miss fortune mystery (ff) - body in the bog in the bog

by j l johnson

  They just kept talking… And talking… And talking, until she couldn’t take it anymore. She felt like screaming. Instead, she glared at both of them.

  “Well?” Fortune asked, as she glared some more.

  “You have to understand that reporting it would open a huge can of worms. Bloated, loathsome, repulsive worms! And once opened, those worms can’t ever be put back in the can!” Gertie shuddered.

  “What could possibly be that bad?” Fortune wondered out loud. What were these old ladies hiding? It sounded like they’d been hiding whatever it was for decades.

  “The consequences,” Gertie said, “of making all of this public knowledge. The consequences would be bad. I mean really, really bad.”

  “We’re also trying not to break our promise to Marge,” Ida Belle said. “We take our promises seriously in Sinful. Especially when that promise was made to a good friend, like Marge.”

  “Marge is gone,” Gertie said sadly, “but I think she’d understand…”

  “And?” Fortune thought Gertie was ready to crack.

  “A promise is a promise!” Ida Belle suddenly exclaimed. “I need to get to the License Bureau today, but I’ll run home and get the lock box first.” She turned to Gertie, “Don’t let her pick up a phone... Scratch that, don’t let her even get near a phone. I expect you to stick to her like glue till I get back, you understand Gertie? Glue!”

  After Ida Belle left, Gertie explained that Marge had written her account of what had happened with that body and put the pages in a lock box, which had never been opened since the day she turned the key. The box was kept with whoever happened to be in charge of the Sinful Ladies Society with strict instructions to not open it.

  Ida Belle returned in record time and handed her the box. It was a waterproof, fireproof type of metal box that someone would keep important papers in. The kind you’d expect to find in a safe, loaded with money or precious gems. The key was sticking out of the lock.

  Fortune supposed she should be glad it was Ida Belle in charge. And that she also knew the story, so she’d at least allow the box to be opened, even if she wouldn’t utter a word about it.

  “Before I let you open this,” Ida Belle held the box reverently, like it contained sacred relics. “I need you to promise me you won’t do anything except read while I’m gone.”

  “But,” Fortune started to say.

  “Promise!” Ida Belle interrupted her. And then glared at her.

  “I promise,” Fortune shook her head. Why did she let these old ladies get away with browbeating her? Although Ida Belle hadn’t even really browbeat her, she’d just looked at her… But she’d looked at her sternly, very sternly. Fortune had to admit, in her professional opinion, Ida Belle had a wicked glare.

  “And you!” Ida Belle turned to Gertie and pointed at her chest. “Don’t let her out of your sight… Like glue! And no phones! You hear?”

  “I won’t dear,” Gertie replied. “Now give me the box, and go get your license. Remember to smile purdy.”

  Ida belle ran back out the door, well, she actually walked out, but in Fortune’s head the old lady was running and not a single curl moved. At least the driver’s license picture explained the need for Ida Belle’s gussied-up hairdo.

  She turned to Gertie. “Well?” she asked, pointing at the box.

  “You just sit down and get yourself comfortable,” Gertie told her, “this could take awhile.” She waited until Fortune got comfortable in her chair, and then she sat on the sofa with the box in her lap, and slowly turned the key.

  “Sometime today would be nice,” Fortune snapped.

  “Keep your britches on dear, it’s illegal to go without pants today,” Gertie chuckled and then got serious. “I’m working on it. It’s a little rusty…”

  “Here! Let me do it,” Fortune leaped out of her chair, and was headed for the couch when Gertie finally got the key to turn.

  “Now, sit,” Gertie said, pointing her finger at Fortune as she opened the box and pulled out what looked like a scroll. It was actually a bunch of pages all rolled up and held in place by a large rubber band.

  “Yep, she wrote it all down,” Gertie said. “Like I said, get comfortable, this could take awhile.” She handed Fortune the first of many pages.

