Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12

by Dell Magazines

  The late Francis McAdams’ house was considerably larger than Lily’s cabin. It was well set back from the road on a heavily treed three-quarter-acre lot. The structure sat on unlandscaped, natural grounds, a blue gravel driveway leading to a weathered garage. An old, unused outhouse was visible some sixty feet behind the house, its door hanging loosely on one hinge. Gus and Worthy climbed the five front steps of the house and crossed the sagging boards of the covered front porch. Gus unlocked the door.

  “Waste of time, you ask me,” Chief Worthy said. “The county boys been all over this house, same as the woman’s. Anything of value, they already found. I’ll take my oath on that.”

  Gus looked around the darkened foyer. “Well, now, Gene, that most surely is true. But I’d kinda like to cast my eyes around some anyway. You never know.”

  Worthy shrugged. “If you don’t mind, Gus, I’d just as soon be on my way. You can drop both sets of keys at my office after you’re done. I can’t see wastin’ my Saturday pokin’ around in a dead man’s house when the murderer is already locked up.”

  Gus nodded. “Suit yourself.”

  Worthy turned to leave. “Just give the keys to my deputy. If he ain’t there, toss ’em on the desk. Guess they’ll be safe enough.” He shook Gus’s hand and left.

  Much later, Gus exited the rear of the house and gazed around the expanse of land surrounding the back porch. The property was bordered by thick woods, early buds beginning to sprout on some of the mockernut hickory trees. Gus’s eyes fell upon the abandoned outhouse. He stepped off the porch deck and crossed to it.

  After a cursory examination of the dank, cobwebbed interior, Gus closed the door and turned away. His eyes fell on the woods to his left, at the very rear of the property. There, where wild shrubbery met the property line, the nearly obscured opening of an old, long-unused footpath was visible. Gus’s eyes narrowed as he gazed at it.

  Born and raised on the rural, pristine lands of Long Island, Gus had spent many childhood hours exploring the woods, streams, and lakes surrounding his hometown of Central Islin. He had learned something as a very young boy: A path in the woods always led to somewhere. A tadpole-and-frog-laden pond, a clear, cool-water swimming hole, a shimmering crystal stream, or a scary, haunted-looking hunter’s cabin. Somewhere.

  Gus crossed the property, noting the remnants of an old-fashioned, homemade cinder-block barbeque pit now choked with weeds. It seemed identical to the one he recalled behind his grandfather’s old green-and-white bungalow on Connetquot Avenue.

  Smiling with his memories, Gus set out onto the path, following its meander for some hundred feet through the woods. The path was heavily overgrown, having not seen regular use in many years; Gus reasoned it dated back to the days when this house and property had most likely served a growing family. As he neared the end of the path, his suspicions were further confirmed. Some twenty feet above him appeared the remains of a roughly built treehouse, constructed from differing sizes and types of lumber, the skeletal remains forming a rough triangle amidst three ancient oak trees. The lumber was mostly rotted away, dangling in some places from large, heavily rusted ten-penny nails.

  Gus stood there looking upward at the sight for long moments. Long ago, as a boy, he and his cousin had built just such a treehouse. Their constant foot traffic to and from that treehouse had created a path through the woods very similar to the one where he now stood.

  Glancing around one final time, he noticed something else. A few more yards ahead, the woods seemed to open up. He followed the path a bit farther.

  An old dirt lane, heavily rutted and about ten feet wide, ran parallel to the rear of the McAdams property. Its existence did not surprise Gus. Long Island was veined with many such lanes, none of which appeared on road maps. They served the hunting blinds and trout streams, fishing holes and hidden copses of hardwood trees that provided locals with firewood for long, snowy winters.

  Most had originally been cut through the woods as fire breaks and access routes for local fire-district volunteers. In the event of a wildfire, the lanes allowed pumper trucks and personnel to get in close to fight the flames.

  Gus had seen many such lanes in his lifetime and knew they always intersected with main roadways. Much like the narrow, winding footpath he had just trod, the narrow dirt lanes always led somewhere.

  Glancing around, he saw a flat expanse of grassy area bordering the lane. It was some fifteen feet long and just wide enough to accommodate an automobile.

