Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

answered the phone. She had a youngish voice. When I asked for Raoul, she said she had never heard of Raoul Guy Rockwell. I suppose it could have been a newly registered guest, but now I even wonder if he picked up some other woman and brought her back to the room.”
    Blake said she had hung up the phone and boarded the plane for her return trip to Seattle—ill, disappointed, and apologetic. Since she’d been gone only two days, she’d been able to come up with an explanation about why she’d gone to San Francisco.
    “My husband didn’t ask too many questions, and he forgave me for leaving without telling him where I was going. He may not have wanted to know…”
    Blake said she had no idea where Raoul Guy Rockwell was now, but she certainly hoped he was someplace uncomfortable. Gail Leonard told her that she wasn’t the only woman he had left behind. Beyond Evelyn Emerson, the investigators had heard rumors of other betrayed women. Blake was astonished.
    “I thought I knew him,” she said bitterly. “I guess I didn’t know him at all.”
    “Maybe none of us did,” Jeffrey Heiman concurred.
    Evelyn Emerson Rockwell was even more shocked than Blake Rossler had been. She had been agonizing over what might have happened to her new husband, and now she knew that he’d deserted her for another woman—and abandoned that woman too. From the moment they’d met in his shop in February, she believed that she was special to him, and she’d never doubted his intentions. He had told her how miserable his marriage was, and that he was doing his best to leave his wife without hurting his stepdaughter too much. She thought he was a man who didn’t want to hurt anyone, even his “selfish wife.”
    But now it dawned on Evelyn—and on Germaine Winkler—that Rockwell had disappeared with $10,000 of Germaine’s money!
    Evelyn had known him only six months. Looking back now, she realized that she knew virtually nothing about his background, his birth family, whether he’d been married before Manzanita. She felt horrible about her mother losing so much money and that they’d both been made fools of. It had been like a lovely dream—one that turned into a nightmare.
    Herb Swindler learned that Rockwell had done some shopping on July 30. He bought a set of expensive luggage at a downtown Seattle store, and three days later—just a day before he said he was going to Canada to collect the Indian artifacts—he spent $80 on a pair of silk pajamas and some underwear for himself. He also spent $49.50 on a woman’s handbag and asked to have it gift-wrapped. If he didn’t give it to Evelyn Emerson or to Blake Rossler, who had he given it to?
    There was undoubtedly a third woman in his life during that hot summer of 1960, but she never came forward. If, indeed, she could come forward. Every bit of information that turned up about Raoul Guy Rockwell sparked even more questions.
     
    Things got worse for Evelyn Emerson Rockwell, the devastated bride.
    Of course, Gail Leonard and Herb Swindler began to wonder about what had really happened to Manzanita Rockwell and Dolores Mearns. It seemed odd that Manzanita hadn’t taken any money from the Rockwells’ bank account, although Raoul had told everyone that she had. The records at the Pacific National Bank showed that the only withdrawals in the past five months had been made by Rockwell himself. The couple’s friends hadn’t heard from Manzanita or from Dolores. The bank where Manzanita worked was given no notice, and Dolores left school without withdrawing, losing all the tuition she had just paid. It was as though the earth had swallowed them up sometime near the end of March.
    Bank records showed that Raoul and Manzanita had opened their account on December 11, 1958. On March 29, 1960, the balance was $199.73. On April 4, Rockwell had deposited $147.88, bringing their balance up to $347.61. There were no large checks drawn on the account, although Raoul had cashed the check from Bushnell’s Auction for the sale of his antiques stock at his bank in early August. If Manzanita had wiped him out, how had she done it?
    On September 2, 1960, Manzanita’s former husband, William Mearns of Vancouver, Canada, filed a missing persons report on his ex-wife and daughter. He and Manzy had three daughters together; the younger two girls were in his custody, while Dolores had gone with her mother after their divorce. Their divorce was amicable, Mearns said, and Manzanita had