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

by Michael Wallace

  “This thing didn’t go off half as much when I was working at the brokerage,” he said. The number was from the local area code, but unfamiliar to him.

  He took his mobile phone from the glove compartment and called the number.

  “Sheriff’s office,” said a female voice on the other end.

  “This is Quill Gordon,” he said. “I just got paged from this number.”

  “Yes. Sheriff Ballou is expecting your call. Let me put you through.”

  Ten seconds later, Ballou picked up.

  “Gordon!” he said. “Thanks for getting back so fast.”

  “I was raised to cooperate with the lawful authorities. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m calling about that floppy disk you brought by the office on Tuesday. You still have it?”

  “I sure do, but I thought you weren’t interested.”

  There was a silence on the other end, and Gordon imagined that Ballou was carefully formulating his response.

  “It’s a matter of routine and just making sure we cover all the bases,” he said. “I’m going to have one of our resident computer geniuses see if he can get anything usable off it.”

  “I might be able to save you some trouble on that score, sheriff.

  “What?” He barked the word out a bit too quickly, and Gordon realized something had made him more interested.

  “After I talked with you,” Gordon continued, “I tried putting it into another computer and it came up nice and clear. It’s her family history, all right. About a hundred pages long.”

  “Did you read it?”

  “Of course I did. She gave it to me, after all.”

  Ballou was silent, and Gordon figured he was probably trying not appear too eager. The next question seemed unnaturally low key.

  “Well, that makes sense now. I guess I should have expected that.” Pause. “I know you’re not from this area, but did anything in it seem, how shall I say this, unusual to you?”

  “Not so much unusual, strictly speaking, but there were a couple of places in the manuscript where she had made a note to herself to look further into some matters. That might be something that bears further investigation — not that I want to tell you how to do your job.”

  “Why not? Everybody else does.”

  “Probably the easiest thing would be if I printed it out at Stanhope House, but unless it’s really, really urgent, I couldn’t do that until later tonight. Would it be OK if I brought a printout to your office first thing tomorrow morning?”

  “That would be acceptable. As I said, we’re just making sure we cover all the bases.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, has some new evidence come up? On Tuesday you were saying it was strictly a fire department case.”

  “I wouldn’t say new evidence, exactly. The medical examiner’s report came in this afternoon, and there are a couple of … ” he stopped to choose the precise word, “… ambiguities is how I’d put it. Most likely doesn’t mean anything, but until they’re ironed out, I should probably dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s.”

  “Due diligence and all that. What time should I come by?”

  “I’ll be here at seven.”

  “I’ll have it to you by eight, then. If that’s all right.”

  “That’s fine. And Gordon, one more thing.”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t repeat what I said about the medical examiner’s report to anybody. It’s probably nothing, so there’s no reason to start people talking.”

  “Mum’s the word.”

  “It better be. Because if I hear that anybody learned about it from you, I’ll have your ass in a sling.”

  THEY LEFT STANHOPE HOUSE at 5:30, driving down the west side of the lake, a mile and a half past Año Nuevo Pines, until they came to another road marked with a small sign that read “Aspen Cove.” It ran through a sparsely developed subdivision where spotting a street number was challenging. Finally, Peter said:

  “That’s Gina’s car. Turn left here.”

  They turned into a gravel parking area and parked between Gina’s Toyota Camry and a white 1994 Ford Ranger. Gordon got out, looked over the lip of the parking area, and whistled.

  From where they stood, a flight of 16 steps led to a pier below. The pier, four feet wide with hand railings of metal cable, extended a hundred feet into the lake, reaching its terminus at a house. The house was square, 40-by-40 feet, with a front door on the left of the outside wall facing the parking area, a barely sloping roof, a deck on three sides, and floor-to-ceiling windows facing on to the deck and lake.

  “So this is her place,” Gordon said in a low voice.

  “Didn’t we see it from the restaurant Tuesday night?”

  Gordon nodded. They went carefully down the steps and knocked on the front door. El opened it, her hair down, wearing a white blouse with the top three buttons open to desired effect, and an ankle-length skirt, brightly patterned in red, brown and gold. It suited her well.

  “Come on in,” she said. “Oh, flowers. How sweet! Alice and Karl are coming over together and should be here any minute.”

  They stepped into an entryway with a large standing coat rack and plenty of room for fishing waders or muddy winter shoes. It narrowed and went between two walls. Gordon later learned that the master bedroom was to the left and two other bedrooms plus a half-bathroom were on the right. They walked through the hallway and emerged into a large open area. To the left, adjacent to the master bedroom, was a kitchen and dining area. In the outer corner at the left was a small work area, with desk, personal computer, printer and fax machine, flanked by windows on both sides. To the right was a large, open living area, taking advantage of the lake view. Two couches, upholstered in a warm brown, formed an L, facing a river rock fireplace with a four-foot opening that sat diagonally across the corner. Gina, sitting on one, waved. Four comfortable-looking chairs rounded out the ring around the fireplace. The house was in shadow, but it was the longest day of the year, and most of the lake was still in sunlight, as were the mountains behind. The dam was clearly visible a mile and a half to the right, and it, too, was beginning to take on a golden cast.

