The Never-Open Desert Diner (23 page)

“I lied because I didn't want to tell him I was reading up on cellos. If I have to explain that to you, you're an idiot. You really think I might have something to do with your missing cello?”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” he answered. “You might have possibly wandered across it. Have you?”

“I might have,” I said. “There's all kinds of shit lying around in the desert.”

Welper glanced over to the captain, who told me to answer the question.

“Sure,” I said, “I saw
a
cello. I don't know if it's the one you're searching for. The one I saw was missing its price tag.”

I did know. I knew Claire had to be the woman in the airport. I assumed Walt had been the one who picked her up in Denver. What I didn't know was that the cello was worth twenty million dollars. Or if Walt knew she had the cello. Or even if he cared one way or the other. What I did know was that it didn't make any difference to me. It did explain a little about why the husband's priorities got derailed. I did know why she didn't have the cello with her at the airport, not that it mattered much now. Some of the odd freight Walt had received must have been the cello. I couldn't help smiling even as I realized Claire hadn't been completely honest with me.

Welper leaned across the table. “You're smiling, Mr. Jones. That tells me you're thinking when you should be talking. You don't seem all that shocked to learn that the cello you saw is worth twenty million dollars.”

“Twenty million doesn't mean anything to me.”

“Why's that? Are you a rich man, Mr. Jones?”

“You know I'm not. It's the other way around. The cash register in my head won't ring up twenty million. It's unreal. I can't even imagine an amount like that. It has no more meaning to me than moon rocks. Now, if you'd said fifty grand, that would have shocked me. Twenty million for a piece of old wood?”

Welper cringed. “Where did you see this old piece of wood?

“Out in the desert.”

“Exactly where out in the desert?”

“A woman had it.”

Welper pulled another photograph from the file. “Is this the woman?”

Of course, it was. “That's her,” I said, hoping he might forget that I'd been vague in my answer to his question about where I'd seen the cello. “What's her name?”

“Claire Tichnor. Exactly where and when did you see Mrs. Tichnor?”

“Out on 117. Her car was broken down,” I lied. “My memory would be a lot clearer if you'd just come to me when you first suspected I had information.”

I shrugged and tried to look like a helpless high-school-educated truck driver. It was a role I was born to play. “I didn't care about the damn cello. I just thought if I ever saw her again I might impress her by knowing something about cellos. That's why I was on the Internet at five in the morning. Jesus, what do I know about cellos?”

“That's what you thought, was it? Take a few minutes on the web and increase your odds of getting laid?” Welper laughed. “Maybe with one of your local barflies. You'd need a million years to have a chance with a woman like that.”

I wanted to tell him how quickly a million years goes by in the desert. I kept my mouth shut.

“But that's what your little girlfriend thought, too
—
there had to be a woman.”

There it was. My little girlfriend. Mentioning Ginny that way straightened my spine just as Welper expected it would. “Yeah,” I said, “my
friend
. Why else would I go to Walmart in the middle of the night looking for cello music?”

“When did you see Mrs. Tichnor?”

I answered as if he were asking about the first and only time I'd seen her. “I'm not sure. The day before I got on the computer. Whenever that was. You'd know better than I would.”

“Where are Mrs. Tichnor and the cello now?”

I shrugged. “I couldn't tell you. It's a big damn desert.”

“You're holding back, Mr. Jones. That's not a smart move. There's more at stake than just a rare cello. A lot more.”

“I think we've already established I'm not very smart. The question now is, how stupid am I? What could be more stupid than someone like me lying to someone like you about a twenty-million-dollar cello?”

“I can think of two. Kidnapping. Maybe murder.”

I
shouted, “I don't know anything about a kidnapping or murder!”

Captain Dunphy didn't waste any time getting to the table. “Neither do I,” he said. “That's the first I've heard of it.” He demanded a chair and a notepad from one of the cameras. In the few seconds it took for the items to arrive, he towered over Welper, grim and silent.

“Up till now we've been having technical difficulties with the tape.” He spoke to the camera. “I've been assured that it's now functioning properly.”

I understood. Until a minute ago Welper's connections had kept my interrogation off the record. That had changed in a big way. The expression on Welper's face told me he was aware of the change, and he wasn't happy.

I settled down. “I think maybe somebody ought to read me my rights,” I said. I was reasonably certain Claire couldn't have had anything to do with a kidnapping or murder. The same for Walt. Of course there was the little matter of the corpse he'd kept in his bathroom. I began to wonder about Claire. About both of them. Maybe I was just the stupid truck driver everyone thought I was.

