“Before we get started,” I said, trying not to sound too defensive, “you need to know something.”
The watery eyes took on an alertness. “What is that?”
“I know you and Dr. Gerber go way back. If he, or his pal Seltzer, think maybe I was selling them a bill of goods about being unbiased, then let me assure you otherwise.”
He frowned, leaning forward; he looked like he might cry. “Nate, please…”
I raised a palm. “Erle Stanley Gardner and his associates are beyond approach. When they decide to look into a case, they do so impartially, objectively.”
He was shaking his head. “I’m sure that’s true.”
Our drinks arrived. We both sipped them, regrouping our thoughts. Mantovani was providing a soft, piped-in soundtrack for us. “Three Coins in the Fountain” right now.
“I’m afraid you’ve mis—” He began to cough, covering his mouth with a napkin; it lasted a while. He cleared his throat. “Sorry.”
“Are you all right, Frank?”
The smile in the haggard gray face was a terrible thing. “No. Not really. I’ve been in and out of hospitals … and that has no bearing…” He coughed again, shorter but just as nasty. “Or really … to be honest with you … I guess it does.”
“I heard you had heart trouble. It kept you out of the courtroom on the Sheppard case.”
He nodded. “My doctor forbid me going anywhere near that trial. What you need to know is … I tried to stop it.”
“The trial?”
He nodded, not looking at me.
I shifted in the booth. “Frank, forgive me, but that’s ridiculous. You are … or anyway were … the top elected official in charge of prosecuting criminals in Cuyahoga County. You could have stopped it any time you chose.”
His eyes were half-lidded, as if he might fall asleep again. But the voice stayed alert, if ragged. “I still hold that office, yes. But it’s not that simple. You see, at first? All of us felt that Sam murdered his wife. I had conversations with Eliot about it. You were in that house that morning, weren’t you?”
“Because you sent Eliot there to get his take on the crime scene, yes. I happened to be visiting.”
His nodding had a slow-motion feel. “Well, to him the crime fit all the standard signs of a domestic homicide.”
“I know. He told me.”
He gestured with an open hand, as if to a jury. “And we were all sure Sam would crack, if we could just get our hands on him. Not for any third degree … just have him in custody. When his brothers fought that, it only strengthened our resolve.”
“Well, that’s pretty clear. But Sam did give interviews to Gerber and a couple of homicide dicks on July Fourth, just hours later.”
His eyebrows rose above dark-rimmed lenses; it looked like it took effort. “Till his doctor brothers started claiming he was injured too badly to withstand further questioning. Which was an obvious ruse.”
I shrugged. “The docs and their wives held up under polygraph testing a few weeks ago, when asked if Sam’s injuries were real. Top examiners said they passed.”
“Still, the way they circled the wagons was suspicious.” He cleared his throat again, but it reached down into his chest, as if looking for something. “But by the time the trial came around, I knew.”
“What did you know?”
A gravelly sigh. “I knew we didn’t have a case—not a legal leg to stand on.”
He almost seemed to be shrinking further into the suit.
“Yet you went on with it?”
A weary head shake. “I had to, Nate. Do I have to tell you, a Chicago boy, that a man in my position sometimes gets marching orders from above? Anyway, we all felt there was no alternative but to go to trial—things had … well…”
“Gotten out of hand?”
A glum nod. “Whether we had the evidence or not, whether the legal niceties were honored, whether Sam Sheppard was guilty or innocent … the trial must go on. We felt confident, despite the lack of any real proof.”
“Why?”
He took a good swig of the bourbon. “Prejudice would take care of the verdict.”
“Trial by newspaper.”
He managed to lift a shoulder and put it down again. “And television and radio and simple word of mouth. Everybody hates rich successful people. Even other rich successful people.”
“The Sheppards aren’t rich. Success isn’t wealth.”
“Tell that to an hourly worker. Tell it to one out of a job.”
I leaned in. “The way you’d come to feel about the case … is that the real reason you stayed away from the trial?”
