Mayhem, Mystery and Murder

by John A. Broussard

  I enjoy my profession but I have to work 24 hours duty sometimes, but then I am happy cuz I am serving mankind, especially the sick.

  The letter went on for three pages in her small and meticulous hand, describing her family, her city and how much she wanted to come to the United States some day. But best of all it included the first of many photos of the lovely Filipina.

  Jimmy smiled at the ending, as he had many times before.

  So much for this. Hope you would consider me to be one of your many friends. I hope you will response my letter. Your hope for friend, Grace.

  And “response” he did. Never a letter writer in the past, he at first cursed the time he’d wasted in school when he could have learned to do more than graffiti. But he struggled painfully along. His own productions, with the help of a dictionary and occasional suggestions from an amused but still cynical Joe, began to improve—even to his own critical eye. And the trickle of letters from Butuan City soon became a flood, as many as two a day, and on one wonderful occasion three of them.

  But the highpoint had been the letter Jimmy had waited most anxiously for. It was the one he expected in reply to what he’d written telling Grace he was a convict. Expected? Jimmy hadn’t been sure he could expect an answer. The six-day turn-around in mail seemed to go on forever. And then came the glorious, wonderful, overwhelming answer.

  Dear Jimmy,

  I was very sad to hear you are in prison, not for me, but for you. I know you are a good man, and please know that nothing has changed. Every body make mistakes but I know you have learned your lesson and God will help you live a good way from now on. I pray for you every day, and pray that soon you will come out to the world again.

  The last words of the letter sent Jimmy into ecstasy.

  Most I pray that someday we could be together forever.

  I love you. Your Grace.

  The following weeks were devoted almost entirely to one end, getting Grace to America. At first it was how, then it was when, and finally it was the endless details and form filling for her at the immigration office.

  Jimmy moved on to the letter which had at first hit him in the pit of his stomach, but had finally turned out to be the best one in the shoe box.

  My dearest Jimmy,

  I have terrible news from the immigration office yesterday. I cry all night. They say I cannot come to America without I have a wealthy sponsor. I know you cannot do anything for that.

  But, today, God gave me a way. Auntie Fe, who I told you owns the dress shop in the City, came to visit us this morning and ask why my eyes were so red. I was almost too crying to tell her. And then she told me that she knows a lawyer here in Butuan who can get me to America without that sponsor. So we called him, and he was so nice.

  At this point Jimmy remembered the pang of jealousy he had suddenly and foolishly felt toward the distant male figure when he had first read those words.

  There is a way, Jimmy!!!! But you have to help me. He says if you insure you for a very large amount, that will be enough for the immigration office. Then you can be my sponsor. Auntie Fe says she will pay all the premiums, so you don’t need worry about that. Please let me know right away if you will do that. The lawyer will send you all the papers soon as he hear from you.

  I am so excited. I am counting the days.

  And Jimmy had been counting the days. The papers had arrived, he had had his signatures notarized as the lawyer instructed him, and he was now covered by a hundred-thousand dollar life insurance policy, the final immigration forms had all been filed, the weeks had somehow passed, and Grace’s arrival was only days away. Jimmy put the most recent letter back in the box, just as the clatter and noise of the approaching supper hour began to reverberate through the cellblock.

  He wasn’t particularly interested in food these days. The world had much too much else to offer to allow meals to be of much interest, though they had once been the central point of his day as they still were for most of the other convicts. Yes, the world had changed, but so had Jimmy. He got along far better with all but the surliest of his fellow inmates. Even Lohman Larsen, the six-foot-four terror of the prison had begun to treat him, if not with admiration, at least with what seemed to be a glimmer of respect.

  The word had gotten around. He had someone “out there” who cared for him, and who’d be waiting for him when the gates to freedom swung open. Few of the long-termers could count on having anyone waiting for them, and fewer yet had acquired such a precious relationship while serving out their time. Smiling happily, he joined the line of shuffling convicts.

