by C. R. Corwin
“So what?”
“What if it was because of my story?”
“Again, so what?”
She slid down in her chair until she looked like a five-year-old sulking at the dinner table. “I guess I had a feeling about her.”
“Good gravy, girl! You talk to some old woman for twenty minutes and you get emotionally involved? You sure this is the right profession for you?”
That got Gabriella’s dander up a bit. Which, I must admit, I liked. “Not that kind of feeling,” she said. “It was just—I don’t know—like she was somebody other than who she said she was.”
I laughed and, unfortunately, sprayed the table with cookie crumbs. “So you don’t think she was really Romanian royalty?”
“I didn’t believe that or anything else she said.”
I liked that, too. “Your shit detector start beeping, did it?”
For the first time that morning she smiled. “Yes, it did. And it just wasn’t the things she said. It was her—what’s a good word for it?”
I’m an old woman. I gave her an old word. “Her countenance?”
“Yeah—her countenance.”
I had no reason to doubt the reliability of Gabriella’s shit detector. It had certainly worked that day I went to see her at the student newspaper office. She’s seen right through my cock-and-bull story about wanting to rummage through the paper’s old files to see what I could find about my own years at Hemphill College. She knew I was digging into Gordon Sweet’s murder. “So why the tears when you heard that Violeta Bell had been murdered? If you had such a bad feeling about her?”
She corrected me. “I didn’t say I had a bad feeling about her. She was a lot of fun. Just like the other three. But I had the sense she was hiding something. Or hiding from something.”
I took a more modest bite of cookie and studied her countenance. Inside that snip of a girl lived a wise woman. “Why would she do the interview then?” I asked. “The pages of a newspaper aren’t exactly the best place to hide. Although nobody reads newspapers any more.”
Gabriella pulled her tea bag from her mug. Let it swing back and forth like a body dangling from a noose. “I think maybe she just wanted to be loved.”
“Just wanted to be loved? For Pete’s sake!”
“I know that sounds like a lot of mushy psychobabble, Mrs. Sprowls. But I think maybe that was it. On the outside she was confident and classy. Inside, totally a mess.”
I couldn’t stop myself. “Just the opposite of me, you’re saying?”
She looked at me the way Aubrey McGinty used to look at me. With exasperation. “I’m saying that maybe she was one of those excruciatingly insecure people who need to be the center of attention no matter what.”
“And so she did the interview knowing she probably shouldn’t?”
“Yeah.”
“And you did the interview knowing she probably shouldn’t, too?”
“Yeah.”
“Because it was your first story and you didn’t want to blow it?”
“Yeah.”
“And so when you heard she’d been murdered—”
“Yeah.”
4
Thursday, July 13
I retrieved my morning paper from the azalea bushes. Which was nothing to grumble about. Too many mornings it’s on the roof. On my way back to the kitchen I read the headlines. The news couldn’t have been better:
Suspect Arrested In
‘Never Dull’ Murder
By Dale Marabout
Hannawa-Union Staff Writer
HANNAWA—Police Wednesday arrested a “person of interest” in their investigation into the murder of retired antique dealer Violeta Bell.
Bell, 72, was found dead July 5 in the fitness room of the Carmichael House condominiums where she lived. She had been shot three times at close range, police said.
The murder weapon, believed to be a .22 pistol, has not been found, police confirmed.
There was no Ike waiting for me at the breakfast table this morning—which was either a good thing or a bad thing depending which side of the independence versus companionship argument you come down on. I ate my oatmeal and read:
Police identified the man they took into custody as cabdriver Edward “Eddie” French.
He was arrested just before dawn at his second-story apartment in the Meriwether Square district on the city’s near west side, police said.
Both French and Bell were featured in a Herald-Union story earlier this month.
That story explored the active social lives of Bell and three other women living at the Carmichael House. Calling themselves “The Queens of Never Dull,” the women hired French to drive them to garage sales on Saturdays.
Police said that while they lacked evidence to charge French with Bell’s murder, the 56-year-old Hannawa native had a number of items in his possession that they believed belonged to the slain woman.
One source close to the case described those items as “very pricey antiques.”
Court records show that French has had a number of run-ins with local police departments over the years, including convictions for burglary in 1981 and 1987.
“Good for you, Mr. Marabout,” I whispered as I turned to the jump page. By that, of course, I meant good for me. Apparently the police had their man. That meant I’d no longer be responsible for Gabriella Nash’s guilty conscience. Every morning for more than a week now she’d been checking in with me as if I were her parole officer.
I finished my oatmeal, took James for his walk, showered and trimmed my bangs—yes, I’m still wearing my hair in this silly 1950s Prince Valiant style—and searched my closet for something I hadn’t worn to work in a while. Something that would express how good I felt. The best I could do was my lime green Liz Claiborne lawn shirt with yellow pinstripes and a pair of twill chinos from Lands’ End in some sensible shade of white they call Nantucket Clay.
