Death of A High Maintenance Blonde (Jubilant Falls Series Book 5) (13 page)

“What was that like for you?” I asked.

Walt put down his lemonade and looked up into the mature maple trees that shaded us. He was silent for a moment. When he began to speak, he chose his words carefully and slowly.

“Bob Martz was a great trooper. We were good friends. His kids went to school with Penny. After Bob died, I used to go sit with Judith, his wife, and we’d talk about what a great guy he was. I could understand her frustration when they never found Bob’s killer. We all did.”

“
Was
Bob really a great guy?”

Walt was silent again.

“Did Bob Martz have secrets?” I asked. “Could they have gotten him killed?”

Walt sighed. “Judith knew the truth. I don’t want it to be the paper now.”

“But what if it uncovers who killed him?”

“I can tell you where to look. How’s that?”

“What am I looking for?”

“It’s in his personnel file.”

“What is it?” I repeated. I couldn’t just dig through a cop’s personnel file just for the sake of digging—Ohio public records law wouldn’t allow it, even if that cop were dead. Current state law now dictated I had to have a specific item to request from the file, something the retired state trooper might not know. The idea was to protect cops and first responders from stalkers and criminals, but it could make unearthing problem subjects or people difficult for reporters. I began peppering him with possibilities. “Was it something at work? His coworkers? Poor judgment? A bad case that came back to bite him?”

Walt sighed. “No.”

“Was it women?”

Walt pointed his finger at me. “Bingo.”

“You knew that all along, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. I had my own messy situation at home with Penny’s mother years before. Even though that all happened twenty-five years before Bob died, I wasn’t going to throw stones in my own personal glass house. I could just commiserate with Judith.”

“Was it one particular woman?”
“I’m not saying any more because I don’t want anything attributed to me in your article. I’ve pointed you in the right direction. That’s all I’m going to do.”

*****

My next stop was Gary McGinnis’s office. Maybe he would have some information on Bob Martz’s problem with women. What kind of problem was it, though? Sexual harassment? Infidelity? And could it have led to him getting shot? Who would have shot him? An angry husband? If he was harassing a female trooper, she could have pulled the trigger, too. But the case wouldn’t have dragged on all these years, too, if this trooper used her service revolver, would it? It would have been solved quickly. There were too many possibilities to consider—I’d have to present them all to Gary McGinnis and see what his thoughts were.

Within a minute or two, I was standing in front of the dispatcher’s bulletproof glass at the JFPD’s basement offices beneath city hall. She buzzed me through the door and back to Gary’s office.

The assistant chief stood when I entered and shook my hand.

“Good job on the first cold case. You’re a hell of a writer,” he said. “We haven’t gotten any calls yet, but the story could shake something loose. You never know.”

We walked to the conference room next door to his office, where all the task force files were now assembled. Each case had a separate table; a large piece of paper taped on the wall above identified each one. I pointed toward the Martz table.

“That’s the next story,” I said. “I got some information that you all may be aware of, or you may not. I don’t know if it’s relevant to my story, but here’s what I know.” Briefly, I explained with Walter Addison told me.

“Before I came here, I worked for a year or so with the Highway Patrol,” McGinnis said. “It was about a year after Bob Martz died. There was some talk: I heard he wasn’t above flirting with some of the female troopers or any of the female office staff, but that was all I knew. I was a new trooper and didn’t get involved in a lot of the office politics.”

“Can I see his personnel file?”

“You know I can’t show you everything, but I’d be glad to look for you.”

Gary lifted the lid on one of the boxes and dug through until he found the right file. He chewed on his bottom lip as he silently flipped through the pages. He stopped and whistled low.

“What?” I asked.

Without a word, he handed me a letter. It was dated eight months before Martz’s death and addressed to the post commander.

“Dear Commander,” it read. “I am writing to file a formal complaint about Trooper Robert Martz, who stopped me for speeding last Thursday. While I readily agree I was traveling over the speed limit, Trooper Martz was neither professional nor respectful of me during that time. I explained to Trooper Martz I was returning to Jubilant Falls, my hometown, to attend my father’s funeral. While he was willing to let me off with a warning for speeding, he said he would do so if I met him after his shift for drinks. I refused and received a written warning.”

I looked over at Gary McGinnis, who grimaced and shook his head. I kept reading.

“Over the next week, seemingly each time that I was on the highway between Jubilant Falls and Collitstown, I would be pulled over by Trooper Martz, each time because I was allegedly traveling over the speed limit. Twice, I was over by less than five miles per hour. Once I was traveling under the speed limit. Each time, he said if I would meet him for a drink, he would not issue me the warning. Each time I refused, he became more and more insistent I meet him. Finally, last Monday, I gave in and said yes.

