Helen Delaporte
On the twelfth of June, Henry and I celebrated our anniversary by going to the Loft Theater in Ambrose Courthouse. The play was A Doll’s House—not at all the sort of play to commemorate an anniversary—but very well staged.
It was a clear, cool evening with a nearly full moon high above the Blue Ridge as we drove the seventeen miles back to Borderville. I thanked Henry for a lovely evening. We don’t go out together—just the two of us—as often as we once did. There are so many things that pull us in opposite directions: his preparation of briefs at all hours and any number of civic responsibilities, and my music along with so many other things, not the least of which is the Old Orchard Fort Chapter. Thank God for anniversaries and an old-fashioned date with my husband.
Out of our silence Henry said, “Are men really as stupid as Torvald?”
“Torvald!” I exclaimed. “He’s not the stupid one in that play. Nora is the nitwit.”
Henry professed to be amazed at my attitude. But it is a fact. If Nora had had any sense at all, she could have made Torvald Helmer into absolutely anything she might have wanted. I have never come across in life or fiction any man as much a lump of dough as Torvald Helmer. All he needed was to be punched down several times and allowed to rise again. Any intelligent woman could have handled him and had an excellent husband in the final product.
By the time we had thrashed that subject fairly soundly, we were swooping down Johnston Street toward Division, where we were stopped by a red light.
One disadvantage of living in a town that straddles a state line is the fact that all streets change their names when they cross the border. For example, in Virginia we were on Johnston, named for the Confederate general Joseph Eggleston Johnston. But the same street continues on the Tennessee side as Polk, named for the eleventh president. Johnston, of course, was a Virginian, and Polk was a Tennessean; and never the twain shall meet—except in Borderville, Virginia-Tennessee.
I explain this because you need to know that on the corner of Polk and Division there is a snooker parlor called Dan’s. I am not clear about what snooker is, but it seems to be a masculine activity; and in our area at least, the feminists have not yet liberated it. Which is not to say that women of a sort do not go into Dan’s now and then. And if they go in, they also come out, as one was doing when we came to a stop.
I could see her quite clearly. She had a great mass of tangled hair in the style the girls are wearing, and to say that her boobs were big would be the only way to describe accurately the protuberance of her breasts. Now that women can wear skirts of any length, she had opted for almost no length at all. She was such a caricature of what she intended to be that I could hardly take my eyes off her.
But as the light changed and we began to move, I did take my eyes off her and saw behind her a dapper figure—the male version of the same ideal expressed by the young woman.
“Stop, Henry!” Stop!” I said.
Already the car was entering Polk Street.
“Why?”
“Because!”
I was not quick enough. We were already half way down the block.
“Stop! Just stop!”
Henry stopped.
“It was his coat!”
“Whose coat?”
By this time the traffic light had changed again; looking back, I saw a car going east on Division. And in it, I just knew, would be the girl in the skimpy dress and the man in Luis García’s green suede coat.
“Oh Henry,” I said, “it was—it really was the green suede coat just like the one Jacqueline Rose and that man at Rentz Auto saw Garcia wearing.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I am sure,” I said. How else can anyone be sure except by seeing? “Turn left at Broad and get back to Division as quickly as you can.”
Henry did just what I asked. He always does, but unfortunately there has to be a little discussion first.
When we merged into Division Street, there was no sign of anything at all going east.
“Henry,” I said, “that really was the coat—the coat. Find that coat, and we will learn at least something. But we will never find it now.”
Henry had pulled over to the curb. Division Street is quite well illuminated, and I could see the concern on his face.
“If we had only seen the number of his license!” I said.
“I’m sorry—I’m really sorry.”
“Of course you are, darling,” I said, and touched his cheek with my hand.
“I’ll do whatever you say.”
“It’s too late now.”
“Well …”
“Yes it is.” I kissed him. “Let’s just go on home.”
“I’ll report it. I’ll report it to both sheriffs tomorrow.”
“Forget it. It wouldn’t do any good.”
And Henry forgot it, at least for the moment; but I did not.
