The Fitzgerald Ruse (13 page)
Nakayla took my hand and traced a path from below my wrist to the tip of my middle finger. “That’s the lifeline I wish for you. But my magic’s only good if you stay in Asheville. Fitzgerald had a heart attack in Hollywood. He shouldn’t have left.”
Hollywood. The place William Dudley Pelley worked before coming here to launch his fascist movement. What a time—the heart of The Great Depression with its politics of the New Deal, Communism, and Fascism all vying for loyalties. What had Fitzgerald found here amid the turbulence shaking the nation and the turmoil racking his personal life? Maybe the timelessness of the mountains or the strength of these stones that created both a shelter and a statement from a bygone age. A place where Jay Gatsby would have been at home.
I looked across the vast hall. Some people moved quickly, some strolled, and some sat in small groups or alone. For a moment I could see F. Scott Fitzgerald among them: a participant and an observer. And yet the scene would have been so different in his time. The cluster of businesswomen waiting for a table on the terrace would have disappeared, relegated to being escorted by their husbands. The black couple at the bar would have been washing glasses, not drinking from them. Nakayla and I couldn’t have walked across the room holding hands without drawing icy stares or overt hostility.
Some things from the past were best buried.
“We’re in luck.” Derrick held up a magnetic keycard. “441 checked out this morning.” He pressed the
CALL
button set in the stones.
As we entered, I asked, “Why’s the elevator in the fireplace?”
“It saves space. And the rocks insulate the sound of the motor.”
Nakayla laughed. “So you can ride the elevator after ten-thirty at night but not flush your commode.”
Derrick shrugged. “Our elevator’s in
Ripley’s Believe It Or Not;
our commodes aren’t.”
“For being in the fireplace?” Nakayla asked.
“This one has three doors.” Derrick swept his hand in an arc in front of him. “We came in the center, and there’s a door to either side. Which one opens depends upon the floor. We’re going to the left for the fourth.”
Fitzgerald’s room had a brass plaque on the door proclaiming its special heritage. Derrick keyed the lock and allowed Nakayla and me to enter ahead of him. I first noticed that the short entry hall had wooden dresser drawers built into the plaster wall. The room wasn’t large and contained twin beds with slat headboards, a desk, and two wooden armchairs under a single window. Between the desk and the chairs stood an armoire, which I suspected housed a TV and cable box. On the wall hung photographs of Fitzgerald and various historical perspectives on his career and time in Asheville.
I ran my hand along the surface of the small desk. “Is this the same furniture?”
“The desk, chairs, headboards, and even the bathtub were in this room when Fitzgerald lived here.”
“Didn’t he also use 443?” Nakayla asked.
“Yes.” Derrick walked to a door beside the desk. “It’s adjoining. Occasionally he’d have them both as a suite, but this one was his favorite.”
I bent between the chairs and looked out the window. “His favorite? He’s facing the parking lot.”
Derrick smiled. “Exactly. He’d sit here, and, while writing, he’d check out the young women entering the hotel. He’d note down those he’d want to meet later.”
Nakayla spun around, taking it all in. “Amazing that you’ve been able to preserve everything.”
“We did patch the bullet hole in the ceiling.”
I looked up at the unblemished surface. “Fitzgerald had a gunfight?”
“No. The story is he discharged his handgun in a moment of passion.”
“Gives new meaning to Mae West’s question: ‘Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?’”
Nakayla winced. “Really, Sam.”
Derrick politely let my remark pass and changed the subject. “Most of the Mission Arts and Crafts throughout the inn are originals. The grandfather clock in the Sammons Wing has been appraised at over a million dollars. Unlike the Biltmore House, we don’t keep our treasures roped off.”
“You must have one hell of a security team.”
Derrick smiled. “Every employee. That’s why I teach a class on the history. I want them to appreciate what we have.”
“Fitzgerald didn’t create any literary treasures in this room?” I asked.
“No. On top of all his other troubles, he severely dislocated his shoulder while diving at Beaver Lake. He was forced to wear a cast and couldn’t type. He tried dictating his stories, but it didn’t work out too well.”
I turned to Nakayla. “Do you know the lake?”
“Yes. It’s not too far.”
“Our guests used to swim there,” Derrick said. “But there’s no swimming allowed now.”
I paced the room a final time, as if some clue might have escaped detection for over seventy years. “So, Fitzgerald’s stay wasn’t productive.”
