The Accidental Death Of Ronald Green

Pete Carlson and Harold Binder were so engrossed in Jim Overman's latest dirty joke that they didn't notice Joe Scanlon enter the Burbank Country Club's dining room. He strode up to their table and announced excitedly: "Ron Green is dead. An accident with a shotgun."

"Good Lord!"

"Heard it on the car radio. Couldn't believe my ears, so I called Larry Vaughan on my car phone. It's true. Last night Cathy Vaughan heard a shot next door and called the police. They found Ron in his garage. Not much can be done after both barrels of a 12-gage shotgun discharge in your chest."

"Both barrels!" Jim exclaimed.

"Larry doesn't know exactly how it happened. Ann was so hysterical, they had to sedate her. God only knows how Scott is going to take it. He's flying down from college today. Poor kid, he and his father were really close."

As if to himself, Pete muttered: "Ron Green dead. Why I saw him and Ann last Friday night. Ann was all excited about their upcoming trip to Europe."

Harold shook his head. "After all Ron went through with his heart ailment, to now get shot in the chest with a shotgun. It doesn't seem possible."

The four men grew suddenly silent as each considered the impossibility of Ron Green's death. Then each thought of what would be expected of them, the obligatory condolences and the funeral service. They couldn't help but prove burdensome.

Rising from his chair, Pete broke the silence. "I should call my wife and have her contact Ann. They're co-chairpersons of the Assistance League Auction this year." Mumbling to himself, he left the table while the other men continued to discuss the tragedy.

"I guess we all know Ann about as well as we knew Ron," Joe said.

Harold nodded. "One thing's for sure, Ann holds that Friday night group together. If you don't drop by for a couple of weeks, she's on the phone trying to find out why."

""I don't know what Ron would have done without her," Jim said. "When he got sick, she was a pillar of strength. He relied on her completely."

"Can you imagine her nursing Ron through that illness and then having this happen?" Joe asked. "The emotional state she must be in."

"And just when it appeared Ron might be okay health wise," Harold added.

Jim let out a dejected sigh. "I for one thought Ron was going to make it all the way back. Remember how healthy he looked at our recent Friday night get together? A little thinner maybe, but almost like his old self."

"Ann watched his diet like a hawk," Harold said.

Joe leaned toward his two friends. "Did you know Ann had one of those timer watches to remind Ron when to take his medicine? I heard it buzz once. She was always looking out for the guy. He was her whole life."

"How long were they married?" Jim asked.

"About ten years."

"Ron was a lucky guy."

When Pete returned to the table, his friends were still discussing how lucky Ronald Green had been to have Ann as his wife. Harold mentioned he considered Ann the most moral person he knew, "although perhaps a tad rigid."

"Moral people are often rigid," Pete told him. "Goes with the territory." He cleared his throat. "I gotta hold of Margery. She's going to try and talk to Ann."

"Ann is going to need all the support she can get," Jim said. "Something like this can't be handled alone."

Just then the foursome's starting time came over the PA system. The men exchanged glances and grew silent. Finally, Harold spoke up. "There's really nothing we can do right now."

"You're right," Jim quickly agreed. "There is not a damn thing we can do."

"I should at least call my wife and tell her what happened," Joe muttered, rising from his chair.

"Margery said she would call all your wives," Pete told him.

Joe sat back down.

Harold then stood up. "Gentlemen, let's go play. We'll be finished by two o'clock."

"Not if you hit the ball like you did last Sunday," Jim joked, pushing his chair back from the table.

"My knee was hurting," Harold told him.

"You and your knee," Joe said.

"When the weather's cold, it hurts."

"It must have been seventy-five degrees last Sunday."

"Tell that to my knee."

Bantering good-naturedly about Harold's knee, the four men left the Burbank Country Club dining room and made their way to the first tee and a Sunday round of golf.

Ronald Green had been an original member of that golfing foursome (Harold had taken his place). After five years, he had quit the game and quit the Burbank Country Club. The reason was that, after he had built his Ford dealership into the second biggest in the San Fernando Valley, he no longer needed the business contacts the club provided. Not that he found it difficult to give up a game he considered an exercise in frustration. Too often he had watched the slightly built Jim Overman drive the ball twenty yards past his own ball.

