Columbo: Grassy Knoll

by William Harrington

  2

  Columbo’s cigar was almost short enough to throw away as he ducked under the police line held up for him by a uniformed officer and walked up the driveway toward the ruined Oldsmobile.

  “Lieutenant Columbo! Doug Immelman.” A young man waved to Columbo.

  “Hi, Doug. I understand the lady survived.”

  Doug Immelman was a detective, LAPD. “Luckiest woman on the face of the earth,” he said. “She opened the rear door to put some dry cleaning in the car. If she’d been at the driver’s-side door, she’d have been killed for sure. She’s in the house. She skinned her knees falling down, but otherwise she’s okay, except for shock. The paramedics wanted to take her in for a checkup, but she insists she’s okay.”

  Columbo stared at the station wagon, pressing down the right corner of his mouth with his right index finger. The driver’s-side door was completely gone. Hunks of steel lying in the blocked street were probably parts of it. The windshield and front windows were blasted out. Strips of sheet steel had been peeled back on the front left fender and from the left rear door. Inside, the front seat had been shredded and blown up against the right-side door. The dashboard had been heaved up and hung out the hole where the windshield had been. Columbo pinched his nose and shook his head.

  “Lieutenant, this is Sergeant Sharkey, the explosives man.”

  “Yeah. We’ve met. Hey, Sharkey! Good to see ya again,” said Columbo, thrusting out his hand for a handshake. He frowned. “Some mess, huh?”

  “Hey, Columbo. Yeah. Some mess. Not near what it might’ve been,” said Sharkey grimly.

  “What ya figure?”

  “Plastique. A lot of it. Right inside the door. The way it looks, it was triggered by the courtesy lights coming on when the door was opened. And I figure there was about a one-second delay in the circuit. When she opened the front door, there was supposed to be just enough time for her to pull the door open and expose herself to the full force of the blast. Lucky for her, opening the rear door turned on the courtesy lights inside the car. When the explosion went off, she was behind the car with the rear door unlocked and just open. The explosion swung the rear door at her and knocked her down, just in time so she was missed by flying debris. One lucky lady.”

  “Professional job?” asked Columbo.

  “I’d call it that. The guy knew what he was doin’. Ninety-nine chances out of a hundred the lady would have opened the driver’s-side door and KABOOM!”

  Columbo spoke to Doug Immelman. “Okay, Doug. You got any ideas?”

  “No, sir. Not yet. We’re working on it.”

  “Don’t spend too much time on it. I know who did it. Do me a favor, Doug. Radio headquarters and ask them to have a coupla men pick up Charles Bell at the Topanga Beach Club. He may not be there, but he will be by noon. Suspicion of murder.”

  3

  Alicia Drury sat in her living room, smoking a cigarette. Her pants were slightly tom at the knees, and her shirt was smeared with gray dirt, but otherwise she showed no sign of having just escaped an abrupt death.

  “How ya feelin’, ma’am?” Columbo asked.

  She shook her head.

  “He’ll try it again, I guess,” said Columbo.

  “Who’ll try it again?”

  He looked around, spotted a big glass ashtray, and crushed the butt of his cigar in it. “Mrs. Drury, you know who did it, and I know who did it, and we know he’ll try it again. He’ll keep tryin’ till he succeeds. You got any real, serious question about that?”

  “Lieutenant Columbo, you have long since ceased to be funny. It will close a file for you and win you a commendation if you can make out a case that I killed Paul. Well… even if I did, you couldn’t prove it.”

  Columbo turned down the comers of his mouth and lifted his brows. “Because you were too clever,” he said. “You figure? You figure you were that smart?”

  “What good would it have done me to kill Paul? I guess you know about his will.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But I also know who tried to kill you this morning—who will kill you sooner or later, one way or another, if we don’t some way stop him. Would you like a look at his picture?”

  She looked away from Columbo, toward the window, and she took a last drag on her cigarette and crushed it in the same ashtray with his cigar.

  “Look at this photograph, ma’am,” he said. He hadn’t sat down, and he pulled the picture from his raincoat pocket and handed it to her. “I bet you’ve seen it before.”

