The Fourth Perspective

by Robert Greer

  “God! You’re investigating a murder?”

  “Nope, just helpin’ out a friend.” Billy opened Sheets’s dissertation and scanned the title page briefly before flipping to the next. The second page contained a list of four names. Above each name there was a signature. Pointing to one of the signatures, Billy asked, “Who are these folks?”

  “My committee members. Three internal and one from outside the university.”

  “Seems like overkill to me,” said Billy, scrutinizing the bottom name and signature.

  “Check and balance, Mr. DeLong. It’s always good to have someone from outside the nest lend an unjaundiced eye to any evaluation.”

  “Did the external guy listed here give you a hard time?” asked Billy.

  “No. Quite the contrary. He helped me immensely. Especially when it came to trying to dig out the truth about the Jacob Covington–Sweet Owl connection.”

  “I see.” Billy hefted the dissertation. “How many pages you got in here about her?”

  “Two, maybe three. No more than that.”

  “Can you photocopy ’em for me? And while you’re at it, I’d appreciate a copy of that sheet with your dissertation committee members’ names.”

  Looking surprised, Sheets said, “Fine. But why the interest in my committee members?”

  Billy ran his finger along the boldly scripted signature of the lone external committee member: Oliver Lyman, Ph.D. “Says under Oliver Lyman’s name that he’s a professor at Metropolitan State College. Ain’t that in Denver?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is Lyman still there?”

  “As far as I know,” Sheets said hesitantly.

  “Good, ’cause he’s close enough to home base that he deserves at least a sniff.”

  Sheets laughed. It was a nervous, halfhearted, almost impetuous laugh. “Oliver Lyman a murderer? No way. The man’s a leftover flower child from the 1960s. All peace and love, if you know what I mean.”

  “When it comes to murder, ain’t no hall passes, Ms. Sheets. Not for flower children or even your highbrow professors.” Billy handed Sheets the dissertation. “I’d sure appreciate it if you’d make me them copies.”

  Looking at Billy as if she were suddenly just a hair off her game, she said, “Sure thing,” turned, and limped toward the front of the museum. Billy followed closely, pondering just how Loretta Sheets fitted into the broad scope of things.

  CHAPTER 17

  Billy’s drive from Cheyenne, a drive that would take him south of Wyoming’s famed Snowy Range Mountains and ultimately home to Baggs, started as a troubled one. During the first half hour, all he could think about was whether Amanda Hunter had told the truth about her uncle’s photographs. It seemed strange to him that she wouldn’t have known about a daguerreotype photograph worth a million dollars or more, and stranger still that during his and CJ’s visit, Amanda had never gotten around to mentioning her uncle’s Union Pacific Railroad connection. Covington had been a Union Pacific doctor, after all. It was spelled out in black and white in the Montana medicine book. CJ had said so himself. That connection alone could be the key to the missing one-of-a-kind daguerreotype, Billy told himself as he gassed up his ten-year-old dually in the foothills town of Woods Landing. There had to be an explanation for the oversight, Billy tried to convince himself.

  He paid for his gas and called CJ from his cell phone, aware that something about Amanda Hunter had penetrated his rough-cut cowboy exterior.

  “CJ, you there?” Billy said into the mouthpiece, his unmistakable gravelly baritone competing with a rumbling convoy of flatbed trucks loaded with hay for high-country cattle. “Got the lowdown on why the Del Mora kid probably bought it.”

  “Shout it out, Billy. The background noise is drowning you out.”

  “I said, I know why Del Mora bought it. He was probably packin’ around a photograph worth at least a million inside that book he sold you. Loretta Sheets, that museum lady Amanda told us about, claims Jacob Covington took one of them daguerreotype photos of the transcontinental railroad Golden Spike ceremony back in 1869. Accordin’ to her, the photo’s been floatin’ around out there somewhere for years.”

  “Gives you a motive for murder, doesn’t it?” said CJ. “What’s the museum lady’s tie-in to all this?”

