Motive in Shadow

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

The Manning Company is a big business, but although it was headed by Claire Manning, the founder's widow, before her death, her son John had been running the firm for many years and was the undisputed successor. So why did Claire leave almost everything to her third cousin, whom no one associated with the firm has ever heard of? Enter Jesse Falkenstein, who is launched into an investigation of Claire Manning's past - and a litany of treachery, fraud, blackmail, abortion, impersonation and sudden death. 'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune

Release date: July 14, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

“I just don’t know how to thank you, Mr. Falkenstein,” said Lillian Keller earnestly. “You’ve been awful good to me.” Her spaniel eyes were
brown and moist. Jesse should have felt sorry for her, but he was merely irritated. Silly dreep of a woman, meekly putting up with a bully who regularly beat her and the kids, until a strong-minded
sister bullied her into a lawyer’s office and divorce court.

“You’ll be all right now,” he said inanely. The decree had just been issued by a bored judge. And he’d be willing to bet that if she took up with another man it would be
just the same kind; she was a born doormat.

The sister nodded grimly at him and bore her away; Jesse headed for the side entrance of the Hall of Justice, which gave onto the parking lot, and stopped to light a cigarette on the steps.

He was feeling stale and bored with life in general. The usual run of daily business was dull: the eternal paperwork, a handful of litigious clients, a damage suit which would probably never get
to court. Unlocking the Mercedes, he gave himself a mental shake; life was treating the Falkensteins rather handsomely at the moment, and he ought to be enjoying it. Old Edgar Walters’ dying
last year—and he still missed the old reprobate—had left him quite a bundle of money. Nell had found her sprawling old house up in Coldwater Canyon, and was having fun remodeling and
redecorating: some day it might be ready to move into. Even the weather was behaving itself, after a wet and wild winter; March had come in sedately, producing mild and pleasant days, and was
surrendering to a milder and warmer April.

And Jesse felt stale and fretful. Perhaps this was what happened as you got into the mid-thirties and realized that there was probably only a lot more of the same thing in store down the
years.

It was just past noon, and he had an appointment at one-thirty with a man who wanted to make a will, and that was all for today. Catching the light at Temple, he yawned and sighed. Stop
somewhere for lunch, and unprecedentedly have a drink first?

But when he went into the restaurant a block from his office on Wilshire there was a discouraging crowd waiting, and the bar was packed. Allergic to people en masse, he settled for a
milkshake at a fast-food cubbyhole in the next block, and got back to his office at one-twenty, the handsome new office on the third floor of the tall new office building.

His invaluable twin secretaries, Jean and Jimmy (Jamesina) Gordon looked up from file cabinet and reception desk as he came in. There was a client—the man about the will?—waiting in
one of the comfortable deep green armchairs Nell had chosen.

“Mr. Manning,” said Jean formally. The one-thirty appointment. The Gordons, of course, could run the office without Jesse; Jean was reminding him that the paperwork was up to date
and he might as well see the client now: nothing else on hand.

“Yes,” said Jesse, and looked at the client, who stood up and looked back at him. He was a good-looking man, about fifty, as tall as Jesse, broader, with heavy shoulders; he had a
good square jaw, intelligent dark eyes—it was an individual face. He was conservatively—and at second glance expensively—dressed in a navy suit, immaculate white shirt, discreetly
patterned navy and gray tie; his squarish tortoiseshell glasses conformed to what the well-dressed businessman should wear. He had a briefcase in one hand. Jesse shepherded him into the inner
office and indicated a chair, sat down at his desk. He was still getting used to the big, new L-shaped desk, the spacious new quarters. He swiveled the desk chair around to face the client and idly
met the stern dark gaze of Holbein’s portrait of Sir Thomas More on the paneled wall opposite the window. “I understand you want to make a will, Mr. Manning.” More busywork.

