Edited for Death

by Michele Drier

  “Does that mean he fell or whatever at 8:45 in the morning? Who was around then?” The voice belongs to one of the reporters from an affiliate television station in Sacramento. I recognize her as younger woman trying to work her way up at the station, or be wooed away to a larger market. She and Clarice have had a couple of mild scenes before, and Clarice refers to her as “that sprayhead,” when she thinks no one is listening.

  “I gave an approximate 45 minute window,” says Dr. Jessup, unruffled by the brashness. “I’ve told Sheriff Dodson that the incident could have happened anytime between 8:30 and 9:15 a.m.

  “There was so much trauma on the body that we haven’t found any indication that there was another person involved. We don’t find any defensive scrapes or bruises. We have sent samples out to toxicology at the state lab. Those test results won’t be available for at least 10 days.”

  “Well, that wasn’t all that helpful,” Clarice mutters as Dr. Jessup sits down again. “He died because he hit the ground. Duh....who wouldn’t?”

  I reach into my purse to stash my notebook and pull out my sunglasses.

  “OK, Clarice, let’s get out of here before the TV guys run us over trying to get their remotes filed.”

  The television reporters have each staked out as picturesque an area as they can find in front of the courthouse without catching someone else in their frames. They’re beginning to check hair and makeup and run sound levels before going live for the 9 a.m. station break news.

  I tug Clarice’s arm and we head toward the Marshalltown Hotel.

  “The TV crews will have gotten all their visuals shot earlier so we should have the hotel to ourselves.” I say, glad to be away from the mob.

  As we walk from the courthouse, the press conference noise fades and the usual small sounds of a summer morning take over. There’s a sprinkler running in the library flowerbeds, shouts and splashes from the town’s swimming pool and a truck shifts into a low gear as it crests the Main Street hill.

  Inside, we’re enveloped in the cool from the hotel’s new central air conditioning. The lobby’s empty, but sounds of cutlery and dishes rattling come from the door to the kitchen.

  I stick my head into the bar area. “Royce? Is anybody here?”

  The bar has had more renovation since last time. New cocktail tables and chairs space around the room, stools line the length of the bar. Mirror-back glass shelving runs across the end of the bar, but the heavy plastic drop cloth still covers about half the back wall.

  “He’s back in the house kitchen.” A man comes through the swinging doors between the bar and the dining room. “Oh, hi. Aren’t you the one from the Monroe paper? You’re Hobbson...?”

  “Hobbes, Amy Hobbes.” I start talking to cover my unease. Who is this guy and why does he know me? “I was hoping to talk to Royce. It’s fairly quiet here, now. How’s he holding up? Is everything getting back to normal, or as normal as it could be?” I’ve figured out this must be Burt Harmony, the one doing the renovation.

  “I guess it’s going along.” The contractor scrubs a hand over his eyes. “It was a pretty big shock and yesterday everybody was in a fog. We all thought he was getting better, you know, laying off the sauce. He’d found some big historical thing up in one of the attics and was more jazzed about it than I’d ever seen him.”

  My nose wrinkles. “He wasn’t drinking?”

  “Well, we thought he wasn’t, but he had us all fooled. He must have been blotto to fall out the window at 8 or 9 or whatever in the morning,” Harmony’s eyes flash along the bar.

  I’m disappointed, too. Stewart Calvert had a skinful of demons inside him, but it seemed as though he was finding some peace with the past in researching and writing a family history. His fears and inadequacies were just too much and he tried to keep them at bay through alcohol.

  “Do you think Royce would mind if I went back to the family kitchen,” I ask, waving my hand to the back of the restaurant.

  “I don’t think so,” Harmony says. “You know where it is? Along the corridor behind the dining room?”

  I nod and go back to the lobby to collect Clarice, who is jotting notes in her laptop.

  “Boy, we better get more than this,” Clarice says. “So far, we have enough for a short second day follow, but that feature package....,” she trails off.