For the next few days the whole experience—from the finding of García’s body to the surfacing of García’s coat (if it actually was García’s coat)—kept coming to mind in bits and fragments. I was assured of the truth of what I knew—but there I had to stop. Henry had asked me how I could be sure, and I had not been able to answer.
Yes, I knew—but perhaps for the present I should put quotation marks around the word.
We “knew” that there was a connection between the Drover clan and Brown Spring Cemetery because there were Baker graves there. We knew—really knew—that Baker Comming’s mother had been a Baker. But the two things weren’t quite the same. If I looked at it from Gilroy’s point of view, I could see that it was a web of supposition such that he would think it the imagining of excitable women devoted to ancestor worship.
And the next item: We “knew” that something illegal was going on at Borderville Transfer because two old women had watched various cars come and go. And yet the very nature of Borderville Transfer required that cars should come and go. Why did we “know” that something illegal was going on there? We “knew” because we “knew” that there was a connection between Brown Spring Cemetery, where García’s body was discovered, and the Drover family. As far
as our observations at Borderville Transfer were concerned, was there anything suspicious about cars that drove into a warehouse and drove out again? Was there any reason why employees of Borderville Transfer should not garage their cars in a warehouse?
And then Harriet had reported pot being smoked at Duncan Yardley’s nightclub. I wondered if there was such a club in the nation where pot was not smoked. But Harriet had seen into Duncan Yardley’s safe. That was an eighty-six-year-old woman’s evidence: what she thought she had seen reflected in the mirror of a compact with a diameter of two inches. I knew—or did I “know” that Harriet knew, actually knew—what she had seen.
And now I had seen a green suede coat and had “known” that it was the coat worn by Luis Garcia Valera when he had been seen at the Three City Airport.
How was I to get from “knowing” to knowing? The fact that I was impatient with the distinction merely kept me from thinking as clearly as I should have liked.
But then there is the larger question of why we do any of the things we do. There are easy answers to this question, but the real answer is sometimes hard to find. I was impelled—actually impelled—that is all that I can say.
And so I finally went to see Butch Gilroy.
Butch had had to take me seriously recently—not because of what I was telling him now, but because I had been right in the past. The identification of García’s body by Hornsby Roadheaver had made it impossible to ignore me. Butch was not about to get himself into an embarrassment like that again. He had to listen, and he had to do what I asked.
I was polite, and he was polite, though neither of us was sincere. I told him about Jacqueline Rose and the agent at Rentz Auto and how both had noticed the suede coat. I also pointed out that the color was unusual and doubted that many
of the men in our area would have so expensive a coat of that color. He volunteered that he himself had never seen such a coat and promised that he would put the word out to look for it.
Sunday a week later, when I got home from church, there was a message on our answering machine to call the Virginia sheriffs office. When I did, I spoke not with Butch Gilroy but with one of the deputies. The coat had been found.
Highway 421 is a marvel of highway engineering—a marvel because it is so wretched. It stretches by tortuous route from Fort Fisher on the North Carolina coast to Michigan City, Indiana. And when it goes over the mountains, it seems to have sought out the most dangerous course it could take. One such patch is to the southeast of Borderville in Tennessee, and another is to the northwest of Borderville in Virginia.
There is a section of that road notorious for the fatalities that have occurred there. Like all such places, it is known as Deadman’s Curve.
That very morning a car had gone off the road there into a ravine, killing the driver. And in the trunk of the car had been a garment bag containing a green suede coat. The car had a Virginia license, and I don’t suppose anyone would have thought anything about the coat except that sewn into it was the label of a Santa Barbara clothing store. Would I please come to the sheriffs office and see if it was the same one I had reported to Sheriff Gilroy?
All I knew about the coat was what Jacqueline Rose and the boy at Rentz Auto had told me. But of course I went, and of course it was the same jacket. While I was inspecting it, Gilroy came in.
“I guess this solves the murder,” he said.
“It does?” I said.
“Well, of course it does. This man had the coat that Valera
man was wearing when he was killed. That ought to be pretty clear.”
