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Authors: Graham Landrum

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BOOK: The Rotary Club Murder Mystery
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Harriet Bushrow
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D
ogs! It's funny about dogs. Papa always had a collie or two. In the summers they would lie on the porch beside his old rocking chair. Dear old Papa! He was fifty-five, and I thought he was old, old, old.
But dogs! There are three dogs in this story. There was Alice Hollonbrook's cocker, the one that had to be fed—and that was why Paula Stout had the house key and was a suspect. Then there was the mutt that belongs to Maud's grandchildren. It doesn't have anything to do with the story; it was just a dog. But the other dog was important, and I am going to tell about it now.
The fact is, this little dog allowed me to see something that I would not have seen otherwise. When you are raised Presbyterian the way I was, you just have to believe that everything works out the way it is supposed to. And I feel sure this little dog was part of the plan.
But let me explain.
You see, Maud's house is right on the corner—neat little lawn and great big trees along the front but hardly any side lawn at all and no trees there—so that the room where I was staying
was practically on the cross street. On the other side of that cross street, there was a house where the lady had a little Chihuahua.
She was just crazy about that Chihuahua—would sit on her patio in back of her house and hold that little dog under her chin, and you'd think she was going to kiss it any minute.
And I admit it was cute the way that little thing would run around the yard with its little rear end wiggling until it almost shimmered.
And of course it just went
yap, yap, yap.
Well this woman's house has a back porch that is screened in, and the little dog has his bed out there. Every time something would wake it up, it would just bark and bark—and if I was sleeping, that would wake me up. Fortunately, Maud lives in a neighborhood where there is very little to disturb a dog.
Well, Maud's garage is so close to the side street that there is scarcely any driveway to it at all. I had to park my old DeSoto on the street, which meant that at night my car was pretty close to the porch where the little dog was sleeping. So I really didn't have to worry about the car with that little dog right there. He was better than a burglar alarm.
Well, as I was coming back to Maud's house after I had my visit with Rose Moody, it was so hot and humid, I could hardly breathe. Maud said surely it would rain. And about 7:30, it did.
Thunder and lightning! Gracious! It was a regular mountain storm. Just buckets of rain! And then it was over and so pleasant and cool that we turned off the air conditioning and opened all the windows.
Maud and I sat there in her living room and reminisced until 9:30 about the girls we used to know at Catawba. And then I retired to my “couch of repose,” expecting to enjoy my rest.
It was a fairly bright moon the night after my latest “escapade,” and my slumbers were getting along just fine when that little Chihuahua began to yap and woke me up. That scamp was so excited, I couldn't believe he was just barking at an old
tomcat. So I reached for my specs on the night table and got up and looked out the window. Parked about ten feet in front of my DeSoto was a big old square-looking van with the motor running. Of course I couldn't tell the color of it, but it must have been a light color because it looked gray in the moonlight.
And there in the light from the street lamp was a hefty man squatting by the side of the DeSoto, pushing something under it. He was there a second, and then as fast as he could he kind of hobbled to his van and jumped in. His motor raced up, and off he took, cutting the corner at the next street so short that his rear wheel went right over the curb.
Then!
All of a sudden there was this brilliant flash under my car and lots of smoke. My ears were deafened with an explosion that shook Maud's house till the teacups rattled. There was another brilliant flash when the gas tank exploded.
“Call nine-one-one,” I yelled.
I think Maud was already halfway to the phone.
I threw on my robe, got my dentures in my mouth, and stuck my feet into my slippers. By the time I got out of the house, my poor old car was just a torch.
The woman across the street was having hysterics—thought something had happened to the little dog, I suppose. Other neighbors began to come out.
Then we heard the fire engine whining away and hooting, and the police car, and the little dog yapping as much as ever. We had quite a symphony.
It was so exciting, I hardly had time to think that I had lost my dear old car.
Maud joined me on the sidewalk.
“Oh, Hattie, what happened?” she asked.
“Somebody blew up my car,” I said. And that made me think: He blew up my car to tell me to quit nosing around Stedbury, North Carolina.
But it also told me that we were absolutely right about
Charles Hollonbrook's death. Because, you see, there would have been no cause to bomb my car if somebody hadn't wanted to frighten me away; and that person must have been the one who killed Charles Hollonbrook.
