Desert Winter

by Michael Craft

  Larry reminded her, “But someone did precisely that.”

  “So you’ve said. But it wasn’t me. Get this straight: Stewart Chaffee was alive and well, sleeping peacefully, when I left the estate on Monday morning.”

  “And when was that?” Larry had his notes open in front of him. He was doubtless checking whether her story would remain consistent.

  “I arrived around nine and left within ten minutes.” Bonnie’s account of the events stayed the same, though we still had no way to verify her departure time.

  Larry closed his notes. “Then we’re left with a total mystery.” His tone seemed to ask, Any suggestions?

  Bonnie tisked. “Come now, Detective. If you need a suspect, he’s been under your nose all along.”

  Larry arched his brows naively.

  “Pea!” she blurted. “He and Stewart had a past. He resented that he’d been reduced to domestic help, and I’ll bet he expected to inherit a fortune. If that’s not a recipe for murder, I don’t know what is.” She ranted on, building her case against a scheming, nefarious little houseman. Though most of her accusations were emotional, even irrational, her basic argument was sound—Pea had harbored resentment and expectations.

  What’s more, Bonnie presumably didn’t know that Pea had arrived at the house from the gym that morning at nine-thirty, after she claimed to have left. But Larry and I were privy to this detail, which lent credence to Bonnie’s accusation. On the other hand, Bonnie and Pea’s mutual hostility had been vented repeatedly, so her current denouncements could have been based on nothing more than spite.

  “I don’t know.” Larry scratched behind an ear.

  I echoed his skepticism, explaining to Bonnie, “Pea told us that he and Stewart were lovers for only a few years, early on. He was majordomo for nearly two decades. Sure, he may have felt downgraded by his menial circumstances, but he had plenty of time to get used to it. It seems to me that if he was going to turn vengeful, he’d have done it long ago. Even if he did have a general, gnawing sense of resentment, that alone wouldn’t have provided a sufficient motive for murder.”

  Bonnie stood, paced once in front of the sofa, then faced us with resolve. “But there’s more.”

  Larry and I exchanged a glance. He asked Bonnie, “There’s something you haven’t told us?”

  She stood before us, nodding in such a way that her whole body wobbled. “This isn’t the sort of thing I like talking about—it’s downright indecent. And I hate to besmirch the memory of Mr. Chaffee. But the truth is, Pea had good reason to hate him, at least in his own mind.” Bonnie bit her lower lip, hard, as if punishing herself for having said so much.

  I asked gently, “What are you trying to say?”

  She sniffed a short, sharp breath. “It started about a year ago. I’d already been working there for a year, so this was something new. It had not been going on for two decades; it was definitely a late addition to Pea’s job description. If he resented his other duties, he hated this one.”

  Larry had opened his notebook again. “Tell us about it.”

  Bonnie turned from us, crossed to the window, and seemed to stare through the closed curtains. “During the last year, Pea began procuring for Stewart the services of young boys.”

  “Services?” asked Larry, though we both understood what she meant.

  “Yes,” said Bonnie, turning to us, “sexual services. Pea arranged for these visits with increasing regularity, sometimes while I was in the house, if you can believe it. Pea was embarrassed and angry, I could tell, but Stewart certainly enjoyed himself.” With a note of disgust, she added, “The old goat.”

  I was tempted to ask her to be more explicit in describing these services—nosy me—but I refrained.

  Larry asked, “When you say ‘boys,’ how old do you mean?”

  “Too damn young for the likes of Mr. Chaffee!” She stepped to her lounger and tidied a few items on the end table, picking up the brochure from the Living Desert Reserve.

  Larry persisted, “Are we talking, say, twelve, or more like twenty?”

  Bonnie looked appalled. “Shame on you, Detective. They were college boys.”

  “I see.” He scratched through something on his pad.

  Listening to these revelations, I was struck by a different twist. “Bonnie, I can understand why these procurement duties might change Pea’s attitude toward Stewart. Did Stewart’s sexual peccadillos also sour your own attitude to him?”

