No Stone Unturned

by James W. Ziskin

  Don had chosen the southwest corner of the top floor for his own office because, he claimed, he worked late, and the setting sun made his day seem longer. But I knew he liked to have a cocktail at twilight. He was just hanging up the phone when his secretary showed me in.

  “Have a seat, Miss Stone,” he said playfully, pointing to the chair in front of his desk. “I want to talk to you about your trip. But first, how about a thimbleful?”

  I looked at my watch: 12:21 p.m. “Friday afternoon—why not?”

  He poured us each a Scotch, then settled into the leather chair behind his desk.

  “So what’s this I hear about a murder in Boston?”

  I explained how I had found Jordan’s roommate dead in their apartment, and I told him that some enterprising soul had redecorated D. J. Nichols’s digs and frightened him into hiding. Or perhaps worse.

  “Boston police think he’ll resurface soon; I’m just hoping it won’t be in the Charles River. I was a little dismissive when he asked me for help.”

  “He’ll be fine,” said Don, a little dismissive himself. “Who do you think killed the roommate?”

  “Not sure, but I’ve got some candidates. Nichols told me someone was trying to set him up for the murders, though he couldn’t say why. What about on your end?” I asked. “You’re still going with murder one against Julio Hernandez?”

  The DA took a sip of his Scotch and ran a hand absently through his blond hair. “I don’t know,” he droned in his nasal whine. “I’m inclined to agree with you, but I don’t want to drop the charge just yet. The kid might crack and admit to the whole thing. Busting the charge down to voyeurism and invasion of privacy won’t exactly persuade him to talk.”

  “Why should he admit to something he didn’t do?” I asked. “Look, he may have been getting his jollies peeping through Jordan’s window, but the murder in Boston kind of lets him off the hook, doesn’t it?”

  “Maybe. But he was on the run for four days after the first murder. Maybe he killed Jordan’s friend, too.”

  “There are two hitches in that theory, Don,” I said. “First, why would he kill Ginny White? It’s a long way to go just to peep. And second, how could Julio have ransacked Nichols’s apartment? He was posing for a mug shot at the time.”

  “Maybe the burglary was a coincidence,” he offered. “And maybe Julio had a reason for going to Boston.”

  “You don’t believe that,” I said. “That’s Frank Olney talking.”

  “Well, there’s no rush to drop the charges. Hernandez is still a few days away from the electric chair.”

  I left the DA’s office a little lightheaded and crossed the street to the paper, where I developed enlarged prints of Jordan’s datebook. In the months before her death, Jordan had written down many of her comings and goings in the diary, but it was far from a comprehensive record. I began my search more than a year earlier, in June 1959:

  The entries continued in the same cryptic fashion through August, with notes from her journey to India. I found it curious she had marked the visit to the clinic in her book; one doesn’t usually plan on emergency dysentery treatment or note down appointments after they’ve taken place.

  Breaking from her routine, Jordan had made detailed entries about her India adventure in the datebook. She described the excitement of the arduous, seven-day string of flights to reach Bombay. Aboard a BOAC DC-7, she and a dozen fellow travelers left Idlewild for London Airport North. Jordan traveled de Luxe class, while D. J. had to settle for tourist. After a night in London, which included a ! with D. J. in his room, the group took off for Rome, then Istanbul on a Super G Constellation. They stopped for two days in Istanbul to rest and to take in the sights. Jordan and D. J. managed a !* in the Istanbul Hilton while the others undoubtedly slept unawares in their rooms under their mosquito nets.

  From Istanbul, the group hopped to Cairo, then Karachi, before finally reaching Bombay, where they spent two nights at the magnificent Taj Mahal Hotel near the Gateway of India. Two more !*s in her room there.

  Jordan described in gushing detail exchanging dollars for pounds sterling, then liras, then rupees. Long lines at museums, wrestling with Italian and Turkish and Hindi in restaurants, bazaars, and hotels. Nearly fifty hours in the air, and stolen moments of whirlwind romance on the ground in European and Near Eastern capitals. It sounded terrifically romantic, and I was more than a little curious about D. J.’s punctuation prowess.

