The Famous Dar Murder Mystery (17 page)

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Authors: Graham Landrum

BOOK: The Famous Dar Murder Mystery
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Driving down Whippoorwill Lane, I was within a block of home when suddenly my windshield exploded. I stopped the car immediately, almost too startled to be afraid. I found that I was not hurt. I also had the impression that a car on the other side of the park had started up and was going away at quite a clip. Not until then did I realize that I had been shot at. I had heard the sound of the gun, but the shattering of the windshield had drawn my mind away from it.
At first I couldn't believe that it had happened. And then a feeling of panic seemed to crawl up the back of my neck. It was horrible. I jumped out of the car and ran as fast as I could. I don't know why I didn't turn my ankle. I did not stop until I tried to open our front door and found that I had left my keys in the ignition of the car.
I fumbled frantically for the key that I keep under the cushion of the glider and was inside the house more quickly than it seemed.
Still in a panic, I called Henry's office. Thank God there had been an adjournment and he was there. I tried to be calm as I told him what had happened, but he had to ask me three times about it. Finally he said, “Stay there until I get there, and don't let anyone into the house unless he is in a police uniform.”
I went into the bedroom. I was shaking all over. But when I sat down in Henry's big easy chair, the first thing I noticed was that I had ruined my best pair of shoes.
That simple detail had sedative effect on me, and I had a little laugh, put on another pair of shoes, and then did my face again.
Almost immediately I heard a siren. A city police car came into the drive. The officer was just beginning to question me when Henry drove up. He was followed by a car driven by the chief of police himself. When Henry summons the law, he does a good job of it.
I started my tale three times before I finally got it finished.
“All right, I think that will do for the moment,” Chief Carter said. “Let's go down where you left the car.”
Henry took me in his Chevrolet. “This is the end of your detective game,” he said very firmly. “You are not to make another move in connection with this Garcia business.”
It was an order. But at that moment it sounded like a very good order. I was perfectly willing to submit to it.
“And when your newspaper friends get to you about this, don't say a thing about Garcia or Highsmith. In fact don't say anything that they can report in that paper of theirs.”
I answered only with a very meek look.
“Now, you heard me,” Henry said just to make it final.
He was right. It was the publicity and my name in the paper, purportedly knowing more than I actually knew, that had got me into this scrape.
By the time we got to my Pontiac, there was a mixed group
of neighbors and others gawking at my shattered glass. And sure enough, here came a reporter with a photographer in tow.
“There she is,” someone said. “It's that Mrs. Delaporte.” The photographer began to click away.
The officers asked me many questions about how fast I was going and how long it took me to stop; whether I had noticed a car on Chestnut Street; whether I had been followed from the club.
I hadn't noticed anything, but one of the neighbors had seen a car with a man in it on the other side of our small neighborhood park. The car had been there since about two-thirty. I realized all too fully that I had been living in a goldfish bowl. He, they—whoever the baddies were—had read about me in connection with the Highsmith shooting and in the stories about the Barnard wedding as well and had waited there in the park until I came by.
The officers found the place where my assailants had been parked. They found a cigarette butt, for all that was worth. People were milling about. Everyone except me seemed to be having a good time. All the while the reporter was taking notes and sketching the lay of the land.
And then the television crew arrived. Remembering what Henry had said, I turned my face away and refused to talk.
But they kept asking their questions, and I kept shaking my head until Henry interposed. “Mrs. Delaporte has had enough of this,” he said. “She has just finished playing for a wedding at Saint Luke's, she has been shot at, she has been interrogated by the officers, and you've got your pictures and all the story you are going to get. Shove off.”
The media people grumbled but turned and left, and Henry took me home in his car before he returned and drove the Pontiac to the house.
I did not watch the local news on television that night, but
I could not avoid the story in the paper the next morning. My picture was in the center of the page, dressed, of course, as I had been dressed for the reception at the club. I was glad at least that I had repaired my face before that picture was taken. The headline said: SHOT AIMED AT PROMINENT CLUB WOMAN. A subhead added: I Cannot Talk About It, She Says.
