The Death of an Heir

by Philip Jett

  AT 629 registered to CLARENCE GADE, 1479 South Wolff, Denver; 1951 Mercury coupe.

  AT 6243 registered to VANCE JOHNSON, 4225 East Jewell, Denver; 1951 Mercury coach.

  AT 6271 registered to CLAIRE GUTHRIE TRAYLOR, 836 Steele Street, Denver; 1956 Mercury station wagon.

  AT 6203 registered to WALTER OSBORNE, 1435 Pearl Street, Denver; 1951 Mercury sedan.

  Agents now knew one of these four automobiles had carried a driver either alone or accompanied by one or more unidentified passengers to the area surrounding Turkey Creek Bridge and Ad Coors’s ranch on several occasions, including the Sunday and Monday before the disappearance, and hadn’t been seen since. All agents had to do was check each of the four Mercurys to determine if one was yellow. That wouldn’t take long.

  Since it was a weeknight, the four suspected vehicles should be parked at their owners’ residences.

  “Come in, 31. Over.”

  “This is DN31. What you got? Over.”

  “Negative on Steele Street yellow. Repeat, Steele Street not yellow. Two tone, white and blue. Registration says ivory and turquoise. Over.”

  “Roger,” said Agent Paul Casey. “Over and out.”

  A few minutes later, the same message came in from two agents checking out the Mercury belonging to the owner on South Wolff Drive. It turned out to be pale green.

  Agents in squad car 31 drove along Pearl Street, then headed into the alley behind the Perlmor apartment building. They didn’t spot a yellow Mercury.

  “You get out here and go up the side. Meet me out front,” said Agent Casey.

  “Right,” replied Agent Art Baier.

  The black sedan parked in the darkness between streetlights on Pearl Street. The Perlmor apartment building was across the street.

  “DN56, this is DN31. Got a match on the yellow Mercury? Over.”

  “DN31, just making visual. Negative. Color is dark blue. Over.”

  “Roger that. Over and out.”

  The agent stepped out of the car as his partner crossed the front lawn in the shadows and rejoined him.

  “Got a negative on the third Mercury. This has got to be our man. You cover the back. I’ll go in the front.”

  Agent Baier trotted across the front and along the side to the alley and positioned himself at the rear door.

  Agent Casey walked up the steps and buzzed the manager. The door lock clicked, and he entered casually so not to raise suspicion. He knocked on a door near the lobby stenciled with the word MANAGER.

  The door opened, and a woman about fifty with glasses and graying hair appeared.

  The agent introduced himself, showing his identification. “We’re looking for a man whose automobile is registered to this address. His name is Walter Osborne.”

  Mrs. Merys said, “Oh, yes, Mr. Osborne in 305.”

  “Is he in his room now?” asked the agent, pulling his suit coat back to reveal an FBI-issued .38-caliber revolver in a leather holster strapped to his shoulder.

  Soon Agent Baier came inside, and the two agents with guns drawn stood on each side of the door to room 305. One knocked. “Open up. FBI.” No response. The agent knocked louder and longer. “FBI! Open the door!” Nothing. The agent motioned for Mrs. Merys to reach around and unlock the door with the master key hanging from a safety pin stuck in her dress. “Step back.” The agents shoved open the door and rushed in, pointing their revolvers about an empty room.

  “I told you he’d moved out,” Mrs. Merys said.

  The agents surveyed the one-room studio apartment. Only a couch and kitchen table and chairs remained. One opened the closet. Empty. Another checked the bathroom. Nothing.

  “Radio this in,” said Agent Casey to his fellow agent. “The subject has fled. And get the forensics unit over here to dust the apartment for prints.”

  The agent walked with Mrs. Merys down the stairs to her apartment. Soon, he was joined by Agent John Goodwin, who carried out the questioning. “Tell me exactly when Walter Osborne left and what you heard and saw.”

  “Like I told you, he left Wednesday morning.”

  “That would be Wednesday the tenth?”

  “That’s right. He buzzed me the night before, about 9:00 p.m.”

  “Tuesday night the ninth?”

  “Yes, and he told me he’d locked himself out of his room and needed me to let him in.”

  “Did he seem nervous or disturbed?”