  After her return from India, there were several mentions of someone named J. N., mostly for dinner, movies, coffee, and study breaks. I groaned at the appearance of another unknown. Who the hell was J. N.? I pushed on. In September, the asterisks, OKs, and NOs disappeared, and I was sure I knew why. A year later, closer to the date of her death, I found phone numbers, appointments, class schedules, and many references to D. J. Whoever J. N. was, he hadn’t completely displaced D. J.

  November 1960 posed its own mysteries:

  It was almost as if Jordan had known someone would try to decipher her datebook. Maybe she was having fun, or maybe it was a habit she’d learned over time to cover her tracks. Some of the initials still stumped me, but her secret codes and winks, intended to be known only by her, hadn’t fooled me. She hadn’t counted on a sister in crime finding them. I only hoped her cipher would point me to her killer. But with Julio in jail and quite unwilling to cooperate, I needed help. I had an idea to stir the pot and decided to start a rumor.

  Fran Bartolo lived with her parents near the public golf course. I called and arranged to pick her up at three for a drive out to McAllister Road—a quiet thoroughfare by day, desolate lovers’ lane by night—which cut across several farms overlooking the valley. It was the perfect spot for an uninterrupted chat.

  “So, what did you want to talk about?” asked Fran, once I’d thrown the car into park.

  “I wanted to ask you about Glenda Whalen.”

  “Glenda the Whale?” she asked, fiddling with the radio dial. “Tutti Frutti” came on. “Oh, I love this song!”

  “Really?” I asked, the horror surely visible on my face. “Pat Boone?”

  I remembered my brother, Elijah, railing against the travesty a few years earlier. He couldn’t understand how people preferred the soulless Pat Boone version to Little Richard’s original. Elijah cared about everything, from music to politics, and he was always on the right side, though that was always pretty far left. That assured him of butting heads with my willful father on a daily basis. They seemed to disagree on everything except politics. And yet, neither harbored any ill will toward the other, at least not after a few minutes had passed. Where I was concerned, however, a disagreement over the weather could incur my father’s rancor for weeks.

  “What’s wrong, Ellie?” asked Franny, rousing me from my thoughts. “You look sad.”

  “Nothing,” I said, chasing Elijah and Dad from my thoughts. They’d be back later, I was sure, once my guard was down, once I fell asleep.

  “Anyway, what do you want to know about the Whale?”

  “That’s not nice, Fran,” I said.

  “Well, Glenda’s not very nice,” she said as a matter of fact. “A horrible creature, who doesn’t know how to act in civilized society.”

  “Jordan liked her, didn’t she?”

  Fran shrugged her shoulders. “Some hero-worship thing, I suppose. Maybe Jordan enjoyed the devotion. But Glenda is a weirdo, unpleasant, and a bully. She didn’t want anyone near Jordan, acted like Jordan was her property. And even when you tried to treat her nice, she’d do something rotten, like talk behind your back or spread a rumor. Everybody hates her.”

  “She punched me in the mouth,” I said after a pause. “Knocked me cold.”

  “There, what did I tell you? She’s a bully.”

  “Maybe she’s just unhappy.”

  “Unhappy is right. She never could get what she really wanted: Jordan. Fat lesbian.”

  We sat quietly for a while, then she provided the opening I needed to pl
ay my hand.

  “So you’re no closer to finding who killed Jordan?”

  “Not yet,” I said, turning down the music a bit. “But I will be, once I find those photos.”

  Fran switched off the radio altogether and looked at me. “What photos?”

  “The ones that Julio Hernandez shot through the window at the motel. The film’s lost, but he got the murderer, I’m sure of that.”

  “You’re saying he took pictures of the murderer? How do you know that?”

  I switched the radio back on—Bobby Darin, “Beyond the Sea”—and surveyed the view of the valley. “Julio told me.”

  I dropped off Fran, watched her run inside—surely to make a series of phone calls with the news—and slipped the shift into drive. Checking the mirror before pulling away from the curb, I spotted the maroon Hudson Hornet about fifty yards back, behind another car. Pukey was changing his tactics. I wound through the looping streets of the golf-course district and regained Route 40 via a seldom-used gravel road. As I pushed my Belvedere to speed, I could see the Hudson turning into traffic behind me. With a couple hundred yards’ lead, I took to the side streets, hoping to lose Pukey. Seven turns in alternating directions took me back to Route 40, inside city limits, and I proceeded downtown, mindful of every vehicle that appeared in my rearview mirror.