Ronald's recreational passion was fishing and hunting. Each July he journeyed into the Sierra Nevadas for three weeks of quail hunting or trout fishing. These forays had not set well with Linda, his first wife, who never cared much for the outdoors, and were what led to them eventually taking separate vacations, something her husband now considered the beginning of the end of their marriage. But vacationing with Ann had been different. Although his second wife was also not the outdoors type, she always accompanied her husband and his son into the Sierras. She had never complained about staying in a cabin all day long by herself, but more than once she had mentioned the two of them could spend at least one summer vacation in Europe, a place neither had been. Finally her husband gave in. Shortly before his illness he had scheduled a three-week summer tour of European capitals.

This travel concession occurred about the same time Ronald began a rigorous exercise program. "Middle age means you have to work harder to stay fit," he was fond of saying. He had joined a gym and started jogging six miles every other day. His gym workouts, his jogging, plus his robust physical appearance and relatively young age of forty-three, all made his sudden heart condition as puzzling as it was frightening.

The attack occurred one morning while he and his German shepherd, Blitz, ran up and down the hills of El Dorado Park. Ron Green had become dizzy and strangely weak and been forced to sprawl onto a park bench. The way he couldn't catch his breath, along with the dizziness and a clammy coldness, frightened him more than he cared admit. He lowered his head between his knees.

"Could I be having a heart attack?" he asked himself. "But I have neither a pain in my chest or pain shooting down my arms. I've read you must have at least one of those if you're having a heart attack."

But the fear did not leave him.

"I wonder where my son is right now?" he asked himself, bringing his head up from between his knees and looking out at the smog-cloaked Golden State Freeway in the distance. "I wish Scott were here."

Thinking of his son, Ron slowly rose from the bench. Taking a step toward the German Shepherd that sat on his haunches staring up at him with a puzzled expression, he clapped his hands. "Time to be getting home, Blitz," he said weakly.

The dog bounded off, turning around just in time to see his master collapse face-first onto grass still wet from the morning's dew.

When Ronald awoke in the hospital, he felt sure he was going to die. Cold and nauseous, he didn't have the strength to lift his arms.

His wife's thin face slowly came into focus above him. He turned his head so as not to see her. Was his son in the room?

"Scott?" he panted. "Scott, are you there?"

"Scott is in Sonoma," his wife said, leaning over the bed.

"I want him here. I want Scott here."

"I haven't had time to call him," Ann said softly.

Her husband groaned. She leaned closer to him. "Are you in pain, dear?"

Ronald didn't want to make the effort needed to tell his wife how he felt. "I want Scott here," he mumbled.

"I will call him."

Her husband lay on his back panting heavily and staring wide-eyed at the wall.

"Call Scott now," he commanded in a hoarse whisper. "Go call him right now."

That night Scott Green drove his new Ford Taurus from Sonoma County to Burbank. When he arrived at the hospital his father was so delirious that he gave no sign of recognizing his son. Only vaguely aware of tubes being stuck into his arms and white-gowned men and women leaning over him, Ronald drifted in and out of consciousness for three days.

By the fourth day he was out of immediate danger, and by the fifth day he had recovered enough to question his doctors and nurses about his illness. Then his vocabulary came to include words like arrythmia, edema, lidocaine, and procainamide. Not that he understood his condition all that well, but as he later explained to friends, his heart beat irregularly which meant his body failed to eliminate wastes fast enough.

As he lay in the hospital bed, he tried to feel his heart beat. "If I can feel it," he thought to himself, "maybe somehow I can aid the stabilization process." But no matter how great his effort, he couldn't feel his heart beat. Now his condition began to disgust as well as frighten him. Once, when being washed by the nurses, he saw how the edema had swollen his ankles to twice their normal size. After that he closed his eyes when being bathed.

On the eighth day, as a nurse changed his gown, he caught a glimpse of a swelling that wrapped around his stomach like a grafted-on piece of fat. Vaguely nauseated, he asked the nurse if he was going to die.

