In March of 1947, I got caught up in the notorious Overell case, which made such headlines in Los Angeles, particularly during the trial that summer. The double murder-laced as it was with underage sex in a lurid scenario that made “Double Indemnity” seem tame-hit the front pages in Chicago, as well. But back home I never bragged about my little-publicized role, because-strictly speaking-I was the one guy who might have headed the whole thing off.
I was taking a deductible vacation, getting away from an Illinois spring that was stubbornly still winter, in trade for Southern California’s constant summer. My wife, who was prent and grouchy, loved L.A., and had a lot of friends out there, which was one of the reasons for the getaway; but I was also checking in with the L.A. branch office of the A-1 Detective Agency, of which I was the president.
I’d recently thrown in with Fred Rubinski, a former Chicago cop I’d known since we were both on the pickpocket detail, who from before the war had been running a one-man agency out of a suite in the Bradbury Building at Third and Broadway in downtown Los Angeles.
It was Friday morning, and I was flipping through the pages of Cue magazine in the outer office, occasionally flirting with Fred’s good-looking blonde receptionist-like they say, I was married but I wasn’t dead-waiting to get together with Fred, who was in with a client. The guy had just shown up, no appointment, but I didn’t blame Fred for giving him precedence over me.
I had seen the guy go in-sixtyish, a shade taller than my six feet, distinguished, graying, somewhat fleshy, in a lightweight navy suit that hadn’t come off the rack; he was clearly money.
After about five minutes, Fred slipped out of the office and sat next to me, speaking sotto voce.
My partner looked like a balding, slightly less ugly Edward G. Robinson; a natty dresser-today’s suit was a gray pinstripe with a gray and white striped tie-he was a hard round ball of a man.
“Listen, Nate,” he said, “I could use your help.”
I shrugged. “Okay.”
“You’re not tied up today-I know you’re on vacation…”
“Skip it. We got a well-heeled client who needs something done, right away, and you don’t have time to do it yourself.”
The bulldog puss blinked at me. “How did you know?”
“I’m a detective. Just keep in mind, I’ve done a few jobs out here, but I don’t really know the town.”
Fred sat forward. “Listen, this guy is probably worth a cool million-Walter E. Overell, he’s a financier, land developer, got a regular mansion over in Pasadena, in the Flintridge district, real exclusive digs.”
“What’s he want done?”
“Nothin’ you can’t handle. Nothin’ big.”
“So you’d rather let me hear it from him?”
Fred grinned; it wasn’t pretty. “You are a detective.”
In the inner office, Overell stood as Fred pulled up a chair for me next to the client’s. As the financier and I shook hands, Fred said, “Mr. Overell, this is Nathan Heller, the president of this agency, and my most trusted associate.”
He left out that I wasn’t local. Which I didn’t disagree with him for doing-it was good tactically.
“Of course, Mr. Heller commands our top rate, Mr. Overell-one hundred a day.”
“No problem.”
“We get expenses, and require a two-hundred dollar retainer, non-refundable.”
“Fine.”
Fred and I made sure not to look at each other throughout my partner’s highway robbery of this obviously well-off client.
Soon we got down to it. Overell slumped forward as he sat, hands locked, his brow deeply furrowed, his gray eyes pools of worry.
“It’s my daughter, Mr. Heller. She wants to get married.”
“A lot of young girls do, Mr. Overell.”
“Not this young. Louise is only seventeen-and won’t be eighteen for another nine months. She can’t get married at her age without my consent-and I’m not likely to give it.”
“She could run away, sir. There are states where seventeen is plenty old enough-”
“I would disinherit her.” He sighed, hung his head. “Much as it would kill me…I would disown and disinherit her.”
Fred put in, “This is his only child, Nate.”
I nodded. “Where do things stand, currently?”
Overell swallowed thickly. “She says she’s made up her mind to marry her ‘Bud’ on her eighteenth birthday.”
“Bud?”
“George Gollum-he’s called Bud. He’s twenty-one. What is the male term for a golddigger, anyway?”
I shrugged. “Greedy bastard?”
“That will do fine. I believe he and she have…” Again, he swallowed and his clenched hands were trembling, his eyes moist. “…known each other, since she was fourteen.”
“Pardon me, sir, but you use the term ‘known’ as if you mean in the…Biblical sense?”
He nodded curtly, turned his gaze away; but his words were clipped: “That’s right.”
An idea was hatching; I didn’t care for it much, but the idea wasn’t distasteful enough to override my liking of a hundred bucks a day.
