by C. R. Corwin
“Like an oyster cracker in a big bowl of soup,” I said.
He backed away from me and pulled Effie into the water. The second he let go of her kayak, she flopped over like a porpoise at Sea World. Mickey quickly uprighted her. She came up spitting and coughing and swearing a blue streak. “Just remember what your tee shirt says,” he said. My giggling made me wobble, but my ample post-menopausal bottom kept me stable.
Mickey showed us how to paddle forward. How to paddle in reverse. How to stop and how to turn. Soon Effie and I were scooting around the little pond like a couple of water bugs.
It was right in the middle of all that mindless, childlike glee that my fears came back to me like an iceberg full of hungry polar bears. I heard a low, long growl. I twisted my head toward James. A few feet behind him, in the shadows of the rhododendrons, stood a man. A tall, bulky man. Even at that distance I recognized his eyebrows. It was Detective Grant.
The rational front part of my brain told me to be happy. That he’d followed me, and now revealed himself to me, just so I wouldn’t worry. But the old reptilian stalk at the back of my head told me to be afraid. That Detective Grant wouldn’t be hiding in those rhododendrons if he didn’t think I was in danger. I instinctively threw up my left hand. I’m not sure if I intended to wriggle my fingers hello or just flash one particular finger. But the next thing I knew, the top of my head was scraping the bottom of the pond, wrapped in a swirl of air bubbles. I felt a pair of strong hands on my shoulders. I saw a flash of sunlight and heard Effie’s hyena laugh.
Mickey was laughing, too. He started to give that same line about my “Capsizing Is Fun” tee shirt he’d used on Effie: “Just remember what your—”
“Finish that sentence and this paddle will be sticking from your ass like a beaver’s tail,” I said.
***
I said nothing to Effie or Mickey about seeing Detective Grant in the rhododendrons. By the time Mickey pulled me out of the water he was gone. And maybe while the two halves of my brain couldn’t agree on what his presence in Harper’s Ferry meant, they did agree on one thing: Grant had wanted to keep his presence a secret. Good gravy! If James hadn’t growled, I wouldn’t have known he was there either. What a good dog.
***
Mickey chased the last two kayakers away. He lit the propane grill on his porch. He put on an entire package of chicken legs, slathered with thick brown sauce, and a wire basket of fresh vegetables—green peppers, zucchini, fat rings of sweet onion, pea pods and mushrooms. We ate like pigs.
At ten o’clock or so, Mickey led us to the barn. Gordon’s belongings, what he hadn’t sold already, were stacked in an orderly mound. I bet there were two dozen boxes of books.
Mickey had refused to sell Effie the books while they were still in Gordon’s house in Hannawa. Now Effie was paying him back. She wanted to look at every book. If it wasn’t sellable, she wasn’t going to buy it. “Nothing sinks a bookstore faster than books nobody wants to read,” she told us. Mickey and I sat in aluminum lawn chairs and watched in awe as she evaluated the books.
She not only judged the books by their subject and the author, but also by their condition, whether they were first editions or not. And she flipped carefully through the pages to see what might be tucked inside.
“I’ve already looked for hundred dollar bills,” Mickey said with a laugh.
“I hope you found plenty,” Effie said. “Because that’s not what I’m looking for. I’m looking for old letters, clippings, that sort of thing. What we in the antiquarian book biz call ephemera. Sometimes it’s more valuable than the book itself.”
“For you or for Mickey?” I teased.
“For both of us,” she said. “To be honest with you, I normally wouldn’t tell anyone about that. But Sweet Gordon was like a brother to me. Which sort of makes Mickey my nephew, too. And I would never screw a relative.” She threw back her head and ha-ha’d like Bette Davis. “Although he is kind of cute.”
It was two in the morning before Effie was finished evaluating the books. She offered Mickey a rather impressive sum and he quickly accepted it. We headed for the cabin and our beds.
