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The women turned when two knocks came on the pebbled glass. Chris Melton walked in. He was actually wearing a suit.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Damned federal racial profiling case. Had to testify. It’s all trumped up by the media.”
He looked around, found no place to sit, and leaned against the wall.
“Who’s that?” His eyes quickly found his competition on the wall behind me. I told a shorter version of the lesson I had given to the Whitehouse women.
Melton said, “Of course.”
He had no idea who Carl Hayden was.
I said, “I asked you to come here today to discuss what I’ve found concerning the wallet that Mrs. Whitehouse discovered in her husband’s closet.”
Melton shot me an icy glance. Why are you surprising me?
Zephyr said, “This is very sexy. Like one of those Masterpiece Mysteries on PBS. But that might make us potential suspects!”
“Settle down, dear,” her mother said. “And call me Diane, David. You know that.”
Zephyr ran her hand in front of her face, turning her amused look into one of mock seriousness.
Several files were laid out on the desk. Screw the paperless office.
I laid down a photo of the wallet.
“This is it. It’s been logged in as evidence so the photo will have to do. When Diane found it, she was curious enough to do some research. She said she discovered it went with a man who died in 1982. At that point, she contacted the sheriff.”
I opened another folder and started laying out photos of men, some quite explicit.
“When I interviewed Diane, she showed me where the wallet was found. These are some of the photos that were also in the drawer…”
Diane turned toward Melton. “Chris, I didn’t think these were relevant.”
I continued. “I thought they might be, so I also placed the originals in evidence. These are copies.”
“And they say size doesn’t matter.” Zephyr eyed the photographs and clicked her tongue against the roof of he
r mouth, smiled, and fiddled with the factory torn fabric of her jeans.
Melton folded his arms. “How is this relevant, David?”
“Among these photos was a smaller snapshot,” I said, placing another picture on the desk. “This is the young man who died, Tom Frazier.”
“He has clothes on,” Zephyr said.
I nodded. “That’s one curiosity. Another is that the snapshot is torn in half. Someone else was in this photo, but that part was discarded. Then there’s the problem that none of these other photographs fit.”
Diane started to twirl her hair but put her hands back in her lap. “What do you mean?”
“Every other photo can be found on the Internet, from gay porn sites to Flickr. They could have been downloaded and turned into physical photographs, even aged to look as if they had been sitting in that closet for decades. So if Elliott Whitehouse was gay or bisexual, and these were meant to be keepsakes from former lovers, it doesn’t fit.”
“Mother!” Zephyr stood, angry enough to dispense with using her mom’s given name. “Daddy wasn’t gay! He hated gay people. How could you have said such a thing?”
I held out a hand and lowered it. Zephyr sat.
“I never said any such thing,” Diane said.
“You did imply it,” I said. “Your husband wasn’t interested in sex. He always had very handsome male assistants. ‘Real hunks,’ in your words. I’ll be happy to read the report I wrote of our discussion to refresh your memory.”
