The Fitzgerald Ruse (12 page)

“What’s it mean?” Nakayla asked.

“Calvin got my signal. He’s in the men’s room.”

“The men’s room?” Nakayla looked at me from the corners of her eyes. “How do you know that?”

“Calvin’s a wise-ass. He spelled a head as two words. Head’s the nautical term for the bathroom. Stay here. I’ll be back before we need to leave.”

The men’s room was downstairs on the lower level. An older man was washing his hands in the sink. I went to the far urinal, hoping I wouldn’t have to fake using it too long. I heard the hand dryer blow for about thirty seconds and then the man left.

“Chief?” The whisper came from one of the three stalls.

I flushed and scanned them. All the doors were open except the one nearest the wall. I entered the stall beside it, wiped the seat with toilet paper, and sat. In case something went wrong, I wasn’t going to get caught with my pants dropped around my shoes. I realized my hand had slipped under my sport coat and rested against the butt of my pistol.

“Busy day,” I muttered, as if to myself.

“You’re telling me.” The whisper turned into Calvin’s recognizable growl. “What the hell happened? You were sandwiched between two cop cars and I couldn’t keep up with you.”

“The woman who owned the lockbox stolen from our office was murdered.”

Calvin whistled. “Damn. Two murders in two days. Have you any doubt it’s Ali Baba?”

“Smells that way, but there’s something else going on.”

“Like what?”

“We think the old lady was hooked up with some fascist group in the 1930s.”

Calvin slapped his hand against the stall. “God damn it, Chief. All the Nazis are dead. And we might be too if we don’t nail these jokers.”

“I know. I’m just trying to cover all the angles. Our offices were bugged. Anybody could have gotten information about our client.”

“Bugged? Did you talk about me?”

The stall suddenly felt like a steel-walled confessional. “Yeah.”

“Well, then what the hell are we doing hiding in the john?” He pushed open the door so hard it banged against the wall.

I stepped out and watched him pace back and forth in front of the sink. He wore loose black jeans and a dark blue pullover. He had no shoulder holster and I suspected one of his so-called girlfriends rode in the small of his back and another on his calf.

He balled his large hands into fists. “So I’ve lost the element of surprise.”

“They would have expected us to reunite at some point. And now they’ve got the police to worry about.”

Calvin walked over to me and pressed his thumb against my chest. “These local yokels couldn’t find their own asses if you tattooed their names on each cheek.”

“They’ve got fingerprints.”

Calvin’s eyes widened. “Really? I’d have thought those guys would be more careful.”

“If they really are our guys. A friend spotted a tail on my partner.”

“The black chick? I spotted her tail myself. Nice piece of merchandise.”

“She’s my partner.” I said the words clipped and hard.

“Okay. No offense.” He moved his hand to pat my shoulder and felt the butt of my Kimber. “All right, Chief. Now you’re talking.” He backed away and leaned against the sink counter. “What have the police got?”

“A glass my friend picked up that the guy used. He described him as mid-thirties, average height, and with blond hair. The police are checking the prints.”

“Anything else?”

“The man who killed my client posed as a deliveryman and was described as Hispanic. So, we’re dealing with two people.”

“The Hispanic has to be Hernandez. The other guy could be Lucas.”

“The Asheville police are requesting ID photos from the military and Blackwater. Have you got any with you?”

“No. I didn’t expect my leave to turn into a manhunt.”

The restroom door cracked open. “Go ahead, Todd,” a woman said. “Mommy will be right outside.”

A boy no more than four backed through the door. “No. You come with me.”

“Mommy can’t. This bathroom’s only for big boys.”

The lad turned around. His oversized Superman tee shirt hung to his knees. He saw me and bolted away, faster than a speeding bullet. As the door closed, he whined, “There’s a man in there. I want to go to your potty.”

Footsteps faded and I figured Todd’s status as a big boy was a few months away.

Calvin punched the hand dryer and spoke just above its roar. “With the police running the show, what are you going to do?”

“Work the case I’ve got. Why was my client killed? What did they want?”

“Information about you.” The dryer died and Calvin lowered his voice. “Maybe something in the lockbox made them believe she knew about your accounts.”

“God damn it. I don’t have any accounts.”

Calvin held up his hands. “Okay. If you say so.”

I stared at him for a second and then the light clicked on. “You checked me out, didn’t you? Somebody thinks I’m dirty.”

“Chief, you know how it is. The bad guys make wild accusations and the snitches pass them along.”

I wondered if my wire transfer to the Caymans had been flagged. “All right. I’m guilty. Arrest me. I opened an offshore account because I didn’t want all my settlement money in U.S. banks. Hell, I didn’t know whether I’d even stay in the country.” The last statement wasn’t true, but I needed to push Calvin off this line of questioning.

