“The window sill is another story. There are finger prints on the frames like someone pushed the bottom frame open. What prints are on the glass are too smudged, but there are some fingerprints and two clear palm prints on the side of the sill.
“Also, there’s a small spot of blood and some hair caught on a nail at the top of the sill. We think it may be Stewart’s. His head scraped across the nail as he went out the window. It doesn’t give us any information about who was up there with him, but it can add to the evidence for murder.”
The word hangs there.
I think, “And that’s three.” Is there anything that ties all three deaths together and makes all of them murder? All three dead people have ties to the hotel, but they are so very different. And they died in different ways, at different times and, in the case of Janet Boxer, at a different place.
“So, how much of this can I use,” Clarice, asks matter-of-factly. “I need enough for a follow-up story for tomorrow and I’m doing a feature piece for Sunday on the Calverts generally and Stewart specifically.”
“By this afternoon, I think we’ll be able to announce that he was murdered. The state crime lab folks will be gone by noon, but I’m leaving the tape up until tomorrow morning, just in case there’s more they need.” He slaps the papers on his desk.
Dodson smiles slightly at Clarice. “That should give you enough for a follow-up story, but we’ll have to send out a press release to all the media when we do announce it. I’m sorry that we can’t give you an exclusive. Giving information may flush some people out, but giving too much can tip some off.”
We sit back in our chairs. What the sheriff is giving us is really a world, but we’ll still have to knit it together to make it whole.
Dodson looks at the clock on the bookcase. “Well, I do have time for a quick lunch, if you’d like,” he says. “But it will have to be fast. Maybe at the Grizzly Diner?”
In the street, more people are out, browsing the specialty and antique shops, strolling along the sidewalks. A few sit on benches on the covered boardwalk in front of what was Marshalltown’s main dry goods and general store.
The lunchtime crowd hasn’t filled up the diner yet so we grab a booth at the front of the restaurant. We chat while waiting for our food and are finished, with the bill paid, in just over half an hour.
Back outside, Jim Dodson offers me his hand and says, “I have to run. Will you be up again tomorrow?”
I nod and turn to walk back to the hotel. I hope I’m leaving enough time and privacy for Dodson to speak with Clarice alone.
When Clarice catches up with me, she’s a little flushed.
“The heat or the sheriff?” I ask, shifting my bag to the other shoulder.
“A little of both. Now what? Back to the hotel?”
“You probably want to spend some time with Royce for the Sunday feature, right?”
“I do,” Clarice says. She’s lost her flush and regained her curiosity. “I’d like to head back about 3. Give myself time to finish the follow story and begin the feature.”
I nod again as we turn into the lobby of the hotel. Going through the dining room, now with the remains of the lunch crowd finishing coffee, we knock on the family’s door.
This time, Royce is on the phone. When he catches sight of us, he quickly says, “Fine, that’s fine, I’ll see you tomorrow,” and abruptly hangs up.
“Are we interrupting something?” I ask.
“No, I was just wrapping it up. It’s another guest, checking in a day early. I usually take those calls on the lobby phone, but I just didn’t want to hang around out there.”
I look at him closely, realizing that his facade of normalness is cracking and fine lines of worry are clear around his eyes. He is under a lot more stress than he’s wanted everyone to believe. I feel a quiver of qualm, but I want to spend some more time in Stewart’s rooms, so I forge ahead.
“I hope you don’t mind if I go upstairs while Clarice interviews you,” I say. “There are a couple of background things I want to check.”
Without waiting for more then a nod, I head to the stairway and leave Clarice pulling out her notepad and pen and settling down at the kitchen table with Royce.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Stewart’s bedroom feels lighter and more airy than the rest of the suite. The furniture is pale blond, probably dating from a modernization in the late 1950s. White hotel linens give an almost sterile feeling, punctuated by a deep maroon antique Oriental rug and the colorful book jackets. This room faces east, so the morning’s sun shafts are no longer painting the piles of books and the dust seems to have settled.
