Everything She Ever Wanted (19 page)

disapproval and curiosity from every side.

Suddenly, there was the sound of chains clanking at the back of the

room, and eyes finally turned away from them.
 
Tom Allanson had been

allowed to attend his parents' services, but George Zellner and C. T.

Callahan had brought him in both handcuffs and leg-irons.
 
The

leg-irons were removed, but still handcuffed, Tom stood with his head

bowed.
 
Susan and Deborah saw that tears streamed silently down his

cheeks.
 
They managed to catch his eye and smiled wanly.
 
And then they

left.
 
Their few minutes in the chapel would remain one of the more

hideous memories of their lives.

The Allansons were buried side by side in Westview Cemetery.

. . .

Shortly before 5:00 P.m. at police headquarters that Saturday,

Detective Zellner interviewed Mrs.
 
Clifford B.

Radcliffe, the woman Pat Allanson affectionately called "Boppo."

If he had found her daughter talkative, Zellner didn't know what

"stream of consciousness" was until he interviewed Margureitte

Radcliffs There seemed to be no pauses in her conversation, and she had

much to tell him.
 
She spoke in a perfectly modulated society voice.

She was a daunting woman who gave the impression that never, ever, ever

had she-or anyone she was related to, or even acquainted with-had

occasion to be involved in a criminal investigation.
 
She would be glad

to help Zellner, of course, if only to straighten out this ridiculous

predicamen.t Tom was in as quickly as possible.

Yes, indeed, she had spoken-not once, but twice-with the deceased Mr.

Allanson.
 
He had confided in her that he suspected Tom of all manner

of mischief and misbehaving-from putting formaldehyde in his own

children's milk to the theft of suitcases.

The dead man had made his son's life utterly miserable.
 
For what

reason, she could not say.

Why, even Bill Alford-"my granddaughter's husband"-had called her from

one of Tom's many divorce hearings as he struggled to be free of Little

Carolyn Allanson.
 
"Mr. Alford's getting ready to study law, you

see-and he said, 'You will not believe what is happening.
 
I'm here and

I'm seeing it and hearing it, and I don't believe it.
 
Tom is not being

allowed to present anything.... But yet Mr. Allanson is getting on the

stand and saying his son is a drunkard!"
 
All these horrible things

about his son, yet he-Tom-doesn't even drink and he doesn't even

smoke.

Mrs. Radcliffe explained that Tom had been their feed man for years,

"but we have only known him in recent months in the capacity we do

now.

His wife is our daughter.
 
We have known him as a very nice, clean-cut

young man-never anything bad about him from anyone."

"You ever heard him say anything negative about his father?"

"Never!
 
Never have I!
 
Nor have I heard him say anything about his

father at all."

Mrs. Radcliffe told Zellner that the most unpleasant person she had

had contact with through Tom was his ex-wife, who would call constantly

at all hours to harass Tom and Pat for money.
 
Sighing, she murmured,

"What did she do with all of the money?
 
Because she had gotten a

tremendous amount of money-and was [still] getting her money."

"Did they stay with you often?
 
Tom and his wife, your daughter?"

Zellner put in.

"They were there until they were married, in our home.
 
He slept on a

sofa in our den."

Margureitte Radcliffe explained that she had had very little contact

with Tom's parents, who had been quite rude generally.
 
Walter Allanson

had frightened her too, she said, as he accused Tom of all manner of

theft.
 
In the next breath he had told her he would "get" Tom.

Zellner didn't have to ask questions.
 
Margureitte seemed eager to get

all of her contacts with Walter Allanson out in the open.
 
"He acted to

me like he thought I knew something that I didn't know and that he was

trying to Justify himself to mewhich wasn't necessary.
 
. . . I came

away firmly convinced that this man was dangerous, that he was very

devious, that he was very cunning, and I couldn't figure out why.
 
I

could not figure out his purpose."

Pat's mother confided that she had been so alarmed by Walter Allanson's

behavior that she had gone to the East Point Police Department and

pleaded for advice about what to do.
 
"I told them, 'I really feel that

the man is ill, really and truly ill."

She had never even seen Big Carolyn Allanson.
 