He relaxed. “Like I said, Chief, you’d make a boy scout look subversive. Here’s my theory. Ali Baba thinks you and I stole their treasure. They come after me and when I disappear they show up in Asheville. They bug your office and kill the poor security guard in the process. Then they take your client’s lockbox. One of them attacks you outside your apartment demanding information about your offshore account, an account you now admit exists. Why did they kill your client? I don’t have a clue. Maybe they thought she had information or there was something in the lockbox they didn’t understand. These guys won’t walk away if they smell money. They’ll get it any way they can.”

“And that’s their weakness. Let’s meet at my apartment tonight. You, Nakayla, and me. I’d like to come up with a plan to turn their greed against them. Then we’ll bring the police in.”

“The police? Why don’t we get support out of Bragg?”

I weighed Calvin’s suggestion and discarded it. “Too much paperwork and too long to bring them up to speed. We need help now.”

Calvin didn’t look happy, but he must not have had any other options. “Okay. What time?”

“Say, seven.”

“What do we do till then? If I stay in this men’s room any longer they’ll start delivering my mail.”

“Nakayla and I are going to the Grove Park Inn for a history lesson.”

Calvin’s face screwed up like he’d bitten into a persimmon. “History lesson?”

“Yeah. Something happened back in the 1930s that involved my client and that lockbox.”

Calvin smiled. “Your Nazis?”

“Possibly. Our only solid lead is to F. Scott Fitzgerald when he stayed at the inn.”

Calvin locked his eyes on mine. “
The Great Gatsby
.”

I was surprised. I hadn’t taken him for the literary type. “Yeah. But the book came out ten years earlier. My client was enamored with it.
The Great Gatsby
was the password I needed to retrieve her lockbox.”

He rubbed his hand across his chin. “Then there really could be more to this than the Blackwater swill.”

“That’s what I keep telling you. Keep an open mind and you might come out of this case with a promotion.”

Calvin laughed. “Chief, I’ll be happy to come out of this case alive.”

Chapter Thirteen

Nakayla and I took my CR-V from the library. On the way, I dialed Hewitt Donaldson and got his voicemail.

“This is Sam Blackman. I’m headed for an appointment at the Grove Park Inn. Let’s meet at five-thirty on the Sunset Terrace for that beer. Leave me a message.”

“He might not like that I’m along,” Nakayla said.

“Tough. You’re my partner.”

“How do you know he’s hiring us for a case? It might be personal. You know, man talk.”

“I don’t like leaving you by yourself.”

“Excuse me?” She turned in her seat to face me. “I can wait in the lobby where Nathan or one of his operatives is probably shadowing me. And if we’re going to be partners, you’re not relegating me to research at the library and running the office. I can carry my share of the field work.” She zipped open her handbag and extracted her Colt twenty-five. “And I’m as armed and dangerous as you.”

“Then heaven help us both.”

As we twisted up Macon Avenue toward the inn, I thought about the car wreck that occurred over sixty years ago and left Ethel without a husband and Hewitt Donaldson without a father. Which of these curves had held the deadly patch of ice? And had the fatal accident somehow started a chain of events that culminated in Ethel’s murder?

The Grove Park Inn and Spa jutted from the side of Sunset Mountain like a majestic castle. Countless rocks and stone boulders that could have built an enormous pyramid lay stacked in long horizontal rows to create a multistoried lodge in keeping with the grandeur and proportion of its Appalachian setting. Unlike more recent construction that perched atop the ridges with all the charm of warts on an elegant cheek, the Grove Park complemented its surroundings, from the muted brown and gray tones of its rock walls to the rustic red of the roof that matched the foliage of the fall hardwoods.

I didn’t know much about the inn’s history, other than it was built a few decades after George W. Vanderbilt established his Biltmore Estate. E.W. Grove had made millions off his patent medicine, Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic, a treatment for the symptoms of malaria popular during the time when the disease plagued the mosquito-ridden South.

If I remembered correctly, Grove had come to Asheville for his own health and used part of his fortune to erect a resort that would appeal to wealthy people seeking rest and relaxation. Nakayla had told me he wasn’t interested in attracting the sick. Instead, he bought many of the nearby “consumption houses” and either tore them down or converted them to regular residences to insure the vitality of the inn’s image. Asheville’s reputation as a haven for sufferers of lung ailments had grown to the point where the locals referred to Pack Square as Phlegm Square.

Derrick Swing could fill in those details, but I wondered if he had any insights into how my client, Ethel Barkley, managed to entwine her life with one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century and one of the most abhorrent political movements in human history.

I turned left off Macon and drove down a lane to the parking lot.

Nakayla pointed across me to where the valets met the cars of arriving guests in front of the main doors. “Derrick said to use the staff entrance. It’s down the hill. Look for a long red awning.”

The inn sprawled along the mountainside, adding new ground floors as the land sloped away. We spotted the awning and I found a parking place in the lower lot less than fifty feet away.

