Murder, She Wrote: A Slaying in Savannah

by Jessica Fletcher

  A minute later, a door opened and a tall, attractive African American woman stepped through it. Her salt-and-pepper hair was braided close to her head, the braids gathered into a swirl in the back. She had an angular face with chiseled features, which could have made her look severe had it not been for the plum-colored lipstick she had applied that matched the pantsuit she wore, and the large drop earrings in the form of cats dangling from her ears. A silk shirt, a Native American necklace, and black pumps completed her outfit.

  “Mrs. Fletcher,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Captain Parker.”

  “I appreciate your taking the time to see me,” I said.

  “Come on. We’ll talk in my office.”

  We walked through the door from which she’d appeared and down a long hallway to where a sign outside an office read CAPT. MEAD PARKER. As we did, I silently hoped we wouldn’t pass through a metal detector.

  Her office was large and nicely furnished. A color photograph of her with a man and two teenage children sat on a credenza behind her desk. She slid off her jacket and hung it on a clothes tree. Her shirt was short-sleeved, exposing surprisingly muscular arms. She must be a weight lifter, I thought, and my immediate reaction was that this was a formidable woman who could handle herself in any situation.

  She dropped into a leather armchair behind her desk, and I took one of the pair facing her, resting my shoulder bag in my lap.

  “It’s a pleasure meeting you,” she said once we were both seated. “I’m well aware of your career as a mystery novelist, although I must admit I don’t get to read much fiction.”

  “I’d be happy to send you a book when I get back home,” I offered.

  “I’d appreciate that,” the captain said. “So, you’re here in Savannah to try and solve a forty-year-old murder case.”

  “You’ve read the paper.”

  “Yes, I have. And I’ve spoken with former detective Sheridan Buchwalter, who worked the case. Frankly, I’m afraid this mission you’re on will turn out to be futile.”

  “I hope you’re wrong,” I said. “You do know the circumstances that brought me to Savannah?”

  “Miss Tillie Mortelaine’s will. She was quite a character.”

  “I certainly wouldn’t argue with that. Captain Parker, before we discuss my being here, I must give you something.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  I explained how recent events at Tillie’s house had led to the discovery of a handgun behind the wall. She sat up straight and leaned forward in her chair. “What did you do with the gun?” she asked.

  “I have it with me.”

  I could see the wheels spinning in her head. Was I some crazed mystery writer from Maine who was about to pull a gun and shoot up Savannah police headquarters?

  I headed off that speculation. “Why don’t you remove it yourself, Captain?” I suggested, using two hands to transfer the bag from my lap to the end of her desk. “I would feel more comfortable that way and I suspect you would, too.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In here, in a plastic bag,” I said, indicating my purse.

  “Did you touch it?”

  I sighed. “I didn’t. However, the plumber who found it did.”

  “We’ll have to get his prints.”

  I got up from my chair while she came around the desk and retrieved the plastic bag. She held it up to light coming through a window behind her desk. “A thirty-eight revolver,” she said to herself. “And loaded!”

  I resumed my seat, and so did she. She placed the plastic bag so that the weapon pointed away from both of us.

  “I’m assuming that’s the weapon used to kill Wanamaker Jones,” I said.

  “I don’t deal in assumptions, Mrs. Fletcher,” she replied, picking up her phone and calling for someone to come to her office. A uniformed officer arrived, and Captain Parker gave him the weapon. “Get this placed in the evidence locker. It may be linked to the Wanamaker Jones murder case from forty years ago,” she said. He looked at her strangely, but said nothing and left.

  “I suggest that the next time you discover a potential murder weapon, Mrs. Fletcher, you call the police instead of taking it upon yourself to deliver it.”

  “I knew I was coming here and thought it made sense for me to bring it,” I said. “But I’ll remember your advice if I ever end up finding a possible murder weapon again. Hopefully, I won’t.”

  “Was this the only reason you made the appointment with me?” she asked. “To bring in the gun?”

  “Heavens, no. I didn’t know about the gun when I called.”

  “Well, then, what can I do for you?”

  “I read the paper, too,” I said. “The reporter quoted someone from the police saying your department never closes a murder case. I would really appreciate being allowed to review the file on Wanamaker Jones.”

  She immediately slid a thick manila file folder across the desk to me.

  “This is it?” I said.

  “That’s it. When I knew you were coming in, I had it sent in from the Georgia Crime Information Center. That’s where we store the records. We barely have room for so much as an additional scrap of paper here at headquarters, much less the multiple file cabinets the records require.”

  I lifted the cover of the file and let it close. I didn’t want to be rude and read in front of her. She must have sensed my hesitation, because she rose and said, “Why don’t I let you have fifteen minutes with the file? You can’t take it with you, and I want your word you won’t remove anything from it.”

  “You have it.”

  “I’ll be back.” She put on her jacket and left the office, leaving the door ajar.

