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

by Michael Wallace

  “It was really interesting what I found out about private planes today. Like I’m always telling people, it’s hard to beat a librarian’s job when it comes to being interesting. I mean, they’re paying me to learn. How good is that? Anyway, I went to one of our research books and looked up California airports, and my God, I had no idea there were so many. I’d never thought about it before, but if every town our size has one, that’s a lot. Anyway, after a bit of mucking around, I discovered that in Sacramento, the private pilots pretty much use Sacramento Executive Airport. So I called down there and got hold of the airport manager, who, by the way, did not seem to appreciate answering questions and was in a bit of a grouchy mood. But like my mother said, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, so I was just really sweet and nice to him, and kept asking questions, and finally he told me that, yes, it would be possible for a private pilot to fly out of the airport and back again without there being any record of it.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Anna. “How, exactly, did you ask that question?”

  “Nothing to it. When I called, I told him my name was Marie Lavoisier, and that I was a mystery writer researching a new book.”

  “And he fell for that?” said El.

  “He totally fell for it. In fact, he even told me his wife enjoys my books, which is kind of interesting, when you consider there aren’t any. Books, I mean. Marie, too.”

  “Old librarian trick,” murmured Peter.

  “Anyway, he eventually got into the spirit of the interview and was surprisingly helpful. He said Sacramento Executive doesn’t have a control tower, so a pilot could fly in and out without there being any record of it, though he did say there were so many people around during the day it would be hard to do without being noticed, but after hours, a little more likely. And he said that if a pilot flew from that airport to another one, like ours, that also doesn’t have a control tower, there probably wouldn’t be any records of the flights at airport level. The pilot would have to record the flights in his log book, but ordinarily that wouldn’t be public record and only a mechanic would see it. So I think that establishes something very important. Bart Sturges could have flown up here last Monday night without there being any record of it.”

  “Good job, Alice,” said Gina.

  “Nice work,” said Gordon. “We may be on to something.”

  “Except for one thing,” said Karl, grumpily.

  Everyone looked at him.

  “Bart Sturges didn’t fly up here last Monday night. I’m sorry, Alice. We were working at cross-purposes. I went down to our airport this morning, and our airport manager told me the same thing. But on a hunch, I asked him if anyone had been at the airport last Monday night. Well, it turns out June 30 is the end of the airport’s fiscal year, and he was there until 8:30 that night, pulling together a lot of paperwork in preparation. I told him I’d heard Sturges was still in town late last Monday, and he said no way. He saw him get in his plane and fly off at 9 that morning, and when he left his office at 8:30 that night, the plane was gone and Sturges’ car was parked where it always is. The call on Charlotte London’s fire came in only a few minutes after that, so it looks like Sturges is out.”

  “I hate it when the facts get in the way of a good story,” El finally said.

  “Good work by both of you, even so,” Gordon said. “You’ve eliminated Sturges, and that’s something.”

  “Except you forgot one thing,” said Karl. “There are probably half a dozen private airstrips around here, so he could have landed at one of those. I don’t think that’s too likely because he would have needed an accomplice with a car, and it would have been really dangerous to take off again after dark. But it can’t be completely discounted.”

  “All right,” said Gordon. “Let’s call the Sturges flight up here last Monday a low-probability occurrence and move on. Anything else, Alice?”

  “I ran down Richard Paris in San Francisco pretty easily. He has a property management business that’s unimaginatively named Richard Paris Management.” She handed Gordon a piece of paper. “Here’s his number.”

  “Thanks. I’ll call him tomorrow.” Gordon looked around the room.

  “Should we talk about the conversation with Adam Beckstein?” said El.

  “Why not?”

  El related the gist of the conversation, concluding with Beckstein’s question about how Sturges had raised the seed money for his first State Assembly campaign. When she finished, Peter spoke first.

  “What was that line from All the President’s Men? ‘Follow the money.’ Any chance of doing that here?”