The waiting room inside the staff entryway held an assortment of mismatched chairs. Two young men were filling out employment applications at long tables. Bulletin boards on the walls displayed notices of the inn’s policies and a variety of government regulations.

A woman wearing a staff uniform and carrying a clipboard came down a short flight of steps to our left. We caught her eye and she paused. “Is someone helping you?”

“Not yet,” Nakayla said. “We’re supposed to meet Derrick Swing at four.”

“He’s still in the classroom, but they’ll be breaking up in a few minutes. You can wait outside the door if you like.” She gestured to the stairs behind her. “Just follow the hallway.”

We walked down a narrow corridor that had the feel of a tunnel and I knew we were heading underground where the nuts and bolts of running a resort were hidden from the patrons. A door opened a few yards ahead and a stream of people emerged. Some wore uniforms like the woman with the clipboard; others dressed casually, marking them as employees who either didn’t interact with the public or hadn’t gone on duty.

We stood to one side and let them pass. When the last person had exited, I followed Nakayla into a room set with folding tables and chairs split either side of a center aisle. They faced the far wall where a photograph of the Grove Park’s exterior was cast onto a screen by an overhead projector. The wash of the room’s fluorescent lights nearly obliterated the image. Bending over the table nearest the screen, a man in a light blue dress shirt and sharply knotted yellow tie was gathering note cards together.

“Mr. Swing?” Nakayla called.

The man looked up. He struck me as somewhere in his mid-thirties, but his blond hair and boyish grin could have shaved a few years off his actual age.

“Are you Ms. Robertson?” He walked down the aisle to greet us.

“Yes. But call me Nakayla.” She shook his hand. “And this is my friend, Sam Blackman.”

“A pleasure to meet you.” He clasped my hand with a firm grip. “I’m Derrick.” He motioned to a table just inside the door. “You’re in luck. Today I was teaching a class on the history of the inn for some of our employees. I saved you copies of the PowerPoint presentation.” He picked up two spiral-bound booklets and handed us each one. “You can use it for general background.” He grabbed three chairs and set them in a circle. “We’re fine to stay here. I understand you have some questions.”

We sat and I looked to Nakayla to start the conversation. We’d agreed to be direct and honest about why we needed his help.

Nakayla folded her hands on the booklet in her lap. “As I said on the phone, we’re trying to retrieve a lockbox for a client. It was stolen from our office.”

He nodded, and his face grew as solemn as a stone. “I read about the woman who was murdered.”

“Amanda Whitfield,” Nakayla said. “The security guard.”

“And you think it involves the Grove Park?” The concern in his voice bordered on fear. History was one thing but linking the inn to an active murder case was something else.

Nakayla shook her head. “Not directly. People who were guests or employees could play a role, but we’re talking seventy years ago.”

“I don’t know how specific I can be. My knowledge of the inn’s history is more general.”

“Our client claimed to be an employee,” Nakayla said. “I guess it’s too much to hope you’d have personnel records that far back.”

“From the 1930s? I’m afraid not. But your client should be able to provide enough details that I can validate her claim.” Derrick’s face brightened. “I love meeting the old timers.”

Nakayla cut her eyes to me, seeking confirmation to give Derrick the bad news. I cocked my head slightly and she read my okay.

“Our client, Mrs. Ethel Barkley, was murdered this morning.”

Derrick’s jaw dropped. “She must have been in her nineties.” He turned to me. “Who would kill an old lady?”

Maybe he thought I was more familiar with the seamy side of the world. “We don’t know,” I said. “The police are investigating. We’re following through on our leads in an effort to assist them. But we need your help.”

Derrick leaned forward. “What do you want to know?”

“Ethel said she worked here during the summer of 1935,” Nakayla said. “When F. Scott Fitzgerald had a room.”

“He was in and out that summer, and the summer of 1936 as well. He usually had room 441 or 443. He liked the fourth floor.”

“Ethel Barkley said she worked the fourth floor.”

Derrick shrugged. “She could have picked that information up anywhere.”

I interrupted Nakayla’s questioning. “Ethel had an autographed copy of
The Great Gatsby.
It was inscribed ‘To Ethel—my palmist-in-training. May your future always be bright.’”

“Palmist-in-training?”

“Yes,” I said. “She told us she learned to read palms from Laura Guthrie Hearne, who entertained the guests with her fortune-telling.”

Derrick reflexively glanced at his own palms. “That’s certainly possible. At that point, the Grove Park Inn had begun taking a more active role in providing diversions for the guests.”

“It hadn’t always been that way?” Nakayla asked.