  What he’d handed her was the enhanced photograph of the two men standing on the Grassy Knoll.

  “Charles Bell told me you’d found a cache of Paul’s materials. If you eventually release them to us, maybe we can still do the fall show.”

  “No, ma’am,” said Columbo. “That’s why Mr. Drury was murdered, to prevent that. Whoever killed Mr. Drury to prevent it will kill you to prevent it—and Mr. Edmonds, and even Mr. Bell.” She tapped the enhanced picture with a fingernail. “Paul didn’t know who these two men were. That’s why he wanted to put this photograph on television screens all over America: to see if anyone could identify these two men.”

  “No, ma’am,” said Columbo. “He knew who one of them was. I guess you’re right that he didn’t know who the other one was. But you and I know.”

  “You’re playing games,” she said sullenly.

  He handed her a Xerox of the Diana Williams sketch of the taller man in the picture. “There’s more than one way to enhance a photograph,” he said. “That was done by an artist who’s worked with me before. That’s what the man in the picture looks like today. Somethin’ close to that.”

  “A complete guess,” she said.

  “It’s not a guess, Mrs. Drury. The woman who drew that is a very skilled artist. She never saw the man, just the enhanced photo. Amazin’ likeness, don’t you think?”

  “It could be any one of ten thousand men.” Columbo stood before her. He began to walk back and forth, not pacing the floor, just taking two or three steps one way, then two or three back.

  “It could be, I s’pose,” he said. “It could be a coincidence that that drawin’ looks so much like Phil Sclafani. And it could be a coincidence that Mr. Drury had been workin’ the last six months or so to get into his computer files as much information as he could about the Sclafani Family. That puts two odd coincidences together. It could be a coincidence, too, that you owed the Sclafanis a lot of money. It could be a coincidence that you were so anxious to pay off your gambling debt that you became a prostitute to make the money to pay them. Oh, yeah, it could also be a coincidence that this morning you were the intended victim of what has all the marks of a gang hit. We got a lot of odd coincidences strung together here.”

  She shook another cigarette from her pack, and her hands trembled as she lit it. “These coincidences don’t prove what you’re trying to prove,” she said.

  “Right. But I got other evidence.”

  “Are you saying you’re going to arrest me for murder?” Alicia Drury whispered.

  “Well, I want a woman detective to do that. I’m waitin’ for Mrs. Zimmer.”

  “But you are going to arrest me? I want to make a telephone call.”

  “You go right ahead. Do anything but try to leave. If you do that. I’ll have to arrest you myself.” While Alicia Drury was on the telephone, Martha Zimmer arrived.

  Alicia returned to the living room. “So… Am I under arrest now?”

  “Sit down, Mrs. Drury. Let’s go over some other stuff. You see, you made some mistakes. You were very clever, but you made some mistakes. Lessee… you remember the day when you and Mr. Edmonds and Mr. Bell sat at that table and I played you the tape off Mr. McCrory’s telephone recorder? Remember that?”

  “I remember.”

  “Do you remember what you said when you heard that tape?”

  Alicia shook her head.

  “Well, I do. You said, ‘McCrory’s tape.’ But, Mrs. Drury, no one had told you that was a tape
from Mr. McCrory’s answering machine. He didn’t tell you. I asked him not to. There was only one way you could have known the voice you heard on that tape was from Mr. McCrory’s answering machine. You put it there, Mrs. Drury. You telephoned Mr. McCrory’s office at eleven forty-seven, when Mr. Drury had already been dead more than half an hour. It made your alibi.”

  “This is speculation!”

  “It didn’t make you an alibi anyway. What you played into the telephone for Mr. McCrary’s answerin’ machine was a tape from your own answerin’ machine… or maybe from Mr. Edmonds’s answering machine. A sound engineer caught onto that one pretty easy.”

  “Even if this is true—”

  Martha Zimmer watched Columbo with curiosity as he stood and gesticulated as he spoke to Alicia Drury. He fumbled for a cigar, found one and found matches, but thought better of it apparently and didn’t light the cigar.