Dunphy said, “You're not under arrest. Yet. You are here voluntarily.” He waited, daring me to disagree. When I didn't, he said, “But you're correct, Mr. Jones. And I'll start with Mr. Welper here. You have the right to remain
—
”

Welper blustered. “You're joking.”

Dunphy continued until he was finished. “Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?”

Welper nodded.

“Say yes or no. Clearly.”

Welper said, “Yes.” He waived his right to have an attorney present.

Dunphy did the same for me, and he said to both of us, “From here on out, I will be asking the questions. I'll start with you, Mr. Welper. A moment ago you suggested you had knowledge of a kidnapping and murder.”

Welper got busy trying to backpedal. “It's a possibility. I have no direct knowledge of either.” It wasn't working.

“Let's start with everything of which you do have direct knowledge.”

“We don't have time…”

Dunphy cut him off. “If you'd started out the right way, you wouldn't feel so pressed for time. Trust me, Mr. Welper, we
do
have the time.”

Welper whispered, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

It sounded like a warning to me. It must have sounded the same way to Dunphy. He responded that he was absolutely sure. He expressed his certainty in a voice that could have been recorded from the parking lot.

Welper was still trying to act as if nothing had changed. Somewhere in his head he was still convinced he was running the show. “I don't want the truck driver here.”

Dunphy seemed to be thinking Welper had a good point. I pushed my chair clear of the table. I was okay with leaving, if only as far as the hallway. “Mr. Jones,” the captain said, “stays put. Remember, he's here at your invitation. Just one of the many courtesies I was asked to extend. Those courtesies have expired, Mr. Welper.”

I was content to be a spectator for the better part of an hour. I wasn't particularly interested in Claire's life before she arrived at Desert Home. I closed my eyes and did my best to send a message to Welper and Dunphy that I wasn't interested. Several times I tried to imagine myself under the archway above Desert Home. I wanted the sun on my face and to see Claire on the porch, alone, looking up at me. I couldn't manage it. I was listening to every word and getting an education I didn't want about cellos and Claire's past.

The captain stopped Welper from time to time to scribble and ask follow-up questions, stating and restating what had been said, moving backward but never forward. Or so it seemed. He knew his job and exactly how to do it. Claire had pretty much told me the truth, which was a relief. For his part, Welper had been telling the truth as well, what little he had been willing to share before Dunphy took over. I only got a few surprises. None of them had anything to do with kidnapping and murder.

When Claire was a senior in college she used all of the inheritance from her adoptive parents to buy an option, a first right of refusal, on a very rare cello, the same cello described on the website. Five hundred thousand dollars. At the time, it was owned by one of her college professors. He needed the money and didn't want to sell the cello while he was alive. It had been in his family for generations. He was fond of Claire. The opportunity to buy the cello in the future was an expression of his admiration for her talent. He had considered Claire his most gifted student. Welper added, with a sick wink, that maybe what the professor, who was in his fifties, really admired was an altogether different set of gifts.

Dunphy made a point of ignoring the comment.

Upon the death of the professor, whenever that might be, Claire would have the right to match any bid when his estate put the cello up for auction. If Claire happened to predecease him, the option money, which was otherwise nonrefundable or unassignable to a third party, would be returned to her estate from the proceeds of the sale. The professor was a cagey old fellow. The cello could not be purchased by Claire and resold. At least not for twenty-five years. How Claire might raise the eventual sale price, which she must have been aware could be in the millions, was not known. At twenty-one, she probably hadn't thought that far ahead.

Three years ago the professor died, and the cello went to auction. Claire had been married for a long time. She had given up playing the cello to support her husband. Not long before the cello was to be auctioned, her husband acquired a girlfriend. Not just any girlfriend, a beautiful young Chinese national from Hong Kong who was a rising star as a violinist. She also had a doting and very wealthy father who had embraced capitalism long before China made it officially possible. Welper thought the appearance of a wealthy girlfriend months before the auction was more than a coincidence. Who had engineered the coincidence, the husband or the girlfriend, was difficult to know.

A chance to purchase this particular cello would have brought out the opportunism in a lot of people
—
investors and collectors, as well as musicians. The relationship benefited everyone but Claire. Daddy, who came up with the millions to exercise the option, benefited most. Claire was told only that a group of foreign investors had loaned them the money, in exchange for which the husband retained exclusive but restricted use of the cello for his lifetime. The investors retained the right to “showcase” the cello internationally for at least one month a year, with or without the husband. Claire signed off on the deal.

