by Bill Bernico
“You too, Miss Bishop,” Clay said and then corrected himself, “I mean, Mrs. Townsend.”
Clay and I left the records department and drove back to downtown Hollywood. Clay’s office would be a good spot to sort the evidence and sift the clues, as I used to describe the process back in the day.
Once we’d situated ourselves in the office Clay turned to me and said, “Can you believe that? Mom was married once before.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know that I do believe that,” I said. “And if she was…” I let the sentence hang there in the air, unwilling to finish it.
“You’re probably wondering the same thing I am, aren’t you?” Clay said.
“What’s that?” I said.
“If the skeleton behind the wall could be Franklin Dunlap,” Clay said.
“Even if it turns out to be him,” I said, “that doesn’t mean…” I couldn’t even make myself say it.
“We have to check every possibility,” Clay said. “Even if it means uncovering something hurtful. Otherwise, you’d always be wondering about it.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I just didn’t want to consider that possibility.”
“So where do we go from here?” Clay said.
“Sacramento,” I said. “If Dunlap’s anywhere in the state, they’ll know. If not, there’s always Washington and the national database or social security. We haven’t exhausted all our resources just yet.”
“Aren’t you forgetting one more resource?” Clay said.
I shrugged.
“Your old neighbors,” Clay said. “Some of them must have lived there since before you moved in and if they’re still there, they may remember something about those days.”
“I should have thought of that myself,” I said. “See, you’re going to make a better P.I. than I ever was.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, dad,” Clay said. “Where do you think I learned it? Shall we visit your old neighborhood?”
“After you,” I said, bowing at the waste and extending my palm out.
Clay and I drove to the house where Clay grew up. Paul Martin was in the front yard, pounding a For Sale sign into the grass.
“Paul,” I said, as we approached. “What’s all this?”
Paul shifted the hammer to his left hand and extended his right. I shook it and then turned to Clay. “Paul, you remember my son, Clay?”
Paul shook his hand and slowly shook his head. “The Clay I remember was a teenager,” he said to me, but looked at Clay. “You’re all grown up now.”
“It happens even in the best of homes,” Clay said. “I couldn’t help it.
“Why are you selling, Paul?” I said. “Last time we talked you were going to remodel the place.”
“It’s Cecilia,” Paul said. “Once she heard what they found in the basement, she couldn’t stand the thought of staying here. I guess the whole thing gives her the Willies, as she puts it.”
“Sorry to see you leave,” I said, “but I understand. Where will you go from here?”
“Haven’t thought about that yet,” Paul said. “I’ll just be surprised if anyone even shows any interest in the place, let alone makes an offer. So what brought you back here?”
“Clay and I thought we’d talk to some of the old neighbors that were here when I moved in back in ‘49.”
“Good luck,” Paul said. “It was an old neighborhood then. If any of those people still live here, they’d all be a hundred at least.” He chuckled. “Except one couple,” he added.
“Who’s that?” Clay said.
“One block over,” Paul said. “Their house and this house have back yards that meet behind here. They were a newlywed couple when they moved in and as far as I know, they’re still there. Gees, they’d have to be pushing sixty by now. I hope they can still remember back that far.”
I raised my eyebrows and suddenly Paul was embarrassed.
“I’m sorry, Matt,” Paul said. “I didn’t mean…”
“That’s all right, Mr. Martin,” Clay said. “I knew what you meant. And as for pop here, by the time we get home, he won’t even remember that we were here today.”
“Very funny, kid,” I said and turned to Paul. “He’s pulling your leg, Paul. I…”
Clay laughed and Paul joined in. A moment later, I couldn’t help but laugh along with them. I slapped Clay on the shoulder. “Let’s go, kid,” I said. “We have some neighbors to visit.” I turned back to Paul. “Thanks, Paul and good luck selling the place.”
Clay drove us around the block and stopped at the house directly behind my old house. This house was well taken care of and the lawn was manicured within an inch of its life. It could have been seen in the pages of one of those house magazines. We walked up to the stoop and rang the bell. The door opened and a man, perhaps younger than me by a decade, answered the door.
“Yes?” he said. “Can I help you gentlemen?”
“My name is Matt Cooper,” I said. “I used to live around the block from you. In fact, our back yards touched.”
The man looked at me and after a moment he could see the man from a quarter century ago that he’d seen occasionally from his back yard.
“Yes,” he said. “You do look like him. How can I help you today?” And then he remembered. “Where are my manners,” he said, opening his door and inviting us in. “In case you don’t remember me, I’m Lee Cramer.”
“Lee,” I said, gesturing toward Clay, “This is my son Clay. You may have seen him back then as a child.”
“I think I do remember him,” Lee said. “Please sit down, won’t you? My wife is out shopping but if you’d like some juice or soda or water…”
“Nothing for me, thanks,” I said.
Clay waved him off. “I’m fine,” he said.
Lee,” I said. “The reason we stopped by is to see if you might recall the couple who owned the house before I moved in. That would have been before 1949. I know that’s a stretch, but there’s something I need to find out about the previous owners.”
“Oh, that was terrible,” Lee said. “I mean what they found over there the other day.”