  “They didn’t help,” she admitted.

  “Did you feel so strongly about the situation that you needed to stop it?”

  Bonnie exhaled a long, low groan. She seemed to wilt before our eyes. “I know this may sound like a double standard—that it was wrong for Pea and okay for Stewart—but that is the way I felt. Stewart had little joy left in his life: paintings, fancy furniture, pink fluff, and these boys. He wasn’t hurting anyone, and they got paid, so I guess it was a fair exchange. If I found it unseemly, too bad. Stewart didn’t need my permission or approval. I was working for him, remember. He was generous and he was kind, at least when he wasn’t crabbing. He let me into a world I’d never seen before.” She glanced down at the brochure in her hands, at the smiling meerkats on the cover. With a whimper, she concluded, “I still miss him.”

  Softly, I said, “Of course you do. He’s been gone just three days.” I was about to add, Time heals all wounds, but I spared her the platitude.

  “Perhaps you haven’t heard,” said Larry. “There’s going to be a ceremony at the new art museum tomorrow night honoring Mr. Chaffee and his bequest. You might find it comforting to attend.” It was a thoughtful suggestion on Larry’s part, but I also understood that he was jockeying to bring all the possible suspects, including Bonnie, together at the event.

  She brightened some. “Thank you, Detective. I would like to be there. It’s the least I can do.”

  We rose, thanked her for her cooperation, wished her happier days, and left.

  Walking to the street with me, Larry said, “The call boys—that’s a whole new wrinkle. I like it.”

  I agreed, “It might have been enough to push Pea over the brink.”

  “I need to talk to him, and soon. Care to be in on it?”

  I checked my watch; it was nearly ten-thirty. “I’d love to, Larry, but I’m due on campus for an important meeting.”

  “After lunch, then, at the estate. I’ll set it up. One-thirty?”

  “Perfect. See you then.” I got into my car.

  Before getting into his own car, Larry said brightly, “Don’t work too hard.” He assumed my meeting on campus related to classes or the play.

  I waved and tootled off in the direction of Desert Arts College, where the true purpose of my meeting was to determine why the young lover of the detective’s brother had created on his home computer a forged interview with a murder victim.

  18

  Shortly past ten-thirty, I had parked in my space in the faculty garage and was rushing across College Circle toward the Desert Museum of Southwestern Arts. The workers who, yesterday, had been installing lighting fixtures on the building’s facade were occupied today with another task, mounting two long banners from the museum’s cantilevered roof. Dangling on either side of the main entrance, one of the banners featured the huge, menacing image of a kachina from a distant galaxy, along with dates of the opening exhibit. The other simply proclaimed, in bold letters running vertically, THE CHAFFEE LEGACY, along with the years of his birth and death.

  Entering the sun-filled lobby, I noted at once that the air-conditioning had been tweaked and now kept the space at a chilly but tolerable temperature. Yesterday’s boisterous construction workers had been replaced by a stolid cleaning crew, mostly Latino women, who feverishly detailed the lobby’s stone floor, massive windows, and gleaming chrome trim. Twins of the kachina and Chaffee banners hung from the ceiling, flanking the entrance to the main gallery, which appeared dark and empty.

  Not sure whether Grant had y
et arrived, I turned down the corridor that led to the museum offices, when I heard Grant call after me from the lobby. He had just entered the building and now rushed across the expansive, marble-paved room in my direction. “Sorry I’m late,” he said as he neared. “I was tied up in a meeting at Nirvana. Have you seen Kane?”

  “I was just going to look for him—and you. Are we expected?”

  Grant nodded, catching his breath. “I called earlier, suggesting he have lunch with us, but he declined, saying he’s too busy preparing for tonight’s event. So I told him we’d drop by to say hello and have a look at everything.”

  “And everything’s looking good.” I nodded my approval.

  Grant glanced about, agreeing, “Major strides since yesterday.”

  With a forbidding tone, I reminded him, “When D. Glenn Yeats sets deadlines, few dare fail.”

  Grant took my arm. “Let’s find Kane.” And he escorted me toward the suite of offices at the rear of the building.