  “I know, let’s go find Royce,” I say. “I just talked with Burt Harmony, the contractor. He said the staff now thinks Stewart was drinking again.”

  “Being drunk that early in the morning could lead to someone falling out of a window, all right,” Clarice sniggers.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Royce is at the kitchen table, staring into the coffee cup in front of him.

  “Good morning. Do you mind if I come in?” I can be brusque with Harmony but Royce will need some coddling.

  The family’s living areas of the hotel are at the back of the building. With the family kitchen separate from the restaurant kitchen only by a partition, this early in the morning there’s clatter and conversation as the prep crew gets ready for lunch. The hotel closed day because of Stewart’s death, but Royce wants normal back as quickly as possible. Money is tight and he can’t pass up any tourist trade during the summer.

  He looks up as I speak and I’m not sure what his glance is saying. He’s upset. I doubt if he’d slept much last night. He’s a little gray and drawn, but overall seems calm.

  “No, come on in,” he says, waving me to a chair opposite him at the scrubbed, wooden table. “Would you like some coffee? There’s plenty left.”

  “Thanks,” I say, trying to keep my voice light. “Are you doing OK? This must be taking a big toll on you.”

  “It’s hard,” Royce shrugs. “We were just cousins, but in a family as small as ours, we were closer than cousins usually are. We had a lot of differences, God knows. I was really disappointed in his drinking and angry that he didn’t, or wouldn’t, or couldn’t, live up to his potential. Did you know that he won awards for his historical research when he was first out of college? He just never seemed to get it together after his father died.” I can hear the discouragement.

  “He’d been basically living off me for the past few years doing his family research. He said he had a publisher interested in the book about grandfather, but I never saw a contract or anything. The polite fiction of a possible advance for the book at least let us be civil with each another.”

  I’m idly watching the back door leading out to Mine Run and I realize with a little jolt that someone sitting at the kitchen table might have looked out the windows over the sink and seen Stewart plummet to the pavement.

  Royce has shifted his gaze to the windows so I ask, “Was anyone in the kitchen yesterday morning when Stewart died?”

  “No. The prep crew had already brought the deliveries in. I was in the office, going over the reservations for this weekend. We actually have, or had—we’ll probably get some cancellations—15 rooms booked.”

  At the thought of losing more business, Royce grimaces.

  “I was thinking about coming up for Friday and Saturday night,” I say.

  “I’d like to see if I can figure out what Stewart was working on, but mostly I have a friend in San Francisco who would like a weekend in the country. Do you have a room?”

  Because Brandon’s bolt was so public in Monroe, I’m private about my private life. Announcing to an acquaintance that I’m planning to spend the weekend with someone is a little unsettling.

  “Sure. Even if all the reservations show up, we have a few. There’s a front corner one above the bar. I call it a junior suite to get it booked because when we get the bar finished, it might be a little loud. Right now it’s quiet, has its own bath and a small sitting area for breakfast or whatever. I’ll keep it for you.”

  “Thank you,” I smile. We’ll be here Friday night.”

  Making these mundane business arrangements seems to let Royce shake himself and focus on getting through the day.
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  “You didn’t just come in here to book a room.”

  It’s a statement, and he looks me straight in the eye.

  “You’re right. I’m hoping you’ll let me up in the attics, or at least into Stewart’s room. Jim Dodson hasn’t specifically said that he was murdered, but there are a lot of questions. I’m sure the cops and crime scene people have been asking, looking and generally making a mess.”

  “The attic is taped off. Probably will be until tomorrow. You can take a look in his room, though. I don’t think the cops did a lot in there. Until they make a ruling on cause of death, they’ve left his papers and stuff pretty much alone.” Royce closes his eyes, this is pretty raw for him.

  I nod. I’m betting the answers are in the attic, but the papers and diaries that Stewart was using in his room might help me map a route.

