Murder and the Museum Read online

  MURDER AND THE MUSEUM

  By

  Dianne Harman

  (A High Desert Cozy Mystery - Book 7)

  Copyright © 2018 Dianne Harman

  www.dianneharman.com

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form without written permission except for the use of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Paperback ISBN:

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To all of you who read my books, thank you!

  To Vivek and Connie, the people who help my books get published and look good, thank you!

  And to Tom, my in-house editor, husband, and best friend, thanks for coming along with me for the ride!

  Free Paperbacks

  I'm giving away FREE Paperbacks. Find out more at www.dianneharman.com/freepaperback.html

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  RECIPES

  COMING SOON

  ABOUT DIANNE

  PROLOGUE

  Camille Borden looked at her to-do list for the coming week and involuntarily winced. Even though she was thrilled it looked like the art museum she’d been planning to build in Palm Springs for the last ten years was actually going to happen, the flip side was she’d be even busier than usual.

  Just looking at all of the appointments that were scheduled the following week in her calendar made her heart race. She had to meet with the architect, the different county departments to finalize the building plan requirements, the art and antique appraiser, plus the people she needed to begin interviewing for the job of museum director was enough to give anyone a headache. And her schedule of meetings didn’t even include her chemotherapy and radiation appointments which she needed to squeeze in somehow.

  Her biggest problem at the moment was that she’d been remiss in not getting a current appraisal of her vast art and antique collection. They hadn’t been appraised for over twenty years. When her additional purchases over that period were combined with the dramatic appreciation in the value of her collection, her accountant, Harold Lassiter, had told her it was something she couldn’t put off any longer. Camille had thought since it was going into a museum, the museum director could take care of the appraisal, but she had been mistaken. The response received to that suggestion boiled down to an unequivocal “No.”

  If she was going to spend the kind of money required to purchase the unimproved desert land needed to build the museum, she would have to put her collection up as collateral in order to get the bank loan she would need to complete the museum project. The bank would require a current appraisal, so the collection needed to be appraised as soon as possible.

  She sat at her desk in her office chewing on the end of her pen, trying to finish up the task of cataloging all the pieces in her collection. It required her to document where she’d bought each piece, how much she’d paid for it, when she’d purchased it, and anything else that was relevant. Her memory wasn’t what it had been, and to make matters worse, she had no records at all for a lot of the pieces in her collection.

  It was on days like today that Camille wished she was more organized. Over the years, when she bought a piece of art, she simply threw the receipt for her purchase into a file folder. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, not so much. Her accountant had been very clear that not only did she need to catalogue everything she intended to put in the museum, she needed to be able to give the appraiser all the information she had regarding each item.

  Her accountant had a relationship with an insurance company with a special division for clients who owned high-end art and antique collection, and they had recommended an appraiser by the name of Marty Morgan. When Camille had called the appraiser, she’d been assured by her that she would take her own photographs. At least that was one less thing Camille needed to worry about.

  Camille knew one of her shortcomings when she became deeply involved in something was that she had a tendency to let everything else go. While it had the advantage of ensuring a laser-like focus on the task at hand, often she would be made aware several hours later that she’d missed an appointment or been very, very late when she’d finally made it. She’d gotten tired of constantly apologizing and as a result, had started using a timer to help manage her schedule. It began to buzz, reminding her that it was time for her weekly yoga class in Palm Springs.

  She walked into her spacious bedroom that looked out at the pool with its colorful cabanas in striped fabrics on either side of it. Her property backed up to the San Jacinto Mountains and the mosaic of changing desert colors reflecting off the mountains never failed to thrill her. She quickly changed into her yoga pants and a tee shirt. She was one of the few in the class that didn’t wear a tank top, but when one was nearing the end of their middle years, she didn’t think showing a lot of skin would be appreciated by the super trim and fit bodies who made up her class.

  Camille walked down the hall and took her keys from the 18th century mahogany Georgian side table in the entryway. Since the museum would be limited to her vast collection of California art, the table was one of the things she wouldn’t have to part with.

  She activated the alarm system which began to beep as she closed the front door. Walking towards her black Bugatti Veyron convertible waiting for her in the circular driveway, her 6,000 square foot Southwestern style one-story home with its obligatory red tile roof dwarfed her in the background. Although she lived alone, there was not much in the way of spare space inside. Five of the seven bedrooms were filled with her collection, as was the guest house located beyond the cabanas and the garage. Camille knew the house, the car, and the collection were an extravagance, but having grown up in poverty in her early years outside of Bakersfield, she easily justified surrounding herself with beautiful and expensive objects.

