Murder in Little Egypt (30 page)

Nolen tried to trace the morphine and other drugs, including a morphine substitute, to Dr. Cavaness. They were pharmaceutical substances, on hand in every hospital, accessible to the doctor.

These particular drugs turned out to have been manufactured several years before; they had perhaps been in Dr. Cavaness’s possession all that time. But Nolen was unable to trace them directly to Dr. Cavaness.

Nolen still had Weingarten’s word on tape that he had “torched” the doctor’s trailer, on which Nolen was able to verify that the doctor had collected insurance.

He presented all the evidence to a judge, asking for arrest warrants to be issued against Dr. Cavaness, Johnny Weingarten, and the third man present at the deal, who turned out to be Weingarten’s younger cousin.

The judge agreed to the warrants for the Weingartens on the drug charge, but refused to issue one against Dr. Cavaness. There was not sufficient probable cause against the doctor, the judge rightly determined, because Weingarten could hardly be considered a “reliable informant,” a precondition for arresting someone on the word of another. If either of the Weingartens could be persuaded to name the doctor fully and to trick him into giving them drugs in a deal observed, recorded, or in some way proved by officers, then there would be probable cause and Nolen could arrest him.

The age of the drugs suggested that Dr. Cavaness was a novice at dealing, making use of substances no longer on inventory at the hospital, and that he might not deal again. Nolen decided that he would have to go ahead and arrest the Weingartens and hope that they would implicate the doctor. He was prepared to make them a sweet deal if they would cooperate.

When confronted with the tape of the conversation with the Panther, the younger Weingarten at first named Dr. Cavaness, then retracted his statement. Johnny Weingarten refused to talk at all.

The cousins were tried, convicted, and sentenced to ten years each. Nolen felt sorry for the younger cousin, who appeared to have been only marginally involved and seemed remorseful; but as Nolen liked to say, recreation can be mighty expensive. As for why neither cousin was willing to finger the doc, Nolen could not be sure. He wondered whether the Weingartens feared Dr. Cavaness. Johnny and the doc had been close over the years, Johnny might know about other activities in which the doctor had been engaged, and surely he must have witnessed many instances of the doc’s violent temper. He might know more than was healthy for him.

But all this was speculation. For now Nolen could only continue to wait and watch, carry on with his daily routine, wheel around Egypt pursuing other cases and absorbing information. Six years after Mark’s death, Nolen could not be absolutely certain that Dr. Cavaness was responsible for the murder, but he felt in his bones that it was so. The doc was one hell of a clever little guy. Everybody in Eldorado and half of Harrisburg still swore by him. It was probably a good thing that Kevin and his brothers were living away from southern Illinois.

In St. Louis Marian was able to discern signs that her burdens were beginning to lighten. Sean, released from the treatment center, joined Alcoholics Anonymous and seemed to be coping much better with his problems. He had a new girlfriend, Tina Crowley, a sympathetic young woman with a child of her own. He was talking about taking classes at a technical college.

Even Dale gave indications of mellowing. He had come up with a scheme to provide for his sons’ futures, an investment program to which he would contribute a thousand dollars per son per year that was tied to the stock market and could be worth a great deal of money, so he said, in a few years’ time. All the boys had to do was to sign some papers; he would take care of the rest. It was a new type of investment program established by the Equitable insurance company: By making the payments through the company, Dale said, he would be able to get a tax deduction.

Kevin thought the plan sounded a little goofy. He called Dale’s insurance agent, Harry Bramlet, who assured Kevin that the plan was sound and would be of great benefit to him and his brothers. The payments would be deducted automatically from Dale’s checking account. Kevin noted that the plan was actually a life-insurance policy and that it included a nonsmoking clause, even though both Kevin and Sean smoked. But he and his brothers went ahead and signed. What the hell, Kevin figured, if the old man wants a tax deduction, let him have it.