I begin picking up the books on the bedside table. Stewart has marked sections with sticky notes, highlighting the pages that talk about the gold rush, mining methods, the establishment of Mother Lode towns and the burgeoning city of San Francisco. I thumb through several books and see that he’s also highlighted mentions of Marshalltown or the Calverts in the appendices.
This is creepy. I’m uneasy pawing through the dead man’s stuff. There’s no doubt that Stewart was a bona fide historian. I’ve read the obituary of his father, William. It mentioned that Stewart had also become an historian, even graduating from U.C. Berkeley like his father. When I’d Googled him, a short bibliography of historical monographs came up. But there was something distasteful about the way he’d lived his last few years. Maybe it was the alcoholism. Maybe it was his sense of failure, of not measuring up to the rest of the family.
There aren’t any answers in the earmarked books so I go back into the living area of the suite. In here the windows face west and the afternoon sun is beginning to streak into the room, lighting up the papers and journals stacked on the desk and the floor.
This room needs the sun and the light. Stewart had recreated a private late-Victorian library and pulled in vintage bookshelves, tables and chairs from an earlier incarnation of the hotel to furnish his work room. The 12-foot tall shelves are a dark mahogany. Three round occasional tables, also mahogany, have elaborate ball-and-claw feet and the mahogany chair arms, backs and seats are upholstered in a dark red fabric. The computer, monitor and printer are a jarring note to the room, even though they’re housed on a dark wood table that had started life in a Victorian home.
I turn slowly around several times, waiting for something to catch my eye. I’m thinking there might be something that stands out, some pile that give me a sense of Stewart’s intentions. I sit at the desk and slowly touch each stack, wanting a frisson of knowledge to run up my skin, but there’s nothing.
I get up from the desk and walk the perimeter of the room, scanning the bookshelves and tracing my fingers over the contents. The collection is similar to the books, papers and journals held in the San Juan Room of the Monroe library. Publications by the California Historical Society and the Society of California Pioneers. Kevin Starr’s recent California histories. Volumes 4, 5, 6 and 7 of Bancroft’s History of California.
What finally stops me are the document boxes labeled “War Journals and Diaries.” These are the only papers in the room that have been boxed and labeled. The yellowed labels are typed and give no clue as to who sorted the collection. I look more closely and realize that there’s a tiny handwritten note in the upper left hand corner of each box front. I don’t want to pick up any of the boxes without gloves for both fingerprint and archival reasons, but there’s a tickle at the edge of my memory. Had I seen a magnifying glass? I go back to his bedroom and search the bedside tables. Empty-handed, I move back to the sitting room to scan the desk. Nothing. Had I just imagined it?
A sudden ray of sun hits one of the elaborate chairs next to the door and the silver gilt handle of the glass glints on the seat. I pick it up and go back to the shelves holding the document boxes. What’s noted in the corner of each box is the war, the years and a name.
I guess the Calverts have long been diarists. The first box says “Spanish-American War, 1898, Samuel Calvert.” The next three b
oxes are “WWI, 1916-1918, Albert Calvert.” The last five are “WWII, 1941-1945.” Three of these are also labeled William and two labeled Robert. My fingers itch, I want to open them so bad. Instead, I put the glass back in the chair, look around to make sure I haven’t disturbed anything else and mutter, “Tomorrow.”
As I come downstairs, I hear Royce and Clarice still talking in the kitchen so I head into the bar where Burt Harmony has sets of blueprints rolled out across two tables shoved together. He’s not tall, but gives the impression of a bigger man. He’s bald, hard to tell whether natural or not, and has heavy shoulders and long arms. He looks like a working contractor, jeans, chambray work shirt and yellow Fry boots. I idly wonder if they’re steel-toed.
“Do you know where Stewart got the furniture in his rooms? The bedroom seems like a really odd partner with the sitting room”
Harmony laughs. “Well, Stewart was kind of an odd duck. He really liked his history. He was really crazy about his family’s history, so he said that he couldn’t exactly pick any era that was better than any other.