  He ambled over to it. Unlike the badly rutted lane itself, this patch of flat, weed-strewn grass had once been pristine. But now, as Gus frowned down at it, his eyes narrowing in thought, it was not.

  Cut into the flat ground were what seemed to be a set of tire tracks. Though worn and weathered from months of exposure, they remained quite visible. Under the warm March sun, the tracks were dried out but appeared to have been originally cut at a time when the ground had been soft and muddied.

  Gus recalled the weather-bureau information he had gathered: Around the time of the murder, there had been an abundant accumulation of rain.

  Something about the tracks seemed very odd to Gus, and he bent to one knee for a closer look. After thirty years of policing, he had seen his share of crime-scene tire tracks. But nothing quite like these.

  Based on dried remnants of sprayed mud, Gus was able to identify the vehicle’s drive wheels. But, as he knew, a car had only one drive wheel, either left or right rear, depending on car make and model. The spray pattern he was looking at indicated two drive wheels, not just one. And even more perplexing, they each appeared to turn in unison as front-steer wheels do. The mud splatter fanned out to the left in a broad, semicircular pattern. The way Gus read the tracks, the car had first pulled off the lane and onto the clearing, then at some point had accelerated sharply away, spinning its wheels forcefully and spraying grass-clumped mud some ten feet into the low-lying surrounding brush. But the drive wheels appeared to be at the front of the vehicle—the steering wheels, not the fixed rear wheels.

  Gus examined the rear tire tracks. They sat slightly inside the front tracks, indicating a narrower rear track width, and no mud spray was visible. Gus, still kneeling, scratched at his head. If it had been a four-wheel-drive vehicle, such as a Jeep, all four wheels would have sprayed mud. But that clearly wasn’t the case here. So what else could possibly explain drive wheels which also steered the car?

  Gus stood slowly thinking. It was a long shot at best that these tracks had anything to do with the McAdams case. But, by the same token, someone had parked here, and someone had left in a pretty damn big hurry.

  That someone had driven a unique vehicle. One Gus had never come across before, one potentially easy to identify.

  And that vehicle surely needed identifying. Gus turned to the path, heading to his car, still parked at Lily’s place. He needed the Polaroid camera and measuring stick from his tool case.

  When Gus arrived at Eddie’s Texaco and Repair Shop in Central Islin, he parked and walked across the oil-stained concrete to the Bell System phone booth nestled at the side of the repair bay. He deposited a dime and dialed the Central Islin Police Department. His friend, Chief Bill Carters, answered.

  Gus quickly filled him in, then got to the point. “I need you to take a look at the county aerial photograph survey maps, Bill. Specifically, the town of Shirley. Just east of the six hundred block of Heston Road there’s a dirt lane that don’t show up on any street maps. I need to know if it leads to anything and where it hits main paved roadways. Can you do that for me?”

  “Sure, Gus. You figure this is important, do ya?”

  “Could be. We’ll see. Check it out, then call me back. I’m over at Eddie’s Texaco. I need his opinion on somethin’.”

  “Okay. Call you back A-Sap.”

  Sitting behind the station’s grease-stained counter beside an ornate and ancient NCR cash register, Eddie Jacobs bent and carefully studied the six Polaroid photos Gus had placed be
fore him. With a musty oil-and-gasoline tinged odor touching at his nostrils, Gus spoke up.

  “Tell me, Eddie: What the hell does that look like to you?”

  The mechanic shrugged. “Tire marks in dried-out mud. What’s it supposed to look like?”

  Gus pointed. “Take a look at that spray pattern. See where it appears to be coming from? The front of the car—and from both wheels. And look, see how those two wheels turn, steer the car out off that lane-side cutaway and out onto the lane itself? Now, how in the hell is that possible?”

  Eddie studied the photos once more. “Well, it ain’t a four-wheeler, like a Jeep or a Dodge Power Wagon. See here, the rear wheels are just followin’ along meek-like. They don’t appear to have spit out any mud.”

  “No, and they both track straight, they’re fixed, that’s how I know they’re rear wheels. If they were the drive wheels, they’da sprayed mud straight back, not fanned out in an arc pattern like those steer wheels did. But there’s no dried spray to the rear.”

  Eddie nodded. “Yeah, sounds about right. So what you need me for, Gus? Seems you got it all figured.”

