Unrevealed (6 page)

First he said he had awakened to a loud thump outside their bedroom, stumbled in the darkness toward the landing, turned on the light and saw his wife sprawled on the entryway tile floor. At that point, he claimed to have raced down the stairs and begun CPR, tearing off and discarding her underwear in the process because he thought he saw a puncture wound in her pelvis. The problem was that her lilac nightgown was not torn or bloodied, only her panties. There was also the question of the distance between where her body lay and the location of the panties under the secretary. When you fling lacy panties aside, they tend not to travel far, due to their weight. Also, a rough tile floor, such as the one in the Gambrels' entryway, prevents items such as lacy panties from scooting too far. Additionally, when I recovered said panties, they were pretty well hidden under the piece of furniture. It was that observation that generated a change in Mr. Gambrel's telling of the story.

With head bowed and eyes never locking with mine, Mr. Gambrel said that the lights in the house were already turned on when he awakened to find his wife missing from their bed. While he still maintained that he cut his nude body en route to the landing because of being half asleep, he claimed that when he descended the stairs, he had no recollection of
removing her panties and tossing them aside. All he recalled was doing CPR and frantically trying to revive her. When I pressed him, asking why her panties were bloodied and seemingly hidden under the secretary, he maintained that he had no memory of removing them.

No memory
. That's never a good answer, especially after you've already stated something else. But I'm patently aware of shock and how it can wreak havoc with recall. Shock can also create gaps in stories big enough for trains to chug through. Furthermore, interviewing a shock victim — especially someone who has just witnessed a loved one's death — can be problematic, since the shock tends to suspend one's reality, often making a person feel as if he is viewing the event from outside his body. The story is told from a more generalized point of view, rather than rife with detail, simply because shock creates a cloudy wash over the trauma. The mind says that “this can't be happening” and, thus, detachment begins to shield an individual from further emotional damage. It's the body's way of protecting itself, but it creates huge problems for a detective who is trying to piece together the puzzle.

One of the local cops on the scene made a comment out of Gambrel's hearing about what a “fine, upstanding guy” Gambrel was and how it was “too damn bad” that this event would fuck up that reputation. It was then that I realized who in the hell Winston Gambrel was. He and his wife owned and operated Abbey's Road Pub, a Denver downtown landmark. The name of the place was a play on words, combining the title of the Beatles'
Abbey Road
album with the name of Gambrel's wife, Abbey. The couple had no children and so their business became their “baby.” Abbey's Road Pub celebrated all things British, from the ceiling that sported a
painted wall-to-wall Union Jack to the bevy of commemorative plates that adorned each booth, with the Queen, Prince Charles, the Queen Mother and Princess Diana featured. But what I remembered most about his pub was the incredible collection of Beatles memorabilia that Winston Gambrel had assembled over the years. You knew it had to be worth something because he had all of it in cases, protected behind heavy glass.

The Gambrels, both British, came to the States in early 1970 and opened their popular pub initially for tourists and British transplants so they'd have a home away from home… or pub away from pub. But the establishment quickly found American fans who loved the Beatles' motif, imported ales and lively atmosphere. In recent decades, Abbey's Road Pub was the epicenter of all things charitable — from Run for the Cure events to feeding the homeless on Thanksgiving Day. They sponsored scholarships for adult literacy programs and were well known for their annual Halloween festivities, where they awarded a one-hundred-dollar cash prize to each of the four people whose costumes and appearance best matched George, Paul, Ringo and John.

While Winston Gambrel looked nothing like John Lennon — his muscular and manly six-foot, four-inch frame would have dwarfed the thinner and slighter Lennon — Gambrel traditionally wore his John Lennon garb, circa 1969, to each year's Halloween party. His wife, Abbey, of course, dressed like Yoko Ono. Photos of the pair in their costumes were a regular feature every November 1 in the “People” section of
The Denver Post
. As I walked up the staircase that led to the master bedroom, I studied the vast array of photographs that lined the wall. The shots chronicled Winston and Abbey's cherished moments at their pub over
the last forty years. Amid the crush of photos were forty shots — one for each year of the pub's operation — of their popular Beatles-themed Halloween parties. In the first shots, taken in the early 1970s, Winston obviously really had long, straggly hair that looked identical to Lennon's unkempt mane, along with the beard and mustache to complete the Lennon-like vibe. But as the 1970s melted into the 1980s and then the 1990s, it looked as if Winston cut his locks and switched to a John Lennon wig and paste-on facial hair. As each year passed, I noted, Winston's frame got a little heavier but his John Lennon costume never changed. From the cream-colored bell-bottom pants to the matching cream jacket and shoes, Winston Gambrel perfectly re-created the outfit Lennon wore on the
Abbey Road
album cover.