As soon as the ink was dry on the sale, the husband filed for divorce. It was, in Welper's words, a rocky divorce. It only got rockier when the judge ruled that while the “first right of refusal” was Claire's alone, she would receive no monetary compensation for the husband's use of the cello. In effect, the husband was awarded sole custody of their major asset, which was not an asset at all, just a simple right to access
—
a form of straw purchase that met, though just barely, the terms of the professor's option. The husband's attorney argued that possession of the cello was essential to Mr. Tichnor's livelihood as a professional musician.

Welper took a deep breath. “Maybe the worst part for the former Mrs. Tichnor wasn't losing the cello. She quickly learned not just of the girlfriend, but of the father's financial involvement. In effect, Mrs. Tichnor lost the cello, her husband, and her five hundred thousand, with the former husband as the beneficiary. The final insult came when the judge ordered Mrs. Tichnor to pay the husband spousal support for five years.”

Dunphy asked, “That's when the wife stole the cello?”

“Yes and no,” Welper answered. “She played nice for a couple of months. Even made the first few spousal support payments. Then she attempted to kill the ex-husband. Poison. Or that was the initial assumption. I don't think she planned to kill him. It was part of a plan to steal the cello. She met him at a midtown bar in the afternoon. He later said she just wanted to say good-bye and good luck. No hard feelings and so on, as if there were a chance in hell. Anyway, he agreed. An hour later he was rushed to the hospital. She even went with him, the concerned and still-loving ex-wife. Also part of the plan, I think. It wasn't until two days later that the doctors told him he had been poisoned. Tough to prove. No charges were filed. Not yet.

“The same evening as Mr. Tichnor lay in the hospital, Mrs. Tichnor showed up where the Chinese princess was playing a charity benefit for the Manhattan Friends of Chamber Music. Dressed in an evening gown, she casually made her way through the social upper crust of New York. After chatting with various people and sipping champagne, she approached the other woman, who had just taken her place for the evening's featured event. No one was paying much attention. She said a few words to the princess, which no one heard and the princess said she couldn't remember. She grabbed the violin from the woman's hands
—
a violin worth a quarter of a million, which thankfully my company didn't insure
—
and swung it like a baseball bat. She hit the princess hard enough to knock her out of her chair. In the turmoil that followed she calmly walked out and disappeared.”

It took every ounce of concentration to keep my eyes closed. Dunphy said, “You getting all this, Mr. Jones?”

I didn't respond. I was getting all of it, even the parts I could barely stand to hear. Claire had a temper. The temper troubled me. Welper was right, Claire's temper was of the worst variety
—
cool and methodical. Returning the gun to Walt had been a damn good idea. There had to be another reason why she knocked the princess out of the park, especially in front of so many witnesses, not that she needed another reason. Either way, Claire's temper was a good reason for Welper to fear for the safety of the cello.

According to Welper, Claire had taken the keys to the husband's practice studio in a secure building. Probably on the way to the hospital. People at the building had been used to seeing her.

“The next day, while the husband was in the hospital and the princess was recovering from largely superficial head wounds, no one knew the cello was missing. She had given herself a head start. Mrs. Tichnor disappeared. She had been smart enough to use her employer's account to buy a plane ticket to Denver. Four hours before departure. In her own name. She was also smart enough to make it round-trip. Ever since 9/11, one-way tickets have been scrutinized. One-way tickets are the first to get attention.”

Dunphy asked, “Why did Mrs. Tichnor come to Utah?”

Welper answered that he had no idea. The husband said she had made the trip at least once before. Mr. Tichnor didn't know why. At the time they were going through the divorce and were not on speaking terms.

“How did she get the cello out here?”

“We don't know that either. We weren't even certain she had the cello with her here.” Welper glanced at me. “An accomplice maybe. She's a loner. No family or close friends. It's not like she could just put a twenty-million-dollar cello in an envelope and mail it to herself. We checked all the high-value transport companies. Until Mr. Jones here, we thought she might have even destroyed it. Its size makes it bulky. I don't think her plan was to demand payment for its return. It doesn't really matter. She's here now. Or was. And she has the cello.”

Dunphy asked to see the police report. Welper fumbled with his glasses and took his time responding. When he did, the answer surprised me. It also surprised Dunphy.

“What do you mean a report was never filed? How can a twenty-million-dollar cello get stolen and a police report not get filed?”

“The consensus was we had a better chance at recovery if we kept the police out of it. This was not a professional theft. It was the result of a domestic dispute. If it was just about money the cello would have been safer in the hands of a pissed-off ex-wife.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I agreed. That's also the way the princess and her father wanted it. So did Mr. Tichnor.”