  Billy lowered his voice as the last truck in the convoy rumbled past. “She used to be a college history professor. Did her Ph.D. dissertation on the history of women in the transportation industry. Her link to Covington is hooked up to the fact that our picture-takin’ sawbones supposedly had an assistant, an Indian woman that Sheets stumbled across while she was doin’ her research. And believe me, after talkin’ with Sheets, you can take it as gospel that this woman existed ’cause Sheets never would’ve been interested in Covington’s photos if there wasn’t a woman linked to ’em somehow.”

  “Interesting. More interesting if you include the good Professor Lyman back here in Denver. All of a sudden we’ve got history professors coming out both ears. Anything else she let you in on?”

  Hesitant to share his concerns about Amanda Hunter until he’d had more time to think things through, Billy said, “Got some more on Lyman that’ll interest you.” He was about to go into detail when a second bevy of semis rumbled by. “Gonna lose you to the noise,” Billy shouted.

  “Where are you?” CJ asked, yelling into the phone.

  “Woods Landing.”

  “Call me back when the traffic dies down.”

  “Will do,” said Billy. “Gotta run and buy a couple of packs of Doublemint anyway. Talk to you in a couple of minutes,” he said, hanging up. He watched the line of trucks lumber by in the midday sun, concerned more than ever that Amanda Hunter probably knew more about the missing daguerreotype than she was telling.

  Theresa Del Mora had tried all morning to grease the wheels so Flora Jean could talk to Howard Stafford, but without any luck. She’d finally called Flora Jean to admit that Stafford would probably be more accommodating and candid if he could talk to a man. “He’s not a bad man,” Theresa lamented. “Just set in his ways.”

  Puzzled over Theresa’s wellspring of loyalty, Flora Jean countered, “You sure stick up for that man, sugar. The two of you got somethin’ goin?”

  “He signs my check,” Theresa said, noticeably offended. “And I sign yours. You’re going to have to find out what you want to know about him on your own,” she added curtly and hung up.

  Twenty minutes later, still puzzled by the Theresa Del Mora–Howard Stafford connection, Flora Jean sat across from a buoyant-looking CJ in her office. CJ, his feet propped up on a chair, had just finished laying out the needle-in-a-haystack daguerreotype story Billy had told him. “Now we have something to go on.”

  Flora Jean shook her head. “Trust me, we ain’t goin’ nowhere with this Del Mora thing without knowin’ more about Stafford, and he ain’t talkin’.”

  CJ toyed with the stubbed-out remnant of a cheroot and smiled. “There’s always more than one way to skin a cat, Flora Jean. For instance, Morgan and Dittier spent most of last night moving themselves and everything worth a nickel out of Ike’s and into my garage. I decided that it was in my best interest to do an end-around Sergeant Commons, city engineers, and any other ruling party with not a thing in the world to lose if all my shit got stolen from under their noses.”

  “And your point is?”

  “Just this. We do an end-around Stafford. Find out more about him than he knows about himself—from somebody else.”

  “Got any candidates?”

  “One. Paul Grimes.”

  “You kiddin’ me? That lowlife, muckrakin’, yellow journalism snot?”

  “He helped us with the Langston Blue case last year, didn’t he?”

  “And he also almost got your ass killed by some rogue CIA agent in the process, in case you forgot.”

  “I haven’t forgotten. You got a better angle for us to pursue?”

  “Not at the moment,” said Flora Jean, looking
as though she’d just been checkmated.

  “Good. Because not even somebody as rich as Stafford likes losing something worth a million dollars, and if anybody has inside dope on Stafford, it’ll be Grimes.”

  “Gotta admit this whole Del Mora killin’ seems kinda rich-folk freaky to me. First off, why would anyone keep a photograph worth that much money sittin’ around on a library shelf inside a book?”

  “Could be it wasn’t. Maybe the book or the photo were somewhere else when they were stolen.”

  “Where?”

  “Haven’t figured that out. And maybe the photo was in the library and inside the book all along. I’m just saying we need to keep an open mind.”

  “Fine,” Flora Jean said. “For the moment, I’ll give Stafford the benefit of the doubt. But I ain’t changin’ my take on Oliver Lyman. Lyman’s in this thing up to his nose hairs. His signature on the front page of Loretta Sheets’s dissertation proves he knew about the photograph. Might be worth me payin’ him another visit.”

