Mayhem, Mystery and Murder

by John A. Broussard

  All in all, it took a good ten minutes of hearing Kearney consigning Albert Hamilton and his partner or employee or whoever his associate was, to the remotest reaches of hell—before the chairman could move on to Goulbenkian, who had been impatiently waiting his turn.

  “What I want to know,” he began, “is why some stranger can walk in here and in five minutes get a permit that I can’t get, and here I’ve been living in Reynolds County for over forty years. That just…”

  With a patience that could only have come from years of dealing with distraught relatives of deceased clients, the Chairman broke in to explain that the sale of fireworks from Goulbenkian’s grocery store would be in violation of the fire code, that if his store went up in flames, it would take the rest of the block, the bank, the hardware store and a half-dozen other shops—to say nothing of the Gottschalk Funeral Home—along with it.

  He failed to mention Cora Kearney’s apartment above one of the shops, but that was just as well and may not have been an oversight after all. I had visions of her demanding additional speaking time to address this newly discovered threat to her well-being.

  The basis for all this eagerness to sell fireworks was not really clear in my mind. A county ordinance restricted sales to the three days prior to the Fourth. But, as I found out later, the mark-up on the merchandise was fantastic, and with the local cattle producers receiving their checks on the first for the spring steers they’d sold off, there was guaranteed to be an enthusiastic flock of customers carrying wallets stuffed with cash. The next speaker went a long way toward convincing me there would be plenty of money to be made from the enterprise.

  Florio Kaminsky, the elder of the brothers, took the tack that fireworks were dangerous, that the planned stand would be a flimsy wooden structure ready to go up in smoke at any minute, that the surrounding countryside could become a raging inferno, and that it was obviously in the interest of the community for the Commissioners to refrain from issuing any such permits. Marcus Kaminsky, smoking up a storm, nodded vigorously in approval of his brother’s performance, while I was reminiscing about having bought a string of crackers from their old van the previous year.

  It wasn’t difficult to see that Albert Hamilton’s scheme stood to substantially cut into the Kaminskys’ profits, and that that was their chief concern. They benefited from the fact that it wasn’t clear from the way the county ordinance had been written that they needed a permit for sales from their vehicle. What was certain, however, was that they would be out there selling, and the less competition they faced, the better.

  Again, with the patience of Job, Lennie explained that Condon’s pasture where the stand would be located was virtually marshland, that the early summer downpours would make any brushfire extremely unlikely, that the site was hundreds of yards from any structures and that, just generally, there couldn’t be a safer spot in the whole of Reynolds County for it.

  A couple of other residents followed, both speaking in favor of granting the permit. The gavel finally fell on the public testimony portion of the meeting, and the interested parties, including me, waited for discussion among the Commissioners. There was none. Lennie called on the clerk to record the vote.

  “Commissioner Johannesen?”

  “No.”

  That was a surprise. Ordinarily, Lyle would simply vote yes on just about anything, as the route of least resistance—unless of course the matter had something to do with cattle. I assumed that for some reason Sidney Condon’s pasture was the issue, that Lyle either envied him the money he was getting for the lease, or perhaps there was some animosity I was unaware of between the two.

  I had no doubts about the next vote.

  “Commissioner Marquart?”

  “Yes.”

  Cynthia wasn’t about to ever be on the same side of Lucia Goulbenkian’s husband—under any circumstances. The feud between the two women was legendary in Reynolds County and went back to when they owned and ran two rival beauty shops in a town which could barely support one.

  So the issue now sat squarely on Lennie’s narrow shoulders.

  “Chairman Gottschalk?”

  “Yes.”

  The murmur that ran through the sparse audience indicated a generally favorable reaction toward the final decision. I had no explanation for Lennie’s vote except that he had probably flipped an imaginary coin. Goulbenkian tried to say something. Lennie gaveled him into silence, officially granted Albert Hamilton his variance, and moved on to a request from the sheriff’s department for a replacement vehicle, now that new ones were once more coming off the assembly lines in increasing numbers.

