Jeff Sherratt - Detour to Murder

“We were dealing with a tough crowd. Some of our clients were directly involved with the mob.”

“Just for argument’s sake, Mel,” Sol said. “Suppose someone… a woman, perhaps, back in 1945 had documents or something, real strong evidence, proof that Byron was as crooked as the day is long. And suppose the woman tried to blackmail him. Maybe threaten to rat him out to the State Attorney General, or the Feds. Do you think it’s possible, just possible, that Byron would’ve had her eliminated?”

Sol was talking about Vera. Practically asking Mel straight out if Byron had murdered her at the motel back then. Or if, perhaps, he had the Bulldogs do it for him.

Mel lowered his head and said nothing. We kept silent, watching him. The moment of truth had arrived. Would he actually cop to a murder, a capital crime that had no statute of limitations? A few seconds later he ran his hand through his hair and looked at each of us one at a time. His eyes reflected the sadness in his soul.

“Mel,” Sol said softly. “You can talk to us. We’re not here to make judgments about you or your past. We’re only interested in Byron.”

Mel glanced around the kitchen and focused on a ceramic red rooster hanging on Rita’s wall next to a copper pot. “Are you talking about a certain murder that happened out in the valley in ’45?”

“Yes.”

He kept staring at the rooster. “About the dead woman they’d found at a sleazy motel, the woman with a telephone cord twisted around her neck?”

“Yes, Mel, I am. And if you know anything, now is the time to come clean.”

“Yeah, I know all about it.”

“Tell us, Mel,” I said.“Do you know if Byron murdered Vera, the woman with the cord around her neck?”

“I couldn’t swear he killed her. But if he did, he didn’t send us to do the job,” Mel replied. “Yet something wasn’t kosher. Right after the murder happened, Byron got real antsy. Wanted to get the case over with fast. When the cops picked up Roberts, Byron pounced on it. Took over the prosecution himself. The DA had nothing solid on the guy so he made up some cock-and-bull story. He railroaded the poor bastard right into a jail cell.” Mel hung his head. “Hell, I knew Roberts was innocent. I let it go.”

“Goddammit, that’s my client you’re talking about!” I snapped. “You should have done something.”

Mel said nothing, just looked at me.

“Go on, Mel. Then what happened?” Sol asked.

“Then the shrew who owned the motel started making waves. Threatening to sue everyone over the lousy fingerprint powder in the room, loss of income, cockamamie bullshit like that. She wrote letters to anyone who’d read them. Byron didn’t need the publicity. So he sent us out there to talk to her. You know, get her to dummy up. Imagine that, sending the Gangster Squad to hassle a lady like her. A private citizen, no less. I told Rinehart that Byron was making a big mistake.”

“Did you and your gang actually go see her?” Rita asked.

“Yeah, afraid so. We went to her office in broad daylight and it got out of hand right from the get-go. We didn’t want to bang her around, nothing like that, just frighten her a little. But the lady went nuts. Started screaming, waving her hands, making a racket. People stood outside gawking. They thought we were robbing her. Someone called the cops. We heard the sirens coming and got the hell out of there.”

“Bless her heart,” I said in a quiet voice.

“That was the end of it?” Sol asked.

“No, not by a long shot. Next thing you know, we get a call from the LAPD chief of detectives, Joe Reed. Byron had him under control, but Reed warned us that the motel lady was adamant about pressing charges. So Byron hired a private attorney to settle the matter. At first she only wanted fifteen hundred for her loss of income. What the hell, petty cash. The lawyer paid her off. Then she wanted more.”

“More?” Sol asked. “How could she pull that off?”

“She had one of those newfangled wire recorders in her office, hidden under the counter. When we came through the door, she flipped it on. Secretly recorded the whole damn thing, all our threats, everything. I heard later that she’d blackmailed Byron. The recording would’ve killed his shot at the governor’s office. He set up a blind irrevocable trust at some bank to pay her a monthly stipend. Once the trust was set up, she turned over her copies of the recording.”

Sol and I looked at each other. We realized that Mel was talking about the funds deposited in Mrs. Hathaway’s bank account every month for the past twenty-nine years, the money her niece Gayle Goodrow had told me about.

“Byron jumped our asses over the affair,” Mel added.

“So the money Mrs. Hathaway received at the end of the month had nothing to do with Vera’s murder,” Rita said.

Mel shook his head. “Just in a roundabout way.”

“But that doesn’t mean Byron didn’t kill Vera back then and Mrs. Hathaway last week,” I said.

“Doesn’t mean he did,” Sol added.

Rita shrugged. “Then we’re back were we started.”

“Not quite,” I said. “The trust fund payments stopped last week, two days after Mrs. Hathaway was murdered. There was nothing in the papers about her death. Notices weren’t sent out. How did the people managing the trust fund know that she had died?”

“Byron must’ve told them,” Rita said. “If he killed her, then obviously he’d know she was dead.”

I raised an eyebrow. “We’re just speculating. We have no proof that Byron is the one who told the trust company about her death.”

“We could question employees of the trust company. Ask them if it was Byron who told them to stop the payments,” Sol said.

“To talk to them about the account we’d need her niece’s power of attorney. She’s the executrix of the estate.”

“Good idea. Give her a call. Get her to sign something.”

I pulled Gayle’s number from my wallet and phoned her. When she answered, I didn’t go into any details. I just told her that I needed her to sign a form, and I’d explain when I saw her. She agreed to meet me that afternoon at Ships, the coffee shop where we’d met before.

I borrowed Rita’s Datsun and drove to the coffee shop. Gayle sat alone in a booth by the front window. “I’m joining a friend,” I told the waitress.

Gayle looked up and smiled when I slid in across from her. But when she noticed the bandages on my face her expression changed. “Are you all right? What happened? Your face-”

“I’m okay. Ran into a door.”

“Oh, really.”

“Nah, got into a fight, but I don’t want to talk about it.”

The waitress brought us coffee. As soon as she left, I placed a standard power of attorney form on the table.

“Gayle, I need to get your signature on this document. We need to talk to the trust employees about an important matter regarding the account.” I didn’t want to mention Byron’s name at this stage, not wanting it to get out until we had more proof that we suspected him of being responsible for her aunt’s murder.

She read the paper carefully, then looked up at me. “I don’t want to sound uncooperative, but what does this mean?”

“I need your power of attorney to enable me to discuss your aunt’s trust account with the people at her bank. I need to know the source of the funds. Might help find the killer.”

She sighed. “Okay, if you think it’ll help.”

While she signed the paper, I asked her the name of the trust company that funded the account, the one from where the money originated.

“It’s the Los Angeles Bank and Trust,” she said.