I said, “You and your husband were the first people to get there—to the crime scene.”
“People made a fuss over me knowing where to go,” she said. “Running right up to a bedroom I’d never been in. But I knew Marilyn slept upstairs, and it was right up there off the top of those stairs. So that’s a bunch of hooey.”
Flo frowned sadly. “Seeing what happened to Mrs. Sheppard—that must have been just terrible.”
“Horrible. I went up to that bedroom, and…”
She shuddered. “I impulsively grabbed her wrist, then just … let go of it! This isn’t real, I thought. It was like something out of a chamber of horrors in a wax museum.”
“After you saw what happened,” I said, “you went down and poured Sam a stiff glass of whiskey.”
“Yes. He was slumped in his chair, moaning, real miserable. I thought it might help. He didn’t want it. He said he needed to be able to think straight. I downed it myself. I guess I was hoping to pass out or wake up. I wished I could do one or the other. It just was not real.”
“Seems to me,” I said, “you composed yourself most admirably.”
She smiled the pinched smile. “Thank you, Mr. Heller. I tried to keep my wits. To stay alert, keep my eyes open. I pointed out a puddle on the back porch and some smaller wet spots on the stairs that were like … you know, footprints. Those police didn’t even take pictures.”
“You were the one who woke Chip up?”
She nodded. “Some people think it was unusual, the boy sleeping through screams and all. But he was always a deep sleeper, like his daddy. Also, there were two back-to-back closets between the two bedrooms. That Chip, his closet was piled with funny books. He’s a nice boy, Chip.”
“Right,” I said. “When you testified, you only mentioned one thing that really hurt Dr. Sam’s case.”
The eyebrows rose again, not as much. “The head injury thing?”
“The head injury thing.”
She drew a breath, let it out. “Well, I took my sister to see Dr. Sam. She’d been in an automobile accident. He treated her, and just in passing mentioned how hard it was to diagnose brain injuries. Head injuries were easy to fake, he said, which was the bane of insurance companies.”
This had come up when Steve Sheppard was filling us in about the Dodges. He’d said that faking a head injury was actually difficult, and Sam had only been advising Mildred’s sister not to make a quick settlement. But of course the implication to the jury had been that Sam Sheppard had faked his own injuries after the murder.
“If I might make one observation, Mrs. Dodge,” I said, “that I hope you won’t take wrong.”
The pinched smile again. “We won’t know unless you ask, Mr. Heller.”
“There were a lot of people in that house, the murder house, that morning. You acted as a kind of … you sort of directed traffic.”
Curt nod. “I did. Wife of the mayor. Wife of the safety director. That was a way I could help.”
“Well, I saw a young man there. You were talking to him. He seemed to be a neighbor kid, or even…?”
Another nod. “Our son Jerome. Yes, Jerry was there for a short while.”
“Excuse me, but … why did you allow that?”
Her chin came up. “I not only allowed it, I encouraged it. Much the same way I once instructed Marsh to take Jerry to the scene of a terrible car crash. He was a little younger, but a teenager. Thirteen, fourteen. He needed to see what death was. What the world was like. The aftermath of that automobile accident—two were killed—was instructive for a growing boy, a boy growing into a man.”
My own eyebrows took a ride. “You’re not saying you sent him up to see the murder scene?”
“I did exactly that. He needed to see what people are capable of. What life and death are really like. What the consequences are.”
Flo looked pale. I think the blood ran out of my face, too.
“You need to understand, Mr. Heller, Miss Kilgore. Jerry and the other neighbor kids thought the world of the Sheppards. Their place was a regular hangout for the boys and girls. There was a kind of clubhouse in the loft over the garage—the driveway was their basketball court, a hoop above the garage door. Jerry idolized Dr. Sam, and Mrs. Sheppard was a kind of big sister to him.”
She had been like a daughter to Jerry’s father.
“Jerry is doing very well at school,” she said. “He’s in pre-med at Case Western. Not doing anything much this summer, helping me around the place, handling a few hours at the meat shop, but mostly just having a good time.”