“… To a degree. But I really haven’t been in fit shape for the courtroom in some time.” He sighed and it was like sharp fingernails were tearing him somewhere inside. “I go back in tomorrow.”
“To the office?”
He shook his head. “The hospital.”
“Why the hell are you telling me this? Are you willing to go on the record?”
He held up a hand as if swearing in at court. “I’m telling you this in confidence, and maybe a little bit to honor the memory of a good, very honest man we both knew and revered.” His upper lip curled. “I think what happened to Sheppard stinks, and I hate that I was part of it. But, damnit, the pressure was too great! And I’m telling you … well, when Gerber called me today, about your visit? It was a kind of warning. He hears ‘Court of Last Resort’ and gets very nervous. Sees his reputation getting tarred. So he tells me to watch myself. Not to trust you. And guess who else called me?”
“Seltzer.”
His smile showed teeth as gray as the rest of him. “Yes. Mr. Cleveland himself. Everybody wants to remind me that Sam Sheppard was convicted on my watch, and that any effort to get our verdict overturned would be a stain on my record. My … ‘life’s work.’ I got those friendly calls because those two know your friendship with Eliot might lead you to me, a mutual friend.”
“Eliot has plenty of those in this town.”
“He does. Hell, Chief of Police Story was Eliot’s man, and he was hip-deep in sending Sheppard up himself.”
“Do you know if Eliot kept tabs on the case?”
“He did, at least a little. He never changed his mind about Sam doing it, but he was sick over the press campaign to convict that man before the trial even started.”
“Sounds like him.”
Cullitan leaned toward me. “Look, today, after I got those calls? I decided this time, to hell with the pressure. I’m a sick man, sure, but not that sick—I have some shred of decency left. You need to know that digging into this again is the right thing to do. Get Sam the fair trial he never had, and if they convict him, so be it. But otherwise let the poor bastard loose.”
“Will you come forward, Frank? Say all this on the record?”
He drew in a deep breath and let it out slow—I was surprised he didn’t rattle. “Let’s see what you come up with, Nate. Then we’ll talk again.”
He finished his bourbon, gave me a ghastly smile, slipped out of the booth and, like any good ghost, faded.
* * *
Flo Kilgore said, “If Frank Cullitan would go public, you’d have Sam out in a flash.”
She was in a black silk short-sleeved blouse with gray skirt and little gray hat that sat at an angle on her head, like the Coca-Cola Sprite’s bottle-cap cap.
I’d picked her up late morning at the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, and on the eleven-mile drive to Public Square had started catching her up. We got her checked into a room on the same floor as mine, and had her bags sent up while we strolled over to Higbee’s department store, where we took an elevator to the tenth floor and the Silver Grille.
Flo had an affection for department store “tearooms,” perhaps because the largely female clientele would show their enthusiasm for her with wide, impressed eyes and shared whispers but rarely stepped over the line for an autograph. That would be simply gauche.
The Silve
r Grille was known for its homey dishes with occasional exotic touches. But also for—as Flo had pointed out while we were perusing the menu—its art moderne decor, reflective of its early ’30s origin.
“A pity,” she said, “that Higbee’s allowed changing times to creep into this charming little tearoom. Look at how they’ve dulled the original look by adding banquettes. And they’ve painted over the silver grilles along the ceiling and floor! Well, at least the aluminum chairs and tables are still here. And the bronze chandeliers.”
I had fully expected Flo to want to be escorted somewhere where wine and liquor were served. So this choice had been a surprise, at least until she discreetly poured something from a silver flask into her 7-Up. After a white-gloved hand tucked the flask back in her purse, she smiled and said, “A girl needs her pick-me-up.”
“Until she falls down, at least.”
She gave me a pucker-kiss of a smile, said, “Oh you,” and sipped her sparkling glass. “You see that hideous gazebo over there?”
“I’m a detective. I notice everything.”
“Remember that red marble fountain? You’ve eaten here before.”
“I have. I don’t.”
“Well, it was simply a marvel. Before this place was improved, and that gazebo thing got erected over it, the red of that lovely fountain was picked up in the columns and carpet. Delightful.”