  He never reached the mess hall.

  The prison authorities weren’t overly concerned about a stabbing. It was mostly a nuisance. They’d try to find the perpetrator, but it was hardly worth the effort. A report would have to be made. Forms would need to be filled out. Some do-gooders from the outside would make noises. But, as one of the guards commented while rolling Jimmy’s body on to a blanket to be hauled away to the prison morgue, “One less mouth to feed.”

  Lohman opened the most recent letter from his ex-cellmate now living in the Philippines; this one smuggled in by a cooperative and well-rewarded guard. Milton Wells had been an expert forgerer, but swore, once he’d served out his years, he’d never go back to the trade. In a way, though, he had.

  “Short and sweet,” Lohman thought as he once more felt admiration at the meticulous and remarkably feminine hand Milt could adopt at will. But envy of his former cellmate was his dominant emotion as he scanned the photo included in the letter. A grinning American type was sitting in a wicker chair, a glass held out to the camera with the frost clearly visible and a half slice of lemon clamped to its rim. On the chair’s arm a dark-skinned beauty, an arm around her companion, was flashing gleaming white teeth at the camera.

  Lohman reread and savored the letter.

  Hi Loh;

  By the time you get this, and if you carried out your end of the deal, we should be a hundred thousand richer. I’ll put your share in the account we agreed on just as soon as I get it.

  Let me know when you have the next one lined up.

  Cheers,

  Milt

  MACRAMÉ

  Bob Soltan’s home was different. There was no question about it. From the outside, the difference didn’t show. It was just an old farmhouse, remodeled to suit the life style of former city dwellers. But on the inside it was obvious Bob was running a cottage industry. Ropes and cords were the enterprise’s chief ingredient. He explained to us, Sheriff Jesse Knowlton and me, how he’d been a sail maker and had spent two years in the merchant marine.

  As he pointed out, “There’s not much call for sail making in Tennessee. Nearest I could come to using my talent at tying knots was macramé. It paid off. I’ve got several retailers who’ll buy just about anything I can produce, from plant hangers, to bed covers, to picture frames.” He waved his hand at some of the finished products spread out on the enormous table in his workshop. At six-four, and with the build of a line backer, he didn’t seem much like a macramé worker.

  The reason for our visit was Bob’s wife, Lynnette. He’d reported her missing, as had her employer, the manager of Blodgett’s Department Store. I scribbled some notes while Sheriff Jesse asked the questions.

  The story was simple and seemingly straightforward. Bob had been gone the past week on a business trip to one of his distributors in Chicago. When he got home, Lynnette was gone. So far as he could tell, none of her personal belongings were missing, there were no signs she had packed so much as her purse. Her car was parked downtown within a block of the bus station. She hadn’t left a note, and Bob said she had given no indication whatsoever she intended to leave.

  I took down her description, though in a small town like Beard, even relatively short-time residents like the Soltans were well known. Five-foot even, ninety-five pounds, dark hair, brown eyes, twenty years old. I could add on the basis of my own observation, “very attractive.”

 
As we drove back to town, Sheriff Jesse asked me what I thought. That was one of the reasons I enjoyed my job as deputy. Sheriff Jesse not only asked my opinion but actually listened to it and even acted on it sometimes.

  “Well,” I began, mulling the situation over as I spoke. “I’m inclined to agree with Bob.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I don’t think she just took off.”

  “Maybe they weren’t getting along.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve seen them around. They looked to me like what I’d call a loving couple. Especially him. It seemed he couldn’t do enough for her.”

  “And her?”

  “I’m not sure.” I gave the relationship a lot more thought.

  “How about another man?”

  “Possible. Not locally though, or we would’ve already gotten wind of it. But they both traveled some. I suppose another man could be the explanation. She met someone else, and took off with him. But there’s still a problem.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Bob doesn’t really seem much broken up about it. In fact, I wonder if he would have even reported her missing if he hadn’t known Blodgett would have reported it sooner or later—or one of her friends in town.”