"I had only one

conversation with Mrs. Allanson and that was when I called her at her

officeseveral months ago-hoping she would accept our invitation, at her

convenience, for her and Mr. Allanson to have lunch or dinner with

Colonel Radcliffe and me."

Mrs. Radcliffe recalled her fear when Walter Allanson had driven his

shotup station wagon to her place of employment and insisted she view

what he said Tom had done.
 
"I saw three places with some kind of tape

or something over them on the windshield .
 
. . and there were some

shatters around it.
 
. . . He said, 'Do you know that on Saturday, on

our way up to the lake, Tommy got out on that road and built an ambush

up on an embankment, and then when Carolyn and I were on [the road], he

shot at us?"
 
I said, 'No, he didn't-because he was out shoeing

horses."
 
He said, 'Well, it has to be him,' and I said, 'No.
 
It does

not have to be-because everything you have accused him of, he has had

lots of people around him at the time that these things have occurred

"Did you really, personally, know where Tom was that day?"
 
Zellner

asked.

"On that day?"

"Yes, ma'am.

"He had called us, and there are people who know he shod horses at

their place," she explained.

Colonel Radcliffe sat beside his wife as she explained her unnerving

encounters with the late Walter Allanson.
 
"Really and truly," she

confided.

"I tell my husband, it seems to be like the Lawrences-all of them-had

some kind of feud.
 
I felt like we were kind of in on the tail end of

something here."

"Caught in the middle?"
 
Zellner offered.

She nodded.
 
"Right.
 
But I'll tell you-perfectly franklythat I don't

feel like there's one way in this whole wide world that Tom Allanson

could, would, kill his parents.
 
. . . I have two theories on him.
 
Am

I supposed to tell my theories?"

Zellner nodded.
 
"You can if you want to, yes."

Margureitte Radcliffe hinted broadly-and incredibly-that she suspected

the dead man and his daughter-in-law might have been romantically

involved.
 
It was, of course, only her own theory.
 
"I really and truly

feel like this thing was set up and I feel like Mr. Allanson and

Carolyn planned to do something to Mrs. Allanson and blame it on Tom

and perhaps-at the last minute -it backfired on him and that Carolyn

did the whole bit."

Mrs. Radcliffe was confident that there was no way "in the whole wide

world" that Tom could be guilty of murder.
 
If that should be true, she

would be "the most absolutely shocked person in the entire world."

"But you said earlier," Zellner reminded Margureitte Radcliffe, "that

it is your nature to see the good side of everybody."

"Well, I was trying to see the good side when I was speaking to Mr.

Allanson.
 
. . . I still don't feel that anybody can be that hard-"

"Pretty much changed your mind at the end, didn't you?"

"That's why I came to the police department, and I said [to myself], Oh

my God, I hope that nothing happens to that man, because if it does .

. . Tom will be the one that will be blamed for it.
 
. . . I was

terrified of that man .
 
. . and I think his parents-the elder Mr. and

Mrs.
 
Allanson-were afraid of him too.
 
.

. . Yesterday, she [Nona] said she could say it for the first time -she

never could say it while they were alive-that they were never parents,

never 'mother' and 'father' to Tommy.
 
I've heard a lot of [other]

things, but they were hearsay."

Zellner asked about Pat's first marriage, and Margureitte explained

that she had been married very young and that it had never worked

out.

"Her father and I-Colonel Radcliffe and I -supported them for sixteen,

seventeen, eighteen years.
 
Right, honey?
 
She got nothing out of the

divorce.
 
. . . She's got fine children too, I'll tell you that."

It had been quite a day.
 
A lineup with a positive ID of Tom

Allanson.

A double funeral.
 
And a long, long interview with Mrs. Clifford

Radcliffe.
 
According to her, the late Walter Allanson had been a

monstrous, fearful man with a heart as cold as death.

And "Tommy," like herself, saw only the good in everyone.
 
He had been

a dutiful son, a fine son-in-law, and had alibis for every incident his

father accused him of.

For all but that very last, fatal encounter.

In the weeks that followed, the investigators learned that Tom would

inherit nothing from his parents.
 
Tom had known that for months.
 
He

knew that both his father and mother had cut him out of their wills the

previous Valentine's Day.
 
In fact, Tom was specifically eliminated in

codicils to their existing wills.