That conversation was before we dined—Flo had the Indian chicken curry on rice with fresh coconut and toasted almonds; I had the broiled whitefish with scalloped potatoes and buttered Brussels sprouts, which was what I’d always had when Eliot and Evaline and a girl named Vivian and I used to lunch here. Vivian died in a boating accident in 1943. Another ghost.
By the time I was diving into my butterscotch cream pie and Flo was working on her strawberry sherbert and macaroon, we’d come back around to what had brought her to town.
“So what’s the plan, Sherlock?” she asked.
“Never call me that,” I said. “I also don’t answer to Sam Spade.”
“I promise to avoid it. So what’s the program?”
“We have a two o’clock with the Sheppard brothers—the two that aren’t in stir, anyway.”
“You do sound like Sam Spade sometimes.”
“And you sound like Brenda Starr sometimes, but let’s be good to each other and not mention it. Counselor Corrigan is lining up some interviews for us—former Bay Village mayor Marshall Dodge and his wife, Mildred, and of course the Lords, who were guests at the Sheppards’ house the evening of July third. And, I hope, the missing houseguest, Hardmann.”
“I can only stay for around three days.”
“With any luck, that’ll do it. I wouldn’t mind getting back to making a living myself.”
“Do you … anticipate any more excitement?”
I’d told her about the pimple-faced trio that took me for a ride.
“No,” I said. I patted my left side. “But I’m packing.”
“At least you didn’t say ‘a rod’ or I would have had to break my Sam Spade pledge.”
I leaned toward her. “We have to remember this is a murder case. It’s an old murder case, but to whoever really did this crime, it’s still got that new-car smell.”
“If Frank Cullitan would go public, you’d have Sam out in a flash.”
Which is where you came in, but don’t leave just yet.
“I think to get Cullitan off the dime,” I said, “we’ll have to come up with something really new. But it’s a very good sign that he sought me out and spilled.”
“‘Spilled,’ Mr. Spade?”
“Eat your sherbert. It’s melting.”
* * *
Bay View Hospital, at 23200 Lake Road in Bay Village, was a renovated mansion on the Lake Erie bluffs, a sprawling Gothic, many-turreted edifice of yellow-tan brick with a reddish brown roof. Sam Sheppard’s father, the late Dr. Richard Sheppard, Sr., had purchased the Victorian-era mansion in 1948. Now its twenty-four rooms had 110 beds and forty-seven doctors, two of whom ran the place—Drs. Stephen and Richard Sheppard. Flo and I sat across a tidy desk from the former while the latter stood at his brother’s right hand.
Stephen had a mild, almost soft look about him, but that was deceptive. In his late thirties with a full head of prematurely white hair, he was the middle brother but the natural leader of the clan, now that their father was gone. His office had cream-color walls, with a few framed diplomas as decoration, though his desk had an array of family photos.
Dark-haired, dark-eyed Richard—a gynecologist and obstetrician—was husky, with a slight paunch, and in his early forties. He wore a doctor’s white jacket while the seated Steve was in a well-tailored lightweight tan summer suit with brown bow tie; he had a natty, Esquire magazine fashion layout look to him.
We’d exchanged pleasantries and performed the handshake ritual, and both men seemed especially pleased to see the famous Miss Kilgore.
Flo had been a rare and important positive voice in the raucous orgy of press coverage of the case, the trial in particular. She’d been given the first exclusive post-trial interview with Sam. Right now Dr. Richard was telling her why.
“That article you wrote on Sam and Sharon Kern pleased all of us, very much.”
“Well, thank you. It was sincere.”
“It’s hard to swallow,” he continued, “that a doctor, a man, would take a heavy weapon and batter his wife to death because of, what? An uncontrollable passion for a girl he hadn’t seen or talked to in four months? It makes about as much sense as saying my brother killed Marilyn because she baked him blueberry pie that night when he’d distinctly asked for apple.”
Steve said, “And blueberry was his favorite.”
