Desert Winter (9 page)

And everyone broke into applause.

I should never have doubted Glenn. Atticus had delivered an enchanting portrait, lovingly rendered, easily recognizable as the actress performing the role. What's more, Atticus had tuned in to the precise aesthetic of the setting, costumes, and period of the production. As far as I was concerned, his posturing and fanfare were now fully justified.

“You like?” he asked, begging for more adulation.

“I
love
it, Atticus. Bravo. And thank you.”

To the continued applause of cast and crew, he swirled his hand in a sort of farewell salute, turned, and left the stage.

“Well, now,” I told everyone, “we're off to an auspicious start. This production is pulling together beautifully, and I'm proud of all of you. But our work today has only begun; we've got a long rehearsal ahead of us. Let's try to remember everything we've learned, then take it to the next level. I'll have notes, as usual, afterward. Places, please.”

The cast and crew scattered backstage.

“Tony,” I told the stage manager, “give me one minute, then cue the music and start the show.”

I settled at my director's table near the middle row of seats, and Glenn slid in next to me, as was his habit. Kiki and Lance Caldwell settled elsewhere in the auditorium to watch, as did the set designer and some of the crew. I jogged my notes into a single pile, grabbed my reading glasses, uncapped a pen, and checked the time. When the music began, the houselights started their slow fade.

“Claire,” Glenn said softly, leaning close to me, “are you happy?”

I could honestly tell him, “I don't remember being happier. I can't thank you enough for making this possible.”

“My pleasure.” He meant it. After a moment's hesitation, he added, “I'm not sure how to broach this, but I couldn't help wondering: Have you warmed at all to the possibility of a future … for us?”

I patted his hand. “Forgive me, Glenn, but the time's not right for that discussion. My mind is elsewhere.”

“I understand. Of course, dear.”

As the houselights went black, I sighed. Everything was perfect.

All that was lacking was Stewart Chaffee's clock.

6

Our Sunday rehearsal was an
unqualified success, so Monday found me in an upbeat mood, almost celebratory. Though my chickens were not yet hatched, I felt no qualms about counting them.

Tanner had a class on campus that morning, leaving early, but I stayed at home, following up with a few phone calls to special guests—critics—who I hoped would attend that Friday night's opening of
Laura.
I had a quiet lunch, snacking on whatever I could find. Then, sometime after twelve-thirty, Tanner called on his cell phone to say that he and Thad Quatrain were on their way to pick me up. We had a clock to fetch.

A few minutes later, I was waiting on the street in front of Villa Paseo when the spotless black Jeep pulled up the block and stopped at the curb. Thad jumped in back, hoisting himself under the roll bar, so I could take the front seat. With a few cheery greetings, we were off, heading up valley toward Rancho Mirage. The noontide sun had crept as high as it would get in the December sky, warming my face in the cool breeze. Overnight, I noticed, the snow on Mount San Jacinto had spread lower from its peak, but down here on the desert floor, the temperature felt like a perfect seventy-two.

In Rancho Mirage, I directed Tanner to turn off the highway. We drove north into the valley, past the Annenbergs' pink, guarded walls, slowing as we approached Stewart Chaffee's gate. “Try the intercom,” I said. Tanner braked the Jeep and pressed the button.

We waited for a response, but after a full minute we had heard nothing but birdsong from the riotous flowering foliage that covered the walls at the entrance. I checked my watch; it was just past one. Drumming my fingers on the top edge of the door, I said, “Stewart told Grant that if no one answered the intercom, we could use a code to get in.” I gave Tanner the four digits that signified Stewart's birth eighty-two years earlier.

Tanner punched in the code, and instantly, the gate rolled open, just as it had done for Grant on the previous morning. “We're in,” said Tanner, as if launching a commando mission, throwing the Jeep into gear and lurching past the gate onto the grounds of the estate.

Driving to the house, I half expected Pea to bolt from the front door, waving his arms as he had done yesterday. Though I'd found him in general to be an annoying little man, I now would have welcomed any sort of greeting, even one of Pea's bossy performances as the household's put-upon majordomo. But when we had rolled to a stop at the entrance to the house, all was quiet—the birds seemed to pause in their chatter—so I stepped down from the Jeep, walked to the door, and rang the bell, whose faint chime sounded from far within.