"Of course not," the nurse replied in a friendly voice.

That same afternoon he asked a doctor, a man he didn't think much older than Scott, the same question.

The doctor straightened slightly. "It was close there for awhile, but with medication and proper nutrition you have a good chance to lead a normal life. You'll be on a salt-free diet, and you won't be drinking alcohol or coffee any longer nor going to Europe this summer."

The doctor, Charles Halper, then smiled. "Although I wouldn't bet against you going the summer after next."

"Not going to Europe is no great loss," Ronald muttered. He studied the doctor for a moment and asked him his age. He was startled to discover the doctor only thirty-one.

"I have a son not much younger than you," Ronald said, although in truth his son was eleven years younger.

"I've met your son and his mother," Doctor Halper answered.

"That's not his mother," Ronald Green said. "His mother was my first wife. Do you have any children?"

"No," Doctor Halper replied absently, checking the chart that hung at the foot of the bed.

"You should have a son. A man's life only really begins when he has a son."

Doctor Halper nodded.

"Of course, as children get older they withdraw, and you can't do the same things with them you once did. But you can remain close if you share their interests."

The way the doctor studied the chart indicated he wasn't listening. It didn't matter. Ronald closed his eyes. At that same hospital twenty years ago, a nurse had shown him Scott through the maternity room window. Then and there he had vowed never to neglect the boy like his own father, a broken-down insurance salesman, had neglected him.

Ronald lay in the bed remembering that shortly after Scott's birth he had taken a salesman's job at a Ford dealership. He had worked hard and eventually saved enough money to buy out the owner. How he had slaved to make that dealership a success! He hadn't done it for himself, or for Linda, or later for Ann. He had done it for Scott. Everything centered on the boy. Even his divorce was only important if it had hurt Scott. And of course, the divorce had hurt the boy. Seeing that hurt in Scott's eyes had made it all the more important that he give his son the security he never had.

Two years after the divorce he married Ann Tuttle, as loyal and decent a woman as he had ever known. Maybe a little too decent, he thought, and a little too controlled in her emotions. She never got mad, and people should get mad sometimes. Well, there was that Friday night she caught him kissing Elizabeth Snell in the Overman's kitchen. She had certainly lost her temper that night! Ronald smiled at the memory of his wife slapping Elizabeth. The way her eyes had narrowed and the words she used! She had cussed like a truck driver. And all over a harmless flirtation. Yes, Ann had a temper, but that was the only time she had shown it, and God knew he had given her other opportunities! That pre-nuptial contract he made her sign must have made her plenty angry. Not easy for a woman who owned so little to learn nearly all her husbands' assets went to his son. Yet she had never complained. Not that it would have mattered if she had.

Ronald opened his eyes. What an admirable person Ann was, and yet he could never really figure her out. Perhaps women were beyond figuring.

His thoughts returned to his son. Wide of chest and broad of shoulder, the boy had a firm handshake and always looked you straight in the eye. Yes, a definite chip off the old block. And just like his father, Scott enjoyed hunting and fishing. It was a shame his studies made their vacation schedules collide. They hadn't taken a vacation together in three years. How he'd love spending a few weeks in the mountains with Scott! The boy was now a senior, and after he graduated in June, maybe they could take a vacation together. That would be a nice touch, a vacation together just before Scott joined him at the dealership. And he certainly needed his son at the dealership. Those computer science courses he studied would come in handy. Was it corny to think of that big neon sign reading "Green & Son?" Well, if it was corny, then let it be corny.

When Ronald Green returned home from the hospital, his appearance and behavior shocked his friends. Thirty-five pounds lighter, he slowly moved about like a man already into old age. Instead of putting in 12-hour days at the dealership as he once had, he often came home early in the afternoon, And while his friends drank large quantities of beer and wine at their Friday night parties, he had to be satisfied sipping orange or tomato juice. He no longer appeared to enjoy his work or his social life. He seemed miserable.

