Empty Promises

father died under unusual circumstances. David Sherer had become a multimillionaire by the time he was forty-four. He never got to enjoy his wealth, however.
    During 1983, Sherri and David Sherer had many arguments over his drinking. All his wealth and business acumen had not made David Sherer happy. Maybe he had too much time on his hands and liquor was always around; maybe he was genetically predisposed to alcoholism. In November of that year, David Sherer packed up and left Lynnwood, reportedly headed for their Palm Desert home so he could “get himself together” and stop drinking. The Sherer vacation home in Palm Desert was in the exclusive Lakes Country Club, a gated community with private security guards. Friends who lived there played golf with David Sherer almost every day and saw how distraught he was about the disintegration of his marriage.
    November 24 was Thanksgiving Day, a sad day for anyone to be all alone and thousands of miles from family. One of Sherer’s neighbors saw him in the clubhouse drinking around five or six o’clock on Thanksgiving afternoon. Sherri called him later that day and could tell that he was inebriated. They had the same old argument and when she called her husband again at 1:00 A.M. , they reportedly exchanged angry words.
    Reportedly, David Sherer told his wife that she would be “better off without him” and informed her he had a gun and “was going to do something about [their situation].” Sherri told authorities later that she wasn’t particularly worried because she didn’t believe him. The only gun her husband had was an old .32 caliber automatic given to him by her grandfather, and she was sure that was someplace in their Washington home.
    But his threat must have niggled at Sherri Sherer because she immediately booked a flight to California. It was almost 11:00 P.M. when she arrived at their Palm Desert house, but the place was oddly silent. When she walked north from the front door into the den, she found her husband. David Sherer was sitting on the couch. He was dead, his head tilted back unnaturally. A .32 caliber automatic, with an empty shell casing beside it, lay on the carpet next to the couch and just below Sherer’s right arm. The phone was on the floor next to his leg.
    Sherri called the country club security office for help, asking them to call the police and fire department. Paramedic Jay Manning from the Indio Fire Department arrived first, and pronounced forty-four-year-old David Sherer dead. He had obviously been dead for some time; his body was frozen with rigor mortis, and lividity—the staining of the skin caused when the heart no longer pumps blood and it settles in lower body parts—was also advanced.
    An Indio police officer named Coillet notified the Riverside County Coroner’s Office at three minutes to midnight that David Sherer appeared to have committed suicide. Investigator Sabas Rosas from the coroner’s office tended to agree. There was a bullet hole in the north wall of the den with blood spatter and what appeared to be bone fragments staining the wall nearby. The bullet itself was missing, but Rosas concluded it had probably dropped to the floor between the studs of the wall rather than penetrating the next wall.
    Sherri Sherer and two of the Sherers’ friends told Rosas that the dead man had been drinking heavily over the past few days. The house showed no signs of forced entry or burglary; it was neat and clean and nothing was ransacked or missing. David Sherer was fully dressed and had no defense wounds on his hands. The only signs of violence were the entrance wound of a bullet in his right temple, the exit wound in the left temple, and blood on his shirt. There were gunpowder burns around the entrance wound. Even though he had left no suicide note, the circumstances suggested that David Sherer had died by his own hand. His blood alcohol was .10 percent—legal proof of intoxication in most states.
    “Based on the physical evidence, statements made by the spouse and friends, the findings of the Indio Police Department, the victim’s psychological condition, his alcohol disease, and the findings of the pathologist,” Rosas wrote, “the death was classified as suicide.”
    His body was sent home to Washington State for burial in Green Lawn Cemetery. At age thirty-nine, Sherri was a widow, but she would remarry the next year.
    There is no information about Steve accompanying his mother to Palm Desert that day after