  Chapter 3

  Fortune unfurled the first page and started reading:

  I’m writing this all down before my memory fails me. It hasn’t yet, but it could, so I want to lay out the facts of exactly what happened in 1971. How I came to be involved and my part in it.

  To begin, I always loved Seattle. Not that it really matters, but I couldn’t figure out how to begin. So, that will have to serve as my beginning, although I will try to stick to the facts from this point onward.

  I first visited my friend from the Army, Wilma Marlow, in Seattle, in 1962 during a leave from my duties, and visited her many times in the years after. In 1962, Wilma had invited me to come and attend the fair with her, since her leave was scheduled at the same time as mine. We both thought it was a happy coincidence. I stayed with her in the house she’d inherited from her grandparents a few years earlier.

  She hadn’t done much to change the house at that point. In later years, she renovated as much as she could, when money and time allowed. Her grandparents had left some money in a trust for her, but she never touched it, saying she was saving it because you just never knew when you might really need it.

  I asked her if she was saving it for a rainy day. She laughed and said most days in Seattle were rainy days, so that expression didn’t work well there.

  Wilma was an thoughtful, intelligent woman and she never married. After the Army, she studied to become a forester. She wanted to help preserve the natural beauty of the forests and mountains surrounding her home. I considered her a great friend. If she had lived in Sinful, she would’ve been a great addition to our Society.

  Seattle could be as cold and wet as Sinful was hot and wet, but its chilly, refreshing rain was nothing like Sinful’s damp humidity, and I loved everything about that kind of rain. The warm, earthy smell of it, the cool, silky feel of it running down my skin, and especially the magnificent rainbows that formed during those few rare moments when the sun shined through it.

  The World’s Fair was in full bloom when I arrived that summer, and we spent a few days playing tourist; we attended the science exhibits, wandered through the art exhibits, and stuffed ourselves with delicious food from the numerous vendors from all over the world.

  We even fought our way through the over-whelming crowds to get on the elevator which deposited us at the top of the newly-built Space Needle. The view made the effort worthwhile.

  It was the tallest building I’d ever been in and the view was spectacular. It wasn’t raining for once on that day, and the sun shone brilliantly over the entire area. The Seattle skyline, the Olympic and Cascade Mountain ranges, Mount Rainier, Mount Baker, Elliott Bay and all of the surrounding islands were laid out before me. The beauty of it all left me breathless. I could’ve stayed up there for hours or days even, just drinking in that view.

  Anyway, I later read that over twenty-thousand people a day had ridden those elevators during the duration of the fair. I didn’t find it at all hard to believe.

  I digress. Where was I? Wilma’s house. Back to the facts:

  Wilma’s cousin, Dan, from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and his new wife, Alma, were also visiting Wilma, and attended the fair with us. Dan’s full name was Paul Daniel Marlow but he was known by his middle name.

  Dan was a Mountie and he served in the Air Services Branch of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. His job mainly dealt with conducting search and rescue operations, first from the air and then with boots on the ground.

  Alma, his wife, suffered from Friedreich's ataxia and was in a wheelchair, which made attending some of the exhibits difficult for them.

  I’ve often thought about that over the years. A World’s fair, whose theme was science and the future,
didn’t even have handicap facilities for the attendees. I guess they figured no one would be handicapped in the future, or maybe the thought of making things accessible for the handicapped was too futuristic for them.

  Anyway, Dan was a kind, thoughtful man and Alma was as sweet as could be. She tried to be as cheerful as possible, using her sense of humor constantly to remind herself, and everyone else, she wasn’t just the sum of her disease. And it was a horrible disease. Her spine was curved and her feet arched sharply.

  The muscles in her arms and legs were weak and spasmed constantly. She must’ve been in constant, horrendous pain. She took dozens of pills everyday, but I’m not sure they helped her much, if at all.

  She had to wear both glasses and a hearing aid because her sight and hearing degenerated at a frightening speed. Although her mind wasn’t affected, her speech was slurred, so at first glance, she seemed mentally handicapped.

