The Famous Dar Murder Mystery

by Graham Landrum

  BELGRADE BREAD

  Cream 5 eggs and 2 cups sugar. Add 4 oz. finely cut or ground almonds, 1 t. nutmeg, ¼ t. cloves, 1 t. baking powder, 4 oz. citron finely cut. Then add 3 to 4 cups flour to make a stiff batter. Roll out to thickness of ¼ in. and cut into desired shapes. Paint top of each cookie with beaten whole egg to which a little milk may be added. Bake in 350° oven 8 to 10 minutes. They should not be baked too long because they become hard.

  So that was the recipe I made; and I put the cookies in a nice box, prettied myself up, and went down to the newspaper office. And there was Mr. Manley; he said he had been expecting me. I told him he could always count on me and that I was sure I could count on him.

  He just opened up the box and started in, and all the other people in the office had learned what to expect whenever I came in; and they came over right away. So I guess I didn’t make too many cookies after all.

  We had just a wonderful time, and I liked the other reporters and secretaries and so on just as much as I liked Mr. Manley. I don’t know whether they liked me, but I must say that they liked my Belgrade bread. Then Mr. Manley said, “You know, I put that story on the wire.”

  I didn’t really know what that meant.

  “I sent it out on the wire,” he said. “It will go to the Associated Press.”

  I guess my eyes must have got big about that time, because he said, “Oh, not all the papers will print it, but some will, and you’ll get lots of inches.”

  My! I never expected anything like that, and I began to think what I could do for that nice young man. So I promised him I would keep the goodies coming just as long as he did the right thing by the DAR. And he said, “I think we can do business. That sort of makes us partners, doesn’t it?”

  I said, “It sure does.”

  As I was going out, he said, “I’ll be on the lookout for the story in the exchange.” That’s the papers in other towns that exchange with the Banner-Democrat.

  About three days later, the mail began to come in. Friends from all over east Tennessee and Virginia and Kentucky and North Carolina and West Virginia began sending clippings to our members. We got clippings from Roanoke, Marion, Parsons City, Cooksport, Knoxville—just everywhere. And Alice Turner’s niece saw the story and sent it to us from Indianapolis! When we got all the clippings together, we had almost two yards of publicity; and I felt sure it would all count because it was about our chapter and our project and all.

  IDENTIFYING THE BODY OF LUÍS GARCÍA

  Hornsby Roadhever

  I am writing this at the request of Mrs. Helen Delaporte, who as I understand it intends to include it in the minutes of her DAR chapter.

  I am Hornsby Roadheaver of the Roadheaver Agency in San Francisco. I manage between fifty and sixty of the biggest names in music and dance on the West Coast. I book my artists with the Community Series Inc. and with all the big symphonies and civic opera companies in the United States and Canada. Lately I have booked several concert tours in Europe.

  I began handling Luis Garcia seventeen years ago. Since that time he has averaged about ten concerts a year. Over the years he has made in the neighborhood of $180,000 with me, and I don’t have to tell you it has been profitable for me also.

  Lu was a different sort of fellow. You could say that about any of my artists, but Lu was not only different from ordinary people, he was different from other artists. I would say he was proud—not proud in the same way all artists are, but proud in his own way.

  You take a soprano who has a few notes above high C. There is something about that that she just can’t get over. Every third sentence she speaks for the rest of her life will have something about “my career” in it. She can’t find anything good to say about any other soprano, unless she is being interviewed on TV—but that’s another matter.

  You never saw a man as polite as Lu was. There was no respect he demanded for himself that he didn’t show to other people. Dapper—good looking in a way—he was just something you don’t run into except in old novels—maybe like The Count of Monte Cristo—I think that’s the title of it.

  You would never say I was close to Lu—nobody was—but we’ve had dinner, cocktails, whatever else together for all those years. He was always friendly. But in spite of that, we never quite managed to become real friends—you know.

  Still, I liked the guy; and when I read that he had passed away, well, just thinking of the guy himself, the first thought that came to me was: “I’m sorry. Something important got away from me again. It was too bad I hadn’t known him better.” It wasn’t till a couple days later that I thought about how much money I was kissing good-bye.

  But after all, our relationship had been business; and even though he was now dead, the business was unfinished. There was an agent in Madrid who would be getting nervous, and he would be screaming pretty soon because Lu did not show up.

  You see, what Lu had planned to do was to take rooms in Madrid, where he could rest up and practice before he began the tour.

  So there would be no reason for me or anyone else to miss Lu (he had no family here) until almost time for his first concert.

  It was a real shock to learn from the morning paper that one of my very own artists had been murdered.

  It took me about an hour to realize that it was up to me to do something about it. You see, he lived down there in Santa Barbara. I knew he didn’t have any family, and I didn’t have the ghost of an idea who his lawyer was or his accountant. He had a little school down there—just his own—just harp and nothing else.

  But you see, I had that number, and I called it.

  The voice that belonged to the second in command down there sounded very sweet and very young to me. “Dear,” I said, “how old are you?”

  “What is this?” The voice didn’t sound quite so sweet anymore.

