Three Strikes You're Dead

Chapter 24

Preston’s “suicide” was big news, with every daily in town giving it an all-caps Page One screamer. The Tribune got a slight jump on the others, though. After the Brother and Mel dropped me off at home, I raced upstairs and called my own desk in the Police Headquarters pressroom, getting our lazy overnight man, Corcoran.

“Here’s a hot one for you to check out, pal,” I said hoarsely, muffling my voice with the old handkerchief-over-the-mouthpiece stunt. “A body in the forest preserve in Beverly Hills, lying near a Packard. Shot. Figures to be a connection with the Martindale murder.”

“Who is this?” Corcoran bellowed as I cradled the receiver. That should give him a slight head start, I figured. If I couldn’t get a scoop, at least maybe the paper would have one.

Our story the next morning was the most complete, although the Examiner had a long piece too, and the p.m.’s all came out with early extra editions. I read them as eagerly as everyone else in town — maybe more so. The Trib version, in part, said: “MARTINDALE MURDERER KILLS SELF! Family chauffeur leaves confession. The murder in February of civic reformer and potential Republican mayoral candidate Lloyd Martindale appears to have been solved with the suicide of a long-time Martindale family retainer.

“Everett Arthur Preston, 58, was found shot to death in the forest preserve on the north end of the Beverly Hills neighborhood late last night by police after the Tribune received an anonymous telephone tip that a body was in the forest preserve.

“Preston, who had been employed as a chauffeur by Martindale’s mother, Mrs. Edgar Martindale, of Longwood Drive in Beverly Hills, apparently shot himself twice, the first time in the leg, the second time fatally, through the heart. His body was found near an auto licensed to Mrs. Martindale, along with a note in which Preston confessed to the killing of Lloyd Martindale.

“In the note, which the police made public, Preston blamed Martindale for ‘ignoring his mother for years, refusing to call or visit her. She suffered terribly because of this lack of consideration.’

“Police confirmed that the handwriting in the note was that of Mr. Preston. ‘This closes the book on a sad chapter on our city’s history,’ said Police Commissioner Allman.

“Both Mrs. Edgar Martindale and Lloyd Martindale’s widow, Carla, of North Lake Shore Drive, were too distraught to comment.”

Later that day I got a phone call in the Headquarters pressroom from the Brother. “I see that you managed to tip your people off,” he growled.

“Hey, I didn’t give anything away,” I said in a low voice, cupping my hand over the mouthpiece.

“I know you didn’t,” he conceded. “Just checking up, that’s all.”

“As far as I’m concerned, the whole business is over,” I assured him. “And by the way, that was an interesting note Preston wrote — about how Martindale neglected his mother and all.”

The Brother grunted. “Bastard sure didn’t want to write it, but I wasn’t going to let him tell the true story. That would have made him look like some kind of damn hero, shooting a pervert and all. Besides, the pervert was already dead, and this Preston and me, we had a score to settle.”

“About Pariello?”

He grunted again. “The cops killed Joe, but the way we figure it, so did Preston.”

“Yes, I guess that’s true, in a sense. While you’re on the line, I’ve got a question.”

“Yeah?”

“What happened to those two guys, the ones who got roughed up in...”

“In that saloon? They got transferred.”

“Where. To Hades?”

“To K.C., not that it’s any of your business. We had a coupla openings down there. Change’ll be good for them. And don’t get yourself all worked up — they won’t be coming back.”

“Remind me never to go to Kansas City. I got one last question. When you guys first started talking to me just after Martindale got shot, you said Capone was still calling the shots, or at least some of them, from out in Alcatraz. That really true?”

“Way back before he went to stir, Alphonse mentioned you once to me, said you were a good reporter, that you covered his trial fair and all. I remembered. Helps to have a good memory.”

“So you really haven’t been in touch with him at all?”

I thought the line had gone dead, but after several heartbeats, the Brother spoke. “Alphonse,” he murmured, “is as nutty as a fruitcake.”

I never saw or spoke to the Brother again, never even learned his name, all of which was jake with me and I’m sure with him as well. I’ve always wanted to see loose ends tied up, though, so I wasn’t ready just yet to walk away from the Martindale story. Two nights later, I stood outside Harding’s on Wabash. At a little past 8:30, Nicolette Stover came out alone through the revolving door.

“Evening,” I said, doffing my hat.

“You!” She backed away, hunching her shoulders.

“Now hold on,” I urged, showing her my palms in mock surrender. “I only want a minute of your time, and you’ll want to hear what I have to say.”

“Go... away. Go... away.” Her dark eyes were wide with terror. I hoped she wasn’t carrying the automatic in her purse, but this time I was ready if she started to reach for it.

“No, I won’t go away. Listen to me, Nicolette, it’s all over,” I said, stepping up my pace to keep even with her as she walked north. “Nobody knows anything about that call you made to Beatrice Martindale. Even Everett Preston, the man who killed himself — and murdered Lloyd Martindale — never knew your name.”

“You know it. She knows it,” Nicolette gasped, now almost running despite her high-heeled shoes.

“I’ll go to my grave with that knowledge,” I said. “And I’m sure Mrs. Martindale will, too.”

“She’ll get me, she’ll get me,” Nicolette Stover keened as she started running away, her heels making sounds like horses’ hoofs on the dark sidewalk.

Three weeks later, the second half of my final comment to Nicolette came to pass. Here was how the Tribune reported it: “MARTINDALE’S MOTHER KILLS SELF; Despondent over recent deaths

“Mrs. Edgar Martindale, 79, widow of the late steel magnate Edgar Martindale and mother of the late Lloyd Martindale, died of gas poisoning yesterday in her Beverly Hills home.

“A maid arriving for duty found Mrs. Martindale’s body on the kitchen floor of the 18-room Victorian mansion. The gas jets on the nearby stove were all open, and the Negro maid, Jessie Lake, was very nearly overcome herself.

“Marsha Weathers, a niece of the dead woman, said that Beatrice Martindale had been despondent since the shooting death in February of her son, a civic reformer and a Republican mayoral hopeful. This despondence, Miss Weathers said, intensified when the family chauffeur, Everett Preston, killed himself last month and left a note confessing to Lloyd Martindale’s murder.

“Although police said that Mrs. Martindale also left a handwritten note, they declined to reveal its specific contents. But one officer who would not be identified told the Tribune that ‘The contents (of the note) left no doubt that the woman meant to do away with herself.’”

There was more, mostly about how star-crossed the Martindale family had been in the last several months. But as dramatic as the paper made it all sound, whoever wrote the piece did not know the half of it.

The trusted family retainer, in an attempt to keep the dowager from killing herself, had dispatched the son, thereby setting in motion the chain of events that led to her suicide anyway. Three deaths, and yet perhaps a greater tragedy than any of them was that of the tormented woman whose life two of the three had helped to shatter.