I asked, “Is he around today?”
“Well, he and a friend of his took the boat out.”
“The boat your husband and Dr. Sam bought together?”
“Yes, that’s right. Do you think I was wrong to send Jerry up to see what happened to that young woman?”
“Frankly, I’m not sure I understand what lesson you hoped to teach,” I said.
“That life is a fragile thing, of course. That one must take care.”
“You spoke of consequences.”
“Well, Marilyn was a lovely girl, and while she didn’t like sex, she … she rather radiated it. She was friendly and some might say flirtatious. She wore daring little tops and tight little pants, short little pants. I don’t mean to be unkind, but in a way you might say she … flaunted what she had.”
Flo said, “You’re not suggesting she brought this on herself?”
“Oh, no! No. Just that life is as dangerous as it is precious. Drive too fast, too reckless, you get in a car crash. If you walk in the forest in the sunshine, you’ll probably be fine. If you do so in the dead of night … who knows?”
* * *
We walked to the Sheppard house and skirted the place, not wanting to disturb the new owners. Discreetly we made our way down the thirty-six steps to the beach, feeling a little lucky not to get yelled at. The waves were not at all angry today, the sun a buttery thing, just warmth, not heat, and the water was in competition with the sky over whose shade of blue was lovelier; the handful of clouds seemed an afterthought, God in a watercolor mood.
Two athletic-looking young men, barely out of their teens, were sitting in their bathing trunks on the wooden slats of the little boathouse landing, which looked out over the narrow stretch of beach where a struggle between Sam Sheppard and a bushy-haired man may or may not have taken place.
The two boys, their backs leaned against the side of the boathouse, had cans of Falstaff and looked alarmed that two adults had found them. Their reaction told me they were under twenty-one, drinking age in Ohio.
“Is one of you Jerry Dodge?” I asked. “I’m not a cop.”
A younger, handsomer, darker-haired version of his father got to his feet, smoothed the sides of his red trunks, and said, “I’m Jerome Dodge.”
The other boy, who was taller though neither was short, scrambled to his feet, pulled up his dark green trunks a little, and grinned and pointed. At Flo.
“You’re that lady on TV,” he said. Not as handsome as his friend, blond with close-set eyes, but with the same kind of slimly muscular build, he sounded a little drunk. My shrewd detective’s eyes quickly spied, on a scrubby piece of the bluff near the boathouse landing, several more Falstaff cans, empty. Some cigarette butts, too.
Flo smiled and gestured to herself with a white-gloved hand. “Yes, I’m Flo Kilgore, from What’s My Line? Pleasure to meet you…?”
The trail-off invited the blond youth to provide his name, although probably not a national TV show he appeared on regularly. “I’m Dennis Lord. Denny. Jerry’s friend.”
Good thing he clarified that.
“My name is Heller,” I said. “I’m looking into the Sheppard case for Erle Stanley Gardner.”
Since Flo’s celebrity had impressed at least one of them, I threw that in for good measure.
“The Perry Mason guy,” Jerry said.
Denny frowned and said, “On TV?”
Jerry said, “Yeah. The lawyer
thing. Mr. Heller, what can I do for you?” The way he said that reminded me that he sometimes worked behind his father’s meat counter.
“We’ve spoken to your dad and mom—your dad at work and your mom at home, just now. I have a few follow-up questions for you. And maybe Denny, too.”
“Well … okay,” Jerry said.
“Okay,” his friend said with a bare-shouldered shrug.
“Jerry, I understand, on July Fourth the year of the Marilyn Sheppard murder, you and some other local boys who pal around together were enlisted for a search of the hill and beach.”
Jerry nodded, and Denny said, “Me, too.”
Jerry said, “There were around a dozen of us boys, who hung around together. We were looking for the murder weapon or anything else that, I don’t know, might be a clue.”
“You found some items in a green bag, is that right?”
“Yes,” Jerry said, “it was a tool bag from Dr. Sam’s study. I guess he kept it in a desk drawer. Green cloth, maybe, I don’t know—six inches wide, thirteen inches long?”
