by B A Trimmer
I went up the stairs to the client’s room and knocked on the oversized wooden door. There was a pause of about thirty seconds where I could hear movement in the room and someone talking on a phone. The door opened and there stood Lester Murdock, dressed only in a towel loosely wrapped around his waist.
The first thing I noticed was he was gorgeous and had an incredible body. He looked to be somewhere in his late thirties or early forties and was about six-feet two. He had short black hair, a nice tan, and deep blue eyes. He was talking on his phone with one hand and had a cup of coffee in the other.
He waved me in, pointed to a couch, and then to the coffee pot on the table. As he pointed, I noticed he had a fantastic smile. It lit up his face in a friendly and welcoming way. Turning, he walked into the bedroom, still talking into the phone.
I was grateful the towel stayed on his waist. I was expecting it to drop off at any moment and I didn’t want to deal with purposefully seeming not to look while at the same time maybe sneaking in a little peek.
I can’t help it. I like men.
I had just poured myself a cup of coffee when he walked back into the room. Fortunately, the towel was still in place. He held up his phone and looked at me.
“It’s on mute,” he said. “Have you ever been to Vail? A friend of mine is buying a hotel there and wants to know if I want a piece of it. He’s as solid as a rock, but I don’t ski and I’ve never been there.”
“I spent the night there when I was on vacation in Colorado a few years ago,” I said. “It’s beautiful. Even though it was summer, I was surprised at how many people were there. We took the gondola to the top of the mountain and the view was breathtaking.”
“Would you buy a hotel there?”
What?
“Umm, I guess it would depend on where it was. Vail’s a big place. The best hotels seem to be near the ski lifts. The ones further away didn’t always look as nice.”
He gave me a look that told me he was impressed. He then hit the button to take the phone off of mute.
“Where is it located?” he asked in a serious business voice. “Is it close to the lifts?” He then looked over at me and winked.
“About two-hundred yards from the gondola,” he repeated the voice on the phone, raising the question as he looked over at me.
I smiled and gave him a thumbs-up.
“OK,” he said into the phone. “I’ll take thirty percent. But, I’ll also need a room at my disposal anytime I give a one-week notice. A nice room. Can you do that? Well, who knows? I might take up skiing. Good, send the paperwork to the office? OK? Thanks.”
He hung up and looked at me.
“Thanks for the tip. Like I said, I don’t ski so I wouldn’t have thought of that.”
He looked down and realized he was still dressed only in a towel.
“Oh Jeeze, sorry. I’m half-naked. I was late getting in last night and I’m running behind today. Let me get dressed then we can take off. I don’t know what Leonard told you but I’m on a bit of a treasure hunt this week. Have another coffee and I’ll tell you about it on the way.”
Fifteen minutes later, he came out of the bedroom, fully dressed. He had on a light blue polo, cream cotton slacks, and brown leather Farucci loafers. As he walked closer, I couldn’t help but notice his cologne. It was unusual and obviously expensive. Smelling it gave me visions of naked men and feelings of lust. He walked over to me and held out his hand.
“Les Murdock,” he said as we shook. “You must be Laura Black. Thanks for coming out here so quickly. If you’re ready, let’s go. We can talk on the way.”
He grabbed a folder sitting on an end table and we were out the door. I noticed he winced at the thirty-degree temperature increase as we went outside. Personally, I thought stepping out into the warm Scottsdale morning was nice. I had been getting cold sitting in the air-conditioned room.
In Scottsdale, any building a tourist may go into is air-conditioned down to sixty-eight or seventy degrees. I guess it’s the temperature considered comfortable in places like Illinois, New York, or North Dakota. It’s way too cold for me. I keep my apartment at a money saving and comfortable seventy-eight degrees. Whenever I go to a mall or a movie theater, I always take along a sweater. I’ve noticed other Scottsdale natives often do the same thing.
We walked through the immaculate resort and made our way down to the parking lot. I hit the beeper to unlock my doors.
As we came to my car, Les pulled up short. His eyes lingered on my crumpled fender, the scraped paint, and the duct-taped mirror. He took a step closer and looked down at the bullet hole in the driver’s rear fender. He went around to the passenger’s side and was about to open his door, when I saw his eyes glance over the gash a hatchet had made in the front fender.
Shit, here it comes.
“Everything, ummm, OK?” I asked.
“I had an Accord several years ago, back when I was starting out. What a great car. These things are indestructible.”
Someone who gets it!
“Yes they are. Nothing seems to stop them.”
“It looks like you’ve had some adventures in this car. I’ve been known to get into a few adventures myself and sometimes I’ve done more than crumple a fender or two. Was that a bullet hole in the back? Hopefully, we won’t run into anything too wild this week.”
“Well, you don’t know my life, but yes, hopefully nothing too wild. Where are we going?”
“My granddad’s house. It’s on the side of a mountain.”
He gave me the address and my eyes opened wide.
“Wow, this must be some house,” I said as I pulled out of the parking lot. “What exactly did your granddad do?”
