The Famous Dar Murder Mystery

by Graham Landrum

  I refused to have any of that.

  “Pride goeth before a fall,” Henry insisted.

  “Save it for the next time you are lay reader,” I said.

  “Very well, I’ll give you another. This time let’s say that old Dunk Yardley killed Garcia. Highsmith is one of the strippers at Dunk’s little club. Dunk has a wife likely to attract the kind of fellow who wouldn’t mind being a male stripper; and a male stripper is probably the kind that could attract Dunk’s wife. Dunk has found out about it. If he sends Highsmith away, Mrs. Dunk might go with him. He kills or has Highsmith killed. He rids himself of competition and removes any likelihood of being found out re the Garcia murder. I believe it is called killing two birds with one—could I say bullet?”

  I wasn’t ready to say it couldn’t be. In principle I don’t understand why one person wants to kill another person. But Henry was on a roll.

  “Here’s one that actually makes sense. Let’s forget about Garcia. Let’s say this Highsmith has been a courier. He has regularly been carrying large amounts of cocaine from here to—let’s say Chicago. But on the way he cuts the cocaine with some similar-appearing substance. The big bosses in Florida or Colombia realize that Highsmith has been cheating them out of great stacks of money. ‘Waste him,’ they say. Goodbye Highsmith.”

  I agreed that that was more like it.

  “Wait,” Henry said, “I’ve got it this time. Duncan or Allen killed Garcia. One or both called on Highsmith to get rid of the body. This time, however, he sees an angle. He can keep the jacket and blackmail the Drover boys. He lets a few months go by. All this time Comming and Yardley, being unaccustomed to murder, are uneasy about certain members of the DAR who are very inquisitive and are furnishing brains to Sheriff Gilroy. Highsmith begins to insinuate that it would be a good thing if the firm cut him, Highsmith, into a more appropriate share of the proceeds. The firm says, ‘Get lost.’ ‘Oh, wait a minute,’ says Highsmith. ‘I have this jacket. If you don’t do right by me, I’ll see that it gets to one of those nasty old women in such a way that you will get the rap.’ ‘You wouldn’t,’ they say. ‘Oh, wouldn’t I though.’”

  “All right,” I said. “You’ve made your point. There are any number of reasons why the Drover family might wish to get rid of Highsmith. And I really don’t know why I care. I don’t intend to search for his killer. He’s a nobody—probably deserved to get just what came to him. Oh, I don’t know why I ever got into all this.”

  Henry looked at me wisely over his spectacles. “Don’t you think you are being a little crass after all the talk about the law and moral fibre?” he said and returned to his book.

  The next morning the Banner-Democrat had a story at the top of the first page about Highsmith and the coroner’s report. The original assumption that death had resulted from the plunge over the edge of the ravine was corrected. And of course the connection between García’s murder and the shooting of Highsmith was strongly suggested. Then at the bottom of the page was a story with the headline:

  WOMAN DENIES HIGHSMITH KILLED HARPIST

  Interviewed by the Banner-Democrat, Mrs. Henry Delaporte, prominent club woman and Regent of the Old Orchard Chapter, NSDAR, refused to accept Sheriff Calvin “Butch” Gilroy’s conclusion that Joseph Christopher Highsmith, whose body was found in a wrecked car below “Deadman’s Curve” on highway 421 early Sunday morning was the murderer of Luís Garcia Valera.

  Last February Mrs. Delaporte and a committee of ladies from her chapter encountered García’s badly mangled body …

  and it went on from there. Manley had made an interview of our conversation of the evening before; and although he did not actually say so, his story left the impression that I might reveal something new about the case. The DAR angle of the story had just really gotten out of hand. But Elizabeth had done her thing and she had certainly been successful. I thought it best to say nothing.

  Although the prenuptial behavior of our young people has changed markedly since my day, there are still plenty of weddings in June—a fact that makes the early part of summer vie with Advent and Holy Week for the busiest time of the year for organists. The church musician is at least in control of the music of the Christmas and Easter seasons; but when it comes to weddings, there is the problem of the bride, the bride’s mother, and the bride’s girlfriend, who is going to sing.

  It is a blessing that the Episcopal Church has a few set ideas about music. When all parties understand this, we get on very well. But there is much conferring, arranging, and sometimes teaching of the music to the soloist before every wedding.

  At the moment I was very busy with the Barnard wedding. Laura Jean Barnard was being married on the eighteenth. Janeen, her mother, was Regent of the chapter on the Tennessee side of town a few years ago; and I have known her for a long time in the music club. Janeen was very careful to include me in all the bridal parties; and since the Barnards are quite well-to-do, my name appeared quite frequently in the society column of the Banner-Democrat.

  The wedding was in fact a very big show, which Henry could not attend because he was in court that day. So I drove alone out to the country club for the reception. There was a six-tiered cake and a champagne fountain and hors d’oeuvres of every sort as well as an orchestra that played so loudly that nobody could gossip.

  After I had taken my share of the goodies and congratulated the bride’s mother on how well everything had gone and she had congratulated me on the music and told me that something would be in the mail for me in a few days in spite of the fact that she had given me a pair of brass candlesticks at the rehearsal dinner, I crunched across the gravel to the club parking lot, got into my car, and headed for home.

  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, d
on’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.

  WHAT I SAW IN ROANOKE

  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 inte
rested 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.