Not Death, But Love (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 3)

by Michael Wallace

  “I understand the whole Peninsulas project was his brainstorm.”

  Roger took a small sip of his martini.

  “Ned was a visionary. You don’t see too many in a town this size. When the first lumber mill closed, most of the people in Arthur were trying to figure out how to attract another lumber company here. Ned grasped that it was the beginning of a long and possibly fatal decline for the whole industry and that we had to find something else to take its place.”

  “You have to remember,” said Ron, “that a lot of people who lived here at the time grew up before the dam was built. They weren’t thinking of the lake as an asset to be capitalized. Ned understood it was the town’s best hope. When the Peninsulas came on the market, he realized it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

  “A great business venture, certainly,” Gordon said.

  “By all means,” Roger said, “but good for the town, too. Ned really believed that. We all did. And I think we’ve been proven right. The local economy is pretty tough, but without The Peninsulas, this would be a ghost town now.”

  “How, exactly, did it work? Ned London brought you in and formed a partnership. Who did what?”

  “Dad and Ned oversaw the whole project,” said Ron. “They hired local people to do the surveying, the subdivision design, the legal work. They also represented the plan in the community. That’s where Ned was so valuable. He was one of the most respected men in the county, and even people who were against the project felt they had to be civil about it. I, being the MBA, ran the finances, which at times was an exercise in creativity, tended to the paperwork and details, and tried to keep Ned and my father from getting too carried away.”

  “How about you, Bobby?” Gordon asked.

  “Bobby ran the Paris real estate office and kept it profitable when we were working on the project,” Roger said. “I can’t tell you how valuable that was. We were stretched pretty thin, financially, so what he brought in was critical. Absolutely critical.”

  After a few more minutes of small talk, lunch arrived. The salmon was excellent, and as Gordon was chewing his second bite, Ron turned to him.

  “You were quite a basketball player back in the day, weren’t you?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Judge Fletcher mentioned it yesterday, and it jogged a memory. Didn’t you make two free throws with almost no time left to beat USC in Los Angeles? I was working late and listening to the game on the radio.”

  “You a Cal fan?”

  “Divided loyalties. I graduated from Cal in ’61, did my two years in the Army, then went to USC for my MBA. I’d like to hear the story from your end.”

  “It wasn’t much of a foul, if the truth be told, but I beat him to the spot, and he was out of position. That’s what the ref saw. We were big underdogs, but the coach put us into a zone instead of man-to-man, and their shooting was a bit off, so we hung with them. We had the ball with a tie score and five seconds left when I made a back-door cut into the key and caught a bounce pass from Clarence Washington. Stevens, their small forward, left his man to cover me, but had to hurry to get there. When I made a head fake, he left his feet, so I went up, too, holding the ball away from him. He really only brushed against me, but, as I said, I had position and threw up a prayer. It rimmed out, but they called the foul.”

  “Two free throws. Seconds left. On the road, with the crowd screaming. How do you tune that out?”

  “Every day at practice, we shot a hundred free throws. Everyone on the team did. If I made fewer than 90, I stayed after and shot another hundred. The reason you do it over and over in practice is so when you get into a situation like that, game on the line, you can tell yourself, ‘Just like practice.’ Same routine. Take two deep breaths, dribble the ball twice, bend the knees and back just so, put the middle finger of the right hand on the manufacturer’s logo, then just do what you’ve done thousands of times before.”

  “You make it sound easy,” said Roger, “yet a lot of players can’t do it.”

  “They start to think,” said Bobby. Everyone turned to him. “You can’t think, or you’re dead.”

  “Bobby was a starter on the high school team,” Ron said.

  “You’re right, Bobby,” Gordon said. “Thinking is fatal. You have to tune out everything but the routine you’ve been practicing. Just focus on doing what you always do. I’m sure that’s what your coach told you.”

  Bobby nodded.

  “There’s one thing I’ve been meaning to ask you, Gordon,” said Ron. “You’re now Charlotte London’s literary executor. What, exactly, does that mean?”

  “I’m still learning on the job. From what her attorney tells me, I’m responsible for the manuscript of the family history and her personal papers. Unfortunately, the personal papers were all destroyed in the fire.”

  “But the manuscript exists?”

  “She did get a copy to me, yes.”

  “Is it in any kind of usable condition?” asked Roger.

  “It seems fairly complete to me, but then I don’t know what else she might have been looking into.”

  “And have you thought about what you’re going to do about it?”

  “Only in general terms. My old college roommate works for the San Francisco Chronicle, and I was going to ask him if he knows a former reporter who might be willing to try to finish it on a freelance basis. I gather it was important to Charlotte, so I’ll get it as good as I can and do a small publication run. Her estate will pay for it.”

  “I think I speak for all of us,” said Roger, “in saying that we’ll be happy to help out in any way we can. If your writer needs more information, we’ll be happy to cooperate.”

  “Glad to know that.”

  “Our families have been very close since we worked together on The Peninsulas a quarter of a century ago. I’ve felt as though Charlotte was the daughter I never had.”