“I did not meet Trooper Martz as I promised. On Tuesday night, I was traveling on a dark county road when Trooper Martz again stopped me. He pulled me forcefully from my vehicle, threw me face down across the hood of my car and, as he held my hands behind my back, he kicked my legs apart and pushed himself against my buttocks, as if to make me think he would sexually assault me. I believed at that point that rape was a distinct possibility, although he never removed or opened his pants.”

“Trooper Martz told me, ‘
This
is what will happen next time you don’t do what I ask. Next time, I won’t stop.’

“At that point, Trooper Martz released me and walked away. I was shaken, but I got in my rental car and drove away. The next day, I left to fly home to Texas. I drove to the airport by an alternate route so as to avoid encountering this predatory man again. After calling the post repeatedly and getting no satisfactory response, I am filing this formal complaint.”

The next few paragraphs promised certain legal action and listed the name of her lawyer, who was copied on the letter. The next page was a letter from that lawyer.

“Oh my god,” I said.

At the bottom of the letter was Eve Dahlgren’s florid signature.

Chapter 20 Addison

“Thanks, folks!” Leland Huffinger called out as he left the newsroom.

I wasn’t real sure about using this PI as a freelancer, but he was better than any other stringer I had. He could easily find out the professional trail our murder victim went down and whom she supposedly damaged along the way. His hourly charge would be more than worth it.

I leaned back in my chair and stared out into the alley behind the building.

I wanted to talk to Betty Dahlgren again, despite her dementia. Who was that woman at her home, the woman wearing the ‘barn diva’ baseball cap? What part, if any, did she play in Eve’s life—or death?

The one person I really needed to talk to was Earlene. She would no doubt be madder than a wet hen about the photo, but what had she said to me Monday night in jail?

“There were things that people don’t know about Eve Dahlgren and I hope somebody like you can dig it up.”

Maybe she knew some of them. She was out of jail now, thanks to a meal she ate with her father—and now that charges against her were now dropped, she also might be willing to talk. I picked up the receiver on my desk phone and dialed Earlene’s cell.

*****

I met Earlene at her father’s house. There was no hello as she pulled the heavy oak door open.

“You ran that god awful photo of me, despite what I requested,” she said. “My lawyer said I should let it go. That doesn’t mean I won’t forget it.”

“I’m glad to see you’re back home, Earlene,” I answered sarcastically. “Thanks for having me over.”

Earlene walked down the hall toward J. Watterson Whitelaw’s study, expecting me to follow.

One night in jail didn’t do too much damage, I thought, as I trailed behind. The tall hair was back, along with the tight denim pencil skirt that barely covered her ass, along with a ruffled yellow top that showed too much bosom for her age. She wasn’t wearing her usual stilettos; today, it was a pair of yellow sandals with a designer logo across the toes. I was more than a little envious of her long, tan legs.

“Daddy doesn’t want me to stay at my condo,” she said. “He thinks it’s safer for me here.”

Isn’t that ironic?
I thought.

She flopped haughtily into her father’s heavy leather chair, behind the dark masculine desk that had been in the
Journal-Gazette’s
publisher’s office my entire career. I took a seat in the same Morris chair I’d sat in two days before.

The desk was covered with all the components for building a high-maintenance blonde: hairbrushes, mascara, powder, bottles and tubes of make-up and creams. A lighted make-up mirror sat in the middle of the desk, reducing the spot where J. Watterson Whitelaw made hard news decisions for years into a workbench of self-absorption.

Without speaking, Earlene picked up a bottle of hair spray. She pulled the narrow cap off with her teeth, like a soldier pulling the pin on a grenade, and began to spray her hair, fogging our corner of the room. When she was done, she sat the bottle down and, staring into the mirror, picked up a tube of red lipstick, applying it with ferocity. Next, she removed a spot of cherry red from her front tooth with her little finger and wiped excess color from her cheeks with a tissue. She checked her false eyelashes before shutting off the make-up mirror’s hard white lights and looking me dead in the eye.

“What do you want to know?”

“I want to know the whole story of your friendship with Eve. I want to know how this whole mess happened.”

Earlene folded her long manicured fingers in front of her and began to speak.

“I probably shouldn’t do this, but frankly, I don’t care about getting clearance from my lawyer,” she began. “As you know, I met Eve while we attended boarding school in Columbus. She came up after the tornado. We became friends almost immediately—I mean, how many other people ever heard of Jubilant Falls? Since she was a late term entry, she was one of the few girls who had no roommate and we used to hang out in her dorm room all the time.”

“Your dad didn’t like her.”

Earlene rolled her eyes. “No, he didn’t. It was the last six weeks of school, I was a little wild—but that wasn’t Eve’s fault.”

“What do you mean by a little wild?”

“Oh, you know—it was the 1970s. We slipped off campus at night to meet boys, we drank a little beer, smoked a little pot. Everybody did it. Eve knew these boys up at Ohio State and they would pick us up outside the campus fence and take us to the bars on High Street. Nothing serious—I mean, we never got caught and we weren’t the only seniors who did that. Daddy just didn’t like Eve.”

