Quiet Dell: A Novel (51 page)

Powers took up the tale. “Well I did not say to Mrs. Lemke, during the trip . . . that I intended to leave her there. . . . I thought that she would realize that much without me telling her. . . . I parked the car along the curb.” He got out to look for a suitable place for lunch, came back, and Mrs. Lemke had disappeared! As there “were no hard feelings of any kind,” he started to look for her, “not wanting to leave her there without someone helping her along.” He found her in a restaurant with Cecil Johnson, who invited Powers to join them. The gentlemen, both in town on “private business,” shook hands. Johnson asked Powers to cash two checks for Mrs. Lemke.

Asked to elaborate, Powers explained. “I had cashed checks before for this Mr. Johnson, and so I considered him an acquaintance,
and then of course I wanted to accommodate him if I could. I says, ‘How big is your check?’ ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘Mrs. Lemke has a check’—in fact, he says, ‘she has two checks . . . they are both cashier’s checks . . . you needn’t be afraid of them.’ ” Powers gazed into a middle distance, wearing a look of slight concern. “I objected to cashing those checks. . . . I did not have the money; that is, not that much. And Mr. Johnson then said, ‘Well, you can cash one and I will cash the other.’ I finally consented to accommodate them, and I cashed one check for Mrs. Lemke.”

Law spoke carefully, as though to be sure the jury understood the complicated truth. “At that time, did you see both the checks? Were they presented to you there in the restaurant?”

“Yes, sir,” Powers assured him. “Mr. Johnson said he would cash one . . . and Mrs. Lemke would endorse those checks and turn them over to me, and then I could give Mr. Johnson, at a future day, a check for his amount.”

The tale accommodated Powers: he alone would deal directly with the bank, reimbursing himself with one check, for which he’d already advanced Mrs. Lemke cash, and collecting cash on the other check, with which he would supposedly reimburse Cecil Johnson. Emily looked at Eric. “Can he be serious? Is this really his story?”

Law offered both checks into evidence. “Mr. Powers, I will ask you which of the checks you advanced the money on.”

“This one right here,” Powers said.

Law held up the check. “That is for the sum of one thousand, five hundred and thirty-three dollars and one cent?”

Yes, Powers asserted. Emily wondered that anyone might believe Powers carried such a sum in his wallet; $1,500 approached an average year’s income for those earning a decent wage. And Mr. Cecil Johnson had cash, in excess of $2,750, to cover the other check.

“This Johnson is well heeled,” Emily whispered, “and no vocation mentioned.”

“Perhaps he’s a con man.” Eric gave her a wide-eyed look.

Powers would bank all the money from Lemke’s checks while
Johnson would hold Powers’ postdated check: a check made out to Johnson. Powers would reimburse him after the bank paid; they would tear up the check, and so Powers could not be asked to produce it. It was bewildering, a sort of parlor game that netted Powers over four thousand dollars.

Law was presented the second check. “Whose endorsement is that, of ‘A. R. Weaver’?”

“That is my handwriting and my endorsement,” said Powers, admitting to fraud.

Why did he write the name A. R. Weaver? Well, he did not want to be responsible in case the checks were not paid, and endorsed them with a false name suggested by Mr. Johnson.

No, he did not see Mrs. Lemke again after July 30. He drove to Hagerstown, Maryland, to see a friend with whom he’d been acquainted four years, whose address he did not know, for whom the post office there had no information; then he drove back to Uniontown to present the checks for payment the next day, August 1, just as the Uniontown bank tellers had testified. And yes, he returned to Uniontown on August 7 to collect on the checks, and to pay Mr. Johnson the amount due him. Powers’ only contact with Mrs. Lemke consisted of the note she left in his car before “disappearing” in Uniontown.

Law began reading the note.
“Connie dear—”

“That was supposed to be me,” Powers informed Law.

Law went on:
“I think it best that we part. . . . So I am leaving you now. Please think as well of me as you possibly can. Best Wishes, Dorothy. P.S. I will write you . . . telling you where to send my things.”

“Best wishes,” Emily told Eric. “No ‘word of Love.’ ”

“I don’t wonder,” he said.