Gilroy has never understood that the Spanish custom requires that the surname of the father’s family precede the surname of the mother’s family, but I saw no reason to go into that with him just at present.
I looked at Gilroy steadily for about thirty seconds while he looked at me just as steadily. What his look said was, Don’t make any more trouble for me, sister. And what my look said was, You just wait.
What I actually said was, “What is the name of the man who was driving the car in which you found this coat?”
“Highsmith.” Gilroy had no objection to telling me that. “Joseph Christopher Highsmith.”
I went on home, wrote a few overdue letters, and talked to both of the children on the telephone. About five o’clock I called Margaret Chalmers and asked her if she had been watching the Borderville warehouse that morning.
She had not. “Why? Has something happened?” she asked.
I explained.
Margaret gave a nervous laugh. “Well,” she said, “Harriet thought Saturdays and Sundays being the weekend …”
“Of course,” I said. “When I asked you to watch that place, I never expected you to be so constant. I only supposed that if you noticed something casually, you could train the telescope on it. The reason I called was that if you had seen a car leaving the warehouse this morning, and it turned out that it was the same car that was wrecked, we would have a proved link between this Highsmith and the Drover family.” Then I explained about the accident that had killed Highsmith.
“Oh, I do wish we had been watching,” Margaret said. “Usually Harriet watches in the morning while I do my errands. Then in the afternoon I take over and she goes home.
And both of us have our Sunday schools. I don’t think Harriet is teaching just now, but she is very faithful about her church, and I have the Mary and Martha Bible Class at the little Methodist church out in the valley where I grew up.”
One cannot argue about that.
I assured Margaret that no harm was done, though I privately wished the Mary and Marthas in Halifax. On the other hand, neither of the ladies would have been able to describe a contemporary automobile with any accuracy. Would they know a Honda, a Nissan, an Isuzu, an Audi, or for that matter a Thunderbird? Then again, how good would I have been in the same situation?
So I thanked Margaret. What those two ladies had done was far beyond what I had had in mind. But probably it had been pleasant for them.
That call put Highsmith’s crash pretty well out of my mind. But it was brought back to me forcefully the next morning when the Banner-Democrat headline read:
DAR MYSTERY SOLVED
An automobile fatality at “Deadman’s Curve” on Highway 421 early yesterday morning unexpectedly brought the solution to the mysterious death of the internationally noted musician Luis Garcia Valera. The driver of a 1987 Dodge that crashed over the guardrails into Willow Creek had in his possession the coat identified by Mrs. Helen Delaporte as the property of Garcia.
Readers will remember the discovery last February of the body of the murdered musician by a party of members of the Old Orchard Fort Chapter, NSDAR … .
Bless Elizabeth and her cookies!
Well, there it was. I had identified the jacket! I wondered how that would sit with Gilroy. It was beginning to be more than a little silly. Nevertheless, we would get our inches, and I feel sure that no chapter in the society has ever taken on a murder as a chapter project.
Henry, you may be sure, did his best to tease me about the news story, and I pretended that I was not teased. But after he left for the office, I was consumed with an uncontrollable desire to go out and see the wreckage.
Although it is a dangerous road, the scenery would be beautiful if the driver dared take her eye off the road. As soon as 421 leaves the city limits on the Virginia side, it begins to climb rather gently. It meanders—that’s the only word for it. On either side the knobs rise. Because access is so difficult, houses along the way are built close to the road. Behind them bluegrass meadows often climb halfway up the hills to be met with thick forest growth of pine and tulip poplar. Here and there is a patch of tobacco. In other places the trees grow almost to the road on both sides of the highway. Sometimes mountain streams flash along beside the road. And occasionally one gets a distant glimpse of a peak.
But it is not wise of the driver to look.
The thing that makes Deadman’s Curve so dangerous is the fact that it comes abruptly at the end of an unusually long (for 421, that is) stretch of straight road. I am not good at estimating distances, but I should say that perhaps one thousand feet of highway precedes the turn. The road, so straight as it is, does not appear to be sloping downward as severely as it actually is. And one is not apt to realize how fast he is going. So in spite of the sign with the wiggly line and the warning that 15 MPH is safe speed, my heart has always risen to my throat every time I have gone around that sharp turn and
looked down an almost sheer cliff at least one hundred feet to Willow Creek.