  The entire matter rated a half column on page four of the Free Press, and I didn’t give the matter much further thought until the evening of June 30, when Sally and I were off to take in our weekly drive-in movie. Suddenly, off to my left, I saw the darkening evening sky light up with what reminded me uncomfortably of some of my tours over the Rhineland. A boom followed, and all thought of the movie vanished from my mind. I U-turned and roared back through town. Within moments, it seemed that about everyone else for miles around had the same thought. We were all streaming toward Condon’s pasture where the sky was rapidly filling with a truly extraordinary display of pyrotechnics.

  A few near misses from erratically flying rockets convinced everyone but the most foolhardy to keep their distance, but even from several hundred yards away the effect was awesome. The structure had evidently disappeared in the first salvo, and now crate after crate of sparklers, devil chasers, pinwheels, roman candles and other exotic matter burned and exploded and spewed out colorful flames while trailing smoke in their wake.

  I managed to run down our fire chief, whose crew was simply standing by, since they couldn’t approach near enough to the conflagration to do anything in the way of quelling it. To my question, he shrugged, saying, “It didn’t start by itself, that’s for sure. All it would have taken was a cigarette or a match. My guess is that someone wanted to liven things up around here.”

  The show reached its peak in about fifteen minutes and continued to sputter for that much longer, so I went off to take down a few of the sheriff’s non-committal comments. That was when someone came running up to announce breathlessly that there was an even more spectacular event occurring back in town. My reporter’s instincts paid off, and Sally and I managed to be among the first to arrive at the second devastation of the evening. Fortunately, I had my camera along, so the scene that greeted us graced the front page of the Free Press’s next issue.

  Leaning back against a van in front of the bank was a smiling Cora Kearney, holding a double-barreled 12-gauge aimed at two prone figures on the sidewalk, with a pair of burlap sacks next to them spilling out packets of bills. Monster Skippy was sitting near the head of one of the men, growling softly at any indication of motion from someone I immediately recognized as Albert Hamilton.

  Later that evening, Cora regaled the sheriff and me with details behind what we’d witnessed in front of the bank.

  “When all those fireworks went off, I went to my window and watched the crowd pouring by. I wasn’t about to go out there, let me tell you. Well, minutes after the street cleared, that van pulled up in front of the bank and those two thugs piled out. One of them had a big tube-like thing he pointed at the bank door.”

  I supplied the name, “Bazooka.”

  She nodded. “Well, when it blasted the door of its hinges, I decided I’d better do something about it. After all, along with all the steer money that came into the bank today, my money’s in there. So I grabbed the old shotgun and headed that way just as I heard another blast. I suppose they were firing away at the safe. Anyhow, within minutes they were coming out loaded down with a couple of sacks of money.

  “It didn’t take much persuading for them to do just like I told them, when they saw the barrel of the shotgun pointed in their direction and Skippy just waiting for me to say ‘siccum’.”

  At that point, I couldn’t help asking
, “Cora, would you have shot them if they hadn’t?”

  She seemed surprised at my question. “Course not. Gun wasn’t even loaded. Belonged to my husband and hasn’t been fired since he died ten years ago. Besides, I never shot off a gun in my whole life.”

  THE DISAPPEARANCE

  It’s amazing how you can get to hate someone you once thought you loved. Clint Forest had been pondering the phenomenon for months before he made his final decision. When he’d first moved in with Joel Malinowski, almost six years previously, the arrangement seemed made in heaven. The agreement was simple. Joel was a successful writer and there would be no need for Clint to work. The house they moved into was a wonderfully cared for farm mansion dating back into the previous century, with an attached pantry, old-fashioned green shutters, a dirt cellar that had been used for storing roots over the winter, and a spacious front porch. Clint quickly took over the garden and made a showcase of it.

  Those first years in the house were happy ones. Joel ground out novel after novel, and Clint had plenty of time to devote to his first love, a massive stamp collection which grew even more rapidly with Joel’s generous infusions of cash. Life was good.