  I scooted my chair closer to the file on the desk, and pulled open the cover. The file contained typical case material: a copy of the death certificate, the initial report by officers Buchwalter and Hadleigh, numerous updates by the investigators, photos of the crime scene, the autopsy report, ballistics results, background checks. There was far more information than I could absorb in fifteen minutes. I took out a pad and pen so I could make notes and concentrated on the crime scene photos and the eyewitness reports. I quickly scanned the autopsy, then looked at pictures of the deceased.

  The children had found Jones facedown, but by the time the police arrived he was lying on his back. Surely a child of eight or nine couldn’t have turned the body over. I’d need to ask Dr. Payne if he’d been the one to move the victim. When a person dies, gravity causes blood to settle in the lowest part of the body. It’s one of the signs that investigators use to determine the time of death. If the body has been lying somewhere for hours, the settled blood will leave a permanent mark. However, if the body had been turned over shortly after death, the settled blood would not have had time to leave the permanent mark and assessing the time of death could have been compromised.

  Captain Mead returned in precisely fifteen minutes. She must have been keeping an eye on her watch. I thanked her for the opportunity to scan the file, and thought for a moment before saying, “Now that you have in your possession the possible murder weapon, will you reopen the case and pursue it again?”

  “Possibly. Why is that important to you?”

  “I wouldn’t want to get in your way.”

  She laughed, showing very white teeth. “I can assure you, Mrs. Fletcher, that I won’t allow you to get in our way during a murder investigation.”

  “I have no doubt of that,” I said. “For my own edification, what’s your procedure in investigating a murder, even one that’s forty years old?”

  She gave me a knowing smile. “Is this for your investigation of Mr. Jones’s murder, or for a book you’re writing?”

  “A little bit of both,” I said, returning her smile.

  “Well, Mrs. Fletcher, our procedures these days will be very different from when Sherry Buchwalter investigated. By the way, he called and said you were a very nice lady.”

  “That was kind of him.”

  �
�He’s a good man. Let me answer your question. The weapon you delivered is on its way to our forensic unit as we speak. We have the bullet that killed Mr. Jones. I’ll assign one of our homicide investigators, probably a sergeant with considerable experience, and . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ll expect you to cooperate.”

  “Of course I will.”

  “According to what I understand, you wouldn’t be happy if we reopen the case and solve it before you do. You have a million dollars riding on it.”

  I’d expected this from her. She was right on the surface, and I nodded my agreement. But I was hoping that the effort I’d already expended, along with having discovered the gun, might qualify me as having played a role in identifying the murderer, and by extension deserving the million dollars for the literacy center even if I wasn’t the first to point a finger at the killer. Tillie hadn’t been that specific as far as I knew, and in any case, it was Roland Richardson who probably would have the last word should the murderer be named by someone other than me.

  “I really don’t consider this a contest, Captain.”

  “And I didn’t mean to imply that you did. The gauntlet that Miss Mortelaine laid down for you is challenging, and I have to admit it’s amusing. But the end result is certainly admirable, and I wish you well, Mrs. Fletcher. I assure you that I’ll cooperate with you to the extent that I can.”

  “I can’t ask for anything fairer than that,” I said. “I hope you’ll share with me the forensics tests on the weapon.”

  “I will. Some of my investigators will want to go to Mortelaine House to document where and how the weapon was found.”

  “I’ll be happy to answer any questions they may have,” I said, standing and picking up my purse, which was now a little lighter. “I appreciate your time, Captain, and your candor.”

  She escorted me to the lobby and we shook hands again.

  Once outside, I drew a series of deep breaths and returned to the small park. I sat on a bench to collect my thoughts. The discovery of the gun behind the wall in Tillie’s house was unexpected, to say the least, and obviously significant. Was it the weapon that someone at the New Year’s Eve party used to shoot Wanamaker Jones to death? It had to be. The question was, Who used it to murder him and discarded it behind the wall? Detective Buchwalter had told me that construction had been under way at the house the night of the murder. That would have provided the killer a place to secrete the weapon, although I couldn’t imagine that the detective and his colleagues hadn’t checked out any open walls or sifted through any construction debris that was there.

  I allowed my mind to drift to my chance encounter with Charmelle O’Neill. She’d had an affair with Wanamaker Jones. If that had gone sour, she had a motive to shoot him. And so did her brother, whose virtual imprisonment of her was hard to fathom, unless he was afraid of the truth coming out. Was he protecting her? Or himself? Was he worried about the scandal of having a murderer in the family? That wouldn’t be good for a judge, who depended upon being elected to his post term after term. Or was he covering up his own guilt? And what about Tillie, who was engaged to Jones at the time of the shooting? If she knew he’d betrayed her with Charmelle, how strange that the two women had remained such fast friends all these years following the murder.

  I was bothered by the fact that Roland Richardson hadn’t told me that he was present the night of Wanamaker Jones’s murder. It seemed to me that he could have offered that at the outset. I made a mental note to query him about that lapse.