This time, to be sure, I did not go around the bend, but parked a reasonable distance from it and as far over as the berm of the road would allow.
As I approached the curve, I was impressed by the irony of the peaceful scene. To the left, hiding the curve, the trees rise high and have been taken over by kudzu, that curse of the southern states. Beyond the “jump-off” and not too far away were the trees of the other side of the ravine. And beyond that one can see the mountains along the Clinch.
I walked along the rocky berm toward the infamous curve. I could see that the guardrail had been knocked catawampus.
Then as I stood at the rim of the bluff and looked down, I saw the wreckage. What was left of the car stood on its nose. The lid to the luggage compartment had sprung open and yawned at me like a baby blue jay waiting to be fed.
There is a road along Willow Creek—so far down that it gives one the impression of looking at a topographical model. And as I watched, a wrecker came along to remove the remains of the car.
There was the rattle of a chain. The hook was attached and the mechanism made its sound as the wreck was reeled in with a further crunch of metal on stones. At last it was on the road and on its way somewhere.
It had been a black car—probably nondescript. I went back to my own car and returned home.
Shortly after dinner Henry and I were relaxing in the den when the phone rang. It was Manley from the Banner-Democrat.
“Mrs. Delaporte?”
“Yes.”
“Are you aware that Larry Highsmith, whom you identified
yesterday as having García’s coat in his possession, was shot in the head before his car crashed?”
I had not precisely identified Highsmith as having Garcia’s coat, but I was so taken by surprise and so interested in the news that I merely answered, “No!”
“The coroner reported it today about four o’clock. A thirty-thirty bullet struck him in the left temple and killed him instantly.”
There was a pause. What else could there be? I could think of nothing at all to say.
“Are you still convinced that Highsmith was García’s murderer?” Manley asked.
“I am not,” I said. “I never was. What gave you that idea?”
“I believe it was the sheriff.”
“You asked him if I was satisfied?”
“Yes, and he assured me that you were.”
“Well, I am not satisfied.”
“Do you have any evidence, other than the fact that Highsmith himself has just been murdered, to indicate that he did not murder García?”
“Mr. Manley, I am not the sheriff,” I said.
He laughed. “No, but you would be a better sheriff than he is.”
I laughed back. “I think you mean that for faint praise.” “I’ll ask you again. Do you have any evidence about this murder? Was it connected with Highsmith’s possession of García’s jacket?”
“Now, Mr. Manley,” I replied, “we know the coat belonged to Luis Garcia because of the Santa Barbara label sewed inside it. The only thing I did was to trace Garcia, find out that he was located in Santa Barbara, and, well, maneuver Gilroy into an admission of his identity.”
“And that’s all you have to tell me?”
“When and if I know any more, I shall certainly tell you
about it,” I said. “Now, tell me something. Did the investigators find any drugs on the body or in the car?”
“Why do you ask me that?”
“Because I want to know.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I have my reasons. Just tell me if they found any drugs.”
“It is interesting that you should ask. There was a nice largish package that was at first taken to be cocaine. But it turned out to be washing soda. Now, do you have something to tell me?”
“When I know something, you will be the first to hear it,” I said, and that concluded the call.
I went back to the den and told Henry that Highsmith had been killed by a thirty-thirty bullet. He pretended he wasn’t surprised, but I know he was.
“Why in the world?” I asked.
Henry laid down his book. “You’re why,” he said. “You saw that jacket. You reported it to Gilroy. He actually put out a description of the jacket. The word got back to persons unknown, who did Highsmith in.”
But wasn’t it just a bit excessive? Why couldn’t the coat simply be destroyed? And even if I had recognized Highsmith from that mere glimpse of him under the streetlight in front of Dan’s Snooker Parlor, wouldn’t it have been simpler and more satisfactory from Highsmith’s point of view if Highsmith merely vanished in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, or any other large city?
