Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

Portuguese ships arrived on the African Gold Coast, and I intend to prove that.”
    Photos of Raoul Guy Rockwell holding some of his Ashanti weights appeared in several newspapers, accompanying feature articles on the fascinating collector. Rockwell had a very impressive résumé and he never hesitated to share it with reporters. He was a natural as far as the media was concerned, and he reveled in the publicity, posing patiently.
    But Raoul Guy Rockwell’s fame had only begun.
    On July 26, the decree of divorce—unopposed by Manzanita—was granted. She and Dolores were thought to be somewhere in Canada, having cut their ties to Raoul and Seattle completely. According to him, they had plenty of money, since Manzanita had wiped out all his savings. But he was rebuilding his life.
    Actually, he had rebuilt it far more rapidly than anyone expected. The day his divorce was final, Raoul announced that he was engaged to marry a most attractive fellow antiques dealer: Mrs. Evelyn Emerson, forty. Evelyn was petite and blond and, like Raoul, divorced. She had fallen in love with him very quickly, thrilled with his intellect, his exciting future, and his sheer masculine appeal.
    She was not, however, the woman in the Cadillac convertible. She was younger, slimmer, and her hair was much shorter, cut and permed into a cap that surrounded her petite features. And Raoul had chosen Evelyn to face the future with him.
    Although they had originally planned to marry on September 1, the couple was so smitten with each other that they had a marriage ceremony on July 29 in Evelyn’s family’s living room only three days after the divorce went through. Raoul had been single for just seventy-two hours.
    Evelyn came from a socially prominent and wealthy Seattle family. Her mother and stepfather, Germaine and Clifford Winkler, were delighted that she had found love again with Raoul Guy Rockwell. They were impressed with his cosmopolitan air and his business sense, and he was wonderfully considerate of Evelyn. The couple had many interests in common, and Evelyn was looking forward to traveling with him to Portugal and Africa as he pursued the project funded by his Fulbright scholarship.
    It would be a honeymoon trip as well as a research trip that would add luster to Raoul’s reputation as an antiques dealer.
    To make their trip even more perfect, Raoul told Evelyn, friends had financed his purchase of a yacht, the Ibsen, and it was seaworthy enough to allow them to sail to Portugal and Africa. When they returned, he would sell the yacht and repay his wealthy benefactors.
    Evelyn quickly sold her antiques shop and placed her remaining inventory in an auction house, planning to give all of her proceeds to her bridegroom as they started their life together.
    The Winklers were honored a few days later when Raoul approached them about joining him in a business venture. He had located a treasure load of rare Indian artifacts and antiques in Canada. He had immediately put down a $500 deposit with the person who let him in on the deal, and he assured his new in-laws that he already had commitments from two Seattle art collectors who were anxious to pay him more than $16,000 for the rare Indian paintings and carvings.
    But Raoul’s funds were temporarily tied up, and he didn’t have the $8,000 he needed to close the sale in British Columbia. His missing ex-wife had taken all of his liquid assets, and, although he had his own inventory of antiques set to be auctioned off by Seattle’s top auction house, he said they hadn’t sold yet.
    (In 2007, the amounts involved would be hundreds of thousands of dollars—but $16,000 was a big chunk of money in 1960.)
    Germaine Winkler assured her new son-in-law that she had the cash to help him. He demurred at first, and finally agreed to accept a loan from her only if she and Evelyn would let him give them each a $2,000 bonus when he sold the Indian objects to the collectors who were waiting anxiously to buy them.
    When Germaine acquiesced to this, Raoul Guy accepted her check for $10,000. She made it for $2,000 more than he needed because she wanted to be sure he had enough when he went to Canada.
    It would be a dicey deal in many ways. He didn’t want to go through customs with the Indian artifacts; there would be too many questions, taxes levied, and some laws might actually forbid the removal of certain tribal icons from Canada. For those reasons, he said, he hesitated to fly or to drive between