When I got to my room I put on my travel pajamas, a baggy blue-flannel pair that covers every inch of me. I bought them during the Nixon presidency when I was still foolishly filled with the notion of being a world traveler. I figured if I ever had to flee a motel because of a fire or hurricane, I could run out into a crowd of people without worrying about hypothermia or embarrassment.
I locked the door. I pulled a small braided rug in front of the door for James to sleep on. I positioned my new Indian moccasin slippers on the floor. I peeked out the window hoping to spot Detective Grant leaning against a tree. If he was out there I didn’t see him. I turned the stuffed owl around so I wouldn’t have its bulging glass eyes staring at me all night. I knelt by James and gave him a final good-night ear-scratch. “Just in case you haven’t read your watch dog manual lately,” I whispered to him, “you’re supposed to sleep with one ear cocked.” I bent his ear to show him. When I let go it flopped like a dish rag. I clicked off the light and felt my way to the bed.
There is nothing more comforting in the world than sinking your head into a big, cool, fluffy pillow. And there’s nothing more disconcerting than a loud crackle. I popped up like a slice of toast. There was a note on the pillow. I fumbled for the lamp. I read:
Mrs. Sprowls,
I need to see you without Effie.
Meet me on the back porch when you think she’s asleep.
Mickey.
Good gravy! What possibly did Mickey want? Did he want to threaten me? Strangle me? Did he have some important information about Effie? And how did I know that the note was really from Mickey? I considered my meager options: I could stay put. “I didn’t see your note until this morning,” I could whisper to Mickey, when Effie was taking her turn in the bathroom. I could open the window and scream at the top of my lungs for Detective Grant. Or I could stop being such a melodramatic old fool and meet Mickey on the back porch.
As usual, my curiosity outweighed my better judgment. I swung out of bed and put on my slippers. I folded the note into a small square and wedged it under my left heel. Detective Grant would need it for evidence if I ended up dead. I started to snap the leash on James’ collar but thought better of dragging him along. His obstinacy would surely wake up Effie. I gave him a rawhide instead.
I unlocked the door and slipped into the hallway. I padded down the stairs. Crossed the dark kitchen. Opened the screen door. Peeked outside. Mickey was comfortably wedged in a wicker chair. His bare feet were propped on the porch post. His hands were cradled around a beer bottle, standing straight up in his lap. I heard myself say what only someone with Effie’s deviant mind would say. “That is a beer bottle, isn’t it?”
He grinned. Toasted me with it.
I sat in the chair next to his.
“I hope the note didn’t scare you,” he began.
“I’m here,” I answered.
He offered me a swig from his beer. To my surprise, I took him up on it. “I know you’ve got your suspicions about me,” he said.
“Don’t take it personally,” I said, handing the bottle back. “These days I’ve got suspicions about everybody.”
“That’s why I wanted to see you without Effie.”
He pulled an envelope from his shirt pocket. “That stuff Effie said about ephemera tonight? About it sometimes being more valuable than the book? I already knew that.” He watched me open the envelope. “I found it in an old archeology book, by Heinrich Schliemann, on his excavation of the lost city of Troy. It’s from David Delarosa. To my uncle. It’s dated December 26, 1956.”
I unfolded the letter but I didn’t read it. “Who told you I’m interested in David Delarosa?”
“Effie,” he said. “During one of her calls I told her I’d met you. I may have said something about you being nice but nosy.”
“You were half right,” I said.<
br />
Mickey took a swig of his own. Handed the bottle back to me. “She said you were running all over Hannawa investigating my uncle’s murder. Suspecting everybody. Even trying to link it to a murder fifty years ago. A young wrestler named David Delarosa. I’d already gone through his books looking for money and personal stuff. So the name rang a bell.”
I was not surprised that Effie knew I was investigating Gordon’s murder. My visit to her bookstore in March made that fairly obvious. “So it was your idea that I come down here with Effie? So you could give the letter to me?”
Mickey pushed himself out of the chair and pressed his face against the kitchen window, to make sure Effie hadn’t tip-toed after me. He sat on the edge of the porch in front of me, six inches from my moccasins. “I want to know who killed my uncle, too,” he said. “I thought maybe you could tell me something.”