“Yes, it was,” I said. “And that’s part of the reason we’re here asking about the previous owners. What do you remember about them?”
Lee looked puzzled. “Let’s see now, we moved into this house right after we were married in 1944, I believe it was,” he said. “They moved in a year later. I do remember her. Joanne was always friendly with me when we’d see each other across our yards.”
“Joanne,” I said. “What else do you remember about her?”
Lee’s face went sour. “I remember the loud arguments and the fights that followed. My word, those two knew how to yell. Every now and then I’d see Joanne hanging clothes on the line and even from here I could see her black eye or cut lip. He must have been a real beast to live with.”
“Those two?” I said. “Tell me about the man.”
“Well,” Lee said, “I didn’t see him nearly as much as I saw her. He pretty much kept to himself and then around 1948 I didn’t see him anymore. I think I recall my missus saying something about Joanne telling her that he just up and left her one day and never came back.”
“And that was 1948, you say?” I said. Something in Lee’s face told me that his memory was kicking in. “What is it?”
“You know, Matt,” Lee said. “Now that I think of it, she never moved out at all after he left. In fact, she was still living there when…”
“When I came along,” I said. “And that was in 1949 that Amy and I got married and I moved in with her.”
“Amy?” Lee said. “But her name was Joanne.”
“I’m guessing Amy was her middle name,” I said. “She probably wanted to start over and took back her maiden name as well.”
“I never thought it about it before,” Lee said. “Hmmpff, Joanne and Amy are the same person. How about that?”
“And you never heard what became of the husband, other tha
n he left her?” I said.
“Never another word,” Lee said.
Clay and I stood, shook Lee’s hand and thanked him for the information.
“You’ve been a big help, Mr. Cramer,” Clay said.
“You’re entirely welcome,” Lee said, closing the door.
Clay and I walked back to the car and just sat there, dumbfounded by this new information.
“I guess it’s true,” Clay said. “But mom? Dear, sweet, innocent, helpless mom?”
“Apparently not so innocent,” I said. “And from the looks of things, not so helpless, either.”
“Now what?” Clay said.
“Let’s see if this new information jives with what the M.E. knows,” I said. “Let’s go see Andy Reynolds right now.”
It took us twenty minutes to get to the parking lot behind the twelfth precinct. Andy was at his desk eating a sandwich when we walked in. Between bites he said, “Hey Matt, Clay. What brings you two down here?”
I looked at Andy chewing and said, “How can you eat in this place? I’d be heaving my guts out at the very thought of it.”
“You get used to it,” Andy said. “After a while, they’re not people, they’re objects to be studied.”
“Still,” I said. “Lunch?”
“So what is it I can do for you gentlemen today?” Andy said.
“Well,” Clay said. “If we were to give you a name and some dates, could you confirm or deny if we’re talking about the same person?”
“Depends what you tell me,” Andy said. “What have you got?”
“What if I told you that I believed the skeleton that they found the other day belonged to a man named Franklin Dunlap?” I said. “Could you do some sort of statewide or nationwide search based on dental records to find out if it is indeed him?”
“You pick that name out of the air?” Andy said. “Or do you have some information that the police don’t?”
“For now,” I said. “Let’s just say that I picked it out of the air and let it go at that, okay?”
I’d known Andy Reynolds ever since he’d taken over the job of county medical examiner after Jack Walsh retired in 1962. We trusted each other’s judgments and covered each other’s backs on more than one occasion, so I knew I could rely on his discretion.
“Fair enough,” Andy said. “Give me a day or two and check back with me. I should have something by then.”
“Thanks, Andy,” I said.
“I hope you have something I can use, Matt,” Andy said. “You know how I hate loose ends.”
“If this pans out,” I said, “you can have the all the credit. I just don’t want something like this hanging over my head for the rest of my life.”
“Thanks, Andy,” Clay echoed before we left.
Two days later at three o’clock in the afternoon I got the call from Andy Reynolds that we’d been waiting for.
“Well, Matt,” Andy said. “You called that one. For a name you just picked out of the air, you hit the bull’s-eye. Now would you care to fill me in?”
“I will,” I said, “but I first have to see Captain Rogers about this.”
“I knew you’d do the right thing,” Andy said. “Come and see me when you’re done, would you?”
“Sure thing, Andy,” I said.
I drove down to the twelfth precinct and found Captain Rogers in his office. His secretary let him know I was waiting to see him.
“Matt,” Rogers said, opening his office door. “Come on in.”
I sat opposite him in front of his desk and wasn’t sure exactly where to start with what I knew I’d have to say sooner of later. “Captain Rogers,” I said. “Clay and I have been looking into the skeleton in the basement and we’ve come across some startling evidence.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Rogers said, “but you know you’re interfering with police business, don’t you?”
“What would you do, captain?” I said.
“Go on,” Rogers said.
“Well,” I said, “I talked with some of my former neighbors and from what we uncovered, it would seem that my wife, Amy, was actually married once before I met her. I never knew. And as it turns out, her first husband was abusive. The neighbor behind that house still lives there and he remembers seeing Amy with a black eye and cut lip and a few other cuts and scrapes. He also remembers loud arguments and fights.”
