Edited for Death (15 page)

“Today the alley is used by locals as a short cut between streets and for deliveries to the hotel. On any given day, probably not more than four or five cars use Mine Run. . One block up Placer from Main Street is one of the most used municipal parking lots, so Placer also sees a tremendous tourist traffic, both vehicle and foot.

“The 911 call about the body was placed by a tourist, a man from San Carlos who had stopped in Marshalltown for a late breakfast on the way to a Yosemite vacation. He parked his car in the lot and was heading down to the hotel’s restaurant. It was getting warm and he thought that there might be a back way into the restaurant off of Mine Run, so he turned into the alley. He noticed what looked like a pile of clothes, or possibly a person sleeping, about 20 feet up the alley. As he got closer, he realized that there was blood splattered and that the body was lying ‘really funny...his legs didn’t look right’.

“We had responders at the scene in less than five minutes. By 11 a.m. we determined that the body was that of Stewart Calvert, the cousin of the hotel’s owner, Royce Calvert, and the nephew of the late Sen. Robert Calvert. It looked as though he had fallen from one of the attic garret windows on the fourth floor.”

“We know he fell. Dr. Jessup will give you the preliminary report in a minute. The person who found him has continued with his family to Yosemite. We’ve called in the state crime scene investigation team from Sacramento because we don’t know yet why he fell. The hotel’s attics are still off-limits because the team hasn’t completed all the investigation

“Now I’ll turn this over to Dr. Jessup,” he says. He’s read us the press release poker-faced with a dead-pan delivery.

The woman in the blue scrubs stands and takes the microphone.

“Good morning, I’m Dr. Emily Jessup. I’m the Madison County Medical Examiner. Stewart Calvert died as the result of trauma suffered when he fell approximately 53 feet from a window of the Marshalltown Hotel. He had multiple broken bones, a massive frontal skull fracture, collapsed lungs and fatal internal injuries. His heart was badly bruised, his spleen was ruptured. Many of the injuries were severe enough to have caused death alone; together, it was almost instantaneous. He lost consciousness immediately and was dead within two minutes. I don’t have an exact time of death, but he had been dead for approximately 90 minutes when he was found.” Her recital would make a medical professor proud.

“Does that mean he fell or whatever at 8:45 in the morning? Who was around then?” The voice belongs to one of the reporters from an affiliate television station in Sacramento. I recognize her as younger woman trying to work her way up at the station, or be wooed away to a larger market. She and Clarice have had a couple of mild scenes before, and Clarice refers to her as “that sprayhead,” when she thinks no one is listening.

“I gave an approximate 45 minute window,” says Dr. Jessup, unruffled by the brashness. “I’ve told Sheriff Dodson that the incident could have happened anytime between 8:30 and 9:15 a.m.

“There was so much trauma on the body that we haven’t found any indication that there was another person involved. We don’t find any defensive scrapes or bruises. We have sent samples out to toxicology at the state lab. Those test results won’t be available for at least 10 days.”

“Well, that wasn’t all that helpful,” Clarice mutters as Dr. Jessup sits down again. “He died because he hit the ground. Duh....who wouldn’t?”

I reach into my purse to stash my notebook and pull out my sunglasses.

“OK, Clarice, let’s get out of here before the TV guys run us over trying to get their remotes filed.”

The television reporters have each staked out as picturesque an area as they can find in front of the courthouse without catching someone else in their frames. They’re beginning to check hair and makeup and run sound levels before going live for the 9 a.m. station break news.

I tug Clarice’s arm and we head toward the Marshalltown Hotel.

“The TV crews will have gotten all their visuals shot earlier so we should have the hotel to ourselves.” I say, glad to be away from the mob.

As we walk from the courthouse, the press conference noise fades and the usual small sounds of a summer morning take over. There’s a sprinkler running in the library flowerbeds, shouts and splashes from the town’s swimming pool and a truck shifts into a low gear as it crests the Main Street hill.

Inside, we’re enveloped in the cool from the hotel’s new central air conditioning. The lobby’s empty, but sounds of cutlery and dishes rattling come from the door to the kitchen.

I stick my head into the bar area. “Royce? Is anybody here?”

The bar has had more renovation since last time. New cocktail tables and chairs space around the room, stools line the length of the bar. Mirror-back glass shelving runs across the end of the bar, but the heavy plastic drop cloth still covers about half the back wall.

“He’s back in the house kitchen.” A man comes through the swinging doors between the bar and the dining room. “Oh, hi. Aren’t you the one from the Monroe paper? You’re Hobbson...?”

“Hobbes, Amy Hobbes.” I start talking to cover my unease. Who is this guy and why does he know me? “I was hoping to talk to Royce. It’s fairly quiet here, now. How’s he holding up? Is everything getting back to normal, or as normal as it could be?” I’ve figured out this must be Burt Harmony, the one doing the renovation.

“I guess it’s going along.” The contractor scrubs a hand over his eyes. “It was a pretty big shock and yesterday everybody was in a fog. We all thought he was getting better, you know, laying off the sauce. He’d found some big historical thing up in one of the attics and was more jazzed about it than I’d ever seen him.”

My nose wrinkles. “He wasn’t drinking?”

“Well, we
thought
he wasn’t, but he had us all fooled. He must have been blotto to fall out the window at 8 or 9 or whatever in the morning,” Harmony’s eyes flash along the bar.

I’m disappointed, too. Stewart Calvert had a skinful of demons inside him, but it seemed as though he was finding some peace with the past in researching and writing a family history. His fears and inadequacies were just too much and he tried to keep them at bay through alcohol.

