The Baxter Trust

Greely is playing in a poker game, and some young stud named John Dutton, who is a pretty boy and an egotistical asshole, is shooting off his mouth about how he’s got a thing going with an heiress. And Greely, who’s always on the lookout for something like that, tunes right in and finds out the girl’s name is Sheila Benton.
    “Which rings a very big bell. So Greely asks a few questions and pokes around some, and finds out this John Dutton is very much married. So now Greely has an heiress with a trust fund playing around with a married man, music to the ears of a blackmailer.
    “So Greely goes to Uncle Teddy and says, ‘Hey, I got all this dope on your niece. You know all about how her trust is set up. If you can figure any way we can shoot this information, I’ll go halves with you.’
    “And Uncle Teddy tells him it’s hopeless. Sheila has no money of her own, there’s no way she can touch the money in her trust, the only one who can get the money out of the trust is Uncle Max, and if he knew about it Sheila would lose the trust, so what’s the point?
    “Now, this is all conjecture, but I would imagine at this point Greely considers blackmailing Dutton. But Dutton doesn’t have that kind of money—he’s a fortune hunter himself, figuring he can retire a millionaire in ten years by hooking up with Sheila. So Greely and Uncle Teddy figure that’s not worthwhile, and Uncle Teddy convinces Greely that they should hang onto the information and then maybe the situation would change and they could shoot it at a later time.”
    Steve shrugged. “So that’s it. The matter drops. They let it slide.
    “And then something happens. What happens is, Sheila sees cousin Phillip and kids him about the time they played doctor together. And Phillip tells Teddy. And the key part of the story is the fact that it happened the same day Sheila’s mother was killed. Because Phillip went everywhere Teddy went. And Teddy was supposed to be in New York that day. But he wasn’t. He was up in Vermont, tampering with the brakes of his sister’s car so she’d go off the road and he’d inherit the whole bundle.
    “So when Teddy hears this he’s hysterical. He knows if Sheila tells Uncle Max, Uncle Max will start thinking and figure out what happened.
    “So he’s got to shut Sheila up. So he figures to involve her in a mess, ’cause if her life is all screwed up, and she’s in a position where she has to protect herself, she won’t be needling her Uncle Max with any cutesy-poo childhood memories.
    “So he remembers Greely. What if he had Greely blackmail her? Wouldn’t that do the trick? Sure. But he realizes that’s not good enough. Because there is no way to blackmail her, and Greely would eventually find that out, and wonder what the hell was going on. And Teddy’s not going to tell Greely the real reason he wants to do it.
    “So he gets another idea. What if he frames her for murder? Of Greely? Great. No problem there. Greely’s dead, so he can’t find out the blackmail was bogus. Or get caught and blurt out his connection with Teddy. It’s perfect.
    “So he calls Greely and tells him he’s figured out how to make the blackmail work. While Greely’s in the john, or out buying beer, or whatever, Teddy types the envelope. He tells Greely his scheme, which is just a bunch of bullshit. But Greely doesn’t know that, and he has no reason to suspect anything. He thinks he’s going to make a killing. So Teddy gets Greely to make the anonymous phone call. And he arranges to meet Greely at Sheila’s apartment, presumably to make the shakedown. He lures him up there, and he kills him.
    “And the beauty of the thing is John Dutton. Because Greely met John Dutton at that poker game, Teddy knows that if the cops start trying to trace Greely’s background, they’ll trace him back to Dutton, not to him. Which they did.”
    Dirkson frowned. “Yeah, but ...” He stopped. Tried to think of a “but.” Got one. “But why go through all that? Teddy, I mean. If he wanted to shut Sheila up, why not just kill her?”
    Steve sighed. He shrugged and smiled. “I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine. This isn’t some TV show where the plot threads get tied up nice and tidy. The principals in this case are all dead, so we’ll probably never know.
    “You want theories? I can give you theories. I talked to Teddy Baxter. I think in spite of everything, he had genuine affection for Sheila and couldn’t bring