Ann saved the day. Refusing to let her husband withdraw into his own world, she insisted he never miss a Friday night party, and that he attend each of their group's charity functions and birthday parties. Ann's persistence paid off, and bit by bit Ronald Green began adjusting to his new regimen. The daily medications, the salt-free diet, and the abstinence from alcohol gradually seemed to him more natural. His appetite for fruits and vegetables increased, and he put on weight. His strength returned, and he began working longer hours. Although he no longer jogged, he and Ann often took long walks together. All in all he was nearly back to his old self.

That Ann was primarily responsible for his recovery was not lost on her husband. One day, while they walked in El Dorado Park, he casually mentioned that the following July they would take their trip to Europe. Ann was overjoyed.

To Ann, their walks now served a dual purpose: they helped her husband regain his health as well as physically preparing them both for their upcoming trip. European city bus tours would not be for Ann and her husband. By that summer they would be in such good shape, they could explore each wondrous capital on foot. Night after night Ann poured over those "walking tour" books of European capitals that fill bookstore travel shelves. She was preparing their trip like a general planning a military campaign.

Her husband never read the travel books and seldom commented upon the trip. The truth was, he had no desire to visit Europe that summer or any other summer. He would say to himself: "Here we live in the greatest country in the world, and Ann wants me to go traipsing off to foreign lands. The whole thing is ridiculous. But I certainly owe her something, and if she wants to go to Europe, that's where we'll go." Not that he spent all that much time thinking about his wife. His illness had made Scott the central focus of Ronald's life more than ever. He talked about his son incessantly. His friends chalked this up to his close brush with death.

"Scott is Ron's religion," Larry Vaughan said to his wife at one Friday night gathering. "The kid is his immortality."

"And don't think Ann doesn't know it," Cathy Vaughan replied.

Christmas came and went with Scott spending alternate weeks at each of his parent's homes. Everything seemed just as it always had been between father and son with one exception: the boy now showed little enthusiasm for working at the dealership.

"I think Scott has a little of that adolescent ennui so many kids get at his age," Ronald told his friends one Friday night in January. "They look down on the adult world of business. I'm sure it's just a stage he's going through. When he graduates this June, he'll probably be over it."

Jim asked what he was going to give Scott for graduation.

"Haven't decided yet."

"How about a trip to Europe," Pete suggested. "That was once the traditional gift of the wealthy to their kids."

Following a smug chuckle, Ronald said: "But I'm not wealthy."

"Are you kidding?" Jim said. "You keep selling all those Fords, and pretty soon they'll be printing money with your name on it."

"I seriously doubt Scott wants to go to Europe," Ronald told him.

"Regardless," Ann said firmly, her green eyes narrowing, "the two of us are going to Europe before Scott does."

During Easter vacation, Scott told his father something that changed everything. He had thought long and hard about his future, Scott said, and he had concluded the business world was not for him. "My interests lie in other areas."

"For instance?" his father asked.

"Forestry."

Ronald had to stifle a derisive laugh. "Scott, there's no money in forestry."

"It's what I want to do, dad."

"But it's not business. You can't branch out from it into other businesses."

"Business is not for me," his son said, looking his father straight in the eye. "I will get a MS in Forestry. And don't think you have to pay for it, either. I intend to work my way through graduate school."

That night Ronald complained bitterly to his wife about Scott's decision. Ann took his hand in hers and said: "I know how disappointed you must feel, but if Scott tries to do something he isn't interested in, there is no way he could succeed. If he changes his mind, he'll have to do it on his own."

"But by the time he changes his mind, he might be married and have all the responsibilities that go with a family. He won't be able to just drop it all and learn something entirely new. Forestry won't help him understand business."

"Forestry is what he thinks he wants to do, Ron, and to stand in his way will only make him more determined."

Nodding at the truth of this, Ronald said: "He'll have to live and work a long ways away from me. I won't be seeing much of him."

"We can go visit."

"I hope Scott knows what he's doing. Forestry Rangers don't make much money. Of course, the fact he will inherit most everything I own makes his financial future secure."

"There's no denying that," Ann said.

Everyone in the Friday-night group agreed with Ann that Scott had made the right decision.