  “Well,” I said, “if you are forty-five, I have an unpleasant task to dump on you: notifying some people in Europe that since they are not going to be seeing Lu Garcia after all, they had better send his baggage back and who knows what else (I never had an artist die like this before); but if you are under twenty-four, I’ll do it myself.”

  “I’m twenty-six,” she said.

  “I think I’ll do it for you anyhow.”

  “Is it about the Spanish tour?”

  “Yes.”

  There was one of those pregnant pauses we so often read about.

  Then I said I was Hornsby Roadheaver; and yes, she knew who I was. And she knew that Lu had sent his harp and all his luggage except for one bag direct to an address in Calle Calderon in Madrid. She sounded really forlorn.

  “Were you close to him?” I asked.

  “Not in that way,” she replied. “He was just a wonderful man, and he taught me everything I know.” She sounded like she really meant it, and I was afraid she was going to cry into the phone just any second.

  “Do you know any more about—” I began. “Do you know any more about what happened?”

  “No, only what’s in the paper just now.”

  Can you imagine it! The poor kid didn’t know anything about it until she saw it in the paper. And here I had been smart-mouthing all over the wire.

  Well, I could see that this sweet kid didn’t know anything that I didn’t know. But I had the news story in front of me—all about the DAR, if you would believe it! “Dear, I tell you what,” I said. “Just look up the number of this Ethel Muehlbach for me, and I’ll let you go.”

  I could hear the pages rustle as she looked up the listing in the book. When I got the number, I thanked her and rang off.

  And that was how I got to know Janie Sieburg—because that’s who that sweet voice belongs to, and there’s more to be said about her in a later installment.

  Muehlbach gave me Helen Delaporte’s number. I called Helen right away, and she was the other good thing that happened to me that day. Janie and Helen are two real charmers in very different ways. Janie—the young chick—a knockout to look at, as I soon fo
und out (but an excellent harpist and I am going to get her engagements and she will pack the houses as soon as the public sees her picture), real blond hair and gentian eyes. And just wait until they hear her play. And Helen—mature, poised, intellectual, forceful. And when I got to know her, I found out that she is an excellent musician too and dedicated to her work.

  I rang up Helen immediately and explained who I was.

  “I guess you are sure this man was Lu García?” I said.

  “Without question,” she came back. I knew from the way she said it that she was right. But you know how sometimes you just hope that what you know is true isn’t that way after all.

  “Could you just describe him a little?” I said.

  She told me all the usual things—height, weight, age, etc. And then she said there was something strange about the appearance of the left eye. You see, that was one of the few things he told me of a personal nature about himself. He didn’t use the word blind, but he said that with monovision he did not like driving more than was necessary.

  Then she asked me about his hair. I said that he had a regular forest on his head. The fact is I often envied him because my own crop is getting a little sparse up there.

  She said that was a discrepancy, but she felt sure that there was a wig missing. So—I was willing to buy that, because that hair of his really looked like an ad for Breck.

  Then she went on with the description, and it checked out right along. When she came to the clothes he had on in the air terminal, I knew there couldn’t be any mistake because of the suede jacket. That just sounded like Lu Garcia: flash, but class just the same. From the description, it had to be Lu.

  Then Helen told me about some man who used Lu’s name and flew out of that Three City Airport on Sunday after Lu would seem to have been killed.

  I was getting to be a little puzzled. I was searching around in my mind for something, and I wasn’t sure what that might be. But I had told that cute voice down in Santa Barbara that I would do a job for her.

  I needn’t have worried about what to do because Helen told me what it was.

  “Take down this number,” she said. It was the number of the commonwealth attorney. “The best thing to do is call him,” she said. “They are not going to do a thing at this end as long as they can deny the identity. But if you call Ron Jefferson and demand clarification, the next move will have to be his.”

  So Helen and I hung up, and I dialed that commonwealth attorney and just barely caught him in the office because by that time it was almost five o’clock there in the East. I offered to send him publicity stills for identification, but he said the only way to identify the body was for someone who knew Lu to look at the corpse.

  Now, I really wasn’t interested in a transcontinental flight to some place called Borderville in the Virginia boondocks. I mean, after all, even though my Daddy was on the Bible-Belt revival circuit for years, I don’t manage country and western. I was very dubious. He said I should let him know if I was going to make the trip so he could get an exhumation order. It really didn’t sound like a party I wanted to attend.

  After we rang off, I got to thinking about it. I was in the soup on this anyhow I looked at it. I dithered about it all evening and finally called Janie again the next morning. We did considerable talking before I asked for the name and number of Lu’s lawyer, which was why I called her in the first place.

  The lawyer said that there would be trouble with the estate unless we could get a death certificate for Lu Garcia and, what’s more, that Janie was the biggest beneficiary of his will.

  After that second talk with Janie, I was ready to do just about anything to look like Mr. Big to her. So I thought maybe I would go back there to Borderville and identify the remains. All the same, it looked to me like the round-trip ticket would be just a little pricey. But then I asked this lawyer if the trip might be charged to the estate. As soon as he said yes, my mind was made up that I was going to take a trip east.

  So I went to Borderville.

