Desert Winter

by Michael Craft

  Larry assured him, “We don’t mean to pry, and I certainly don’t mean to judge. After all, my own brother’s gay. But your background with Stewart could be helpful to our investigation. We all share the same goal—we want to figure out who killed your friend.”

  Pea looked up. “Then it wasn’t an accident?”

  Larry leveled, “We believe Stewart was murdered.” He explained how the refrigerator door handle had been cleaned of all fingerprints.

  “Yesterday,” said Pea, “the police were also checking the doors and knobs for fingerprints, right?”

  “Right. We found traces of your prints on all the doorknobs—front, back, and garage. Since you live here, that’s exactly what we’d expect. What’s most telling is that the inside knob of the front door had been wiped clean. The killer must have been flustered or in a hurry. We have a lot to sort through.”

  “Who could do such a thing? And why?”

  “At the moment, I don’t know.”

  I added, “That’s why we need your help, Pea. You knew Stewart better than anyone, I gather. Please, tell us how you came to know him.”

  With a faint laugh, he told us, “It’s a long story.”

  Larry sat back, resting an ankle on the opposite knee. “I’ve got plenty of time.”

  Pea nodded. “Okay.” He collected his thoughts. “I should back up—before I came to California.”

  Larry turned a page of his notebook. “Where did you grow up?”

  “Born and raised in Charlotte. In the proper Southern tradition, my parents were both literary types, and I was named after William Makepeace Thackeray. From the start, everyone called me Pea, which I really resented, since it was only a breath away from Peewee. But the name stuck, and eventually I grew to like it. I mean, it’s different. And it sure as hell beats Makepeace.”

  I laughed. “I’m inclined to agree with you.”

  “In college, I majored in English. My parents thoroughly approved, but careerwise, the degree prepared me for nothing. By the time I graduated, I’d ‘found’ myself—sexually, I mean—so I moved to California for the freer lifestyle.”

  “What’d your parents think of that?”

  “Not much. But then, I didn’t tell them much. After all, that was almost twenty-five years ago—those times were still fairly closeted, even after Stonewall. So I settled in LA for a while, hoping to blend into the counterculture. One weekend, I visited Palm Springs with friends, and it was a real eye-opener. It was early spring, so the weather was spectacular—and so were the guys. That weekend was one long party, and sure enough, at a bar on Saturday night, I met Stewart. We shared an instant, mutual attraction.”

  I said, “Do you mind if I ask how old you were then?”

  “Not at all. That was just over twenty years ago. I was twenty-four; Stewart was sixty-one.” He smiled at the memory.

  In spite of my relationship with Tanner Griffin, or perhaps because of it, I had to ask, “Didn’t the age difference present some … obstacles?”

  “Like what?” Either Pea had been truly infatuated, or he was very naive.

  I tried explaining, “You were nearly forty years apart, and—”

  “Miss Gray,” he interrupted, “I have always had a thing for older men. It’s not that unusual. Wealth is an amazing turn-on, and Stewart offered fame as well; those are two qualities than can override all manner of shortcomings. Besides, guys never really lose the urge, regardless of age. Stewart didn’t. Of course, his tastes were the opposite of mine. Till the day he died, he was always partial to younger men—and lots of them—for all the obvious reasons.”

  “Sounds like a match made in heaven,” I said, attempting to inflect my words with a tone other than cynicism.

  “It was, at least at first.”

  Larry got curious. “What went wrong?”

  “What usually goes wrong? One of us got bored. After three or four years as lovers—and we really did love each other, emotionally as well as physically—Stewart’s eye began to wander. What can I say? He lost interest in me. He liked to screw around. As angry as that made me, I was in no position to object—or leave. Like it or not, I’d built a comfortable life with Stewart, and I wasn’t inclined to walk away from it in a fit of jealous pique. So Stewart kept me on as his secretary. I’d fallen a notch from lady of the manor, but my life was no less cushy, and truth is, the job suited me.”

  “What were your duties?”

