Maria Eftimiades - Secrets from the Grave

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Contents

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to People Assistant Managing Editor Joe Treen for his deft edit of this manuscript, for his criticisms and suggestions, and for his support and interest in this project. I would also like to thank the many kind people I met in researching this book, especially those Montrose residents who shared their memories and anecdotes.

CHAPTER 1

A firm pull of the trigger, a blast, and the grasp releases; sending the clay pigeon tumbling to the ground, unbroken. In the shade of the skeet machine, the stillness of the woods kept score. Along the path that afternoon two sets of footprints marked the journeys start. By days end, shadows darkened the retreating steps of only one.

There was a misty quiet at Gunsmoke that day, one only a man who had walked the woods as a boy could know. In the stillness was a whispered pledge, that the secrets of the forest are kept. But the forest would suppress the truth for only so long, for the paths taken by its visitors are recorded in every mans soul, and the soul must ultimately have its say. And the just man his day.

* * *

It was nearing noon on June 2, 1976, when attorney Martin Dillon and his client Kendall Strawn wrapped up a real estate closing at County Bank in Montrose, Pennsylvania, a quiet hilltop town amid the Endless Mountains in the northeastern tip of the state. For the thirty-year-old Dillon, the workday was almost over.

As had become his custom in recent years, Marty took off most Wednesday afternoons to skeet-shoot with friends on a plot of land his parents owned and affectionately called Gunsmoke, about twelve miles northwest of Montrose. At the camp, the members of the Wednesday Afternoon Club, as Marty and his pals dubbed themselves, took turns shooting clay pigeons, with occasional breaks for beer and cigarettes.

Kendall Strawn didnt live in the area and wasnt part of the club, but he was a close friend, and today Marty Dillon wanted company. Leaning against Strawns Jeep in the parking lot, the young lawyer tried to cajole the burly thirty-six-year-old developer into an afternoon at the Dillon camp.

Come shoot with us, he urged Strawn. Couple of hours up at Gunsmoke. Come on. Itll be fun.

Kendall Strawn wasnt tempted. His mind was racing with all he had to get done that afternoon. Lately, hed been working seven days a week managing his properties, in addition to running the farm he owned in Le Raysville, west of Montrose. He barely found time to spend with his wife, Joan, and baby daughter, Tami.

Marty, I just cant, he said apologetically. Im too busy.

Marty wasnt giving up. What else do you have to do? he pressed.

For a moment Kendall thought he detected a touch of urgency in his friends voice, but then Marty smiled.

You dont have anything to do, he told Kendall, teasing. Come on, lets go shoot.

Three other friends, Marty explained, couldnt make it. Gary Passmore, an administrator at Montrose General Hospital, canceled that morning; it was his wifes birthday. Earle Wootton, publisher of the Montrose Independent newspaper, left a message saying he was too busy. And John Dabulewicz, an X-ray technician at the hospital, said he, too, had to pass.

That left Marty with just one member of the Wednesday Afternoon ClubDr. Stephen Scher, an allergist at Montrose General.

Kendall Strawn grasped the situation at once, but since Marty didnt volunteer anything further he decided not to ask. In the past, when Kendall had offered his opinion, hed gotten the impression that Marty didnt always appreciate his candor. And so now, when Dr. Stephen Schers name was mentioned, Kendall tread cautiously. A husbands denial, he knew, was a powerful force.

* * *

After Kendall drove off, Marty Dillon headed to his law office at the top of Public Avenue, just a few doors away from the bank. Since he returned to his hometown after graduating from law school five years earlier, hed landed a prime partnership with Robert Dean, one of the most respected attorneys in Susquehanna County. Martys practice was particularly busy. Land prices in the area had begun rising in the early 1970s, and the local economy was thriving. Many chose to live in the town of two thousand lined with lakefront, hundred-year-old Victorian homes and commute to jobs in cities like Binghamton, New York, twenty miles north, or Scranton, Pennsylvania, thirty miles south. Marty handled as many as a dozen real estate closings a week while his criminal defense practice continued to grow.

At his desk that afternoon, Marty Dillon thumbed through motions for a homicide case in which hed been appointed public defender. It was to be the young lawyers first murder trial. His client was accused of beating a Choconut, Pennsylvania, man to death, and the evidence against him was compelling. It wasnt going to be easy.

Marty was having difficulty concentrating on the case. Hed been fighting the tension that had been building all day, ever since Gary Passmore called to say he couldnt make it to camp. Dillons spirits rose once that day when his secretary, Bonnie Mead, told him he had a call from Anthony Amendola, an old friend whod moved to Florida but was back in town for the week. Marty reached for the phone, relieved.