  I went to the edge of the park and waited until a vacant taxi came along. As we drove back to Tillie’s house, I thought of my meeting with Captain Mead Parker. Obviously, things had changed dramatically in the Savannah police department since Sheridan Buchwalter’s days on the force. For one thing, it was now the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department, a merging of the Chatham County and Savannah city police that had taken place in 2003. Detective Buchwalter had described a racially tense and divided department, a state of affairs that thankfully no longer existed. Captain Parker was a black woman, as were the two officers at the desk when I arrived. It was good to see that sort of racial progress taking place, made more significant in a distinctly Southern city like Savannah. That reality was the only uplifting thought I had during my brief trip to the house.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I’d no sooner walked into the house than the phone rang. Mrs. Goodall answered and said it was for me.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Fletcher, it’s Captain Parker. I was wondering whether you’d like to witness the testing of the revolver you delivered to me.”

  “Yes, of course I would,” I said. “When will you be doing the test?”

  “This afternoon at five, at our regional crime lab.”

  “I appreciate being invited,” I said, surprised that I had been. I’d left Captain Parker’s office concerned that the police wouldn’t be especially cooperative. Obviously, I’d misread her. “Just tell me how to get there.”

  “I’ll have you picked up at four. You’ll be at Mortelaine House?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  I was standing in front of the house that afternoon when a marked squad car pulled up, driven by a uniformed female officer. I’m sure the sight of the official white car with SAVANNAH-CHATHAM POLICE emblazoned on its sides caused a few curtains to be parted in neighboring homes, and generated speculation about whether something nefarious had occurred at Miss Tillie’s mansion—again. I looked back and saw that the Grogans were witnessing the scene through one of the front windows of the guesthouse.

  “Mrs. Fletcher?’ the officer asked as I opened the rear door of her vehicle.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Patrol Officer Lee. Captain Parker sent me to bring you to the crime lab.”

  “I appreciate being picked up,” I said, climbing into the backseat and closing the door behind me.

  She navigated traffic, including the many slow-moving sightseeing trolleys that seemed to be everywhere, and proceeded around Calhoun Square past “The Book” Gift Shop, headquarters for everything related to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, whose wildly popular book, helped along by Clint Eastwood’s film version, put the city on the tourist map. We followed Abercorn Street out of the downtown area until it became a highway running south, passing all the vestiges of the inevitable suburban sprawl, including restaurant and clothing chains, numerous large signs promising instant cash for a variety of reasons, and the Oglethorpe shopping mall, one of Melanie Goodall’s favorite spots.

  We turned off onto a road whose sign read MOHAWK STREET and continued on it until reaching a series of low buildings on the left. Signs indicated that they housed the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and one of its divisions, the Coastal Regional Crime Lab.

  Officer Lee pulled into a parking lot and turned off the engine. I followed her through a door into the lab, where she was greeted by a large man with a pleasant smile who introduced himself to me as Charlie Elison, the laboratory manager.

  “The others are already here,” he said. Officer Lee and I fell in step behind him through a series of doors to a room where every flat surface was covered by thick black foam shaped like the bottom of an egg crate. Captain Parker was there with two other people, a uniformed forensics officer and a casually dressed young man who was in charge of tool-mark testing. His name was Richie Gollub.

  I sensed that my unexpected presence caused a modicum of unease in the room, which Captain Parker put to rest. “Mrs. Fletcher is here in Savannah to . . .” She glanced at me, and I detected a small smile on her lips. “She’s here to look into the murder of Wanamaker Jones forty years ago.”

  “I read about you in the paper,” Gollub, the tool-mark expert, said eagerly. “You were mentioned in somebody’s will.”

  “The victim’s fiancée,” I said.

  “Right,” he said. “There’s a million bucks riding on it for you?”

&
nbsp; “I’m afraid so,” I said.

  I glanced at a table dominated by a sophisticated microscope connected to a computer screen. Lying next to it was the revolver that had been discovered behind the wall in Tillie’s house.

  “I’ve never witnessed a ballistics test before,” I admitted, “although I’ve visited other labs where tool-mark testing takes place. I’ve seen them match a screwdriver used to pry open a window with the marks on the window itself, and there was also the mark left by a pair of clippers on the hasp of a padlock that had been cut through.”

  “I’m sure it’s no different than this lab,” Gollub said as he picked up the revolver and walked to a corner of the room where a huge barrel, at least ten feet deep, stood. “Ballistics testing is just a glorified form of tool-mark testing,” he explained as the forensics officer handed each person in the room a set of sound isolation earphones, the kind used at airports to muffle the roar of jet engines for those working on the ground. “The water in the tank is eight feet deep, enough to stop a bullet fired into it.” He laughed. “When I test a rifle or other long gun, I have to stand up on that platform to fire down into the tank. So far, I haven’t fallen in.”

  “Even with your earphones on,” Mr. Elison said, “it’ll still be pretty loud. Whenever he tests a weapon in here, the whole building shakes. You can stand outside the door if you prefer.”

  “This thirty-eight special is at least sixty years old,” the tool-mark specialist said, turning the weapon over in his hands. “Small, too. You don’t see too many of them.”