The Baxter Trust

33

Steve Winslow slumped into one of Mark Taylor’s overstuffed clients’ chairs and rubbed his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “Here’s the rundown. The grand jury’s indicted Sheila Benton for murder. You can go over the transcripts all you want, but you won’t find anything we don’t already know. The D.A. gave the grand jury just enough to indict, nothing more. Any little surprises he has for me are gonna remain surprises until he springs them on me in front of the jury. Meanwhile, she is remanded to custody without bail.”

“As expected,” Taylor said.

Steve nodded. “Right. Okay. Let me tell you what I want you to work on, then you can tell me what you’ve got.”

Taylor grabbed a notepad. “Shoot.”

“You got any connections in California?”

“Yeah. I know a guy with an agency in LA. Why?”

“Samuel Benton.”

“Who?”

“Sheila Benton’s father.”

“What about him? He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“That’s what I want to find out. According to the best information I have, Samuel Benton married Alice Baxter in California shortly before Sheila was born. How shortly I don’t know, but I wouldn’t necessarily go back a full nine months. Sheila’s twenty-four now, you can do the math for yourself.

“Now, the story is he was killed in a plane crash before Sheila was born. That shouldn’t be hard to trace. Find out about it. I want to know for sure whether Samuel Benton is dead or alive.”

Taylor was staring at him. “What’s the idea, Steve?”

“All right,” Steve said. “Let’s look at this case objectively. To begin with, let’s assume Sheila is innocent.”

“I thought you said objectively.”

Steve looked at him sharply. “Don’t you think she is?”

Taylor looked uncomfortable. “Look, Steve, you’re my client. I’m partisan. I’m on your side. I give service. But-”

“All right. Fine. Then just bear with me. Assume that Sheila is innocent.”

“Okay.”

“Then how does any of this make sense?”

“That’s the problem. It doesn’t.”

“I know. But it has to. So here’s how I figure. If Sheila is innocent, then everything that’s happened to her is part of a deliberate frame-up. And the question is why. And the answer is Sheila. Not Greely. Not blackmail. Sheila. Someone has framed Sheila because of who she is. And who is she? She’s Maxwell Baxter’s niece. An heiress. The beneficiary of the Baxter trust. Now, if Sheila Benton’s father is alive, he would be in a position to upset that trust. And that opens up a lot of possibilities.”

Taylor’s nod was not enthusiastic. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Look, I’m going up in front of a jury. The prosecution has to prove her guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. Reasonable doubt, that’s all I need.”

“Yeah.”

“So get going on the California end.”

“Will do. You ready for the rundown?”

Steve sighed. “Yeah. Let’s have it.”

Taylor turned back a few pages in his notebook. “Here we are. Phillip Baxter, John Dutton, Carla Finley, and Tony Zambelli have complete alibis for the time of the murder. Stella Rosenthal, Maxwell Baxter and Teddy Baxter do not.”

Steve frowned. “Teddy Baxter. Why is that name familiar?”

Taylor grinned. “The anchorman on the Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

“Oh yeah. He must be the life of the Castle Hotel. Okay, let’s have ’em.”

“Phillip Baxter was on the bus to Boston. The evidence there is circumstantial. The bus driver doesn’t remember him, but then you wouldn’t expect him to. Phillip’s father says he was on his way to the bus, and Phillip checked into his dorm at Harvard that night.”

“Okay. Next.”

“John Dutton was in Reno at the time. I checked his reservation on the plane. His ticket was used.”

“Yeah, but is there any chance someone else used it?”

“None at all. One of the stewardesses remembered him. She identified his picture. He was handing her a line and trying to date her up for later that evening.”

“Great, just great. Next.”

“Before we move on, I got some more on John Dutton.”

“What?”

“Well, there’s a little discrepancy. According to his secretary, he was staying at the Wilshire Hotel. However, the Wilshire has no record of him staying there.”

“Really…”

“Yeah, but before you get all excited, I think there’s an explanation. We know Johnny’s a playboy, and there’s every reason to believe he had something lined up in Reno he didn’t want anyone to know about.”