  It broke my heart that there was nothing the doctors could do for her, and the irony didn’t escape me that we were attending a fair dedicated to the future of science.

  She tried to be strong, even as the disease ravaged her body. Any physical exertion put extra stress on her heart, so she and Dan moved slowly and told us to go about our activities and they’d join in when they could.

  Dan doted on her, trying to provide for her every wish. They’d brought along the live-in nurse who cared for her at their home in Edmonton and we all tried to include her. I don’t remember her name, but she was young even then, only a few years out of nursing school and she treated Alma like a beloved big sister.

  I’ve thought about that nurse a lot in the years since. She had to have recognized Dan in the sketches on the FBI most-wanted posters and she knew for a fact that he’d disappeared and never returned. She never came forward though. I’ve always thought maybe she understood why he did what he did.

  Fortune couldn’t take anymore, “Did what? What happened to him? This ‘Dan’ is the body in the bog, right? He doesn’t sound like a bad guy. He sounds like one of the good guys! What did you Ladies do?”

  “Just keep reading, dear, we didn’t do anything to him, except try to help,” Gertie calmly replied. “You’ll understand everything soon enough.”

  Exasperated, Fortune picked up the next page and read on:

  Wilma told me the nurse had been with Alma for a few years, even before her marriage to Dan. Dan had wooed Alma for over a decade, but Alma sincerely loved him and wanted him to find someone he could have a future with.

  She tried to push him away for years, hoping he’d move on without her. Alma knew she’d never have children and probably wouldn’t live to a ripe old age, or even old age. He never gave up on her though, and they were both well into their thirties when she finally agreed to marry him. His world revolved around Alma. I’d never met a man so in love.

  I didn’t see Dan or Alma after that trip, but Wilma kept me informed about them through letters she faithfully wrote me every other month or so. Dan’s job kept him busy and Alma’s disease progressed slowly for a few years.

  I can admit now I had mostly forgotten about them, the way one often does with acquaintances you barely actually know. I thought of them occasionally because of Wilma’s letters, but that was the extent of it.

  I hadn’t heard from Wilma in a few months before the Saturday night in November of 1971, when she and Dan appeared on my doorstep. She looked exhausted and he looked horrible. He had bruises everywhere, it seemed his skin color was black and blue, and he looked shrunken somehow.

  He was distant and withdrawn. Lost... As if he wasn’t sure of where he was, or even who he was, and he didn’t seem to care either way. Not at all the same man I’d met at the fair a decade before in Seattle. I barely recognized him.

  We put Dan to bed in one of the upstairs rooms, and then I hustled Ida Belle over to see if she could do anything for him. He looked like he’d injured every part of his body.

  Wilma filled me in on what had happened in the last few days while Ida Belle tended to Dan. What had happened to turn Dan into the broken, fragile man he’d become.

  Of course I’d heard about the hijacking. It had been in all of the newspapers, and I’d watched the evening news on Thanksgiving night when Walter Cronkite introduced reporter Bill Curtis.

  The reporter conducted a detailed report from Reno, Nevada with local footage from both KIRO-TV, a local CBS station in Seattle, and KOLO-TV, the CBS affiliate in Northern Nevada, covering both Reno and Lake Tahoe.

  The report had included interviews of the plane’s Captain, William Scott, and one of the plane’s Stewardesses, Tina Mucklow. Harold Campbell, one of the FBI agents on the scene, had also been interviewed. For all of that, no one knew much about the hijacker or what had happened to him.

  According to the report, on November 24th a man calling himself D.A. Cooper had boarded Northwest Airlines flight #305 in Portland, Oregon at 2:50 pm PST. The flight was scheduled to land in Seattle, Washington.

  He handed the stewardess a note and then showed her what appeared to be a bomb in his suitcase. She recognized dynamite with wires attached. He told her he was hijacking the plane, and demanded two-hundred thousand dollars and two parachutes upon arrival in Seattle.

