Edited for Death (16 page)

But if Stewart was murdered, I’m sure his delve into the past, particularly his uncle’s past, holds a key to his death. Or maybe I’m letting Clarice’s conspiracy theories get to me. When Phil and I come back for the weekend, I’m bringing some latex gloves. I’m going to spend Saturday digging through Stewart’s papers and documents—the ones in his room and the attics.

A shaft of sunlight filled with dust from the yellowing journals catches my eye and I suddenly wonder at the time. Clarice and I are meeting the Sheriff at 10:30 for a private briefing. I close the door to the suite behind me and check my watch as I run down the stairs through the kitchen and into lobby.

“It’s almost 10:30, Amy, where have your been?” Clarice asks as I skitter to a stop in the foyer. She’s looking nervous. “I found the cell phone number for the guy who found Stewart’s body and talked to him. I was about to go over to the Sheriff’s office without you.”

“I was talking with Royce then went up to look at Stewart’s living area,” I say. “Way, way too much information. I’ll try to make some sense of it when Phil and I come up over the weekend.” OK, I’ve just told two people I have a weekend assignation. “Let’s go.”

The street is back to normal when we head to the sheriff’s office. A knot of tourists are gathering with the air of distraction that a group has before someone takes charge and herds them toward a destination. A local mom is unloading a toddler and an older child from an SUV with a running commentary. “No, you can’t take Bear. Andy, just pick up your shoes. Lift up your arm so I can get this off. Andy, put your shoes on!”

Parallel parking spots on the street are full and two cars are turning left, heading toward the back of the hotel. I think it’s a good sign that business is as usual. Tragedy is a magnet for some but the faster Marshalltown can get answers to Stewart’s death and back to normal, the better off the town will be.

The front of the courthouse is empty now. Crowds, TV satellite trucks, cables, have all gone home and the chairs and tables returned to their owners. Coming into the cool foyer, I feel a pang for what may have been lost. This is a quiet town that came of age in the Gold Rush and managed to stay alive for the intervening 150 years, but it’s fragile. The mines played out more than 100 years ago. The freeways and interstates sapped traffic from Highway 49. Marshalltown depended on its being the county seat of government, on a few small farms and ranches, and on tourism for its livelihood. Too many people coming for a gruesome look, or too few because of the death, could topple the delicate economic balance for the rest of the summer.

“I don’t know about you two, but it’s been one long morning. Hell, it’s been a long 24 hours,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “This just isn’t the kind of thing we’re well equipped to deal with.”

I start to say something just as Clarice says, “Well, was he murdered?”

Dodson jumps a bit at her directness and takes a couple of seconds before he says, “Well, there are indications, yes.”

“Ahhh,” Clarice leans forward getting ready. “What are the indications? When will you make it public? Do you have a suspect or person of interest?”

When Clarice is off and running, I know better than to interrupt, so I sit back and start jotting in the notebook I pull out.

“As I said at the press conference, we still haven’t gotten back most of the information from the autopsy,” Dodson says in his strictly-business voice. “The official cause of death is blunt force trauma. Basically, hitting the street killed him. What we’ve found most interesting is the attic and the window. We still have some people from the state crime lab over at the hotel...” he tapers off, picks up a stack of papers, taps them straight and puts them back on his desk. A delaying tactic or a cover-up?

“I noticed that the attic was still taped off when I was talking with Royce this morning,” I say, letting him know I have sources, too. “How much longer will you be there?”

“Boy, you two are a tag team,” Dodson says wryly. “I’m not getting words in edgewise, upside down or backwards. Let me finish, then questions, OK?”

Clarice purses her lips and glances over at me. Dodson’s usually more tolerant of our cross-questions and impatience.

“As you probably know, the maintenance and cleaning over at the hotel has been spotty for the last few years, or decades, to say the least. The attics have a lot of dust laid over all the stuff stored there.

“Stewart, and probably Royce as well, have been in and out of the attics for the past few years. Royce and his contractor, Burt Harmony, have been up there a lot checking on the stability of the ceilings and the state of the roof. I know they’re particularly careful about the chimneys and the flashings, both for water coming down and sparks going up. One of the selling points for the hotel is that a lot of the rooms have fireplaces.

“There are footprints and drag marks all over. At least three different foot prints are around the chimneys. We’re checking those, but we assume that at least Royce, Burt and either Stewart or Burt’s foreman have been there. Then there are drag marks where the trunks and boxes have been moved or shoved out of the way. The layers of dust are different thicknesses, so we know some things have been moved recently and some are in their original sites.

“Also, there are places where something, some type of fabric or sheeting, has been laid down and something has been put on it. It could have been some fabric from one of the trunks, but one of the marks looks like it was a harder fabric, maybe a plastic sheet.

“What we don’t know is if anything was taken out of the attics. There’s just so much stuff there and no one has really done any inventory. Some of the trunks and boxes are labeled. From the penmanship and ink, some were labeled and stored before the turn of the century. Uh, that’s the turn of the 20
^th
century I’m talking about.”

Clarice is fiddling with her pen, a sure sign that she’s out of patience with Dodson’s recital, so I say “But none of that had anything to do with Stewart’s death, right?”

“We don’t know. We’re checking everything out and as soon as we get confirmation on some of the footprints, we can begin eliminating. This is background and completely off the record...” he clears his throat.

Both Clarice and I stop writing.

“There are interesting marks in the dust under the window that Stewart fell from. It looks as though there was a scuffle or pushing match. The marks are too blurred to get a good print for a match, but at least two people were sort of wrestling in front of the window.

“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.

“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.