I almost laughed at that, but I managed not to, because I wasn’t sure it was a joke. Doctors.
I said, getting fairly familiar since we’d met a number of weeks ago at the polygraph testing, “Dick, you’re not claiming that Marilyn and Sam never had a spat?”
A quick head shake. “Of course not. What married couple doesn’t?”
“Right. But when there was friction, what was it about? And please don’t say whether to spend Thanksgiving or Christmas at which in-law’s house.”
“Nate,” he said, answering my familiarity with his own, “you need to understand—Marilyn was very much in love with Sam. It was just … difficult for her.”
“His running around?”
The older brother stiffened. “Difficult for her to adjust to the life of a doctor’s wife. Especially difficult when he was interning and frequently spent all night at the hospital. Sometimes volunteering his help.”
Steve said, “Naturally, Marilyn wanted Sam to spend all his free time with her.”
His brother said, “I think she was a bit … jealous of his profession.”
“That’s not uncommon,” Steve said. “At any rate, we are pleased to see both of you. Miss Kilgore, during the trial, you were a most welcome antidote to Walter Winchell.”
Winchell’s nationwide, outrageously prejudicial coverage of the case had been featured on his TV show as well as in his widely read columns. And some members of the jury admitted having been exposed to it.
“And, Nate,” Steve said pleasantly, “we couldn’t be happier that you’re re-opening the case.”
I shifted in my chair. “Well, it’s not me re-opening it—it’s Erle Gardner and his Court of Last Resort, and Argosy magazine, for that matter. You do understand that I’ve been tasked with pursuing new evidence with an open mind. That includes the possibility of demonstrating your brother’s guilt.”
Steve’s smile was barely readable. “The jury only guessed that Sam was guilty. If he is guilty, I’d like to know it. In that case, I would want him to stay in jail. If Sam were really guilty, it would be a lot easier on all of us on the outside.”
Flo was frowning. “Why is that?”
“For one thing,” he said with a restrained shrug, “my mother and father might still be
alive. I’d have been able to leave this goddamn Cleveland area years ago and set up my practice somewhere else. We’d have folded up our tents.”
Richard put a hand on his brother’s shoulder, but his eyes were on me. “That’s what the police wanted us to do, you know. They urged us to pressure Sam into confessing.”
“But because I know Sam didn’t do this,” Steve said, “I had to stay here and raise my kids. And Sam’s.”
I asked, “Chip is with you?”
“He is. But now he insists on being called ‘Young Sam.’”
Flo, a mother herself, said, “This would be so hard on a child.”
Steve said, “He believes one hundred percent in his father’s innocence.”
Another unbiased opinion.
“I’ve heard,” I said, “that Sam was offered a deal and turned it down.”
“That was part of the confession routine,” Steve said, with bitterness that also was hard to read. Like most doctors, he played his feelings close to the vest, but his words gave him away. “You know who this Schottke is?”
I nodded. “Homicide dick.”
“He said to me, ‘Your brother is guilty as hell and you know it.’ I said I knew no such thing, and so did he. He told me to get Sam to confess. Said, ‘Goddamnit, he can plead insanity.’ Said Sam would do six months in a hospital and come out cured. Go back to medical practice, no more police problems.”
Richard said, coldly, “Would you go to a surgeon to use his scalpel on you, when you knew he was a murderer? Or a supposedly ‘cured’ psychotic?”
Flo said, “I’m so sorry. This has been so very hard on the two of you … and your families.…”
“We’ve had no time to feel sorry for ourselves,” Steve said. “Or to mourn our parents, or look back fondly on better days. Days when I guess we, or at least I, was a little smug in my perfect life.”
Much the same perfect life had been Sam Sheppard’s.
Richard said, “We had to get about the business of living, and making a living. We’ve devoted ourselves and our time to this hospital, to our clinic, to our patients, to our separate families.”
Steve said, “Special, personal problems come up when you go through a series of tragedies. And, of course, all of that was secondary to planning and taking steps to get a reversal of Sam’s conviction.”
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