“No,” said Manning. “I said it was about a will.” He had an unexpectedly deep, full voice. He looked at Jesse consideringly, doubtfully; he opened his mouth, shut it, and
said after a moment, “Tregarron suggested your name. It seems he knows your father, who I gather is also a lawyer. He said you should be—er—sound. I don’t know. I
don’t know what we can do— You see, I couldn’t ask Tregarron to act for me, because he’s named executor of the will, and besides we’ve used Tregarron and Weekes on all
the legal business of the company for twenty years, he’s—an interested party. My God!” said Manning, and sagged back into the chair and passed a square manicured hand over his
face. “What a goddamned mess—and I ought to be furious, I am furious—but mostly I’m still feeling so damned astonished—” He let out a long breath. “Short
and sweet,” he said. “My mother’s will—we’ll have to contest it. I haven’t the least idea how you go about it, but—”

Jesse sat back. “Very tricky thing in law, Mr. Manning. You could spend some money and get nowhere. On what grounds do you want to contest?”

“I don’t know, damn it! I can’t—Mother! Mother, doing a thing like—” Manning hoisted the briefcase onto his lap, opened it. “This has—it’s
like seeing four suns in the sky, or, or waking up on Mars. Nothing like this happens. It can’t be happening. But it seems to be. I’m not making much sense, am I?” He took a
little sheaf of papers out of the briefcase and laid it on the desk. “That’s the will,” he said. “We knew where her will was, of course—in Tregarron’s office.
She made a new one a little over five years ago. She—she died ten days ago, and Tregarron was starting all the paperwork—getting it into probate—but there was the safe-deposit box
to clear. We had an appointment with an I.R.S. man on Monday—and there was this thing on top of everything else. Made three months ago.” He sat back. “You’d better read it
first.”

Without comment Jesse picked up the papers. It was a Xerox copy of the original. The outer sheet was labeled Last Will and Testament of Claire Elizabeth Manning; below that a line was
crossed out, has been deposited for safekeeping with, and below that was Peter J. Kellogg, attorney-at-law, with an address on Melrose Avenue. Jesse folded the first sheet over
and was confronted with a single succinct page.

I, Claire Elizabeth Manning, a resident of Los Angeles County, state of California, do hereby declare this to be my last will and testament and revoke all other wills and codicils
previously made by me.

First, I declare that I am a widow.

Second, it is my intention hereby to dispose of all my property, real and personal, which I have the right to dispose of by Will.

Third, I give, devise and bequeath the following bequests to the following persons:

The sum of ten thousand, three hundred and forty-two dollars and seven cents ($10,342.07) to my son John G. Manning, resident of Los Angeles County.

The sum of ten thousand, three hundred and forty-two dollars and seven cents ($10,342.07) to my grandson James J. Manning, resident of Los Angeles County.

My home residence on Valle Vista Place, Hollywood, and all its contents to my son John G. Manning.

All other property of which I die possessed, real and personal, I leave to my third cousin Adam Pollock, resident of Middlesex County, New Jersey.

I name Arthur Tregarron sole executor of this Will.

There followed the signature, in a fairly neat backhand, Claire Elizabeth Manning. On the third sheet was more typescript:

On the seventh day of December, 1979, Claire Elizabeth Manning declared to us the undersigned that this foregoing instrument was her last will and testament, and requested us to act as
witnesses to the same and to her signature thereon. She thereupon signed said will in our presences, we being present at the same time. And we now, at her request, in her presence and in the
presence of each other, do hereunto subscribe our names as witnesses.

Below this was a careless, big scrawl, Peter J. Kellogg residing at Hollywood, CA, and a neat, tiny script, Emily W. Vickers residing at Glendale, CA.

Jesse put it down and said, “Short and sweet all right. What’s the matter with it, Mr. Manning?”

“My God,” said Manning. He opened and shut his mouth again, and then reached into his breast pocket and handed Jesse a card: C.M.R. Management Company, an address out on Sunset in
West Hollywood. Mr. John G. Manning, President. “I can’t tell you within a few thousand what we’re worth, but we grossed seven and a half million last year. We own fourteen office
buildings. We manage about forty others. We’ve gotten into condominiums the last ten years. It’s a private company. The family business.”

Jesse’s brows shot up. “That’s ‘all other property of which I die possessed’?”

“That’s what I mean,” said Manning. Suddenly, as if he couldn’t sit still another moment, he plunged to his feet and began to pace back and forth in front of the desk.
“My God, my God, why? Why should she do such a thing? Why? There was nothing—no reason—I don’t even know who this goddamned Pollock is! The whole business, the whole
shebang that she worked to build up, that I worked for— It doesn’t make sense!” He stopped short and stared at Jesse bitterly. “Ruth—my wife—says she was crazy.
It’s easy to say, and you’d never prove it. I never knew a shrewder woman than Mother.”