  “You name it. I generally ran the estate, coordinating the schedules of all the part-time help. Stewart knew he could trust me, so he eventually put me in charge of the household accounts, paying bills and such. I also took care of his social correspondence; there was a lot of it.” He gestured toward the desk there in the great room. “We finally got a computer a few years ago, and it’s really helped. Stewart never quite got the hang of it, but I’ve found it a godsend, especially for accounting and correspondence.”

  Larry noted, “So this room has been your home office.”

  “I suppose you could call it that. Comfortable surroundings, eh? Stewart even built me a nice workout room here on the estate. He converted one of the guesthouses.”

  Through a squint I asked, “Then why did you go out to Decathlon Gym yesterday morning?”

  “You would ask,” said Pea, almost blushing, as if I’d caught him in a fib. I hoped I had. The murder investigation would take on sudden life if we were about to learn that he’d fabricated yesterday’s story about being away from the house that morning. But no. Pea continued, “The workout room here at home is great; I really appreciate that Stewart went to the trouble of installing it. But it’s too convenient. I found I missed the discipline of actually going somewhere for my workout—more like keeping an appointment. And that’s not all.” He paused, twitching a brow. “The scenery is far better at Decathlon. So without fail, I head over there every morning, promptly at seven-thirty.”

  Stupidly, I said, “I find it hard to imagine that the views at your gym are any better than those here at the estate.” I gestured toward the glass doors and the mountainous vista beyond.

  “I’m talking about the guys there,” he explained. “The locker room at Decathlon is spectacular. There’s plenty to look at. Here, it’s just little ol’ me.”

  “Oh.”

  Larry indulged in a good laugh. He wasn’t quite so square as I’d judged him.

  “So basically,” I summarized, “your relationship with Stewart had evolved from that of lovers to that of trusted friends.”

  “Yeah, I guess. But after his health went bad, even our friendship was strained. In the end, we were little more than boss and employee.” Bitterly, he added, “The terms of that half-assed ‘will’ make it pretty clear how little he thought of me.”

  I reminded him, “That interview was printed nearly fifty years ago. His intentions predated your arrival on the scene.”

  “But I did arrive on the scene. I was with him for twenty-one years, through thick and thin. I hate to sound like some floozy, but I gave that man the best years of my life. He had so much—wouldn’t you think he’d leave me something?”

  I had to admit, “It does seem insensitive.” I thought of my neighbor Grant and his young lover, Kane, who were demonstrating the foresight to arrange a contractual “marriage.” How modern of them—and wise. Trying to console Pea, I ventured, “Stewart wasn’t himself in his latter years. It was apparent even to me, during two brief visits, that his mind wasn’t quite right. Try not to blame him for what he’d become. Curse the illness, not the man.”

  “Like ‘hate the sin, love the sinner’?”

  Though the parallel was apt, I found myself silenced by it, unable to respond. I recognized that the aphorism Pea had quoted was often a condescending crumb of tolerance tendered to the gay community by the religiously inclined.

  Larry picked up the conversation, telling Pea, “According to that old clipping, Mr. Chaffee intended, all along, to leave everything to the Desert Museum of Southwes
tern Arts. Are you tempted to contest the museum’s claim against the estate?”

  Frustrated, Pea stood. “I just find it hard to believe that a scrap of newsprint, half a century old, could be used as evidence of anyone’s intentions.”

  “But,” I told him, “Stewart recently wrote in the margin, ‘This will make my wishes plain enough.’ What’s more, he said those very words when he handed the envelope to Merrit Lloyd on Saturday. I was there, in the living room.” Pea had not been present that morning; I had met him later, on Sunday.

  Pea paced in front of the glass doors. “Still, it’s a clipping, for God’s sake. I know Stewart didn’t trust lawyers—neither do I—but why wouldn’t he write his intentions, explicitly, in a letter of some kind?”

  I admitted, “That’s what I assumed was in the envelope. I think we all did.”

  “Well, what’s done is done.” He stopped pacing, then faced us squarely. With a snide laugh, he added, “At least she didn’t get anything.”

  “Who?” asked Larry and I in unison.

  “Bonnie, of course. Who’d you think?”