  “Probably, but there’s always the possibility that Sheets played Billy a little so we’d go tracking after Lyman instead of her.”

  “So which way do we head?” asked Flora Jean.

  “I root out Stafford using Paul Grimes, you have your second dance with Lyman, and we regroup.”

  “That’ll work. What about Counts and that security guy Vannick? I’ve got a boatload on the two of them.”

  “Bad people?” CJ asked, checking his watch.

  Flora Jean shrugged. “Vannick would like you to think he is. As for Counts, he ain’t nothin’ but a bag full of stale air.”

  “Think either one of them could’ve killed Del Mora?” asked CJ, picking up Flora Jean’s phone, hoping to catch up with Paul Grimes before he headed out for his noonday jaunt to the Denver Press Club to drink his lunch.

  Flora Jean smiled and watched CJ dial. “For a photograph worth a million bucks, sugar? Ain’t no doubt about it in the world.”

  The Denver Press Club, a watering hole where hard-drinking newshounds could commiserate and vent their spleen, had undergone a much-needed recent interior facelift. Luckily the renovations hadn’t cost the venerable old club its sense of history or the offbeat press-room charm that patrons loved.

  Paul Grimes, a press club member for close to thirty years, spent three late afternoons a week, elbows anchored to the far end of the first-floor bar, tossing back gin and tonics and chasing them with handfuls of whole walnuts that he carried with him by the mason jar.

  Grimes usually arrived at the club for thirty minutes of imbibing before a five-thirty meal. He’d agreed to meet CJ at four-thirty because it would mean an extra hundred dollars and an additional half hour at the bar. Ill-mannered, crass, New York City abrasive, and as good an investigative reporter as the Rocky Mountain News had ever seen, Grimes was standing near the club’s leaded glass front windows, gin and tonic in hand, when CJ walked in.

  “CJ, my man,” Grimes called out, spotting CJ as he reached the top of the stairway that led into the club’s front lounge, a room dominated by its bar and the smell of whiskey, leather chairs, and oak.

  CJ removed his Stetson and set it on a nearby table. “Paul.” He smiled and pumped Grimes’s drink-free hand.

  “What are you drinking?” Grimes asked as if CJ were missing an article of clothing.

  “I’ll do a beer. Negra Modelo if they’ve got it.”

  Grimes turned and called out to the bartender, “A Negra Modelo over here for my riverboat-machine-gunning friend.” Turning back to CJ, he said, “Park it over there,” motioning for CJ to take a seat in one of the room’s high-backed leather chairs. “I’ll get your beer.” Grimes strolled to the bar, aware from the look on CJ’s face that his machine-gunner remark had tweaked a deep-rooted nerve in CJ’s psyche but unfazed by the reaction.

  Hoping to get the information he needed from the quixotic reporter as quickly as possible, CJ asked as Grimes handed him a Negra Modelo in the bottle with a wedge of lime, “Did you bring that interview you mentioned on the phone?”

  “Not so fast, my antique-dealing friend. First we need to settle up.”

  CJ pulled out his wallet and extracted a $100 bill.

  Grimes smiled. “Hell, man, I don’t mean that settlement. I’m talking about the real money the two of us are gonna make on the story I’m thinking of piecing together about that antiques store of yours getting blown to smithereens.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t look so torn and twisted, my man. Hell, you’re sitting on a natural-born, made-for-TV gold mine of a story, my friend.” Grimes raised both arms, held up two fingers of each hand, and jiggled them quotation-marks style. “Navy Cross-winning bail bondsman turned antiques dealer stalked by vengeful Rhodes Scholar Indian maiden. Hell, the story’s got Hollywood stamped all over it. And it’s tabloid fodder for sure.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  Grimes looked offended. “You’ve gotta seize the moment, friend.”

  “What the hell do you know about my story, Grimes?”

  Grimes mounted an ear-to-ear grin. “All there is to know, my man. All there is. Shit, I’ve been piecing your story together since late last year. Getting the facts, knitting together the whole nine yards, filling in holes that other people would’ve certainly missed. I got wind of the Deepstream woman wanting to settle a score with you from one of the boys down at Homicide right in the middle of when I was researching that Langston Blue thing for you last year. Been following up ever since. Shit, what we’ve got here, CJ, is pretty much a daytime soap-opera serial. And right on cue, just like magic, the whole thing gets programmed for sweeps week when our Indian maiden bombs the hell out of your store. Catch her or kill her and you can pretty much name your price.”

