Mystery on the Tramway Read online

  He walked up to the tram gondola, there were different crime scene people working away in the car than last night. The gondola was now covered with fingerprint dust; there were black smudges of the powder everywhere and Wayne thought it looked like the end of a finger-painting session at a day care center. He asked the technician for the supervisor and was told that he had gone to the bathroom to wash up. As he turned around to head that way, the supervisor came walking up and to Wayne’s surprise it was the same guy that he had left here last night.

  Despite freshening up, the guy looked haggard. He told Wayne that they confirmed that the victim’s fingerprints had been found on the control panel and mechanism inside the car, on the outside and inside of the door handle, and although they were having some difficulty lifting clear prints off the trash bags, it looked as though those prints would also belong to the victim. Todd Gregory’s prints were found on the outside of the door, they were consistent with his story of opening the door when the car arrived at the Valley Station.

  There were a lot of other fingerprints around the car, but it looked as though they belonged to tourists who had ridden during the day, they were found on the glass, but not near the controls or the door handle. Wayne asked if they could check the top of the car, just in case the murderer rode up there before committing the crime. The supervisor raised an eyebrow, he said that this was starting to sound like something out of a James Bond movie, but he agreed to check. His crew was finishing up with processing the scene and he thought they would be done by ten, eleven at the latest.

  George Margolis came over to find Wayne; he wanted to know if they could open the tramway to the public after the crime scene crew had cleared out. He thought he could have his people clean the gondola in a couple of hours; he wanted to open up the tramway by early afternoon. Wayne agreed to release the crime scene once the lab guys were done and told Margolis to expect a lot of sicko thrill seekers. People who would want to ride the tram just because it had been the scene of a murder. The tramway slaying was the lead story on the morning news; he expected this afternoon’s Desert Sun newspaper would have front page coverage as well.

  George also told Wayne that a man who identified himself as Robert Silverstein had called this morning. He was concerned since Terrance didn’t come home last night. George was surprised, he thought Terrance Quinn was single and at first refused to give him any information. George said the man was insistent and then told him that he was Terrance’s partner. George took it upon himself to tell him what had happened to Terrance, at which point Robert Silverstein lost control of his emotions and hung up the phone. Wayne asked if that was the only next of kin that needed to be notified and George said as far as he knew it was. George Margolis said he was actually surprised about the phone call from Silverstein, since Quinn kept to himself and rarely socialized or talked about his life outside of work, Margolis said he had just assumed that he lived alone.

  Wayne asked George if he could see Terrance Quinn’s personnel records, he wanted to go and talk with Silverstein on his own. George said he’d take care of talking with Nancy in the office and would bring the file out to Wayne.

  He wondered where Todd Gregory was this morning and George told him that Todd worked the afternoon shift; he didn’t come in until two and worked until ten-thirty at night. The last car of the night came down off the mountain at nine-thirty and usually Todd and Terrance Quinn would need an extra hour to clean up for the next morning. Margolis walked off to the office to get the personnel file for Wayne. He made a note on his pad to talk to Nancy in the office; he wanted Todd Gregory’s address and home phone number as well.

  Margolis came walking back with a manila folder that he handed to Wayne. He told him it was the only copy of Quinn’s file so Nancy wanted it returned. Wayne told him he’d make a copy of it at the station and that he wanted to talk with Nancy later so that he could get the names, addresses and phone numbers for Todd and in fact for everyone that worked at the tramway, including the campground host at the top. George picked a walkie-talkie off his belt and radioed the request directly to Nancy. He told Wayne that he would have a spreadsheet with all the contact information within an hour.

  Wayne spent several more hours talking with everyone connected to the tram’s operation and then he and George drove out to the cableway’s first tower and had a look around. Wayne marveled at the size of the tower, it reached more than two hundred fifty feet into the desert sky. But other than being fascinated by the forty year old technology, he didn’t spot anything that would lead him to solve this crime. On their drive back to the Valley Station he asked George to give him a ride in the tram up to Mountain Station.

  The crime scene crew finished up at ten-thirty and George had several of his staff come in and clean out the fingerprint dust and the large bloodstain from the car. Shortly after one o’clock, Wayne and George rode up the mountain, mid-way they passed the other car coming down, it was empty. Wayne looked out the windows, George used the mechanic’s override on the controls to slow down and stop the car from rotating. The trip up which normally took twenty minutes lasted just about forty-five. Wayne ignored the scenery and looked at how close the tram came to the support towers to see if there was any way someone could have entered the car, committed murder and escaped.

  When the car came to a gentle stop at Mountain Station at the end of the cable, it was considerably cooler than in the valley. He met the Round Valley campground host at the bottom floor of the three level station. Warren Evans told Wayne that after he waved goodbye at Quinn on that last ride, he hiked back to the campground. Wayne asked him if he was sure that it was Quinn that he saw and Evans said there was no doubt about it. Upon returning to his post at the campground it had been still and except for a group that sang around a campfire right up until quiet time, nothing unusual had happened.

