The Never-Open Desert Diner

by James Anderson

  “I shot him with his own gun. He was trying to rob me.”

  “Understandable. Did you think you missed him with the first three shots?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “And the drunk and disorderlies here?”

  “That was a long time ago,” I answered. “In my own defense I admit I was drunk. I wasn’t all that disorderly. It’s a fine distinction cops don’t always appreciate.”

  “What about the man you beat so badly he took his meals through a straw for six months? Was he trying to rob you?”

  “No,” I said. “I objected to his sense of humor. Like I said, I was younger then. I’d probably object differently these days. Maybe not. The point is, those charges never came to much. Simple assault. Time served. Ten days if I remember right.”

  “I’m curious,” he said. “Seems like an extreme reaction to what it says here was just a joke.”

  “Depends on the joke,” I said.

  Captain Dunphy pushed himself away from the door and walked quickly to the table. He leaned on his hands between us. “I’ll tell it just like Ben heard it. Then you decide, Mr. Welper. Then I’ll expect you to move on.

  “One night in a bar a forty-year-old roughneck learns that Ben here is an orphan, maybe half Indian and half Jewish. He says he heard a joke that reminded him of Ben. A boy goes home to his mother and father. His mother is Jewish and his father is African American, though that isn’t the word he used. The boy says he has a problem. He wants to buy a neighbor kid’s bicycle. The parents ask him what the problem is. The boy says since he’s half Jew and half black he can’t decide whether to Jew the kid down or just steal the motherfucker. The roughneck says to Ben, ‘Since you’re an Indian, what would you do, chief? Jew him down or just get drunk and forget about it?’ ”

  Welper stared at me. I imagined a window behind him.

  “What’s the matter, Mr. Welper?” Dunphy asked. “You’re not laughing. Neither did the judge, who, by the way, was Jewish. The charges were reduced. The judge made Ben promise to control his temper and his drinking. To my knowledge he’s made good on both.”

  Welper pushed himself away from the table. “Mr. Jones’s face tells a different story,” he said. “I need a word alone with you, Captain,” he said.

  When Welper had left the room, I said to Dunphy, “Walt Butterfield.”

  The captain nodded. “I know. Trooper Smith told me.” Keeping his voice low, he said, “I’m going out in the hall to have a word with Mr. Welper. When we come back in you both better have a change of attitude. I don’t like him or the way he operates. To answer your question, I’d say I’m here as much for you as him. If I were you, I wouldn’t count too much on the past. Mr. Welper doesn’t know God, but he has friends who do. Together they got the old man out of bed for this one.”

  I thought about Andy’s advice. I had to trust someone. Captain Dunphy wasn’t God, but for someone in my position he was close enough. I wouldn’t argue the point. “Why am I here?”

  “That’s a good question. Welper has a good answer. Or thinks he does. If he doesn’t tell you, I sure as hell will. I don’t give a shit. I’m forty-one days away from retirement. They can all kiss my Jack Mormon ass. I just hope you haven’t done anything stupid, Ben.” He left the room.

  A few minutes later they returned. Welper slid a glossy eight-by-ten photograph toward me. “You know that man?”

  “Yes,” I said. It was a photo of Josh Arrons. He was in a workshop of some kind. Several parts of cellos and violins were suspended from the wall behind him. I thought of Claire waiting for me and forced myself to perk up for Welper’s benefit. I hadn’t been the valedictorian of my high school class, but I tried to put the same tone of exuberant innocence into my answer. “He’s a reality television producer.”

  “That’s what he told you. I’m an insurance investigator. The truth is, he is working with me. Or was. My company insures the most valuable cello in the world. That cello is missing.”

  “Damn,” I said, ignoring the news that Josh wasn’t who he said he was. “What’s the most valuable cello in the world worth?”

  “You already know that, Mr. Jones. In the neighborhood of twenty million dollars.”

  “What makes you think I know anything about a twenty-million-dollar cello?”