Marian meanwhile was making plans to marry again. She had been surprised late in 1982 to receive a telephone call from Les Green, a man whom she had not seen or heard from in thirty years but whom she remembered as the fellow who had married one of her roommates from her Washington, D.C., days as an airline stewardess. Les contacted her after his wife died of cancer and he learned from the third roommate that Marian was divorced and living in St. Louis, where one of Les’s married sons also lived. Les told her that he was president of his own advertising agency in Wausau, Wisconsin; he was coming to St. Louis to visit his son and would love to see her and reminisce about the great times they used to have together in Washington.

Marian went to dinner with Les and his son and daughter-in-law at Al Baker’s, a popular Italian restaurant that Marian had not been able to enjoy for years. Being with Les was like escaping decades of unhappiness. He was a quietly humorous, conservative man, close to his children, successful in his business, ten years older than Marian but still handsome, elegantly dressed, with beautiful manners. Soon he and Marian, as Les said, became the best thing that ever happened to the airline business between St. Louis and Wisconsin. He called her Skip; her old nickname made her feel like her fun-loving self again.

“I guess we’ve found out that we can bear each other’s company,” Les said to her when she was visiting him at his house in Wausau. That evening he proposed to her. He had a spare room where Patrick could live while finishing high school.

Patrick resisted, and Marian worried about leaving Sean, but marrying Les seemed to her a godsend. She knew that she would be a fool to turn down a man whose company she loved and who offered her peace and security. Les made every effort to befriend her boys; for a man at his age to agree to live with someone else’s teenaged son was a sign of generous character. Wausau was not a metropolis but it was attractive and orderly, and Les’s friends welcomed her.

Putting Sean on his own seemed the best choice for him. At twenty-two, it was time for him to stop living with his mother anyway. He cried at the prospect of her leaving, but she helped him find a spacious apartment across from the Botanical Gardens on Arsenal Street, only seven blocks from Tina Crowley’s. Kevin and Charli would watch out for him, and Marian could fly down if there were any crises. Dale agreed to send the hundred and fifty dollars monthly rent until Sean could establish himself.

Marian was puzzled when, in order to obtain a marriage license, she requested a copy of her divorce decree from the St. Louis County clerk and was told that none could be found. She hired a lawyer from Marion, Illinois, to investigate. It turned out that, although the judge had pronounced Dale and Marian divorced thirteen years before, the final decree was conditional on Dale’s signing and filing the settlement papers. He had neglected to do so.

Isn’t that typical, Marian thought. Anything having to do with Dale meant problems. It crossed her mind that he might deliberately have contrived to leave the divorce unsettled, as a final gesture of control over her or as an expression of his indifference or contempt; but she kept her thoughts to herself. Les took the matter lightly. He laughed that it was the first time that he had gone steady with a gal only to find out that she was married. Imagine a man of my years, he said, ending up engaged to a female bigamist.

Marian’s lawyer drove over to Eldorado to obtain Dale’s signature. He reported that the doctor had kept him waiting for an hour and a half but that Dale had seemed to be a terrific guy, warm and down-to-earth.

“That’s Dale,” Marian said. “He could charm the birds off the trees. That’s why I married him. The charm wore off after a while.”

She said no more. She saw no reason to burden Les with her tales of the woe that had been her marriage. If you were going to start over, you had better be prepared to leave the past behind. All Les knew was that Marian’s marriage had soured after many years and that her eldest son had died under tragic circumstances. The important thing was, Les liked to kid her, that she had survived all those years without losing her looks.

Les and Marian were married in June 1984 at the Central Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, with her boys and his three children in attendance. Pat and Betty Ray Sullivan drove up from Harrisburg, and Marian’s brother, Bill, flew back from California for the event. Bill invited the boys to visit him and his family at their house in the Bay Area. They should consider moving to California, Bill said, where there were plenty of opportunities. Privately he told Marian that he had surmised some years before that she might be having trouble with Dale. He had been on a business trip in the late 1960s, he said, checking into a hotel in Nashville, when he noticed that the man signing in next to him at the registration desk was from Eldorado.

“I’ve got a sister living in Eldorado,” Bill had said. “She’s married to a Dr. Dale Cavaness.”