  Sheriff Jesse looked over at me and grinned. “You sound suspicious. So we start by looking for a fresh grave?”

  I shook my head. “Too easy. If I wanted to get rid of a body there, it would be a lot easier to tie some rocks to it and dump it in Rail Run Pit. It’s right at the edge of his property. Easy to get to.”

  Rail Run is a long rambling creek emptying eventually into the Cumberland. On its way it makes a stop over in what we call the Pit, where I—and probably every kid, or at least every boy in Beard—had skinny dipped at one time or another. We used to say it was bottomless, but actually it’s only about a hundred-and-fifty feet deep. Apparently an old crack in the ground left over from some earthquake a thousand years ago, the bottom was a mass of crevasses and boulders. They guaranteed my next suggestion wouldn’t set well with the Sheriff Jesse.

  “We could drag there for a week and never find a thing,” he said, as expected.

  “Why not divers?”

  He snorted. “Can you picture the look on the County Commission Chairman’s face when he sees the bill for divers? We’ll drag. If we pick up something, clothes or a shoe or something like that, it will be time enough for calling in the divers.”

  So, I guess maybe mostly to humor me, we dragged the Pit, and a crew went over Bob’s property with rakes and shovels and picks, mainly looking for freshly overturned ground. After five unproductive days and no significant response to our all-point, Sheriff Jesse quietly closed the file.

  Maybe he forgot about it. I didn’t. Whenever I’d see Bob in town, I wondered. But there really was nothing suspicious about his behavior. There was no girlfriend lurking in the woodwork. And, in spite of the fact he was now at least a semi-widower and a good catch by Beard standards, it was almost a year before I saw him appearing around more or less regularly with one woman.

  Margo Flint couldn’t have been more different from Lynnette. Almost six-feet tall, even without heels, more or less blonde, and nowhere near as attractive as her predecessor, Margo eventually moved in with Bob, and before long had even ended up working for Blodgett’s. Life seemed to go on.

  But there were some changes. The years rolled by. Sheriff Jesse retired. I ran for the office and made it, twice in a row. Beard, the county seat, changed from a quiet rural community to a still quiet collection of second homes, bed and breakfast establishments and just generally a suburban county. Bob was more successful then ever and even opened up a small shop in town, with a couple of workers helping out with the rope work. One day he told me he couldn’t keep up with the demand for his products, and how the change to a tourist town had been a boon for him.

  As for me, I went on sheriffing. Maybe most people would find the kind of job I have as being pretty boring, but I was only too happy to deal with routine work. TV cop shows were entertaining, but watching them on the tube was the only contact I wanted with rapes, burglaries, homicides and the other horrors which seemed to be daily events for city law enforcement officers.

  Last week, though, I had a break in the routine. There seemed little doubt the Sheriff of Beard County now had a murder on his hands. A tourist had been fishing the Pit—without being aware fish seldom stayed in there—and had put too much lead on a line strong enough to land a whale. All he caught was a human skeleton—a skeleton weighted down with a cement block.

  Doc Ferguson quickly identified it as a female and had the ambulance crew take it off, cement block and all, to what served as the town’s seldom used morgue, a cubbyhole at the back of the station.

  I couldn’t resist dropping by Jesse Knowlton’s to tell him the news—I guess, mostly, to kind of gloat over having been right some fifteen years ago, but also to have him hear Doc Ferguson’s analysis first hand. Jesse was happy to go along, and his wife wasn’t too unhappy to get him out from underfoot for a while.

  We found Doc examining Lynette Soltan’s dental chart, a copy of which I’d advised him to pick up from the town’s dentist, where I knew Lynette had had some dental work done before she disappeared.

  Doc tilted his head toward us as we came into the room where he had the skeleton stretched on the morgue’s only table. “You were right, Sheriff. This is definitely the same woman. She had a couple of fillings since this chart was made, but there’s no question but it’s her.”