  The main office was bright, modern, and efficient, beautifully designed but more utilitarian than luxurious. A receptionist greeted Grant while fumbling with the new phone system. Losing a call, she mumbled an expletive deriding the march of technology. We waved to Iesha, who looked up briefly from a knot of staffers around her desk, returning the salute. Her huge, primitive pounded-brass necklace (it reminded me of a personal-size gong, decorated with multicolored glass dangles) banged and clattered as she leaned over the desk again. “In here,” Grant told me, turning into a separate, smaller office, its door wide-open.

  “Oh, hi!” said Kane, looking up from his computer terminal, smiling at the sight of Grant. His soft yellow polo shirt accentuated the deep tan of his face and arms, even under the sterile glare of fluorescent lights.

  “You sound surprised to see us.” Grant stepped to his young lover, who stood for a hug, a quick kiss.

  “Just absorbed in one of these projects. Time really gets away from you.” Then Kane acknowledged me, “Morning, Claire.”

  “Good morning, Kane. It looks as if everything is pulling together splendidly for tonight’s big bash.”

  “It’s what you don’t see that has me worried.” He began ticking through a list of unfinished projects, then stopped himself, telling us, “I’ll spare you the lurid details.”

  Grant took a breath, paused, then asked, “Can you spare us a minute?”

  There was something in the tone of the question that made Kane’s face wrinkle. “Sure, Grant. For you and Claire, anytime. What’s up?”

  Grant hesitated, looking around. “Is there somewhere we could go to talk?” He added, “Somewhere more private.”

  Warily, Kane said, “This sounds serious.” When we didn’t respond, he suggested, “How about the main gallery. There’s nothing cozy about it, but the workers are finished in there, for now, so we’ll have the space to ourselves.”

  He led us out of the offices, returning to the lobby, then turning into the dark, gaping space of the gallery, where he switched on a few lights. “Will this be okay? Is something wrong?”

  “This is fine,” said Grant. “Let’s sit down.” There were a number of black boxes, display cubes, arranged throughout the space, but few of them held anything. There was a sparse arrangement of Indian artifacts in a Plexiglas case at the far side of the room, but otherwise, the gallery contained no art. Choosing a cluster of these vacant cubes near the center of the floor, Kane sat on one, and Grant and I faced him, sitting together on a larger one.

  Kane repeated, “Is something wrong?”

  Grant said, “I don’t know. I hope not. But Claire and I discovered something this morning that’s very disturbing.”

  Great, I thought. Pin it on me. The discovery was Grant’s; he’d merely shared it with me.

  Kane gave us a quizzical stare. If he felt guilt or panic at Grant’s words, he hid it well. He simply looked confused, asking, “What did you find?”

  Grant began, “After you left the house, I was on your computer—”

  “Yeah. I left it on for you. Did you get that e-mail you needed?”

  “Uh, no, it hadn’t come in yet. So I was frustrated and a little bored. And I did a bit of browsing. I ended up going into some of your files.”

  “Okay…” Kane seemed neither surprised nor worried nor defensive. In fact, he pulled both feet up onto the cube, crossing his legs like a kindergartner (looking adorable, I must say—good for Grant). Kane asked, “And you found something … ‘disturbing’?”

  “Well, yes,” Grant answered, suddenly agitated. “For God’s sake, Kane, I opened one of your museum files, the one labeled HISTORY, and it contained the interview with Stewart Chaffee that had supposedly appeared in a 1954 issue of the Palm Springs Herald.” Grant crossed his arms, saying, in effect, that he’d said his fill.

  But Kane’s only reaction to this revelation was a continued look of contusion.

  Perhaps, I thought, Kane’s confusion stemmed from genuine lack of knowledge of the document that had been forged on his computer. Perhaps, as we had earlier speculated, someone else had planted it there, attempting to frame the kid for Chaffee’s murder. I suggested, “You knew nothing about it?”

  With a puzzled laugh, he blurted, “I know everything about it.”