"I'll let you in on a little secret," Harold, an accountant, confided to Ron in the Overman kitchen that next Friday night. "I've always wanted to be one of those Ranger guys. Having all that freedom alone in the wilds and yet having the security of a government pension. Scott could have made a lot worse choice, believe me."

Other Friday night regulars told Ronald much the same thing, and it wasn't long before he began to grudgingly accept his son's decision. "After all," he said to himself, "a Forest Ranger does lead a good clean life, one not filled with irresponsible employee demands and the capricious whims of customers. And besides, how many young men really know what they want at Scott's age? You have to give the boy credit for knowing his own mind."

Ronald not only eventually accepted his son's decision, he supported it. And since Scott's college graduation were coming up, what better way to celebrate than by giving him a present symbolizing that support?

Searching through a sporting goods catalog, he came across a shotgun. Scott hadn't talked much about hunting lately, but he obviously loved the outdoors. A shotgun would be the perfect gift! So he purchased one of the finest shotguns money could buy, a magnificent German gun from the famous Merkel firm. He did not tell Ann about the gift, not because of the cost, over $3,000, but because he had rented a cabin in the Sierra Nevadas for three weeks in July. For the first time in a long time, he and Scott could share a vacation. The European trip would have to be postponed. He and Ann could go next summer.

Not so naïve as to think Ann wouldn't be upset at the news, he told his son not to mention the trip. He would be the one to tell his wife. And since it was only April and they weren't scheduled to leave for Europe until July, he had until June to cancel without penalty.

In the middle of May the sporting goods store called Ronald at his office to say the shotgun had arrived. He picked up the gun that morning and kept it in the trunk of his car until the weekend. When Ann was away from the house running an errand, he took the gun from the car and, standing at his garage workbench, examined the expensive German import. Lovingly he ran his fingers over the coin- finished receiver with border engraving and the oil finished wood. The arabesque engravings of flora and fauna were delicate and yet somehow intensely masculine. The gun was both practical and a work of art. Scott would love it!

He carefully slid the shotgun back into the leather carrying case and walked to the water-heater closet. He opened its door and leaned the carrying case against the wall behind the heater. He closed the closet door. Ann would never discover it inside there. And since it was still May, he had at least five weeks to choose the right moment to tell her the trip was off.

As the days passed, the fact that he hadn't told his wife made the eventual telling more and more difficult. Compounding that difficulty was the way Ann constantly discussed the trip both with him and their friends. He found it intolerable listening to her chatter about something he knew wasn't going to happen. The ridiculous trip to Europe had become the biggest thing in her life. It was all so silly and out of proportion!

On a Saturday night in early June, Ronald was worried. Here the supposed trip to Europe was only a month away, Scott's graduation ceremony scheduled for the following Tuesday, and he still hadn't told Ann a thing! At the party last night she had talked incessantly about Europe to anyone who would listen. The whole thing had gotten out of hand, and he had nobody to blame but himself. He should have told her weeks ago.

That morning he had promised himself to tell her at dinner. But no sooner had he sat down at the table than she began describing how in Paris they would walk from the Louvre to the Arch of Triumph, a long distance that seemed much shorter because of the amazingly clear Paris light. On and on she prattled. There was mention of the Place de Concorde and some architect named Baron Von something-or-other. Later that night, while they watched a dreadful made-for-TV-movie, she used every commercial to further embellish on the wonders of Paris. They would do this in Paris and they would do that in Paris. She couldn't stop talking about the trip, and now she was in the bathroom getting ready for bed and he couldn't make himself tell her that night either. Then when would he tell her? Maybe tomorrow morning at breakfast.

"There I go," he said to himself, "postponing it again! What a weakling!"

As he often did when upset, Ronald began thinking of his son. What fun they would have in the Sierras, and how Scott would love his gift! As he sat on the bed thinking about the shotgun and the trip to the Sierras, suddenly he felt an overpowering urge to hold the shotgun in his hands. To see and handle the gun would make him feel closer to Scott.

