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

by j l johnson

  She started to read:

  In the summer of 1971, Alma’s health had reached a breaking point. Dan had taken an unpaid leave from his job and Wilma had given him money from her ‘rainy day fund’ so he could stay home and care for his dying wife. They’d let the nurse go earlier that year because Alma was now completely bed-ridden and there was nothing anyone could do for her anymore.

  She was almost completely blind and Dan wasn’t even sure if she could hear his voice when he read to her. She did respond when he touched her though, so he caressed her face all the time and tried to hold her hand or her arm whenever he was near her.

  Dan was beside himself, he couldn’t just sit and watch his beloved wife waste away. He took to researching her disease and contacting any doctors or medical centers working on a cure. He spent every minute his wife slept on his pursuit of information and it finally paid off.

  In mid November, he discovered a small medical center in Argentina which seemed to have a viable course of therapy for people with her disorder. Dan immediately called and found out the therapy would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. He only knew of one person who might have that kind of money.

  He knew Wilma still had some money tucked away, so he contacted the nurse to stay with Alma for a few days and he drove down to Seattle to see her face to face. Asking for that amount of money couldn’t be done by phone.

  He was devastated when Wilma told him she didn’t have enough to cover the full expense, she barely had half the funds he needed.

  Wilma told me she knew he was distraught when he left to go back home, but never in a million years did she expect him to act on his desperation. She thought he was headed home to Alma when he left her.

  A few days later, she got a call from the nurse with the sad news that Alma had passed, and the nurse couldn’t locate Dan. Alma had willed her body to be used in research, so there wouldn’t be a funeral, but the nurse had remembered Wilma, and thought maybe Dan was with her or had at least contacted her.

  The nurse wanted him to hear the news as soon as possible, so she had decided to try and call Wilma long distance. Wilma explained to her about Dan’s visit and told her she hadn’t seen or heard from him since he left her house that day. As far as she knew, he was on his way home when he’d left her, on his way back to Alma.

  Wilma reluctantly hung up the phone and contacted the operator to reverse the charges on the call. She knew the nurse didn’t have much money and felt it was the least she could do.

  Later, that same evening, Wilma heard the news about the hijacking. The plane had just landed at Sea-Tac and was being re-fueled. The media was all over the story. The reports mentioned the ransom money and the request for multiple parachutes. They were speculating that the hijacker would force one of the remaining crew-members to jump out of the back of the plane with him. It all sounded very suspicious to Wilma.

  The plane was a Boeing 727 aircraft, and even Wilma knew it was ideal for parachuting. The hijacker had done his research. It had an air-stair in the back of the plane, which could be lowered manually from the inside of the plane.

  All three of the jet’s engines were located high above the stairs, which meant someone could safely jump off the stairs without a severe risk of being burned alive by the jet’s exhaust.

  She knew for a fact that people had jumped from those planes and lived. She and I had talked about the secret missions carried on by the CIA during the Vietnam war. Wilma knew what I really did during the war, that I hadn’t been simply a supply clerk. Anyway, she knew the US government had dropped agents and supplies out of 727’s quite a few times.

  And, she just knew it had to be him. Her cousin, Dan. Especially when she heard the name Cooper. She’d been afraid he’d attempt something desperate but was stunned to believe it could really be him… It couldn’t be a coincidence though.

  Wilma explained to me how the cousins had both laughed when his real name, Paul Marlow, had been used as the name of the main protagonist in a science fiction novel, ‘A Far Sunset’ written by a man named Edmund Cooper.

  Dan had his copy signed ‘to Paul Marlow’ by the author. It was one of his prized possessions. Wilma was certain if Dan ever needed a fake name, he’d be sure to use the name Cooper.

  Wilma told me she wracked her brain, trying to figure out where Dan would jump. He’d jump alone, she was sure of that. He would’ve asked for the extra parachutes as insurance that they wouldn’t be tampered with. As a Mountie himself, he knew the authorities wouldn’t risk a civilian life by sending a disabled parachute.

