The Baxter Trust

know, but I wouldn’t necessarily go back a full nine months. Sheila’s twenty-four now, you can do the math for yourself.
    “Now, the story is he was killed in a plane crash before Sheila was born. That shouldn’t be hard to trace. Find out about it. I want to know for sure whether Samuel Benton is dead or alive.”
    Taylor was staring at him. “What’s the idea, Steve?”
    “All right,” Steve said. “Let’s look at this case objectively. To begin with, let’s assume Sheila is innocent.”
    “I thought you said objectively.”
    Steve looked at him sharply. “Don’t you think she is?”
    Taylor looked uncomfortable. “Look, Steve, you’re my client. I’m partisan. I’m on your side. I give service. But—”
    “All right. Fine. Then just bear with me. Assume that Sheila is innocent.”
    “Okay.”
    “Then how does any of this make sense?”
    “That’s the problem. It doesn’t.”
    “I know. But it has to. So here’s how I figure. If Sheila is innocent, then everything that’s happened to her is part of a deliberate frame-up. And the question is why. And the answer is Sheila. Not Greely. Not blackmail. Sheila. Someone has framed Sheila because of who she is. And who is she? She’s Maxwell Baxter’s niece. An heiress. The beneficiary of the Baxter trust. Now, if Sheila Benton’s father is alive, he would be in a position to upset that trust. And that opens up a lot of possibilities.”
    Taylor’s nod was not enthusiastic. “Yeah, I guess so.”
    “Look, I’m going up in front of a jury. The prosecution has to prove her guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. Reasonable doubt, that’s all I need.”
    “Yeah.”
    “So get going on the California end.”
    “Will do. You ready for the rundown?”
    Steve sighed. “Yeah. Let’s have it.”
    Taylor turned back a few pages in his notebook. “Here we are. Phillip Baxter, John Dutton, Carla Finley, and Tony Zambelli have complete alibis for the time of the murder. Stella Rosenthal, Maxwell Baxter and Teddy Baxter do not.”
    Steve frowned. “Teddy Baxter. Why is that name familiar?”
    Taylor grinned. “The anchorman on the Mary Tyler Moore Show .”
    “Oh yeah. He must be the life of the Castle Hotel. Okay, let’s have ’em.”
    “Phillip Baxter was on the bus to Boston. The evidence there is circumstantial. The bus driver doesn’t remember him, but then you wouldn’t expect him to. Phillip’s father says he was on his way to the bus, and Phillip checked into his dorm at Harvard that night.”
    “Okay. Next.”
    “John Dutton was in Reno at the time. I checked his reservation on the plane. His ticket was used.”
    “Yeah, but is there any chance someone else used it?”
    “None at all. One of the stewardesses remembered him. She identified his picture. He was handing her a line and trying to date her up for later that evening.”
    “Great, just great. Next.”
    “Before we move on, I got some more on John Dutton.”
    “What?”
    “Well, there’s a little discrepancy. According to his secretary, he was staying at the Wilshire Hotel. However, the Wilshire has no record of him staying there.”
    “Really ...”
    “Yeah, but before you get all excited, I think there’s an explanation. We know Johnny’s a playboy, and there’s every reason to believe he had something lined up in Reno he didn’t want anyone to know about.”
    “Yeah, that checks,” Steve said. “No, it doesn’t either. If he had some girl waiting for him, what the hell would he be doing trying to date up the stewardess?”
    Taylor shrugged. “Probably just running his game. It seems to be a compulsion with him. Anyway, I don’t think it’s any big deal. The stewardess he was hitting on saw a young woman run up and hug him when he got off the plane, so that’s probably all there was to it.”
    “I suppose so.”
    “Plus we have the confirmation that he did meet with his wife’s attorneys while he was out there.”
    “All right, all right, I give up,” Steve said. “If he met with the attorneys ... Hey, wait a minute.”
    “What?”
    “What about his wife? Did he meet with her too?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Find out, will ya?”
    Taylor looked puzzled. “Why? I mean, if the attorneys confirm the meeting.”
    “They confirm him. What about her?”
    “Her?”
    “Yeah. Dutton’s wife.”
    Taylor looked at him. “Are you kidding?”
    “No. I’m not kidding. What I’ve been looking for all along is someone who hates Sheila Benton,