Murder at Thompson Bog

Episode 3


Harlen Eldridge sat on the front porch of his lavish estate smoking a cigar. That the cigar was expensive didn't matter to his wife; she would not let him smoke it in the house. “Just as well,” he thought, “I've got things to do that are best done in the dark.”

The senior Eldridge thought about his darling daughter, Edna Maye, and unwrapped the string from the folder that sat on his lap. On the table close by sat a short glass of cut crystal with a heavy bottom and a dramatic pattern. He dropped two cubes of ice into the glass, covering them with whiskey from a matching decanter and adding a splash of water from a matching water pitcher. The folder had a stamp on the front, “A. Gaither Detective Agency.” Inside were typed reports and several black-and-white glossies taken from a distance.

The photos were of a man in a two-year-old black Ford sedan driving up to a trailer, the man walking up to the trailer and the man leaving the trailer after dark, kissing the girl in the glow of the yellow light coming through the door.

Harlen closed the folder. He would have to take action, but what? He could have the man fired from the force. But then he would just have to provide his out-of-work son-in-law with a job. He could expose him and get them divorced. But that would have his daughter back in the house and it had cost him a small fortune to have her married off; not many were willing to put up with his darling daughter. He could buy the Miller girl off easily enough, but there would be another in the next trailer down the road. Another thought flitted through his head, making him smile, but he soon shook it off.

“No. He is, after all, a detective of police, his disappearance is bound to bring up questions. That'll never do.” Harlen went back to his drink.


Al Gaither sat up with the ringing of the alarm clock. He slapped a large, flat hand on the button and the ringing stopped. He looked around. He was in his apartment on the outskirts of Landon County. “Thank God!” he said, turning to sit sideways on the bed. “Not another crumby motel room. It's good to be home if only for a while.”

It was midnight and he had to be going, there were people to follow, pictures to take, reports to make. Tonight, he would get to his hiding spot just in time to see his latest case leaving his girlfriend's place, kissing under the bare light bulb. It was all so romantic. Al smiled.

“You going already, babe?” said his wife, Claire.

“Yeah, gotta get the latest chapter of a story that is fast coming to a close. I'll be back in a couple of hours. We can have breakfast together later.”

Claire Gaither smiled and touched her husband's back as he got up to put on his shirt. She had married him when she was his secretary and he was just starting the agency. He had been a cop until a scandal had sullied him. He swore to the authorities and to her that he had been innocent. The charges were dropped for lack of evidence, but he had lost the trust of his superiors and took early retirement. She was much younger, but had no prospects and she respected him, so when he asked, she answered to the affirmative. Al knew he was lucky to have her and showed it whenever he could. Every night that he spent watching others cheat on their wives made him happier to see her when he got home.

Al got dressed in the same clothes he had on earlier that day when he took the folder out to the Eldridge place. “See what else you can get.” old man Eldridge had said. “You're the boss.” Al had replied. Now he was once again getting into the aging Chevy and backing down the driveway in the middle of the night.


Collin Miller sat in his boat, his shotgun across his lap and a lantern on the front board, drinking kerosene. Well, it tasted like kerosene, anyway. Whatever it was the Belter boys were making up there, it had a kick and got him numb and that's all he cared about. They took his $2.00 and gave him a couple of Mason jars of it. He was already into the second.

A sound to the right caused him to turn the flashlight on and look over, but he couldn't see what it was. “It sure ain't Clara,” he said to himself. He turned the flashlight off, content to sit by the dim light of the lantern.

He had named his daughter after his wife. Mrs. Miller had died in childbirth. To help raise Clara, he had remarried quickly, but she left before too long. Living with Collin Miller proved to be a chore not worth the trouble. A third woman stayed a while, then left when the subject of marriage came up; he was still married to the missing second Mrs. Miller. After that, a string of increasingly desperate single women came and went from his life until finally there was only him and young Clara.

But Clara was growing into a woman and her womanhood was firing on all cylinders. Keeping the boys away was a full-time job and more than once the dogs had given chase through the woods followed by a blast from Miller's shot gun. The police had come out twice to remind him that murder is a crime, teenage daughter or no teenage daughter.

It wasn't until his shift was changed to grave-yard that she stopped taunting the local young studs. Collin thought it might be she was finally growing up, but coming home early to find a grown man leaving the trailer changed his way of thinking. He had passed the man on the road. A black Ford sedan with a grown man at the wheel, in a tie and a hat and coming from his trailer. “Who was that?” he had asked Clara, but she just swore up and down that no one had been there. That's when he knew that the man who had been there was there for her and not for some other business. He had recently demanded another shift and had been laid off for his trouble.

Now he sat and waited for the man to come back. Instead of the man coming back, Clara was gone. When he came home that night, there was no sign of her. The police had come out and asked some questions, but they didn't seem very interested. The police had the same kind of black sedan as the man, but then next to Collin's old truck, they all looked alike.

He pictured the black Ford sedan, riding down the road, the man laughing, Clara in the passenger seat, laughing right along with him, and figured he was better to be shut of her. Still, he hadn't come up like a man and asked for her, he just took her – and nobody took anything from Collin Miller and got away with it. If the police found him, he would go to jail, but if Collin found him first, the man would be picking buck shot out of his butt-cheeks until the next winter. Miller took another drink of the second jar of the Belter brothers' home-made and listened for the sound of someone who might be coming through the swamp to steal from him.