The door was hung with an oversize wreath of pine sprigs flocked the hue of champagne, like the tree I'd seen in the living room on Saturday. Dangling from the wreath were wide velvet ribbons, not red, but burgundy, almost brown, looking more somber than merry. While I waited, a wave of anxiety washed over me, the same nebulous sense of dread I had felt yesterday when Grant had driven me here. Though yesterday's foreboding had been proven irrational and groundless, today's uneasiness sprang from a pragmatic, specific worry that grew more real by the second. What if no one was home? What if Stewart had forgotten, or reconsidered, his promise to give me the clock?

“What'll we do?” asked Tanner. The idling Jeep sputtered with an uncertainty that mirrored my own.

Mustering a show of determination, I answered, “Let's go around back. That's probably where we'll load up.” And I hopped into the Jeep, directing Tanner around the house, away from the street, toward the garage.

“Wow,” said Thad from behind me, “a Rolls.” The garage door was wide-open, with the vintage car parked in the same space where it had been the day before. The white Cadillac was gone, however, and there were no other cars, such as yesterday's Korean compact, outside in the parking court.

I suggested, “Maybe they left the clock in the garage for us.”

Tanner asked, “It's valuable, isn't it? Do you think they'd leave it out like that?”

I shrugged. “The grounds are gated.”

“True.” Tanner cut the engine.

We all got out of the Jeep, walked toward the cluttered garage, and snooped. Thad's investigation was limited to the Rolls-Royce—not many in Wisconsin, I reasoned. But I could tell at a glance that the distinctive Austrian clock was not there. I told the others, “I'll try the kitchen door.”

I left the garage, stepping to the nearby back entrance to the house. Standing in the shade of a date palm, I pressed the doorbell, hearing it chime within. Again, I felt a ripple of apprehension pass through me as I waited. Again, there was no answer. So I gave a yoo-hoo. Still nothing. I called, “Anyone home?”

Tanner and Thad stood watching from the garage, wondering, I'm sure, if I had dragged them on a wild-goose chase.

I peered through the door's window, but it was partially curtained, and the glare of sunshine made it impossible to see inside. Plucking up my resolve, I reached for the knob and gave it a turn.

But it was locked.

“Miss Gray?” said Thad. “There's another door in here.” He pointed past the Rolls to a door in the garage wall common to the house.

I had assumed since yesterday that the opulent old car belonged to Stewart, so it was reasonable to conclude that Stewart was at home. Perhaps he was napping. If so, I didn't like the idea of waking an elderly, ailing man, but still, I was expected. This had all been prearranged. It was my third visit, and I did not intend to leave without that clock. Eyeing the door discovered by Thad, I figured, “Worth a try.”

So I entered the garage again, stepped between Thad and Tanner, and approached the door. There was no bell, no window. I knocked.

Doing so, I found that the door had not been tightly closed; it inched open at my touch. I yoo-hooed through the crack, calling, “Stewart? Pea? Bonnie? Is anyone there?”

Hearing no answer, hearing nothing at all, I opened the door wider, poking my head inside.

I gasped, losing my breath for a moment. Then I swung the door wide and rushed inside. I heard Tanner's and Thad's footfalls as they bounded through the door from the garage, stopping behind me. But my eyes were fixed on what I saw ahead.

There on the kitchen floor lay Stewart Chaffee, crushed beneath the refrigerator, which had toppled onto him, covering his lower torso. The scene was a grisly mess, with Stewart pinned in the mangled metal frame of his wheelchair. The refrigerator was still running, its condenser humming, its door flung open. Foodstuffs were scattered everywhere, including a large bowlful of pink fluff, which had oozed across Stewart's chest and spread to the floor. His head was shmooshed against the black-and-white pony skin of his saddlebag. From his mouth, blood had streamed and begun to coagulate, puddling on the floor with melba sauce, forming a horrific red-and-pink swirl with his favorite treat. Strewn about the tile floor, in addition to the dishes, bowls, and bottles that had been dumped there, was the collection of cocktail shakers that I'd seen displayed atop the refrigerator. Stylized chrome penguins, zeppelins, barbells, and fireplugs now littered the farthest corners of the room, where they had bounced and clanged.

