by Sylvia Nobel
Arms folded behind my back, I wandered around the room studying several paintings of local landmarks, one being a stunning oil of the Praying Nun towering over Hidden Springs. Beneath it, on the top shelf of a cherry wood bookcase sat two porcelain angel figures with smiling cherub faces. Closer inspection confirmed my hunch. The tiny initials MC identified Myra Colton as the creator. Once again filled with admiration for the woman’s artistic talent, it reminded me that I needed to set aside some time either tonight or tomorrow to choose the best photo of Tally and Geronimo. On the second shelf were several framed pictures. One showed a smiling, much healthier-looking La Donna standing beside Riley. Damn, he’d been a handsome man. Another photo showed her standing next to a teenage girl in a school uniform. I turned when she re-entered the living room.
“Here we are,” she announced, setting a tray on the glass-topped coffee table. “Green tea is supposed to possess a lot of medicinal properties. I hope you like it.”
The plate of chocolate chip cookies interested me more, but I said, “Oh, yes. Thank you.”
I sat down on the couch and selected two cookies before she handed me the cup. She settled in a chair and sipped her tea while one of the cats rose, sniffed my snack, and then apparently disappointed, jumped to the floor and sauntered from the room.
“So, Miss O’Dell, since you work for the newspaper and are connected with the Talverson family I presume you already know quite a lot about what happened.” Her penetrating gaze held mine. “What makes you think that you’re going to be any more successful at finding the monster who did this than the bevy of reporters and the law enforcement people currently working on this case?”
“I’m not sure that I will be, but if you’ll permit me to ask some questions and take a look at the crime scene I’d like to give it a shot.” She looked dubious, so I added, “My specialty is investigative reporting. I’ve been successful at cracking several difficult cases in the past six months.”
“Indeed.” She placed her cup and saucer on the coffee table and sat back, looking pensive. After a moment’s silent reflection she said, “All right. When you leave here follow the walkway past the hotel entrance and take the right hand path. It will lead you to the natural springs. Riley’s body was found in the largest pool next to the bathhouse we’re having built. Be careful. There’s construction material everywhere.” Her voice sounded weary, resigned. “Now, what do you want to know?”
The fuzzy peach-colored cat that reminded me a little of Marmalade stood, stretched and decided to take up residence on my lap. I stroked the animal gently then opened my notepad. “I really don’t know that much about the judge’s personal life. Some background information would be helpful.”
“I would think the Talversons would be more qualified than me to give you that information.”
“I’m looking for more recent information. Say, the last five or six years.”
She drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. “All right. Riley and I met about seven years ago. I’m a flight attendant and he was on my Phoenix to Philadelphia turn. I’d been a widow for two years and…needless to say I was lonely and vulnerable. There was a mutual attraction and even though I sensed he was quite the ladies’ man, he seemed like a nice person. I hadn’t planned to get involved with him, not seriously. I knew he was seeing other women, but I couldn’t resist when he finally asked me out. Anyway, we dated on and off for almost four years. I should have left it at that.” Her eyes clouded with misery. “I can’t believe I was so gullible. I can’t believe he’d—”
A dissertation on their courtship wasn’t really the information I wanted. “But you married him anyway.”
She closed her eyes momentarily and when she opened them, her gaze held a sad, dreamy quality. “Did you ever meet him?”
“No.”
Languidly, she pointed over her shoulder to the photo of them together. “As you can see Riley was an extraordinarily handsome man and also a very charming one. He took his work seriously and was highly respected by everyone. Life was good…or so I thought.” She took another long swallow of tea. “Things started to go downhill when he found this place. What a disaster. The first time I saw it I thought he’d lost his mind. It was so terribly run down. There had been a fire in the old hotel, there was water damage and the place was riddled with termites, but he convinced me that finding a piece of property this size for the asking price was a real steal. He thought opening a B&B would be a great investment and also something we could do together after he retired. I suggested we tear that decrepit old building down and start over, but he wouldn’t hear of it.”
“Why not?”
Her lips curved in a wry smile. “Because he wanted it preserved and renovated. He was captivated with its one-hundred-and-twenty-five-year-old history, and he didn’t want to disturb the…resident ghost.”
11
A delicious shiver of expectation swept over me. “Really? Crumbling old places that are supposedly haunted have always intrigued me.”
She narrowed her gaze, apparently trying to determine if I was joking. “Yes, well, according to local legend the hotel is inhabited by the spirit of an eight-year- old boy whose mother rode off one day to meet her lover and never came back. The child waited and waited for her and it’s said that he finally died of typhoid fever. That was around 1890.”
“That’s a tragic story.”
“Whatever. Several guests claim they’ve seen the apparition near the stairwell leading to the third floor or sometimes roaming the hallways. Some have even claimed to have heard a child weeping.” She gave a noncommittal shrug. “I don’t believe in such things myself.”