  The ride down was less pleasant; George and Wayne shared the car with a number of overnight campers who had been waiting all day to come down the mountain. They had obviously not been near a shower for some time and the car, which had seemed spacious and bright on the way up suddenly seemed confining and stifling with the odor of too many bodies in too much heat closing in like a large concrete door that was swinging shut in a bank vault. Wayne stood near George who was operating the car and looked out at the spectacular scenery without talking.

  There was a large group of tourists at the bottom waiting to go up, many of them ambulance chasers, or the equivalent when a coroner’s van was involved, as Wayne had predicted. Nancy was waiting at the car when it stopped and handed Wayne a piece of paper with the staff’s contact information. Wayne said goodbye to Margolis, and told him that he would be in touch.

  All the signs of last night’s and this morning’s activities were gone and when Wayne walked out of the station to his car, the tramway looked like it did on any other summer day with tourists milling about, and the sun glinting off one of the gondolas as it made its way along the cable. He got into his car and looked at the stack of paper that he had collected on the passenger seat and headed down the hill towards the police station to try and make sense of this mystery.

  Chapter 2

  Henry Wright looked in his bathroom mirror and ran his hand over the stubble on his head. He’d always worn his hair short, but since retiring and moving to this warm desert climate, he’d gone even shorter on the clippers. He found that it was a lot easier to take care of with his daily swims this way. He supposed that if he ever let it grow out it would be salt and pepper colored, there was a lot more grey these days than the dark brown that his driver’s license said he had. He put down his toothbrush and turned the light off as he walked out of the bathroom and headed outside.

  There was some faint light on the Eastern horizon, but the stars were still visible when Henry walked out of his bedroom’s French doors. He turned on the underwater pool light so that he could follow the line of tile on the bottom of the pool while he swam and crossed the small lawn over to the poo
l at his house on Mel Avenue in the Ruth Hardy Park section of Palm Springs.

  He took the towel from around his waist, he never bothered wearing a swimsuit, the backyard was very private and the only other person here was Charles, his housemate, who usually slept late. He tossed the towel on a chaise lounge, strapped on his digital watch, put his swim goggles on top of his head and jumped into the water. It was warm, but nowhere near as warm as his bed had been. The water felt good against his bare skin and the sleepy grogginess that he felt before getting in was gone.

  Henry pulled his goggles down, pushed the buttons to start the stopwatch and started swimming laps. He enjoyed the exercise and usually used the time in the pool to solve problems or think about the issues he was dealing with. Before he retired, when he was still the police chief in Eagle River, Wisconsin, he never swam. Of course he knew how, you cannot grow up in that part of Wisconsin and not know how to swim. The area was literally dotted with lakes and he had learned how to swim as a young boy in the early fifties.

  As he got older and joined the police force and later became chief of police he occasionally would take a dip in Eagle Lake to cool off, but he didn’t swim for exercise as he liked to do now. The exercise helped him keep in shape as well. As an adult, it seemed like he had always weighed the same one hundred eighty pounds, which on his just over six foot frame made him look slender. Since moving to Palm Springs and starting his swimming routine he hadn’t lost any weight, but he was wearing a smaller size pants than he did while he was on the police force. At sixty-one he felt that he was in the best shape of his life.

  Henry made another kick turn at the end of the pool and kept swimming. He found that when he didn’t have something to resolve, like one of the profiling cases that he helped the FBI with, his mind wandered while he was swimming. He thought about his journey to Palm Springs and how he really ended up here as a fluke. At this point he wouldn’t live anywhere else, but his journey here had been by chance.

  Just over three years ago, Henry was living and working in Wisconsin and was three months away from retiring from the Eagle River police force when he and his wife Irma took a flight out to Las Vegas to look for a place where they could live out their retirement. Henry was at the point where he hated the snow and cold and didn’t want to deal any more with beer laden snow mobilers racing through town on cold February days. They had talked about retiring to a warmer climate, and after long discussions, they had narrowed their choices to Las Vegas, Nevada; Palm Springs, California or Phoenix, Arizona.

  They flew to Las Vegas first, the folks in Eagle River thought he and Irma were on a well deserved vacation to do a little gambling at the slot machines. The long time Eagle River residents didn’t want to let on to the folks at home that their beloved chief was leaving town after retiring and used the vacation excuse with their friends and travel agent. In the meantime, they had quietly lined up an appointment with a Las Vegas realtor to look at homes in which to live out their lives quietly. After checking in at the hotel and having some lunch, Irma decided to go back upstairs by herself to lie down when she didn’t feel well, thinking that the food hadn’t agree with her.

  An hour later when Henry went back up to the hotel room to check on Irma, she was dead on the bathroom floor. The coroner told him later that she had a massive heart attack and had died before she hit the floor and never felt a thing. Henry flew back to Wisconsin with Irma’s body and buried her there. The following few months were difficult for Henry and he didn’t remember much of them now.

