by Ed Nelson
As I drove out the gate the guards gave a cheerful wave, so I guess all was forgiven.
At the stunt yard I first practiced archery. Not the shoot at a butt fifty yards away, but at a man-sized target at two hundred yards. This was known as flight or clout archery. Since I was hitting the target fifty percent of the time I wasn’t worried about the shorter distances. That said I loosed a few at fifty yards and had them all in the bull.
Several stunt men were hanging around. They weren’t any that I knew well. They razzed me for ‘only’ hitting the target at fifty percent of the time at the longer distance. As if!
I told them there was a call for extra’s on the furthest lot away. It was an easy way for them to pick up some spare cash, so they took off running as those spots filled quickly. That got me some peace and quiet. I would probably pay for that one way or the other, but it worked for now.
Next I went over to the boxing ring and sparred for a while. I would never be a great boxer, but my moves were good enough I could do my own work in a movie.
Mr. Palmer was in his office, so I talked to him about my unarmed combat lessons. I was up to what the Marines considered a brown belt, but my schedule was going to make it difficult to spend the forty hours needed for the next step.
He told me not to worry about it; maybe we could do it after the first of the year. I told him I was going to be in Hawaii for a movie so we would have to play it by ear. He was okay with that as long as I kept myself fresh by doing my exercises to keep myself limber and automatic on my reactions.
“How will I do that?”
“You have some time?”
“Yes.”
With a grin he told me to follow him. Well I wasn’t too rusty but he still threw me all over the place. The only saving grace was that he had to work up a sweat while doing it. He then went through a set of exercises I should do, they would only add fifteen minutes to my daily routine, so no big deal.
Afterwards I told him that I would rather shoot two arrows at him from two hundred yards. He agreed that was a better plan, his plan was two shots from an M1 at four hundred yards. Hmm, I need a new plan, maybe Mr. McGarry from four thousand feet. Of course he would then go to ICBM’s.
From there I looked for a partner for swords. The guys I had sent on the extra call were back. They gave me a little grief but not much.
One of them agreed to face off with me, using sabers, none of those foil toys for real men! Since sabers are one of my strengths I went for it. We went back and forth pretty heavy, and it was clear that I was the better swordsman. That is until one of his partners joined the fray.
Fighting two at once may look easy in the movies but real life is different. They quickly had me turned and were backing me up. I tried a flurry of swings but still had to give ground. I gave ground until my knees backed into a low object, and I went over backwards sitting down hard. Right into a water trough!
They stopped immediately and started laughing like loons. One of them gave me a hand out. I thought about trying to pull him in, but didn’t. Sometimes you go with the flow. This story would make the rounds.
It is said that revenge is a dish best served cold, but hot works most of the time. I did have some dark thoughts about digging two graves. That didn’t last. If you can’t take a joke, stay out of the water or something like that.
Since it was all a set-up, another stuntman had a camera and got the picture. I bought the film off him for one hundred dollars with the understanding if they turned out I would provide them all copies.
The originals would go to the newspaper spy in the Jackson household. I was going to get my money back from her.
At home for lunch I gave the film to Denny to be developed and told the family what it was about. They had fun coming up with captions for the photo; Ricky takes a dip, Splash another one, Ricky gets what’s coming. You get my drift. Once past my pride it was kind of funny. I wondered if I need to see a therapist about a growing fear of water troughs. I made the mistake of voicing that thought. I could guess the headline.
Mum and I went downtown to our normal evasion starting point. I dropped Mum off at an outdoor café where she ordered her normal Mexicali Delight beer to drink while waiting for me. She now let me go alone, before she walked with me and told me what to do and why. It didn’t take long to pick up my CIA friends.
Today I took them on a merry chase. At one point I came out on a back alley of a department store and took off running. A block down the alley was the back of the café where Mum waited. We had scouted the area out and realized the café left the backdoor open all day. For cross ventilation I supposed. It could get quite warm here in California.
Anyway I entered the back door and exited the front, sitting down with Mum. With great effort I didn’t look around. Mum did that. She casually told me that there was a watcher across the street. He was doing his job well as he didn’t just stand and stare. He would look around and stroll a few steps, as though he was waiting for someone and was bored. That probably was the truth.
As such he didn’t always have an eye on our table. Mum stifled a chuckle as she told me.
“Rick, he didn’t see you come out of the back of the store. He looked away when he looked back you were there. You should have seen the look on his face.”
I turned for a look as he headed to a payphone on the corner. I bet he was asking where my tails were. I hoped they all had to stay after school for doing a poor job today. I would also make it a point not to go down any blind alleys in the near future.
Waiting at home was a letter from Judy. We were exchanging letters about every fortnight as Mum would say. She didn’t have any great news. She wrote of the social life at her school, but I can’t say it was that interesting. What was interesting was that she had been a constant in my life for a long time while others came and went. Well her and Cheryl.
I would see Cheryl at the Whitehouse next month. After a few pleasant day dreams about the two girls, which I won’t share I cleaned up for dinner.