“Perhaps there are other factors,” Henry offered.
Pressed to explain, he thought for a minute and said, “Try this scenario: Suppose that Allen Comming killed Garcia. Highsmith is called in to help him dispose of the body. Afterwards, Comming tells Highsmith to get rid of García’s clothes. Five months later, Highsmith, who is something of a peacock, pulls out the suede jacket that he has stashed away
and wears it to impress the doll you saw him with last week. You stir up Gilroy. Comming is maybe tired of Highsmith for some other reasons, sees his opportunity to waste his unreliable henchman and pin García’s murder on the poor sucker. Gilroy is satisfied, you are satisfied, and that is the end of the episode.”
I refused to have any of that.
“Pride goeth before a fall,” Henry insisted.
“Save it for the next time you are lay reader,” I said.
“Very well, I’ll give you another. This time let’s say that old Dunk Yardley killed Garcia. Highsmith is one of the strippers at Dunk’s little club. Dunk has a wife likely to attract the kind of fellow who wouldn’t mind being a male stripper; and a male stripper is probably the kind that could attract Dunk’s wife. Dunk has found out about it. If he sends Highsmith away, Mrs. Dunk might go with him. He kills or has Highsmith killed. He rids himself of competition and removes any likelihood of being found out re the Garcia murder. I believe it is called killing two birds with one—could I say bullet?”
I wasn’t ready to say it couldn’t be. In principle I don’t understand why one person wants to kill another person. But Henry was on a roll.
“Here’s one that actually makes sense. Let’s forget about Garcia. Let’s say this Highsmith has been a courier. He has regularly been carrying large amounts of cocaine from here to—let’s say Chicago. But on the way he cuts the cocaine with some similar-appearing substance. The big bosses in Florida or Colombia realize that Highsmith has been cheating them out of great stacks of money. ‘Waste him,’ they say. Goodbye Highsmith.”
I agreed that that was more like it.
“Wait,” Henry said, “I’ve got it this time. Duncan or Allen killed Garcia. One or both called on Highsmith to get rid of
the body. This time, however, he sees an angle. He can keep the jacket and blackmail the Drover boys. He lets a few months go by. All this time Comming and Yardley, being unaccustomed to murder, are uneasy about certain members of the DAR who are very inquisitive and are furnishing brains to Sheriff Gilroy. Highsmith begins to insinuate that it would be a good thing if the firm cut him, Highsmith, into a more appropriate share of the proceeds. The firm says, ‘Get lost.’ ‘Oh, wait a minute,’ says Highsmith. ‘I have this jacket. If you don’t do right by me, I’ll see that it gets to one of those nasty old women in such a way that you will get the rap.’ ‘You wouldn’t,’ they say. ‘Oh, wouldn’t I though.’”
“All right,” I said. “You’ve made your point. There are any number of reasons why the Drover family might wish to get rid of Highsmith. And I really don’t know why I care. I don’t intend to search for his killer. He’s a nobody—probably deserved to get just what came to him. Oh, I don’t know why I ever got into all this.”
Henry looked at me wisely over his spectacles. “Don’t you think you are being a little crass after all the talk about the law and moral fibre?” he said and returned to his book.
The next morning the Banner-Democrat had a story at the top of the first page about Highsmith and the coroner’s report. The original assumption that death had resulted from the plunge over the edge of the ravine was corrected. And of course the connection between García’s murder and the shooting of Highsmith was strongly suggested. Then at the bottom of the page was a story with the headline:
WOMAN DENIES HIGHSMITH KILLED HARPIST
Interviewed by the Banner-Democrat, Mrs. Henry Delaporte, prominent club woman and Regent of the Old Orchard Chapter, NSDAR,
refused to accept Sheriff Calvin “Butch” Gilroy’s conclusion that Joseph Christopher Highsmith, whose body was found in a wrecked car below “Deadman’s Curve” on highway 421 early Sunday morning was the murderer of Luís Garcia Valera.