Overell was saying, “I believe he met my daughter when he was on leave from the Navy.”
“He’s in the Navy?”
“No! He’s studying at the Los Angeles campus of U.C., now-pre-med, supposedly, but I doubt he has the brains for it. They exchanged letters when he was serving overseas, as a radioman. My wife, Beulah, discovered some of these letters…. They were…filth.”
His head dropped forward, and his hands covered his face.
Fred glanced at me, eyebrows raised, but I just said to Overell, “Sir, kids are wilder today than when we were young.”
He had twenty, twenty-five years on me, but it seemed the thing to say.
“I’ve threatened to disinherit her, even if she waits till she’s of legal age-but she won’t listen, Louise simply won’t listen.”
Overell went on, at some length, to tell me of Louise’s pampered childhood, her bedroom of dolls and Teddy bears in their “estate,” the private lessons (tennis, riding, swimming), her French governess who had taught her a second language as well as the niceties of proper etiquette.
“Right now,” the disturbed father said, “she’s waging a campaign to win us over to this twenty-one-year-old ‘boy friend’ of hers.”
“You haven’t met him?”
“Oh, I’ve met him-chased him off my property. But she insists if we get to know Bud, we’ll change our minds-I’ve consented to meet with them, let them make their case for marriage.”
“Excuse me, but is she pregnant?”
“If she were, that would carry no weight whatsoever.”
I let the absurdity of that statement stand.
Overell went on: “I’ve already spoken to Mr. Rubinski about making certain…arrangements…if that is what Louise and her Bud reveal to us tomorrow evening.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes, we have a yacht-the Mary E.-moored at Newport Harbor.” He smiled embarrassedly, the first time he’d smiled in this meeting. “Excuse my pomposity-‘yacht’ is rather overstating it, it’s really just a little forty-seven footer.”
Little?
“Louise asked me to invite her and her ‘boy friend’ aboard for the evening, with her mother and myself, so we can all get to know each other better, and talk, ‘as adults.’”
“And you’re going along with this?”
“Yes-but only to humor her, and as a…subterfuge for my own feelings, my own desires, my own designs. I want you to explore this boy’s background-I don’t know anything about him, except that he’s local.”
“And you think if I turn up something improper in this boy’s past, it would matter to your daughter?”
His eyes were so tight, it must have hurt. “If he’s the male equivalent of a golddigger, won’t he have other girls, other women? That would show Louise the light.”
“Mr. Overell, is your daughter attractive?”
“Lovely. I…I have a picture in my wallet, but I’m afraid she’s only twelve in it.”
“Never mind that right now-but you should know there’s every possibility that these two young people…and twenty-one seems younger to me, every day…really are nuts about each other. Gollum may not be seeing anybody else.”
“But you can find out!”
“Sure, but…aren’t you overlooking something?”
“Am I?”
“Your daughter is underage. Iyou tch ’em in the backseat of this boy’s jalopy, we can put him away-or at least threaten to.”
“…Statutory rape?”
I held up two palms, pushed the air. “I know, I know, it would embarrass your daughter…but even the threat of it oughta to send this rat scurrying.”
Overell looked at Fred for an opinion. Fred was nodding.
“Makes sense, Mr. Overell,” he said.
Overell’s eyes tensed, but his brow unfurrowed some; another sigh seemed to deflate his entire body, but I could sense relief on his part, and resignation, as he said, “All right…all right. Do what you think is best.”
We got him a contract, and he gave us a check.
“Can I speak with your wife about this matter?” I asked him.
He nodded. “I’m here with Beulah’s blessing. You have our address-you can catch her at home this afternoon, if you like.”
I explained to him that what I could do today would be limited, because Overell understood that his son and daughter were (and he reported this with considerable distaste) spending the day “picnicking in the desert.” But I could go out to the Los Angeles campus of the University of California and ask around about Bud.
“You can inquire out there about my daughter as well,” he said.
“Isn’t she still in high school?”
“Unfortunately, no-she’s a bright girl, skipped a grade. She’s already in college.”
Sounded like Louise was precocious in a lot of ways.
Around ten thirty that same morning, I entered at Westwood Boulevard and Le Conte Avenue, rolling in my rental Ford through a lushly terraced campus perched on a knoll overlooking valleys, plains and hills. The buildings were terra cotta, brick and tile in a Romanesque motif.