  “Tell him about her house,” said Ron.

  “Ah, yes. When we had the plan put together, all of us sat down around the subdivision map one Saturday afternoon and picked out the lots we wanted for our own homes. It was a way of making it personal and committing to the future. Ned picked out a lot for Charlotte, and after the county approved it, I personally took charge of the design and building of her house. She was most appreciative, but it was the least I could do. She was like family.”

  They fell back to eating for a moment, then Gordon raised the point he had been working up to.

  “You said Ned London was the public face of the project, the one who gave it credibility in the community. It must have been a terrible blow when he died before the county board voted on the project.”

  “A terrible blow to the project and a blow to us as friends,” Roger said.

  “I don’t know if Charlotte mentioned it in her manuscript,” said Ron, “but he was headed home from our house when the accident happened. We were meeting almost every night trying to make sure everything was in place for the public hearing.”

  “There was some malicious gossip that Ned was drunk when he ran off the road,” Roger said with feeling. “Nonsense! He had two weak whisky-sodas in two hours and was fine when he left. He hit a patch of ice, and ran off the road. That’s all there was to it. It was a tragedy.”

  After a moment of silence, Gordon said, “And he wasn’t there when the project was approved. One thing I wasn’t clear on from the manuscript: The way Charlotte told it, a lot of people were surprised when Bart Sturges voted in favor. It had been widely assumed he was against it.”

  “We weren’t surprised,” said Roger, “because we’d been talking to him, and it was clear he could see our side and appreciate what the business community was saying. We didn’t know whether we’d carry the day, but we knew we at least had a chance.”

  “There’s one other thing that should go in the book,” said Ron. “It’s the truth, and I’m sure Sturges will confirm it after all this time. I mean, it’s ancient history now. He came to that meeti
ng with two speeches in his briefcase. One was to read if he decided to vote in favor of it, and the other was if he voted no. That’s how close it was.”

  “Wow,” said Gordon. “So what would have happened if Sturges had read the second speech and voted no?”

  “We’d have been back,” said Roger.

  “That’s right,” said Ron. “The people who thought they could stop anything from happening were delusional. We would have been back in a few months with a downsized plan, and the county board would know it was facing a lawsuit if it rejected that one. It would have been a smaller project, but we could have come back over the next few years with additions to it and ended up with pretty much what there is now. More bother and less profit, but still well worth the effort.

  “You see, Gordon, on something this big, the land owners can wait. We’ll always make money in the end.”

  WHEN GORDON EMERGED from Ike’s, the temperature was in the high 80s, and the sun was beating down mercilessly through a cloudless sky. It was dry heat, but still getting uncomfortable. He sat on a bench in the shade of the restaurant and ruminated. Were the Parises being genuinely helpful, or were they overdoing the sincerity just a bit? He didn’t know them well enough to make a definitive reading.

  He called Peter, who said the Cherokee would be ready at 3:30, and that he’d head over to Ike’s immediately afterward. Gordon was wondering how he would kill the next hour and a quarter, when his pager beeped. It was an unfamiliar number from the local area code, and a man’s voice answered when he called.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello. This is Quill Gordon. Is that you, Karl?”

  “Speaking.”

  “You just paged me.”

  “You’re a smart guy. Actually, I tried Elke first, but she was out of the office, and I thought this might be something that someone would want to get on to right away.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I went to the Highway Patrol office this morning, and as I thought, they had the report on Ned London’s accident in storage on site.”

  “Good work.”

  “It gets better. When Sergeant Hancock came back with it, would you care to guess what he said?”

  “I’m not good at guessing.”

  “He said, ‘This thing sure seems to be popular. Second time this month I’ve been sent to get it.’ I asked him who else had requested it, and it turned out to be none other than our Charlotte. She picked up a copy Tuesday of last week.”

  Gordon whistled.

  “But wait, it gets even better. Would you care to guess the name of the patrolman who wrote the report?”

  “Just tell me.”

  “His name was Alvin Davies.” Karl paused for dramatic effect.

  “A.D.,” said Gordon. “In Charlotte’s manuscript, there was a notation to check with A.D. in the section describing the accident.”

  “Has to be, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t suppose this is our lucky day and Davies is still working there.”

  “Nope. Left ten years ago.”

  “I wonder where he is now.”

  “I thought the same thing, so I did what any competent historian would do. I asked Hancock.”

  “And?”

  “Turns out he’s now the chief of police in Cabrillo.”

  “Cabrillo. That’s southeast of here, in the next county.”

  “Easy drive, no traffic. I thought Elke might want to call him and make an appointment for an interview tomorrow.”

  “I’ll do that. When we meet tonight, we can sort out who actually goes.”

  “That’s the way to do it. I even got the number. You have something to write with?”

  Gordon realized, to his irritation, that he didn’t. He had deliberately gone into the meeting with the Paris family with no notebook, wanting to keep the session informal and them off guard. He didn’t even have a pen in his shirt pocket — everything was in the Cherokee ten miles away in an auto-glass shop.

  “I don’t,” he said. “Stupid of me. Can you hold on for a minute while I go back into the restaurant and cadge a pen and a piece of paper?”

