. Fitzgerald. He bought me his book so I could get it autographed. Did you see?”

“No.”

“Well, he did it. I felt sorry for him. His wife going batty and all. She was up in Baltimore that summer and he was down here for his health, or so he said. He was bad to drink. The bellboys would smuggle in beer and the management didn’t like all the carrying on.”

“What year was that?”

“1935.”

The same year as her alleged crime, I thought. “And you worked at the Grove Park Inn?” Nakayla and I’d been up to the mammoth stone hotel and spa a couple of times for a sunset drink. The resort dated to the early 1900s and had lured the famous and the infamous to Asheville for generations. Now the photograph of the girl in front of the stone wall that I’d seen in Ethel Barkley’s memory box made sense: the picture of her had been taken beside a section of the inn.

The old woman gave a wistful smile that shed years from her face. “I was eighteen. It was my first real job. Even though I was only changing sheets and cleaning rooms, to be around such glamorous people set a girl’s fancies flying.”

I wondered if those fancies had included the author. “And there’s something else in the lockbox that belonged to Fitzgerald?”

Her worn yellow teeth bit her lower lip as she nodded. “Hugh wanted to know what Mr. Fitzgerald was writing and who he was seeing. My brother was nearly seventeen years older and I adored him. As a young man, he’d loved the Jazz Age, the smart people who came in by train, the dancing, and the parties. He made friends with everyone in the grand hotels. Then the stock market crashed.”

“Did your brother lose a lot?”

“No. Hugh didn’t have that kind of money. He was a lawyer and helped support Mother and me. Our father had died in a railroad accident when I was thirteen. Hugh saw what the Depression had done to this town. Even my high school had to close for awhile.”

The boiling kettle cut off and Mrs. Barkley poured the hot water over three teabags dangling in the pot.

“The tourists still came,” I said.

“Yes. But their money stayed in New York and Chicago banks. Development stopped. Hugh said Roosevelt used the crisis to grab power. Then he recognized the government of those Russian Communists and turned our country away from God.”

The woman was zoning out again. I wondered if Detective Newland would have any better luck getting a coherent statement.

“What does that have to do with F. Scott Fitzgerald?”

She looked at me with surprise. “Everything. Hugh said Mr. Fitzgerald had defined an age and maybe he could be enlisted to bring the country to its senses.”

I began to see a glimmer of logic in her rambling. “Your brother wanted you to spy on Fitzgerald? Get something to use against him?”

“No,” she said sharply. “Hugh wanted to know what he was thinking. Mr. Fitzgerald would leave papers out in his room or keep talking with guests when I was present. I told Hugh I thought he didn’t care much about politics one way or the other. Then partway through the summer, Mr. Fitzgerald checked out. I think he went back to see Zelda in Baltimore or to New York. I cleaned his room and found a large envelope that had fallen behind his bed. It was filled with manuscript pages. There was no address on the envelope, so I didn’t know if he meant to mail it or used it to keep the pages together.”

“What did you do?”

“I took it to Hugh. I expected him to read it and give it back.” She took two cups and saucers from a shelf and poured from the pot. “Let’s sit down.”

I took the unwanted tea without protest and joined her at the table where yesterday she’d studied my palm. At least there were no loose leaves to read at the bottom of my cup.

“Your brother didn’t return it, did he?”

“No,” she whispered. “I begged him to, but Hugh said if it was that important, then Mr. Fitzgerald wouldn’t have left it. He said it was a story, and just because Mr. Fitzgerald didn’t want it, didn’t mean it wouldn’t be valuable some day.”

“You must have gotten it back if it went into your lockbox.”

She took a sip of tea and then hesitated before speaking. “That was Hugh. He kept a safe-deposit box under my name. There were some financial difficulties at the time and he didn’t want his name to appear.”

“Then why didn’t you give the envelope back?”

“Because Hugh kept the key. When Mr. Fitzgerald returned in a few weeks, he asked if I’d found any papers in his room. I had to say no or he would have thought I was a thief.”

He would have been right, I thought. “And this all happened in the summer of 1935?”

“Yes. Mr. Fitzgerald shed himself of the Texas woman. He moved in and out of the Grove Park a couple times. The next summer he returned and put Zelda in Highlands Hospital. I was courting my husband Terrence by then and working a different part of the Grove Park.”

“What did your husband do?”

“He was an accountant. I met him through Hugh.”

I thought about Ethel Barkley’s net worth. “He must have been a good one.”

“He was smart. In the forties, we bought a little place on Sunset Mountain close to the Grove Park. When I sold it two years ago, I couldn’t believe the price.”

“And you have other investments, I’m sure.”

She shook her head. “No. But the house brought enough that I can stay here the rest of my days.” She turned up her palm. “Even my lifeline doesn’t go on forever.”

I was confused. How much money had her house brought? “Mr. Tennant at the bank told me he could find a better rate of return on your CDs.”

Her expression darkened. “Mr. Tennant should mind his own affairs. That’s money in trust, not mine.” She looked away and I barely heard her whisper, “Has the time come?”

“Mrs. Barkley, you said they never came. Who are they?”

She kept silent.

“Were they friends of your brother?”

“I’ll know them when the time comes.”

There was that phrase again: when the time comes.

“Mrs. Barkley, you told me you’re ninety and your lifeline doesn’t go on forever. What will happen to the trust and your lockbox when you’re gone?”

She set her cup on her saucer. “My son and nephew will take it, and I don’t know what to tell them. Hugh didn’t say.” Her tears started again. “But I don’t want Mr. Fitzgerald’s papers found as part of my property. You’ve got to get them back to their rightful owner.”

“Did anyone else know about them? Your children?”

She shook her head. “Terrence and I had a boy and a girl. Sarah died when she was ten. Polio. One of the last cases before that Dr. Salk invented the vaccine. My son Terry’s retired in Charlotte. We wanted more children, but my husband was killed in a car wreck.”

“Did your brother have children?”

“Only one son. He’s four years younger than Terry. My brother didn’t marry till he was over forty. Hewitt was born during the war.”

I felt a tingle down my spine. “Hewitt?”

“Yes. But Hugh couldn’t have told him anything. He died before his child was born.”

“Was your brother named Hugh Donaldson?”

She smiled. “You know about him?”

A knock came from the door. Detective Newland must have arrived.

Ethel Barkley glanced over her shoulder and then back to me. She lowered her voice. “Was this a test?”