I asked a cute coed for directions to the student union, and was sent to Kerckhoff Hall, an imposing building of Tudor design with a pinnacled tower. I was further directed to a sprawling high-ceilinged room where college kids played ping pong or played cards or sat in comfy chairs and couches and drank soda pop and smoked cigarettes. Among sweaters and casual slacks and bobby socks, I stuck out like the thirty-eight-year-old sore thumb I was in my tan summer suit; but the kids were all chatty and friendly. My cover was that Bud had applied for a job-what that job was, of course, I couldn’t say-and I was checking up on him for his prospective employer.
Not everybody knew Bud Gollum or Louise Overell, of course-too big a campus for that. But a few did.
Bud, it seemed, was a freshman, going to school on Uncle Sam. Other first-year fellas-younger than Bud, probably nineteen-described him as “a good guy, friendly, and smart,” even “real smart.” But several didn’t hide their dislike of Bud, saying he was smart-alecky, writing him off as a “wiseguy.”
A mid-twenties junior with an anchor tattooed on his forearm knew Bud as a fellow Navy veteran, and said Bud had been a Radio Man First Class.
“Listen,” the husky little dark-haired, dark-eyed ex-gob said, “if you’re considering him for a job, give him a break-he’s smarter than his grades make him look.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, when you see his transcripts, you’re going find him pulling down some low junk, so far this year…but it’s that little skirt’s fault. I mean, they don’t let dummies into pre-med around here.”
“He’s got a girl friend distracting him?”
The gob nodded. “And it’s pretty damn serious-she’s a young piece of tail, pardon my French, built like a brick shithouse. Can hardly blame him for letting his studies slide.”
“Well, I hope he wouldn’t be too preoccupied to do a good job-”
“No, no! He’s a right fella! Lives at home with his mom and stepdad-he’s an assistant scout master, for Christ sakes!”
“Sounds clean cut.”
“Sure-he loves the outdoors, always going hiking in the mountains up around Chatsworth, backpacking out into the desert.”
“His girl go in for that?”
“They go everywhere together, joined at the hip…don’t give me that look, buddy! I mean, haven’t you ever had a female lead you around by the dick?”
“No,” I said, and when he arched an eyebrow, I added, “Does my wife count?”
He grinned at me. “Does mine?”
A table of girls who were smoking and playing pitch allowed me to pull up a chair for a few questions; they weren’t very cute, just enough to make me want to bust out crying.
“I don’t know what a neat guy like that sees in ol’ Stone Face,” a blonde with blue eyes and braces said. I liked the way she was getting lipstick on her cigarette.
“Stone Face?”
“Yeah,” a brunette said. She wasn’t smoking, like her friends, just chewing and snapping her gum. “That gal’s got this round face like a frying pan and’s got about as much expression.”
“Except when she giggles,” a redhead said, giggling.
All the girls began to giggle, the blonde saying, “Then she really looks like a dope!”
“She laughs at everything that idiot says,” the brunette said. “They hang onto each other like ivy-it’s sickening.”
That was all I learned at the college, and the effort took about three hours; but it was a start.
Pasadena was the richest city per capita in the nation, and the residential neighborhood where the Overells resided gave credence to that notion-mansions with sunken gardens, swimming pools and tennis courts on winding, flower-edged, palm-flung streets. The white mission-style mansion at 607 Los Robles Drive, with its well-manicured, lavishly landscaped lawn, was no exception.
Mrs. Overell was younger than her husband by perhaps ten years, an attractive dark-blonde woman whose nicely buxom shape was getting a tad matronly. We sat by the pool watching the mid-afternoon sun highlight the shimmering blue surface with gold. We drank iced tea and she hid her feelings behind dark sunglasses and features as expressionless as the Stone Face with which those coeds had tagged her daughter.
“I don’t know what I can tell you, Mr. Heller,” she said, her voice a bland alto, “that my husband hasn’t already.”
“Well, Mrs. Overell, I’m chiefly here for two reasons. First, I can use a photo of your daughter, a recent one.”
“Certainly.” A tiny smile etched itself on the rigid face. “I should have thought of that-Walter carries a photo of Louise when she was still a child. He’d like to keep her that way.”
“You do agree with this effort to break off Louise’s relationship with this Gollum character?”
“Mr. Heller, I’m not naive enough to think that we can succeed at that. But I won’t stand in Walter’s way. Perhaps we can postpone this marriage long enough for Louise to see through this boy.”
“You think he’s a male golddigger, too?”
She shrugged. “He doesn’t come from money.”
“You know where he lives? Have an address?”
“He’s here in Pasadena.”
I couldn’t picture a wrong side of the tracks in this swanky burg.
