Gone to Glory Page 16

  Which brings me to Claire. I found an envelope from her under the door when I got home. It contained the Monopoly card you’ll find on the mantel. She also called last night, at a decent hour for her, and left a message. She says, quote: ‘I know Moroni found my first clue. Now we have to talk about it. You tell him that for me.’ Though why she wants to talk to you, I can’t understand. After all, I’m the father of her child, aren’t I? It says so right on the subpoena.

  In any case, she left a number for you. I jotted it down on the pad next to the phone. You’ll also find Chuck Cecil’s number there. He called again, collect, and I accepted, only I didn’t know what to ask him exactly, though I figured it had something to do with Hap Kilgore. All we did was talk about the old days when he played center field for the Bees. He seemed pleased that somebody remembered him after all these years.

  Martin

  Traveler read the note through again, sighed, and called the office. The answering machine said, “Hello. You’ve reached Moroni Traveler and Son … and Son. None of us can come to the phone right now, so leave your message after the beep.”

  Traveler waited until it was time to say, “Dad, I’ll see you for dinner if not sooner,” and disconnected.

  His head was aching again, not as bad as last night, but enough to make him sensitive to the light streaming in through the window next to the telephone nook.

  His next call was to the Stratford Hotel in Baltimore. Chuck Cecil wasn’t in his room. Traveler left a message. He was halfway through the sequence of Claire’s number when he changed his mind and hung up. Talking to her on the phone never got him anywhere. Then again, he couldn’t see her in person if he didn’t play by her rules.

  Frustrated, he retrieved her Monopoly card from the mantel. It said community chest on the front and depicted a man holding two newly born babies. A nurse stood next to him holding her hand out to be paid. Bold black printing said pay hospital $100. On the back Claire had written “play the game for your next clue.”

  Traveler shook his head. A feeling of exhaustion swept over him. He thought about going to bed for the rest of the day, but his conscience wouldn’t allow it. A shower and a change of clothes would have to do.

  While the water was running to warm up, he swallowed three aspirin and shaved. After that, he soaked under the spray until the hot water ran out. By then the headache was gone.

  The clothes he selected, tan slacks and maroon crew-neck sweater, had been birthday gifts from Claire. The brown, penny-free loafers had been his choice. He slipped them on while dialing her number.

  “My angel,” she said as soon as she heard his voice. “I’ve been praying that you’d call.”

  He held his breath, listening for background noise, for any sign that he’d reached her at one of her usual hangouts. This time there was nothing but the static created by her lips rubbing against the mouthpiece.

  “You’re a good detective, Moroni. But even you need clues.”

  As always her breathless telephone voice brought back bedroom memories from when he’d lived with her after moving back to Salt Lake from Los Angeles.

  “Don’t you think Monopoly cards are a bit obvious?” he said.

  “Oh, Mo. Don’t you remember how we played the game? The special rules we had? What I used to do to you with my mouth whenever you lost?”

  “I remember.”

  “You used to lose on purpose, didn’t you? Come on. Admit it.”

  “I don’t have much time, Claire.”

  “I know for a fact that you had time to come looking for me at my old apartment. They told me so.”

  “I was doing it for my father.”

  “Exactly.” She spoke the word with triumph.

  “I’m going to hang up.”

  “I can always tell when you’re lying, Moroni. Always.”

  “What do you really want, Claire?”

  “A name for my child. Our child.”

  “It’s not mine.”

  “Oh, yes, Moroni. I was thinking of you at the moment I conceived it. I closed my eyes, opened my legs and thought of you doing it to me. When I came I screamed your name. It’s yours, all right.”

  Jesus, he thought, the conversation reminded him of something he’d overheard as a child. Something between his mother and Martin.

  “Why sue my father for paternity then?”

  “I knew you’d fight me if I tried that with you.”

  “And you think my father won’t?”

  “I know you. You’ll marry me to protect his name.”

  28

  Traveler daydreamed about the Monopoly games he’d played with Claire. The prizes that went with Boardwalk and Park Place, her sensuous reward for passing Go, and what she called her special ride on the Reading Railroad. But what haunted him most was her smile. No real joy in it, only mockery.

  He tried a smile of his own. The muscles around his mouth felt stiff and unused. He tested them again in the bathroom mirror. There was nothing funny about the bruises on his face. They’d turned yellow, tinged with green around the edges. The colors matched the way he felt.

  Grimacing, he fingered the Community Chest card. The nurse depicted there reminded him that Claire had once checked herself into the hospital for observation. Was that where she was now, giving birth to Moroni Traveler the third?

  He turned the card over and reread Claire’s note. Sooner or later he would have to follow her instructions and play the game. In the meantime, the Monopoly nurse reminded him of something else, that he had work to do at the Phoebe Clinton Home.

  Ten minutes later he drove up the circular driveway and parked under the porte cochere. On his first trip there, thunderheads had been spilling over the Wasatch Mountains. Today the sky was fiercely blue.

  The house stood on the high ground of Twelfth East. From the porch he could see all the way to the Great Salt Lake. He could smell it, too, the rotten-egg taint of pollution carried on a west wind.