  Gus shook his head. “I been drivin’ since I first snuck my granddaddy’s Model 20 Hupmobile outta the barn when I was ten years old. I never once seen a vehicle could put down tracks like these.”

  Eddie squared the photos into a neat pile with his permanently oil-stained right hand and gave them back to Gus. “No, I don’t figure you woulda, ’cause the vehicle that left them tracks was a front-wheel driver. Back in the thirties, Cord made a few front drivers. Built ’em upstate somewheres. They only lasted a coupla years and cost as much as a damn Cadillac. See, Cord figured front drivers was gonna be the next big thing, but hell, who wants a car with the front wheels drivin’ and steerin’ it? Makes steerin’ real tough, like drivin’ a damn snowplow.” He shrugged. “You’ll never see them again, Gus. Not in this country, anyways.”

  Gus thought for a moment. “What do you mean, not in this country?”

  Eddie, a World War II veteran who had served as a motor-pool sergeant, shrugged again. “Well, now, when I was over in France, I come into possession of an old Citroën. French-built car, real piece a crap and the ugliest machine on God’s green earth. But it beat walkin’, so me and a buddy of mine fixed that old car up, got it runnin’ again. It drove even worse’n it looked, real bad heavy feel to the steerin’, ‘torque-steer’ we called it, felt like drivin’ a bulldozer.” Here he paused, smiling. “Served us pretty well with a coupla local Frenchie gals, though, as I recall. Far as I know, Citroëns are still front drive.”

  Gus dug a slip of paper from his pocket. “I measured the front and rear track widths best I could. Front track is wide, close to sixty inches. Rear track is a lot narrower, more like fifty, fifty-one. That mean anything to you?”

  Eddie screwed up his lips as he replied. “Now I can’t say certain, but the Cord was a pretty big car. That rear track seems way too narrow for a Cord. Hell, a Ford Fairlane has a wider rear track than that.”

  “Yeah,” Gus said. “And a Chevy Bel Air, too.”

  The phone rang. It was Chief Carters calling for Gus.

  “That’s a fire-break lane, Gus, for the South Haven Fire District. It runs parallel to Heston Road for a ways, eventually meets up with the Sunrise Highway on the north, County Road Eighty on the south. It just serves as access in case a wildfire breaks out. It doesn’t actually go anywhere.”

  “County Road Eighty goes somewhere,” Gus said, more to himself than to Carters. “Goes straight to the Poospatuck Indian Reservation where the body was found.” After a slight pause he asked, “Where exactly does it hit Eighty, Bill?”

  There was a pause as Carters rustled with maps, looking. “Quarter-mile east of the Strandvold farm near Clifford Road.”

  Gus nodded. “Okay, thanks. I’ll be in touch.”

  He turned back to Eddie. “You seen any Cords around lately? Any Citroëns?”

  “Hell, no, Gus. You lookin’ for a Cord, you better start in the museums or the junkyards. And Citroën? Nobody around here is fool enough to buy a foreign-built car, ’specially one looks like a torpedo comin’ at you backwards.”

  “Any other front-wheel drivers you know of?”

  “I never hearda none, but I can’t say sure. Now that I’m thinking about it, Citroën mighta invented front drive. Back before Cord, even.”

  “Thanks, Eddie. You’ve been a big help.”

  “My pleasure. And just so’s you know, it’s been awhile since your last tune-up and oil change. You better take care of that Edsel of yours, Gus. Keep it runnin’ till you get your money’s worth out of it. You’ll never be able to sell it to anyone else, that’s for sure.”

  On Monday morning, Gus Oliver waited as the head librarian of the Lake Ronkonkoma library unlocked its front door. He gave her a few minutes to get settled, then made his inquiry.

  Two hours later, surrounded by piles of back issues of Hemmings Motor News, Gus had the information he sought.

  The last Cord automobile had been built in 1937, some twenty-three years ago. Because of Lily O’Rourke’s speakeasy background, Gus had reasoned that, despite Eddie Jacobs’ “museum” remark, there could very well be a fancy old car involved here somehow.

  But further investigation had shown that, as Eddie had suspected, the Cord would not have left such a narrow rear track.