  He shot me a self-satisfied smirk. He couldn’t wait to tell me how smart he was. “Not long after the cello disappeared—stolen, really—my company put up a website. Innocuous appearing. It was a long shot. You spent two minutes and thirty-six seconds on the Internet reading about that cello. Our IT people were tracing your computer through its IP address. There were a few other hits on the site. None for longer than a minute. But you, Mr. Jones, you rang all the bells. The woman who stole the cello took a flight from New York to Denver. She didn’t rent a car or take public transportation. Someone picked her up at the airport. The surveillance cameras at the airport lost her. Colorado borders Utah.”

  “The cameras lost a woman with a cello in the airport? You’d think a woman with a cello would have been easy to track.”

  “She didn’t have the cello with her. And she didn’t check it. I wish she had. Suppose you tell me why a high-school-educated truck driver, and occasional self-taught flute player, was on his employer’s computer researching rare cellos at five in the morning? A computer he uses maybe twice a year to check billing and weather? And why he lied when his boss asked him about it?”

  “I lied because I didn’t want to tell him I was reading up on cellos. If I have to explain that to you, you’re an idiot. You really think I might have something to do with your missing cello?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” he answered. “You might have possibly wandered across it. Have you?”

  “I might have,” I said. “There’s all kinds of shit lying around in the desert.”

  Welper glanced over to the captain, who told me to answer the question.

  “Sure,” I said, “I saw a cello. I don’t know if it’s the one you’re searching for. The one I saw was missing its price tag.”

  I did know. I knew Claire had to be the woman in the airport. I assumed Walt had been the one who picked her up in Denver. What I didn’t know was that the cello was worth twenty million dollars. Or if Walt knew she had the cello. Or even if he cared one way or the other. What I did know was that it didn’t make any difference to me. It did explain a little about why the husband’s priorities got derailed. I did know why she didn’t have the cello with her at the airport, not that it mattered much now. Some of the odd freight Walt had received must have been the cello. I couldn’t help smiling even as I realized Claire hadn’t been completely honest with me.

  Welper leaned across the table. “You’re smiling, Mr. Jones. That tells me you’re thinking when you should be talking. You don’t seem all that shocked to learn that the cello you saw is worth twenty million dollars.”

  “Twenty million doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “Why’s that? Are you a rich man, Mr. Jones?”

  “You know I’m not. It’s the other way around. The cash register in my head won’t ring up twenty million. It’s unreal. I can’t even imagine an amount like that. It has no more meaning to me than moon rocks. Now, if you’d said fifty grand, that would have shocked me. Twenty million for a piece of old wood?”

  Welper cringed. “Where did you see this old piece of wood?

  “Out in the desert.”

  “Exactly where out in the desert?”

  “A woman had it.”

  Welper pulled another photograph from the file. “Is this the woman?”

  Of course, it was. “That’s her,” I said, hoping he might forget that I’d been vague in my answer to his question about where I’d seen the cello. “What’s her name?”

  “Claire Tichnor. Exactly where and when did you see Mrs. Tichnor?”

  “Out on 117. Her car was broken down,” I lied. “My memory would be a lot clearer if you’d just come to me when you first sus
pected I had information.”

  I shrugged and tried to look like a helpless high-school-educated truck driver. It was a role I was born to play. “I didn’t care about the damn cello. I just thought if I ever saw her again I might impress her by knowing something about cellos. That’s why I was on the Internet at five in the morning. Jesus, what do I know about cellos?”

  “That’s what you thought, was it? Take a few minutes on the web and increase your odds of getting laid?” Welper laughed. “Maybe with one of your local barflies. You’d need a million years to have a chance with a woman like that.”

  I wanted to tell him how quickly a million years goes by in the desert. I kept my mouth shut.

  “But that’s what your little girlfriend thought, too—there had to be a woman.”

  There it was. My little girlfriend. Mentioning Ginny that way straightened my spine just as Welper expected it would. “Yeah,” I said, “my friend. Why else would I go to Walmart in the middle of the night looking for cello music?”