  Unable to check his temper, CJ grabbed Grimes by his jacket lapels and lifted the suddenly wide-eyed 145-pound man off the floor. “People have told me you’re crazy,” said CJ, nose to nose with Grimes. “And you just proved it. I don’t know how you worked your way into this Deepstream thing, who the cop was that gave you inside dope, or why you ever thought I’d agree to you sifting around in my life, but it’s time to stop the presses.” CJ released his grip, and, landing askew, Grimes wobbled momentarily from side to side.

  Trying his best to look unperturbed, Grimes gulped in a breath of air. Eyeing CJ and the suddenly nervous-looking bartender, Grimes said, “Didn’t know I’d tickle such a raw nerve.”

  “You did. Try not to tickle it again.”

  “Read you,” said Grimes, breathing heavily as he tried to reenergize the two most powerful tools in his investigative journalism arsenal: his gall and his composure.

  “Glad you do,” said CJ, realizing that his heart was racing. “Now, can we get back to the reason we’re here?”

  “Got that Stafford piece right here.” Grimes slipped the yellowed, trifolded newspaper feature he’d done on Howard Stafford ten years earlier out of his shirt pocket. “Sized Stafford up right off when I did this piece. Not an ounce of bullshit in it. The man’s all about money and collectibles.” Grimes unfolded the paper and handed it to CJ.

  CJ scanned the story’s headline: “Serious and Selective: Howard Stafford Unvarnished.” He asked, “How’d you get Stafford to agree to talk to you?”

  Grimes flashed CJ the sly, penetrating smile of a manipulator. “Easy. I intimated to him that I’d give him the chance to set the record straight on all the bad press he’d gotten over the years, counter the stories about him being a half-off-his-rocker pervert of a recluse. Of course I didn’t say it like that. I simply said that I’d give him the opportunity to talk about his interests, his triumphs, and his everyday decency. And that I’d give him space to talk about his number-one passion: collecting the rarest of the rare.”

  “And he bit, just like that? Strange. From what I’ve heard about the man, I’d’ve figured he’d never let a muckraker like you through the front gate.”

  Grimes jaw muscles fl
exed, and both eyes narrowed. “Don’t sell me short, Floyd. I wasn’t always what I am now. I was top-drawer material back when you were babysitting that machine gun of yours during Vietnam.” Grimes grunted dismissively and continued proudly, “Read my article and see what I got. In case you don’t, here’s the bottom line. Stafford’s family made their money brokering oil and gas leases in Kansas, Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming right after World War II. His father was a D-Day veteran and a son of a bitch. His grandfather was meaner still. His mother drank, and his two brothers, both of ’em dead by the time I interviewed him, whored. He collects rare artifacts, ephemera, tapestries, pottery, and books because, according to him—and this is a direct quote—they suit him, tell a story, and most of all, they don’t talk back. He made a point of telling me three times during our interview that never once during a near lifelong trek through the antique and rare collectibles world has he ever been outbid at an auction.”

  “Sounds determined.”

  “As a fucking pit bull,” Grimes said, nodding. “My guess is you’d have to kill him to get him off if he ever sank his teeth into you.” Grimes shook his head. “Believe me, he’s one hell of a dichotomous man. The SOB raises prize roses by the truckload. Showed me a strain of prizewinning Mr. Lincolns that go back a hundred and fifty years. He champions people he sees as downtrodden and powerless because, according to him, his old man whipped his young powerless ass a couple of times a day. And on top of all that, he claims to read four or five books on American history every week.”

  “Complex man.”

  “And a sad one. I came away from our interview feeling like I’d been peeking in the women’s bathroom, and for me that’s saying a hell of a lot.”

  “Did Stafford put any limits on what you could say in the story?”

  “No. Just asked me to let him see the piece before I ran it. And I did. The only thing he changed was a reference I made to him being worth close to a hundred and fifty million. Blacked it out and inserted one seventy-five.”