  Instead, certain Citroëns available in the U.S. bore a front track width of 59.1 inches and a rear track of 51.7, nearly identical to the approximate dimensions Gus had taken behind the McAdams house.

  And the Citroën was very expensive, priced higher than a top-of-the-line Lincoln or Cadillac.

  Combining its foreign nature, unique front-wheel-drive configuration, and modest styling with its steep purchase price, United States Citroën sales figures had been very low. In fact, without available automatic transmission or power steering, it was unlikely that upscale Americans would purchase such a vehicle in any meaningful quantities, even despite the fact that both Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball had recently done so.

  If the vehicle that had lurked behind the McAdams place had indeed

  transported the murderer, it was very possible that Gus could eventually identify that murderer by first identifying the vehicle itself.

  Later, at the law offices of Andrew Saks, Gus gathered the notes he had compiled from working the telephone and entered Saks’s private office. He took a seat opposite the lawyer at the wide, polished desk.

  “There are only two Citroën dealers in the whole country. One is out in Los Angeles. The other is at 300 Park Avenue, New York City. According to the sales manager at the New York office, since the cars were introduced in the U.S., they’ve only sold a couple hundred of ’em. A lot of those were shipped to buyers in the snow-belt areas. Apparently this here front-wheel-drive thing gives a vehicle much better traction in the snow. Second-largest sales volume is in L.A., thanks to a few celebrities settin’ a trend. For models matching the track widths we have here, only twenty-two have been sold in the New York metropolitan area.”

  Saks nodded. “Did you arrange for a list of buyers to be sent to us?”

  “The guy wouldn’t go for it. Said he’d have to check with his legal department first. He did tell me one thing, though: Nobody from Long Island has ever bought one from him.”

  “And you really feel this can be important, Gus?” Saks asked.

  “I do. It’s a long shot, sure, but to tell you the truth, it seemed a long shot Lily was innocent in this to start with. The way I see it now, this was a pretty sloppy job if she did do it. Hell, the police went straight to her. But if she didn’t do it, then what have we got? A clean shooting, no forensic evidence, no known motive or suspect, nothing. Now if McAdams was a crooked cop, like it seems, maybe a pro killed him. Somebody tied to that New York mob stuff. They probably don’t know or care that Lily lives out here. Somebody tracked McAdams down specifically to kill him.”

  “That’
s highly speculative, Gus.”

  Gus nodded. “Okay. Then plead her guilty and try to cut a deal to keep her out of the gas chamber. I’ve got nothin’ else.”

  Saks pondered it. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Get me that list of buyers from the Citroën dealer in the city. Get a court order from Judge Maull if you have to. We go over the list, show it to Lily and the New York police, see if a name jumps out at anybody. At the least, this buys us some time. Maybe Maull will agree to a continuance on jury selection. Push the trial back some. Then, if this hunch of mine turns out wrong, we’ll still have time to look for another angle.”

  Andrew Saks smiled. “Gus, maybe it’s you who should have been an attorney instead of your son. I like the way you think.”

  He reached for his intercom button.

  “Agnes,” he said to his secretary. “Please get me Judge Robert Basil Maull on the phone. It’s quite urgent.”

  “So,” Gus said to Lily O’Rourke. “What I’m thinkin’ is, some pro comes out from the city. He drives around, cases the area. Probably at night and while it’s raining. Not many people notice that car he’s drivin’. He finds the fire lane running behind the McAdams place, sees it leads out to Route Eighty and that nice, quiet deserted area around the Indian reservation. So he goes back to McAdams’ place, parks on the side of the dirt lane next to that footpath through the woods. He knows no one has reason to be on that rutted lane at night, especially with all the rain. See, people drivin’ rear-wheel-drive cars more’n likely would be afraid of gettin’ stuck in the mud. But the killer—he’s got front drive, he’s not worried ’bout any mud. So he somehow gets into the house, maybe just knocks on the door and McAdams opens up. The killer shoves a gun in his face, walks him out to the Citroën, and shoots him. Then he drives to the Poospatuck Reservation. Once he gets there, he can’t afford to leave any tire tracks near the body, so he parks his car on the gravel roadway and drags McAdams’ body into the woods. The only tire tracks that are found are the unrelated ones in the dirt near the woods, and they just happen to match your Chevy. Along with a coupla million other cars.”