“Interesting,” Rogers said.
“And digging a little further on my own, I found out that Amy was actually her middle name. She was born Joanne Callahan and her married name was Joanne Dunlap, Mrs. Franklin Dunlap.”
“That name rings a bell,” Rogers said. “I was just a rookie in the forties but I remember something about a case of a missing husband that was never solved. Hold on a second.”
Rogers pressed the button on his intercom. “Shirley, would you bring me a file from the late forties on a missing husband named Franklin Dunlap?”
“Yes, sir, right away,” Shirley said.
Rogers turned his attention back to me. “And you suspect that your wife, well, she wasn’t your wife at the time, but you suspect that she might have killed Dunlap and bricked him up in that basement?”
“It’s beginning to look that way,” I said.
Rogers turned to Clay. “You’ve been pretty quiet during all this. You want to add anything to what your father’s already said?”
Clay turned and gave me a look as if to ask permission to add his opinion. I nodded at him. He turned back to Captain Rogers.
“I’m still having trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that my mother may have killed her first husband,” Clay said. “That’s nothing like the woman I grew up loving. But on the other hand, the facts do point to her having done it. And Doctor Reynolds’ findings prove that the skeleton did, in fact, belong to this Franklin Dunlap fellow.”
“And how would you know about Doctor Reynolds’ findings?” Rogers said.
I stepped in. “On a hunch, Andy sent the skeletal dental records around the state and the country and got a match on Dunlap,” I said. “I was just in his office and he was just about to bring you his findings when I told him I was going to see you myself. He said he could wait until I was finished talking to you before he brought you the findings.”
Rogers seemed to relax a little after that. I had told Andy that I’d cover his back in exchange for his connections in the medical community. It was the least I could do.
Amy,” I said, “I mean, Joanne worked at the library all those years and she had access to thousands of books, including how-to books that showed how to do bricklaying. I imagine there was also a book or two on handling dead bodies. Chances are she drained Dunlap’s body of all its blood and removed the internal organs to cut down on the decay and smell. I’m guessing that if Andy runs some tests on the skeleton he may find traces of lye, if he knows what to look for.”
“Sounds like she’d given the whole thing some serious thought beforehand,” Rogers said. “I mean, you just don’t kill someone and then let the boy lie around the house while you look up bricklaying and body disposal from a book.”
“I know what you’re going to say, captain,” Clay said. “She could have just walked away and left him, but no two people would react to a situation like that in the same way. Maybe she looked those things up as part of her daydream of ridding herself of her abusive husband. Most times that’s as far as anyone would take their daydreams. But maybe one day he’d hit her once too often and she just broke. I don’t know, I’m guessing. We’ll probably never know, but I’m just saying that mom was not a violent woman by nature. Just the opposite, in fact.”
“I hope neither of you is suggesting that I sweep this whole thing under the rug for you,” Rogers said.
Clay and I both shook our heads in unison. “Not at all,” I said. “I just wanted the chance to explain some of the evidence and give you a little background on Amy. It’s important to us that you know the woman we knew and not just the abused
wife who snapped and finally lashed out.”
“Thank you, Matt,” Rogers said. “Thank you for your candor and for leveling with me. I’ll make sure your bail is suspended and your money is returned to you.” He turned to Clay and smiled. “And you, young man, I just have to tell you that I’m very impressed with both you and your father. It isn’t everyone who would uncover this sort of thing and still come forward with it. I understand you’re taking over Matt’s business and I just want to say that my door is always open to you if you need anything.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Clay said. “I really appreciate that.”
“If you don’t mind, Captain,” I said. “Clay and I have a few things to do this afternoon, so if there’s nothing further.”
Captain Rogers rose from his chair and gestured toward the door. “You’re free to go, Matt. I’m sorry you had to find out about your late wife this way.”
Clay and I left the precinct, drove home in silence and flopped down on the couch, exhausted.
“You know, Clay,” I said. “Even with what you know now, you can still hang on to the good memories of your mother. You don’t have to let this one incident define her life, at least not in your mind.”
“I know,” Clay said. “I thought about that on the drive home. Who’s to say what either of us would have done if we’d caught up with mom’s killers.”
I remembered what I’d done to all three of those muggers when I’d found them. I hogtied one and left him for the cops to find. I chased the second one through a lumberyard until he ran into a forklift full of lumber, which fell on him, squashing him like the bug that he was. But it was the third mugger, the one who’d actually killed Amy that had set me off. I found him alone and broke both of his arms and legs with my tire iron and left him lying there on the street crying.
“Anyone can snap, I suppose,” Clay said. “Every family probably has at least one member who would take things to the next level if push came to shove.”
“It happens,” I said, “even in the best of homes.”
“I suppose it does, dad,” Clay said.
38 - Sgt. Cooper’s Lonely Hearts Club Frame
In my youth, that is to say, when I was in my twenties and thirties, I’d be the first one to make fun of anyone using a lonely-hearts club to find a companion. Nevertheless, here I was going on sixty-nine years old and a card-carrying member of just such an organization in search of that someone special for me.
