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Authors: Graham Landrum

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BOOK: The Famous Dar Murder Mystery
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My hand went to my throat. Pebbles rolled under my foot, and I sprawled on the ground as a strong jerk at my necklace broke the cord and scattered the crystal beads everywhere.
“Oh, my! Oh, my!” I gasped.
Immediately I looked up and saw Bettye leaning over me. She seemed to be quite frightened. “Are you hurt?” she gasped.
I got myself into a sitting position and looked as dazed as I could.
I heard her say to that man I told you about, “Go back. Can't you see the poor thing is hurt?” And he did.
I said, “Oh, dear!” several times, partly because I
had
hurt myself. I had scraped my shin almost raw. “No, I'm all right,” I said after a quick inspection. “But my beads!” I exclaimed. “They are cut crystal, and my husband gave them to me on the day we were married.”
I scrambled to my poor old knees and began to pick up the gleaming bits of glass and put them into my handbag.
“Darling, help me find them,” I said as though I was heartbroken over the loss of even one bead.
Well, we picked around in that gravel; and I picked more carefully than you'd ever expect. It took more time than I liked, I can assure you. But I had to make it look like I was only picking up little crystal beads.
Finally I decided that I had found all I was going to find. I thanked Bettye for her help and told her I would see her in August. I got into my car and started up quick. I didn't even turn around so as to go back the way I had come. No indeed. I just wanted to get shut of that place right away.
So I went fast as I could, although that road was just a snake the way it wiggled around.
About the time I commenced to relax, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw this old gray automobile behind me, coming fast. The thought struck me like a ton of bricks: What if it's him?
And it was.
Something said to me: Drive in the middle of the road so he can't come up beside you.
And that's what I did.
He just stayed right there almost on my back bumper. I would step on the gas a little, and he would step on the gas
a little. I would slow down a little, and he would slow down a little. My old De Soto is thirty-five years old, but it hasn't gone over fifty thousand miles, and I figured it could go pretty fast and I could get away if that dratted road just hadn't been such a mass of curlicues.
Pretty soon I was relieved to see that the fellow was falling back. I was just delighted.
Then I heard a gun.
And I realized that the reason he was falling back was so he could shoot at me when I went around a bend in the road. I suppose he had to shoot with his left hand, and that was a blessing.
But what
was
I to do?
Then I saw this big old lumbering shape ahead of me. It was the garbage truck.
It was just blocking the road and going so slow. Well that's it, I thought. That fellow will get me for sure.
I guess I didn't tell you that all this time the road had been running through cutover timber where the new-growth pine was about fifteen feet or so high, and it was just thick everywhere on both sides. That meant you couldn't see around a bend very far at all.
Well, I got around one of those curves, and what do you think? That garbage truck was turning off. We had come to the dump.
You can bet I followed that garbage truck right into the dump. And there were three other trucks there and a man with one of those bulldozer things. I sailed right into the midst of them and just sat tight.
The fellow in that gray car didn't know what to do. I saw him drive by that entrance. And in a few minutes he drove back the other way. Then he went by again. But he didn't dare come in because there were all those garbagemen there.
I can tell you they were the handsomest garbagemen I ever expect to see. I just loved them.
As you might expect, the trucks were there to dump garbage and not to sit around. So one of them pulled out and then another. That left one truck and the bulldozer man. I supposed some more trucks might come along, but there was no assurance of that.
It was getting on past three o'clock, and I knew they would all be gone—including the bulldozer man—at five or maybe even four. And there I would be, back in a pickle again.
So I drove my car up next to the one garbage truck that was still there and said to the driver, nice young man—looked like he might be twenty-five or thirty—I said, “Can you tell me if there is another way to get out of this dump except the way I came in?”
He had that machinery going that dumps the garbage and didn't hear. So I asked him again.
“Yes ma'am,” he said. “Hit's right through thataway.” He was just a good old Tennessee boy. And he was pointing—it looked like—to a big pile of garbage that the man with the bulldozer thing hadn't flattened out yet.
I pulled around in that direction, and sure enough, there was a way out over there.
Believe me, I took it and did not spare the horses!
After about ten minutes I was at Hogan's Tank. And I knew how to get back to Borderville from there. I guess my Confederate veteran was still back there watching the entrance of that dump like a cat waiting for the mouse to come out of her hole—no, “his” hole. This women's lib thing has got me so mixed up I don't know what to say anymore. But I think the cat is female and the mouse is male, although it was the other way around with me and that Confederate fellow.