Now who was the man that blew up my car?
He had looked to be normally tall—maybe five foot ten or eleven, and he was stocky and ran with a sort of limp. I had the impression that he might have been in coveralls. A working man—painter? plumber? electrician? Some line of work where a man could do his job without being what you might call nimble.
Well, the firemen got there with the hook and ladder truck and I don't know what all. But my old car was already done for. They put out the flames that were burning inside—used chemicals. The poor old thing just looked pitiful. Then the police stood around and watched the firemen.
One of the policemen came over to where we were standing. I must say we looked a fright. My hair was in every direction, but Maud had hers in a net.
“Ma'am,” the officer said, “do you know whose car this was?”
Well, he certainly had the right tense of the verb. “It was mine,” I said.
“I'll have to take down the particulars,” he said. “Is there someplace where we can have light?”
Maud had the kitchen light on already. So we just stepped in, and he began asking me about everything—my name and the year and make of the car. That really surprised him. And when I told him it only had forty thousand miles on it, he could hardly believe it.
I told him about the little dog and how it woke me up—and about seeing the man, but I didn't describe him very well because if it sounded like I had recognized him, it was perfectly obvious that next time he blew up anything it would be me. And, of course, I didn't at all see plainly enough to be able to
identify the man in a way that would satisfy the police. But I had an idea about his height and build. And then there was the lumbering way he walked. If I saw somebody like that, I made up my mind I'd look at him very closely just on the chance it was the same man.
Maud brewed coffee—sort of an extra-early cup, don't you know. The young policeman was very pleasant and nice. After he had asked me all kinds of things and written down my answers, I said, “And now what is
your
name?”
He was Joe Bell and just as nice as he could be—married and has three little boys—has been on the force for five years—wife comes from Florida.
While he was having the second cup of coffee, Maud said, “After all these years of reading about car bombs—in Northern Ireland and London and all those places—I never would have thought we would have one right here in Stedbury.”
“Oh, this wasn't what you would call a ‘car bomb,'” the young man said. “Whoever set this one off didn't use anything as fancy as that.”
When he looked into our faces and saw how curious we were, he went on: “Monday, we'll have an expert look at the wreckage and determine exactly what explosive was used. But if you ask me, it was blasting gelatin—the same stuff any farmer might use to blow a stump out of his field.
“For this job, I'd say,” he went on, “he had about four sticks of that stuff with a cap and a fuse. The fuse sets off the cap, and the cap sets off the gelatin. Then the gelatin sets off the gasoline, and that is it.”
After that nice Officer Bell left, Maud and I sat around talking about it quite awhile before we went back to bed. It was just so clear that the explosion and all was a message for me.
Now you might ask how the man knew to blow up the right car. A DeSoto is a landmark in this day and age. I couldn't have been much more obvious if I had rolled into town in a Detroit Electric. Any DeSoto in Stedbury was bound to be my car, and
it wouldn't be too hard to find out that I was staying with Maud Bradfield.
I thought about Jimmy Hollonbrook and how interested he had been in my car that day when I pretended it had stalled on me. Could that boy have had something to do with the man that blew up my car? Jimmy thought he was going to have money—lots of it—from his father's estate. All those big houses in Hollondale—if you didn't know that Charles Hollonbrook was just about insolvent, you would think he was big rich. The boy could have offered this man no telling what to come out and dynamite my car. And I had a feeling that Jimmy Hollonbrook would know the kind of folks who would do things like that.
But then, all the other likely suspects had undoubtedly seen my car. So that didn't get me any closer to who the culprit was: Jimmy Hollonbrook, Linda Hollonbrook, Kimberlin Mayburn, Paula Stout—maybe even Alice Hollonbrook—and I couldn't even rule out Ben Rawlings. I had no idea who did it, but all of those people knew about me.
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Henry Delaporte
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O
n Sunday afternoon, I went to the office to work on a brief for a couple of hours. When I returned home, Helen had received a call from Harriet Bushrow in Stedbury, detailing the bombing of her DeSoto. Helen reported that Mrs. Bushrow was cheerful in spite of the loss of her car and her failure to find the thread that would unravel our mystery. If anything, she seemed not only undeterred but more determined than before in her efforts to find the murderer of Charles Hollonbrook.