“No, I don’t have an address,” she was saying, “but he’s in North Fair Oaks…where so many coloreds have moved in.”
I had been met at the door by a Negro butler, who I supposed had to live somewhere.
But I didn’t press the subject. I sipped my tea and offered, gently, “If your daughter is willing to wait to marry this boy till her eighteenth birthday…which I understand is many months from now…perhaps what you ought to do is humor her, and hope this affair cools off.”
The blue and gold of the sun-kissed pool shimmered in the dark lens of her sunglasses. “I would tend to agree with you, Mr. Heller. In time she might come to her senses of her own volition. But Walter is a father who has not adjusted to losing his little girl…she’s our only child, you know…and I do share his concern about the Gollum boy.”
“That’s the other reason I wanted to speak with you, directly,” I said, and-delicately-I filled her in on my notion to catch the two in flagrante delicto. I wanted to make sure she wouldn’t mind putting her daughter through the public embarrassment a statutory rape accusation would bring.
Another tiny smile etched itself. “We’ve gotten quite used to Louise embarrassing us, Mr. Heller.”
Mrs. Overell thought I might have trouble catching them, however, since they so often went hiking and camping in the West San Fernando Valley-like today. That would be tough: I was used to bagging my quarry in backseats and motel rooms.
As it turned out, Mrs. Overell was able to provide a snapshot, filched from her daughter’s room, of both Louise and her beau. They were in swimsuits, at the beach on towels, leaning back on their elbows smiling up at the camera.
Louise had a nice if faintly mocking, superior smile-not exactly pretty, and indeed round-faced, but not bad; and she was, as that ex-gob had so succinctly put it, built like a brick shithouse. This girl had everything Jane Russell did except a movie contract.
As for Bud, he was blond, boyish, rather round faced himself, with wire-rimmed glasses and a grin that somehow lacked the suggestion of cunning his girl friend’s smile possessed. He had the slender yet solid build so often seen in Navy men.
I spent another hour or so in Pasadena, which had a sleepy air of prosperity spawned by the many resort hotels, the formidable buildings, the pretentious homes, the bounteous foliage. The North Fair Oaks section did seem to have more than its share of colored residents, but this was still nicer than anywhere I’d ever lived. With the help of a service station attendant-the private detective’s best friend in a strange city-I located the home of Dr. Joseph Stomel, married to Bud’s mother, Wilhilmina. But I had no intention of talking to anyone there, as yet. This was strictly a point of reference for the eventual tailing of Gollum.
That was Friday, and between the college and the Pasadena run, I’d earned my hundred bucks. I spent all day Saturday with my wife, and friends, enjoying our premature summer vacation.
Then I went back to work Saturday night, though I looked like a tourist in my blue sportshirt and chinos. The camera I had with me was no tourist’s Brownie, however, rather a divorce dick’s Speed Graphic loaded with infrared film and the world’s least conspicuous flash.
It was around ten o’clock when I turned right off State Highway 55, my rental Ford gliding across the low-slung spit over the mouth of an inlet of landlocked Newport Bay, dotted by sails, glistening with moonbeams, dancing with harbor lights. Seaside cottages clustered along the bay shore, but grander dwellings perched on islands in the lagoon-like bay, California-style Riviera-worthy stucco villas, a suitable backdrop for the fleet of yachts and other pleasure crafted moored here.
My behind was moored in a booth in the Beachfront Cafe, a chrome-heavy diner with a row of windows looking out on the dock and the peaceful, soothing view of lights twinkling and pleasure crafts bobbing on the moon-washed water. I ate a cheeseburger and fries and sipped coffee as I kept watch; I had a perfect view of the sleek cruiser, the Mary E. A few lights were on in the boat, and occasional movement could be made out, but just vague shapes. No different than any number of other boats moored here, gently rocking.
Overell had told me that he and his wife would be entertaining their daughter and her beau aboard the cruiser, having dinner, talking out their problems, perhaps even coming to some sort of understanding. What I had in mind was to follow the young lovers when they left this family powwow.
Since Bud lived at home with his mom, I figured the couple would either go to some lover’s lane to park, or maybe hit a motel. Either way, my Speed Graphic would collect the evidence needed to nail Bud for statutory rape. It’s not elegant, but it’s a living.
Around eleven I spotted them, comng down a ladder, stepping onto the swaying dock: Bud and Louise. Hazel-haired, taller than I’d imagined her, she did have an admirable top-heavy figure, which her short-sleeved pale blue sweater and darker blue pedal pushers showed off nicely. Bud wore a yellow sportshirt and brown slacks, and they held hands as they moved rather quickly away from the boat.