  Still in a fog, three months after Irma’s funeral Henry retired from the police force, he now wanted to leave Wisconsin more than ever but he couldn’t bear moving to Las Vegas. The city would always be a memory of Irma and the hotel room bathroom. His old colleague from an FBI crime class that they attended together, Wayne Johnson, called him and invited him to come to Palm Springs for a visit and a look around. That was how he ended up here, in his little oasis on Mel Avenue.

  Henry made yet another kick turn in the pool and headed back towards the other end. He’d stayed with Wayne and Elliot in their beautiful home on a golf course in Indio for a couple of weeks. Then after looking around briefly, he bought the house here on Mel in the older part of Palm Springs. The place was too large for one person, but Henry thought the layout of the home was perfect and he loved living here.

  The house was in the shape of a U with the front door, living room and kitchen in the middle. At each end of the U were two bedrooms each with their own bathroom. All the bedrooms had double French doors leading to the inner courtyard which was the inside of the U with its pool, cabana and tiny strip of lawn. Henry set up one wing of the house with his bedroom and an office. The other wing was set up with two guest rooms, until he met Charles.

  Charles Knightly III was a retired high school history teacher who played pool at the local senior center where Henry spent a lot of time after he moved into the house. Charles was one of the few people who could beat Henry at eight ball, and they struck up an immediate friendship. Charles had moved to Palm Springs recently after caring for his life partner in San Francisco who passed away from AIDS. He had a hard time finding an apartment to rent, not many places were willing to let Charles bring in his little dog, a toy poodle named Pierre, that he couldn’t part with.

  Henry offered him one of the two guest rooms while he was hunting for a permanent place and Charles and Pierre moved in. After a few months, Henry suggested that Charles stop looking for a new place to live, and the two of them had been housemates for a couple of years now. The arrangement worked well for both of them. Henry didn’t really need the couple of hundred dollars that Charles insisted on paying in rent every month, but Henry thought Charles would feel better if he didn’t provide charity. Henry liked having someone to talk with, Charles’ history teacher experience had come in handy and Pierre was no trouble at all, Henry liked having the well behaved little dog around.

  Shortly after Henry moved into the house, he talked with a grief counselor about Irma’s unexpected death. He told the counselor about the fog that he was in for several months and the unexpected lonely retirement life that he had found himself living. Talking with the counselor helped somewhat, but he had a hard time socializing with women until he helped his old friend Wayne out with solving the murder of a local real estate agent a few months ago.

  He met a woman while he was investigating that incident, and while things didn’t work out with her, he realized that he missed loving someone. He’d come out of his shell at that time and had finally taken off his wedding ring which was now in the desk drawer in his office.

  Then, almost two months ago, he met Gloria McCann while helping a Northern California sheriff solve a mysterious murder in a gold mine. Henry smiled underwater as he thought of Gloria and felt a stirring that he had not felt in a long time. Gloria lived in a beautiful home on a hilltop just outside of Sonora in Northern California’s Gold Country, and she had promised to come and visit him during the upcoming Fourth of July holiday.

  They talked several times a week on the phone since he left Sonora in May and they were both looking forward to her visit. Gloria’s daughter, Samantha, was a professor at the University of Redlands and had been begging Gloria to visit once school was out for the summer. So Gloria decided to combine a stay with Sam in Redlands, less than an hour from Palm Springs, with a stay at Henry’s house. They hadn’t spoken since she arrived in Redlands last week; she wanted to devote the time to be with Samantha.

  Gloria was finishing up her stay in Redlands now and would be here in two days. TWO DAYS! Henry had a momentary panic, lost a stroke and almost swallowed some water, but quickly recovered as he realized that he had everything under control. He had put a schedule of tasks that needed to be done before her visit on the refrigerator that had driven Charles mad, but he had stuck to it closely and was confident that everything would be ready.

  He had a lot to do before Gloria arrived in Palm Springs, and he wanted the ho
use to look great and he hoped that she would be as comfortable here as he was at her house when he was recuperating in May. If he remembered his to-do list correctly, today he would go out shopping for new sheets for the guest room bed. Henry had washed the linens on the bed twice already, but decided he wanted Gloria to have the best experience she could possibly have. He talked Charles into going to the outlet mall with him today in Cabazon to look for a luxurious set of bed linens for the guest room bed.

  Tomorrow the landscapers were coming; he wanted the grounds to look nice and had done a bit of pruning himself. He hoped that Gloria would like his backyard and its tropical feel as much as he did. The garden was planted in the mid-fifties and the palm trees and shrubbery were mature and lush. The yard with its pool looked like a miniature tropical resort and despite the continual summer desert heat; the foliage was fresh and the colors vibrant. When they first talked about her visit, Gloria had said that she had no problem visiting him in July as long as he had a pool. He made a mental note to make sure that he put fresh pool towels on the guest room bed. There was a brand new terry cloth robe in the closet; he purchased it specifically for her.