  At the office, I spent two hours hammering out my copy for Saturday’s paper. The Boston murder and burglary dominated my story, which stressed the times and dates of the crimes. While not directly accusing the sheriff and the DA of blindness to the obvious, I suggested that the man they had arrested could not have burgled D. J. Nichols’s apartment.

  I phoned Judge Shaw from the photographers’ room to discuss what I had learned in Boston and to ask him a few questions pertaining to the datebook.

  “Do you know of any friend of Jordan’s in Boston whose initials were J. N.?” I asked.

  “Not that I recall,” he said. “But I don’t know all her friends’ surnames. There was a Judy, I think, and a Jeffrey she mentioned a few times.”

  Jeffrey. I’d read his letters to Jordan and had put him out of my mind. J. N. could well be Jeffrey, but who exactly was Jeffrey?

  “Where did you come up with J. N.?” he asked while I was thinking.

  I didn’t want to tell him about the datebook, didn’t see how the judge could benefit from reading about her trysts in fancy hotels with a married man. My father had suffered greatly from too much knowledge of his daughter’s behavior, and I wanted to spare the judge that.

  “I don’t remember where I heard it,” I said. One of my weaker lies.

  I was sure D. J. was Jerrold and that the Dear Jordan letter was from him, the heel. But just who was J. N.? The answer was not far off.

  My handsome detective Morrissey phoned me from Boston to report that none of the fresh bodies in the morgue were Nichols’s. He asked if I had anything new.

  “I’m at a dead end,” I said. “There’s a new set of initials I can’t identify. Have you come across any J. N.s or Jeffreys?”

  “You’re kidding me, right?” he said. “Your boy Nichols’s name is Jeffrey. Duane Jeffrey Nichols. Goes by D. J. at school, but his wife calls him Jeffrey. She’s been whining at us for two days about her poor Jeffrey.”

  “I can’t believe I missed that.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  That was sure to clear up a few items on my list. It made perfect sense now. Jordan had been consistent and particular in her notations and abbreviations. First name initial, surname initial. If she knew Nichols as Jeffrey, then J. N. had to be him. The pathetic love letters from Jeffrey fit Nichols’s profile better than the lady-killer described by Roy. And suddenly, what had nagged me about the Dear Jordan letter came into focus. There was no signature, but there was spelling.

  Before ringing off with Morrissey, I told him of my suspicions that Julio had taken pictures through the window at the Mohawk Motel. I asked him to help me play my gambit on the Boston end, to spread the word that both photos and a witness to the murder existed. Morrissey said I was crazy, but, since he had nothing else to go on, he agreed to give it a try.

  It was after five thirty when I left the Republic’s offices. I climbed into my car, turned the key, and adjusted my mirrors, still on the lookout for Pukey Boyle. The coast was clear, and I drew a sigh of relief. But as I eased away from the curb, my eyes caught sight of a young man loitering on the sidewalk across the street. He was just standing there, staring at me. It was Greg Hewert.

  I gunned the engine and headed east on Main Street. I couldn’t be sure if Greg’s presence was a coincidence or if he’d been waiting for me to leave the office, but his glare had unsettled me. I cranked down the window for some cold air and shook the vision of him out of my head.

  I didn’t relish the prospect of calling on the Hernandez family, especially with the light falling, but I told myself that unpleasantries were part of any job, and reporters sometimes had to knock on doors where they weren’t wanted. As it turned out, my visit was doubly unwelcome because the family was just about to sit down to supper.

  “What you want now?” asked Hernandez, padre, through the door.

  “I saw Julio today,” I said. “He asked me to give a message to his mother.”

  “What’s the message?”

  “He wanted me to speak to her personally.”

  He closed the door, and I heard a high-pitched voice on the other side, answered by the father’s baritone. Another exchange, and the woman won. The door opened, and Señora Hernandez invited me in.

