David Bishop - The Original Alibi

Fact: Someone had coerced Mr. and Mrs. Yarbrough into claiming they had seen Eddie in Buellton. Fact: Someone had bribed and threatened Cory Jackson and Tommy Montoya into providing the original evidence that led to Eddie’s arrest. Fact: Someone had sold that alibi to the general for two million dollars. Lies told by others, along with an unknown party bribing and threatening Mr. and Mrs. Yarbrough to tell those lies did not prove Eddie did anything. Not that he had dinner in Buellton. Not that he didn’t have dinner in Buellton. Not that he killed his fiancee. Not that he didn’t kill his fiancee. The rest was conjecture that could fit various theories. One being that Eddie killed his fiancee and then extorted money from his grandfather. Was he capable of such a bold and diabolical plan, including arranging for his own arrest and release? Could someone else have murdered Ileana and crafted both events as part of a plan to shake down the general?

We still had Principal Flaherty who claimed he also saw Eddie in the Pea Soup Andersen’s restaurant in Buellton. Maybe Axel had found something on Flaherty. If Flaherty, like the Yarbroughs, admitted not having seen Eddie in Buellton, I was still in the same position. Eddie either went to Buellton for dinner or he did not. At worst, that meant he lied about where he was. Not that he murdered Ileana. He could have been in bed with a married woman and lied to protect her secret. People lie about their whereabouts for many reasons, rarely to cover up having committed murder.

I needed to get in Eddie Whittaker’s face. Get a read on the guy. In a normal murder investigation, the immediate parties are among the very first to be interviewed. However, the case of the murder of Ileana Corrigan was eleven-years old. Eddie had been interviewed, and later interrogated after his arrest, so his opinions and reactions were a matter of record. I had read them in the police file. I had intentionally held off confronting the general’s grandson until I had immersed myself in the case and all the other players. For a little longer, I would leave Eddie to stew in his own juice. He knew I was coming. He just didn’t know when, or where, or what I might learn before I got him nose to nose.

*

My next stop was at the home of Ileana’s parents, Betty and Willard Corrigan. They lived modestly in San Fernando Valley. Their home appeared to be about twenty years old, with blue siding and a block and iron rail wall around the property. The pride of their front yard, a queen palm whose fronds rose above the composition roof.

I introduced myself at their door and they warmly greeted me into their home. Mr. and Mrs. Corrigan were recently retired, although Betty still worked some in real estate, sitting open houses for other agents. We chatted for a couple of hours.

When I asked how long they had been married, their memories included the general giving them an all-expense paid two-week cruise from Long Beach to Hawaii, roundtrip, for their last anniversary. “They don’t make men like the general anymore,” Mr. Corrigan said.

Mr. and Mrs. Corrigan did not recall their daughter having an old boyfriend who became incensed when Ileana chose Eddie Whittaker. That didn’t mean there was no such boyfriend. Only that after all these years, if there had been one, the Corrigan’s didn’t remember. Parents are often the last to know much about a daughter’s lovers. I asked the Corrigans about the expensive jewelry found where their daughter lived. They didn’t even know she had it. Faded memories are always a major problem when working old cases. That and real or possible witnesses having moved away or died, which I s’pose constituted faded memories to the max. Ileana’s parents did remember how their daughter had met Eddie Whittaker. Ileana had been out with one of her girlfriends, Karen Whittaker, and the two of them were with a group of bikers. They admitted that in those years Ileana was struggling with maturing and often took up with bad boys, like the bikers. That was why they were so pleased when she took up with a respectable boy like Eddie Whittaker. One of the bikers, the one who had introduced Ileana to Eddie Whittaker had been identified as General Whittaker’s chauffeur; Mrs. Corrigan said it like show-fer. They had remembered Cliff because, as a young man, Mr. Corrigan had been in the army and knew of General Whittaker.

*

I drove back to Long Beach wondering what role, if any, Cliff played in all this. Perhaps, the chauffeur’s connection to Eddie went beyond being the family driver. While I drove, I called Charles at the Whittaker home. He told me that back then Cliff had taught Eddie to ride a motorcycle and the two of them had hung around some. “Partying, they called it.” Charles further recalled that Eddie had trouble keeping his balance and eventually lost interest in his motorcycle.

“You have to understand, Mr. Kile, Eddie was very coordinated and most things physical came to him easily when he applied the effort. When something didn’t come easily he’d sour-grapes it and walk away.”

I asked Charles if the two men were still close.

“The only thing the two had in common was riding motorcycles, so once Eddie tired of that, as he eventually did nearly everything, he sold his motorcycle and they quit palling around.”

“How long ago did Eddie sell his motorcycle?”

“Right after Ileana died. Cliff found the buyer.”

Charles also said that Cliff still arrived each day on his motorcycle and while on duty kept it in the Whittaker garage. Charles explained that Cliff had an apartment in town, in addition to a small sleeping room upstairs over the garage.

I thanked Charles and hung up. So, Eddie and Cliff had been pals, but no longer. I needed someone to poke around and see what could be learned about Cliff’s dad and the other four old soldiers the general had taken care of in the assisted living facility. I called Axel. There would be lots of hits about the general on the Internet: his life and philanthropic activities, so maybe something would come up on his providing the care for those soldiers. I also needed someone with at least solid bookkeeping skills to go through the records to see how many years and how much the general had spent to care for the five men. I wasn’t certain if doing that would mean anything, but I wanted to have the information in the event I chose to follow it.

All this was likely a dead end, but so far the game only had the general, Eddie, Karen, Charles, and Cliff. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was playing poker with an empty chair at the table, a chair for a player who had yet to join the game.

Axel wanted me to join him and a young lady friend for dinner tomorrow night. He said their relationship was not romantic. They had met outside Mackie’s and he had invited her to join him for lunch. “She’s young enough to be my daughter,” he said, “my granddaughter even. For Christ’s sake.”

He asked me to go along for two reasons: so she and I could meet, and because he hadn’t yet gotten a driver’s license. I had gone through this kind of thing with my daughters when they first started dating so I suppose I had a feel for it. But Axel was in his sixties and from what he told me the young lady was still looking up at twenty. It would be weird, but he said it was no date. “I’m no pervert,” is how Axel put it.

Axel also said she had some skills I might make use of. Although, when he told me how he met Hildegard it left me somewhat unsure to which skills he had referred. Then he told me her father had been an accountant, and that she had worked with him summers and weekends for several years. Before she left home she had planned to become a CPA like her father.