  “Mr. Drury died a little before or after eleven, as the medical examiner can testify to. You tried to manufacture an alibi for yourself for eleven forty-seven, by making a conspicuous appearance in a restaurant a little after eleven-thirty and being there when you played your tape into Mr. McCrory’s answerin’ machine at eleven forty-seven. You were confident that would work, so you didn’t build much of an alibi for eleven o’clock or a little before or after. Mr. Edmonds told me you went out to Blocker Beach so you could have privacy in his car and… well… to whatever you wanted to do in privacy. But I drove out to that beach at eleven one night to see what it’s like out there at that time of night. Privacy is the last thing you’re gonna find at Blocker Beach at eleven at night, either on the beach or in a car.”

  “You can’t prove anything.”

  “We can add some more things. Mr. Drury was killed by someone who had one of those plastic cards that let you into his house. It’s true you turned over a card when you were divorced, but nothin’ says you couldn’t have had another card. Mr. Drury was killed by someone who knew where he kept things in his house, like the crowbar. He was killed by someone who knew where he hid his laptop computer in his car. He was shot by someone your height. And besides that, you’ve lied to me a lot.”

  “What lies? Name one.”

  “You told me you owed the Sclafanis somethin’ like sixty thousand dollars and that you sold yourself to men in Las Vegas to get the money to pay them off. Ma’am… That’s something only a very desperate woman would do. You also told me you own this house free and clear, from your divorce settlement. And that’s true; the city attorney ran the records for me. You could easily have borrowed sixty thousand on the house, rather than do somethin’ so hateful to you as sell yourself in prostitution. The truth, Mrs. Drury, is that you owed the Sclafanis a whole lot more than that. A whole lot more than that. Phil Sclafani gave you almost unlimited credit, because he figured Mr. Drury would pay your gambling debts—or, better than that, he could get a hook into Mr. Drury and use him. Instead, Mr. Drury divorced you, leaving you into the Piping Rock for— For how much, Mrs. Drury?”

  “I don’t owe the Sclafanis a cent!”

  “That’s right. You did them a big service, and they wrote off the debt. A big service. Now they’re trying to kill you to cover their tracks. Where you think you’ll be safer from them, Mrs. Drury: here, waitin’ for the next attempt, or in jail?”

  Alicia began to sob. “You don’t have it right… You don’t have it right.”

  “Detective Zimmer, place Mrs. Drury under arrest for the murder of Mr. Paul Drury. Read her her rights.”

  Before she read from the Miranda card, Martha stepped behind Alicia Drury and handcuffed her hands behind her back. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “We don’t have any option. It’s required procedure.”

  Eighteen

  1

  Alicia Drury remained calm. She cried for half a minute only, then just sat looking defeated and desperate. Her cheeks glistened with the tears she could not wipe away because her hands were locked behind her. Martha stepped over to her and gently wiped her cheeks with a Kleenex.

  Martha carried a tape recorder in her car, and she went out and got it.

  “You don’t have to talk, Mrs. Drury,” said Columbo. “But if you cooperate, it could help you a lot. You’re the witness that brings it all together. That’s why they tried to kill you. Do you want to make a statement?”

  “I might as well,” said Alicia bitterly. “If I don’t… You’re right. The Sclafanis will try again.”

  “And again and again, until they get ya, ma’am. You’ll be a lot better off where you’re gonna be. A lot safer.”

  Martha switched on the recorder, and with the tape running she again read Alicia Drury her rights. She asked her to confirm, on the tape, that she was speaking voluntarily. Alicia confirmed that she was.

  “Okay, how much did you really owe the Piping Rock Hotel?” Columbo asked.

  “Over two hundred thousand dollars. They gave me that much credit because they thought they could get it out of Paul. He could’ve paid it. He could’ve. But one of the reasons he divorced me was that he’d found out I was a compulsive gambler. After the divorce, a collector came to see Paul at the office. Paul flatly refused to pay a nickel of my gambling losses. He almost fired me that day.”

  “Did he know how much you owed?”