He left the bedroom and went downstairs to the garage. From behind the water-heater, he took out the carrying case and crossed over to his workbench. He pulled the shotgun from its leather binding and slowly ran his hands over the smooth wooden stock. He then lay the shotgun down and, from a cabinet above the workbench, took out a box of 12-gage shells. He slipped two shells into the shotgun's chambers.

In his mind he heard the whir of a startled pheasant. He raised the shotgun to his shoulder and rotated his shoulders to follow the bird's flight.

Whoosh!--the noise of the kitchen door opening. "Ron, what are you doing?"

Ann, the curlers in her hair making her face all the more lean and hawk-like, stared at him from the doorway.

"Nothing," he answered.

"Nothing?" she asked, stepping into the garage. "Where did you get that gun? I haven't seen it before."

"It's a Merkel 12-gauge shotgun. One of the best you can buy."

"You just bought it?"

"Yes."

Ronald Green nervously thrust the gun at his wife. She took it in both hands, her arms falling with the weight.

"Look at the arabesque carvings on the metal, Ann. And notice how well balanced it is. It's one of the best you can buy."

"You said that, Ron. It's obviously very expensive."

"Sure, but it's Scott's graduation present."

Her husband's nervousness was not lost on his wife. Then she saw the open water-heater closet door.

"You keep the gun in the water-heater closet? I thought you just bought it?"

"I didn't hide it."

"Then why did you put it in the water-heater closet?"

Things were moving too fast for Ronald. He stood helplessly staring into his wife's frowning face.

"Why, Ron? Scott's not here to find his present. Why did you hide it."

Just after she said this, the truth registered on Ann Green. Her head rose slightly and her green eyes narrowed into slits.

"We're not going to Europe, are we, Ron? We're not going to Europe, so you and Scott can go off to the mountains with this silly gun. That's true, isn't it?"

"It's his graduation, Ann."

"We're not going to Europe because of Scott! Because of your son I don't get to go to the places I've dreamed of going for all these years. Because of your son!"

"Please, Ann."

"And you didn't even tell me! I had to find it out by walking into the garage and seeing you playing with this . . . this thing! You didn't even have the courage to tell me! You're a fucking coward!"

"That's enough, Ann," Ronald said, placing his hands on the shotgun's twin barrels.

His wife attempted to wrench the gun away from him. His grip tightened on the barrels.

"You're a coward, Ronald Green! A sniveling coward!"

Ann again tried pulling on the stock. The wood slipped through her hands. She reached forward and grabbed the trigger guard. Her husband again pulled back on the barrels. Her fingers slid off the guard and caught on the double triggers. Her eyes opened wide.

A deafening BANG! The shotgun flew backwards and clattered on the cement floor.

From the moment he reviewed the police report, District Attorney Joe Cavenaugh had thought the death of Ronald Green more than a mere accident. For one thing, it didn't make sense that an experienced hunter would stand at the business end of a loaded shotgun. Making the incident more suspicious was his wife's testimony. She said they were talking, and the gun had suddenly gone off. For a reason she couldn't explain. she and her husband were holding a loaded shotgun inside their garage at 11 PM. That both triggers had been pulled made it all the more suspicious.

The District Attorney demanded a complete and thorough investigation. Records were subpoenaed. The DA read Ronald Green's will and learned that virtually his entire estate had been left to his son. He then read the pre-nuptial contract and learned Ann Green had known this from the beginning of their marriage. Those two documents seemed to close one avenue.

The District Attorney then turned to information gathered from interviewing friends of the couple. There was no mention of any problems in the marriage. The file was replete with examples of how Ann Green doted on her husband. Not long ago she had pulled him through a depression following a serious illness. They had scheduled a trip to Europe in July that the wife eagerly looked forward to. More than a few friends commented they had never seen the lady happier than she had been right before he husband's death. And nobody had even hinted there might be another woman in his life.

Reluctantly, District Attorney Joe Cavenaugh concluded he had no choice but label Ronald Green's death an accident. As he said at a meeting of his deputies: "We have no objective evidence that points to homicide, and even if we did, what the hell could we use as a motive?"