“He made me help him salvage the stuff in his bedroom from the hotel rooms that had been redone in 1958, when his grandfather first decided to run for office. A few years later, when he ran for the Senate, Robert talked the Old Calverts, his folks, into modernizing the whole place. Redid all the guest rooms; that’s even when this bar was remodeled. Took off the original mirrors, stripped off the wallpaper, paneled all the walls, even built a false wall behind the bar.”
He points over his shoulder. “That’s it right there, behind the curtain. Wow, sounds like some kind of game show, ‘What’s behind the curtain?’, but the plastic is keeping the dust down while we take out the wall and see what’s back there.
“As for the rest of the furniture in his living room, when they remodeled a lot of things went into their living quarters or up into the attics. The family never was big on throwing things away, so I guess Stewart just went shopping for the stuff he liked. His great-grandparents had what’s now the lounge area of the bar as a sort of sitting room or library for hotel guests and the shelves and table were from there. They were too big to get up into the attics, so they’d just been stored in an unused room that used to hold stable tack.”
“You seem to know a lot about the hotel and the Calverts,” I say, hoping he’ll go on.
“I was born here and grew up here. I’m about the same age as Stewart, well as Stewart was, although he came from the Bay Area, of course. In an old town like this, you kind of grow up knowing a lot about one another and the Calverts have always been synonymous with Marshalltown.” He’s rolling up one of the blueprint sheets as he talks.
“I imagine there’s a lot that goes into a renovation of a building as old as this hotel,” I say. I’m trying for a tone of disingenuousness which must have worked because Harmony says, “Yes, there is. This building is listed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation and is a California Historical Landmark so you really can’t touch the outside. Well, to bring it up to safety codes, sure. So you have to keep the shell and work within that. And then Royce wants to bring it back to its best days and he has those pegged at about 1880. We’ve taken a lot of areas right down to the timbers and then built them back up. Found some interesting stuff, too,”
“Really? Like what?
Harmony slows his pace at my interest and tempers his enthusiasm. “Oh, mostly old newspapers stuffed in the walls,” he says, backpedaling on his information sharing. “You know, folks used to do that as insulation. It’s funny to look at the ads and see what the prices were back then.”
He’s beginning to show signs of wanting to suck some of his words back. I’m familiar with this syndrome—it happens when people remember they’re talking to a journalist—and when they start watching their words, it’s all over. There isn’t going to be any more information from Harmony.
“Thanks for the brief history lesson,” I say and give the contractor a big smile. “I’ll go see if Clarice is ready.”
Clarice is still taking notes when I come into the family kitchen.
“I think I’ve given her everything I can,” Royce says with a rueful shrug. “Stewart was the historian, it’s hard trying to give you the family history for a story about his death.”
“You’ve been really helpful, Royce,” Clarice says, widening her eyes to underscore her attempted naïveté. “Thanks.” She stuffs her notebook and pen into her bag and nonchalantly stands. “I think I’ll just check with Sheriff Dodson one more time before we leave. I’ll meet you at the car in about 20 minutes?”
With an inward grin—Clarice is more transparent than the plastic sheet hanging in the bar—I say, “Great,” and watch her try to saunter out of the kitchen.
“I’m glad we have a few minutes together,” I say, turning to Royce. “I spent some time in Stewart’s rooms and wanted to ask you a few things.”
“OK, I guess.” Royce is clearly wearing down.
“Burt Harmony told me that most of the furniture in Stewart’s rooms had been gathered and salvaged from other parts of the hotel.”
“That’s right. When he moved in here, I told him that money was tight and he could use stuff as long as it wasn’t anything, any piece of furniture that I was planning to use. I know he took that fake modern blond stuff for his bedroom, which was fine. That was on its way to a thrift store. The other pieces, the library furniture, is just too big any more. I’m not going to have that kind of a public area. I’ve made the lobby smaller and carved up what used to be the guest library into a larger bar area and dining room. That’s where I can make money. We’re not too far from the valley for people to come up for a nice lunch or dinner. We’re trying to turn this into a destination instead of a stopover.”