  I glowed, but didn’t gloat, and was glad I hadn’t when I heard Doc’s next words. “I’d say she’s somewhere in her mid thirties. Can’t tell for sure how long she was in the water but, from the condition of the ropes, I’d guess maybe a year or two at the most.”

  Jesse seemed to be only half-listening, as he went over and inspected the rope connecting the concrete block to the skeleton’s left leg and then checking the remnants of rope attached to the other limbs.

  I was baffled. Jesse wasn’t. He grinned at me and said, “Maybe you should go out to the Soltan’s.”

  I tried to smile back, but I don’t think I succeeded very well. “Guess so. I’ll have a long talk with Bob.”

  “I think you can skip Bob. Better have a long talk with Margo, instead.”

  If I’d been baffled before, I was completely bewildered now. “Why Margo?”

  “Look at the knots,” Jesse answered, holding up a length of one of the ropes attached to the skeleton’s leg.

  He was right. Bob would never have made that jumble of square knots and grannies.

  In looking back on what happened next, I guess I lucked out. I certainly had no proof Margo was the murderer, but I was convinced she was the only other person in the community who might want Lynette dead, so I took a chance. With me and a deputy back at the office, and after reading her her rights, she broke without even asking for a lawyer, confirming what had happened. Two years earlier, Lynnette had suddenly reappeared one day when Bob was in town at his shop. She had left the man she had run away with fifteen years before and had come back to reclaim her husband.

  Margo’s eyes welled with tears. “And she would have been able to. He never forgot her. He’d even slip sometimes and call me Lynnette by mistake. He was devastated when she left him. He didn’t want to admit it to anyone, not even to himself, even though he had proof she’d gone off with another man. Long ago I found the note she left behind when she took off. He kept it all those years. And, worse yet, when she came back she looked just the way she did in an old photograph Bob had of her.”

  Margo’s last words in her statement were. “She was so sure of herself.”

  MISTAKEN IDENTITY

  To Denise Worton, the rear seat of a stretch limousine hardly seemed an appropriate place for a serious financial transaction. But she recognized that she knew little about business and, besides, she had already decided she couldn’t be too choosy.

  An importunate lover; a dull, staid, ult
ra-conservative husband—with a double indemnity clause in his sizable life insurance policy; and a successful search for someone who would be willing to relieve her of her burden; these came together with the ideal opportunity. Manly Worton had left on a buying trip to New York. His death, thousands of miles from Seattle, could never be traced back to her. All she wanted to do was to get it over with. That was what she told herself as she emptied the contents of the envelope on the seat between her and the limo’s occupant.

  “Here are some photos of my husband, Mr.…”

  “Duke will do just fine,” he interrupted, then added, “The photos aren’t that important, but his credit card information is. Did you bring his card number?”

  “Yes, here are some receipts, but I don’t really understand what good these will do you.”

  He smiled. “I have excellent contacts with card companies, and can get immediate notice of its use. Photos won’t find Mr. Worton. Charges on his card will. But you’re sure this is his only card?” He picked the receipt out from among the photos and held it up for her inspection.

  She nodded, saying, “He would never have more than one.”

  “All I need now is the first installment. By this time tomorrow I’ll get in touch with you for the final payment. Be sure to have it on hand.”

  ***

  He couldn’t remember ever having been in such a plush hotel before, and for a moment he wondered if he stood out among the people in the lobby. But there was no indication he was even noticed as he walked over to the elevators and punched the button.

  There were definite advantages to luxury hotels. Walls were thick and insulated, carpets were deep, the ceilings were designed to absorb sound. Even a loud noise would be muffled, and he planned on making as little noise as possible. He rapped softly on the door of 595.

  The door opened after a few moments to reveal a barefoot man with a questioning look on his face. The visitor asked, “Are you Manly Worton?”