I got to the morgue right at nine. I made my tea, read the obituaries, zapped all the worthless emails in my inbox, and settled in to mark up that morning’s paper.
And of course my phone rang. And of course it was Suzie. “Hiya, Maddy. It’s Suzie. I’ve got Mr. Averill on the phone for you.”
“Good gravy! What does he—”
“Morning, Maddy!”
“Bob! How are you?”
“Fine and dandy—so how long has it been since you and I had lunch?”
Bob Averill is The Herald-Union’s editor-in-chief. An overstuffed teddy bear about to turn sixty. Unless you count spearing cheese squares at the newsroom Christmas party, he and I had never had lunch together. “It has been a while,” I said.
“We should rectify that.”
“I suppose we should.”
“How about today?”
“Well—”
“Super. I’ll have Suzie make reservations for us at Speckley’s. Say twelve-thirty?”
I was too shocked to tell him that you don’t need reservations at Speckley’s. That as long as you comply with the NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE sign on the door, they’ll seat you. I told him twelve-thirty would be great. That I would meet him there.
“Meet me? Maddy Sprowls! What kind of men have you been eating with? I’ll drive.”
And so in three hours I was going to have lunch with Bob Averill. And it was no mystery why. He finally had the ammunition he needed to force me into retirement. Or as he once put it: “The common ground you and I need to find vis-à-vis your tenure at the paper.”
I was not going without a fight. I grabbed a piece of scrap paper and drew a line down the middle. On the left I listed the various infractions he might bring up: my long lunches, personal long distance calls, my usually foul disposition. On the right I listed explanations or denials. When I got to my snoopfests into the Buddy Wing and Gordon Sweet murders, I noted that while they had been unauthorized, on the sly, and initially troublesome for the paper, they both had resulted in some very good journalism.
The
n, while I was pondering how I could good-naturedly threaten filing an age discrimination suit, Gabriella Nash appeared in front of my desk. She announced that she was “totally apoplectic.”
“About what, dear?”
Like a bad actress in a bad movie, she flung that morning’s front page on my desk. “That is my story, Mrs. Sprowls.”
I knew what she meant of course. But with my hours at The Herald-Union down to a precious few, I was in no mood for foolishness. Especially hers. I pretended to study the story she was thumping with her finger. “According to the byline, it’s Dale Marabout’s story.”
She curled her lips at my flippancy like a rabid raccoon. “This is serious business, Mrs. Sprowls!” She went on and on how the story shouldn’t have been taken away from her just because it unexpectedly evolved from a “fluffy piece of shit” into a “hard news murder story.” The Washington Post, she said, didn’t take Redford and Bernstein off the Watergate story when it grew from a third-rate burglary into a constitutional showdown between President Nixon and Congress. She should be allowed to follow the Never Dull story wherever it lead, she said. Redford and Bernstein had been young reporters, too, she said.
I neatly folded the front page and handed it back to her. “In the first place, it was not Redford and Bernstein. It was Woodward and Bernstein. Robert Redford was the actor who played Woodward in the movie. But I suppose you deserve some credit for at least having heard about Watergate.” Her eyes dropped. I hurriedly crumpled my list of job-saving excuses and slid it off my desk into the wastebasket. “And in the second place,” I said, “you should be telling all this to Alec Tinker—not me.”
She went from rabid raccoon to vulnerable bunny. “I was hoping maybe you’d go with me.”
I showed her the most empathetic smile I could. Then I lowered the boom. “I just don’t see that happening, Gabriella.”
Bob Averill appeared in the newsroom at twenty past twelve. He gave me a big John Wayne thisaway wave. I grabbed my purse and followed him to the parking deck.
Bob is extremely well paid. And his wife comes from money. But he still likes to think of himself as the regular guy he was forty years ago. So he eschews his reserved parking space by the door and deposits his Mercedes wherever he can find a spot. It’s not one of those big roomy Mercedes. It’s one of those sporty, midlife crisis two-seaters. Yellow as a ripe banana. He wedged his 200 pounds behind the steering wheel with the help of a laborious “Augggghhhh.”
We headed toward West Apple Street and Meriwether Square. “You think we can get there in five minutes?” he asked.
“If we don’t get behind too many buses.”
He chuckled like some old soldier fondly recalling the Battle of the Bulge. “I remember when I had to take the bus.”
As we buzzed along, I pictured him that morning calling Suzie and asking, “Any idea where Maddy Sprowls likes to have lunch?” And when she answered Speckley’s, him asking, “Where the hell is that?” And when she said Meriwether Square, him harrumphing, “That figures.”