The story was highly colored and amazingly ingenious as it described the society glitter for a church wedding and a glamorous function at the country club only to be followed by a close brush with death.
One paragraph was headed: There Was No Warning. What followed was a paragraph that said much about my busy concerns as housewife, musician, and civic leader and what was supposedly in my mind as I had been driving down Whippoorwill.
Then the episode of the discovery of García's body was reviewed, and the Old Orchard Fort Chapter, NSDAR, was duly mentioned, and our project of marking graves and my office as Regent and the likelihood that the attack on me resulted from my efforts to elucidate certain aspects of the Garcia case. Inches! All of it inches! I wished I had never heard of inches. This was not at all the kind of publicity the DAR was seeking.
On an inner page there was a picture of me at the organ at Saint Luke's. It had been used several years back when I gave a recital. Beneath the picture was a resume of my career as a “club woman.” It was the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen.
Even before I could read all the hoopla in the
Banner
-
Democrat,
the telephone began to ring. The vicar was first. He was astounded, but I could tell he was also pleased that it had been mentioned that I performed at his church. Harriet Bushrow called. She had to be told everything about it. I told her
that Henry had positively forbidden me to go any further in the matter of García's murder.
“That's just what Lamar would have said to me,” she observed. “But Lamar is gone now, and I can do just what I please—the old darling! Was it one of those wretched Drovers that shot at you?”
I don't know why I hadn't thought about it, but both Allen Comming and Duncan Yardley had been at the reception at the club. It was a horrible thought that people who were accepted socially were involved in trying to kill me.
I told Harriet that we had better give up on our search for an answer to the Garcia mystery. I could tell, however, that she was unimpressed by my suggestion.
The story(s) in the
Banner-Democrat
did not end the newspaper coverage of the episode. Far from it. The attempt to murder the Regent of a DAR chapter was not quite the same as a man's biting a dog; but it was near enough to it that the story received more attention elsewhere than any of the preceding accounts of what was now the
famous
DAR murder mystery. A friend in Gainesville, Florida, sent me a clipping from her paper, and the President General (of the DAR) in Washington called me in the greatest solicitude.
I was a wreck.
But it was already Saturday again, and I had to go down to Saint Luke's and practice. With the altar guild busily preparing for the Sunday service and the familiar gloom of the sanctuary and the familiar sound of pipes, reality returned. I was quite content to be just a church organist.
 
 
Elizabeth Wheeler
Other than looking up the Drover family genealogy and working with that nice young Mr. Manley on the publicity, there was just one little thing that I discovered about our DAR mystery, and I didn't even have enough sense to report it to Helen or the rest of them until it was almost too late to be of any use.
It was all because I am pretty good at family history; and if there is something in a line that doesn't work out just right, I just go after it and keep on going. And I generally find what I'm looking for sooner or later. Well, that's the secret of genealogy: experience and persistence. Because if you ever find something in a certain way, you remember to look there again the next time you think you have come to a dead end. By keeping everlastingly at it, you pick up new ways of doing things.
Thirty years ago, when I first got to work on my own family, there were other ladies in my chapter (I was living in
Norton then) that wanted help, and I helped them. And then I moved to Borderville and went into the Old Orchard Fort Chapter, and the ladies wanted me to help there too. After that, I began to help ladies who wanted to join other chapters; and before I knew it, I had an absolute
reputation.
Well, it is something to have a reputation. And it can mean a little money, because now every so often they ask me to go somewhere—up the valley, or over into Kentucky, or even over into North Carolina—and give a workshop.
I used to do it for $25 and expenses. But now I get $300 and expenses for a three-day workshop. I guess that's inflation. But that isn't at all bad, because there are so many genealogy clubs now; and if they sell tickets to people who aren't members, they can make a little money for their club or chapter or whatever.
