The Death of Perry Many Paws (40 page)

I grabbed my cell phone and dialed Diane’s number.

“Diane. It’s Tamsen. Do your parents tell the same stories over and over?”

“Yeah, about as often as you find stashes of old money in your attic.”

“Do you remember a story about a woman stuck in the bathtub?”

“… and the EMTs had to get her out. Sure. That’s a cornerstone of the repertoire. Why?”

“Hard to say. There’s something about that story that I think is important. Is there more to the story?”

“Not really. She’s very large. Friendly, nice …”

“Something else …”

“Jeez. Her name is Muriel Wilson. Her sister Maxine lived with her but died right before my parents moved in. She talks about her all the time. And she had an uncle who discovered a body one time. She talks about that a lot …”

“That’s it! That’s it! Your parents were telling me about her getting stuck in the tub and then something about an uncle finding a dead body. Ernie. I know your parents said his name was Ernie. I think it was Ernest Whitcomb and she’s talking about Raymond Ketchum’s body.”

“That seems like a leap but I suppose it could be true. But why …?”

“She may know something or have heard something that would tell us why Uncle Franklin ended up with the ransom money. I need to know.”

“Why? Obviously Ernest Whitcomb couldn’t have come after Franklin after all these years to get the money. What difference to Franklin could it make now?”

“I can’t stand not knowing if he was a criminal or a victim or, especially, if this money had something to do with his murder. I need to talk to Muriel.”

“Well, she’s real friendly. I’m sure if you dropped over there around lunch time you’d find her.”

ometimes I operate on impulse and don’t think things through. Actually that happens a lot. I think it comes from being a writer and sometimes getting confused with what is reality and what is fiction. After talking to Diane I headed out to Bugg Hill in hopes of striking up a conversation with Muriel. Should I just walk up to her and say, “Hey. I heard you got stuck in the bathtub once. How did that feel?” Or maybe I could start talking about dogs and finding bodies and see if the entire uncle story would come out. I’ve noticed with Diane’s parents that you can trigger a specific story if you give the right cues.

There weren’t many people still in the dining room when I arrived but luckily I spotted someone who fit Muriel’s description right away. There were two other ladies seated at her table chatting so I skulked around outside the dining room door waiting for a chance to get her alone. Several people asked if they could help me and I politely demurred. After about ten minutes, the two ladies grabbed their walkers and headed out. One didn’t make it any farther than the sitting area outside the door, collapsed on the couch and immediately went to sleep. The other headed for the elevator.

Muriel smiled as I approached her table. I introduced myself as a friend of Ted and Thelma’s and she asked me to sit and join her. She waved to the waiter and he brought me a glass of tea. I hate tea. Hot
tea, cold tea, presweetened tea, it doesn’t matter. Apparently it was the drink of choice so I thanked him and poured in four packets of sugar hoping that would help kill the taste so I could at least politely sip while I pumped the poor woman for information.

One of the many endearing things about elderly people is that they don’t need a formal introduction to strike up a conversation. She seemed glad to have someone to talk to and didn’t need a lengthy made-up explanation as to why I was there. She told me about her sister Maxine and how she had died, leaving her all alone in their apartment. Maxine had a cat that Muriel was taking care of and she was worried that when the cat died—it was twelve years old—she would have nothing left of Maxine. I noticed that her eyes were puddling up. I reached over to squeeze her wrist and was reminded of how warm and chubby Abbey’s thighs were when she was a baby. I squeezed again, and my eyes began to puddle up, also.

“You’re a very sympathetic girl,” she told me. Actually I was being empathetic but why quibble with semantics.

“Thelma told me that you had an interesting story about an uncle who found a body in the woods. Is that true?” I gave her my wide-eyed wonder look. Cam says it makes me look like I have Grave’s disease but I think it lends an aura of innocence to my questions.

“Yes. Absolutely true. Well, not absolutely true because he wasn’t really my uncle.”

Oh great. This was going to be a big nothing. She probably made the whole thing up. “Who was it?”

“It was Maxine’s uncle.”

“But Maxine was your sister, so it would be your uncle, too,” I gently clarified. She was obviously confused.

“No, Maxine and I weren’t really sisters. People just thought we were because of our names, Maxine and Muriel, and because we lived
our whole lives together. I grew up in Maxine’s house. But we weren’t sisters. It was just easier to let people think we were. Do you see what I’m saying?” Muriel tilted her head and several chins cascaded toward her shoulder.

“Um, yes. I guess I see what you’re saying,” I replied. I wasn’t sure how to respond. Was she telling me they were lovers?

“Are you a little bit shocked?”

“Um, do you want me to be shocked?”

“Yes, a little,” she smiled.

“OK then, I’m a little bit shocked.”

She nodded. “That’s why we always told people we were sisters. I hate shocking people. It’s so unladylike.”

“Yes, I suppose it is. But there was really an uncle who found a dead man?”

“Oh yes, Maxine’s Uncle Ernie. It happened in 1938. Did you know the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped in March 1932?”

The Lindbergh baby? What did any of this have to do with the Lindbergh baby? Did Uncle Ernie kidnap him too? I could be fairly sure that Uncle Franklin hadn’t been involved in the Lindbergh kidnapping. He would have been only seven years old, and no one is that criminally precocious.

“Maxine and I were fascinated with the Lindbergh baby. He was the same age we were so we were always watching for him to turn up in school or other places around town. He never did, of course. He died you know.”

“Yes, I had heard that. Terrible tragedy. Did the Lindbergh baby have something to do with Uncle Ernie and the body he found?”