  He walked into a two-story entrance hall that still had the look of an 1880s mansion, walnut woodwork, Doric columns of marble, and a grand Gothic staircase. The pattern on the flocked wallpaper, fleur-de-lis, showed through despite a coat of white paint that had aged to the color of old teeth. Pine-scented air freshener failed to mask the underlying odor of decay.

  “Hello,” Traveler called. His voice echoed across the granite floor, Utah granite as cold and uninviting as the facade of the Mormon temple itself.

  The granite magnified each footstep as he crossed the hall to the base of the staircase, which rose to a second-floor landing before branching both left and right. Above the landing was a massive stained-glass window, where an inlaid Doubting Thomas had his finger buried in Christ’s wound.

  Traveler was starting up the stairs when someone coughed behind him. Feeling like he’d been caught prying, he turned to see Golly Simpson. At the sight of Traveler’s face, the man’s smile faltered, but quickly righted itself to become as crisp and bright as the white uniform he wore.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  The white letters on his blue plastic name tag said: g. simpson, staff.

  “I’m here to see Hap Kilgore,” Traveler said.

  “By golly, I am sorry. We do love having visitors come to see our residents. But you’ve missed him. He doesn’t usually get back from the ballpark much before suppertime.”

  “It was my understanding that he no longer worked for the Saints baseball team.”

  “That can’t be right, Mr. …?”

  “Have you forgotten me already? Moroni Traveler. The man you were spying on at Derks Field.”

  “As you can see, I work here.”

  “The owner of the Saints, Jessie Gilchrist, seems to think you work for him. He tells me that you’re some kind of talent scout. But scouts don’t usually watch their own te
ams through binoculars from the left field bleachers when they can sit in the dugout. The way I figure it is, I’m the one you’re scouting.”

  “As I said, Hap Kilgore isn’t here. I suggest you call ahead next time.”

  “Just what is your job here, Simpson? Are you spying on Hap Kilgore by any chance?”

  “That’s a laugh.”

  “All right. Tell me what ‘staff’ means then.”

  “In my case, by golly, it means I own the place … with my sister.”

  “I didn’t know Phoebe Clinton was still alive,” Traveler said.

  “Her name is Mary Cook and you know it, though some call her Mother Mary.”

  Traveler remembered her, the capable heavyset woman he’d talked to on the day he brought Hap home from the ballpark.

  Mrs. Cook’s office was a converted solarium with glass walls on three sides. One of them was trapping the spring sun and redirecting it onto Traveler, causing him to sweat.

  From behind a desk occupying the only shade in the room, she pointed an accusing finger at him. “When we first met, Mr. Traveler, you told me that you were trying to help Hap Kilgore.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And my brother? Are you helping him too? Without his knowledge?”

  Traveler adjusted his chair to get the sun out of his eyes. Once he didn’t have to squint, he decided that Mrs. Cook, with her gray hair and shiny, makeup-free face, had to be somewhere in her late fifties.

  “To be frank, Mrs. Cook, or would you prefer Mother Mary …?”

  “I would not.”

  “… I caught your brother spying on us at the ballpark.”

  “Don’t talk to me about being frank, Mr. Traveler. I have a very good memory. I remember exactly what you said the last time you were here. That you were a detective working for Mr. Kilgore, but that there wasn’t any trouble. Or doesn’t a man in your profession consider murder trouble?”

  “When I said that, I meant that Hap wasn’t in trouble.”

  “What other hidden meanings were there in that

  conversation we had?”

  “Hap hired me, Mrs. Cook, not you. My first duty is to him.”

  For the first time since he’d entered the woman’s office, she relaxed and smiled. She picked up a silver picture frame from her desk and turned it around so that Traveler could see it. Hap was younger then, in a Bees uniform. The inscription read, “With all my love, Hap.”

  “I feel the same way myself. Hap comes first with me, too. He’s asked me to marry him.”

  “That’s one thing he didn’t tell me.”

  “That’s my Hap all right. He thinks he’s protecting my honor by keeping it a secret until we’re actually married. But I think we’re already an item around here.”

  She turned away, but not before he’d seen her blush. “It’s not just my office that’s a fishbowl,” she said. “There’s no privacy in a place like this. You see, a lot of our residents have trouble sleeping, so we allow them kitchen privileges to fix themselves cocoa at night. All that roaming around occasionally leads to mischief. The spreading of rumors on the bathroom walls, for one thing. Judging from some of the more recent messages, Hap must have been seen coming out of my room.”

  “‘Does your brother live here?”

  “Technically speaking, only staff and residents have live-in privileges. But I’ll admit it. I do keep a small room for Golly.”

  Traveler wiped sweat out of his eyes. “I was telling the truth before, Mrs. Cook. I did see your brother watching me and Hap at the ballpark.”

  “Call me Mary, please.”

  He nodded that he would.

  “What can I say about Golly?” she said. “To him, I’ll always be the little sister who needs protecting. He’s probably keeping an eye on Hap to be certain that he makes an honest woman out of me.”