Last February Mrs. Delaporte and a committee of ladies from her chapter encountered García’s badly mangled body …
and it went on from there. Manley had made an interview of our conversation of the evening before; and although he did not actually say so, his story left the impression that I might reveal something new about the case. The DAR angle of the story had just really gotten out of hand. But Elizabeth had done her thing and she had certainly been successful. I thought it best to say nothing.
Although the prenuptial behavior of our young people has changed markedly since my day, there are still plenty of weddings in June—a fact that makes the early part of summer vie with Advent and Holy Week for the busiest time of the year for organists. The church musician is at least in control of the music of the Christmas and Easter seasons; but when it comes to weddings, there is the problem of the bride, the bride’s mother, and the bride’s girlfriend, who is going to sing.
It is a blessing that the Episcopal Church has a few set ideas about music. When all parties understand this, we get on very well. But there is much conferring, arranging, and sometimes teaching of the music to the soloist before every wedding.
At the moment I was very busy with the Barnard wedding. Laura Jean Barnard was being married on the eighteenth. Janeen, her mother, was Regent of the chapter on the Tennessee side of town a few years ago; and I have known her for
a long time in the music club. Janeen was very careful to include me in all the bridal parties; and since the Barnards are quite well-to-do, my name appeared quite frequently in the society column of the Banner-Democrat.
The wedding was in fact a very big show, which Henry could not attend because he was in court that day. So I drove alone out to the country club for the reception. There was a six-tiered cake and a champagne fountain and hors d’oeuvres of every sort as well as an orchestra that played so loudly that nobody could gossip.
After I had taken my share of the goodies and congratulated the bride’s mother on how well everything had gone and she had congratulated me on the music and told me that something would be in the mail for me in a few days in spite of the fact that she had given me a pair of brass candlesticks at the rehearsal dinner, I crunched across the gravel to the club parking lot, got into my car, and headed for home.
Driving down Whippoorwill Lane, I was within a block of home when suddenly my windshield exploded. I stopped the car immediately, almost too startled to be afraid. I found that I was not hurt. I also had the impression that a car on the other side of the park had started up and was going away at quite a clip. Not until then did I realize that I had been shot at. I had heard the sound of the gun, but the shattering of the windshield had drawn my mind away from it.
At first I couldn’t believe that it had happened. And then a feeling of panic seemed to crawl up the back of my neck. It was horrible. I jumped out of the car and ran as fast as I could. I don’t know why I didn’t turn my ankle. I did not stop until I tried to open our front door and found that I had left my keys in the ignition of the car.
I fumbled frantically for the key that I keep under the cushion of the glider and was inside the house more quickly than it seemed.
Still in a panic, I called Henry’s office. Thank God there had been an adjournment and he was there. I tried to be calm as I told him what had happened, but he had to ask me three times about it. Finally he said, “Stay there until I get there, and don’t let anyone into the house unless he is in a police uniform.”
I went into the bedroom. I was shaking all over. But when I sat down in Henry’s big easy chair, the first thing I noticed was that I had ruined my best pair of shoes.
That simple detail had sedative effect on me, and I had a little laugh, put on another pair of shoes, and then did my face again.
Almost immediately I heard a siren. A city police car came into the drive. The officer was just beginning to question me when Henry drove up. He was followed by a car driven by the chief of police himself. When Henry summons the law, he does a good job of it.
I started my tale three times before I finally got it finished.
“All right, I think that will do for the moment,” Chief Carter said. “Let’s go down where you left the car.”
Henry took me in his Chevrolet. “This is the end of your detective game,” he said very firmly. “You are not to make another move in connection with this Garcia business.”
It was an order. But at that moment it sounded like a very good order. I was perfectly willing to submit to it.
“And when your newspaper friends get to you about this, don’t say a thing about Garcia or Highsmith. In fact don’t say anything that they can report in that paper of theirs.”
I answered only with a very meek look.
“Now, you heard me,” Henry said just to make it final.
He was right. It was the publicity and my name in the paper, purportedly knowing more than I actually knew, that had got me into this scrape.
By the time we got to my Pontiac, there was a mixed group
of neighbors and others gawking at my shattered glass. And sure enough, here came a reporter with a photographer in tow.