“The other will—the one you thought was valid—how does it read?”

“It all came to me. Naturally. It’s the family business, for God’s sake. There was never any question— Not even any special bequests, she knew she could leave it to me to
do the things she wanted—five thousand to Mrs. Hawes, and Jim was to have my father’s diamond ring. Why in God’s name she did this! My God,” said Manning, “how many
times has she said to me, when I’m gone and you’re in charge—”

“Could you supply witnesses to that?” Jesse got up to find a book in the rank of shelves behind the desk.

Manning nodded, pacing again. “I was doing some thinking along that line. Very probably. Fowler—he’s our head accountant—must have heard her say something like that a
good many times. And Hansie, of course. I suppose the family wouldn’t count.”

“Within the last two or three months, since this will was made?”

“Oh, God, no. I’ve been in charge the last five, six years.” For the first time he gave Jesse a small fleeting grin. “Whatever, she was quite a gal, my mother, Mr.
Falkenstein. You couldn’t beat her—you couldn’t get her down. She was in charge, in spades, up to then—at her desk all day five days a week, knew everything that was going
on. It was her baby, she knew the business backward and forward—”

“’Scuse me,” said Jesse, “you put up with getting ordered around? Don’t strike me as a milquetoast, Mr. Manning.”

Manning laughed briefly and sat down again. “I wouldn’t like to think so. It wasn’t exactly like that. God knows when I was a brash kid just out of business administration at
U.S.C. I clashed with her a few times—but I found out she usually knew just what she was doing. And she never tried to keep me under her thumb while she bossed everything—I served time
in accounting, and then on to investments, until I knew the whole business as well as she did—that was the general idea, that I should take over. Actually I’d been running the business
for ten years and more, only she liked to come in, keep an eye on what was happening. Then she broke her hip, and that finished that. Though she surprised everybody, including the doctor, how she
came back. He didn’t think she’d walk again, but she was on her feet in three months, slowed down a bit but just as sharp as ever.”

“Um,” said Jesse, leafing over pages. “There hadn’t been any difference of opinion between you at all?”

“Nothing,” said Manning. “Nothing. I—when we came across that thing, and read it, Tregarron and I must have just goggled at each other for five minutes before—
It’s a monstrosity, nothing that could happen. Everything—the whole business, all the property—and Jim just out of college and in his first job in the accounting department—
There wasn’t any damned reason! I suppose Mrs. Lightner could testify that we were on perfectly amicable terms, and Mrs. Hawes—though I wasn’t often there when she
was—”

“Mrs. Lightner.”

Manning finally stopped turning a cigarette around in his fingers and lit it with a little vicious click of a lighter. “Housekeeper,” he said. “Nurse? When she broke her
hip—she couldn’t be alone any longer. That white elephant of a house—but she never would consider leaving it, going into an apartment. They’d only just built it and moved
into it when my father was killed. That was nineteen thirty-five. Of course I lived there, after college, until Ruth and I were married—that’s twenty-six years ago. She’d lived
there alone ever since, rattling around in the place. Had the cleaning woman, Mrs. Hawes, in a few days a week, to keep it in shape—she’d had her for years, twenty at least. She was
still driving then. Then she fell down the back steps and broke her hip, and when she came home from the convalescent place she had to give in, have someone with her. She—was a woman who
valued her privacy, and she didn’t like it, but there it was. And Mrs. Lightner’s been more than satisfactory. A practical nurse really, but she took over the housekeeping, did
everything for Mother.”

“What,” asked Jesse, “did your mother die of, Mr. Manning? Did you notice any—even slight—mental disability?”

Manning stubbed out his cigarette. “It said cardiac failure and thrombosis on the death certificate. You might as well say old age, I suppose. She was getting on for seventy-six. All I can
tell you is that, yes, she’d slowed down a good deal—but she was still all there mentally, if a little absentminded sometimes. But I think that was mostly because she missed having a
regular routine—the way it had been, all those years, every day at the office—”

Jesse watched him, letting him talk; he prowled the office restlessly.