I was preparing to leave the cafe and follow them up to the parking lot, and Bud’s car-Mrs. Overell had given me the make and color, and I’d already spotted it, a blue Pontiac convertible, pre-war, battered but serviceable-only, they threw me a curve in addition to Louise’s.
The couple were heading up the ramp toward the cafe!
Absurdly, I wondered if they’d made me-impossible, since they hadn’t seen me yet-and I hunkered over my coffee as the lovebirds took a couple of stools at the counter, just about opposite my window booth.
At first they were laughing, at some private joke; it seemed rather forced-were they trying to attract attention?
Then they both ordered burgers and fries and sat there talking, very quietly. Even a trained eavesdropper like me couldn’t pick up a word. Perhaps they’d had a rough evening with her folks, because periodically one would seem to be comforting the other, stroking an arm, patting a shoulder, reassuringly.
What the hell was going on? Why did they need a burger, when presumably that luxury cruiser had a well-stocked larder? And if they wanted to get away from her parents and that boat, why hang around the dock? Why not climb in Bud’s convertible and seek a burger joint that wasn’t in her parents’ watery backyard?
Such thoughts bobbed like a buoy in my trained snoop’s mind as the couple sat at the counter and nibbled at their food. It was a meal any respectable young couple could down in a matter of minutes. But forty-five minutes later, the two were still sitting on those stools, sometimes picking at barely eaten, very cold-by-now food, often staring soulfully into each other’s eyes. Every other stool at that counter had seen at least three customer backsides in the same span.
I was long since used to boring stakeout duty; but it was unnerving having my subjects so near at hand, for so long a time. I finally got up and went to the men’s room, partly to test whether they’d use that opportunity to slip away (again, had they made me?), and partly because after three cups of coffee, I needed to take a piss.
When I got back, Bud and Louise were still sitting on their stools, Louise ever so barely swivelling on hers, like a kid in a soda shop. Frustrated, confused, I settled back into my booth, and glanced out the window, and the world exploded.
Actually, it was just the Mary E. that exploded, sending a fireball of flame rising from the cruiser, providing the clear night sky with thunder, hurling burning debris everywhere, making waves out of the placid waters, rocking the pier.
Rocking the cafe patrons, too, most of them anyway. Everyone except the employees leapt to their feet, screaming, shouting, running outside into a night turned orange by flame, dabbed gray by smoke.
Almost everyone-Bud and Louise were still just sitting at the counter, albeit looking out the window, numbly.
Me, I was on my leapt to but then I settled back into the booth, trying to absorb what I’d seen, what I was seeing. I knew my client was dead, and so was his wife-two people I’d spoken to at length, just the day before-as that cruiser was already a listing, smoking shambles, sinking stern first into the bay’s eighteen feet.
Finally, the couple headed outside, to join the gathering crowd at the water’s edge. I followed them. Sirens were cutting the air, getting closer, closer.
Louise was crying now, hysterical, going from one gaping spectator to another, saying, “My father was on that boat! My mother, too! Somebody save them-somebody rescue them…somebody has to rescue them!”
The boy friend remained at the side of the stricken girl as she moved through the crowd, making her presence blatantly known, Bud’s boyish face painted with dismay and shock and reflected flames.
I went to my rental car and got my Speed Graphic. I wouldn’t even need the flash-plenty of light.
Snagging shots of the dying boat, and the distraught daughter and her beau, I heard the speculation among the boating-wise onlookers, as to the explosion’s cause.
“Butane,” one would say.
“Or gasoline,” another would say.
But this ex-Marine wasn’t so easily fooled.
Butane, hell-I smelled dynamite.
Before long, the Coast Guard arrived, and fire trucks, and police from nearby Santa Ana and Orange County Sheriff’s Department personnel. The Chief of the Newport Beach Police showed, took over the investigation, questioned the tearful, apparently anguished Louise Overell and promptly released her, and her boy friend.
Pushing through the bustle, I introduced myself to the chief, whose name was Hodgkinson, and told him I was an investigator who’d been doing a job for Walter Overell.
“A job related to what happened here tonight?” the heavyset chief asked, frowning.
“Very possibly.”
“You suspect foul play?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Where are you staying, Mr. Heller?”
“The Beverly Hills Hotel.”
That impressed him-he didn’t realize it was a perk of my security work for the hotel. “Well, obviously, Mr. Heller, I’m gonna be tied up here quite a while. Can you come by the station tomorrow sometime? Tomorrow’s Sunday-make it Monday. And if I’m not there, I may be back out here.”