  “He had no idea. If it had been five hundred dollars, he wouldn’t have paid. You see— Paul could walk into a casino, play blackjack or roulette for an hour, win a few hundred, lose a few hundred, have a good time doing it, and walk away from the game. I couldn’t. I was sure I’d be a big winner, sooner or later. I wasn’t like the other gamblers. Oh, no. Not me. I knew the games. I knew the odds. I knew how to play. I was going to break the bank. I knew I could. Maybe I would’ve, too.”

  “So you couldn’t pay, and Sclafani put the pressure on you,” said Columbo.

  Alicia Drury nodded. “He told me I was going to pay, one way or another. He wanted more and more—always more. Eventually I was paying him half my salary—which left me with barely enough to live on, not enough, for example, to patch the stucco on this house. The next thing he did was, he made me pose for a bunch of pornographic pictures —which he wanted so he could blackmail me. Then he told me I would have to turn tricks. There was real profit for him in that. He set me up with heavy gamblers. The idea was to keep them at Piping Rock. I’d tell some sucker, ‘No, I don’t think we should go to Caesars. I really like this place. I know the tables are honest here.’ I kept them in the house and encouraged them to play—and lose. Then of course I had to do what they expected—what they’d paid for.”

  “You discouraged Mr. Drury from doing a show on the odds in Las Vegas casinos.”

  “Sclafani credited me with five thousand dollars for that.”

  “Okay. Do you want to tell us about Mr. Drury?”

  “Why? You have it all figured out.”

  “Where’s the pistol?”

  “Gone. You’ll never find it.”

  Columbo went to the window, pulled back a sheer curtain, and looked at the men continuing their investigation of the explosion. “Do you confess to the murder of Mr. Paul Drury?” he asked.

  “I might as well.”

  “Is that yes or no?” asked Martha.

  “That’s yes,” said Alicia Drury quietly.

  “Mr. Edmonds…?” Columbo asked.

  She shook her head. “He had nothing to do with it.”

  “Won’t do, Mrs. Drury. He lied about the beach, so as to make an alibi for you for the time when Mr. Drury was killed. He was with you half an hour after the murder, in Cocina Roberto. You want me to believe he dropped you off at the house, left you there for half an hour while you killed Mr. Drury and ransacked his desk, then picked you up to take you to dinner?”

  “The man’s in love with me,” she whispered. “That’s who I called a few minutes ago. I warned him. Frankly, I hope he some way escapes.” Columbo shook his head and showed her an ironic smile. “It’s not likely, ma’am. S
o, how about Charles Bell…?”

  She nodded. “He’s in on it.”

  “In fact,” said Columbo, “he’s the second man in the computer-enhanced photo, right?”

  “Right.”

  “What were they doing on the Grassy Knoll on November 22, 1963?”

  “They were there to assassinate President Kennedy.”

  2

  Two uniformed officers brought Charles Bell into Alicia Drury’s living room. His face was flushed and gleaming with sweat, and he struggled against the two policemen, compelling them to guide him along with both his arms in their grip. He wore his Topanga Beach Club uniform: the lemon-yellow slacks and pale-blue polo shirt. His hands were locked behind his back.

  “This one doesn’t like being under arrest,” said one of the officers. “He’s not ready to settle down yet.”

  “You’ll regret this, Columbo!” Bell shouted.

  “No, sir,” said Columbo. “Mrs. Drury has confessed. Whatta ya wanta bet Mr. Edmonds does? Besides, I’ve got some other evidence. I’m sure you know.”

  “Did you know he was going to try to kill me?” Alicia demanded of Bell.

  “Who was going to try to kill you?” Bell muttered.

  “Don’t play games, Charles. What makes you think you aren’t next? Or right after Tim?”

  “Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Bell?” said Columbo. “We’ve got a few little details I’d like to get cleared up. I guess I’ve told ya I have this thing—maybe you’d call it an obsession—with getting loose strings all tied up. You don’t have to give us a statement, but I’d appreciate it if you would answer a question or two.”

  Bell glowered at Alicia. “You shot off your mouth,” he said sullenly.

  “Phil tried to kill me this morning.”

  “If you think so. If he did, he’ll get you yet. There’s no place you can hide from him.”