Helen reported further that Mrs. Bushrow was planning to return to Borderville on Tuesday to tend to some domestic matters, put in a claim for her insurance, and negotiate the purchase of another car.
It is an understatement to say that I was conscience-stricken over the danger to which the Baker Street Irregulars had subjected an eighty-eight-year-old woman by encouraging or even allowing her to investigate a murder. I was, in fact, horrified.
Helen, on the other hand, pointed out that her friend Harriet Bushrow was a free and vigorous spirit who would go her own way and do her own thing, regardless of the Baker Street Irregulars.
“Harriet never fails,” Helen assured me. “She will come through.”
Nevertheless, at the very least, Rotary had an obligation to Mrs. Bushrow in the loss of her car.
The reader, never having seen the car, may not appreciate its significance. Originally of a blue color, over a period of thirty years it had faded, and a copperish tinge had invaded the blue until the surface was somewhat iridescent in bright sunshine. Mrs. B. kept the vehicle in perfect condition; and why should that not be so? I understand from my wife that Mrs. B. drives only to church, market, and club meetings.
The car is, nevertheless, in use frequently enough that it is one of the local sights of our small city. When it is on the street, it is pointed to, and people say, “That's Mrs. Bushrow. She's still driving that old DeSoto.”
There was all the more reason, then, to lay the matter of the DeSoto, its destruction, and Mrs. Bushrow's predicament before the Irregulars.
Accordingly, the Irregulars convened at the close of the next Rotary meeting.
The announcement about the car was a shock to all the men except Fred Middleton, with whom Mrs. Bushrow had also talked by telephone.
The question immediately was what to do about it.
“It's an obligation,” Seth declared. Seth Newgent is what I like to think of as the typical Rotarian. There is no subtlety about him, but he volunteers among the first whenever there is a need.
There was a pause after Seth's declaration.
“Well, I suppose it is,” Trajan agreed. “What are we going to do about it?”
Old Mr. Garrison had his tobacco pouch out and was filling his pipe. “She still had that old DeSoto!” he said. “I don't suppose there is any possibility of repairing it.” He put the pipe
in his mouth, struck a match on the bottom of his chair, and got the pipe going with a few loud gurgles.
“No,” I said. “The car is a total loss.”
“Then we must replace it,” J.L. said.
Once J. L. Garrison had said it, the question was not whether it should be done, but how. Some thought the replacement should be paid for out of the club treasury. Others were doubtful that the board would approve so large a sum. It was pointed out that our club had already made contributions to the literacy program, the Boys Club, the Girls Club, the Shelter for Battered Women, the Janie Boyer Home, and the Borderville Ballet.
Finally, J.L. calmed the waters by stating, “This doesn't have to be a new car. Mrs. Bushrow would never think of anything like that. What she needs is a good, nice-looking used car with twenty thousand miles of use left in it. A car like that will last her the rest of her life, and she'll be happy as pigs in the mud.”
And so our Irregulars, irregular and unauthorized as we were, created, with me as chairman, along with Leon Jones and Stanley Ferguson, a committee of three to consider what should be done about Mrs. Bushrow's car.
In my new position, I said, “Is there any further business?” I meant it halfheartedly as a joke, but it was also an effort to break up the meeting.
“Yes,” Trajan spoke up. “Has Mrs. Bushrow found out anything?”
Knowing that Fred had spoken with Mrs. Bushrow, I looked at him.
“She has quite a list of suspects,” he said.
Then it developed that some of the men had an itch to involve themselves in the gumshoe work. Fred agreed to confer with Harriet and see what help she might be able to use.
The meeting of the Irregulars broke up.
Mrs. Bushrow was already in town, having come back from Stedbury that morning. Fred conferred with her and learned
that she had some interest in a Bucky Patterson, golf pro at the Playa Grande Club near Lauderdale.
Stanley Ferguson's wife came from Lauderdale. Stan has a brother-in-law down there who is a golfer. Fred got in touch with Stan, and Stan agreed to ask his brother-in-law to investigate.
BOOK: The Rotary Club Murder Mystery
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