  Despite her health issues, life was good. Camille never forgot about her roots and appreciated her good fortune. It may have come through luck, but that didn’t deny her the right to enjoy it.

  The last thing she ever did on this, the final day of her life, was press the power door lock of the exquisitely beautiful Bugatti that was gleaming in the midday sun. Camille never saw what caused her death. Nor did she know her final physical feeling, the worst pain she’d ever felt in her back, was caused by the puncture wound that would end her life within seconds, no timer required.

  Camille fell to the ground as blood began to pool around her. Her killer calmly withdrew the murder weapon from where it had been pressed deeply into her back and walked to the end of the curved driveway, where a car was waiting.

  CHAPTER 1

  Adam Navarro, Chairman of the Whitewater River Indian tribe, whose reservation was located near the headwaters of the Whitewater River in the San Bernardin
o Mountains, not far from Palm Springs, stepped out of the sweat lodge and felt lightheaded from the intense heat in the small enclosure.

  He’d taken the sweat to see if it would give him some clear-cut answers as to what he should do about his recent meeting in Palm Springs with the three men from Las Vegas. They were the money men who owned one of the biggest casinos in Las Vegas and wanted to expand into the Palm Springs area. Gambling casinos located on land owned by an Indian tribe had been legal in California for over twenty years. The business of tribal gaming had become enormously profitable, and the Las Vegas money men wanted a piece of the action.

  Adam walked in the early evening darkness to his trailer and stopped for a moment before he entered it. It was rusted and rundown like everything else on the small reservation. There were only twenty families who lived on the reservation, and they were all dirt poor. Few of the tribal members had jobs and if they were lucky enough to find work, as soon as they could afford to, they moved off the land to live elsewhere.

  He thought about his children, Sage and River. He’d wanted to stay on the reservation to give them a sense of their heritage. Sage was named for the various types of sage that grew wild in the dry desert area. River was named for the Whitewater River which ran through the reservation and was the basis for the tribe’s name. Just thinking about them made him flinch. He knew they needed to be seen by a pediatrician, but he didn’t have any extra money. It was all Adam could do to find jobs here and there that would allow him to put food on the table.

  The children’s mother and his wife, Chima, who he had fondly called his little butterfly, had left one day with an Anglo fisherman who had been taken by her beauty. She, in turn, had been taken by the fisherman’s promises of never-ending beer. With no goodbye or anything else, she simply walked away, and that was the last Adam, Sage, or River ever saw of her.

  The months Adam had spent torturing himself, wondering whether he could have prevented her departure, were futile. His heart had healed, but not his children’s, who still harbored hopes for her return. That wouldn’t be happening in the absence of any incentive for her to come back. The chances of that were fading, unless he took action.

  He knew what the promises of the three men would mean to the members of his tribe. They wanted to build a casino near the junction of Highway 111 and Interstate 10 just outside of Palm Springs, but they needed a Native American tribe to do it. They’d first approached Adam over a year ago and begun their talks.

  They’d convinced him that with their money, his small tribe should buy the twenty acres of unimproved desert property near the junction of the two highways, because, after all, that was the home of his tribe before the lands had been wrongfully taken from the tribe by the government over a hundred years earlier. Actually, it originally had been many, many more acres than that, but twenty acres would be adequate for the casino the money men wanted to build.

  Adam had even met with the Governor of California and gotten his approval for the tribe to buy the land. He’d had more meetings than he could remember with county officials, city officials, and finally his own tribe. Everything had been a go until he’d contacted the commercial real estate broker who was selling the land. That’s when the plan had come to a crashing halt. The real estate broker had told him that a woman by the name of Camille Borden had made an offer for the property and it was now in escrow. He’d told Adam he’d be happy to call him if something happened to stop the sale.

  Adam had immediately gotten in touch with the Las Vegas money men who had told him he needed to talk to Camille and see if he could persuade her to buy elsewhere in the Coachella Valley. He’d done that, but to no avail. She’d told him she wanted that particular piece of property because it was located at the gateway to Palm Springs and all the other desert communities that had become getaways for the rich, the famous, the snowbirds, and everyone who wanted to pretend they were rich. She said it would be a perfect location for the art museum she wanted to build on the site.

  Now it had gotten to the stage where he couldn’t leave his trailer without one tribal member or another asking him what the latest was on the sale of the land. They wanted to know when the casino would be built, so they could begin to get their share of the profits, profits that would make each tribal member rich beyond his or her wildest dreams.

  Adam hadn’t even been able to escape the pressure from the other tribal members during the sweat lodge earlier that evening. He wondered if the tribal members had planned it or if it had just happened, but it seemed a little too pat when the talking stick was passed around the circle of men and each one spoke of how wonderful it would be when the casino was built. Each man said how difficult it was to feed and clothe his family, and how the casino would make all of his money problems go away.