In case you haven’t spent much time in Hannawa, Ohio, Meriwether Square is our city’s version of Greenwich Village. It’s a four-block strip of coffee shops, thrift shops, and hole-in-the wall bars, each geared toward a particular sexual orientation. The strip is surrounded with wonderful art deco apartment buildings and once-grand turn-of-the-century houses. The brick streets are lined with shaggy oak trees and badly buckled sidewalks. Dale Marabout calls it Differentdrummerville. And he’s pretty much on the mark. Meriwether Square is lousy with angst-riddled college students, old hippies, even older Beatniks, artists who never sell anything, writers who never get published. It’s a real bouillabaisse of daydreamers, outcasts, and kooks. And I just love the place. And I just love Speckley’s. I’ve been going to that wonderful old diner since my college days.
Bob found a parking space right in front. But he couldn’t find any quarters in his pocket for the meter. “It’s on me,” I said.
Inside, he announced his name to the waitress. “Averill.”
She squinted at him the way James squints at me when he’s trying to decipher the strange sounds coming out of my mouth. Finally she figured it out—or at least thought she had. “I don’t think we got any of them,” she said. “But I’ve got some Tylenol if that would help.”
It was Bob’s turn to imitate James’ squint. I came to the rescue. “He doesn’t have a headache,” I told the waitress. “He has a reservation.”
“Oh, he’s the one,” she cackled. “We all thought that was a prank call.” She grabbed a pair of menus from the counter. “Right this way, Mr. Averill. Your table’s waiting.” She gave us a booth by the eight-foot plastic bipedal cow statue drinking a chocolate milkshake.
I talked Bob into ordering the diner’s legendary house special—meatloaf sandwich, au gratin potatoes on the side. I told the waitress I’d have hot tea. Bob pointed at the plastic cow and said, “I’ll have what she’s drinking.”
Good gravy I was nervous. I decided to take the bull by the horns. “Bob,” I said, “I know why we’re here.”
“You do?”
“Of course I do! Now shoot!”
He cringed. “Shoot? Don’t you think that word is maybe a bit inappropriate under the circumstances?”
I attacked. “Come on, Bob. Give me your best shot. Then I’ll give you mine. Then we’ll enjoy the meatloaf.”
He dug his elbows into the Formica. Propped his chin on his fist. Looked me straight in the eyes. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“My retirement. What else would I be talking about?”
His face withered until it looked like one of those old cooking onions I keep on top of my refrigerator. “Oh no, Maddy Sprowls—you can’t retire now. I need you.”
It was my turn to look him straight in the eyes. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“Eddie French.”
“That cab driver they arrested? What does that have to do with me?”
The waitress brought our beverages. Bob pounded the wrapper off his straw. “Nothing to do with you—not yet, anyway—but unfortunately it does have something to do with me.”
I zeroed in on the most pertinent part of his answer. “Not yet, anyway?”
He drilled his straw into his milkshake. Took a long suck. “I need your help with something, Maddy.”
I finally knew where he was headed. “Absolutely not!”
He grabbed his temples. Grunted in pain. At first I thought he had an aneurysm in his brain that just popped. But when he started gasping like a beached fish, I realized he was just having a brain freeze from the milkshake. I laid into him without pity. “I’m not a detective, Bob. I’m a damn librarian.”
The pain on his face slowly subsided. The self-confident, always-in-command Bob Averill I’d known for fifteen years was gone. “It seems that Eddie French is the worthless older brother of Tippy’s sorority sister,” he said.
Tippy was Bob’s wife. Several years younger than him, trim and pretty. A real ballbuster. Bob would still be writing high school sports at that little weekly in Coshocton County if she hadn’t rescued his dormant potential from the dustbin of happiness. “And this sorority sister knows her worthless brother couldn’t possibly have murdered Violeta Bell?”
Bob took a much more modest sip from his shake. “She was on the phone half the night crying to Tippy about it. Which meant Tippy was crying to me the other half.”
“And now you’re crying to me?”
“You know how irascible Tippy can be.”
I did know how irascible Tippy could be. I also knew it would be smart to stick to the facts. “According to Dale Marabout’s story, the police found Bell’s stuff in his apartment. And he’s got quite a record, too.”
“Yes they did, and yes he does,” Bob admitted. “But sorority sisters are sisters for life and, well—”
I finished the sentence. “And I owe my shaky future at the paper to your good graces?�
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The Bob Averill of old would have gone ballistic over a remark like that. The new one only got more docile. “I can’t put Marabout or some other reporter on this. That would be unethical. This is a personal matter.”
“But you can put me on it?”
“No putting. Begging.”
The waitress arrived with our platters. The meatloaf was stacked high inside huge Kaiser rolls. The enormous globs of au gratin potatoes were steaming. “Frankly, it feels more like putting,” I said.
Bob hadn’t learned his lesson from the milkshake. He filled his mouth with potatoes, getting a dandy cheese burn on the roof of his mouth. “Look Maddy, I know this stinks. I’ve spent the last two years trying to stop you from snooping into murders and now I’m asking you to do exactly that. But for some reason you’re good at it.”