  “Please sit,” she said, gesturing nervously to an armchair in the dark parlor. I was sure it was the place of honor. She smoothed her apron and asked if I would like some coffee. I said yes.

  She turned to the teenage girl watching from the kitchen door and rattled off in Spanish some instructions to her, I believe to fetch me coffee. The girl disappeared into the kitchen.

  The house was neat, in contrast to the ragged appearance of the exterior. A thin, worn rug covered most of the dark, wooden floor, and the only light in the room was a floor lamp in the corner. A dull fluorescent spilled from the kitchen into the parlor, and I could smell something spicy cooking.

  Hernandez, padre, still didn’t like my being there, and he watched me intently from a wooden chair across the room. Three small children—a girl and two boys—streaked in and out of the room, excited by my presence. The older girl brought me a cup of coffee from the kitchen.

  “What Julio say?” asked Mrs. Hernandez, pulling a small armchair closer to mine. She sat down as if bracing for the worst. “He okay?”

  “He says they’re treating him fine, that he misses you.”

  “¡Ay, Dios mío! ¡Pobrecito!” Tears flowed down her cheeks. She crossed herself, then wrung her hands to God. “What else he say?”

  “He insisted that I tell you one thing,” I said, fixing my eyes on hers. “He wants you to know that he’s innocent.”

  “¡Lo sabía! ¡Lo sabía!” She crossed herself a few more times, held her hands close to her heart in a tight fist, and cried. Then she asked me when he would go free.

  “Not yet,” I said. She seemed surprised then confused. Her older daughter explained to her in Spanish, and she looked at me as if I’d pierced her heart willfully. “I can help Julio,” I insisted. “But I need his cooperation, his help. I need to see his cameras, his film equipment. Do you know where he keeps them?”

  The father made a clicking noise with his tongue and shook his head. “He never keep no camera here.” I looked across the darkened room, barely able to see his eyes. “Try that lady’s place. The motel.”

  “He’s a good boy,” said Mrs. Hernandez, reaching out to take my hands. “Please help us, Miss Stone. Don’t let them kill my son.”

  I smiled at her, but I worried she would hold me accountable if the unthinkable ever came to pass. “I’ll do my best,” I said. “If the sheriff lets you see him, tell him to trust me, to tell me
everything. Otherwise, I can’t help him.”

  Mrs. Hernandez swore she would tell him, crossed herself again, and kissed my hand. I was embarrassed and politely excused myself to leave. But at some point during my five-minute visit, I had earned the family’s gratitude. The father wasn’t exactly ready to slap me on the back, but his gold-toothed smile betrayed a thawing in relations. They compelled me to stay for a supper of rice and beans. When I left an hour later, I no longer feared the dark on Hawk Street.

  I did, however, fear the maroon Hudson Hornet I noticed in my rearview mirror as I headed west on Main. By instinct, I resorted to the evasive tactics I had learned in my two previous encounters with Pukey Boyle. I slowed for yellow lights, then sped through reds; zigzagged through side streets and crowded parking lots; and even cut across the high school practice fields. But the Hudson clung to my heels. Finally, in desperation, I decided to drive home and face whatever awaited me. I pulled over to the curb across from Fiorello’s, expecting the worst, but the Hudson zoomed past me and down the street before I could throw the car into park. I shrugged my shoulders, climbed out, and went upstairs. A couple of hours later, after a call with Charlie and a drink, I crossed the street to see Fadge.

  The store was jammed with teenagers sipping cherry Cokes and playing the jukebox. It was a little after ten, and the youngsters were trying to pack in a few last minutes of flirting—the girls preened and giggled; the boys strutted and postured—before having to head home for curfew. A booth in the back freed up suddenly, and I grabbed it for myself. It took Fadge twenty minutes to get around to asking for my order. When busy, he always left his regulars to wait long beyond their turn, well aware that they would suffer the slight out of loyalty. I didn’t mind; he was mixing fountain drinks and scooping ice cream furiously, sweating like a horse, and breathing through his mouth, as was his wont. And I enjoyed watching the rituals of teenagers anyway, as if I were an anthropologist living in their midst.