“Sure. Why did you let those two kids go?”
“Are you kiddin’? We’ll be dredging her parents’ scorched corpses outa the drink before too long. It’s only decent to spare that girl the sight of that.”
Only decent.
Sunday I took my wife to the beach at Santa Monica-she was only a few months pregnant and still looked great in a swim suit. Peggy was an actress and recently had a small role in a Bob Hope picture, and even out here her Deanna Durbin-ish good looks attracted attention.
She ragged me, a little, because I seemed preoccupied, and wasn’t terribly good company. But that was because I was thinking about the Overell “Yacht Murder” (as the papers had already starting calling it). I had sold my crime scene photos to Jim Richardson, at the Examiner, by the way, for three hundred bucks. I was coming out way ahead of the game, considering my client and his wife had been blown to smithereens the night before.
Call it guilt, call it conscience, call it sheer professionalism, but I knew I hadn’t finished this job. Walter Overell deserved more for that two-hundred buck retainer-just like he’d deserved better from that shrewd sexed-up daughter of his.
So on Monday, bright and early, looking like a tourist in sportshirt and chinos, I began looking. What was I looking for? A slip of paper…a slip of paper in the desert…sounds worse than a needle in a haystack, but it wasn’t. I found the damn thing before noon.
Chatsworth was a mountain-ringed hamlet in the West San Fernando Valley that used a Wild West motif to attract tourists, offering them horseback riding and hiking trails, with the ocean and beaches and desert close at hand for lovers of the outdoors-like that Boy Scout Bud Gollum and his bosomy Campfire Girl.
The guy behind the counter in the sparse storefront at the Trojan Powder Company looked a little like Gabby Hayes-white-bearded, prospector-grizzled, in a plaid shirt and bib overalls. But he had his original teeth and a faint British accent, which took him out of the running for playing a Roy Rogers or Gene Autry sidekick.
This was the owner of the place, and he was looking at the photo I’d handed him, taking a closer look than he had at the Illinois P.I. badge I’d flashed him.
“That young woman will never drown,” he said, with a faintly salacious smile.
“I’m not so much interested whether you recognize her tits as if her face is familiar-or her boyfriend’s.”
“I recognize the whole batch of them-both faces, both bosoms, for that matter. The girl didn’t come in, though-she sat out in their convertible-a Pontiac, I believe. I could see her right through the front window.”
“Did he make a purchase?”
“I should say-fifty sticks of dynamite.”
Jesus, that was a lot of dinah.
“This is fresh in my memory,” the proprietor said, “because it was just last Friday.”
Day before the boat blew up.
“Can anybody stroll in here and buy that stuff?”
“It’s a free country-but back in the early days of the war, when folks were afraid of saboteurs, city and county officials passed an ordinance, requiring purchasers to sign for what they buy.”
I liked the sound of that. “Can I see the signed receipt?”
Bud had not signed his own name-“R.L. Standish” had purchased the fifty sticks of dynamite-but I had no doubt handwriting experts would confirm this as the Boy Scout’s scrawl.
“Some officers from Newport Beach will be along to talk to you,” I told him.
“Fine-what about reporters?”
“Good idea,” I said, and used the phone.
Examiner editor Richardson paid me another C-note for the tip, and the proprietor of the Trojan Powder Company earned his own fifty bucks of Mr. Hearst’s money for providing the exclusive.
I found Chief Hodgkinson at the Newport Beach dock, where the grim, charred wreckage had been surfaced from the depth of eighteen feet-about all that remained was the black blistered hull. The sun was high and golden on the waters, and the idyllic setting of stucco villas in the background and expensive pleasure craft on either side was turned bizarre by the presence of the scorched husk of the Mary E.
Seated in the Beachfront Cafe across from the blue-uniformed, heavyset chief, in the same booth I’d occupied Saturday night, I filled him in on what I’d discovered up Chatsworth way. He excused himself to pass the information along to a couple of D.A.’s investigators who would make the trip to the Trojan Powder Company.
When the chief returned, bearing a plate with a piece of pecan pie with whipped cream, he sat and ate and shared some information.
“Pretty clear your instincts were right about those kids,” he said gruffly but good-naturedly. “It’s just hard to believe-patricide and matricide. Only in California.”
“The late Walter Overell was supposedly worth around a million. And, like I told you, he was threatening to cut his daughter off, if she married her four-eyed romeo.”
“What made you think to go looking for that sales receipt, Mr. Heller?”