I handed him the beer bottle. It was time for me to read the letter:
Gordon,
Christmas was just as wretched as I expected. My mother insisted on having her asshole boyfriend here. Christmas Eve right though this morning. This isn’t that truck driver I told you about before. This new goof works at the washing machine plant down the road in Clyde. Given all the ugly sounds at night, this one looks like true love. It might even last until Easter.
I’ll be glad to get back to the college. Thanks to your most-excellent tutoring, my grades were just good enough to keep the scholarship jack jingling in.
I know you don’t exactly dig the idea, but be warned my friend! I fully intend to resume my biological quest for Miss Forty Below. A little wine and Charlie Parker mixed and shaken with my ample animal charm, and that tiny chip of ice will just be a nightlight showing me the way.
See you after the ball drops!
David
I put the letter back in the envelope. I flashed an apologetic smile at Mickey. “There’s a lot to decipher here,” I said.
“Just tell me what you can when you can,” he said.
I promised I would. I went upstairs to bed. James was happily gnawing away. I took the rawhide from him. I clicked on the lamp by the bed. I crawled in with my moccasins on and started deciphering.
The first thing that struck me was the letter’s style. It was written in Beatnik. Or at least in what passed for Beatnik to a kid from Sandusky on a wrestling scholarship. Clearly he was trying to impress Gordon.
The next thing was David’s obvious hatred for his mother. Or more accurately, his hatred for the way his mother behaved with men. I know Sigmund Freud isn’t as popular as he was when I was taking college psychology, but I think that ugly sounds at night comment spoke volumes about his own sexual aggression.
David also made sure to show his appreciation for Gordon’s help with his grades. Thanks to your most-excellent tutoring, he wrote. I had no reason to doubt he was sincere about that.
But the real point of the letter, or so it seemed to me, was that last part about his intention to pursue Miss Forty Below. I know you don’t exactly dig the idea, David began. Now what exactly did that mean? Did it imply some kind of jealousy on Gordon’s part? Or was Gordon merely concerned about David’s pursuit of a particular woman? A woman he shouldn’t be pursuing? Whichever is was, it was clearly an issue between them. And David was telling him in no uncertain terms that he was going after Miss Forty Below whether Gordon approved or not.
And just who was this Miss Forty Below?
I’d overheard enough man-talk in the newsroom over the years to know that women unwilling to jump into bed after the first howdy-do are quickly labeled as frigid. I’d never heard the phrase before, but forty below was clearly shorthand for forty below zero. Based on everything I’d heard from Effie and Shaka, and especially from Howard Shay, the handsome David Delarosa was accustomed to bedding young women without much effort. Apparently Miss Forty Below was not thawing out as quickly as he wished.
The other intriguing line in that paragraph was the last one: A little wine and Charlie Parker mixed and shaken with my ample animal charm, and that tiny chip of ice will just be a nightlight showing me the way. David intended to loosen up the mystery woman with the help of alcohol and bebop and then close in for the kill with his enormous ego—not a particularly new strategy. What really made me squint, however, was the tiny chip of ice reference. That just had to mean a diamond ring. Apparently Miss Forty Below was engaged.
The final thing for me to ponder that night was why Gordon had kept David Delarosa’s letter all those years. One possibility was that Gordon didn’t even know he’d saved the letter. Maybe he’d stuck it in that old book and forgotten about it. But in a book by the famous Heinrich Schliemann? On his historic excavation of Troy? No, I think Gordon would have gone back to that book again and again.
So my guess was that Gordon not only knew he had the letter, but kept it in that safe, secret place for a reason. Was it simply because David had meant so much to him? Was it another very personal treasure? Like that can of Jack Kerouac’s pine cones? Or was it something else?
David’s murder hit Gordon hard. He sulked for days then took the bus to Sandusky for the funeral. He returned to Hannawa full of anger. He wanted David’s killer found. But he never believed it was Shaka. Maybe the letter held a clue to David’s real murderer.