  The airline had collected the ransom and thirty-six passengers were released when the plane landed after circling the airport for a few hours. It was then re-fueled and four crew members and the hijacker took off, planning a lay-over in Reno, Nevada to get more fuel for its final destination in Mexico.

  The flight from Seattle to Reno had taken longer than usual. The hijacker had instructed the crew to stay in the cockpit and to fly the plane as low and slow as possible.

  The hijacker, and the briefcase full of money, weren’t on the jet when it landed in Reno at approximately 10:15 pm PST. By most reports, D.A., Dan, or D.B. as he was variously called by all of the different media outlets covering the story, had parachuted alone, somewhere over Washington or Oregon with the money. The massive man-hunt covered four states, but no one knew for sure where he’d jumped.

  Wilma knew. And, although she was exhausted, both mentally and physically, she spent the next two hours telling me all of the details.

  “You’re kidding me, right?” Fortune deeply inhaled and then slowly exhaled. “Some old Army friend of Marge’s was the... The what? Cousin of an infamous hijacker from the seventies?”

  “Keep reading, dear. Marge wrote it all down so it would be in her own words,” Gertie said softly and then chuckled. “I think she always knew someone would need that documentation. I don’t imagine she could’ve possibly guessed it would be you though.”

  “I have heard of D.B. Cooper. I guess I always thought he’d died out there in the mountains somewhere. I mean, someone would’ve heard if he was still alive.”

  “Some people did just disappear, dear,” Gertie said. “Especially in the age before computers took everything over.”

  “I guess. I need a shot of cough syrup. Would you care for some while I’m getting it?” Fortune stood up and stretched. She’d had her legs curled up like a pretzel in the chair, and the blood rushing back to her limbs made her legs tingle. She carefully shook out each leg before heading to the kitchen.

  “No thanks, but I’d take some coffee, if there’s any left.”

  “It’s cold,” Fortune yelled back.

  “Iced would be nice. I don’t suppose you have any lemon?”

  “Nope,” Fortune answered. “Do you actually keep lemons in your fridge?” she asked out loud while grumbling something under her breath about old ladies.

  “Of course dear. How could I make lemonade or lemon meringue pie, or even lemon bars, if I didn’t have lemons?” Gertie innocently asked, ignoring Fortune’s tone.

  “Well, now you’ve done it,” Fortune’s tummy rumbled as she brought Gertie her iced coffee. “I don’t suppose you have any of that pie handy, do you? Breakfast was hours ago.”

  “Not lemon, but I did make a chocolat
e cream pie yesterday!” Gertie smiled, and then just as quickly, frowned. “But, it’s at home and I promised Ida Belle I wouldn’t leave you until she got back.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. At least not before I finish this… confession, report, whatever it is,” Fortune pointed at Marge’s document and put on her best puppy-dog face, “Please?” She knew she was whining, but decided to just go with it. Who knows, it might even work, she thought. “I’m hungry!”

  “I guess we did miss lunch…” Gertie wavered, and furtively glanced back and forth between Fortune and the door, like she was ready to stand up and go to the door.

  “Please, please, please? With sugar on top… I promise I won’t move from my chair until you get back…”

  “Okay, fine!” Gertie laughed. “But stop making that face, you look like Bones when you scrunch up your lips like that.” She narrowed her own eyebrows, “I’ll make you a sandwich too, so no pie till you eat a decent lunch. And, don’t move from that spot. I’m trusting you.”

  “Yes ma'am,” Fortune purred, happy to hear her empty, noisy tummy would get filled soon. “I won’t move and I’ll eat every bite, I promise.”

  Chapter 4

  After Gertie left, Fortune grabbed the next page. This really is a book, she thought as she counted the pages remaining. She estimated she had about two hours of reading ahead of her, so she pulled an ottoman up to her chair and stretched out on it.

  Then she glanced at Gertie’s forgotten glass of iced coffee and decided she needed some iced tea. She hoped that sweet old lady would be back with her lunch soon, so she didn’t have to get up and make it herself. She had promised not to move, after all.