“No. Grove’s son-in-law, Fred Seely, was the real brain behind the operation of the inn. He and Grove modeled it after the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park. None of the plans submitted by architects pleased Grove or Seely. Finally, Seely drew up his own sketch, using boulders instead of logs. He stunned everyone by promising he could build it in a year. They broke ground on July 9, 1912 and opened for business July 13, 1913.”

“He missed by four days,” I said.

“And you can be sure Seely wasn’t happy about it. He was a tough taskmaster. The first two general managers quit after working only one year each. He laid down the law to everyone, including the guests.”

“Would he and Fitzgerald have locked horns?” Nakayla asked.

“Yes. If Seely had still been in charge. He envisioned the inn as a place for wealthy people to enjoy rest and relaxation, peace and quiet. If guests got too loud in the Great Hall, a printed card was delivered asking them to be more subdued. Children were discouraged, dogs forbidden, no alcohol was served, and you couldn’t run water in your room after ten-thirty.”

“Not exactly the kind of place I’d expect to find the Father of the Jazz Age,” I said.

“Things had loosened up by 1935. Seely and Grove had had a falling out. When Grove died in 1927, Seely was excluded from the will and any operations of the inn. Fortunately, he’d purchased Biltmore Industries from Edith Vanderbilt, George’s widow, years before, so he set up shop right across the street. The buildings are still there.”

“Must have been a bitter pill,” I said.

Derrick smiled. “Seely kept a hand in the game. The heirs sold the inn shortly after Grove’s death, and Seely worked as a consultant for the new owners. His austere philosophy had to give way to a more accommodating atmosphere.” Derrick scratched the side of his face as he thought for a second. “Of course, Fitzgerald still taxed management’s patience. He had the bellboys sneak in beer, which he considered a concession to cutting back on hard liquor. He had a very public affair with a married woman who was here caring for her sister, and people came to his room at all hours of the night.”

Derrick’s depiction matched what Ethel had told me. “Did he become involved in the local community?”

“No. But I think he was courteous to local writers and admirers. Thomas Wolfe didn’t return to Asheville till 1937, so Fitzgerald had the literary stage all to himself.”

“Did he hold court with his admirers?”

Derrick shook his head. “Not really. Famous figures of the early twentieth century frequently came to the inn. Harry Houdini, Henry Ford, Al Jolson, Will Rogers, and almost every U.S. President. Fitzgerald was at the low point of his career. He’d even been given a literary obituary by the New York Post.”

“How’d he afford to stay?”

“Friends with money. And he was selling the occasional magazine story, although he wrote very little while he was here.” Derrick glanced at his watch. “Do you have time to see his rooms? One of them might be vacant.”

I wasn’t sure how that would help our investigation, but I was curious to glimpse where Ethel and Fitzgerald had met so many years ago.

Nakayla rose quickly. “That would be great, if it’s no trouble.”

Derrick waved a hand to one side. “No problem, unless they’re occupied. We’ll check the front desk.”

He led us out of the classroom and up a long flight of stairs. We passed through a narrow door and stepped into a wide corridor. Rounding a corner to the right, we entered the Great Hall of the Grove Park Inn, virtually unchanged since its grand opening over ninety-four years ago.

The space had to be over a hundred feet long. Guests entering through the main entrance found themselves between two incredible stone fireplaces running the width of the opposite walls. In a few months, trunk-sized logs would blaze on the massive andirons and the sweet scent of wood smoke would mingle with the multitude of aromas generated by the inn’s extravagant buffet.

Nowhere did the influence of the magnificent lodges of the Rockies appear more clearly than in this room, although the terrace off the rear didn’t overlook jagged peaks and harsh bluffs. Instead patrons gazed at the ancient, rounded Appalachian hills shaped by eons of wind and rain and covered with a thick growth of hardwoods and evergreens. A hint of pink tinted the wisps of clouds, promising richer colors as evening neared. The view from the Sunset Terrace would be beautiful for my beer with Hewitt Donaldson.

“Wait here while I check with the front desk,” Derrick said. “If one of Fitzgerald’s rooms is available, we’ll take the elevator.” He pointed to the closest fireplace where a shaft had been built into its side.

Nakayla grinned. “I’ve always wanted to ride in that.”

“If we get stuck, at least we’ll be toasty.” I walked over to a placard mounted on an easel that had been positioned where arriving guests could see it.

The banner across the top read: “The Fitzgerald—Sumptuous condominiums just steps from the Grove Park Inn Resort and Spa.” Beneath the type, an artist’s rendering showed an elegant beige stucco building adjacent to the inn and sharing the same spectacular view.

I tapped the word “Fitzgerald” with my finger. “The guy who was the bad boy when he stayed here is now a marketing brand name.”

“And he’d finally have enough money to be
The Great Gatsby
,” Nakayla said.

“How old was he when he died?”

“Forty-four.”

“So much for his lifeline. But Ethel said the fortune-teller charged him only a dollar.” I looked at my palm. “He should have paid more.”