“What I was most interested in was not so much the shelves as the contents,” I say. “Do you know where he found the document boxes of journal and diaries?”
“I always assumed in the attics. I know he spent a lot of time up there, hauling out old trunks and boxes. Why?”
“I was wondering if I have your permission to look through the document boxes and also poke around the attics when I come back up,” I round my eyes. “I’m planning to wear gloves and I won’t remove anything.”
Royce wrinkles his nose. “I don’t really have an objection. Does Sheriff Dodson?”
“I’m going to get clearance from him, but once it’s not a crime scene any more, it’s your property again. We won’t get here tomorrow night until about 9, so probably Saturday?”
The reservations line starts to ring and Royce says, “That’s fine. Excuse me?”
Taking my exit cue, I head out and turn toward the courthouse. I retrace my route from the morning and come into the parking lot just as Clarice comes through the back door.
“Perfect timing. Ready?” I have my keys out and glance at the windshield. There’s a flyer or something stuck under the wiper blade.
“God, you can’t get away from that sales crap anywhere,” Clarice says then notices my expression. What I’ve pulled off isn’t a sales flyer. It’s another threat. Computer printed, it’s a copy of the one faxed to me. “Keep your God-damned nose, and your God-damned nosy reporter, out of our business or you’ll be sorry!”
“Aaacckk,” says Clarice, for once at a loss. She turns to hustle back to Dodson’s office and I’m not far behind her. An anonymous fax is one thing, but this is personal. Somebody knows where I am. Somebody knows what car I drive.
With the flyer in Dodson’s hands and time enough to calm down and get the story coherently told, we’re ready to go again. It isn’t such a big mystery. Whoever is writing these, knows who I am. My name is on the paper’s opinion page every day. A notorious death close to Monroe is probably going to pull me up here. I drive a red Miata, which might as well have a banner, “Here I Am.”
It’s unsettling, but Dodson assures us that he’ll try to lift prints, for what good that will do, check if anyone was seen arou
nd my car during the day and alert the Monroe cops before we get home.
We’re shaky as we head down to the valley, but finally Clarice pulls out her notebook and flips through the pages.
“Jim gave me a little more background, but nothing I can use yet,” she says. “It turns out there was a glass that had Stewart’s fingerprints on it and the remains of Scotch in it.”
“Where was that?” I whip my head around and give her a look. “I was in his rooms and in the bar, talking to Harmony. I didn’t see anything.”
“I think they found it on the bar. They actually took it to the crime lab. It does seem odd, though. Stewart lived at the hotel, he was a known alcoholic, why wouldn’t his fingerprints be on a glass in the bar? They don’t have any unidentified fingerprints, though. Stewart’s, Royce’s, Harmony’s and two of his work crew’s are all over the place. In the bar, up and down the staircases, in the attics.
“It’s a nasty feeling.....,” she trails off.
I look over at the blonde who is idly staring out the window, watching the scrub-covered foothills give way to pasture with an occasional oak tree shading a few free-range cows.
“What?” Clarice jerks around, feeling my look.
“What’s up? I never like your nasty feelings,” I say.
Clarice pushes her sunglasses up to her forehead and rubs the bridge of her nose. “Either Stewart was murdered or he fell out of that window. Jim has all but stated it was murder. If so, by who? And why? Royce? Harmony? One of the workers? I just can’t imagine what possible reason any of them would have. Unless......”
“Unless Royce was tired of supporting him,” I finish.
“But that doesn’t make any sense. Royce could have just kicked him out,” Clarice says. “And Harmony, jeez, there couldn’t be any reason for that. If it is murder, it’s the third one connected to the hotel. Maybe he knew something about the others?””
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