  “Take your time. I got nothing to do but act like a historian, which means moving piles of paper around.”

  Gordon went back into Ike’s. In the middle of the afternoon it was nearly empty. An older man and woman, having late lunch or early dinner, were the only occupants of the dining room. Three regulars were hunched over the bar, staring into their drinks rather than looking at the lake behind them. At the reception table, the hostess was talking to a man in his early thirties, dressed in khakis, a short-sleeved, button-down white shirt and plain black tie. Guessing it was the uniform of the manager, Gordon walked up to them.

  “Can I help you?” the man said.

  “I just got a phone call and don’t have anything to write with. Could I possibly borrow a pen and a piece of paper?”

  “No problem.” He reached into the hostess stand and took out a 5-by-8 pad of note paper and a cheap ballpoint pen, both emblazoned with the restaurant’s logo. Gordon thanked him and sat down on a bench in the deserted waiting area.

  “OK. Shoot.”

  Karl gave him the number. “It’s the direct line to his office. Hancock says he’s a nice guy, so hopefully he’ll cooperate.”

  “Thanks, Karl. This is great. Anything else?”

  “I finished copying all the newspaper articles, and things did get more interesting as the project moved forward. I’ll bring those and copies of the accident report to the meeting tonight.”

  “Good. See you at six.”

  He took the pad and pen back to the manager, who waved them aside.

  “If you’re here with the Paris family, you’re a VIP customer,” the manager said. “Keep the pen and pad.”

  “That’s very kind. I guess the Parises are regular customers.”

  “Lunch every Friday, dinner a couple of times a month, other lunches from time to time. Fact, they were here Monday with Miss London. You heard what happened to her?” Gordon nodded. “Awful. And there she was at lunch Monday, just like any other day, with no idea. In fact, on the way out, she made a reservation for lunch on Wednesday. Party of three.”

  Gordon went outside, thinking about the lunch with Charlotte that never happened. He switched to the call at hand, thought for a few minutes about how to make the approach, and dialed Davies’ number. It rang three times, and Gordon was beginning to think the chief had gotten an early start on the weekend. Halfway through the fourth ring, the call was answered.

  “Davies.”

  “Chief Davies. Glad I caught you. My name is Quill Gordon, and I’m working on a history of the London family of Forest County. You’re listed as the author of the report on the accident that killed Ned London, and I was wondering if I could have a few minutes of your time to talk about it.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  “Any time that’s convenient for you. It shouldn’t take too long,” Gordon added

  “No, I’ll meet with you. But it’ll have to be Monday. My son’s getting married in Tahoe tomorrow, and I was heading out the door to get down there for the rehearsal dinner tonight. If you’d called 30 seconds later, you’d have missed me.”

  “Monday’s fine. You tell me when.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “I’ll be in Arthur through Tuesday. Maybe a bit longer.”

  “How about eleven o’clock?”

  “Done. Thank you so much.”

  “I always wondered if somebody might come along asking about that one down the road. Didn’t think there’d be two people.”

  “Two?”

  “London’s daughter called last week. We were supposed to meet Tuesday, but she never showed and never called. She’ll probably turn up on Tuesday of next week.”

  “Actually, I don’t think so.”

  “Oh?”

  “Her house burned down Monday night, with her in it. That’s why she miss
ed the appointment.”

  “Geez, I’m sorry to hear that. So you’re taking her place.”

  “You could say that.”

  “That makes sense, then.”

  “I won’t keep you any longer, chief. Have a safe drive to Tahoe, and I’ll see you Monday.”

  They rang off, and Gordon looked at his watch. It would be an hour before Peter arrived, so he walked to The Chainsaw and ordered a frosty. He sat under an umbrella at an outside table, thinking about how he seemed to be following directly in Charlotte London’s footsteps. Given that she had died before her time, the prospect made him a bit uneasy, but the midafternoon heat was melting the ice cream at an alarming rate, and he turned his attention to the frosty.

  PETER DROVE UP AT EXACTLY 3:48 and hopped out of the Cherokee so they could switch places. When Gordon got behind the wheel, Peter handed him an envelope. Inside was the itemized bill from the glass shop.

  “Pretty reasonable,” Gordon said.

  “I thought so, too. I put it on my VISA, so write me a check when we get home.”

  As they drove back to town, Gordon filled in his friend on the lunch with the Paris family and his conversations with Karl and Alvin Davies.

  “That Karl’s a real woodpecker,” said Peter.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He keeps banging his head against the tree until he’s got all the grubs and worms and beetles out of it. You probably wouldn’t want him writing the story because he’d insist on getting every last fact into it and make it twice as long as it should be. But we need somebody like that to dig up the raw information.”

  Gordon nodded. “I was annoyed when he showed up last night, but now I’m glad he’s on board.”

  When they reached Arthur, Gordon made a point of stopping at Frank’s Market, the locally owned super, to buy a bouquet of flowers for El Sundstrom. As they turned into the driveway of Stanhope House and Gordon’s pager beeped again.