  Clint couldn’t pinpoint the reason the relationship had begun to sour—perhaps because so much had changed; some changes perhaps the cause, some undoubtedly the result. Joel’s “writer’s block” was certainly part of the problem. More and more frequently his home office was littered with paper torn out in anger and tossed somewhere in the vicinity of the wastebasket. More often than not, the sheets were almost as blank coming out of the typewriter as going in.

  And Clint began to notice and to be annoyed by the way Joel pushed his glasses up on his nose, the way he held his coffee cup with both hands, the repeated “you knows” in the less and less frequent conversations they held. These and other mannerisms made Clint wonder if they had always been there, and he had only come to notice them because of other things.

  The most prominent of the “other things” was a young college student. Clint had followed Joel one day and had seen him at a rendezvous, later to learn the intruder into their lives was called Tim Neuhaus. But even the secret relationship might well have been effect rather than cause. Clint simply had to admit to himself the arrangement was coming to an end, and the comfortable existence at 1151 Parker St. would soon be history. Drastic steps were called for.

  The police would perhaps never have bothered to call on him if Clint had been the only one to report Joel’s disappearance. But a distraught publisher, whose livelihood to a large measure depended on the stream of romantic novels produced by Joel under the famous name of Marilyn Heartwell, also reported the writer’s absence. And friends had joined with Clint in expressing to the police their conviction Joel would never just have “walked away” from a beautiful home, a successful career, and a loving relationship. Clint was adamant on the point.

  Detective Sergeant Martin McCaffrey, whose specialty was missing persons, took careful notes at the first interview. Anna Deventer, the accompanying detective, who’d learned her boss expected the same from her, filled her notebook as well.

  Clint was clearly distraught. “Joel would never have just departed like that without telling me—without at least leaving me a note. No, he never would have left—period. I know he never would have. Something happened to him. It’s been almost three weeks now, you know, and I know he would have called me—if he could have.”

  “Can you think of any reason, any reason at all why he might have decided to leave?”

  Clint shook his head.

  “No quarrels?”

  Clint looked away, hesitated, then said, “We did have a little tiff, but it was nothing serious. It most certainly was not something that would have made him decide to leave.”

  “Could you tell us about it?”

  Clint was firm in his insistence. The quarrel had been minor. It couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with whatever had happened to Joel. And Clint became increasingly insistent Joel had met with foul play. He’d been attacked and robbed and probably left someplace to die, and the police were simply being stupid in thinking Joel would just have walked off without so much as a good-bye.

  “What makes you think he may have been robbed?”

  “Well, for one thing, he carried a lot of money on his person. He always did that, you know. He was always afraid he’d end up somewhere without any money.”

  Deventer wasn’t sure what Sergeant McCaffrey was thinking, but she was convinced the interview was turning out to be a waste of time. Clint was becoming more and more hostile, and he repeatedly castigated the police for taking weeks to even begin investigating what he kept on insisting had to be foul play. Deventer was relieved to hear McCaffrey ask if they could “look around,” on the stated assumption Joel might have left some indications behind to explain his departure. Surprisingly, Clint seemed only too happy to allow them the run of the house.

  Back in the patrol car, Deventer broke into McCaffrey’s thoughts, “Wow. He sounds like something out of the Smithsonian.”

  McCaffrey merely rolled his eyes.

  “Do you think he had anything to do with his partner’s disappearance?” Deventer asked.

  “No question about it,” McCaffrey growled. “He killed Malinowski. Did you see how nervous he was? He chain-smoked all the time we were questioning him. You can bet he got rid of the old guy because Malinowski was about ready to throw him out. Not only that, but that fancy joker is probably the sole beneficiary. He’ll get the house, the money, life insurance. You name it.”

  “But why is he insisting Malinowski is really dead? Why not just go along with the idea he took off in a rage over some petty quarrel? And why is he being so cooperative, like letting us look through the house and even offering to take us to the bank to let us see what’s in their joint safety deposit box?”