Dad updated us on the rustling case. The Sheriff had been out on bail. He made the mistake of trying to flee to Mexico and had been caught. He now was locked up with his bail revoked. Unfortunately for the others the Judge on the case revoked their bails also.
This triggered a round of panic on the newspaper owner’s part. He accepted Dads offer immediately without any counters. Dad now owned two newspapers and a radio station.
Owning a radio station started a round of bad jokes about playing my songs all day, both of them. Denny and Eddie I could understand, but Mum and Dad!
After the mirth and merriment at my expense died down, Mum brought out a package. She handed it to me.
“This is for you Rick.” I had no idea what it could be or what the occasion was. It was a rather large box like it could hold an overcoat or something like it. There was no gift wrapping so all I had to do was lift the lid.
Staring out from the box were the glistening eyes of a tiger. It looked like it was going to jump out at me. Well not really, since it was just the head and skin of the tiger I had shot. I didn’t know what to say. I really mean I had no idea what to say.
“What are you going to do with it,” asked Mary.
What do you do with a tiger skin?
“I’m not certain; I guess I could use it as a rug in front of the fireplace in my bedroom”
Dad chimed in, “Or you could hang it on the wall in the basement recreation area.”
Mum thought it would make a nice bedspread. Denny and Eddie wanted to use it to scare the guards. This got shut down quickly by Mum, Dad, Mary and I. We had learned guards and games don’t go together.
Mary asked if she could take it to school for show and tell. I told her she could. I would love to see that presentation.
After much discussion and a round of desserts, a trifle, all agreed that in front of my fireplace was a good place to start.
After dinner I arranged the tiger skin on my bedroom floor. It did loo
k neat. Then I spent the evening on my school work. It was well under control and I wanted to keep it that way.
Chapter 30
The next morning there was a very light rain, but I did my run anyway. It was actually pleasant. It made me think of how the weather in Ohio must be right now. We had made a good decision moving to California. I no sooner had that thought than the ground started to shake under me.
It was an earthquake. I had felt mild tremors before, but this one was more serious. I raced home and found no problems to my great relief. What had seemed like the beginning of the end of the world to me was nothing but a little shaker according to the news on the radio.
Ohio looked a little better.
Mum and I headed downtown for my lesson on evasion. I had thought the rain might get me out of it. Instead I was to learn the glories of an umbrella and a reversible Macintosh. It was not actually a rubberized raincoat, but an ordinary raincoat made by Burberry.
What promised to be a trudge turned out as a fun day, my followers never had a chance. I lost them so quickly I purposely went back and let them pick me up again. Later, Mum scolded me once more for playing with my food.
Mum and I had a nice lunch at our favorite restaurant, the one with multiple entrances to front, side and rear. I then took her home and went to the airport to get in some flying time.
The weather had cleared somewhat, but there were still a lot of clouds. This gave me an entire new outlook on flying. Some of those clouds were thick enough they could have been rock filled and I wouldn’t know it until too late. I went around them. Mr. McGarry has been watching me silently all this time.
I may be young and bold, but intended to become an old pilot. As the saying goes there are bold pilots, and old pilots, but no old bold pilots.
Flying over what I now knew as the Tunstall ranch, there was nothing going on. I had no urge to land and face the terrible twins. They come under the heading of double trouble.
I started to make another loop around the valley when the wind picked up. Not only up, but down and sideways. It was getting bumpy as all get out. I decided I would rather be an old pilot rather than a bold one so headed back to the Ontario airfield.
As I was tying the plane down, Mr. McGarry spoke up.
“Rick, I’m glad to see you made good decisions about the weather. It’s too dangerous to be up there in a light craft right now.”
I snorted and said, “This from the guy who flew fighters?”
“There’s a difference from doing what you have to do, and doing it from stupidity.”
Ouch.
“It just seems weird to be getting a lecture on safety from someone who risked his life constantly.”
“You risk your life when you have to. When I had to take a plane up I knew it was okay because I had worked on it beside the mechanics. Yeah somethings you can’t control, you try to offset the danger by taking care of those things you can control. Not flying in this mess is one of those things you can control.”
“That’s why I landed, I hadn’t put it together like you are presenting it, but I knew it was not a good idea to stay up there.”
“You did the right thing. An example, control what you can is how we fought in the air. The Japanese planes were better. We couldn’t go one on one in a dog fight. So we would fly high as a group, swoop down in one firing pass and run like heck. We fought to our strength. I’m glad you aren’t a crazy like Boyington of the Hell’s Angels. Though I got to say he could fly his P-40 pretty well. Not as good as Jimmy Howard, but pretty good.”
“Who is Boyington?”
“A story for another day, let’s just say he was a real black sheep. A self-promoter, but he could get the bad boys to follow him. If he would have left Olga alone he wouldn’t have got kicked out of the Tigers.”