Powers of course knew Mrs. Lemke’s handwriting; they had corresponded since the first of the year. At Law’s request, Powers read out a second letter, received August 7, postmarked from Uniontown on the third. He made a show of putting on his gold-rimmed spectacles and holding up the letter:
“I do not know as yet where to tell you to send my things. Please hold them for a while until I
know where I will locate.”
“Dorothy” did not blame him for getting so mad at her after he found out she had deceived him. Would he forgive her? She meant no harm, but was “so anxious.”

The letter implied a hysterical, confused woman living who-knew-where with none of her belongings, for Powers had them.

On the way back from collecting her money in Uniontown, Powers stopped in Fairmont to collect her trunks. He took them to his Quiet Dell garage for safekeeping. Did he open them? He did not, but went into the “shed” on his return, for “it was not a garage,” and “found the contents of those two trunks on the floor.”

“Imagine,” Eric said.

Prompted by Law, Powers confided that he’d often heard “about the neighborhood, being rather suspicious.” He took Lemke’s trunks home to Quincy Street.

Law referred to the large bloodstain on the concrete floor and asked about the “natural light” in Powers’ “shed.”

“Well, there was no provision made for any light at all,” Powers answered.

No light, Emily knew, for this was his dark place, his hole in the earth, to starve them, hang them, strangle them.

There were four ventilators in the basement, Powers volunteered, “near the overhead, right close.” The “ventilators,” Emily knew, were merely small grated openings near the ceiling of each cell, barely at ground level outside, fitted with bolts so that boards could be secured over them. All this was known, for a newspaper had commissioned a detailed diagram of the “Murder Farm.”

Emily knew the diagram by heart: four four-by-five-foot basement cells with thick, windowless doors and ceilings lined with soundproof board. A trapdoor in the garage covered the rough steps to the basement. A rope tied securely to a rafter dangled over it, broken off as though snapped by a heavy weight.

Dorothy, the last, broke the rope. And so he beat her and used the strap. Emily forced herself to look at Powers, who was saying he saw no stains in the near-dark garage until shown them by police.

And his arrest?

Powers sat back in his chair, relaxing as though to converse. “My wife and her sister told me at once; they were awfully excited . . . that city police had been there that morning asking for C. O. Pierson, that they did not know anyone by that name, and they told him so.”

“Luella and Eva Belle,” Eric said, “pure as driven snow.”

“And awfully excited,” Emily wrote Powers’ exact phrase.

Powers said he went along to the police station, “to find out what this is all about.”

Law noted that Powers had been held in jail ever since, and faced the audience to ask, “Mr. Powers, have you ever endeavored to find Cecil Johnson or Charles S. Rogers, since your arrest?”

“I have given such information as I knew, to different persons, including officers of this town, but there was not much information that I could give.”

“What to do?” Eric asked, writing.

“Did you ever have a letter at any time from Charles Rogers?” Law paused, as though for a reveal.

“Several letters,” Powers answered.

Law then gave him a letter “bearing date of ‘Fairmont, July 6, 1931,’ addressed to ‘Dear Pal,’ and signed ‘Charles.’ . . . Are you acquainted with his handwrite, and often saw him write?” Law accepted Powers’ affirmation and declared “we now want to offer this letter in evidence.”

Finally, Morris objected. “It is self-serving.”

Judge Southern examined the letter. “Sustained.”

Emily reflected that Powers was quite occupied between calamities, driving from town to town, cashing checks and mailing himself letters.

Law reintroduced the linchpin of Powers’ defense. “You spoke of the man Charles S. Rogers. Have you met him at Clarksburg other than the time when he introduced you to Mrs. Lemke?”

“I have. . . . He was out to the garage several times.”

“State whether he had a key to the garage.”

“Mr. Rogers had a key to that building practically ever since it was finished.”

“Tell us about Cecil Johnson, was he ever out there?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

And had Powers ever seen Cecil Johnson in Clarksburg?

“Why, yes . . . he was introduced to me by Mr. Rogers. . . . I think it was at the post office.” Powers described Johnson as looking “similar to myself”; Rogers was a bit older, and had a joint missing from a finger on his left hand. Powers wasn’t sure which finger and didn’t know the cause of the injury, but “went to see him quite frequently” in 1925 and ’26.

Before he married Luella in ’twenty-seven, was the point. Emily looked up to find William gone from his seat, for it was not his job to listen to Powers’ lies.

