then he began to laugh, a soft, amused, tension-releasing sound that elicited smiles, laughter from the others.
“Oh, we did it,” he said, “we did it, we—did—it! And we’re going to get away with it, babies! The police are never going to catch us, you mark my words!”
Larry Drexel was right.
The police never caught them ...
October, 1970
BLUE ...
BUSINESSMAN KILLED, 4 HURT IN FREAK AUTOMOBILE EXPLOSION
Elgin businessman Frederick S. Cavalacci was killed last night, and four other prominent citizens were injured, when Cavalacci’s 1969 compact Chevrolet exploded in the Elks Club parking lot following an Urban Betterment League meeting.
Police sergeant Thomas Carlisle, the investigating officer, stated that there was the possibility of “fuel leakage from the carburetor somehow igniting, but we have no way of determining if this was the actual cause of the explosion.” Another of the officers on the scene said that the blast was “one of those tragic things that happen sometimes, a real freak.”
The other four men—David Keller, George R. Litchik, Nels Samuelson and Allan Conover—were treated for minor burns at County Memorial Hospital and subsequently released. Samuelson told reporters: “We had just come out of the meeting and were walking together toward our cars. We saw Fred get into his Camaro and heard the starter grind, and then there was this terrible, white-hot burst of flame. The concussion knocked us all off our feet. I thought the whole world had exploded.”
Cavalacci, 32, owned a half-interest in Bargains, Inc.—one of Evanston’s largest discount department stores. He was a native of Arden, Oklahoma, and came to this city in 1959. In 1963 he entered into partnership with Graham Isaacs of Evanston to establish Bargains, Inc. He was active in public affairs, and last year ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the City Council.
He is survived by his wife, Rona, and a seven-year-old daughter, Judith Anne.
GRAY...
TRUCK MISHAP CLAIMS LIFE OF LOCAL MAN
Paul Wykopf, 34, owner of the X-Cel Trucking Company of Fargo, was crushed to death shortly past 7 p.m. last night in the company’s truck garage at 1149 State Street. A failing hand brake on one of the General Motors diesel cabs parked in the garage was blamed for the tragedy. The vehicle apparently rolled forward after the hand brake slipped, pinning Wykopf against one of the concrete walls. Death was instantaneous, police said.
Gordon Jellicoe, head mechanic at X-Cel, discovered his employer’s body when Wykopf failed to meet him as promised at a local tavern, and he returned to find out why. He said that Wykopf was in the habit of working late on the company books three nights each week, and that he always made a check of the premises before leaving on those evenings. “That’s when it must have happened,” he told police.
Wykopf was graduated from Fargo High School in 1953, where he received statewide prominence in both football and baseball. He purchased X-Cel Trucking, then called Martin’s Freight Lines, from Pete Martin in 1962. The company specialized in the hauling of perishable goods.
There are no survivors.
RED ...
EUGENE BEAUCHAMP DIES IN PRIVATE PLANE CRASH
Eugene Beauchamp, the wealthy Philadelphia jet-setter who last month took his third bride, steel heiress Gloria Mayes Tanner, was killed yesterday in the crash of his private plane near Lake Wallenpaupack.
Investigating officers responding to the report of a midair explosion by rancher Neil Simmons, found the smoking wreckage of the 35-year-old financial wizard’s Cessna in a fallow field on Simmons’ property three miles from the lake. Beauchamp was alone in the twin-engine craft at the time of the fatal plunge.
He had taken off from Kirin Field in Philadelphia early yesterday morning on a planned flight to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, where he was to meet friends for a caribou-hunting expedition. He was in the habit of flying alone, a source close to the family said.
Police could find no explanation for the apparent explosion of the aircraft. A complete investigation is being conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Beauchamp, whose uncanny knowledge of the stock market resulted in the accumulation of a fortune reported to exceed twenty million dollars, had devoted his time to world travel in the past few years. He was a well-known member of the fabled international jet set, and maintained homes in Cote d’Azur and on the island of Majorca, as well as in Philadelphia.
Before wedding Miss Tanner in a lavish ceremony in fashionable Beacon Hill in September, Beauchamp’s name had been romantically linked with two international film starlets. His previous wives were Kelly Drew Beauchamp, an airline stewardess, and the socially prominent Maria Todd Andrews. Both marriages ended in divorce, the first in 1963 and the second in 1966.
Yellow November 1970 Saturday and Sunday
1
Andrea was gone.
Steve Kilduff knew that, intuitively, the moment he entered their apartment high on San Francisco’s Twin Peaks. He stood just inside the door, the cashmere overcoat he had shed in the elevator over his left arm, his eyes moving slowly over the neat, darkened living room—the magazines on the coffee table arranged just so, the freshly pressed drapes drawn carefully over the wide window-doors, the replace hearth swept clean and its steel screen placed with precise orderliness before the grate, the buff-colored shag carpet fluffy and well vacuumed, the expensive and ornate maple furnishings glistening with lemon-scented furniture polish. Everything was in its place, everything was spotlessly clean, everything was just as it always was, just as Andrea—warm, sweet, passionate, orderly Andrea—insisted it should be.
But she was gone. There was a tangible feel of desertion, of emptiness, which lay on the air in that very tidy living room like stagnating water at the bottom of a forest pool.
Kilduff shut the door quietly behind him, letting the overcoat fall to the carpet at his feet. Mechanically, he walked past the gleaming kitchen with its waxed linoleum floor and followed the short hallway into their bedroom. He saw, without seeing, that the wide double bed was neatly made, the white chenille spread free of even a single wrinkle, hanging exactly the same distance from the buff carpet on either side; that the toilet articles and jewelry cases on his dresser were schematically apportioned; that the hammered bronze ashtray on his night stand sparkled with a recent application of tarnish remover.
He went to the walk-in closet to the left of the doorway and slid back the paneled door on Andrea’s half. He looked at a bare, scrubbed wall and two dozen empty hangers uniformly bunched on the round wooden rod. The floor was equally bare; there were no pumps or heels or puff-ball slippers in the wire shoe rack, and the matching pieces of Samsonite luggage he had given Andrea for an anniversary present three years before were not there.
Kilduff returned to the living room. She hadn’t even bothered to leave a note, he thought, all the conspicuous surfaces where one might have been were barren; no note, no explanation or good-bye or kiss-my-ass or go-to-hell, nothing, nothing at all.