“There she is,” someone said. “It’s that Mrs. Delaporte.” The photographer began to click away.
The officers asked me many questions about how fast I was going and how long it took me to stop; whether I had noticed a car on Chestnut Street; whether I had been followed from the club.
I hadn’t noticed anything, but one of the neighbors had seen a car with a man in it on the other side of our small neighborhood park. The car had been there since about two-thirty. I realized all too fully that I had been living in a goldfish bowl. He, they—whoever the baddies were—had read about me in connection with the Highsmith shooting and in the stories about the Barnard wedding as well and had waited there in the park until I came by.
The officers found the place where my assailants had been parked. They found a cigarette butt, for all that was worth. People were milling about. Everyone except me seemed to be having a good time. All the while the reporter was taking notes and sketching the lay of the land.
And then the television crew arrived. Remembering what Henry had said, I turned my face away and refused to talk.
But they kept asking their questions, and I kept shaking my head until Henry interposed. “Mrs. Delaporte has had enough of this,” he said. “She has just finished playing for a wedding at Saint Luke’s, she has been shot at, she has been interrogated by the officers, and you’ve got your pictures and all the story you are going to get. Shove off.”
The media people grumbled but turned and left, and Henry took me home in his car before he returned and drove the Pontiac to the house.
I did not watch the local news on television that night, but
I could not avoid the story in the paper the next morning. My picture was in the center of the page, dressed, of course, as I had been dressed for the reception at the club. I was glad at least that I had repaired my face before that picture was taken. The headline said: SHOT AIMED AT PROMINENT CLUB WOMAN. A subhead added: I Cannot Talk About It, She Says.
The story was highly colored and amazingly ingenious as it described the society glitter for a church wedding and a glamorous function at the country club only to be followed by a close brush with death.
One paragraph was headed: There Was No Warning. What followed was a paragraph that said much about my busy concerns as housewife, musician, and civic leader and what was supposedly in my mind as I had been driving down Whippoorwill.
Then the episode of the discovery of García’s body was reviewed, and the Old Orchard Fort Chapter, NSDAR, was duly mentioned, and our project of marking graves and my office as Regent and the likelihood that the attack on me resulted from my efforts to elucidate certain aspects of the Garcia case. Inches! All of it inches! I wished I had never heard of inches. This was not at all the kind of publicity the DAR was seeking.
On an inner page there was a picture of me at the organ at Saint Luke’s. It had been used several years back when I gave a recital. Beneath the picture was a resume of my career as a “club woman.” It was the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen.
Even before I could read all the hoopla in the Banner-Democrat, the telephone began to ring. The vicar was first. He was astounded, but I could tell he was also pleased that it had been mentioned that I performed at his church. Harriet Bushrow called. She had to be told everything about it. I told her
that Henry had positively forbidden me to go any further in the matter of García’s murder.
“That’s just what Lamar would have said to me,” she observed. “But Lamar is gone now, and I can do just what I please—the old darling! Was it one of those wretched Drovers that shot at you?”
I don’t know why I hadn’t thought about it, but both Allen Comming and Duncan Yardley had been at the reception at the club. It was a horrible thought that people who were accepted socially were involved in trying to kill me.
I told Harriet that we had better give up on our search for an answer to the Garcia mystery. I could tell, however, that she was unimpressed by my suggestion.
The story(s) in the Banner-Democrat did not end the newspaper coverage of the episode. Far from it. The attempt to murder the Regent of a DAR chapter was not quite the same as a man’s biting a dog; but it was near enough to it that the story received more attention elsewhere than any of the preceding accounts of what was now the famous DAR murder mystery. A friend in Gainesville, Florida, sent me a clipping from her paper, and the President General (of the DAR) in Washington called me in the greatest solicitude.
I was a wreck.
But it was already Saturday again, and I had to go down to Saint Luke’s and practice. With the altar guild busily preparing for the Sunday service and the familiar gloom of the sanctuary and the familiar sound of pipes, reality returned. I was quite content to be just a church organist.