  With his years of experience conducting search and rescue, he would’ve realized his life depended on having a safe location to land with some mode of transportation available on the ground. Dan would have planned everything ahead of time.

  She also knew it wouldn’t be too far away, since he would be eager to get home to Alma and get her to the clinic in Argentina, once he had the money securely in his possession. He couldn’t know he was already too late to save her.

  Wilma felt rushed. He’d had a few days to plan and she sensed she didn’t have much time to find him. She pulled out her atlas and started to study the flight plans of planes departing from Sea-Tac.

  Fortune looked up to see Gertie setting a plate on her lap from a tray loaded with three more plates. Two of those plates had enormous pieces of chocolate pie on them. She set the page down on the side table and reached to steady her plate.

  The plate contained a double-decked turkey sandwich with all the fixins, and a huge pile of chips. “Finally!” she exclaimed and dug right in. “Mm, thank you, this is so good,” she muttered after taking her first huge bite.

  “You’re welcome, dear” Gertie replied, as Fortune reached for the pie.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” Gertie wagged her index finger at Fortune. “Not till you’ve finished every bite of that sandwich!”

  “Fine!” Fortune pouted. “But, I don’t suppose I could talk you into making me some iced tea, could I?” she asked. “I was going to make some while you were gone, but I didn’t want to get up from my chair…”

  “Good girl! I knew I could trust you,” Gertie chuckled. “I’ll be right back with your tea.”

  “Thank you,” Fortune settled back to enjoy her lunch and popped a chip into her mouth. She continued munching on the chips until Gertie came back in the room.

  Gertie handed her a quart-sized Mason jar full of tea, with a twisty straw sticking out of the mouth of the jar.

  “Perfect!” Fortune gulped the tea thirstily. “Thanks! Those chips are salty!”

  “They are,” Gertie replied. “And, you’re welcome. How far have you read?”

  “Alma just died,” Fortune said morosely. “I mean, I know it all happened so long ago, but it’s just so sad…”

  “Yes, it was sad,” Gertie agreed with her. “You’d never know how sad unless you read those pages though.”

  “You met him? Dan, I mean?”

  “I met a man named Dan, but he wasn’t anything like the man that Marge described meeting in Seattle,” Gertie remembered, gazing out at nothing. “The man I met was a small, sad, shattered shell of the man he used to be,” she looked at Fortune and continued. “To have gotten so desperate to attempt what he did and then to actually pull it off…”

  “Pull it off?”

  “Well dear, he did successfully hijack that plane and he did live to tell about it,” Gertie sadly smiled. “And he was never caught. That was quite an accomplishment.”

  “I don’t imagine he thought it was much of an accomplishment though, right?” Fortune said thoughtfully. “I mean, Alma died before he even had the money for her treatment. He still lost his wife.”

  “Yes dear, sadly, he did.”

  “That was the whole reason he even attempted the hijacking, so he couldn’t’ve thought he accomplished anything,” Fortune mused.

  “I knew you’d understand,” Gertie smiled. “He didn’t do it for glory and he didn’t do it reckless
ly. He did it for his wife, but he was too late to save her. He acted purely out of love. It was a well thought-out act of love.”

  “That poor man,” Fortune wiped at a tear threatening to fall from her eye. “How long did he live here in Sinful? Where did he live?” she asked, hoping Gertie hadn’t noticed the tear.

  “He stayed right here dear. In one of the rooms upstairs,” Gertie said, and she pointed to the ceiling.

  “Here?”

  “Yes, dear, Marge and Ida Belle nursed him for months. Remember, Ida Belle was a nurse’s aide during the war, so she did know what she was doing.”

  “But, he didn’t live long, did he?”

  “No, he sure didn’t,” Gertie paused to take a bite of her own sandwich before continuing. “He plumb lost his will to live after he heard about Alma’s death. Knowing she’d died while he was off on a fool’s quest didn’t help matters.”