  “Your brother also followed us to a coffee shop. Hap saw him there, but said he didn’t recognize him. Why would he do that?”

  “I can’t explain, not unless Hap was embarrassed to find himself being spied on by his future brother-in-law.”

  “What does your brother do for a living?”

  “That’s not an easy question to answer, though he does manage to do a few odd jobs around here for me once in a while.”

  ‘“Does he have anything to do with the Saints baseball team?”

  She sighed deeply. “Golly means well. He loves baseball and he wants to be knowledgeable because of Hap’s expertise. But I don’t think he has any kind of formal position. Actually, Golly likes to call himself an entrepreneur, an investment counselor. But the Phoebe Clinton Home is the only investment he ever made, and that was with the money our parents left us. Take a look around you. It’s obvious to anyone that we’re about to go bust.”

  Traveler glanced away from the misery on the woman’s face. In so doing, he noticed how many of the panes in the solarium windows were cracked. All were dirty.

  “Let me assure you,” she continued, “that we do our best to keep the place up. But what money we have is best used for heating and the proper nutrition of our residents. Not frills like fixing windows and repainting every little worn spot.”

  He remembered the fresh coat of paint out front, the one that didn’t extend to the sides or back of the mansion.

  “That’s why Hap tried to get back into baseball. He wanted to bring in some extra money to help pay the bills. He would have, too, if Pepper Dalton’s plans had worked out. Pepper was going to make Hap a coach, you know.”

  “It may still happen.”

  “Dear God. Making Hap a coach was only part of it. ‘I owe everything to you,’ Pepper told my Hap. I was there when he said it. ‘You stuck by me in the old days, when they wanted to dump me off the Bees for hitting less than my weight. I’ll never forget that,’ he said. ‘Half of everything I inherit is going to be yours eventually. Half ownership in the team, our new Bees. You’ll be more than my coach, Hap. Eventually you’ll be my general manager.’ Those were his words. After all these years, Hap’s dream was going to come true. He was going to be part of baseball again. And in the front office, too.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “That was then. Now is now. The state inspectors are due next week. There’s a good chance we won’t pass the inspection. If that happens my dream of helping the elderly will die. Where will Hap and I be then? We’ll both be out of work, that’s what. Depending on how the trial goes of course. Depending on what you do to help Pepper, to help all of us out of this mess.”

  “Hap didn’t tell me he was going to be a partner.”

  “He’s not a man to blow his own hom.”

  She left her desk to rub a peephole in one of the grimy panes. Peering out she said, “I love this place. My grandfather, Jedediah Simpson, built it. Golly’s real name is Jedediah, but he’s never gone by it.”

  She turned away from the window to take Traveler’s hand. “Come on. Let me introduce you to Jed.” There was an astringent smell to her, part medicinal, part female.

  Together they returned to the entrance hall and

  climbed the staircase to the landing. Beneath the stained-glass Doubting Thomas hung a gold-framed portrait. A plaque attached to the frame was inscribed “Jedediah Simpson, 1910.”

  “Grandfather couldn’t read or write but he knew silver when he saw it. He struck it rich in Park City in 1883. He owned half the town before he was done.”

  Her eyes closed, her hands pressed together as if in prayer. “Eventually the land came to my father. By then, however, Park City was a ghost town. Dad, Jed Junior, spent his life trying to bring it back to life. Unfortunately for him, he thought a new vein of silver was the only way to do it. In the end, he sold out to developers who made millions by turning Park City into a ski resort. I think that’s what killed him, not having the vision
to see the riches that were right there in front of him all the time. I watched him die, Mr. Traveler, and I couldn’t help. That’s when I decided to become a nurse. The Phoebe Clinton Home is my way of paying him back. I treat the elderly here as I would my own father.”

  Her eyes opened. “He left us just enough to buy this place when it came on the market.”

  “You said this was your brother’s folly.”

  “I confess, Mr. Traveler. I’m as foolish at heart as he is. You can’t get rich helping people.”

  Traveler shifted his gaze to Doubting Thomas. For some reason he felt like poking Mary Cook to see if she was real.

  Instead, he clasped his hands behind his back and said, “Do you know Kate Ferguson?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “She’s Pepper Dalton’s fiancée.”

  “That’s right. Now that you say it, I remember Hap mentioning her. Why do you ask?”

  “You remind me of her a little,” he lied.

  As far as he knew, there had been nothing on the radio or in the papers yet about the killing.

  “By the way,” he said, “your brother told me that Hap went to the ballpark this morning.”

  “My Hap does that every morning. Like clockwork. We won’t see him again till sunset. That man and his baseball. He loves it as much as I do this home.”

  “Didn’t he tell you what happened with the Saints?”

  “That they let him go? Of course he did. And him working for nothing. It almost broke his heart. But he said it wasn’t going to stop him from keeping an eye on things for Pepper’s sake.”

  “How well do you know Mr. Dalton?”

  “He’s Hap’s best friend.”

  “And his sister, Priscilla?”

  “I met her only once. Pepper brought her here just the other day. The day before she died, I think it was. He wanted her to see the good work that was being done at the home.”