I checked downstairs and saw that Mr. Gambrel was seated on a chair, head in hands, as the paramedics zipped his wife's body into a black plastic bag and summarily lifted her onto a wheeled cart. There was no dignity to the whole thing, I thought. Here was the grieving husband and there was his wife, cold and dead, being zipped up like leftovers into a plastic baggie. Everything they shared before that moment was brutally truncated by fate and punctuated by the irreverent rip of a metal zipper. Every dream they dreamed ended at that moment; every knowing glance they shared across the breakfast table would be at the mercy of Mr. Gambrel's heartbroken memory.
Shattered
. That's the best way I can describe that man at that moment.
Gutted
. That's what he looked like as he reached out and achingly touched the plastic bag one last time as they carted Abbey's body out the door.

I knew what the cops were thinking downstairs.
Nice acting job, asshole.
We're all skeptics at any death scene. We
always see the worst in everyone because we've seen the shithooks of humanity and what they are capable of doing to their loved ones. To most of us, you're not innocent until proven guilty; you're a suspect until we can find the real perpetrator. And when I find a pair of your wife's panties with bloodstains hidden under a piece of furniture…well, what can I say? It's not leaning in your favor.

I continued up the stairs to the master bedroom. The light on the landing was on. That was what Mr. Gambrel told me in his first telling of the story. I flicked on another switch, which partially lit up the master bedroom. Walking into the bedroom, I turned on another light and gazed around the dark wood-paneled room. My first thought was that it reminded me of the kind of elegance you might find in an English castle. There was the king-size four-poster that sat so high up, one would need a small step stool to comfortably get in. A stone fireplace across from the bed had a wrought iron emblem that looked like a royal crown and the words “Hail Britannia” beneath it. I've always wanted a fireplace in my bedroom because there's something quite calming to me about going to sleep with only the amber light from a fire and the reassuring crackle of the logs spitting embers onto the stone. It's like camping, minus all the annoying shit. I stood there for a second and imagined Winston and Abbey curled up in their high-rise bed staring at the roaring fire and talking about their long day at the pub.

Walking around to the foot of the bed, I turned on a decorative lamp that stood on a small table. I determined that Winston slept on the right side of the bed based on the fact that on the left side table, there was a jar of jasminescented hand cream, a box of pink Kleenex, and a small photo of Winston. Call it preschool deduction, but that had
to be Abbey's side of the bed. I stepped back and retraced the most likely steps that Winston would have taken in the dark if, as he claimed, he had made his way around the bed and out the door. There were those surface cuts on his upper thigh, some of which had bled, that had attracted the attention of the cops on the scene. From what I could see, his alleged route showed several telltale signs of recent travel. For example, a framed photo was on the floor beside the small table that held the decorative lamp. A pair of slippers were several feet apart, as if someone had stumbled over them. Signs of a physical altercation in the room? Maybe. I peered closer at the corners of the bed but the dark wood made it difficult to see major blood transfer. Mr. Gambrel initially said that he tore off his wife's lacy panties because he thought he saw a puncture wound in her pelvis. But there was no puncture wound anywhere on her body.

