“And what about the inheritance?” asked Chase. “Why suddenly settle his entire estate on Jayme? Just because she could draw well? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It certainly seemed to make sense to Dave. You see, as an artist, Dave was a very intuitive man. He always believed he owed his success to always following his intuition, and clearly his intuition told him that Jayme should inherit the bulk of his estate.”
“So what about Veronica? Or Danny?”
“Well, I don’t think I’m betraying any confidences when I tell you that Dave and Veronica were on the verge of a divorce. They hadn’t been getting along for some time, and Dave told me he wanted Veronica and especially her son out of the house as soon as possible. Only he needed to handle things very carefully, to prevent her from laying claim to a chunk of his fortune, or even part of the Tollie franchise, for herself and the boy.”
“Dave didn’t like that kid very much, did he?” asked Chase.
“No, he most certainly did not,” said the banker. “Then again, who would? The boy is a menace. And Dave is not his father—another man is. A man with whom Veronica has kept a good connection over the years. Maybe too good a connection, if you know what I mean.”
“You’re saying…”
“I’m saying that Dave suspected that Veronica had secretly stayed in touch with her ex all these years, and maybe even more than that. He believed she was having an affair.”
“Okay,” said Chase, making a note of this.
Just then, the banker’s phone chimed, and he quickly picked it up. When he realized who it was, he became cagey. “I’m sorry, but I can’t talk right now,” he spoke into the phone. “No, we’ll discuss it later. Later!” He quickly disconnected, his finger jabbing at the phone with some vehemence.
“I think that just might be the same man who was in here earlier,” I told Odelia.
“Trouble?” asked Odelia when the banker frowned at his phone.
Waldo looked up as if caught, then plastered a smile onto his face.“One of Dave’s artists. Understandably they’re all very upset about what happened, and anxious to find out what will become of them now that he’s gone.”
“Which artist?” asked Odelia casually.
The banker stared at her for a moment, then seemed to realize she was talking in an official capacity, and said,“Heiko Palace. He’s the inker: the person who puts the original drawings as created by the penciller in ink—though nowadays everything is done on the computer, of course. Are you familiar with the way a comic strip is made, Mrs. Kingsley?”
“No, I’m afraid I’m not,” Odelia admitted.
“You write a script,” said Dooley, “and then you get Scarlett to take a bunch of pictures.”
“I think it’s slightly more complicated than that, Dooley,” I said.
“First you need to come up with the storyline, of course,” said Waldo as he swallowed away a lump of uneasiness. Clearly Heiko Palace had gotten under his skin. “In this case a three-panel joke. Which is what Dave still did himself. Once a week he sat down at his desk and came up with seven jokes, covering the entire week. He also sketched them out in very rough form, then handed those sketches off to Flint Kutysiak, his penciller, who turned them into a neatly drawn comic strip in the classic three-panel format. And while Dave still worked with pencil and paper, Flint exclusively workson the computer.”
“The drawing is done on the computer?” asked Chase. As a big fan of Tollie the Turtle he was clearly fascinated by the process and wanted to know how the sausage is made.
“Well, like I said the initial design is done with pencil and paper, which is then scanned and imported into Photoshop. A new layer is created, and from that point on the artist, in this case Flint, uses a pressure-sensitive pen on a large display, called a Wacom Cintiq if you’ll allow me to become technical for a moment, to draw the sketch. This is then sent to Heiko, the inker, who creates a new layer for the final version. A colorist then applies the vibrant colors Tollie the Turtle is so famous for, and the file then goes back to Dave—or at least it used to, so he could make the necessary adjustments. All in all a smooth process.”
“Fascinating,” said Chase. “I didn’t know how much work went into the creation of a comic.”
“Oh, it’s a very elaborate and yet straightforward process. And of course, since a comic has to appear in the paper every single day, there’s a lot of pressure involved—deadlines and such. Which is why Heiko and the other members of the studio are a little anxious to know what will happen now that Dave is gone.” For a moment he sunk into thought, then he looked up again. “I hope I’ve answered all your questions?”
“One more thing,” said Chase. “Why did you tell Veronica what her husband’s plans were?”
The banker looked caught.“Veronica is an old friend of mine. In fact I was the one who introduced them. And when Dave consulted me about Jayme, I felt it unfair that he’d leave Veronica in the dark about his plans. So I told her Dave had settled a large sum of money on one of the school’s pupils. I thought it only fair that she knew what was going on.”
“But Dave was your client. Aren’t you bound to a confidentiality clause?”
He bowed his head.“I know I messed up. But honestly I didn’t think things would become so bad between Dave and Veronica. I always hoped they’d be able to work things out. You wouldn’t believe it now, but once upon a time they were very much in love.”
“One question remains,” said Odelia. “Veronica seemed to think that Jayme was having an affair with her husband. Do you think…”
“Oh, that’s absolute nonsense,” said Waldo, shaking his head vehemently. “And I told her. But of course Veronica being Veronica she simply wouldn’t listen.”
“What do you think will happen now?” asked Chase, as he got up.
The banker spread his arms.“I have absolutely no idea. With Jayme arrested, accused of Dave’s murder, she probably won’t inherit, and so everything will go to Veronica. So unless Dave made other stipulations, the future of Tollie the Turtle now lies with her.”
Chapter 12
“He seemed very nervous, Max,” said Dooley.
“Understandable,” I said. “Now that Dave is dead, who knows what will happen?”
“Veronica hates Tollie, so she’ll probably want to stop the comic.”
“She might hate Tollie, but she doesn’t hate the wealth that turtle has brought her. So I don’t think she’ll stop the comic. Though she might want to sell it to some consortium.”
“I think maybe it’s best if we have a chat with the members of Dave’s studio now,” Chase suggested as we all repaired to the car.
“I wonder what happened to Tollie,” said Odelia. “Did you get a chance to talk to Jayme? Did you ask her about Tollie?”
“I did talk to her, and she denies everything. Says she never came near the house, and has never even met Dave face to face in all the time she’s been a recipient of his foundation’s scholarship. In fact it was only Saturday that she discovered who was behind the foundation, and it came as much as a surprise to her as it did to her grandmother.”
“So how about what Hester said? That Jayme walked the dog last night?”
“She did walk the dog, but then she ushered the dog into the backyard and went for a walk by herself, along the beach. She says she often goes for long walks like that. It’s where she gets her inspiration for her drawings.”
“And nobody saw her?”
Chase shook his head.
“Okay, so if she didn’t do it, then who did? And why did Dave write her name on that piece of paper?”
“Has it occurred to you that the killer could have written that note? Trying to implicate Jayme?”
“You know what you should do? You need to have that note examined by a handwriting expert. Compare it to Dave’s handwriting to see if he actually wrote it.”