I tried to get some follow up on this partial story but that’s all Mr. McGarry would say. I asked him why he didn’t talk about things and he told me he didn’t like to talk about anything that reminded him of Thailand. That left more questions than answers, but I also thought of the sound of bullets on the landing craft doors and shut up.
I headed on home. When I got there Dad asked for some help in the sub-basement, our hidden refuge. He had completed everything to make it a place where we could hide for days if needed. The only project he needed to finish was to paint the floor under the old roll-top desk.
He needed my help in moving it as it must have weighed a ton. He had emptied it out to reduce weight and pulled the drawers but it was a monster.
After dinner we put on some old work clothes and went down below.
Through brute force we managed to slide it over the floor. I suspected he would have to repaint the portion we had slid it over.
There was a surprise waiting for us after we had it out of the way.
There was a rectangle of different concrete where the roll-top had sat. It was about three feet wide and six feet long. The desk was so big that it hid it completely.
Dad and I looked at each other. We didn’t have to voice the thought, what was under there?
“I’ll break the concrete up tomorrow, it is too late now.”
“Okay, I would like to be here when you do it.”
“Okay we will do it immediately after breakfast, then I will have to get downtown for some meetings. I have to decide if we are going to keep the new newspaper. It turns out there are also two radio stations involved, and a small TV station out in the valley.”
“Why would you want to keep them?”
“My initial thought was no, but then Susan Wallace and your Mum got into the act. They feel that by having the media outlets we can get our own message out if need be. I don’t see where that would be an issue.”
“Also there could be legal problems with how the companies are set up. Congress is talking about limiting the ownership of all the media in one market. It may not come to pass, but if it did we would be forced to sell. Any forced sale is a loss as you have a timetable to meet. We will have to restructure the business to avoid that.”
“I’m glad you have those problems and not me.”
“Watch out or I will put you in charge of them.”
“Ah Dad, I have enough on my plate!”
“If you want a job done, give it to a busy man.”
“Huh?”
“Think about it.”
I was getting tired and didn’t want to think.
Chapter 31
The next morning I was in much better shape, after my run and workout I was ready to join Dad in opening up the mystery in the basement.
He had a sledgehammer and pick so the job went fast. The ground under the concrete had subsided so the concrete broke up easily and fell about four inches. I then had the job of picking up each piece and putting it in several wheel barrows stationed for that job.
As the majority of the area under the slab became visible, it was evident that a blanket had been laid over the top of what was underneath. Dad peeled it back, and my worst fears were confirmed. There was a skeleton down there. The hair was still there and the corpse had a robe partially covering it. Most of the flesh was gone but not completely. It was pretty gruesome looking.
I recoiled a bit, but from Dads reaction he not only was expecting it, this wasn’t his first corpse. He knelt down and looked the corpse over carefully. He reached into one of the robe pockets which had a bulge in it. He withdrew a wallet.
Opening the wallet, there was a driver’s license in the name of Jason Talmadge. If this was really Jason Talmadge we had a real mystery on our hands. Reportedly the original owner of Jackson House had disappeared from his yacht off the coast of Santa Catalina Island.
Dad was looking the corpse over very carefully. Luckily there was no smell due to its age. Pretty much everything that was going to rot had rotted. Yuck.
“Rick, look at this.”
Dad showed me that there was a heavy silk like cord wound around the neck. He peered very closely at the neck.
/> “The hyoid bone is broken. That is a sign of possible strangulation. The cord around the neck pretty well establishes this guy was strangled.”
“Murdered?”
“It may have been sex play.”
“What!”
Dad went on to explain how some people enjoyed autoerotic asphyxiation during sex. I considered this to be way too much information. Once more I realized how much about the world I didn’t know.
“Where did you learn about the hyoid bone and this strangling stuff?”
“In the army, as an MP Officer we had courses taught by Detectives. I’ll never forget my instructors. William was a retired Detective from the Toronto Constabulary and Julia was a retired ME.”
“They were very interesting people. He was also an inventor and held several patents on automobiles, airplanes and radio transmission. She must have been a real looker back at the turn of the century. They were really nice people. They came out of retirement to help with the war effort. William held the Victoria Cross from World War One and she was a Dame of the British Empire for work on the front lines as a Doctor, unique people.”
“Yes they were,” said Mum. I didn’t hear her join us. Dad proceeded to explain to her what his thoughts were so far.
“This is not good, if this is Talmadge it means those people who said he went overboard on his yacht were all in on it. We had better find out who they were, and where they are today.”
“They would have to be in their eighties at the youngest today.”
“Well at least we own several newspapers with reporters. I can have a follow up done on the entire group. I’ll say we are investigating the history of the house.”
“That is even true.”
I asked, “Are you going to call the Police.”
Mum and Dad looked at each other; they seemed to communicate without saying a word.
“I don’t think so Rick,” replied Dad. “Whatever happened here; happened a long time ago, those who were involved have lived their lives one way or another. We have to trade that off with keeping this basement a secret. We will make a decision after we investigate the people involved. In the meantime keep it between the three of us.”