  He entered his trailer and wished he could afford an air conditioner. If the casino ever got built, that would be the first thing he’d buy. The night was warm, made even warmer by his recent sweat. His decision weighed heavy on him, and the great spirit had given him direction during the sweat. He knew he’d might not be forgiven for what he had to do, but when it came to balancing the ego of one woman wanting to showcase her art collection against what the money from the casino could do to help tribal members who were almost starving and unable to even afford health care for their children, it was not a hard decision.

  Adam asked the great spirit for forgiveness for what he was considering doing.

  Is it acceptable to do something bad, for the greater good? he asked himself.

  With reluctance, he decided it was.

  CHAPTER 2

  Violet Smythe walked outside to the pens where she kept her pet desert tortoises. As a founding member of The Desert Tortoise Conservancy, she’d been very careful to build the pens to best accommodate the desert tortoises. They were built of cement which extended below the ground twelve inches, so the tortoises couldn’t dig their way out. The upper portions were constructed of heavy wire mesh which allowed for fresh air.

  She had three structures which contained eight tortoises that she’d either found or been given. Over the years, she’d developed the nickname of “Tortoise Lady,” which was directed at her in both honor and in ridicule. Violet didn’t care. She felt her purpose in life was to help those less fortunate, and for her, the less fortunate were the desert tortoises.

  Her home was on a ridge that provided her with a magnificent view of the desert she’d grown to love. She’d been born in Chicago, and her aunt had moved to the Palm Springs area when Violet was a child. Violet and her mother had visited her aunt when she was in her teens. She knew when she was just a few miles out of Palm Springs that she was meant to live in the desert. It called to the depths of her soul. As soon as she’d graduated from college with a degree in zoology, she’d put the few belongings she had in her old beat-up car and headed for Palm Springs.

  When she’d visited her aunt all those years ago, her aunt had two cages in the back yard where she kept a couple of tortoises she’d found on her property. For Violet, it was as if a light bulb had gone off. All she wanted to do was work with tortoises. She couldn’t explain it to people, and after her mother told her she was crazy, she quit trying. Violet could no more deny the feeling she felt for them than she could stop the earth from turning on a daily basis. It simply was what it was.

  She’d been able to get a job with a veterinarian, and although she wasn’t one herself, her knowledge and ability to deal with tortoises had made her invaluable to the veterinarian’s clients. In just a few years, she’d built up a reputation in the valley as being the go-to person who could help with those animals. The veterinarian who she worked for became very concerned that he was going to lose her to other vets who were offering her huge sums of money to come to work for them.

  Dr. Lance really liked Violet, although if push came to shove, he’d probably agree she was a little strange. He didn’t want to lose her, so he built a special building for her to work her magic on tortoises.
It was a huge success, and people often had to wait for days before they could get an appointment with the veterinarian’s assistant, the Tortoise Lady.

  Violet was very clear about what she considered her mission in life to be. It was not only to heal the tortoises, it was also to educate the public about tortoises, and so she did. No one who came to Tortoise Home, as her building was called, left without instructions on how to care for their animal and what they must do to help tortoises.

  That included: (1) garbage cans should always be covered, preferably in raven-proof containers; (2) never litter; (3) off-roaders must be required to stay on established paths or roads; (4) wild tortoises should not be poached; (5) tortoises in the wild should never be picked up or disturbed; (6) tortoises that have been pets should not be returned or placed in the wild; (7) tortoises should not be bred; and (8) dogs should not be allowed to run loose. She had the guidelines printed up on a sign and leaflets, with a phone number to call if anyone needed assistance.

  Violet didn’t consider that she’d had too many bad days in her life, but when Susie Lowe, a client of hers, told her about Camille Borden and what she planned to do, all that changed. “Don’t you think it’s just awful that rich woman is going to build a big museum, parking lot, and desert garden on those twenty acres out by the junction of Highway 111 and Interstate 10?” Susie was indignant. “I know that property is prime tortoise habitat. What’s going to happen to all the tortoises that are going to be uprooted because of the construction?”

  “You’re kidding!” Violet said, her hand that was sewing up Muffy, stopping in mid-air. “I haven’t heard anything about that.”

  “Yeah, there was a big article in the Desert Sun this morning. Actually, I heard about it a while ago. I contacted the state and the city officials, and they said nothing could be done about it. They said the woman had every right to build on that land, but I thought they couldn’t build on land where there was an endangered species. Isn’t the desert tortoise an endangered species?”