  I got to Three City Airport at 11:45 P.M. on Sunday, March 6, because I missed a connection at a place called Charlotte, North Carolina. I checked in at the Sunset Inn just next to the terminal at Three City and didn’t wake up the next morning until half past ten. I called this Jefferson person—the commonwealth attorney. He sounded relieved to hear from me because he had the undertaker ready to dig up the coffin. He told me he would send a car for me at two o’clock.

  As soon as I looked out, I saw mountains; and believe me, it was cold outside with heavy clouds. I got in the car beside the driver and began to wish I hadn’t. The roads were like absolutely drunk, and this guy’s driving was like something else.

  We finally pulled into a cemetery and drove clear to the back, which seemed to be where they plant paupers and such.

  The grave had already been opened, and the coffin all crudded up with red clay was on the surface at one side. Jefferson shook my hand, said he was glad to see me, and asked how it was at the Sunset Inn, then told the undertaker’s man to open her up.

  It was worse than I expected. The lower part of Lu’s face looked like it had been tenderized. His nose was smashed in, and the undertaker hadn’t bothered to rebuild anything.

  There was no hair topside, but the suntan came right up to the line and the scalp was strictly pale skin from there on. The face was in really bad condition, and he had been dead for some time, but I knew in my vitals that this was Lu Garcia.

  I nodded, “That’s him.”

  The D.A. turned to the undertaker and said, “Take him to the morgue. I suppose the body is to be sent to California?”

  “Yes,” I said, though I hadn’t thought of it before. I sure hoped that somebody would do something to make Lu look better before Janie saw him.

  There were some papers for me to sign.

  “When does your plane leave?”

  “Four-thirty,” I said.

  “Where would you like us to take you?”

  “Sunset Inn,” I said, and he told the driver to take me there.

  Going back out that hilly road, I guess I was a little reflective, the way you are after a funeral. Lu and I had been friendly—a glass of wine, a good steak, that kind of thing. He had a real talent, and I was pretty depressed that it had come to this. In fact I didn’t realize for about ten minutes that it had begun to snow in a sort of neglectful way.

  By the time we got to the inn, the snow had got down to business. It had been a long time since I was in a real snowstorm. About three-thirty I opened my door and stood under the overhang just a minute. The snow was two and a half inches on the ground and there was not a sound. I looked over toward the control tower. As I thought about it, I hadn’t heard a plane come in for half an hour. I called the ticket counter. All flights canceled. There I was without even an Esquire. I had already found out that the TV in my room was one that Noah threw out of the ark. What to do? Then I happened to think that I had had that telephone contact with Helen Delaporte. I decided to give her a call.

  That turned out to be a smart move, because she came out and got me—through snow and ice—and gave me a big dinner that you couldn’t buy at a San Francisco restaurant and entertained me like a movie star.

  I finally flew out of Three City Airport at 3:00 the following afternoon.

  WHO LUÍS GARCÍA VALERA REALLY WAS

  Helen Delaporte

  Down here in the South, people don’t consider that they know a person until they know what his family is. Your family is who you are. It’s cozy, and it’s an attitude that makes it easier for a lot of women in this region to get into the DAR. But more of that shortly.

  That was quite a storm we showed Hornsby Roadheaver. But it meant that we got to know him, and through him we had finally got official recognition of García’s identity. Although Roadheaver was not the type, he had studied for a year at Juilliard; and he knew Julia and Mac Chapman. He also managed Rachel Gillfallon, a flutist whom I knew at Eastman.

&n
bsp; Actually, when I said good-bye to Hornsby at Three City, I thought the DAR part of the DAR mystery was over.

  Of course I was mistaken. The headlines of the next morning read DAR REGENT RIGHT ABOUT MURDER. Then there was a ream about me and the chapter, all of it a recap of what had already been printed. At that point I had not yet found out that Elizabeth Wheeler had been bribing the newspaper for publicity. Of course every scrap of publicity we got in that manner was tweaking the nose of Butch Gilroy, not to mention Ron Jefterson.

  I was immediately the town celebrity, and as soon as the telephone rates went down that evening, I found that I was a big hit with the Daughters all over the Commonwealth of Virginia.

  “We’re proud of you, Helen,” the State Regent assured me. Actually, I was a little nervous because National is very touchy if we don’t live up to their standards of dignity. For example, there are rules as to where we can and can’t wear the DAR insignia. And there is a general atmosphere that, if not defensive, is at least cautious. And all the media are only too glad to ridicule us if we do anything in the least silly.

  I got calls from Tazewell, Roanoke, Bedford—just everywhere.

  Mabel Hazelhurst from the Royal Oak Chapter said, “Now, dear, you must go right ahead and solve that mystery.”

  She seemed to be serious about it, but I had no idea at all that our chapter would become further involved.

  Nevertheless we did, and things began to stir the very next Sunday. Nearly everybody had left the church, and I was winding down the postlude when I looked up and saw Frances Vogelsang, who was on altar guild that month. Her round, bland face appeared above the console like a moon fifteen minutes above the horizon.

  “I read about you,” she cooed.

  “I’m notorious.”