Maybe she didn’t, but the subject sure fired up my interest. Since childhood I’d been fascinated with the notion that some places were haunted with the spirits of some unfortunate souls destined to spend eternity stranded in some in-between world from whence they could neither live again nor embrace the final rewards of heaven. On more than one occasion I’d scared the living daylights out of myself reading ghost stories alone late at night, and then there had been the unexplained phenomenon at my Aunt Beverly’s creepy old house in Ohio. “Tally told me that the judge was quite a mystery enthusiast. Owning a haunted hotel must have been right up his alley.”
“It was. He had high hopes that it would help attract people who thrive on that baloney, you know, for these mystery weekend retreats, but then…everything happened. Since then we’ve had nothing but cancellation after cancellation.” Her shoulders sagged with dejection. “Did Tally also tell you of Riley’s affinity for practical jokes?”
“Yes, he did.”
Her mouth compressed into a bitter smile. “He certainly had the last laugh on me. Several actually.”
“How so?”
She inclined her head towards the old hotel, partially visible from the living room window. “First off, he sweet-talked me into spending the bulk of my savings to renovate that dilapidated old place and make property improvements—” she paused suddenly. Wincing softly, she pressed two fingers to her temple then let her hand drop limply in her lap.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“My head is killing me. I’ll be right back.” She rose stiffly and moved to the kitchen where she downed pills from several of the prescription bottles before returning to her chair. She gathered the flannel shirt tightly around her thin frame. “I began not feeling well about a year ago,” she began in a halting tone, as if talking was suddenly too much effort, “and blamed my constant exhaustion on my flight schedule and the endless amount of work here. Something had to give so I finally went on medical leave. I had every test known to man before being diagnosed with fibromyalgia. As if that weren’t bad enough, about six months ago Riley came home one night sat me down and told me he wasn’t happy. I know it wasn’t easy for him because of my deteriorating health, but I thought we could work things out. The next thing I knew he served me with divorce papers.”
Having gone through a sim
ilar experience with Grant I couldn’t help but feel instant empathy with the woman. “Had you been experiencing marital problems?”
“Well…we had some disagreements over the years, what couple doesn’t? There’s no doubt that buying Hidden Springs put a strain on our relationship but I never dreamed…” her voice trailed off and she looked so wretched my heart went out to her.
I permitted a moment of healing silence before venturing, “I’m aware of his alleged relationship with Marissa Van Steenholm.”
“I can’t believe he’s…was involved with a woman only a few years older than…my daughter would have been.” Tears misted her eyes as she gestured towards the photo of the young girl. “Tara and my first husband were both killed by a drunk driver.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
For a minute she looked like she was going to lose it and then she inhaled a shuddery breath. “God has given me a heavy burden to shoulder. Widowed twice, losing my beautiful daughter and now my health.” She laid her head back and stared at the ceiling for a time before making eye contact with me again. “And then we come to the last laugh. Riley told me that he had collected a substantial number of gold coins over the years and had them stored in a safe deposit box. I found the key several days after his body was found and since I was still legally his wife…his widow, I went to the bank. Imagine my shock to find the box empty. Considering the fact that I may not be able to return to work having a nest egg to rely on would have saved me a lot of grief.”
“What do you think happened to them?”
Resentment blazed in her eyes. “For all I know he may have given her a key. If he did, don’t you think it provides the perfect motive for a murder? Of course she denies taking them. So what am I to think? I suppose Riley could have sold them and not told me but then…what happened to the money?” She swallowed the remaining tea and set the cup down with a bang. “You want to hear the most ironic thing of all?”
I munched on the second cookie. “Sure.”
“I have no choice but to rely on that little tramp to help me run this place. The volume of work is simply overwhelming. Some days I’m in too much pain to do much of anything and to make matters worse she’s been sick the past couple of weeks. We make quite an odd pair.”
“What about your housekeeper, Bernita Morales?”
“She’s a jewel but she’s got her hands full with laundry and cleaning all four residences. I can’t ask her to take on the cooking, the reservations, bookkeeping and everything else involved. Not even half of the renovations are completed. I owe everybody in town and if I don’t finish what Riley and I started I’ll never be able to build up the clientele enough to make this place pay off or even sell it.” She rose and paced the room. “It’s so unfair. I’m literally marooned here because of that damn stipulation in his will. I own the property and guesthouses, but Riley deeded the hotel to Marissa and I don’t have enough money to buy her out. Isn’t that rich?”
“Definitely…not cool.”
“To say the least.” Her gaze hardened noticeably. “Don’t presume that I don’t know what people are thinking. Tell me, is that what you’re thinking, Miss O’Dell?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come on. I wasn’t born yesterday. The wronged wife would be the prime suspect in his murder, am I right?”
I’m not sure how she expected me to respond, but I kept my face expressionless because the thought had already crossed my mind. “I suppose that’s one theory.”
“Well, think about it,” she snapped impatiently. “I barely have enough energy to get out of bed in the morning let alone—”
“Any thoughts on who may have done it?”
“Only a couple of hundred people if you count the number of criminals who stood before him in his courtroom, not to mention the extended families of all those lowlifes he sentenced to prison over the past fifteen years. I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Did he ever talk about any specific threats made against him regarding past cases?”