  “No, he was the same as usual. Polite, nice. He apologized for having me come up to let him in. He was the same as always. That’s when he told me he was moving out and had some things he wanted to give to Goodwill. I was so surprised he was leaving.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “’Cause he’s lived here almost four years. Plus, we require a month’s notice to terminate, and he’d already paid his February rent in full. I told him I’d have to keep the rent, though I’d try to let his apartment before the end of the month and mail him a refund.”

  “Did he leave a forwarding address or tell you where he was going?”

  “No, he didn’t seem worried about the money. All he said was, ‘I’m going back to school, to the University of Colorado in Boulder. I guess I’m kind of old for that.’ And I told him, ‘No, not necessarily. But I’m sorry you’re going. You’re such a good neighbor.’”

  “Did he leave that night?”

  “No. Harry saw him about 8:30 the next morning around back carrying out some of his things.”

  “Harry?” asked the agent, scribbling notes.

  “He’s my husband, Eugene Harry Merys. He’s an electrician and helps out with the management in his spare time.”

  “Anyone else see Osborne or his car?”

  “Viola Borch said she saw him about 7:30 that morning loading belongings into a dirty car parked on East Colfax, which is around the corner. We both thought it was strange because Mr. Osborne’s car was always neat and clean. Always real shiny. He was out there cleaning on his car twice a week. But Viola said this car was spattered with mud along the sides and even up on the windows.”

  “Do you know the color?”

  “Viola only said it was muddy. You can ask her. She’s in room 304, across the hall a bit from Mr. Osborne’s old room. She did say the front and rear door handles were both in the middle of the car if that helps any.”

  “So the color wasn’t yellow?”

  “I don’t know. She just said muddy.”

  “Ever seen him in a yellow Mercury?”

  “No. He’s had … oh, my … Mr. Osborne’s owned a bunch of cars since I been managing the Perlmor. He had a blue-and-white Chevy, a blue Ford wagon, and a gray-and-white Ford, but nothing yellow that I’ve seen.”

  “Go on. Anybody else see anything?”

  “One of my tenants said she saw him at 5:30 that morning carrying stuff out to his car. Almost bumped into him.”

  “What’s the tenant’s name?”

  “Vivian Cherveny. She’s in 306.”

  “What was Osborne’s room like when he left?”

  “The room was clean. Mr. Osborne always kept a clean apartment. I was surprised, though, at the amount of dust on the floor.”

  “See anything left behind? Did you remove anything?”

  A buzzer interrupted. Mrs. Merys shooed the tenant at her door away with a quick answer.

  “Sorry. Okay. You asked if I took anything out of the room? I did. Was that wrong? I didn’t know he was in trouble. I cleaned the room for the next tenant.”

  “Can you tell me what you removed?”

  “Well, he left behind that chrome table and chairs you saw in there. I took out a floor lamp and a portable television set. It’s a GE. And there were two metal poles in the closet. I took them down to storage. And there were some very nice polished boxes in the trash chute along with a lot of frozen food. I pulled the boxes out and didn’t incinerate them. He had some stuff in storage, too. It’s still there.”

  The agent asked Corbett’s former landlady to t
ake him to the basement. The agent inspected the items in a storage locker made of wooden slats and chicken wire marked 305. Behind the wire were two aluminum tent poles, a small black-and-white television set, a fan, a gasoline can, and a twelve-piece aluminum picnic set.

  “Did you ever see a typewriter in his room?”

  “Yes. I try to check my tenants’ apartments every quarter to make sure they’ve not made a rat’s nest out of them. I do remember seeing a typewriter. It sat on the kitchen table.”

  “Was it a portable or upright?”

  “I can’t remember. Might’ve been an upright. It was covered.”

  “See any guns in the room?”

  “Oh, yes. They were in gun cases about the same size as Harry’s rifle and shotgun.”

  “See any pistols?”

  “No, I don’t remember seeing a pistol.”

  After Agent Goodwin finished examining Corbett’s storage space, he asked to see the trash chute and incinerator. Mrs. Merys showed the agent the boxes she’d pulled out of the chute but didn’t incinerate. Goodwin was very pleased. They weren’t boxes. They were polished black leather cases for four sets of handcuffs. Monte Carlo was engraved on the back of each case. She also showed Goodwin a Benjamin Moore five-gallon bucket full of metal chain her husband had found behind the apartment building.