  Like the family kitchen, the family rooms are at the back also. Both Royce and Stewart have suites on the second floor, comprising a bedroom, small sitting room and bath. Between the suites is a larger living room with a big screen TV and a wall of bookcases filled with recent best sellers. End tables by two recliners with reading lights are piled with books, magazines and newspapers. As I head through the living area I notice the magazines and papers are recent. Some litter escapes from the piles but basically it’s neat and I assume that Royce uses this space more than Stewart had.

  I open the door into Stewart’s suite, and confirm my suspicion. Here is true clutter. Two walls of the sitting room are bookcases, solid with well-read and well-thumbed books. A computer and printer sit on a desk facing the window. Books are stacked on the desk, on the floor and spill off the seat of a straight-backed wooden chair. Two shelves of a four-shelf horizontal file cabinet are pushed open and stacks of journals, magazines and document boxes are jammed in. It’s clear that someone—Stewart?—has made a stab at bringing order. The document boxes are labeled “War Journals and Dairies,” the stacked journals are gathered into bundles with rubber bands and the magazines look to be filed by dates.

  In his bedroom, the clutter is less chaotic. The queen-size bed is unmade, but the sheets and pillowcases looked freshly laundered and a down duvet is neatly folded over the footboard. Here, books fill a wall-size bookcase and are stacked on the floor as well, but many of them are carefully bookmarked. There are no journals or loose papers and the nightstand holds a reading lamp, two books on the San Francisco 1906 earthquake, John McPhee’s “Assembling California,” a clock radio and a glass. The cops and crime scene people have been here; the glass and top of the nightstand are gray with fingerprint powder.

  Another glass in Stewart’s bathroom has also been dusted. The glasses are empty. I lean over to sniff, but no odor.

  I go back to the sitting room and look around. I don’t really know what I’m looking for and not sure I’ll know it if I find it. It’s just a sense that this is a puzzle.

  If Stewart was murdered, why? And until the why, there’s no way of knowing the who.

  But if Stewart was murdered, I’m sure his delve into the past, particularly his uncle’s past, holds a key to his death. Or maybe I’m letting Clarice’s conspiracy theories get to me. When Phil and I come back for the weekend, I’m bringing some latex gloves. I’m going to spend Saturday digging through Stewart’s papers and documents—the ones in his room and the attics.

  A shaft of sunlight filled with dust from the yellowing journals catches my eye and I suddenly wonder at the time. Clarice and I are meeting the Sheriff at 10:30 for a private briefing. I close the door to the suite behind me and check my watch as I run down the stairs through the kitchen and into lobby.

  “It’s almost 10:30, Amy, where have your been?” Clarice asks as I skitter to a stop in the foyer. She’s looking nervous. “I found the cell phone number for the guy who found Stewart’s body and talked to him. I was about to go over to the Sheriff’s office without you.”

  “I was talking with Royce then went up to look at Stewart’s living area,” I say. “Way, way too much information. I’ll try to make some sense of it when Phil and I come up over the weekend.” OK, I’ve just told two people I have a weekend assignation. “Let’s go.”

  The street is back to normal when we head to the sheriff’s office. A knot of tourists are gathering with the air of distraction that a group has before someone takes charge and herds them toward a destination. A local mom is unloading a toddler and an older child from an SUV with a running commentary. “No, you can’t take Bear. Andy, just pick up your shoes. Lift up your arm so I can get this off. Andy, put your shoes on!”

  Parallel parking spots on the street are full and two cars are turning left, heading toward the back of the hotel. I think it’s a good sign that business is as usual. Tragedy is a magnet for some but the faster Marshalltown can get answers to Stewart’s death and back to normal, the better off the town will be.