“Yeah, that checks,” Steve said. “No, it doesn’t either. If he had some girl waiting for him, what the hell would he be doing trying to date up the stewardess?”

Taylor shrugged. “Probably just running his game. It seems to be a compulsion with him. Anyway, I don’t think it’s any big deal. The stewardess he was hitting on saw a young woman run up and hug him when he got off the plane, so that’s probably all there was to it.”

“I suppose so.”

“Plus we have the confirmation that he did meet with his wife’s attorneys while he was out there.”

“All right, all right, I give up,” Steve said. “If he met with the attorneys… Hey, wait a minute.”

“What?”

“What about his wife? Did he meet with her too?”

“I don’t know.”

“Find out, will ya?”

Taylor looked puzzled. “Why? I mean, if the attorneys confirm the meeting.”

“They confirm him. What about her?”

“Her?”

“Yeah. Dutton’s wife.”

Taylor looked at him. “Are you kidding?”

“No. I’m not kidding. What I’ve been looking for all along is someone who hates Sheila Benton, who would have reason to want to frame her. I can’t think of anyone with a better reason than the present Mrs. John Dutton.”

Taylor shook his head. “I really think you’re grasping at straws.”

“I gotta grasp at something. What’s his wife’s name?”

Taylor consulted the pad. “Inez Dutton.”

“Fine. Check her out. Who’s next?”

“Carla Finley.”

“Ah, yes. Let’s not forget Carla Finley. What about her.”

Taylor grinned. “Carla Finley happens to have the best alibi of all. At the time of the murder, she was seen by at least fifty people. Naturally, none of them would be very eager to testify, even if they could be found.”

Steve grinned. “I’ll bet. Next.”

“Zambelli, as he said, was involved in a poker game at the time. There again, no one is particularly anxious to testify.”

“Which proves nothing. If he hit him, he’d have hired it out. Who’s next?”

Taylor wheeled around and put his feet up on his desk. “Now we come to the have-nots. Mrs. Rosenthal, the next-door neighbor, claims she was at the supermarket at the time.”

“For the whole hour?”

“So she says. She points to an eighty-nine-dollar, forty-seven-cent cash-register receipt and a stocked refrigerator and pantry as confirmation.”

“Wait a minute. How could she carry that much stuff?”

“She didn’t. She had it delivered. The delivery boy brought it around two-thirty that afternoon.”

“That sounds about right. But wait a minute. Wouldn’t he have run into the cops, then?”

“He did. Mrs. Rosenthal was out in the hallway giving the cops an earful when he arrived. At first the cops weren’t going to let him through, but then Mrs. Rosenthal raised merry hell about her frozen foods melting, and billing the cops for it, and suing the city, and finally they gave in just to shut her up.”

“So… her alibi is purely circumstantial.”

Taylor sighed. “Yes it is. Now, I know you asked me to do this, so I did it, and I have to tell you, if there’s any connection between Mrs. Rosenthal and Robert Greely, I can’t find it. And just between you and me, alibi or no alibi, I’d be willing to bet you my agency she didn’t do it. Mrs. Rosenthal isn’t the type of woman who would have known Robert Greely. Mrs. Rosenthal is the type of woman who accounts for the large number of bachelors in this country. In short, Mrs. Rosenthal is an obnoxious, gossipy, interfering, nosy pain in the ass.”

“All right,” Steve said, relenting. “Next.”

Taylor glanced at the sheet. “Teddy Baxter says he was at home. Whether he was is anybody’s guess. As a widower living alone, he has no corroborating witness.”

“Too bad.”

“Uncle Max has the same problem. The elevator man doesn’t remember seeing him go out, but of course there’s a back entrance, and a man on his way to a murder might be inclined to use it.”

“He certainly might. I’d give anything to be able to prove that he did.”

“You’d really like to pin it on him, wouldn’t you?”

“I certainly would.”

“I don’t blame you. With him convicted of murder, you could knock out the trust, get Sheila a few cool million, and cut yourself a nice slice of the pie.”

“Yeah. But that’s not why I want to do it.”

Taylor looked at him. “Oh? Well then, why?”

Steve shrugged. “I don’t know. He just really pisses me off.”