Absorbing it all, I was struck speechless. We all were.

Thad broke the silence—“We've got to
help
him”—and he darted around me toward Stewart.

“No,”
I commanded. Then I issued the obligatory warning: “Don't touch
anything.
” Had I thought there was any chance of saving a life, I'd have rushed with Thad toward the body on the floor. But it was only too evident that Stewart's body was already a corpse.

Tanner said, “I'll call nine-one-one.” He unsnapped the cell phone from a holster on his belt.

“Wait,” I said. “Stewart is clearly beyond helping. We don't need an ambulance, but the police. May I?”

Tanner handed me his phone. “Do you remember the number?”

I eyed him askance, as if to ask, Are you kidding? Though it had been three months, I had no trouble recalling the number I tapped into the phone.

“Yes,” I said when someone answered, “may I speak to Detective Larry Knoll, please? Tell him it's Claire Gray. And it's an emergency.”

*   *   *

Half an hour later, just past one-thirty, the grounds of the estate were cluttered with various police vehicles from the Riverside County sheriff's department. The house itself, particularly the kitchen, was a beehive of commotion as investigators began trying to piece together the unknown circumstances that had led to the death of the king of Palm Springs decorators. Larry Knoll, the detective in charge, sat in the great room with Tanner, Thad, and me, taking notes while we recounted how we'd happened on the scene.

One of the uniformed deputies interrupted us, telling the plainclothes detective, “We've searched the entire premises. There's no one else here.”

I quickly added, “We'd reached that conclusion ourselves, or we wouldn't have entered the house.” I explained our arrangements to pick up the clock, which I needed for the set of our play.

Larry's eyes slid to the clock; the swing of its long, delicate pendulum marked a few passing seconds. He loosened his tie, asking me, “Any tickets left for opening night?”

“Long sold out.” I grinned. “Sure, Larry, I'll find you a pair of comps.”

“Is Grant going that night?” He was referring to his brother, Grant Knoll, my neighbor. Larry, at forty-six, was three years younger than Grant.

Shortly after I'd moved to the desert, the week before classes were to begin, I'd picked up a fellow faculty member at the airport one morning, driving him home. Entering the house together, we'd discovered his wife's dead body. Grant had then put me in touch with his brother, a sheriff's detective who would become involved with the investigation; eventually, so would I.

“Yes,” I told Larry, “Grant and Kane will be there on Friday. Would you and your wife care to sit with them?”

“If you can arrange it, great. But I'll be happy with anything available.”

“Consider it done.”

In the kitchen, cameras were flashing. Several deputies grunted and scuffled, trying to right the refrigerator.

Larry looked over his notebook, spread open on a coffee table. Tanner, Thad, and I sat across from him on a leather sofa. He asked me, “So the three of you entered from the garage and found the scene exactly as it was when I arrived, correct?”

“Correct.”

Tanner added, “Claire made sure we didn't touch anything.”

Through a wary smile, Larry said to me, “Most professional. You don't intend to make a habit of this, I hope.”

“Of course not.” Perish the thought.

With a heave, the deputies in the kitchen got the refrigerator standing upright. It slammed against the wall before resting on its feet.

“Detective Knoll?” asked Thad, wide-eyed. “Do you know what happened? I mean, did someone
murder
him?”

“Too early to tell. The victim may have simply had the misfortune of tipping the refrigerator over—onto himself.”

Tanner said, “An accident? That seems unlikely. Too fluky.” He and the detective were already well acquainted from my previous foray into crime solving.

Larry scratched behind an ear. “The circumstances of Chaffee's death aren't really so freakish as they seem. The AMA reports, for instance, that over a thousand teenagers have been killed by Coke machines.”

“Huh?” I asked skeptically. From the corner of my eye, I watched the awful spectacle of Stewart's body being disentangled from the crumpled wheelchair.