“I was with him,” Denny volunteered.
Jerry went on: “We undid it, dumped it out there on the hill—it was some jewelry, a watch with a broken band, a yellow chain with a football charm on it, gold. Another charm from some hospital, I think. A frat ring, stone kinda cracked up. Maybe a few other things, I dunno.”
Denny said, “The cops took everything. Didn’t find any prints.”
“Not even you two’s?”
Jerry and Denny shrugged at each other, then at me, the former adding, “Not that I know of.”
Flo said, “I hear the Sheppards’ place was a kind of hangout for you kids.”
“Well,” Jerry said, frowning a little, “not their house. The two rooms over the garage.”
“Sometimes we even spent the night,” Denny said, grinning a little. “One time, Mrs. Sheppard got mad at us, because some guys and girls stayed over at the same time. She said, ‘No funny business!’”
I said, “But she was usually nice?”
“Oh yes,” Denny said. “The girls and some of the guys, too, would talk to her about school problems and dating and stuff.”
“How about Dr. Sam?”
“I really looked up to him,” Jerry said. “I still do, sort of … I mean, if he isn’t a murderer. Some people don’t think he is.”
“Do you?”
“I really don’t know.”
Denny said, “He wasn’t as nice as she was. About a year before he killed her, if he killed her? We took the boat out. We had permission, and had done it lots of times. But … we were roughhousing around, and a kid almost drowned, and Dr. Sam got really mad. He never let us use the boat after that.”
“Was he nasty about it?”
Jerry shook his head. “No, sir. He was quiet. But really firm. He found out … uh, listen. I’ll … I’ll tell you something else, if it’s in confidence.”
“Sure,” I said.
Jerry looked at Flo. “You’re a writer. Is this … what’s it called, ‘off the record’?”
“Off the record,” she said with a nod and a smile.
His nod seemed more for himself than us. “We were goofing around the summer before junior year. We were … well, we got into shoplifting. Daring each other to swipe this and that from the dime store or record shop or whatever. Just for a little thrill and to get away with it, you know? We’d come to the clubhouse with our loot and laugh and brag, if we got the most expensive item. Which was probably worth just a buck or two. Anyway, Dr. Sam got wind somehow, and he took me aside and let me have it.”
I frowned. “Hit you?”
“Oh, no. He’d never do that. He just talked to me about right and wrong, and values and stuff. He didn’t even tell us we couldn’t use the clubhouse over the garage. Still played basketball with us and everything.”
“He was a nice guy,” Denny said. “I suppose he still is.”
Jerry frowned at me. “Is this going to start up again? All of it?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Not unless Dr. Sam gets a new trial.”
“Could that happen?”
“Could. Maybe a long shot. We’ll see.”
Jerry huffed a sigh. “I’m glad I live in the dorm during school.”
“Why’s that?”
“Maybe I wouldn’t have to put up with having all that under foot again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you know? During that whole thing, that coroner guy, Gerber? He turned our living room into a lousy command center. Worked out of our house for, like, six weeks! My dumb parents invited them in. Mom served that guy meals!”
The boys asked if that was all and we said yes. They left their beers by the side of the bathhouse and went down to the beach, kicking at the water, then going in for a swim.
Flo looked at me like she didn’t know what to think.
Like I did?
CHAPTER
9
Our final stop of the afternoon was a few houses west of the Dodges’—the home of Denny Lord’s parents, Betty and George Lord. This was another Cape Cod not unlike the Sheppard place, and nothing at all like the almost shabby former summer cottage Jerry’s parents inhabited. The Lords lived in a white double-story affair with an attached garage and the usual short front lawn, well tended, by the street that was also a highway. Around back was a real yard, equally well maintained with the expected bluff and steps down to the beach.
Dusk was threatening to descend into that nice twilight the moviemakers call magic hour, as we sat on the screened-in porch in white wicker chairs, Flo and I with our backs to the wall and getting the entire Lake Erie view, with Mrs. Lord—who said we should call her “Betty,” and used “Flo” and “Nate” right off the bat—seated on another white wicker chair to our right, angled toward us. She’d seen the view.