Well, the Genealogy Club in Roanoke wanted me to talk about genealogical information in what I call “hidden places” in courthouses. Now, that really does call for experience because the practice of keeping records could vary from county to county in the old days, and sometimes the records never have been put in order.
They wanted me to go up to Roanoke the first week in June. I didn't even know that Helen Delaporte had just played a concert up there, and I don't imagine she knew I was holding a workshop.
Anyhow, the Roanoke club, to cut down on expenses, had me stay in the house of the president of the club, Mrs. Amy Tilbury. That is always the cheapest way, and it is just okay with me because I get a nice quiet room and my hostesses always treat me like the queen of England. And besides, I usually pick up some new recipes when I stay in one of those homes.
The Roanoke meeting went off well. The ladies were all very interested, and there were five
men
in the club. When
you get a
man
interested in family history, you have a real genealogist.
Mrs. Tilbury had a lovely room for me—upstairs in a big old two-story house. There was exposure on two sides, and one of the windows looked out at the back. If you remember what the weather was like that week, we had that cool spell, and then it got so warm that I had to loop the curtains back to try to catch a breeze and bring a little air into the room.
The session on Friday afternoon was over at 4:30, and I was just back in my room and had gone to loop the curtain back. I just stayed at the window a bit looking out at Mrs. Tilbury's flower garden. She had the little dwarf marigolds and ageratums, and they were all in bloom and just as pretty as can be. And then there was a fence and the alley. And beyond that there was a great big house—just about big enough to be a country inn. There was a great huge garage, and most of the backyard was paved like a parking lot.
In the middle of that paved space there was a spanking new hardtop convertible, white with gray top, and beautiful white-sidewall tires.
Pretty soon the back door of that big house opened and a man in a wheelchair came out. He looked like he might be in his fifties except that his hair was white. There was a young woman in a nurse's dress walking along pushing this little chrome wheelchair—the kind that folds up. That nurse just pushed that wheelchair right up to the driver's side of that sporty car, opened the car door, pushed the chair up a little farther, and there the man was in his wheelchair right next to the driver's seat. Then he reached up and got hold of something next to the roof on the inside of the car and strained up on it. The nurse pulled the chair back, and the man kind of moved his hips around and adjusted his position by holding to the roof in that manner. The nurse came over and picked up his legs and set them inside the car and closed the door.
Then she pushed the chair around to the back of the car, opened the trunk, closed up the wheelchair, and put it into the trunk. She closed the trunk and gave the key to the man.
You never saw anything that looked easier.
The next thing I knew, he had the engine going and was backing around in his own car! I just thought it was marvelous. It was absolutely fascinating, and I thought: How wonderful that a man with paralyzed limbs can get out and drive around in his own car!
So I asked Mrs. Tilbury at dinner about her neighbor. Yes, she said, her neighbor had been paralyzed for years and it was simply astounding how he got along. She said he was running a nursing home over there and doing very well financially, but it wasn't surprising that he was doing so well with a nursing home because he was a doctor and had had a large practice before he lost the use of his legs.
Then she mentioned his name: Anthony Hancock!
Of course I remembered
that
name! But I didn't let on that I knew anything about him. Mrs. Tilbury said something about Dr. Hancock's wife being dead and how she had had money, and I just sat there as if it was all news to me. But I was thinking all the time—that man has mighty strong arms, and it's only 150 miles from Roanoke to Borderville.
Now could he get in that car, drive down to Borderville, somehow or other get into a fight with Mr. García, and kill him? But, then, I didn't see how that was possible. How could a paralyzed man get into a fight and kill someone? He could shoot somebody, but Garcia was not shot. And then how would he get rid of the body and get it out to the Brown Spring Cemetery?
I didn't see how a man in a wheelchair, even if he was big and strong otherwise, could do what the man who killed Mr. García did. So I just sort of put it out of my mind.