I have a very fine man who takes care of my eyes—Dr. Thomason. I absolutely think the world of him. He can do
just about anything that can be done in the line of eyeglasses. He has an office on Division Street, and there was a parking place only three doors down from where he is.
Earlene Hawkes, the office girl, looked up when I came in and of course knew me immediately—she should—I've been going to Dr. Thomason for thirty years. “Why, I don't believe we have an appointment for you today, Mrs. Bushrow,” she said.
“No, honey, you sure don't,” I said. “This is something different and something special. I've got a little job for Dr. Thomason to do for me and it won't take two minutes for me to explain it to him.”
He had a patient having his eyes examined, which meant I had to wait a little bit. And that was just as well because I had to dig around in my purse to find the evidence I had been collecting. By the time Dr. Thomason's patient was out of the office, I had got together four pretty good pieces of lens and two tiny slivers.
“Can you tell me what the formula for a lens is by looking at broken pieces?” I asked after Dr. Thomason had greeted me.
“Perhaps,” he said. “It depends on the condition and size of the pieces.”
“All right, then,” I said. “Here are the pieces.”
“But Mrs. Bushrow,” he objected, “we have your prescription on file. We would not have to reconstruct it from these pieces.”
I looked at him and laughed. “Who said these are from my prescription?”
He looked at me in a quizzical sort of way.
“Now, don't ask questions,” I said. “Ladies have their secrets.” And I gave him such a look that it would have melted his heart if I had been sixty years younger. It doesn't have the same effect when you are eighty-six, but at least Dr.
Thomason took the little pieces of glass and said he would let me know by Thursday.
Between my adventure and the whiskey Bettye VanDyne had given me, I was revved up. I hardly noticed the pain in my shin as I drove home, and it really wasn't all that bad. I put a little salve on it, and went straight to the telephone to call Helen Delaporte.
“I want you to find out something for me from those folks out in California,” I said. And then I told her what I wanted. And of course I had to tell all about my adventure. Helen was horrified, but that was all right.
I don't know when I have been so excited about anything. But, then, if I was all wrong, what a fool I would look!
I made myself a little supper and tried to watch TV. I got ready for bed and turned out the light. In the darkness I could imagine Bettye VanDyne holding a length of chain about two feet long with a heavy padlock hanging from the end. It was an eerie picture like the posters that used to advertise horror movies. Poor little Bettye! The stuff that had made a monster of her would make a monster of anybody.
 
 
Helen Delaporte
From the moment Henry laid down the law, I fully intended to have nothing more to do with gumshoe work of any kind. And in fact I never touched the matter except to use the telephone. To that extent I disobeyed Henry's injunction, but I suppose it is forgivable casuistry to claim that using the telephone is not the same thing as talking to someone face to face.
Whatever the conjugal blame I deserve, as soon as the rates went down, I called Hornsby Roadheaver and got from him the telephone number of the little harpist who had been the assistant of Garcia in his school. He knew her number without consulting a telephone book or memorandum of any kind. So apparently one good thing was resulting from this murder.
Miss Sieburg was at home, and wonder of wonders, she knew the name of the opthalmologist. After a glance at her directory, she had the address and telephone number for me. So that was very easily done.
But Miss Sieburg had never known Evelyn Garcia. That meant that I had to call Ethel Muehlbach. Although Ethel did not have the answer, she said she would ask around.
When I told Henry about all of this, he was incredulous but charmed that a woman of Harriet's age should have become so involved in an affair of this sort. He doubted that the bits of glass would turn out to match García's prescription. But then he had not heard Harriet explain how she had collected those bits of glass from the gravel right under the nose of her prime suspect.
“But if it should be García's prescription?” I asked. I so wanted Harriet to have solved the case!
“A lens is not the same thing as a fingerprint,” Henry said. “You would need supporting evidence.” And we left it at that.
I called Harriet, gave her the address of the oculist she wanted, and told her that Ethel would find out what she could and call me.
Then Henry and I went away to the beach for four days. On the day after we got back, I got a call from Harriet.
“Where have you been?” (This in a rather accusing tone.)
“Hilton Head.”
“I know it was lovely. Are you sunburned?”
“A little.”
“You haven't heard from the lady friend in California, have you?”
“No, I haven't. And there was nothing from California on our answering machine.”