“The Lindbergh baby had a lot to do with the dead man. But it’s a long story and, well, Maxine and … Maxine and her mother and I agreed never to tell it.”

“I understand. I don’t want to make you do something you aren’t comfortable with but I’d be very interested in hearing the whole story. Maybe now that Maxine and her mother are gone …”

“Do you have stories you aren’t supposed to tell anyone?”

Oh dear. I felt like I was at a slumber party and we were playing truth or dare. This was obviously an “I’ll tell you if you’ll tell me” proposition. This woman was going to be a tough negotiator and I didn’t have much to negotiate with. I didn’t want to sic Officer Donny on her and she would probably be less likely to tell him than to gossip with me. But what could I negotiate with?

“Listen Muriel, I’d very very much like to hear the story of Uncle Ernie and the dead body, but I’m not sure what I could tell you in exchange. Maybe we could …”

“OK. I’ll tell you. But I’d feel better if I had some ice cream. Want some?”

I shook my head. She signaled to the waiter, who immediately brought her four Dixie cups and a flat wooden spoon. She pulled the top off all four of them and began eating a little from each of the four containers—chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and lemon. I waited patiently.

“It was March 1938 and the sixth anniversary of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. The papers were full of all kinds of theories even though the kidnapper had been caught and executed. The trouble all started on March 16. It was my birthday and Maxine’s mother had made me a cake, had friends over and given me a really great party …”

“Why didn’t your parents give you a party at your house?”

“Because they didn’t know it was my birthday.”

“How could they not know …?”

“They were drunks and there were nine kids in my family. Maxine’s mother took me in a couple years earlier and they hadn’t even noticed I was missing. Maxine and her mother were my family. And Uncle Ernie.”

“Uncle Ernie lived with Maxine?”

“Yes, he was the younger brother of her mother. Tall, dark and handsome—attractive, if you like that sort.”

“Everyone likes tall, dark and handsome.”

“No, I meant men. If you like men. Anyway, Ernie came home the night of my birthday and he was angry. He had been fired from Clancy’s Hardware, where he unloaded trucks and stocked shelves and stuff. Maxine’s mother took in people’s laundry but that didn’t pay much so we relied on Ernie’s income. He and Maxine’s mother fought about it all night. He was mad that she had spent all that money on a birthday party for me, someone who wasn’t even part of the family. She had insisted I was part of the family and I remember how good that made me feel.” Muriel eyes filled with tears and I handed her a napkin to blot them up. She attacked the four containers of ice cream and continued.

“Ernie started coming up with all kinds of ideas on how to get money. I asked him once why he didn’t just find another job and he said it was because he would probably just get fired again. One of the ideas he had was to go over to my dad’s and demand that he start paying Ernie something for keeping me at their house. He came back with a black eye and a cut on his arm from a broken whiskey bottle. He never went over to see my dad again. He did do some yard work for the big houses across from Camden Woods.

“Did he ever do work at the Behrends house?”

“Is that the one that looks like it should be in a Boris Karloff movie?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah. He did a lot of work there. They had a huge yard and no one who lived there knew how to do anything. By the end of the month things were getting very tense. Maxine’s mother and Ernie fought every night after Maxine and I went to bed. She wanted him to
get a steady job and he wanted something that would give him a lot of money at once. He wanted to go to the race tracks but she wouldn’t give him enough money to do that. That’s where the Lindbergh baby came in and caused all the trouble. You know, my bottom is getting numb from this chair. Let’s move into the sitting room. The furniture is real comfortable out there.”

I helped launch Muriel out of her chair and took her elbow and propelled her to the couch that did not have the sleeping grandma on it. I sat in a wing chair next to the couch so we could talk without being overheard. There were only three of us in the room and one was snoring so it was fairly private.

“You know, it’s nice of you to come and talk to me. This place is full of people with stories but not enough people to listen. We each get to say a few sentences of our story and then someone interrupts with a few sentences of their story and so it goes. I think my story is more interesting than Vivian Nothnagel’s account of her trip to Albany to see a quilt show but she keeps telling it over and over and I never get a word in edgewise. Maxine was the only one who ever listened to me.”

“I’m very interested in your story, Muriel. I think you were up to the part about Ernie doing yard work but wanting to make some quick money. And the Lindbergh baby was about to get involved …”

“Oh, yes, the Lindbergh baby. You know, the ransom was paid—$50,000—but Bruno Hauptmann still killed him. That seems so wrong. It’s not like the baby could identify him or anything. He wasn’t even two years old. His body was found in 1932 but people still claim to be him, even now. Maxine and I read everything we could about the poor Lindbergh baby. So sad.”

“Yes, it’s terrible. I may be kind of dense but I’m having a difficult time figuring out how the poor little Lindbergh baby factors into the Uncle Ernie story …”

“That’s because I haven’t gotten to that part yet.”

“Could you?”

“All right. Everything is a rush with you young people. Well, Ernie hadn’t been eating dinner with us much since he lost his job but this one night he was. Maxine and I were talking about the Lindbergh baby, which is all we had been talking about all month. Maxine’s mother tuned us out but Ernie listened as we recounted the entire crime and told him all the theories and how we were still checking out the boys our age in case he showed up. He said that if he were going to kidnap someone, he would grab them off the street and not try to sneak them out of their house in the middle of the night. Ernie also said he thought it was stupid to take someone famous because everyone all over the world would know about it. Ernie was usually pretty stupid but he had a point there.”