  “But he pulled it off. He did what he set out to do.”

  “I’m afraid he didn’t see it that way,” Gertie said. “He only saw his failure to be at his wife’s side as she left this world. He never forgave himself for that.”

  They both finished their lunch, but Fortune found she’d lost her appetite for the pie. She asked Gertie to put it in her fridge, knowing her appetite would come back and she’d want that pie.

  “I’ll put both of them in your fridge,” Gertie said. “You finish that up and maybe we’ll both want some pie when you’re done.”

  Fortune picked up the pages:

  Wilma felt rushed. He’d had a few days to plan and she sensed she didn’t have much time to find him. She pulled out her atlas and started to study the flight plans of planes departing from Sea-Tac.

  Yep, that’s where she left off, she thought and continued on:

  Wilma later told me her finger landed close to Mount Hood as she circled the map around Seattle. Her grandparents summer cabin, she’d immediately thought. Of course that’s where he’d head. It had sat abandoned for years and it was in the middle of nowhere, but the interstate was relatively close, in Portland.

  The cabin was close to the tiny town of Mount Hood Village in Oregon, next to the Sandy river, nestled in the foothills of the mighty Mount Hood. She was certain that had to be his destination.

  She packed a small bag, grabbed her purse, and jumped in her car. If her memory served her right, the trip to the cabin took about three and a half hours. Being the night before Thanksgiving, she knew there’d be some traffic on the interstate, but didn’t believe it would stop her from arriving before Dan.

  She drove straight through, only stopping for gas and coffee once. As she got closer to the mountain, she recognized some of the landmarks, which meant she was almost there. She was heading east on US Highway 26 when she spotted him.

  His clothes were in tatters and he was limping badly on the side of the road. He shied away when she slowed her car. She could tell he’d been injured and she spoke very softly to him, trying to coax him into her car. He finally recognized her and got in.

  He seemed manic at first, and couldn’t wait to tell her all about how he’d hijacked the plane and his plans for Alma’s therapy. Dan had driven to Portland and ditched his car at the airport. He’d removed the plates and left it in a long-term parking lot.

  Those were the days before cars were required to have VIN numbers to identify them. He knew his car couldn’t be traced back to him… Or Alma.

  Wilma’s eyes filled with tears when he mentioned his wife and she knew she had to tell him Alma had died. The tears flowed as she explained about the long distance phone call from the nurse.

  Fortune realized her cheeks were wet, her own eyes were full of tears, and she gasped, “It’s too sad, I can’t read anymore.” She furtively wiped her eyes and thought to herself, this town is making me soft...

  “Here you go, dear. This will help,” Gertie handed her the piece of pie and patted her shoulder. “I headed for the kitchen when I saw the first tear.

  Chapter 5

  Fortune had read the remaining pages before Ida Belle returned. Marge had told of Wilma and Dan’s short stay at the cabin and their desperate drive across the country to Marge’s house.

  They’d stopped and flung a packet of the ransom money off the side of a mountain pass and watched as it slowly disappeared. Dan had wanted her to fling the entire briefcase off that mountain, but she wasn’t sure they should do that yet.

  Wilma had hoped someone would find it and take some of the pressure off them. She’d hoped the man-hunt would center around that money. She told Marge, Dan had expected the serial numbers on all of the bills would’ve been tracked, but as he was planning to spend it in Argentina, he hadn’t worried much about it.

  Knowing better than to spend even one bill from that briefcase, they only had the cash Wilma had brought with her, and they tried to only spend it on gas, hoping they’d have enough to make it to Marge’s house.

  Marge’s house in Sinful had been the only place Wilma could think to bring Dan. They couldn’t go north. And they’d heard a newscast on the radio that the man-hunt covered four states, so Wilma was desperate to get them out of that part of the country.