  “When did you see Mrs. Tichnor?”

  I answered as if he were asking about the first and only time I’d seen her. “I’m not sure. The day before I got on the computer. Whenever that was. You’d know better than I would.”

  “Where are Mrs. Tichnor and the cello now?”

  I shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. It’s a big damn desert.”

  “You’re holding back, Mr. Jones. That’s not a smart move. There’s more at stake than just a rare cello. A lot more.”

  “I think we’ve already established I’m not very smart. The question now is, how stupid am I? What could be more stupid than someone like me lying to someone like you about a twenty-million-dollar cello?”

  “I can think of two. Kidnapping. Maybe murder.”

  I shouted, “I don’t know anything about a kidnapping or murder!”

  Captain Dunphy didn’t waste any time getting to the table. “Neither do I,” he said. “That’s the first I’ve heard of it.” He demanded a chair and a notepad from one of the cameras. In the few seconds it took for the items to arrive, he towered over Welper, grim and silent.

  “Up till now we’ve been having technical difficulties with the tape.” He spoke to the camera. “I’ve been assured that it’s now functioning properly.”

  I understood. Until a minute ago Welper’s connections had kept my interrogation off the record. That had changed in a big way. The expression on Welper’s face told me he was aware of the change, and he wasn’t happy.

  I settled down. “I think maybe somebody ought to read me my rights,” I said. I was reasonably certain Claire couldn’t have had anything to do with a kidnapping or murder. The same for Walt. Of course there was the little matter of the corpse he’d kept in his bathroom. I began to wonder about Claire. About both of them. Maybe I was just the stupid truck driver everyone thought I was.

  Dunphy said, “You’re not under arrest. Yet. You are here voluntarily.” He waited, daring me to disagree. When I didn’t, he said, “But you’re correct, Mr. Jones. And I’ll start with Mr. Welper here. You have the right to remain—”

  Welper blustered. “You’re joking.”

  Dunphy continued until he was finished. “Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?”

  Welper nodded.

  “Say yes or no. Clearly.”

  Welper said, “Yes.” He waived his right to have an attorney present.

  Dunphy did the same for me, and he said to both of us, “From here on out, I will be asking the questions. I’ll start with you, Mr. Welper. A moment ago you suggested you had knowledge of a kidnapping and murder.”

  Welper got busy trying to backpedal. “It’s a possibility. I have no direct knowledge of either.” It wasn’t working.

  “Let’s start with everything of which you do have direct knowledge.”

  “We don’t have time…”

  Dunphy cut him off. “If you’d started out the right way, you wouldn’t feel so pressed for time. Trust me, Mr. Welper, we do have the time.”

  Welper whispered, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  It sounded like a warning to me. It must have sounded the same way to Dunphy. He responded that he was absolutely sure. He expressed his certainty in a voice that could have been recorded from the parking lot.

  Welper was still trying to act as if nothing had changed. Somewhere in his head he was still convinced he was running the show. “I don’t want the truck driver here.”

  Dunphy seemed to be thinking Welper had a good point. I pushed my chair clear of the table. I was okay with leaving, if only as far as the hallway. “Mr. Jones,” the captain said, “stays put. Remember, he’s here at your invitation. Just one of the many courtesies I was asked to extend. Those courtesies have expired, Mr. Welper.”

  I was content to be a spectator for the better part of an hour. I wasn’t particularly interested in Claire’s life before she arrived at Desert Home. I closed my eyes and did my best to send a message to Welper and Dunphy that I wasn’t interested. Several times I tried to imagine myself under the archway above Desert Home. I wanted the sun on my face and to see Claire on the porch, alone, looking up at me. I couldn’t manage it. I was listening to every word and getting an education I didn’t want about cellos and Claire’s past.