“I knew they’d gone ‘picnicking’ in the San Fernando Valley, and a college pal of Bud’s said the loving couple liked to hike up around Chatsworth. Plus, I knew if Bud had been a Radio Man 1st Class in the war, he had the technical knowhow to rig a bomb. Hell, Chief, Saturday night, you could smell the dynamite in the air-and the murder.”
He nodded his agreement. “It’s as cold-blooded a crime as I’ve ever come across. We found thirty-one sticks of unexploded dynamite in the galley, crude time bomb thing, rigged with wire and tape to an alarm clock-second of two charges. Bulkhead kept the larger one from goin’ off. Which was lucky.”
“Not for the Overells.”
“No, the smaller bundle of dynamite was enough to kill ’em plenty dead,” he said, chewing a bite of pecan pie. “But it wasn’t enough to cover up the rest of the evidence.”
“Such as?”
“Such as what the coroner discovered in his autopsies-before the explosion, both Mom and Dad had been beaten to death with a ball-peen hammer we found aboard the ship…. That there was no water in their lungs backs that theory up.”
“Jesus-that is cold.”
A young uniformed officer was approaching; he had a wide-eyed, poleaxed expression.
“Chief,” the young cop said, leaning in, “somebody’s here and wants to talk to you-and you won’t believe who it is.”
Within a minute, a somber yet bright-eyed Louise Overell-in a short-sleeved, cream-colored, well-filled sweater and snug-fitting blue jeans-was standing with her hands fig-leafed before her.
“Hello, Chief Hodgkinson,” she said, cheerfully. “How are you today?”
“Why, I’m just fine,” he said.
“I’m doing better…thanks,” the blue-eyed teenager said, answering a question Hodgkinson hadn’t asked. “The reason I’m here is, I wanted to ask about the car.”
“The car?”
“My parents’ car. I know it was left here in the lot, and I thought maybe I could drive it back up to Flintridge…I’ve been staying up there, since…the tragedy.”
“Excuse me,” I said, getting out, and I flashed the chief a look that I hoped he would understand as meaning he should stall the girl.
“Well,” the chief was saying, “I’m not sure. I think perhaps we need to talk to the District Attorney, and make sure the vehicle isn’t going to be impounded for…”
And I was gone, heading for the parking lot.
Wherever Louise went, so surely too went Bud-particularly since another driver would be needed to transport the family sedan back to the Flintridge estate.
Among the cars in the gravelled lot were my own rental job, several police cars, Bud’s Pontiac convertible, and a midnight blue ‘47 Caddy that I just knew had to have been Walter Overell’s.
This opinion was formed, in part, by the fact that Bud Gollum-in a red sportshirt and denim slacks-was trying to get into the car. I approached casually-the boy had something in his left hand, and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a weapon.
Then I saw: a roll of electrical tape, and spool of wire. What the hell was he up to?
Then it came to me: while little Louise was keeping the chief busy, Bud was attempting to plant the tape and wire…which would no doubt match up with what had been used on the makeshift time bomb…in Overell’s car. When the chief turned the vehicle over to Louise, the “evidence” would be discovered.
But the Caddy was locked, and apparently Louise hadn’t been able to provide a key, because Bud was grunting in frustration as he tried every door.
I just stood there, hands on my hips, rocking on my heels on the gravel. “Is that your plan, Bud? To try to make this look like suicide-murder, planned by ol’ Walter?”
Bud whirled, the eyes wild in the boyish face. “What…who…?”
“It won’t play, kid. The dynamite didn’t do its job-the fractured skulls omb in the autopsy. You’re about two seconds away from being arrested.”
That was when he hurled the tape and the wire at me, and took off running, toward his parked convertible. I batted the stuff away, and ran after him, throwing a tackle that took us both roughly down onto the gravel.
“Shit!” I said, getting up off him, rubbing my scraped forearm.
Bud scrambled up, and threw a punch, which I ducked.
Then I creamed him with a right hand that damn near broke his jaw-I don’t remember ever enjoying throwing a punch more, though my hand hurt like hell afterward. He dropped prayerfully to his knees, not passing out, but whimpering like a little kid.
“Maybe you aren’t smart enough for pre-med, at that,” I told him.
Ambling up with two uniformed officers, the chief-who had already taken Louise into custody-personally snapped the cuffs on Bud Gollum, who was crying like a little girl-unlike Louise, whose stone face worked up a sneery pout, as she was helped into the backseat of a squad car.
All in all, Bud was pretty much a disappointment as a Boy Scout.