I went back to those motives for murder: sex, money and gettin' even. That's where the secrets like to play. When you have bloodied lacy panties, you've gotta consider rough sex gone wrong or rape. It didn't mean that he killed her on purpose. Working out this twisted scenario in my head, I wandered onto the landing off the bedroom and tried to picture the possible ways this could have gone down. Abbey and Winston could have been going at it on the landing; maybe he rubbed against something sharp and transferred his blood onto her panties. Perhaps that's when he ripped them off her body and tossed them downstairs, which would make more sense given their final location. But without getting too graphic here, no matter how many sexual positions I tried to visualize the Gambrels engaged in, I couldn't find any sign of activity on the landing nor could I figure out how they might have been having sex in order for Abbey to land
in the manner she did. Even though Winston said he turned her over to do CPR, the manner in which she was initially sprawled — again, according to Winston — indicated that she fell forward down the stairs. Of course, Winston could have lied to us about how he found her body, but my initial take was that his telling of that part of the story truly seemed genuine. What I didn't buy was his second version of the story, when he had his head lowered and never looked me in the eye. That was guilt showing through. What that guilt was connected to, I didn't know yet.

One of the first cops on the scene called up to me at that point. Mr. Gambrel was now in the other room. “There was no sign of sexual penetration on the deceased,” he offered, as if he somehow knew I was up there visualizing the Gambrels getting frisky.

Okay, I thought, cross sex off the list. That left money and gettin' even. But this was spouse-on-spouse, which revolved in its own orbit. And that orbit is known as
rage
. Typically, you kill your spouse because you find out he or she is cheating on you. It can be premeditated but it's usually a boiling hot explosion wrapped in a blinding primal frenzy that starts with a verbal confrontation, graduates to throwing and breaking various household items, and escalates to a full-blown physical fight that leads to the death that lawyers justify as a “crime of passion.” I thought about how shattered Mr. Gambrel looked. If that was an acting job, the guy should get an agent and go to Hollywood. As far as I was concerned, he loved his wife with a depth most people never experience. But that kind of unflagging devotion could certainly make the pain of finding out she had a lover even more cutting, which
could
result in a swift and sudden fight to the death. And yet, where was the proof of this violent fight?
Aside from that knocked-over photo and scattered slippers, I was coming up short.

I returned to the bedroom and righted the photo that had fallen off the small table. I couldn't help but smile. It was an obviously old shot of our man Winston Gambrel personally re-creating the cover of the
Abbey Road
LP in his cream John Lennon suit. There he was, all alone, walking across the real Abbey Road in London, caught in long stride. But he didn't look like he had on a wig or fake beard and mustache in the photo. I opened the back of the frame and pulled out the photo, turning it over. Printed were the words: Me on abbey road, December 1, 1969.” Ah, he was a Beatles fan even back then.

I meandered around the bedroom, opening up drawers and closets. I memorized the contents of the drawer in Abbey's side table. I discovered a media closet that housed at least several hundred CDs. Of course, he owned every single Beatles album, but he also had every solo effort that John Lennon recorded. Oddly, there was nothing in there of George, Paul or Ringo's solo projects. In the corner of the closet, I found a small, unmarked box of reel-to-reel tapes. They were all dated 1969. As I shuffled through them, I only found one that was labeled: “proper elocution.” I thought back to when Winston was wailing after hearing that his wife was dead. “
She was my world!
” I heard him say. I had detected something off at that moment in the entryway but I had nothing to link it to, so I just stuck it in the back pocket of my memory. But now I replayed those words as I had heard them downstairs. Oh, those buried secrets. They do tend to rise up at the most inopportune times. Buried reel-to-reel tapes on proper elocution from the late 1960s. What else was buried?

I strolled over to the walk-in closet. It was immaculate and was big enough to hold a compact car. The left side held all of Abbey's clothes and shoes, while the right side belonged to Winston. I closed the door, turned on the light and soaked it in. It wasn't the smell of the cedarwood or the beautifully crafted shelving I cared about. I was marinating in the vibe, letting my mind's eye root out the surreptitious clues. I took a few steps forward, touching the smooth handles of the wooden drawers that lined Winston's side of the closet. I was drawn inexplicably to a small brown, unmarked box pushed to the back of the top shelf. There was no way to reach it without getting on a stepladder. Thus, it was either something Winston didn't need often or something he wanted to make sure was out of the way. I went into the bedroom, grabbing a chair and the fireplace poker. Back in the closet, I stood on the chair and used the curved tip of the poker to drag the small box toward me.