  While Agent Goodwin continued to interview Mrs. Merys, other agents began arriving. Corbett’s apartment, the trash chute, the incinerator, the garbage bin out back, and the apartment’s storage room were all dusted for prints. They ransacked the place, searching for store receipts, shell cartridges and casings, blood, paper, envelopes, used typewriter ribbons, stamps, maps, photographs, spent film, a diary, anything that might provide a clue. But the only piece of evidence retrieved was a single fingerprint on the Benjamin Moore paint bucket storing the metal chain. Corbett had done a thorough job wiping away all signs of his existence, with the help of a tidy landlady.

  The agent ordered that the print be checked not only with driver’s license records but with criminal records, too.

  The tedious process of visually comparing thousands of fingerprints against those on the driver’s license application of Walter Osborne and the bucket could take months. There were nearly 150 million prints on file in the FBI’s national repository. Fortunately, it didn’t take long. The FBI headquarters in Washington would discover a match in just three weeks.

  CHAPTER 11

  The signal was sent. On page 31 of Sunday’s edition of The Denver Post, set to hit newsstands at 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, in the small-print classifieds devoted to farm implements, lay the tiny message, an ad without a telephone number:

  JOHN DEERE. 1957 model 820, 69

  h.p. tractor for sale. King Ranch,

  Fort Lupton, Colo.

  At long last, Mary thought, they’ll call. Maybe they’ll let me talk to Ad or at least hear his voice. She’d been falling in and out of sleep brought on by sedatives all day. But starting at 5:00 p.m. sharp, Mary spent the hopeful evening in the den accompanied by cups of coffee, substituting cigarettes for sedatives as she anxiously awaited a telephone ring. Bill and Joe had joined her, all hoping the kidnappers would be anxious to initiate the exchange despite the bad weather.

  Mary’s friend Cecily Kendrick arrived around seven o’clock, bringing dinner with her. She and Mary talked late into the evening. It was nearing 10:30, and Cecily was about to leave when—

  The telephone rang. FBI agents clicked on the recorder and contacted the Golden Telephone Company to trace the origin of the call. Mary leapt from her chair and stood beside the telephone. She glanced at the two agents, who gave her the thumbs-up signal.

  “Hello,” Mary said softly, looking at Bill and Joe.

  “Is this Mrs. Coors, Mrs. Adolph Coors III?” asked a serious voice.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Don’t say anything. Just listen. I’ve got your husband. Don’t try to find him. Only I know where he’s hidden, so if you ever want to see him again, you’ll do what I say.”

  “Is he okay? Is he hurt? Can I talk to him?” Mary asked frantically.

  “I said don’t talk.… Your husband is fine, for now. So listen carefully. I want $60,000. Old bills. All twenties. Put the money in a briefcase and leave it on the back porch of the old sawmill a half mile outta town on Tuesday, midnight. Don’t tell the coppers or else. Understand?”

  “You say you want $60,000?”

  “That’s what I said. Used twenty-dollar bills.”

  “$60,000? But your letter said $500,000.”

  An agent stood and shook his head. There was a short pause.

  “Hello?” said Mary.

  “Sure I did. This is only the first installment. On second thought, forget the installments. Let’s stick to the original plan. I want the full $500,000 put in a briefcase and left at the old sawmill. You have until Tuesday, midnight. No tricks.”

  There was a click, and the line hummed.

  “Hello? Hello?” A perplexed Mary looked at the agents.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Coors,” said the agent, clicking off the recorder. “Just a piggyback kidnapper who learned about the kidnapping in the news. A con artist trying to extort money out of you. I’m sorry. We’ll have to keep waiting for the real kidnappers to call.”

  Mary let out a scream. “How sick can someone be? What monsters! Don’t they know Ad’s life’s at stake? Don’t they know what we’re going through?”

  She began to cry and hurried toward her bedroom. Cecily followed. They’d been friends since childhood. Mary fell on the bed, crying longer and louder than she had since the first day. Cecily didn’t try to stop her. She rubbed Mary’s back and patted her, saying nothing until Mary rolled on her side and spoke.

