“Sure, call me anytime. Good night.” He strode toward his hostess’s table, spoke to her for a moment, kissed her on the cheek and left the room.
Callie reached over, picked up the small liqueur glass, wrapped it in a tissue from her purse and dropped it into her bag. “Better than a photograph,” she said.
Stone looked up to see Frank Wilkes coming toward them. He sat down in Bartlett’s chair. “Paul has abandoned us, I see.”
“Yes, he seemed uncomfortable.”
“Stone, after speaking with him, do you think he may be the man you’re looking for?”
“I think he may be,” Stone said, “but even if he’s not, he’s not the man he says he is.”
“Then who is he?”
“I hope to know more about that soon, Frank. I’ll let you
know when I find out.”
“I’d appreciate that. Margaret and I introduced him to Frances, his wife, and the thought that he might have had something to do with her death is, naturally, very disturbing to us.”
“I can understand that. Can you tell me everything you remember about the accident?”
“It was on a Sunday afternoon, I remember. Paul and I had a golf date, and Frances picked him up at the clubhouse when we had finished—must have been around six. They were on the way home when …” He stopped. “No, they weren’t on the way home. We played at the Manitou Ridge Golf Club, in the Minneapolis suburbs, and their house—Frances’s house—is west of there. The accident happened along the shore of White Bear Lake, which is east—no, northeast of the club. After the funeral, I remember asking Paul what they were doing out in that direction. He said Frances had wanted to go for a drive along the lake. I didn’t say anything at the time, but that seemed odd to me. I can’t explain why, exactly, but it seemed out of character for Frances to want to do something as idle as go for a drive. She was the sort of person who would never take the long way home, if there was a shorter route.”
“And what do you remember about the accident itself?”
“The papers said that they were coming around a curve when a deer jumped out of the brush, and in trying to avoid it, Paul went off the road and smashed into a tree. Frances went through the windshield and hit the tree, killing her instantly.”
“You said earlier today there was something wrong with the seat belt?”
“Yes, I remember reading that. I told Paul he should sue, but he wanted no part of that.”
“Do you remember anything else about the accident or its aftermath that struck you as odd?”
Wilkes thought about it. “A few weeks later I was playing golf with a friend of mine, Arthur Welch, who was Frances’s lawyer. He mentioned that Paul had sold Frances’s house, and that surprised me.”
“Why?”
“Well, I knew that when Frances and Paul married, she insisted on a prenuptial agreement that severely limited any inheritance for him in the event of her death. The bulk of her estate was to go to a local art museum. When Arthur told me Paul had sold the house, I mentioned the prenup, and he told me that Frances had rescinded the prenup and had made a new will.”
“When?”
“Less than a month before her death.”
“I see.”
Wilkes rubbed his forehead. “I think I see, too. I didn’t want to believe it, but now …”
“Let’s not jump to any conclusions just yet,” Stone said. “Let’s wait until we know more.”
Wilkes nodded. “You’re right,” he said.
“And please don’t do anything that might make Bartlett feel that your relationship with him has changed, or that you don’t want to see or talk to him.”
“I’ll try,” Wilkes said. “Margaret will, too.”
As they left the party, Stone called Chief Dan Griggs.
“Dan, can you meet me at your office?” Stone asked. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”