  “Because he’s a slick sonavabitch, that’s why. We won’t find anything in the box. And he could have buried Malinowski in that damp cellar, for all we know.”

  Deventer grinned. “You going to get a search warrant and dig it up?”

  “Damn right! Just as soon as we can establish motive.”

  Deventer decided there was no point in pursuing the topic, convinced as she was McCaffrey was a gay-basher at heart.

  The safety box produced surprises. A copy of a will revealed the home and worldly goods of one Joel Malinowski were left in toto to the CRFGC, the Civil Rights for Gays Committee. A hundred-thousand dollar insurance policy, with Timothy Joseph Neuhaus named as the sole beneficiary, produced a query from the sergeant.

  “He’s a friend of Joel’s,” Clint remarked as he looked over the few papers. “I’m not really acquainted with him, since I never met him, personally. I do know he’s a student at Eastern Reserve.”

  When they’d arrived back at the station Deventer, trying to hide her amusement, asked, “Have you changed your mind, Sarge?”

  McCaffrey’s answer was a non-committal grunt as he went off to write up his report. The vision of the dank cellar with its earthen floor kept coming back to his mind. And he’d made up his mind even before sitting himself down in front of Lieutenant Willis’ desk. Handing in his report, he asked, “What are the chances of getting a search warrant? I’m convinced Forest killed Malinowski. Probably buried him in the cellar. It would have been easy enough. It’s just a dirt floor.”

  The lieutenant’s answer was, “Sorry. Take a look at this.” He pushed a half sheet of paper across the desk. “Joel Malinowski’s publisher just received it this morning. It was mailed in London. No return address.”

  The typed note was brief, to the point and unsigned. “You damn money grubber. One of these days, one of your stable of writers is going to catch on and finish you off.”

  The lieutenant gave McCaffrey a moment to read and digest the message. “The publisher is convinced the note was written by Malinowski. He says it even sounds like him.”

  McCaffrey couldn’t suppres
s a snort. “So what does that prove?”

  “Nothing much. At least, not by itself. Except that we made a quick check for fingerprints. There are some besides the publisher’s. Malinowski’s!”

  When shown the note, Clint expressed as much skepticism as McCaffrey felt. “Joel would never write anything of such nature,” he said. “It just could not be from him. He’s dead. I’m absolutely certain he is.”

  McCaffrey agreed.

  Another similar note to Malinowski’s literary agent, this time from Rome, didn’t change McCaffrey’s mind, but it was sufficiently convincing to Lieutenant Willis for him to move the detective sergeant off to other cases. So far as the lieutenant was concerned, the Malinowski case was solved.

  ***

  If McCaffrey hadn’t long forgotten the case, Lieutenant Willis certainly had. That was why, years after he’d become captain, he couldn’t at first place the names in the note he’d found in his inbox with the Chief’s scribbled comment: “How about looking into this?”

  Dear Chief,

  I apologize for not knowing your name. I suppose I could have looked it up, but time is growing short. Some seventeen years ago my housemate, Joel Malinowski, was reported as having disappeared. I have important information about him and would appreciate it if you would send an officer, with a tape recorder, to my room here at Providence. Since the doctors feel I have only a few days left, I urge you to have someone come soon.

  Sincerely,

  Clint Forest

  Captain Willis had never seen Clint Forest in his healthy days and found it hard to visualize what the emaciated patient with the waxy-brown face could have looked like back then. Sitting beside Clint’s bed, and holding his skeletal hand, was a handsome, blonde, muscular, man. Willis estimated him to be in his early thirties.

  Clint signaled to the grim-faced nurse, who shrugged and removed the oxygen tent, then left the room. “Isabella’s really a nice person,” he attempted a smile. “She wrote the note to the Chief for me. But she disapproves of removing life-support systems, even for a moment. It’s a Catholic hospital, you know. I think she’s also holding me responsible for my dying. Lung cancer, you know. In a way I suppose she’s right.”