“Boy, we better get more than this,” Clarice says. “So far, we have enough for a short second day follow, but that feature package....,” she trails off.

“I know, let’s go find Royce,” I say. “I just talked with Burt Harmony, the contractor. He said the staff now thinks Stewart was drinking again.”

“Being drunk that early in the morning could lead to someone falling out of a window, all right,” Clarice sniggers.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Royce is at the kitchen table, staring into the coffee cup in front of him.

“Good morning. Do you mind if I come in?” I can be brusque with Harmony but Royce will need some coddling.

The family’s living areas of the hotel are at the back of the building. With the family kitchen separate from the restaurant kitchen only by a partition, this early in the morning there’s clatter and conversation as the prep crew gets ready for lunch. The hotel closed day because of Stewart’s death, but Royce wants normal back as quickly as possible. Money is tight and he can’t pass up any tourist trade during the summer.

He looks up as I speak and I’m not sure what his glance is saying. He’s upset. I doubt if he’d slept much last night. He’s a little gray and drawn, but overall seems calm.

“No, come on in,” he says, waving me to a chair opposite him at the scrubbed, wooden table. “Would you like some coffee? There’s plenty left.”

“Thanks,” I say, trying to keep my voice light. “Are you doing OK? This must be taking a big toll on you.”

“It’s hard,” Royce shrugs. “We were just cousins, but in a family as small as ours, we were closer than cousins usually are. We had a lot of differences, God knows. I was really disappointed in his drinking and angry that he didn’t, or wouldn’t, or couldn’t, live up to his potential. Did you know that he won awards for his historical research when he was first out of college? He just never seemed to get it together after his father died.” I can hear the discouragement.

“He’d been basically living off me for the past few years doing his family research. He said he had a publisher interested in the book about grandfather, but I never saw a contract or anything. The polite fiction of a possible advance for the book at least let us be civil with each another.”

I’m idly watching the back door leading out to Mine Run and I realize with a little jolt that someone sitting at the kitchen table might have looked out the windows over the sink and seen Stewart plummet to the pavement.

Royce has shifted his gaze to the windows so I ask, “Was anyone in the kitchen yesterday morning when Stewart died?”

“No. The prep crew had already brought the deliveries in. I was in the office, going over the reservations for this weekend. We actually have, or had—we’ll probably get some cancellations—15 rooms booked.”

At the thought of losing more business, Royce grimaces.

“I was thinking about coming up for Friday and Saturday night,” I say.

“I’d like to see if I can figure out what Stewart was working on, but mostly I have a friend in San Francisco who would like a weekend in the country. Do you have a room?”

Because Brandon’s bolt was so public in Monroe, I’m private about my private life. Announcing to an acquaintance that I’m planning to spend the weekend with someone is a little unsettling.

“Sure. Even if all the reservations show up, we have a few. There’s a front corner one above the bar. I call it a junior suite to get it booked because when we get the bar finished, it might be a little loud. Right now it’s quiet, has its own bath and a small sitting area for breakfast or whatever. I’ll keep it for you.”

“You’re right. I’m hoping you’ll let me up in the attics, or at least into Stewart’s room. Jim Dodson hasn’t specifically said that he was murdered, but there are a lot of questions. I’m sure the cops and crime scene people have been asking, looking and generally making a mess.”

“The attic is taped off. Probably will be until tomorrow. You can take a look in his room, though. I don’t think the cops did a lot in there. Until they make a ruling on cause of death, they’ve left his papers and stuff pretty much alone.” Royce closes his eyes, this is pretty raw for him.

I nod. I’m betting the answers are in the attic, but the papers and diaries that Stewart was using in his room might help me map a route.

Like the family kitchen, the family rooms are at the back also. Both Royce and Stewart have suites on the second floor, comprising a bedroom, small sitting room and bath. Between the suites is a larger living room with a big screen TV and a wall of bookcases filled with recent best sellers. End tables by two recliners with reading lights are piled with books, magazines and newspapers. As I head through the living area I notice the magazines and papers are recent. Some litter escapes from the piles but basically it’s neat and I assume that Royce uses this space more than Stewart had.

I open the door into Stewart’s suite, and confirm my suspicion. Here is true clutter. Two walls of the sitting room are bookcases, solid with well-read and well-thumbed books. A computer and printer sit on a desk facing the window. Books are stacked on the desk, on the floor and spill off the seat of a straight-backed wooden chair. Two shelves of a four-shelf horizontal file cabinet are pushed open and stacks of journals, magazines and document boxes are jammed in. It’s clear that someone—Stewart?—has made a stab at bringing order. The document boxes are labeled “War Journals and Dairies,” the stacked journals are gathered into bundles with rubber bands and the magazines look to be filed by dates.

In his bedroom, the clutter is less chaotic. The queen-size bed is unmade, but the sheets and pillowcases looked freshly laundered and a down duvet is neatly folded over the footboard. Here, books fill a wall-size bookcase and are stacked on the floor as well, but many of them are carefully bookmarked. There are no journals or loose papers and the nightstand holds a reading lamp, two books on the San Francisco 1906 earthquake, John McPhee’s “Assembling California,” a clock radio and a glass. The cops and crime scene people have been here; the glass and top of the nightstand are gray with fingerprint powder.

Another glass in Stewart’s bathroom has also been dusted. The glasses are empty. I lean over to sniff, but no odor.

I go back to the sitting room and look around. I don’t really know what I’m looking for and not sure I’ll know it if I find it. It’s just a sense that this is a puzzle.

If Stewart was murdered, why? And until the why, there’s no way of knowing the who.