The Original Alibi (Matt Kile) (12 page)

“Have a seat, Mr. Kile,” Mrs. Yarbrough said while fidgeting with her hands. Then she began to cry again. They sat on the couch. Mr. Yarbrough held her.

“How long have you folks been married?” I asked.

“Thirty-five years. A wonderful life together, except for this terrible thing. We are so ashamed.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Yarbrough, why did you lie?”

They had clearly lost their will to continue as they had for so long. The wrong of it had eaten through their resolve. Over the next half hour they told me of the morning when they walked their new puppy at the beach. The phone call Melanie received on her cell phone, the shot that had killed Snookie, and finally about the threat that stopped their hearts. “Do what you are told or my next shot will kill your grandson, Bobby.”

Robert continued to hold his wife, but now he also swiped at tears of his own. Then I asked, “A man? A woman?”

“A man,” Mrs. Yarbrough said, “a cold, heartless man, without feelings. How can anyone speak of killing a little infant, barely able to walk?”

“There are such people. Fortunately, they are few.” I didn’t tell them that the number of such people seemed to be increasing every year. Or maybe saying that would only have revealed my cynicism which had grown with time, and my knowledge of too many such people. I also recalled the general’s words about America losing its taste for swift and final justice.

“I know what I am about to ask you will not be easy. But believe me, it is necessary. Will you repeat everything you have told me into a tape recorder? I will not take it to the authorities without your permission.” After some resistance, they came to accept they had crossed a bridge this morning. That they could not put what they told me back into the darkness. They needed to do what they could to make amends for the pain and emptiness that filled the hearts of the parents of Ileana Corrigan.

I went out to my car and brought back the tape recorder. They asked if they could record it as well. I agreed. With two tapes running, Mr. Robert Yarbrough and his wife Melanie retold the horror of their morning eleven years ago, and the tribulations they had endured since. When they finished it was clear, they had never seen Eddie Whittaker anywhere except in the newspaper and on the news eleven years ago.

I drove back to Long Beach searching for the answer to the meaning of what I had learned. Someone had eliminated Cory Jackson, the only witness who had claimed seeing Eddie Whittaker at the scene of the crime. Oh, sure, Tommy Montoya could testify he was bribed to say he sold Eddie gas. But that only proved, especially with Cory Jackson dead, that no one knew where Eddie had been the night of the murder of his fiancée. The Yarbrough confession argued only that they had not seen Eddie in Buellton, not that he had not been there. Eddie says he went up there and nothing I had proved he hadn’t.

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 fiancée. Not that he didn’t kill his fiancée. The rest was conjecture that could fit various theories. One being that Eddie killed his fiancée 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.

Chapter 13

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.

“She can handle going through the records about the five old soldiers the general helped,” Axel said. “She can use the money, boss.”

I understood, but promised nothing.

Cars had changed enormously since Axel went to prison over thirty-five years ago, not to mention changes in the roads and the traffic lights. Yesterday he had begun driver training. His teacher was Buddha, one of the ex-cons who hung out in Mackie’s. The cars Axel drove before going inside featured split front windshields, bench seats, bigger steering wheels, and stick shifts to mention just a few of the differences. The roads in those days had fewer lanes and not many designated for turns. In prison he had gotten more than comfortable with computers, but he found nearly everything else on the outside new and a bit strange. So far I had only identified a few changes he found agreeable: big-flat-screen color television, and women’s shorter skirts along with the improved engineering of brassieres.

*

At nine I stopped for a quick meal in Hof’s Hut on Long Beach Blvd in the Bixby Knolls area. I took in the department’s homicide file on Ileana Corrigan and went over it again while I ate. There was nothing in the file about Cliff and Eddie being pals around the time of the murder. I hadn’t expected there would be, but I recalled the report mentioning guns at the Whittaker residence. The general had approved Fidge taking and testing any guns he wished. Fidge had taken a few possibles to determine if they had recently been fired. Ileana Corrigan had been shot twice, first in her throat and then a make-sure bullet in her head. The department ran tests, but none of the weapons had been fired recently enough, and in the opinion of their experts the bullet wounds had not come from shots fired by those guns. The shots that killed Ileana had been through-and-throughs from a powerful handgun. The evidence team had found no casings or bullets at the scene. Whoever had murdered Eddie’s fiancée had been calm and knew not to leave behind anything that ballistics might use.

After getting in my car, I called Charles’s cell phone to see if Cliff was still around. The chauffeur had left. Charles reminded me Cliff had a small place he kept in town to use sometimes. That he had gone there for the night and gave me that address. I started to head for his apartment on the off chance I might catch him there.

*

“Cliffy? Cliffy?”

Cliff Branch heard his name being spoken softly. It was after ten and he had just turned off his television. He knew the voice, but had not heard it spoken just that way in nearly a year.

“Hello,” he said after opening his door. “What brings you here?”

“I need someone to talk to and you’re the only one who really understands me.”

Karen Whittaker walked in wearing a loose extra large man’s tee shirt and red high heels. He could tell she wore no underwear and the way she moved without it could have been a commercial for a pediatrician. He wore only the jockey shorts he always slept in.

“I just don’t know what to make of this Matt Kile nosing into our family’s business. I’m not sure it’s good for Eddie.”

“Why not? The general believes Eddie didn’t kill Ileana. He’s hired Kile to prove that.”