“Not in a literary sense,” Derrick said. “In 1935 he came here for his health because he thought he’d contracted tuberculosis. The next year he returned when Zelda was admitted to Highland Hospital. I don’t think he seriously resumed his writing until he went to Hollywood.”
“Nothing was written here?” Nakayla asked.
“I’m not a Fitzgerald scholar. Maybe a few short stories. Like I said, he was in pretty bad shape.”
He headed for the door, but I side-stepped in front of him. “Do you know if he had anything to do with William Dudley Pelley?”
“Who?”
“A guy who lived in Asheville during the 1930s. He founded The Silver Shirts.”
“Sounds vaguely familiar, but I’ve never heard the name in connection with Fitzgerald.”
“We know they were interested in him. The Silver Shirts was an organization of fascists and Nazi sympathizers.”
Derrick shook his head. “Are you sure about the year?”
“Yes,” Nakayla said. “I found the date from several sources in the Pack Library.”
“Sorry. I don’t know of any Nazis that were here. Not at that time.”
“Not at that time” caught my ear. “Were there Nazis here earlier?”
“No. But in the early forties, the government used the Grove Park Inn as a holding spot for Nazi diplomats. Just till they could be deported. There were guards on the grounds, but no barbed wire. To put it politely, they were unwanted guests.”
I cut my eyes to Nakayla and saw her nod. In the 1940s, Ethel Barkley and her husband had lived only a few blocks away from the American-based brain trust of Hitler’s Nazi patry.
Hewitt Donaldson stepped onto the terrace. He squinted against the setting sun and scanned the tables. I rose from my chair and gave enough of a wave to attract his attention.
He nodded without smiling and headed toward me. His suit had collected a day’s worth of wrinkles. The ponytail was gone and his gray hair now fell around his shoulders in disheveled strands. To judge by appearances, Asheville’s most flamboyant defense attorney had not had a good day in court. But then since I’d last seen him, his aunt had been murdered.
“Thanks for meeting me.” He pulled out the opposite chair and glanced around as if to make sure no one he knew was sitting within earshot. “Where’s your partner?”
“In the lobby. She thought you might want to see just me.”
After our meeting with Derrick Swing, Nakayla had convinced me she’d be more valuable watching for who might be following us.
“No, she’s welcome to sit in.” He swiveled and looked back into the Great Hall.
“She ran into a friend,” I lied. “Maybe we’ll see her later.”
Donaldson summoned a waiter and we both ordered Sam Adams. As soon as we were alone, he scooted closer to the table. “What the hell happened to my aunt?”
“She was killed by someone posing as a flower deliveryman.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know.”
“Don’t give me we don’t know,” he snapped. “What do you think?”
I was getting a taste of what Donaldson’s cross-examinations must be like.
“I regret to say she might have been murdered because I tried to help her.”
He stared at me, letting his silence push for further explanation.
“She was my client. I went to her apartment twice and I retrieved her lockbox.”
“Lockbox?”
His question told me the police hadn’t shared that information. I gave him the summary of my experience at the bank and the lockbox’s disappearance from our office.
“You think that’s why they broke in?”
“Maybe. But they bugged our phones. I think that’s what they were doing when the guard discovered them. The lockbox might have been their reason, as well, or just something that looked valuable. Once they saw the contents, they must have figured your aunt either knew something that they wanted kept quiet or they thought she had more information. The problem is neither the police nor I have a handle on the motive.”
Donaldson thought for a moment. Then he took a long sip of beer and set the glass on the table with a thud. He smiled, and that made me more nervous than when he was badgering me. “All right. I expect I’ll be summoned to police headquarters for questioning as to any enemies a ninety-year-old woman might have made. I spoke with Aunt Ethel’s son Terry. He’s driving up from Charlotte and may wish to see you.”
“Fine.” I used the break in his questions to interject my own. “Is your cousin the sole heir?”
Donaldson laughed. “Right to the point. You’re a man after my own heart.”
“I’m not after your heart, but someone might be after your aunt’s five million dollars.”
He flushed. I wondered if the bank manager had told me a closely guarded family secret.
His voice dropped to a low growl. “I want no part of Aunt Ethel’s estate or anything in the lockbox.”
“Wouldn’t it go to her son? I thought he was her only surviving child.”
“Terry will get her personal assets—except for certain funds stipulated to be split between us. So the police will have to consider that I had nearly two-and-a-half million reasons to kill her.”
“But I take it you’re a successful attorney. Why kill her now?”