“I took a liking to Rogers,” Powers was saying, “and we became friends.”

Morris rose for the cross; what was the purpose of the lists of names shown Powers by Charlie Rogers?

“Well, all I can tell you . . . it was a list used by a correspondence club . . . that went under the name of the American Friendship Society.”

So he’d gotten both Asta’s and Dorothy’s names from an agency that catered to respectable women. Eva Belle Strother corresponded through “Cupid’s Columns,” but “the American Friendship Society” implied a vaguely charitable or even spiritual mission.

“What was the purpose of a married man,” Morris asked, “in corresponding with these women, members of matrimonial bureaus?”

Powers leapt into the breach. “That purpose, to explain it right, would be a story.”

“Well,” said Morris, “let us have it.”

“No,” Emily said, into her notes.

But Powers obliged. “During the four years that we were married there was a good many domestic troubles. I had made up my
mind that I would obtain a divorce. . . . I had frequently told [Rogers] about my troubles. . . . One day, January of this year . . . I met Mr. Rogers . . . and he pulled out several sheets . . . of these names, and he said, ‘I know what I would do if I was in your place.’ And I said, ‘What would you do, Charlie?’ ”

Powers was actually doing the voices, pitching his own part in a slightly higher register.

“He says, ‘I would get someone else.’ My troubles had nearly driven me crazy at that time.” Powers allowed his voice to tremble, and wiped at his eyes.

Morris looked skeptical. “And as a result . . . you did correspond with several women throughout the country?”

“I then, in my frame of mind, jumped at that suggestion that Mr. Rogers made to me.”

“And among the women,” Morris demanded, “was one Mrs. Asta Buick Eicher, of Park Ridge, Illinois?”

“Objected to!” Law shouted, for the noise in the hall suddenly increased. “That is not cross-examination!”

“Overruled!” Judge Southern declaimed.

Morris pressed on. “You had an understanding with Mrs. Lemke that you would be married?”

“No understanding whatsoever.”

No understanding? Yet, Morris observed, Powers sent his picture to Lemke, and to other women, including Asta Eicher.

“Just a small picture,” Powers said.

And he described himself, C. O. Pierson, as a man of wealth who owned property, a civil engineer . . . who built bridges?

Powers did not remember.

“Let us come to your trip to Northborough on Monday evening, July twenty-seventh. . . . You all talked over the situation together, you and Mr. and Mrs. Fleming, Mrs. Lemke, and the two Fleming children. Do you recall that?”

“I absolutely recall that we did not.”

Morris reminded him: the large ranch near Cedar Rapids, his own electrical installation, to light the farm and house.

“There was no electricity mentioned by myself.” Powers glanced at Law.

Didn’t Powers recall the conversation later that Monday night with Mr. and Mrs. Fleming and Mrs. Lemke, about future arrangements? That he was going to give Dorothy all her heart could wish for?

“I did absolutely not say that.” Powers tone was cold and flat.

And nothing was said about a honeymoon, Morris persisted, because Powers had no matrimonial ideas; was that correct?

“I did not say that merely; I meant that there was no such thing mentioned on the twenty-seventh day of July in the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Fleming.”

“Where were you going then?”

Powers repeated, like an automaton, “Mrs. Lemke was on her way to Paris, Illinois, and Fairmont, West Virginia.”

“And you were just very kindly taking her along, without any ultimate intention of marrying her? And brought her all the way from Northborough to Fairmont, and she never told you who she was going to visit in Fairmont?”

“She did not.”

“Now, Mr. Powers, just tell the jury please, how long a vacation Mrs. Lemke was going to take.”

“I did not ask . . . that was her affair.” Powers was sweating, and wiped his brow quickly.

“She took her bedding with her, didn’t she, and a lot of other articles . . . winter clothes . . .”

“I can express my opinion about those things,” Powers retorted, “but from real knowledge I would not be able to tell.”

Morris went on, clarifying that Powers could not describe their route, did not register under any name at any of the tourist homes where they stayed. And so they arrived at Uniontown, where “the business of the checks” took place. “And without any more ado you took out a roll of bills and counted out one thousand, five hundred and thirty-three dollars and one cent, to Mrs. Lemke, and cashed the check payable to Dorothy A. Pressler?”