I refolded the letter and put it in the envelope. I folded the envelope and wedged it under my other heel. I turned off the lamp. “Does it, Gordon?” I whispered. “Does that letter say who killed David? Who killed you?”
Chapter 22
Friday, June 8
We had a good country breakfast—scrambled eggs and onions—and then headed out to load the books into the van. Effie saw to it that Mickey did most of the work. “Save your back, Maddy,” she said. “It’s just going to be me and you when we get to the bookstore.”
We wedged James into the small space we’d left for him behind the front seat. Then we crawled in ourselves, Effie behind the wheel, me shotgun. Our freshly filled Thermoses were lying between us on the seat like a couple of unexploded artillery shells. I cranked down my window to say good-bye to Mickey. “When you get back to Hannawa tell Detective Grant I said hello,” he said, grinning like a raccoon. “Assuming he didn’t fall in the river and drown yesterday.”
I didn’t say anything.
Effie did. “We can only hope he did.” She backed the van around and headed down the long drive, blowing a big, theatrical kiss at Mickey in her rearview mirror.
I felt foolish. Like this whole trip was a badly staged junior class play and I was the only one who thought it was real. But I was also relieved. Mickey and Effie were taking Detective Grant’s not-so-secret presence in good humor. The way people with nothing to hide would. I gave James a cat-shaped biscuit and nestled back in the seat for the long drive home.
We crossed the Potomac into Maryland and headed north on Route 65 toward Sharpsburg, where one of the Civil War’s most inconclusive bloodbaths took place, the Battle of Antietam Creek. I suggested we take a quick drive through the battlefield but Effie was in a hurry to get home. She had her books and most likely her fill of James and me. She planned to connect with the Pennsylvania Turnpike and shoot straight west into Ohio. No more of that, “If it ain’t a back road, it ain’t a road worth taking” stuff for her.
“I’ve been doing an awful lot of thinking about the old days,” I said after an hour of silence. “Who we were back then and what we meant to each other.”
“Those were special times,” Effie said.
“Yes,” I said. “Even the crappy times seem special now.”
Effie motioned for me to pour a cup of coffee for her. “There were plenty of those, too, weren’t there.”
I’d been maneuvering toward a particular crappy time, of course, and figured now was as good a time as any to bring it up. “None crappier than the night David Delarosa was killed.”
“That does win the Oscar,” she said.
“I didn’t know him as well as you, of co
urse.”
Effie cackled. “I’ve already admitted to sleeping with him, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“He was quite the ladies’ man, I guess.”
Said Effie, “That’s putting it mildly. It was easier to keep track of who he didn’t sleep with than who he did.”
I handed her a sloshing cup of coffee and then screwed the lid off my Thermos of tea. “So—who didn’t he sleep with?”
“I’d say just you and Gwen. Unless you’ve been holding out on me.”
“Lawrence and I were already engaged that year,” I said. “Not that I would have slept with David otherwise. Or more accurately, not that he would have slept with me.” I finished pouring my tea. I took a cautious sip. It was plenty hot but not unswallowable. “You sure about Gwen?”
Effie hooted like an owl getting its belly feathers tickled. “I’m sure she didn’t even sleep with Rollie before they were married.”
I told one of my patented half-truths. “I was only wondering if she was engaged then or not, Effie. I’m no more interested in her sex life than I am in mine.”
We didn’t get back to Hannawa until late in the day. We unloaded Gordon’s books then headed through the rush-hour traffic toward my bungalow. It was six o’clock by the time I got home. I immediately went to the basement and checked my files. The information I needed wasn’t there. I called Eric at the morgue. “Stay put until I get there,” I said.
He whined like a third grader. “But it’s Friday.”
“It also might be Christmas,” I said. “Stay put!”
I filled James’ food bowl and headed for the garage. I was downtown in twenty minutes, storming through the newsroom like a category five hurricane. I was so anxious to get to work that I didn’t even take time to make a mug of tea. Which worried Eric to no end. “I will be able to get out of here sometime tonight, won’t I?”