  The captain stopped Welper from time to time to scribble and ask follow-up questions, stating and restating what had been said, moving backward but never forward. Or so it seemed. He knew his job and exactly how to do it. Claire had pretty much told me the truth, which was a relief. For his part, Welper had been telling the truth as well, what little he had been willing to share before Dunphy took over. I only got a few surprises. None of them had anything to do with kidnapping and murder.

  When Claire was a senior in college she used all of the inheritance from her adoptive parents to buy an option, a first right of refusal, on a very rare cello, the same cello described on the website. Five hundred thousand dollars. At the time, it was owned by one of her college professors. He needed the money and didn’t want to sell the cello while he was alive. It had been in his family for generations. He was fond of Claire. The opportunity to buy the cello in the future was an expression of his admiration for her talent. He had considered Claire his most gifted student. Welper added, with a sick wink, that maybe what the professor, who was in his fifties, really admired was an altogether different set of gifts.

  Dunphy made a point of ignoring the comment.

  Upon the death of the professor, whenever that might be, Claire would have the right to match any bid when his estate put the cello up for auction. If Claire happened to predecease him, the option money, which was otherwise nonrefundable or unassignable to a third party, would be returned to her estate from the proceeds of the sale. The professor was a cagey old fellow. The cello could not be purchased by Claire and resold. At least not for twenty-five years. How Claire might raise the eventual sale price, which she must have been aware could be in the millions, was not known. At twenty-one, she probably hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  Three years ago the professor died, and the cello went to auction. Claire had been married for a long time. She had given up playing the cello to support her husband. Not long before the cello was to be auctioned, her husband acquired a girlfriend. Not just any girlfriend, a beautiful young Chinese national from Hong Kong who was a rising star as a violinist. She also had a doting and very wealthy father who had embraced capitalism long before China made it officially possible. Welper thought the appearance of a wealthy girlfriend months before the auction was more than a coincidence. Who had engineered the coincidence, the husband or the girlfriend, was difficult to know.

  A chance to purchase this particular cello would have brought out the opportunism in a lot of people—investors and collectors, as well as musicians. The relationship benefited everyone but Claire. Daddy, who came up with the millions to exercise the option, benefited most. Claire was told only that a group of foreign
investors had loaned them the money, in exchange for which the husband retained exclusive but restricted use of the cello for his lifetime. The investors retained the right to “showcase” the cello internationally for at least one month a year, with or without the husband. Claire signed off on the deal.

  As soon as the ink was dry on the sale, the husband filed for divorce. It was, in Welper’s words, a rocky divorce. It only got rockier when the judge ruled that while the “first right of refusal” was Claire’s alone, she would receive no monetary compensation for the husband’s use of the cello. In effect, the husband was awarded sole custody of their major asset, which was not an asset at all, just a simple right to access—a form of straw purchase that met, though just barely, the terms of the professor’s option. The husband’s attorney argued that possession of the cello was essential to Mr. Tichnor’s livelihood as a professional musician.

  Welper took a deep breath. “Maybe the worst part for the former Mrs. Tichnor wasn’t losing the cello. She quickly learned not just of the girlfriend, but of the father’s financial involvement. In effect, Mrs. Tichnor lost the cello, her husband, and her five hundred thousand, with the former husband as the beneficiary. The final insult came when the judge ordered Mrs. Tichnor to pay the husband spousal support for five years.”

  Dunphy asked, “That’s when the wife stole the cello?”

  “Yes and no,” Welper answered. “She played nice for a couple of months. Even made the first few spousal support payments. Then she attempted to kill the ex-husband. Poison. Or that was the initial assumption. I don’t think she planned to kill him. It was part of a plan to steal the cello. She met him at a midtown bar in the afternoon. He later said she just wanted to say good-bye and good luck. No hard feelings and so on, as if there were a chance in hell. Anyway, he agreed. An hour later he was rushed to the hospital. She even went with him, the concerned and still-loving ex-wife. Also part of the plan, I think. It wasn’t until two days later that the doctors told him he had been poisoned. Tough to prove. No charges were filed. Not yet.