“Oh, God, I hate like the devil even having to think about it— Mother, incompetent? Off the rails enough to do a thing like this—the whole business she’s spent a lifetime
building up— People to testify we were on the usual affectionate terms,” and he shook his head, collapsing into the chair again. “I really don’t know. I respected her more
than anyone I’ve every known, you know. But she wasn’t a—a demonstrative woman. I—if you don’t mind a little family history—”

“We might have to look at some.”

“Yes. She wasn’t a woman to live in the past, either, but just in the course of learning the business I heard a certain amount—and Hansie could fill in between the
lines—”

“Hansie.”

“Miss Wilma Hansen, she’s retired now, but she was Mother’s secretary for years—as long as I can remember. Nice woman—I suppose you could say I got as much
mothering from Hansie as from Mother,” said Manning heavily. “You don’t, well, think of your parents having romantic feelings and deathless love affairs, but looking back at
it—I don’t know a great deal about my father. Mother was brought up in New Jersey—Passaic, I think it was. For some reason my father went there on his way to California. She was
an only child, her mother was dead, and I gather there was quite a row when they eloped. All I know about my father is that he came from somewhere in New York and his family was all dead then. He
had an idea there was money to be made in Southern California land. Money!” said Manning. “A gold mine. Southern California in the twenties—the thirties. My God, was there money.
That was in 1925. They came out here, and he was with a real estate firm in L.A., doing all right, when her father died and left her a bundle of money—it wouldn’t amount to a hell of a
lot now, but then it was a nice piece of working capital. They were so lucky, you see, up to a point. All they could see was land investment—when the bundle came, it was in gilt-edged stock,
and they sold it all out to realize the capital—and that was just before the crash in twenty-nine.”

“Oh, yes, I see,” said Jesse. “And after that—” Talk about gold mines. Southern California in the thirties, just on its way to building one of the world’s
great cities: all the bare empty stretches of land west and east and north of Hollywood, property values depressed to record lows, but the potential—ten years later the great aircraft
industry galvanized to growth by the war, and thousands of people flocking in. “Little joke, about the banks turning into real estate agencies during the Depression. All the
foreclosures.”

“That was the luck,” said Manning. “Even a relatively small amount of working capital—it was just over two hundred thousand—gave them the edge to buy up rental
property clear, buy up land to hold for future potential. One of the first goodies they held a deed to was a triple lot on Santa Monica between San Vicente and Robertson Boulevard—”

“Oh, my, how pretty,” said Jesse. “The hand of the diligent maketh rich, according to Solomon. The profit on that alone—I can imagine.”

“Yes,” said Manning dryly. “They bought it in 1931 for fourteen thousand and sold it ten years later for two hundred and twenty grand. There’s an office complex sitting
on it now worth about seven million.”

“You were talking about luck.”

Manning got out another cigarette. “Up to a point. They were doing fine in the Depression, you can see. Other people’s bad luck was their big chance. They’d accumulated enough,
had enough profit coming in, to build that house—it was away out of town then—and they’d just moved into it, I should say we, I was six years old—when my father was killed.
It was one of those senseless accidents—he was driving home up on Highland when a drunk ran a light and hit his car broadside. He was killed instantly. He was only thirty-five.

“And looking back on it—later on, when I knew more about it and understood her better—I could see that was when she changed, you know.” Manning’s tone was sober.
“She never was a woman for—oh, the hugs and kisses and darlings—but I can just remember, when I was just a kid, her putting me to bed, singing lullabies. I can remember them
laughing and singing together—they both liked music, and Hansie said they used to go dancing a lot. After he was killed—I can just barely remember him—there wasn’t any more
of that. I think it was as if something froze in her, and all the feeling she had left, for a long time, was a kind of fierce determination to go on and build up the business—pile up the
money—just as he would have tried to do.”

“Yes,” said Jesse. “You’re saying there wasn’t much affection.”

“No, no,” said Manning impatiently. “It’s hard to explain her to a stranger, Mr. Falkenstein. It makes her sound hard and cold, to tell you that she packed me off to
military school and plunged into the business single-mindedly. She wasn’t, exactly. She was always good to me, when I was at home. She talked to me—there were always birthday parties,
and Christmas parties. I think it was when I was about sixteen, she took me to the office for the first time and explained what the business was, wha. . .