  They’d driven the entire way using only the back roads, and Dan had reclined on the back seat covered by a blanket. Wilma had tried to sleep in the car, but jerked awake each time she started to fall asleep.

  She’d finally given up and searched the seat cushions for change. She spent some of her new-found bounty on the largest cup of coffee she could buy. She’d stopped in rest areas and filled her two thermoses with water and had been trying to make sure Dan at least had some water. She’d also given him some aspirin from her purse.

  Marge finished the story by explaining how Wilma had stayed with her until the following Spring, when Dan died. It wasn’t an unexpected death. They all thought he’d just given up, everyone that is, except Ida Belle, who always thought he had some sort of internal injuries.

  He’d refused to go to the doctor, even when the fervor surrounding the hijacking had died down and he could explain his injuries as a common fall from a roof or something. Doctors in those days didn’t need identification before treatment. They’d just help whoever needed help. Some even still made house-calls.

  He refused to accept any kind of help. Wilma tried to reason with him, but he simply wouldn’t talk about it. He’d spent his last days just staring out the window. Marge had thought all along, that all he wanted was to die and join his beloved Alma.

  She never worried he’d commit suicide though. It was apparent to all of them, all he wanted was to see Alma again. It was almost painful, watching him pine for her.

  No one in Sinful, other than Ida Belle and Gertie, had ever known anyone besides Wilma had been staying with Marge. They’d kept Dan a secret and now they’d keep his secret.

  They’d kept the whole incident secret. They hoped to keep his death a secret also. Wilma was fine with burying him in private, somewhere close to Sinful. She said the only person Dan would want at his funeral would’ve been his Alma.

  She told Marge she only hoped he’d found Alma and they were both at peace. He’d never forgiven himself for not being there when she died. She hoped he’d found forgiveness.

  The final words written on Marge’s tale were:

  We buried him late one night at the edge of the bog, outside of Sinful. We buried the briefcase, still stuffed full of cash, with him. No one saw us. We’ve kept the secret.

  “Unbelievable,” Fortune said, shaking her head as she laid the page with the others. “What a story.”

  “So, now do you understand why we don’t want anyone poking around where he’s buried?” Ida Belle asked.

  “Would it really be so bad…” Fortune started to say.

  “Yes!” Ida Belle exclaimed. “Marge was a distinguished veteran, and a decent woman, and I want her remembered that way. How do you think the media would treat this story? That Marge had helped a friend in need, or that Marge had h
arbored a vile criminal who’d gotten away with one of the most notorious crimes of the last century?”

  “He was a good man at heart; he committed that crime for his dying wife, for crying out loud. His story deserves to be told. If we could get the real story published, the case could be closed and everyone would forget about it,” Fortune mused.

  “Almost everyone has already forgotten about it,” Ida Belle countered. “While the FBI considers it to be an on-going case, no one is actively pursuing any leads. There haven’t been any leads in decades. Not since that cash that Wilma threw off that mountain was found. And it had floated or an animal had dragged it so far, nothing ever became of it. That caused some media sensation for awhile, but it didn’t last long. D.B. Cooper is remembered now as just a folk hero, if he’s even remembered at all. Younger people don’t have any idea who he even is, or who he was.”

  “That’s kind of sad…” Fortune said softly.

  “It’s what he would’ve wanted,” Ida Belle claimed. “He didn’t do it to get famous or see his name in print.”

  “He did it for love, dear,” Gertie mused.

  They all sat and thought about Dan and Alma for a minute and then Fortune realized she didn’t know what happened after Dan was buried.

  “Did Wilma just go home and forget about him? she asked. “And what repercussions were there from the hijacking?”

  “Wilma did go home, but I doubt if she ever forgot about her cousin, and how his life ended. As far as we know, she took the secret to her grave. She died about five years ago. Marge went to her funeral,” Ida Belle explained. “She spent two weeks in Seattle when she went. Marge really did love that town. It’s strange when you think about it, I mean Seattle is almost the exact opposite of Sinful.”