He shrugged. “Maybe I’ve got a terminal illness and I’m afraid she’ll outlive me. Maybe I got nervous when she hired you to get the lockbox. I can read your face. You’re already thinking through those possibilities, aren’t you?”
Hewitt Donaldson wasn’t a man to bluff against in a poker game.
“Why don’t you want your share of the money?”
“I don’t like what it represents.”
“Money’s money,” I said. “It’s what you do with it that’s important.”
He twisted in his chair and crossed his legs. A light evening breeze set his long hair dancing against his collar. “Sometimes money brings its past with it. I may be a lawyer, but I have a few shreds of decency that our so-called justice system hasn’t stripped away.”
I decided to stop playing games. “Where’d it come from? A Nazi payoff?”
Donaldson raised his half-empty glass and toasted me. “You are the right man for the job.”
I kept my beer on the table. “Not me. The right man for the job is a woman. Nakayla did the research that led to the Silver Shirts. That’s the money’s source, isn’t it?”
He left his glass in the air and the smile on his lips, but his voice rang cold. “Be careful what you say. Asheville may have dark secrets that some people want to keep buried.”
I stared back at him. “Is that why I’m here? So you can tell me to stop digging?”
Donaldson leaned across the table so far he came out of his chair. “No. I want to hire you, Sam. I don’t like surprises, and it’s time I stopped denying the past and faced the truth.”
“Is that because your aunt’s dead?”
“Partly. I could never get beyond her mumbo-jumbo and the fantasy world she lived in.”
“You could have hired a private detective years ago.”
“Let’s say maybe I never wanted to ask a question to which I didn’t already know the answer. Being a lawyer isn’t a vocation, it’s a curse.” He stopped and the façade on his face cracked. His eyes welled. “And that young guard might have died because of something I let go unchallenged.”
“Sorry. I already have a client on this case.”
“Who?”
“Your aunt.”
He relaxed into his chair. “I visited her last Sunday and mentioned we had a detective moving next to our office. She likes to read mysteries. You could say I’m the reason she hired you. And she’s not exactly in a position to pay you.”
So Ethel’s having Captain contact me hadn’t been coincidence, and I now had an explanation for why her nephew happened to be beside us. But she hadn’t told Donaldson she was hiring me. Why?
“She made an arrangement,” I said. “I, too, have a few shreds of decency left. I won’t double-bill a case.”
“Then whom will you report your findings to?”
I wanted to say my conscience, but I’d just told Donaldson I was working for a fee under a contract that went beyond the client’s death, assuming Fitzgerald’s gift was still in the lockbox. “I guess the proper procedure will be to file a report with the executor of her estate.”
His smile returned. “Precisely. And as the executor, I’m requesting that you say nothing to my cousin about your investigation. And that you clear everything with me before sharing information with the police.”
I slid back the chair and got to my feet, my artificial leg buckling slightly with the rapid rise. “Then I’m resigning. Consider our conversation your final report.”
“Hold on.” He licked his lips and laid his palms flat on the table. “You’re still going to investigate, aren’t you?”
“You said you could read my face.”
He nodded. “Sit down, please. Let me rephrase my concerns, and I hope you’ll excuse my erratic behavior. I’m upset about what happened to my aunt and the young woman.”
“And your own safety,” I added.
“I suppose. You see I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t like it. That’s when I make mistakes, like trying to control you. Stay on the case and work however you want. If your fees go beyond what my aunt authorized, I’ll make up the difference. All I ask is that you do your best to keep me informed. I’d appreciate not being blindsided, especially where it regards my father.”
I eased into the chair. “All right. What about your cousin?”
“My cousin will have no qualms about the money. He resents that I’m due an equal share and he’ll try to stop you from doing anything that might delay or negate the settlement.”
“What could I do? I assume the will is straightforward, if you drew it up.”
Donaldson lifted his hands and clasped them together so tightly his knuckles turned white. “But I didn’t. My father drew up the will on file, the only one she’s ever had.”
“When?”
“In 1935. Ten years ago she had another attorney amend it naming me as the executor. Her son went ballistic, but I think for all of our differences, my aunt trusted me to carry out her wishes.”
He stopped as our waiter approached the table.
“Would you gentlemen care for another round?”
“Not me,” I said.
Donaldson also declined and asked for the check. The waiter cleared the empty glasses and left.
I began to understand what was troubling him. “Why are you in her will? In 1935, neither you nor your cousin had been born.”
“That’s right, and when my father died, my mother received my father’s estate except for these same funds that were earmarked for his sister, with the stipulation that half of them would come back to his progeny upon her death, provided they hadn’t been used.”
