Authors: Michele Drier
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 boxes 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 around 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?””
“We don’t have enough information,” I say with a sigh. “Jim has been careful to give us some good background, but I’m sure he’s got more than he’s telling us. There could be someone else, someone who’s not connected, or connected in a way we’ve never thought of, who was there. And that someone could have worn gloves, for heavens sake. The scuffle marks in front of the window won’t give enough information to even trace a shoe print and those damned attics are so dusty that everybody who’s been in there over the past couple of months has left prints, all on top of one another.”
Both of us are silent. For Clarice, this is the best part of the chase; trying to second-guess the police and crime lab people and then getting to write a well-read story about it. Even though she can’t use any of her own thoughts or opinions, they give her a framework for asking questions.
For me, though, this is beginning to take up a lot of time. It’s interesting, it’s a puzzle, it’s affecting people I know, like and respect. It’s a string of very loose ends that I want to crochet into a neat doily.
It can be wonderful stuff for my book. I thought of it as a lark, a somewhat quick rehash of well-documented information about the Senator’s public life mixed with historical background on his family. I was planning a more in-depth examination of how his family fit into and shaped the history of a small California town. Now I have access to all of the historical documentation I could possibly use, and a mystery as well. There was something going on in Marshalltown and with the town’s most famous son. This book could actually make some money. I feel a little like a carrion crow, but I’m going to continue.
But I have a lot of other ends vying for my attention, none the least of which is a daily newspaper. Clarice is back at her computer by 4 and starts writing while I catch up with the other assignments I’ve made.
The mega-church zoning is on the City Council agenda for tonight and the reporter has pre-written much of the story. I approve the story and send a note to the news editor who will add how the Council’s vote went.
Clarice’s follow-up story is ready by deadline and she’s beginning to rough out the weekend feature piece when I turn my office lights out to go home.
“Hey, don’t stay too late,” I say. “You’re on overtime now and you know I’ll catch hell from Max and Calvin.”
“I know,” Clarice pulls her head up from her notebook where she’s translating scribbled notes onto the computer screen and grimaces. “We aren’t the Marshalltown paper. But I do think this is a big story.”
It has been a long day. I swing by the grocery store and pick up a deli salad for dinner. I feel my usual twinge of guilt as Mac bounds up to greet me at the door, wiggling from happiness and the need to go outside.
“OK, OK, let’s put you out in the back, then we’re doing a short walk, sweetie. “
I rub his ears and give him a hug as I open the French doors. “I’m sorry that I always have to cut your walk time and play time short. One of these days...”
I’m glad Mac doesn’t understand. I’ve promised several year’s worth of “one of these days” but am pretty sure I’ll never be able to fulfill the promise, just like my promise to get him a boy when I win the lottery. After a change of clothes and a walk, Mac and I settle down to our dinners, Mac in the laundry room and me in front of CNN Headline News.