  “Pretty slim,” said El. “Campaign finance records from back then — even if you could dig them up from storage somewhere — weren’t that good. Before I start chasing that wild goose, I’d like to have something to go on.”

  “Still,” said Gordon. “It’s intriguing. Sturges’ change of heart on The Peninsulas struck some people as wrong. If there was a payment involved, it would have made a lot more sense. But it’s the same story here as with everything else. We have a lot of tantalizing hints without any hard evidence.”

  “Are we considering some sort of payment as a possibility?” asked Gina.

  “I’d say so,” Gordon said.

  “Then let me throw out an idea. Suppose Ned London’s memo about the Crocker Bank plan didn’t refer to financing the project. Suppose it referred to arranging some sort of payment using Crocker Bank. Would that make sense?”

  “It would totally make sense,” said Anna. “Laws on reporting wire transfers were looser then than they are now.”

  “But again,” said Gordon with some exasperation, “How do we find out? Crocker Bank doesn’t even exist any more.”

  “No, but there is one thing. It’s a long shot, but I think we should try. When zipperhead …”

  “Who?” said Peter.

  “Sorry, my ex-husband. When he worked at Crocker Bank in Sacramento in the 70s, the branch manager was a man named Howard Sheehan. I remember my ex saying that the Sacramento branch handled an unusually high volume of wire transfers. Howard thought it might be related to the fact it was the state capital. In fact, he was suspicious enough to have copies made for himself — he even paid for it out of pocket — of all the transfers. Thought it might help in an investigation some day. If he still has those records … ”

  “If he’s still alive,” said Karl.

  “He retired in 1979, so he’d be about 80 now. I’m sure my ex could track him down. He owes me one. More than one, actually.”

  “But would Sheehan still have those records after all these years?” said Alice.

  “Once a pack rat, always a pack rat. If he’s alive, I’d bet a tidy sum he still has those records. And if there was some sort of payment, they wouldn’t have wanted to make it through a local bank. Should I try to run it down?”

  “It can’t hurt,” Gordon said, after a silence. “But I wouldn’t expect much. As you say, it’s a long shot. Anything else on this?”

  “No,” said Gina. “But tell us about your interview with Davies.”

  Gordon described that meeting, with Peter adding a fine point here and there. He concluded by saying:

  “So once again we have a lot of emanations and penumbras, but nothing to hang our hat on. The key thing to me is that the officer who was first on the scene at the accident thought there was something fishy about it, and Charlotte had already made an appointment to talk to him when she was killed. There’s nothing you could prove in court, but it’s sure starting to look like a story line. Thoughts, anybody?”

  No one responded immediately, and finally Karl spoke.

  “I could stop by the Highway Patrol office tomorrow and see if I could find out who might have known Charlotte was looking into it. No promises, though.”

  “Worth a try,” Gordon said. “If we check out everything, we just might hit upon the one thing that will open this up. Does anybody else have anything?”

  No on
e spoke, so he continued.

  “Then I’d like to end the meeting with this. The more I think about it, the more I believe the key to this investigation is in the journal. And more specifically, the question of who Charlotte’s lover was. If we can find out, we might be able to talk to him, and get something we’ve been missing so far. So I’d like to suggest that we sit here quietly for three minutes and just focus on that issue. Who could her lover have been? Who was The Guv? If we don’t have any ideas in the next few minutes, let’s all think about it overnight, and see if anybody has an idea tomorrow.”

  The suggestion was greeted with nods of agreement.

  “All right, then. Before we go, three minutes of silence. Who was The Guv?”

  Three minutes is a long time to sit quietly in one place. During that period, two motorboats passed by on the lake. A gust of late afternoon wind came up and animated the tops of the pine trees. As the day wound into evening, the cooling air caused El’s house to creak twice as joints contracted. Karl’s heavy breathing dominated the sounds inside the house.