  “Wow,” said Gordon.

  “That’s what everybody says,” El replied. “I was hoping for more from you.”

  “It’s one of a kind. You couldn’t build something like this today.”

  “Pure luck that I ended up with it. Andre had taken out a large life insurance policy before he died, unbeknownst to me. Tom Cutter, who owned this place, was getting too old to climb up and down those steps, and the market was dead when he put it up for sale. Sometimes you get the breaks. Anna and I have a lot of good memories.”

  A sharp rap on the door announced Alice and Karl. El poured glasses of Chardonnay for the women, produced a bottle of beer for Karl, and provided Gordon and Peter with ginger ale. She installed Gordon in a chair by the fireplace and took the one on the other side of it for herself. Peter and Gina sat on one couch, while Karl and Alice took the other.

  Gina asked how the fishing had gone that day.

  “Not too good,” Peter lamented. “We boated over to Trout Creek and fished our way up it, but it didn’t live up to its name. We didn’t even see a trout, let alone catch one.

  Karl cleared his throat.

  “When you’re a historian, you learn that names aren’t always what they seem. Trout Creek, for instance, was named for an early homesteader by the name of Jacob Trout, who farmed the land where the creek runs into Hawk River — or did, before the dam. Come to think of it, I’ve never heard of anyone catching a fish in that creek.”

  Eager to change the subject, Gordon called the meeting to order and led off with a summary of his conversation with Sheriff Ballou, which caused a mild sensation. Everyone laughed when he recounted Ballou’s parting threat.

  “I don’t think you have too much to worry about,” said Alice. “You’re bigger and younger than he is.”

  “Do you see me tremb
ling? But it was a strange conversation. It was pretty obvious that something in the coroner’s report got his attention, but how do we find out what?”

  “That may not be too hard,” El said. “John Brantley, the medical examiner, is cooperative with the press, and he’s usually in his office Saturday morning. I’ll give him a call and see what I can get out of him.”

  “Wouldn’t Ballou have told him not to talk?”

  “You’re giving our sheriff too much credit. First, he’d have to think of it, and second, I doubt they’ve talked face to face. Brantley operates out of Adams, and he probably just faxed the report over.”

  “I’m not an expert on these things,” Peter said, “but isn’t it unusual to have the sheriff and the medical examiner in cities 35 miles apart?”

  “Local politics.” El looked at Karl, who had leaned forward and taken a deep breath. “You want to explain it, Karl?”

  “But cut to the chase,” Alice said.

  “It was an interesting political story,” Karl said. “Back in the mid- to late 1950s, some of the people in Adams started agitating for a vote to move the county seat there from Arthur. Looking at where the population of this county was in the 1950 census, they might have been able to win, but we’ll never know. The county Board of Supervisors put together a closed-room deal. There was state bond money available to build a new county hospital. The old one, which was in Arthur, was inadequate. There was also a move under way to bring a community college to the county. The deal was Adams got the new hospital and the college, while Arthur remained the county seat and kept the courthouse.”

  Peter turned to El. “When you call the medical examiner tomorrow, can I be there? I might hear something that a lay person wouldn’t.”

  “Please,” she said. “He usually gets in around 9. We’ll call from the newspaper office and use the speaker phone.”

  “All right,” Gordon said. “Let’s move on to Karl’s newspaper search. Anything interesting in the stories about the campaign for The Peninsulas project?”

  “Never seen an old newspaper story that wasn’t interesting in one way or another,” Karl said, pulling out a bulging file folder. “I made a copy of every story for everybody in the group. Maybe somebody will see something I didn’t.”

  “Good idea.”

  “What struck me as I read through the stories in sequence, over a short period of time, was the way the opposition changed. Reading a story once a week, then reading the next one a week later, you might not notice it, but when you read the stories one right after the other, it jumps out at you.”

  “You’re losing me, Karl,” said Gina. “What do you mean by the opposition changed? Different people got involved?”

  “Not so much that as the arguments got more sophisticated. More legalistic, really. When the plan for The Peninsulas was announced in August, the opposition was more reactive and emotional. ‘Keep the peninsulas wild,’ that sort of thing. By late October, early November, they were more specifically attacking the plan in detail. The subdivision map is deficient; the drainage plan won’t handle runoff and will cause erosion; there hasn’t been a study on how much water this will use and where it will come from. You could almost see them laying the ground for a lawsuit.”

  “Was there a lawsuit?” said El.

  “I didn’t get past the Board of Supervisors voting to approve it, so I can’t say. But if there was a suit, it didn’t go very far because the development that occurred is pretty close to the proposed development — at least as it was described in the paper.”

  “I don’t suppose,” said Alice, “that there was a leader of the opposition who’s still alive and living here today?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. Celia Strickland came up quite a bit.”

  “Celia,” said El. “Well, it figures.”

  “Who is she?” asked Peter.

  “She owns Shore Acres Lodge, and she always seems to have a finger in any local shit-stirring.”

  “Do you think she’d cooperate?” Gordon said.

