by Todd Borg
It took me a minute to absorb the implications. I watched Immanuel closely. “And Samuel Sommer’s father?” I asked.
Immanuel Salazar was enjoying the moment. “My dear younger brother Abraham had but few weaknesses. Helga’s beauty was matched by a cunning guile. Abraham, I’m sorry to say, succumbed to the combination.” He shook his head. “Damn women.”
I sat on the edge of the bed holding the photo.
Immanuel continued. “The son Samuel, my nephew, Joseph’s half-brother, was dispatched to foster care, aided by occasional anonymous checks. At some point, no one will say how, he learned of his true identity. A deal was brokered after Melissa’s death. He was given the job of caretaker. They paid him well and he was given a trust fund. He jumped at the offer. But the terms of the trust are that he can never reveal his biological parents. Some clever lawyer arranged it so that even if someone else reveals Samuel’s lineage, the checks to Samuel stop. I don’t believe that would stand up in court. But nevertheless, my nephew has a large motivation to be sure that no one discovers his connection to the family.”
“Could he have murdered Melissa?”
“Absolutely,” Immanuel Salazar said. “Young Samuel has always been fixated on our family from the moment he learned that we are his blood relatives. Imagine his jealousy of those kids who are acknowledged as family members and given everything. A young niece of his, especially someone as obnoxious as Melissa, might be the focus of considerable rage. Remember, Samuel gets a monthly check until he dies. But niece Jennifer gets hundreds of millions.” Immanuel stared off into the Pacific. A white cruise ship was the only interruption on the blue plane. “If I were you,” he continued, “I’d be concerned for Jennifer’s safety.”
“May I use your phone?” I asked.
“Certainly.” He pointed to his end table.
I dialed Street’s number. Jennifer answered it on the second ring. “Hi, Jennifer,” I said. “I’m glad you’re still there.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Not until Smithson is caught. Have you found sufficient evidence against him?”
“I’m getting there. Is Street in?”
After a moment Street came on. “Owen, sweetie,” she said. “The peripatetic detective.”
“Hi, Street. The reason I called is that Diamond said he was under pressure and that he’d be checking both our houses to see if we might be harboring Jennifer. But now I’ve new information about Samuel and I don’t want Jennifer to go back to the Salazar home.”
“Okay. What do you want me to do?”
“I think you and Jennifer should stay at your place, but keep the lights low, keep the blinds shut, don’t make any noise and do not, under any circumstances, answer the door. Can you get that across to her?”
“Yeah, sure. Can you say what you found out about Samuel?”
“Let me do some more checking, then I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
Street told me good luck and we hung up. I put the phone down and turned to Immanuel.
“You are, I gather, charged with Jennifer’s safety?” he said.
“Yes. There have been some threatening situations. By way of protecting Jennifer, I’m trying to find out who, if anyone, killed Melissa.”
Immanuel got a dazed look again. Then he shook himself. “In addition to Samuel, I would take a closer look at Helga.”
“What?”
“You shouldn’t be surprised. Mothers look after their brood. If Samuel would kill someone in the way of his line to the throne, surely his mother might do the same for him.”
“You believe that?” I said incredulously.
“I don’t know what I believe,” Immanuel said slowly. “But consider this. If Jennifer were dead, then Samuel would possibly be the sole heir to something approaching a billion dollars. There is the stock already earmarked for Jennifer. And Abraham’s widow has hundreds of millions of her own. Of course, she has arranged for the disposition of her money and I’d be surprised if Samuel could successfully contest her will. But he doesn’t know that. Neither does Helga. I have already given much of my fortune to various art museums. Again, Samuel has no clue. All he and Helga know is that they are related to a family with money and they’ve been cut out of most of it. Lot’s of motivation there, it seems to me.”
“You knew Helga when she was younger,” I said. “Did she strike you as the kind of person who could push a child off a cliff?”
Immanuel smiled. “Young Helga was as tempestuous as she was beautiful. And she had a temper. Oh yes.” He nodded at some memory. “One time she was bitten on the wrist by a dog. A good sized dog, if memory serves. So she wrung its neck. Picked the poor thing up with those strong German arms and twisted its head until it breathed no more. Yes, Mr. McKenna, I can envision Helga pushing a child off a cliff.”
Immanuel picked up a remote and pushed some buttons. In seconds the Vietnamese man appeared with a glass of water and some pills on a tray. Next to the water was a shot glass filled with whiskey. “You won’t begrudge an old man his medicine, will you?” Immanuel swallowed the pills with water, then picked up the shot glass and downed it.
“I’m an old man,” Immanuel repeated. “I’m cynical, bitter and something of a misanthrope. So you should take everything I say with a grain of salt. There is one person, moreover, who understands far better than I the dynamics of Abraham’s family.”
“Tell me,” I said. “The police are coming for Jennifer. They will put her back in her house where she is an easy target. I don’t have much time.”
Immanuel started coughing, sucked on his inhaler, breathed oxygen, then calmed. “This person is in isolation. Joseph’s widow, Alicia Salazar. Jennifer’s mother.”
“I thought she was institutionalized. Schizophrenic.”
“That’s what they say,” Immanuel said.
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. That’s what they say.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“Put it this way,” the old man said wearily. He leaned his head back and rested it against the pillow. “There is something wrong with the woman. She is disturbed. No doubt about it. But a paranoid schizophrenic needing to be locked up? I doubt it.”
I was beginning to lose my center. Where once I had a simple murder case with John Smithson as my suspect, I now had a complex family where everyone seemed to have a motive for killing Melissa. Even the old man in front of me had admitted to disliking Melissa.
“Where is Alicia?” I asked “Can I talk to her?”
“She is in a secure facility that operates under the name of Saint Mary’s Sanitarium of Nevada. It would more properly be called Saint Mary’s Prison. It is in the desert north of Las Vegas. And no, I don’t think they’ll let you talk to her.”
I stood up. “Mr. Salazar, I’m indebted to you.”
“Owen,” Immanuel said. His voice was low and ragged. “If someone really did murder Melissa, I hope you catch him. Or her. I didn’t like Melissa, but she certainly didn’t deserve to die. Neither does Jennifer. And now I must get ready. I have a villa above the bay in Acapulco. Because my lung ailment is acting up I’m going there this afternoon. It was good to talk to you, Mr. McKenna.”
I was spooked as I left the room. The possibility that Jennifer was in imminent danger suddenly seemed much more real to me. I trusted that she would stay quiet and out of sight at Street’s condo.
Jaspar Lawrence met me in the hall. “Would you like a drive back to the airstrip, sir?”
“Please.”
When I returned to the flight building, the pilots were sipping sodas and watching a football game on TV.
“Ready to return to San Francisco?” the captain said.
“No. I need to fly to Las Vegas. Can we do that?”
The woman thought a moment. “Without refueling? Possibly. Let me run the numbers. Bob? Can you get on the radio and see what they’ve got for our schedule?”
I said goodbye to Jaspar.
Fifteen minutes later we accelerated down the runway, and the turboprop screamed into the sky toward Las Vegas.
TWENTY-SIX