In cat’s-eye glasses behind which big dark blue eyes almost filled the lenses, her dark hair a permed rounded frame for her pretty face, she was in her late thirties and reminiscent of the adult Shirley Temple. Her nice full figure, stopping just short of voluptuous, was made for the light blue shorts and pink blouse. Like Mildred Dodge, she wore a string of pearls, but these looked real. Her shoes were beaded moccasins. Her fingernails were red. Her tan was just getting started.
We were all drinking the lemonade she’d provided, herself included. We were past the laughter and excitement of her bringing a star from What’s My Line? into her house. Her husband was out of town at an insurance convention, so meeting us so late in the day was no inconvenience—she did not have supper to make. She’d have a sandwich later and Denny was going out with some friends.
“We met your boy on the beach,” I said, nodding toward it. The water was staying calm, the gentle blue waves shadowed now. “He and his pal Jerry were swimming.”
And drinking beer and smoking, but mentioning that would have set the wrong tone.
“Jerry’s a nice young man,” she said with a smile as white and as pretty as the rest of her. “He and Denny played football together at Bay High School.”
Flo said, conversationally, “Is Denny in college, too?”
She nodded. “Yes, he’s in junior college.”
That seemed to embarrass her a little.
As if to justify that, she said, “They have a basketball team, and he’s a starting forward. I think Jerry regrets going to Case Western, in a way, because he so loved playing football, and was too small for the team.”
“Mrs. Lord,” I began, “I know—”
She stopped me with a hand and a blurted, “Betty! Mrs. Lord is my mother. Don’t make me feel awkward using your first names, Nate.” She smiled at Flo and said, “Flo.”
“Thank you, Betty,” I said. I sipped the lemonade. Nice, sweet but tangy. Kind of like our hostess. “I know you’ve had to go over this time and again, and are surely sick of it.”
She nodded, half smiled; her lipstick was the same red as her nail
s. “Actually, it’s been a while since I’ve talked about what happened. Oh, for a while, it was just wall-to-wall police and reporters around here—I had to testify at that inquest, you know. That Gerber is a terrible little man. So full of himself!”
Taking a chance, I said, “This porch is very similar to the one at the Sheppards’. Isn’t that where your two families had supper on the evening of July third?”
Didn’t throw her at all. She sipped lemonade and nodded as she swallowed. “It was a kind of holiday ritual we’d fallen into. Either we’d go to the Sheppards, or they’d come here—one couple served up drinks, the other supper. As you noted, Denny and Jerry are practically blood brothers, and Chip would play with our smaller two, boy Mark, girl Helen—they must have been, oh … four and seven then. But, you know, we started out here—right here on this porch.”
“Is that right?” I said, Flo and I sharing a glance, a little uncomfortable with sitting sipping lemonade at the extended crime scene.
“Yes,” Betty said. “It was Marilyn’s turn cooking, so we started here, with cocktails. George made martinis for Sam and himself, and whiskey sours for us girls.”
She paused, frozen in reflection for a moment. “Such a lovely girl, Marilyn, so athletic, so fresh-looking. You could mistake her for a teenager! Hair so thick, lustrous—she wore it shoulder-length, you know. Those eyes, those wide-set hazel eyes of hers … and you should have seen her tan!”
She swallowed hard. She’d been so upbeat in all of that rhapsodizing about her dead neighbor that I hadn’t noticed her tearing up.
“Sorry,” she said, wiping each eye with a little paper napkin. “She was a wonderful girl.”
Flo said, “You were good friends?”
“Oh, yes. Like sisters.”
Everybody on this street seemed to feel like part of somebody else’s family.
“We were in the Women’s Bowling League together, two afternoons a week,” she continued. “We would sit and talk—right out here, in summer, with lemonade. In the kitchen, in winter, coffee. George and I and her and Sam, we were all in the Junior Club.”
I asked her what that was.
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