There was a pause. “Oh, I was hoping you might have heard.”
There was such disappointment in that sentence that I felt a wretch not to have received a call. I promised Harriet that I would call Ethel that very night.
So I talked to Ethel. It was one of those things where
nobody was quite sure. General talk had it that Evelyn Garcia had died of a heart attack, but one of the women who had played bridge with her said it was drugs.
The trouble had started when Garcia had gone on extended tours and Evelyn had been alone. She was very dependent and lost without him. When Garcia returned, Evelyn had tried to keep the habit from him and seemed to have succeeded, but her bridge friends suspected; and if the husband knew about it, he was too proud to let the addiction of his wife become common gossip. So they watched it and saw that some times were better and some times worse. Her health declined and her appearance was such that when she died, it was quite believable by the public at large that she had died of heart disease. But Ethel's informant was quite sure that it was either an overdose or cardiac arrest in some manner related to the habit.
“I knew it,” Harriet declared jubilantly when I told her. “I don't know how, but I knew it.
“Just wait,” she continued, “We'll have real news in a few days.”
We needed the answer from the oculist. I was confident that Harriet had ferreted out the solution, but it all hinged on those two things.
In a little less than a week the prescription arrived from Santa Barbara. After Harriet conferred with Dr. Thomason, she called me again. “Helen, do you think your husband could listen to me a little while if I came by your house at a convenient time?”
I assured her he could and would. And in fact I suggested that she join us for dinner at Ted's.
“Ted's!” she said. “How nice!”
So we met her at 7:30 in Ted's parking lot.
“Now, there will be no talking about anything consequential,” Henry announced, “until after we have finished dinner.”
And so we only talked of
in
consequential things until the dessert had been served. Meanwhile, I am bound to observe that Harriet flirted shamelessly with Henry. And Henry loved it.
After the coffee had been replenished, Henry turned to Harriet and said. “Now let us talk about things consequential.”
“Very well,” said Harriet as dispassionately as though she had been asked to open the bidding.
“As you know, Mr. Delaporte, your wife led us into a very puzzling and intriguing adventure.
“From the very beginning she recognized that there had been an attempt to hide both the identity of the deceased and the place of his murder. Through her cleverness, Helen established Mr. García's identity. But it didn't make any sense at all for a great, famous musician to come to a place like Borderville and nobody would know about it. And then for a perfect stranger—and it certainly looked as if Mr. García was a perfect stranger, at least to anybody around here—for a perfect stranger to be murdered! The question is why anybody around here would have something against him that would call for killing the poor man. And it was perfectly ridiculous that he should be killed out there in that Brown Spring Cemetery.
“Then by accident our Helen learned that there was a connection between Mr. García and the Drover family, and she saw that we would have to investigate the whole family from old Quinby Drover down to the present.
“That's when little Lizzie Wheeler got to work and made that chart of the Drovers with all their laws and in-laws. But looking at the Drover family tree didn't seem to suggest any reason to murder Mr. García.”
Harriet paused to take a sip from her coffee cup. “Well, some of us,” she resumed, “knew a thing or two about old Quinby and the rest of the Drover crew. And those of us with
the longest memories wouldn't be surprised at anything, because that old man was a scoundrel.
“Lizzie did a marvelous job of tracing the family—with dates and everything—and it turned out that there were only five living Drovers, so to speak, and Mr. García would have made the sixth. There was Allen Comming, Jr., Duncan Yardley, and Dorothy Greene Raebon, Dr. Anthony Hancock, and Bettye VanDyne.
“It was like looking at a pack of cards and knowing that somewhere there was the ace of spades.
“Well, there was the map that Lizzie had found and the dark pencil line showing that whoever had taken García's body out to Brown Spring had not known where the cemetery was. And then there was the other thing: We also turned up the fact that there were Baker graves out there and the Bakers are Allen's mother's people.
“That made it look as though Allen Comming had had something to do with the disposal of the body, and so he was a party to the murder or perhaps just involved in some distant way.
“Then Helen carried the investigation of the family a step further. She went to Angus Redloch, who knew all about the will but also pretty much how the family fortune was dissipated. And I could bear witness to much of that myself, because I was right here when most of it went up the spout.