  Truth is, my first reaction was that Pea had been referring to Stewart’s niece, whom Stewart had derided in Pea’s presence on Sunday morning. But I decided not to share this notion, which would only heighten Pea’s paranoia of circling buzzards, the metaphor he had invoked on Monday afternoon.

  Larry asked him, “Did Bonnie expect to be included in the will?”

  “Ask her. Though I’m sure you wouldn’t get an honest answer.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Pea paused. “Isn’t it self-evident, Detective? Don’t try to tell me you haven’t seen this sort of thing before. Bonnie Bahr is the classic ‘healing angel,’ a Florence Nightingale who tends to the infirm and the dying. She waltzes into someone’s life at the last minute, so to speak, and ingratiates herself as the only one who truly cares. She feeds, bathes, and pampers her wealthy victim, knowing it will soon be over—and hoping for a big, fat remembrance, a hefty gratuity from the otherworld.”

  “Isn’t that a tad harsh?” I asked. “We just visited Bonnie. She’s grieving, Pea.”

  “Practice makes perfect. She’s walked many a geriatric to the grave, I’m sure. You’re a director, Miss Gray. You might want to take notes from the charming and talented Miss Bahr. She’s an actrice extraordinaire.”

  I shook my head. “She struck me as guileless. She finds soap operas ‘cute’ and thinks meerkats are ‘adorable.’”

  “What’s a meerkat?”

  Larry volunteered, “A member of the mongoose family.”

  Pea looked momentarily befuddled.

  I told him, “I know there’s been some hostility between you and Bonnie. You’re welcome to think what you will of her. But did you really feel she should be barred from returning to the house?”

  “You bet. She’s done enough damage already.”

  Larry asked, “What sort of damage?”

  “For starters”—Pea looked the cop in the eye—“she killed Stewart. She crushed an old man under a goddamn refrigerator. Isn’t that damage enough?”

  With flat inflection, Larry said, “You seriously suspect her.”

  “Yes.” Pea returned to the sofa, sitting not at the end as before, but in the middle, next to me, almost touching knees, directly across from Larry. Lowering his voice, he told both of us, “I’ve suspected Bonnie of plotting to profit from Stewart’s death since the day she entered this house. I know this sounds unwarranted, as if I’m jumping to conclusions, but think about it. We know she was here yesterday morning. We know she brought the pink fluff and left the note for Stewart. We know he was killed while trying to get the pink fluff from the refrigerator. Christ. Connect the dots.”

  Larry conceded, “It’s a reasonable theory, yes.”

  “But it’s also an obvious theory,” I added. “Too obvious.”

  Pea persisted, “I assume the security photos showed Bonnie entering the estate yesterday.”

  “They did,” said Larry. “She arrived at nine o’clock, well before you returned from the gym. She found Stewart sleeping in the living room, as you did, so she decided not to wake him and left him the note. She says she left within a few minutes. And you said there was no one here when you arrived at nine-thirty. Your stories seem to validate each other.”

  “But the point,” said Pea, “is that you have no way of knowing when Bonnie actually left. All you’ve got is her word on it.”

  I touched Pea’s arm. “I don’t mean to insinuate anything, but we have no way of verifying when you left, either. All we know for sure is that, later that morning, after both you and Bonnie claim to have left the house, Stewart was killed.”

  With greater composure than I expected, Pea conceded, “Fine. But I had no reason to kill Stewart. I loved him.”

  Larry reminded him, “Not ten minutes ago, you expressed dismay that Stewart left you nothing after you’d given him the best years of your life. In other words, you expected an inheritance; you claim Bonnie did as well. On the surface, that’s a feasible motive for either of you. An expected inheritance makes a nice, tidy motive when any wealthy person dies of sudden, unnatural causes. But I’ll need more than that to name Stewart Chaffee’s killer.”

  “Then try this on for size.” Pea paused for effect. “Mercy killing.”

  Larry and I exchanged a wary glance. He told Pea, “That’s a serious accusation. If it’s no more than wild speculation—”

  Pea raised his hands in a calming gesture. “It’s speculation, I admit, but it’s anything but wild. Did Bonnie happen to tell you about her career in hospital nursing?”