The case was huge in the California press, the first really big crime story since the Black Dahlia. A grand jury convicted the young lovers, and the state attorney general himself took charge of the prosecution.
My wife was delighted when we spent several weeks having a real summer’s vacation, at the expense of the state of California, thanks to me being a major witness for the prosecution.
I didn’t stay for the whole trial, which ran well into October, spiced up by steamy love letters that Louise and Bud exchanged, which were intercepted and fed to the newspapers and even submitted to the jury, after Bud’s “filth” (as the late Mrs. Overell would have put it) had been edited out.
The letters fell short of any confession, and the star-crossed couple presented themselves well in court, Louise coming off as intelligent, mature and self-composed, and Bud seeming boyishly innocent, a big, strangely likable puppy dog.
The trial took many dramatic twists and turns, including a trip to the charred hulk of the Mary E. in drydock, with Louise and Bud solemnly touring the wreckage in the company of watchful jurors.
Not unexpectedly, toward the end of the trial, the respective lawyers of each defendant began trying to place the blame on the other guy, ultimately requesting separate trials, which the judge denied.
After my wife and I had enjoyed our court-paid summer vacation, I kept up with the trial via the press and reports from Fred Rubinski. All along we had both agreed we had never seen such overwhelming, unquestionably incriminating evidence in a murder case-or such a lame defense, namely that Walter Overell had committed suicide, taking his wife along with him.
Confronted by the testimony of handwriting experts, Bud had even admitted buying the dynamite, claiming he had done so at Walter Overell’s request! Medical testimony established that the Overells had died of fractured skulls, and a receipt turned up showing that Bud had bought the alarm clock used in the makeshift time bomb-a clock d given Louise as a gift. Blood on Bud’s effects was shown to match that of the late Overells.
And on, and on…. I had never seen a case more open and shut.
“Are you sitting down?” Fred’s voice said over the phone.
“Yeah,” I said, and I was, in my office in the Loop.
“After deliberating for two days, the six men and six women of the jury found Bud and Louise not guilty.”
I almost fell out of my chair. “What the hell?”
“The poor kids were ‘victims of circumstance,’ so says the jury-you know, like the Three Stooges? According to the jury, the Overells died due to ‘the accident of suicidal tampering with dynamite by Walter Overell.’”
“You’re shitting me….”
“Not at all. Those two fresh-faced kids got off scott free.”
I was stunned-flabbergasted. “How could a jury face such incontestable evidence and let obvious killers go free?”
“I don’t know,” Fred said. “It’s a fluke-I can’t imagine it ever happening again…not even in California.”
The trial took its toll on the lucky pair, however-perhaps because their attorneys had tried to pit Bud and Louise against each other, the girl literally turned her back on the Boy Scout, after the verdict was read, scorning his puppy-dog gaze.
“I’m giving him back his ring,” she told the swarming press.
As far as anybody knows, Louise Overell and Bud Gollum never saw each other again.
Nine months after her release, Louise married one of her jailers-I wondered if he’d been the guy who passed the love letters along to the prosecution. The marriage didn’t last long, though the couple did have a son. Most of Louise’s half million inheritance went to pay for her defense.
Bud flunked out of pre-med, headed east, married a motor-drome rider with a travelling show. That marriage didn’t last long, either, and eventually Bud got national press again when he was nabbed in Georgia driving a stolen car. He did two years in a federal pen, then worked for a radio station in the South, finally dropping out of public view.
Louise wound up in Las Vegas, married to a Bonanza Air Lines radio operator. Enjoying custody of her son, she had a comfortable home and the security of a marriage, but remained troubled. She drank heavily and was found dead by her husband in their home on August 24, 1965.
The circumstances of her death were odd-she was naked in bed, with two empty quart-sized bottles of vodka resting near her head. A loaded, cocked .22 rifle was at her feet-unfired. And her nude body was covered with bruises, as if she’d been beaten to death.
Her husband explained this by saying, “She was always falling down.” And the Deputy Coroner termed her cause of death as acute alcoholism.
I guess if Walter Overell dynamited himself to death, anything is possible.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Fact, speculation and fiction are freely mixed within this story, which is based on an actual case and uses the real names of the involved parties, with the exception of Heller and his partner Fred Rubinski (the latter a fictionalization of real-life private eye, Barney Ruditsky). I would like to acknowledge the following works, which were used as reference: The California Crime Book (1971), Robert Colby; For the Life of Me (1954), Jim Richardson; “Reporters” (1991), Will Fowler; and the Federal Writers’ Project California guide.