Now, of course I had been keeping up the publicity the
chapter was getting from the very beginning of the DAR murder mystery, and I was keeping track of the number of inches. And it was just surprising how ladies all over the country were sending our members—and other people in Borderville too—clippings from their local papers.
So when Helen was shot at by that gunman, the whole thing started up again. Mr. Manley and all the other people down at the paper handled it just the way I had showed them. So it was time for me to go into the kitchen and bake up a storm.
Well, the ladies in the chapter were just getting a flood of letters asking if it was our chapter and all about it. So there was quite a lot of interest.
Then I got this call from Harriet Bushrow. She explained that Mr. Delaporte wouldn't let Helen do anything more about the murder, and now Harriet said that she and Margaret and I had to go on with it.
I'll tell you plainly, I can look up genealogy like anything; but if it ever came to doing the kind of thing Helen and Harriet do, I'd just be scared to death.
“I can't do it,” I said. But Harriet never will take no for an answer, and she said we ought to meet and put our heads together and—well, there is no denying Harriet.
So we came together at Margaret's house the very next morning. Margaret had coffee and a real nice coffee cake for us, and we sat around on that lovely porch at the back of her house. The windows were open, and it was just delightful.
Harriet explained what she and Margaret had been doing and showed me the record they had made of the things that happened over at Borderville Transfer. And it
did
look very peculiar and as if something suspicious had been going on over there.
“Well, I think what we have to do is just go over everything
that has happened,” Harriet said, “and we'll see if there is anything we have been overlooking.”
So we started with the day we went to the Brown Spring Cemetery, and Harriet told Margaret to write down notes on everything we went over.
Then Harriet asked me everything I had run into in tracing the Drover family, and I went over each one of the Drovers again and told everything I knew.
After we got it all out there in front of us, Harriet said, “There is too much money in that family, and they are not making it out of the transfer business. That club the Yardley boy has may be making a little money, but it has been open only a few months. So all this money he's been spending around here has to come from somewhere else. Then there is that lawyer up in Hogg's Gap. Do you know how he's doing, Lizzie?”
Well, I didn't. But I said that he seemed to be doing all right. He's the one, you know, who married Sarah Drover; and they have always been in a comfortable way. I guess he's still practicing law. I said I would ask my sister in Hogg's Gap. The Hogg's Gap people usually have a pretty good idea of the financial condition of everybody up that way.
“That leaves us with Miss VanDyne,” Harriet said. “Now what do we know about her?”
Margaret knew the answer to that. “She raises Tennessee walking horses,” she said.
“But does she make anything out of it?”
Margaret seems to know something about raising horses because her brother used to raise them. She said, “There is a lot of expense in it if you try to do it in a big way. Brother managed a stock farm for a man in McMinn County thirty years ago. The man had to give it up on account of losing some of his mares when his barn burned down. There are lots of things that can go wrong when you breed animals.”
“Helen tells me that doctor up in Roanoke has lots of money,” Harriet said.
“Oh, yes,” I said, and of course I told her what Mrs. Tilbury had said about his getting money from his wife and about how he still had patients and kept them in that fancy rest home. And then I mentioned about his being able to drive, because that car that he had looked awfully expensive. And that was the first that the others knew that Dr. Hancock could get out and go anywhere he wanted to.
Then Harriet asked me to describe the car; and when I did, she and Margaret looked at each other. It seems they had seen a car like that several times go up into that warehouse place up on the hill across from where Margaret lives. And Harriet said that was probably why they had fixed that ramp, so Dr. Hancock's car could drive into the warehouse.
After we had talked and talked about everything, Harriet said, “Now, girls, what it amounts to is that those two boys are living way too high on the hog to be depending on honest money, and we all know there's nothing left of the Drover money. So there's just one thing it can be:
Drugs.”
It's just so sad to think how that family went down. Old Mr. Quin Drover always wanted his children to be respectable and all. But when you think of it, he wasn't very honest and honorable when he first got started.

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