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She turned around. It was Zephyr Whitehouse.
I suppressed a sigh and said, “Come up to my office.”
She followed me to the elevator and we walked down the long hallway in silence.
That changed once I closed the door.
“I owe you an apology for this morning,” she said. “I didn’t realize you were a deputy sheriff. I had to rifle through Diane’s purse to find your business card. Then I called Chris and he told me you are a historian, too. I’m impressed.”
Good old Chris.
“No apology necessary.” I sat behind the desk. “No need to be impressed.”
“My therapist has told me about sexual competition between mothers and daughters,” she said. “It’s always been there between me and Diane.”
She called her mother by her first name, like Lindsey and Robin had done. Did anyone say “mom” anymore?
I invited her to sit but she walked around inspecting, pausing to look out the restored 1929 windows. She had that combination of beauty, grace, money, and—if she didn’t read serious books—at least a feral intelligence that allowed her to effortlessly be the sun of any solar system she entered.
She alighted on the 1950s photo of Camelback Mountain with nothing but citrus groves flowing out to the south.
She pointed. “Our house is right here now. Amazing. You must despise my father. Even though I loved him, I hated growing up with his last name. I thought about taking Diane’s maiden name, Jacobi. You know last names only became common in Europe in the sixteenth century, as people left their home villages? Of course you do.”
I would have nodded but her very nice back was still facing me.
She turned. “We both have the same middle name, mother and daughter. Colleen. Do you like that?”
“Colleen is a lovely name.”
She smiled. “But I’m a Zephyr.”
“Yes, you are,” I said. “What do you want, I’m-a-Zephyr?”
She straightened her shoulders. “You’re very direct, Professor. No time for postmodern irony and cynicism? Or maybe that’s what you did and I missed it.”
I put my hands flat on the desk. “This is not Stanford and these are not office hours. Please sit down and tell me…” I smoothed out my insides and finished with “…how I may help you.”
She sat, the skirt rode up, and long tanned legs crossed. I kept my eyes on her face.
“Your investigation of Chip. I’m assuming that’s why you came to see Diane this morning.”
“Chip?”
“Elliott Whitehouse, Jr., my half brother. Chip. He and James are sons of Daddy and the sainted first wife, Kathryn. The woman done wrong when Daddy left her for Diane, who was nothing more than a secretary in his office. It was a scandal. Very sexy. Kathryn and my half brothers hate me. James goes by the nickname Tanker, don’t ask me why.”
Diane Whitehouse had told me that she met Elliott while she had been working at Diamond’s.
I asked Zephyr to tell me about Chip.
“Nothing you probably don’t suspect.” She played with a thick strand of tawny hair. “He did bribe county officials to get land rezoned for his warehouses. He’s mean and lazy, but he’s also careless. I have copies of the checks.”
She reached in her purse and slid across sheets of folded paper.
I scanned them. They showed checks written on E2 LLC and signed by Chip Whitehouse. Each was made out to a different individual. I recognized one name from the Planning and Zoning Board and another who was a county commissioner. Each check was in the amount of ninety-eight hundred dollars. The payment was below the threshold where the bank would be required to report it to the feds.
I said, “Why are you doing this, Zephyr? He is your brother. What’s your angle?”
Her face flushed. “Chip destroyed an eight-hundred-year-old Hohokam site to build those warehouses. Never disclosed it.”