  “Ad’s not coming back, Cecily. He’s dead. I know it.”

  “You’ve got to believe Ad is out there right now and he’s coming home. The telephone could ring any minute and you’ll hear his voice, just like that.”

  “Oh, Cecily, that would be so wonderful.”

  There were no other calls that night.

  * * *

  Special Agent Werner was busy following his new lead, Walter Osborne, and relaying information of the case’s progress to J. Edgar Hoover in Washington. Hoover told Werner to keep pressing, not to let up. Find Osborne. Though Hoover was overseeing cases involving international criminals and Soviet and Cuban intrigue, COORNAP was unquestionably the most important domestic case to the FBI director at that moment. And that was a problem for Werner. He had no idea who or where Osborne was.

  * * *

  February is the coldest month in Colorado, filled with knee-deep snowfalls, blistering winds, and treacherous roadways. A strenuous, grueling time for humans and livestock alike. A month in which the blue grama grass has turned pale and brown, amid everything colorless and dreary save the scattered mountain pines. A month indicative of Mary’s present situation. Yet rare beams of sunlight broke through the ashen clouds that Sunday morning as six inches of snow continued falling. Mary opened her eyes to a room filled with light. The night had been a long vigil.

  The alarm clock beside her bed read eleven o’clock. Why should I get up? Just another day of waiting, worry, and anguish, she thought. On the dresser, she noticed a small package wrapped in red paper and a white bow beside an envelope containing a card. It was Valentine’s Day. Mary had planned to attend a Valentine’s Day dinner with Ad at the Denver Club the night before. The club would be decorated with red and pink hearts and white streamers and other papier-mâché creations. A tiny bouquet of roses would be the centerpiece of each table, covered with red, white, and pink tablecloths. She and Ad would share some wine and toast to each other, their children, their health, and their future. They’d exchange cards whose printed words eloquently expressed each other’s love and appreciation. And there would be gifts and intimacy. Mary opened her eyes and saw her gift for Ad on the dresser.

  She thought about Valentine’s, Ad, and even t
heir wedding. It would be their twentieth wedding anniversary that fall. What a grand day that was, she thought.

  “Miss Mary Urquhart Grant is engaged to be married to Adolph Coors III of Golden,” The Denver Post declared in September 1940. “This announcement, made Monday, tops the season’s news of socially important events, for it heralds the union of two outstanding families and has long been anticipated by Denver’s most exclusive groups.”

  At twenty-five, Mary was a beauty. Her photo in The Denver Post announcing her engagement witnessed that fact.

  “Of primary interest to the city’s most prominent circles is the news that Miss Mary Urquhart Grant … one of the loveliest members of the exclusive younger set is betrothed to Adolph Coors III,” read The Post. “A radiant personality and quiet charm are combined in Miss Grant to make her one of the most sought-after members of fashionable society. She reflects the aristocracy that has marked her family through its many generations of service to Colorado.”

  Mary had tucked those newspaper clippings safely away with her wedding photos and scrapbooks. She hadn’t flipped through them in a long time, but could remember many of their words, words written by family that left her embarrassed at the time. She especially remembered the parties. “Prenuptial parties for Mary Grant and Adolph Coors to enliven the season,” The Post heralded. There were endless bridal parties. Mary remembered all the fun she had at the many “beautifully appointed” breakfasts, buffet suppers, dinners, cocktail parties, and other “smart entertaining” for the betrothed couple hosted by family and friends at private residences and country clubs. How she loved them; but Ad, he would have preferred a picnic lunch on a butte far away.

  Their wedding day was November 15, 1940. Marie Lewis from Baltimore was her matron of honor, and Ad’s brother Bill was his best man. Her six bridesmaids were dressed in velveteen gowns in a soft shade of copper with empire-style hats to match. She could still see them vividly. They carried bouquets of yellow calla lilies down the aisle while ushered by Ad’s close friends. Her father took her arm and stood waiting for the music to cue her march to the altar, where she could see that Ad was so nervous, hoping not to stutter “I do,” but he’d never looked more handsome.