  Grant and I looked at each other with blank, dumb astonishment.

  Kane continued, “Of course I know about the Chaffee interview. I made it myself—on the computer in our spare bedroom.” With a touch of pride, he fished, “Not bad, huh?”

  “Kane,” said Grant, “do you have any idea of what you’re saying—and implying? Don’t you realize how serious this is?”

  “Uh, no.” The kid uncrossed his legs and sat up straight. “Sorry. What am I missing here?” He beaded Grant with an inquisitive stare.

  Grant recited coldly, “You’ve just admitted forging an interview with Stewart Chaffee on your own computer. I checked the file and determined that you finished it on Sunday night. On Monday morning, you visited Stewart. He was found dead later that day, and on Tuesday, the fake clipping surfaced and was interpreted as Stewart’s will, leaving a fortune to this museum—the same museum that you work for and I serve as board president. Don’t you understand? Anyone might conclude that you and I plotted and executed this—and I know damn well that I did no such thing.”

  Kane now had a full grasp of the situation, insisting, “I had nothing to do with that old guy’s death.”

  “And another thing,” said Grant, reaching toward Kane, raising the sleeve of his polo shirt. “That bruise. How did it happen? Don’t try to tell me the car door hit you—that’s crap. And where were you for the rest of Monday morning? After you delivered the key to Stewart, I tried phoning you here at the museum, several times, and you hadn’t arrived. What’s going on, Kane?”

  Rising from the cube where he’d been sitting, the college kid seemed both angered and amused. He told Grant, “You’ve asked me, like, about a dozen questions: Why was the clipping on my computer? How did I get the bruise? Where was I on Monday morning? What’s going on?” Kane planted his hands on his hips. “Is there any particular order in which you’d like me to respond, Your Honor?”

  “Don’t get smart with me.”

  “Don’t you play dad with me. You’re my lover, not my parent. I want to ‘marry’ you, Grant. I love you. So you need to give me the benefit of the doubt sometimes. How could you possibly jump to such awful conclusions?”

  Grant’s mind was surely in a spin. The computer file was all but damning evidence against the young man Grant had brought into his home. Grant had understood, intellectually if not in his heart, that his attraction to Kane had been pure infatuation, but he’d thrown caution to the wind in merging their lives. Kane had recently been pressuring him to go a step further, to make their relationship contractually binding. Grant was now rudely sobered by that morning’s discovery, forcing him to weigh their future prospects with a clearer head.

  Still, Kane had just as
ked him for the benefit of the doubt, and based on their three months together, which had been totally loving—rapturous beyond Grant’s jaded dreams—he was now inclined to suspend judgment and explore the situation rationally. He said softly, “Let’s start with the clipping. What happened?”

  “Okay,” said Kane, gathering his thoughts. He began pacing as he spoke. “On Sunday afternoon, I was working here at the museum, putting in some extra hours. We were hustling to get the kachina exhibit ready for the museum’s opening.”

  Grant nodded, recalling, “You helped Claire and me return the Biedermeier desk to the Chaffee estate that morning, and you said you’d be spending the rest of the day here.”

  “Right. And that’s exactly what I did. There was a lot going on that afternoon, preparing both the building and the exhibit. I took a short break, and as I walked through the lobby, this guy asked to talk to me.”

  “Who?” both Grant and I asked.

  “Someone from the school. I think he said he was Professor Eastman. He was involved with mounting a display that would chronicle the museum’s history.”

  I recalled Kane mentioning a history display on Wednesday morning. “When you asked about it yesterday, Iesha said that no such exhibit had been planned.”

  “I know. But that’s what the guy told me; someone must’ve been confused. Anyway, he explained that an important part of the museum’s history was contained in a newspaper clipping, but that it was tattered with age and needed to remain safely in the school’s files. So the museum needed a convincing reproduction for display purposes, and since they needed it fast, they’d pay some nice overtime. He gave me a few sheets of old newsprint, a photocopy of an old advertisement, and typewritten text of the interview itself. It was an interesting challenge, and I enjoyed working on it.”