“We all know that Allen came home from the Vietnam War and took over the management of Borderville Transfer, which was just about all the wealth that had come through the depression for the Drover heirs, and there is no doubt that he improved the business. But then there was a time in the late fifties when his father built that storage warehouse up on the hill, and he would have had to borrow money for that. So Allen, Jr., may have had to pay that off; I imagine he did.
“Now who of us knows whether that transfer business is
making money? After watching that enterprise for the better part of a month, frankly I saw little that would make me believe that Allen Comming can support his life-style from Borderville Transfer. But both Allen Comming and Duncan Yardley seem to have plenty of money.
“That's how things stood when Opal Ledbetter made her national defense report for the May meeting of the chapter. And that triggered a memory. It came to me that Duncan Yardley must be the operator of the Gold Coast.”
Harriet began to fumble in her famous pocketbook. “Do you mind if I smoke?” she said.
I don't know why the question should have surprised me. Neither Henry nor I smoke, and I had known Harriet for such a long time without ever having seen her with a cigarette that I felt just a bit shocked at her request. I could tell that Henry too was taken by surprise as he reached for the matchbook in its holder between the salt and pepper shakers.
Harriet looked up with a mischievous grin. “Well, I'm not going to smoke,” she said as she extracted something wrapped in Kleenex from her purse. She handed it to him. “That's the evidence,” she said. “That's where the Drover money comes from today. From these marijuana cigarettes and the other stuff he has in those little plastic packets I saw in his safe while I was in his office down at the Gold Coast. And I believe we will find that he is in the dope business much deeper than that.
“Meanwhile,” Harriet continued, “at Helen's suggestion, Margaret Chalmers and I took up our post watching the Borderville Transfer premises. We found a very strange pattern. Every so often, about seven or seven-thirty in the evening, a car from the south—always from the south—would roll up that hill and drive right into the warehouse. Then the next day, early, three cars would sort of converge, go into the warehouse for a while, and then come out and go off different
ways. Then in five or six days the same thing would happen again.
“Now you can't tell me they weren't distributing something.
“Then Helen saw this Highsmith fellow wearing a suede jacket that she thought belonged to Garcia. And when the police began looking for that jacket, what should happen but somebody shot Highsmith out there on four-twenty-one.
“And they almost shot our little Helen.” Harriet leaned over and patted me on the arm.
“At that point we had pretty good evidence that both Duncan Yardley and Allen Comming were in the dope business, but I didn't see how we were going to prove that either of them had killed Luis Garcia.
“Well, I thought, we haven't investigated Bettye VanDyne the way we have snooped around those boys, and she's right here in the county. So I went out there.
“It's a very pitiful thing; that place is so poorly kept up. That girl isn't making anything there. And I hadn't been talking to her ten minutes before I knew she was on drugs.
“It was just very sad. And yet—you can't just let a murderer go.
“Then that man—I call him the ‘Confederate veteran'—came around the corner, and he must have known in a minute who I was. So I was eager to get away from there and mostly from him.
“While Miss VanDyne was opening the gate to let me out, two things happened almost at the same time. I saw the broken lens of García's glasses, for one thing.”
Harriet delved into her purse once more and came up with a rumpled envelope. “Here are the pieces. Dr. Thomason worked out the prescription from the fragments. It turned out that there are parts of two lenses here. One was a prescription lens, and the other was not a lens at all, which, if you'll think about it, is the way it would have to be, since the poor man
was blind in one eye. Helen got me the address of Mr. García's ophthalmologist in California so I could write out there and check it. According to the prescription he sent me, these are Mr. García's lenses. And I would think that that means that Mr. García was killed right there at Bettye VanDyne's gate.
“Now, for the other thing that came to me just at the time I saw the glint of the glass among the pebbles—Bettye VanDyne was standing there holding the chain that ordinarily keeps the gate shut. It was then that I first thought of her as a menacing figure. That poor girl is very strange. If she was hopped up on something, she could swing that chain with that great big padlock on the end of it, and she could kill somebody with it. And I don't suppose that it would take too much to crush a man's windpipe with a heavy chain swinging around like that.
“And, of course, if you think about it, most folks would protect their face and eyes with their hands. But, no, with Mr. García, all that was different. Those artist's hands of his meant more to him than his eyes. So he didn't raise his hands, and so that chain with that big lock on it just hit him and hit him. I don't know whether she actually hit his glasses or they fell off and got stepped on and broken. I suppose somebody picked up what was left of the frames—they would be easy to see. And maybe they took the pieces of glass that were easiest to find.”
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