“Did she ever talk about Jimmy Lyle, her old boyfriend from Shanahan High School?”

“She had a brief fling with one of those OSU boys and it ended badly. That was the first time she mentioned something strange.”

“What happened?”

“She had a horrible temper and was horribly jealous. She keyed this OSU boy’s new Camaro, broke the windows out, after she caught him exchanging phone numbers with some girl in a bar.”

“Was that when she talked about Jimmy Lyle?”

Earlene nodded. “We were about half potted—I never could hold my beer. But Eve, she saw this girl give him her number and she went nuts. She screamed at him, slapped his face and then grabbed my arm and pulled me onto the street. When he didn’t follow her outside to beg for forgiveness or whatever, she got even angrier. She found a brick and broke the windows of his Camaro and then keyed it from the front fender to the back. She even scratched ‘liar’ across the hood. He came outside screaming about the damage she’d done, just as we were hopping in a cab to head back to school.

“She did say something I thought was odd at the time. As we pulled away she turned around to look out the back window and said, ‘Well, there’s another man who knows not to mess with someone in the Dahlgren family. Jimmy Lyle learned that lesson the hard way, too.’”

“What do you think she meant by that? Do you think she could kill anybody?”

A somber look came over Earlene’s face. “There was a part of Eve that really kind of frightened me. She had a horrible dark side—these unbelievable rages, and dark, dark depressions. But when she was at a party, she was the life of the party. She’d dance on the tables; she could outdrink every man at the place. She had no inhibitions whatsoever and always wanted to push the limits. My first husband used to call her Zelda, after some writer’s crazy wife, I don’t know who. As for killing somebody, I...” Earlene stopped.

Silence hung in the air between us.

“You believe she could, don’t you?”

“The Saturday night we went out, Eve got really drunk. She had been caring for her mother for several years by then and it was a horrible stress on her. Betty has dementia so bad. Eve spends half her money keeping up that house and the other half paying for her mother’s care. We went out to dinner that night, and then to this bar. I wanted to stay and have a few drinks, but Eve was acting all paranoid, said she was being followed, so we went to the liquor store, picked up a bottle of vodka and we went back to my condo.”

“Paranoid? About what?”

“She always got this paranoid streak when she came home.”

“Why do you think that was?”

Earlene shrugged. “Who knows? She made so many people angry over the years.”

“But you said she lived in Texas. The people she dealt with professionally wouldn’t have followed her back to Jubilant Falls, would they?” I thought about Betty’s reaction to the photo of the young man found in the creek.

Earlene shrugged. “She wasn’t talking about her job. In her line of work, she eliminated the chaff and the dead weight after a company bought another company out.”

“So she came in after corporate raiders bought a company and gutted its staff.” I made a note to check in with Leland Huffinger for the details on her professional life.

“Whatever you want to call it, there was a lot of weight on her shoulders from a lot of different sources. When we got to my condo, we had more than a couple drinks and that’s where she went off the deep end.”

“About what?”

“I mentioned that we’d done a fortieth anniversary issue on the tornado and she just went crazy. ‘I don’t want to talk about that stupid tornado! I don’t want to remember that day!’ she said. I told you that Monday, remember? She just kept doing shots, one right after the other.”

“The tornado destroyed a lot of people’s lives,” I said, trying to hide the fact I hadn’t listened to too much of anything she’d said Monday afternoon. “What else did Eve say?”

“That’s just it. That night was the second time I ever heard her talk about Jimmy Lyle.”

My stomach tightened in fear. I swallowed hard and looked her in the eye.

“What did she say?” I asked.

“She said there weren’t thirty-five people killed in the tornado. There were only thirty-four.”

“Did she mention Jimmy Lyle specifically?” My pulse quickened.

Earlene nodded. “I asked her, ‘Eve, who are you talking about?’ She just kept saying ‘Jimmy was going to ruin my life. He was going to ruin my life and he got what he deserved.’ I asked her if she knew how he really died and that’s when she turned on me.”

“What did she say?”

“She said she knew what really happened, but if I ever mentioned this conversation to anybody about Jimmy Lyle, she would destroy me. I tried to convince her to tell somebody, but she wouldn’t hear of it. We argued and she left. Then Monday the police find her dead in the park and I’m looking at a murder charge!”

I leaned back in my Morris chair as Earlene checked herself in the make-up mirror.

“Tell me something, Earlene. Did you ever go to her house?”

Earlene leaned to the side the mirror and gave me an odd look. “Of course not!”

“Really? Why not? I mean if you two were such good friends…”

“With her home situation, Eve didn’t want me to come over.”

“What do you mean?”

“You never knew? The abuse she suffered at that house was horrible. She’s an angel for taking care of Betty, after all that happened at that house.”