“He was an engineer and an inventor. Dad said he was always messing around with stuff. According to family history, he got his first fortune when he patented some advances in air-conditioning systems back in the nineteen-forties and nineteen-fifties. From what Dad said, Granddad’s inventions are largely responsible for people being able to live comfortably in places like Scottsdale. Granddad told me that before World War II, Scottsdale was a small farming community in the desert and the only tourists were tuberculosis patients who came to Arizona for the hot dry climate. After Granddad’s window-mounted air conditioning systems were introduced in the fifties, people started trickling into the desert. He said the Arizona migration boom really started when his central air conditioning systems were widely adopted in the sixties.”
“He’s right about that,” I said. “From what I learned as a kid, nobody really lived here at all until about nineteen-fifty. Then things started going crazy.”
“Granddad trained to be a World War II fighter pilot at Falcon Field in Mesa. He came back after the war and lived in Arizona for the rest of his life. After the money started rolling in from his air-conditioning patents, he went on to make another fortune in real estate. Apparently, he wasn’t a very active investor. According to Dad, he bought any ranch or tract of land on the outskirts of town that would come up for sale. Some of the land he bought was out in the middle of the desert, miles from anything. Granddad thought when his air conditioners started to become widely used, the city would rapidly expand, and his land would be worth a lot. Since he already had money, he sat on the land as the city grew up around the properties. He sold off most of it about fifteen years ago, when land values were so high.”
“He must have done well with that.”
“More than well, but it partially leads to my current problem. I’ll tell you all about it as soon as we get to the house.”
We drove down Scottsdale Road to Camelback. We then turned west and drove past the Phoenician resort and into the high-dollar real estate area south of Camelback Mountain. We turned north when we got to Dromedary Road and wound our way up to a cluster of affluent homes sitting at the foot of the mountain. When we got to the address, I stopped the car in the middle of the street. With the possible exception of Muffy Sternwood’s house, I’d never seen a h
ouse so big.
“Are you sure this is the right address?” I asked as I looked up at the huge house. “It looks more like a hotel.”
“This is the place. And as big as it looks on the outside, it’s even bigger on the inside. There are rooms and hallways going everywhere.”
We drove up a long curved driveway and parked in a front courtyard that could easily hold ten or fifteen cars. The house itself was beautiful. It was built against the steep side of Camelback Mountain and I could see the bedrock of the mountain had formed the back wall of the house. There were four floors with several archways and balconies. On the far right side of the house, the third floor had been replaced by a wide flat terrace with a black and gold iron railing. To the left of the house was a tempting tropical oasis with a nice-sized pool and an inviting waterfall. Surrounding the pool were a dozen date palms, several queen palms, and clusters of pink oleanders. There were several lounge chairs and tables with bright umbrellas surrounding the pool. There was a five-foot high wall made of native stones topped with a three-foot high wrought-iron fence to separate the pool from the courtyard. It looked nicer than the pools in some of the hotels in Scottsdale.
Les opened up the folder he had been carrying. He took out an envelope and pulled out a key.
We walked up to the front and I couldn’t help but be impressed. The front entrance consisted of two enormous doors, each almost nine feet tall, flanked with a set of graceful queen palms. The front surface of each door was covered with a thick copper plate, molded with a scene of a half-dressed Greek goddess being fed grapes by an eager looking satyr, the little half-man half-horse of Greek mythology. Maybe it was just me, but the little satyr seemed to be leering at the nearly naked goddess.
Les opened one of the doors and led me into the main entrance hall. The elegant vaulted ceiling again looking more like a nice hotel than of a house.
“Come on,” he said. “If I can remember how to get there, I’ll show you my favorite part of the house.”
He led me down a long hallway past six or seven doors, all made of some sort of dark wood, to an open area with a high ceiling and a beautiful curving staircase. We walked up the stairs then walked down another long hallway.
“Does anyone still live at the house?” I asked as we walked.
“From what the lawyer told me, there’s a cleaning staff that comes in twice a week along with a gardener, a pool service, and some landscapers. Other than that, the house is empty.”
At the end of the corridor was a set of large double doors. As we walked down the hallway, I could see the wooden doors were massive, each easily ten feet high, both with oversized polished brass knobs.
Les opened the doors and we stepped into a beautiful two-story library. Every wall was lined with bookshelves. There were thousands of books going up almost twelve feet to a balcony that curved around the entire back part of the room. There was a ladder on a rolling track so you could climb up and get the books on the upper shelves. Looking up I saw there were more bookshelves on the balcony level, which was ringed with an elaborate black and gold iron railing. The effect of having so many books in such a large room was wonderful and I could see why he liked it so much.
On the left side of the room was a spiral metal staircase connecting the main floor to the balcony level. The left wall was all bookshelves, except for three recesses in the wall on the lower level. In each of these alcoves was a Greek looking sculpture. In the center of the room were several comfortable looking red-leather couches and wing chairs. The right side mirrored the left, but without the sculptures. Three small windows evenly spaced between the stacks of books on the upper balcony provided points of natural light.
It was the floor-to-ceiling window at the end of the room that was the real statement piece. It must have been twenty feet high and twenty-five feet wide, and covered the entire expanse of the wall, revealing a breathtaking view of the city. I could see from downtown Phoenix all the way to South Mountain. I went up to the window and looked out.