  “This is probably a stupid question … ”

  All heads snapped in the direction of Emma. It was the first time since joining the group that she had spoken without being called on.

  “Considering where we are now, there’s no such thing as a stupid question,” Gordon said. “Please, Emma, go on.”

  “Well, we were living in Colorado in 1970, and we really don’t follow politics that much.” She looked at Gordon who gave her an encouraging nod. “But I just had the idea that if she was calling her lover The Guv, maybe he had the same name as the governor of California back then. Does anybody remember who the governor was in 1970?”

  With the exception of Anna, who hadn’t been born then, the light came on almost simultaneously for everyone else. El spoke first.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “It was that bastard Reagan. Ronald Reagan.”

  “And we have a Ronald in this story,” said Alice. “Ronald Paris. Who would have been perfectly placed to start up a flirtation with Charlotte.”

  “And if anyone chanced to see them together,” said Peter, “they might not make too much of it because of the connection between the families.”

  “He’s a smart and personable guy,” said Gina. “It’s plausible that Charlotte could have fallen for him.”

  Gordon had been looking through Charlotte’s journal. “She first called him The Guv in early November of 1970, right after the election that year. When Reagan won his second term.”

  “Defeating Jesse Unruh, who was speaker of the California Assembly,” said Karl.

  “Gordon!” said El. “Do you have that Polaroid that was in Charlotte’s journal?”

  He nodded.

  “Give it to me.”

  He handed it to her and turned back to the group.

  “Before we get too carried away about this, we should do a quick check. Look at what we know about The Guv and see if it all matches up with Ronald Paris.”

  “Gordon!” El again.

  “What?” he snapped.

  “You said Davies saw a paint mark on Ned London’s car, right?”

  “Right.”

  “What color was it?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Look, dammit.”

  He fished around in his messenger bag and found the page Davies had given him that morning. He ran his finger slowly down it, pausing halfway.

  “It was red,” he said.

  “Like the pickup truck in this photo?”

  She passed the picture back to him, and he stared at it, speechless. When he’d read the report earlier, he’d glossed over the color.

  “I remember that pickup really well,” Karl said. “Everybody who was around back then would. Ronald Paris drove it everywhere before it finally gave out about 10 years ago. It was a town joke.”

  “That still doesn’t prove anything,” said Anna.

  “No,” said Gordon. “But the picture is beginning to take shape, isn’t it?”

  “Let’s not go too fast,” said Peter. “I’m sure Ronald Paris didn’t have the only red vehicle in this area. How does he match up against the rest of what we know about The Guv?”

  “For starters,” Gordon said, “he could have met Charlotte at the Rotary Club’s new teacher lunch.”

  “He’s been to every one I can remember,” said Gina.

  “And he chatted her up by talking to her about her classes,” Gordon said. “When I had lunch with the Paris family last week, Ronald tried to draw me out by asking a lot of questions about Cal basketball. Same technique. Warm up the prospect by talking to his or her passion.”

  “Really?” said Alice.

  “Old salesman’s trick,” Gordon said. “And she said in the journal The Guv’s wife wasn’t as complex as he was. Of course, The Other Woman would say that, but does anyone know her? Mrs. Ronald Paris, I mean. What’s she like?”

  “Well,” said Alice, “she’s kind of …”

  “I know what you’re trying to say,” said El. “She’s sort of …”

  “Christine Paris is a superficial airhead,” said Gina. “Let’s be real. Charlotte was rarely wrong about people. That’s just who she could have been talking about.”

  “And Charlotte also said something about an age difference,” Gordon said. “Does anybody know exactly how old Ronald Paris is?”

  Karl cleared his throat.

  “In 1977 he was chosen as the Arthur/Año Nuevo Chamber of Commerce Man of the Year,” he said. “He was 37 then.”

  “So he’d have been born in 1940,” Gordon said. “That would make him five years younger than Charlotte.”

  “Lot of that going around,” muttered Gina.