  The front of the courthouse is empty now. Crowds, TV satellite trucks, cables, have all gone home and the chairs and tables returned to their owners. Coming into the cool foyer, I feel a pang for what may have been lost. This is a quiet town that came of age in the Gold Rush and managed to stay alive for the intervening 150 years, but it’s fragile. The mines played out more than 100 years ago. The freeways and interstates sapped traffic from Highway 49. Marshalltown depended on its being the county seat of government, on a few small farms and ranches, and on tourism for its livelihood. Too many people coming for a gruesome look, or too few because of the death, could topple the delicate economic balance for the rest of the summer.

  We push into the sheriff’s waiting room just as Jim Dodson comes out of his office.

  “I was wondering if you got lost in all the media,” he says, nodding at me and giving Clarice a long, direct look. “Come on in.”

  We take the chairs facing his desk. He walks around and sits down, letting out a puff a breath.

  “I don’t know about you two, but it’s been one long morning. Hell, it’s been a long 24 hours,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “This just isn’t the kind of thing we’re well equipped to deal with.”

  I start to say something just as Clarice says, “Well, was he murdered?”

  Dodson jumps a bit at her directness and takes a couple of seconds before he says, “Well, there are indications, yes.”

  “Ahhh,” Clarice leans forward getting ready. “What are the indications? When will you make it public? Do you have a suspect or person of interest?”

  When Clarice is off and running, I know better than to interrupt, so I sit back and start jotting in the notebook I pull out.

  “As I said at the press conference, we still haven’t gotten back most of the information from the autopsy,” Dodson says in his strictly-business voice. “The official cause of death is blunt force trauma. Basically, hitting the street killed him. What we’ve found most interesting is the attic and the window. We still have some people from the state crime lab over at the hotel...” he tapers off, picks up a stack of papers, taps them straight and puts them back on his desk. A delaying tactic or a cover-up?

  “I noticed that the attic was still taped off when I was talking with Royce this morning,” I say, letting him know I have sources, too. “How much longer will you be there?”

  “Boy, you two are a tag team,” Dodson says wryly. “I’m not getting words in edgewise, upside down or backwards. Let me finish, then questions, OK?”

  Clarice purses her lips and glances over at me. Dodson’s usually more tolerant of our cross-questions and impatience.

  “As you probably know, the maintenance and cleaning over at the hotel has been spotty for the last few years, or decades, to say the least. The attics have a lot of dust laid over all the stuff stored there.

  “Stewart, and probably Royce as well, have been in and out of the attics for the past few years. Royce and his contractor, Burt Harmony, have been up there a lot checking on the stability of the ceilings and the state of the roof. I know they’re particularly careful about the chimn
eys and the flashings, both for water coming down and sparks going up. One of the selling points for the hotel is that a lot of the rooms have fireplaces.

  “There are footprints and drag marks all over. At least three different foot prints are around the chimneys. We’re checking those, but we assume that at least Royce, Burt and either Stewart or Burt’s foreman have been there. Then there are drag marks where the trunks and boxes have been moved or shoved out of the way. The layers of dust are different thicknesses, so we know some things have been moved recently and some are in their original sites.

  “Also, there are places where something, some type of fabric or sheeting, has been laid down and something has been put on it. It could have been some fabric from one of the trunks, but one of the marks looks like it was a harder fabric, maybe a plastic sheet.

  “What we don’t know is if anything was taken out of the attics. There’s just so much stuff there and no one has really done any inventory. Some of the trunks and boxes are labeled. From the penmanship and ink, some were labeled and stored before the turn of the century. Uh, that’s the turn of the 20th century I’m talking about.”

  Clarice is fiddling with her pen, a sure sign that she’s out of patience with Dodson’s recital, so I say “But none of that had anything to do with Stewart’s death, right?”

  “We don’t know. We’re checking everything out and as soon as we get confirmation on some of the footprints, we can begin eliminating. This is background and completely off the record...” he clears his throat.

  Both Clarice and I stop writing.

  “There are interesting marks in the dust under the window that Stewart fell from. It looks as though there was a scuffle or pushing match. The marks are too blurred to get a good print for a match, but at least two people were sort of wrestling in front of the window.