“This is stunning,” I said.
“Come on,” he said. “Let me show you a better view.”
“This isn’t the best view?” I asked.
“Just wait.”
He led me over to a small door in the wall, next to where the window ended. We went through the door and found ourselves outside on a wide stone terrace. The same elaborate black and gold iron railing went around the front of the terrace, combining a sense of architectural beauty and common sense safety.
The back of the terrace was against a steep slope that was part of Camelback Mountain. A huge red rock jutted out of the mountain and formed part of the back wall of the terrace. The rest of the rear wall consisted of hundreds of flat rocks intricately fitted together to form a sheer face that must have been ten feet high.
As I stepped out, I felt the heat of the late morning. I guessed it was now about a hundred or maybe a hundred and five degrees. The view of the city from the back part of the terrace was the same as from the library. As I walked closer to the front edge of the terrace, the view opened up and I could see down the mountain to all of the houses below. There was a faint breeze coming up the side of the mountain, cooling the air, just a bit.
I stood at the iron railing and marveled at the view. Since the air in Arizona is so dry, there is seldom any haze to blur details in the distance. I had a clear view of the massive skyscrapers of downtown Phoenix, the thousands of individual houses, and the snaking highways full of cars. The city itself seemed to be a living thing stretching across the Valley. I watched as a dozen tiny airplanes took off and landed at Sky Harbor airport. I felt like a princess standing in her castle looking down over her beautiful kingdom.
“As a kid,” Les said, “I’d come out here with a chair from the library and spend hours reading the wonderful books and looking down at the city. I think they got tired of me leaving the good chairs outside because one day when I came out here, there was a kid size chair and footstool already set up for me. No matter what kinds of family squabbles were going on inside, I always looked at this terrace as my own little personal refuge.”
“There was a lot of arguing within the family?” I asked, coming out of my princess trance.
“Mostly between Dad and Granddad. They fought constantly until right before Dad died, about fifteen years ago. For our family dynamics, you need to know my mom died shortly after I was born and I never really knew her. My sister and I were raised by Dad and a series of nannies. You also have to understand Granddad was a kid in the great depression and was part of the World War II generation. Dad was a hippy baby-boomer who grew up in the sixties. I’ve heard he was always somewhat of a socialist and after Mom died, it only got worse. He kept accusing Granddad of being greedy and hoarding his money from the people. I once heard Dad tell Granddad he should give away his fortune in the name of humanity.”
“How’d your granddad react to that?”
“About like you’d expect,” Les said with a laugh. “He’d lecture Dad right back that he was naïve of the ways of the world. Granddad once told Dad that when he had actually done something with his life, other than bitch about how unfair the world was, they could have a man-to-man discussion. Granddad said until that happened, he would consider my dad to be a whining child. It was a discussion that went on for years.”
“I can’t imagine it was easy listening to that.”
“Well, I was young and pretty much used to it. What I couldn’t figure out is why Dad wanted Granddad to give away his house and his money. Even as a kid I knew Granddad had worked really hard to earn it and giving it away to somebody because they didn’t want to work sounded sort of silly.”
“How did you deal with the family tensions? Especially when you were young?”
“Well, as you can see, I had this wonderful refuge. There are thousands of books in the library. My favorites were the international travel books. There must have been a hundred of them and most were filled with pictures. As a child, I
could visit the Taj Mahal in India or the Great Wall in China. Through the books here, I’ve been to the ancient temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia and toured the ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru. Now I’ve actually been able to make some money of my own, I’ve been able to visit most of the places I read about here on the terrace as a kid. In some ways, it seemed like I was visiting old friends.”
He fell silent lost in his thoughts. It was obvious being at the house again was stirring up a lot of old memories.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get back into the air-conditioning and I’ll tell you why we’re here.”
We walked back into the library. He motioned me to one of the leather couches while he grabbed a nearby chair and moved it closer to the couch. We both sat and he began to talk.
“Granddad was ever one for practical jokes. When they read the Will, it seems he wanted to continue his jokes, even in death. Some of his wealth was in real estate, mostly this house and a few properties scattered in the cities around Scottsdale. He even owned a bar, somewhere up in the mountains. But for the last fifteen years, he’s had the bulk of his fortune in jewelry. It’s been both a hobby and a passion. He’s been collecting rare and historic pieces of jewelry his entire adult life. He has a necklace documented to be worn by Jane Seymour, queen of England under Henry the Eighth, and an engagement ring Richard Burton once gave to Elizabeth Taylor.”
Damn.
“That sounds like a good hobby to me,” I said. “I’ve always envied people who could afford to do something like that. I can barely afford to collect souvenir tee shirts.”
“Granddad always kept the main pieces in a large and ornate wooden box. He called it his jewelry case but I always thought of it as a treasure chest. He kept the box in the walk-in safe in the master bedroom. I remember as a kid he would take my sister and me into the safe and let us hold some of the pieces. Most of them have full documentation to verify their legitimate sale, authenticity, and history. The lawyer back in Chicago has all the paperwork. That’s not the problem.”