  “Hold on a minute here,” said Peter. “If our train of thought is going in the right direction, we’re talking about a man who had an adulterous affair with his business partner’s daughter, got her pregnant and walked away from it, murdered his business partner, and bribed or paid off an elected official in order to get a land development approved. And he gets named Chamber of Commerce Man of the Year? What does it take to get disqualified in this town?”

  Alice finally broke the brief silence that followed the question.

  “On the other hand,” she said, “he is a deacon in the Presbyterian Church.”

  “Aren’t we forgetting something?” said Anna. “Ned London and the Paris family were partners in the development. They both had the same interest and objective. Why would Ronald Paris kill his business partner just as the project was coming up for a vote?”

  “I think Gina was pointing us to the answer a few days ago,” said Peter. He turned to Gordon. “Ned London’s father — Charlotte’s grandfather — you said he was the county sheriff, right?”

  “Matt London,” Gordon said with a nod.

  “Well, the apple doesn’t generally fall too far from the tree. If your father’s the sheriff, you probably were raised with a strict sense of right and wrong. Pretty much black and white. If that’s the code you live by, how are you going to react to your business partner’s idea of bribing a public official to get a result? Not well, I’m guessing.”

  “That makes sense,” said El. It would explain the Crocker Bank memo, and it would explain a falling out between London and Paris.”

  “And if Celia Strickland was right,” Gordon said, “they were facing ruin if the project didn’t get approved. That’s motive enough for murder, if anything is. Especially a spontaneous one like this. If we’re right, Ned London drove off, and a hot-headed Ronald Paris jumped in his truck and followed him a minute later.”

  “It wouldn’t be more than second degree,” said Anna, “and more likely voluntary manslaughter.”

  “Even so,” said Alice, “the Paris family is proud of its position in this town. I could see them doing anything to hush that up.”

  “And if Charlotte was starting to get warm about her father’s death …” Gordon said.

  There were
general nods of agreement.

  “It’s a great theory,” said Peter. “But it needs evidence.”

  After five more minutes of discussion that went nowhere, Gordon called an end to the meeting. As people were getting up to leave, he sidled over to El.

  “We need to talk,” he said softly.

  “That’s supposed to be the woman’s line.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Dinner?”

  “That works. Thank you.”

  He stepped back and let her show her guests out, appreciating the way she moved as she did. In a little more than a minute, he was alone with her and Anna. El turned to her daughter.

  “Honey,” she said, “we’re going out to dinner.”

  “Oh, good,” beamed Anna. “Where are we going?”

  El gave Gordon a what-can-I-do look. He responded with a resigned shrug.

  PETER HAD MADE THE MISTAKE of waiting too close by the front door, and Gordon drafted him to make a fourth for dinner. They drove to Garbini’s in separate vehicles, grouped by gender. As they slid into the usual booth, Tony Bennett was singing “Who Can I Turn To?”

  Gordon and Peter volunteered the opinion that they were making progress in the investigation, but Anna, her young mind filled with law school ideas, dissented.

  “You have the outline of a case, but no proof,” she said. “There’s nothing here to justify a prosecution, let alone a conviction.”

  “That may be true, dear,” said El, “but that’s the district attorney’s job, not ours. All we really have to do is come up with a news story that raises questions about Charlotte’s death, and that the sheriff isn’t taking them seriously.”

  “In other words,” said Gordon, “we don’t have to prove the case ourselves. We just have to light a fire under the people who can, and then hope they do their job.”

  “But if we don’t have evidence,” she persisted, “why should they investigate?”

  “Because,” said Peter, “they have much more effective ways of collecting evidence and conducting an investigation. We’re limited to make-nice conversations with people who want to talk to us. The sheriff can call someone in and read them their Miranda rights to let them know he’s serious. He can go to the judge and get search warrants. The district attorney can call witnesses before the grand jury. Step up the investigation to that level, and things start coming out. That’s how it works.”