  “Getting her to talk won’t be the problem — it’ll be getting her to stop. That, and sorting out the wheat from the chaff. You’ll have to listen to her whole catalog of resentments to get to the good stuff. But I guess we’ll have to. I’ll call her tomorrow morning and try to set something up.”

  “One other thing, Karl,” said Peter. “How good were the stories in the paper? How much do you think we can rely on them?”

  “As a historian you want to get all the facts from all the sources, but my impression is that these stories are a pretty solid basic source. I’ve read almost every issue of the Clarion over the last hundred years, and I’d say the reporting in these stories was well above average in detail and understanding.”

  “All the more reason to talk to the reporter if we can,” said Gordon. “Alice, did you have any luck running down Adam Beckstein?”

  “Luck had nothing to do with it, Gordon. I had to work on it during my lunch break, what with filling in on the circulation desk and doing not one, not two, but three children’s story hours. I mean, Green Eggs and Ham with three different sets of children, all of whom were more interested in committing mayhem on each other than in listening to a story, even if it is a classic, and then of course this was the day the book club from the rest home came in to check out half the mystery and romance novels on the shelf to get them through the next two weeks. All I can say is thank God I was looking for Adam Beckstein and not Bill Johnson. It’s always easier when you’re looking for a name that’s relatively uncommon.”

  “So you found him?”

  “Of course I did. I told you I would. I did an internet search for him by name and came up with an Adam Beckstein in Southern California. Then I went to the Editor & Publisher newspaper yearbook and searched the listings of people working for newspapers in Southern California. He’s Assistant Managing Editor-News for the Riverside Press-Enterprise.” She took a scrap of paper from her purse and walked it to El. “Here’s their phone number.”

  She looked at it blankly. “One more call to make tomorrow morning.”

  “Are you all right, El?” said Gina. “You look shell-shocked.”

  She shook her head. “I’m OK. I was just thinking about what it must be like to have such a big newsroom that you need more than one assistant managing editor.”

  “I think we can cross Beckstein off the list for tonight,” said Gina. “I’m dying to hear about Gordon’s meeting with the Paris family.”

  He summarized the high points of the lunch, his chance discovery about Charlotte’s Monday lunch with the Paris family, and ended by saying he wasn’t sure how to read his meeting with them.

  “Well,” said Alice when he was through, “I’d say it’s more than suggestive that she had lunch with them the day she died.”

  “Gina,” said Gordon, “do you know if Charlotte met regularly with the Paris family?”

  “Not much. She didn’t talk about them much either. I gathered that her relations with them were cool but cordial.”

  “So it could mean something,” said El.

  “It could mean something or nothing at all,” said Peter. “Let me ask a question, since I don’t know the Paris family first-hand. Does anybody here like them as suspects in Charlotte’s death, her father’s death or both deaths?”

  There was a long silence, which Alice finally broke.

  “They’re a gang of buccaneers, but murder … I don’t know.”

  “What I can’t figure out,” said Gina, “is what Charlotte suspected about her father’s death. It seemed to be an accident, but if it wasn’t, what motive would the Paris family have to kill Ned London? They all had an interest in getting the project approved, and Ned was their best ambassador to the community. It doesn’t add up.”

  “Good point,” said Peter. “But if Charlotte had dug up something dirty about that project, they might have a lot of reasons for wanting to keep it quiet. Maybe they had something to do with Charlotte’s d
eath, but not her father’s.”

  “It’s sounding to me,” said Gordon, “like we still don’t know much at this point, including what we need to know. And that brings up another question.” He looked around at the group. “Given the call from the sheriff this afternoon, it looks as if he may be moving toward treating Charlotte’s death as suspicious. If the authorities are investigating it, should we be duplicating their efforts, or should we turn over what we have to the sheriff and let the professionals do the job?”

  The reaction was silence, with a lot of awkward looking back and forth. Karl spoke first.

  “Ordinarily,” he said slowly, “what Gordon is saying makes sense and would be the way to go. But …”

  “Look who the sheriff is,” said Alice.

  “And Charlotte was my best friend,” said Gina. “I want to feel I personally did everything I could for her. Besides, the sheriff hasn’t even told you there’s a criminal investigation under way, so your only obligation is to give him what he specifically asks for.”

  “The problem with handing the whole thing over to the sheriff,” El said, “is that he can then do anything he wants, including filing it and forgetting it. At the very least, I think we have a responsibility to light a fire under him and keep the heat on. If we move forward and run a big front-page story in next Thursday’s paper, he isn’t going to be able to let it drop.”

  “I think you’re outvoted, Gordon,” Peter said, “and El makes a good point. Gordon and I are here through Tuesday and we could stay another day if we have to. Let’s get everything we can for next week’s paper, then decide how to deal with the sheriff.”

  All heads, including Gordon’s, were nodding in agreement.

  “I think that’s settled,” Gordon said. “So that leaves one more item on the agenda. Ned London’s accident. Karl dug up the accident report and the news stories, which we’ll all get copies of. But there was something else interesting. In her manuscript, Charlotte had made a note, in the section about the accident, to check with ‘A.D.’ It turns out the officer who wrote the report was named Alvin Davies, and Karl tracked him down. He’s the chief of police in Cabrillo, and I made an appointment to interview him next Monday morning.”