“Your father went to a lot of effort to keep them intact, and your aunt must have never touched them.” The obvious point came to me. “Wouldn’t the probate of his estate have shown the source of the money?”
“Normally.” Donaldson sighed. “Man, I’ve got to hand it to him. My uncle too. I’m sure they both put the scheme together.”
“What scheme?”
Donaldson smiled with what might have been pride. “The funds came from a life insurance policy. Life insurance proceeds go directly to the beneficiary. There’s no court filing, no income taxes, just a check. And no one goes back to look at the source of the premium.”
“Have you seen the policy?”
“No. It would have been surrendered with the claim. But it had to be taken out before 1935, because my aunt’s will references the policy. That’ll come to light during her probate.”
“Is there a policy number?”
“No. Just the company name. The Pollosco Life Assurance Society. I’ve checked on them. They were gobbled up years ago.”
“What about old check records? Somebody paid the premiums.”
Donaldson shook his head. “Maybe there’s some record in the lockbox, but I suspect there was only one premium paid. He probably made a large enough prepayment that the policy was instantly in force and would never lapse. It would grow in cash value without any income tax liability, could be surrendered for cash or borrowed against, and paid out a death benefit that grew over the years, particularly if dividends were used to buy additional insurance.”
“Maybe your father just wanted some life insurance.”
“Then why didn’t my mother get the money? Even if he took out the policy before he married, it’s common practice for a new husband to change the beneficiary of his insurance.”
Donaldson’s suspicions were contagious. I couldn’t come up with a plausible explanation.
“But there’s another consideration I can’t dismiss.” He shifted in his seat, and I sensed he moved from prosecutor to defense attorney.
“What?”
He wagged his finger. “Remember we’re talking 1934 and ’35. The Great Depression. Thirty-eight percent of the banks failed. But only 14 percent of the life insurance companies went under. Limits had been put on how much of a policy’s cash you could pull out or how much you could borrow. If you didn’t need your money for a while, that regulation provided comforting stability.”
My financial expertise bordered on zero. Only within the previous three months had I dealt with circumstances more complicated than depositing an Army paycheck. “But wouldn’t that make your father’s actions prudent even if the money had been earned legitimately?”
“That’s my point. And maybe Aunt Ethel’s husband was uninsurable, so my father was making certain she’d be cared for. In return, his offspring would share in the payout.”
“What you’re telling me is that you don’t know.”
Donaldson held out his hands palm up like they were a pair of scales. “I’d like to believe my father was very clever with his funds at a time of financial turbulence.” He let his left hand drop lower as the right rose. “That the payout arrangement took care of his sister and both their heirs. On the other hand, why has my aunt been so secretive in preserving those funds for over sixty years?”
“Maybe she read more into your father’s will than he intended.”
“And maybe I’m reading more into the fact that he was a key member of the defense team when William Dudley Pelley went on trial for fraud in 1934 and again for sedition in 1942.” He quickly reversed his hand motion till the left was above his head and the right smacked the top of the table. “My father represented a man who idolized Adolph Hitler, who wanted to confine the Jews to one city in each state, and who wanted to be the transitional dictator as he turned our country into a Christian bastion against what he called the International Jewish-Communist Conspiracy headed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom he called the Russocrat.” He brought his hands together and twiddled his thumbs, mocking the seriousness of his charge. “You’re the jury. What do you think?”
“I think you need more evidence before you take a pass on two and a half million dollars.”
The smile returned. “That’s why I want to hire you.”
“I’m working for your aunt,” I repeated. “But I’ll keep your questions in mind.”
“Sam, the most important question in my mind is one I haven’t asked yet. You said you were afraid my aunt was murdered because you tried to help her. What you didn’t say was whether that was because you’re a private detective or because you’re Sam Blackman.”
A shadow came over the table. Our waiter returned, but not from inside the inn. Donaldson looked up and reached for his wallet, expecting to receive the bill. Instead, the waiter handed me a slip of paper. “A gentleman at the edge of the terrace asked me to give you this.”
Unfolding a torn scrap of a brochure, I saw a note written in the white margin. “Chief, he’s here.” I glanced back in the direction the waiter had come. Calvin leaned against a stone column at the edge of the terrace. The distant buildings of Asheville lay behind him, reflecting gold from the setting sun. He gave a quick jerk of his head toward the lobby and walked away. I crumpled the note and dropped it in my coat pocket.