“That’s not something I’d brag about,” the man had snapped and turned his back.

The minister spoke of how Les and Marian had found each other after thirty years. Now they would be able to love and care for one another in their maturity. Their story was an inspiring one, an instance of benign providence.

At dinner afterward at The Coal Hole, a cheerfully opulent restaurant in Clayton, everyone toasted the newlyweds.

18

THROUGHOUT THE LATTER HALF OF 1984, WITH MARIAN AND Patrick living up in Wisconsin, Sean and Dale were in closer touch than ever before, as Sean reported happily to Kevin and Charli. There were phone calls two or three times a month, and once early in November Dale dropped by Sean’s apartment unexpectedly when, he said, he happened to be in St. Louis on medical business. Sean was not at home but the downstairs neighbor put Dale on the phone with Tina Crowley, who said that Sean was with her and gave directions to her place. Dale had stayed at Tina’s for several hours, talking and drinking.

Kevin was glad for Sean that he was getting closer to Dale, although Kevin worried that Dale would encourage Sean to drink. Around Kevin and Charli, Sean drank little or not at all, being anxious, they understood, for them to see that he was making progress. They worried about him. They were never sure whether to believe him when he told them that he had a job doing one thing or another, and he had dropped out of the classes he had been taking at St. Louis Community College at Forest Park. He seemed to enjoy being with Tina Crowley, but he also spent a lot of time alone, walking through the Botanical Gardens across from his apartment and going fishing out at the Busch Wildlife Center, which reminded him of southern Illinois.

As winter came on, Sean’s only job was shoveling snow for a landscaping company. Dale paid his rent, but his telephone was shut off—temporarily, he assured Kevin and Charli; he had forgotten to pay the bill. He did not tell them that his gas and electricity had also been cut off. They asked him to dinner as often as they could and gave him a few dollars when they had something to spare.

On Saturday, December 8, Sean came to dinner at their apartment, bearing Christmas cards for Marian, Les, Patrick and some friends, wrapped gifts for Kevin and Charli. He asked them to mail the cards for him—to save the postage, Kevin presumed, figuring that Sean must have pawned something to afford the gifts, however small they probably were. But he seemed cheerful, hugging them as he always did and asking whether he could ride down to southern Illinois with them for Christmas; he did not think his Olds would be able to make the trip. He was looking forward to seeing his dad and to spending the rest of the holidays in St. Louis with Tina. The old man had been acting pretty decent lately. It would be a drag, staying with Dale and Martha as Sean planned to do, but it would be worth it, he said.

After dinner they watched a World War II documentary on television. If he ever had to go into combat, Sean said, he would want to have Poncho (his pet name for Kevin) by his side.

“Poncho would ride shotgun,” Kevin said. He had been reading Ernest Hemingway and had placed a bust of Papa, with sunglasses perched on the bearded face, on top of the television set. Kevin liked to kid Sean by talking in Hemingway lingo to him. “Poncho would pick off the bastards one by one. Then we would catch a fish and cook it and eat it and drink plenty of the good white wine they serve in the clean café by the river. You stick with the old Poncho. We’ll have good times, and the women will be fresh and pretty after we’re finished with the killing.”

Kevin and Sean talked about other Christmases, laughing about the bad times and trying to remember the good ones. That Christmas in the trailers after the house had burned down had been the worst, they agreed. When they saw that it was after midnight, Sean decided to sleep over. He headed home after watching some football on television the next afternoon.

One Monday evening Dale telephoned to ask whether Kevin had seen Sean. He wanted to talk to him; it was nothing important, some papers to sign. Kevin said that he would relay the message. On their way over to a St. Louis Blues hockey game the following evening, Kevin and Charli stopped by Sean’s apartment, but he was not home, so they left a note saying that they hoped to catch him after the game. When Sean was still not at home—they assumed he must be with Tina—Kevin left a second note:

Sean,

Give me a call as soon as you can. Nothing wrong. Just a relay from the Honcho [Dale].

Luv,