A slight shrug. “He’d told me there’d been verbal threats, you know the usual, ‘I’ll get even with you’ or something else unmentionable and I vaguely remember something about someone stalking him for a couple of weeks, but that was years ago. He said it came with the territory.”
“But nothing current?”
“If there was, he didn’t communicate it to me.”
“How about his personal effects? Did you find anything that might provide a clue?”
“Detectives and forensics people have gone over every inch of this place. To be honest, I haven’t had the heart or energy to go through all his belongings yet. As I said, we haven’t been living together for over four months. There’s still a lot of stuff remaining at the condo in Scottsdale. I don’t know what Marissa has done with his things that were in the room we shared over at the hotel.”
“I see. So…what about his frame of mind? In the past month or so, did he appear to be disturbed about anything? Distracted? Withdrawn?”
“How would I know? Why don’t you ask her?”
I planned to. And I also wanted to verify the allegation that La Donna and the judge had bitterly fought the night before his disappearance. “What about someone he’d met recently, like one of the guests here?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” She moved to the window and stood there looking out in extended silence before turning back to me. “Even though I despise what Riley did to me, I wouldn’t wish for anyone to die in such a horrible manner.”
“Are you planning to attend his funeral?”
She rubbed her arms as if she were suddenly cold. “I don’t know. It depends on how I’m feeling. I may just send flowers.” She searched my face for signs of disapproval. “I know that may seem crass, but I don’t want to go if Marissa is going to be there. I think it would be a very awkward and taxing situation for me.”
“Is she taking care of the arrangements?”
“No, his sister Charlotte is. She still lives in Prescott. That’s where his family was from originally, you know.”
“Yes, I knew that. Well, I’m going to be there with the Talverson family and I’ll be covering it for my paper. My major focus right now is to concentrate on this case so if you think of anything else that might be helpful would you please call me?”
She fell silent, her eyes glinting with shrewd speculation. “I’m going to show you something.” She left the room and returned carrying a white envelope, which she handed to me in silence. Puzzled, I opened the flap and pulled out two sheets of white paper. Printed in neat block lettering on the first one was: DEAREST LA DONNA, TO ERR IS HUMAN TO FORGIVE DIVINE. The second sheet read: LET YOUR HOOK ALWAYS CAST. IN THE POOL WHERE YOU LEAST EXPECT IT, WILL BE FISH. –OVID I looked up at her intrigued, my pulse quickening.
“I assume these are from Riley.”
“It’s his printing style.”
“Any idea what these mean?”
“The first one sounds like a half-assed apology for his reprehensible behavior, the second, I haven’t the foggiest. They could have come from one of the many volumes in his library.”
“Where did you find these quotes?”
“They were delivered this morning.” She handed me a cream-colored envelope with the firm name MILLS, DAVIS AND PAYNE on the upper left hand corner. “Richard Mills was his attorney.”
I unfolded a letter explaining that he’d been given instructions to mail the enclosed message to La Donna in the event of Riley’s death. I looked up, my frown meeting her expression of perplexity. “Well, this is…certainly thought-provoking. There has to be some good reason that Riley laid out such specific instructions with his attorney.”
“Yes, well I won’t pretend to know what he meant by sending it to me.” Her eyelids drooped. “I’m sorry,” she said suddenly. “I have to lie down now.”
“I understand. Thank you for your time.” I rose and headed towards the door.
“Please make sure you close the door securely,” she called after me in a tired voice. “I don’t want my cats to get outside.”
“Will do.” Pulling the door closed behind me, I wasn’t quite sure what to think about her or the significance of the peculiar messages from beyond the grave. In addition I questioned the sincerity of her vehement denial of any involvement in Riley Gibbons’s death. The ailing, victimized widow had more than enough reason to dispatch her philandering husband. And even if she didn’t have the wherewithal to do it herself, it wasn’t out of the question that she could have hired someone to do it for her. One could almost understand why she might shoot him in a fit of jealous rage, but I still could not fathom why she would go to the extra trouble of slicing off the man’s head.
I returned to my car, dropped the notepad on the seat and reached for my windbreaker. The waning afternoon sunlight cast a pleasing buttery glow over the landscape, but provided little warmth against the incessant wind as I followed the walkway towards the old hotel. I was tempted to stop and interview the Van Steenholm woman, but there was a finite amount of daylight remaining to view the crime scene. Passing by the old hotel, I noted the piles of new boards, drywall, cans of paint and tools, but there were no signs or sounds of anyone working. The sandy path wound its way through well-tended rock gardens sprinkled with cacti, wildflowers and native succulent plants. But the further I walked the more the path narrowed and the foliage became jungle-like, creating a cloistered effect that even muted the birdcalls. Suddenly, I felt isolated. Try as I might, I could not banish the visual of someone hacking away at Judge Gibbons’s neck in this secluded hideaway. I shook off a chill of unease as the oncoming clouds echoed with the distant rumble of thunder.