  “Yes, in detail.”

  “Did she tell you why she left it?”

  Larry glanced back through his notes. “She told us that hospital nursing had changed a lot, that she grew tired of the paperwork, regulations, and hours. So she bowed out and entered private-duty nursing.”

  “Mm-hmm. That’s essentially what she told me when we interviewed her to care for Stewart. She had just left her hospital career, saying it had become a bureaucratic nightmare.”

  “So?” I asked. “Same story. Perfectly consistent.”

  “But later,” said Pea, leaning forward, as if to huddle with us, “I began to hear other stories. The scuttlebutt is that Bonnie did not bow out of hospital nursing. No, she was drummed out when it was discovered that she had been writing anonymous letters to the local paper in support of euthanasia. Yes, this is hearsay, but where there’s smoke…”

  “Really now, Pea.” I flumped back in my seat. “I doubt if Larry can book the woman on the basis of bad gossip.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but that’s all I have. Check it out.”

  “I intend to,” Larry assured him.

  “Besides,” said Pea, “it all fits. Two years ago, when Stewart suffered his stroke, it was clear that we’d need help at home when he returned from the rehab ward. Everyone warned me how tremendously difficult it is to find good long-term home-nursing help. I heard some real horror stories. But Io and behold, just when we needed her, there was Bonnie. She was highly qualified and eager to work for us, saying she’d had it with hospitals. I recall thinking that the timing of her career shift seemed too good to be true—lucky us. Later, when I got drift of the rumors, I realized that maybe Bonnie was too good to be true.”

  Larry asked, “Who told you about these letters to the editor?”

  “I know this sounds lame, but I don’t even remember. It was a friend-of-a-friend kind of deal. Someone at a party. Or the gym. It’s popped up more than once.”

  I asked, “If you had these awful suspicions, why didn’t you confront Bonnie with them?”

  He shook his head. “I should have. But, like you, I recognized these stories as mere gossip. Besides, she did her job, we needed her, and Stewart seemed to like her. It may have been a horrible mistake, but I didn’t want to rock the boat.”

  “These letters,” said Larry, “were th
ey supposedly published around the time you retained Bonnie?”

  “I think so, yes, but I’m not sure how long it had been going on.” Pea continued to detail for Larry the chronology of Bonnie’s employment at the estate.

  But I had tuned out, recalling the morning, three days earlier, when I’d met Stewart Chaffee’s nurse. Among the many unexpected turns of that first visit was an exchange between the eccentric decorator and his caregiver that now stood out in bold relief:

  When Merrit Lloyd and his secretary had arrived, Stewart had told his buxom nurse, “Hey, you. Show him in, piglet.” Undaunted, Bonnie had lobbed back, “You crippled old goat—someone ought to put you out of your misery.”

  Now Pea had raised the specter of mercy killing.

  It seemed far-fetched.

  But I had to wonder.

  13

  Wednesday morning, I sat alone in my theater, writing notes at Laura’s desk.

  The previous night’s rehearsal had been, in a word, disappointing. Though the cast’s performance had been technically proficient, they had lost some of the focus they’d attained prior to that week. This was due in part to the approach of Friday’s opening, which brought with it an air of excitement and predictable jitters.

  More serious was the disquieting stir caused by Stewart Chaffee’s murder and fueled by the presence of the dead man’s clock on the set. On Tuesday, I had assured myself that this buzz would quickly dissipate, but to my chagrin, it had not; it had grown. I had already put my reputation on the line by inviting to the play’s opening, among others, Hector Bosch and Spencer Wallace, whose objectivity would not be clouded by friendship if my efforts failed to deliver. Now, I realized, an unsolved murder, that of a man I barely knew, was jeopardizing not only the quality of the school’s first main-stage production and not only my own professional credibility, but also the dreams and ego of D. Glenn Yeats, who had committed several years’ work, not to mention hundreds of millions of dollars, to launching a fledgling arts college that had been built around a world-class theater program and the director he had wooed to chair it—me.