Dig (Morgue Mama Mysteries)

by C. R. Corwin

  If Eric had been there, I’m sure that’s when I would have made my excuses and fled. But he was back in the erotica, immersed in stories about God knows what. I had no choice but to plow on. “There are lots of other possibilities, of course,” I said, “but I think maybe Gordon was looking for the weapon used to kill David Delarosa. And maybe somebody figured that out. And killed him.”

  Effie was sitting two feet away from me, but she might as well have pushed her chair across the street. “I don’t know anything about that,” she said.

  The eyes inside Effie’s lollypop glasses widened. “So you really have no idea what Gordon may have been digging for?”

  “No, I do not.”

  I bent forward and grabbed her hands. “Oh, Effie, I don’t want to see anybody put through the wringer if they don’t deserve it,” I said. “Not Andrew or Chick or anyone else.”

  I got exactly the reaction I wanted. “Chick?”

  “That old argument over the cheeseburger,” I explained. “They fought about it at the Kerouac Thing, two days before Gordon was killed. You saw them, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but it was nothing.”

  “But the police might interpret it as something,” I said. “You remember what happened to Sidney after that little incident at Jericho’s. If you hadn’t come forward the way you did―who knows what would have happened.”

  Effie laughed. Not like a flock of ducks. Like a single, very nervous duck. “How in the world do you know about that?”

  I pawed the air, to make her believe I’d known forever. “It took a lot of guts, Effie, times being what they were. I don’t think I could have done it.”

  “Slept with Sidney or told the police about it?”

  I stood and buttoned my coat, to make her think I was finished prying. “I promised to get Eric home by six,” I said.

  We put our arms around each other and headed for the back of the store to extricate Eric from his fantasies. “Why do you think Chick and Gordon fought about such a stupid thing all those years?” I asked her. “It’s so absurd.”

  “Absurd but not absurd,” Effie said. “Both Gordon and Chick considered themselves Kerouac’s apostle at the college. They were the best of friends, but they also wanted their version of his legendary visit to prevail. To fortify their own legends. So if Chick was right, and Jack had a cheeseburger, then Chick would be the rock upon which Kerouac’s Hemphillite church was built. But if Gordon was right, and Jack ordered a plain burger—well, they’re hardly the first college professors to get caught up in some meaningless turf war.”

  “No, I guess not,” I said. I got Eric’s attention and impatiently motioned for him. He put the tiny green book he was reading back on the shelf and sheepishly trotted toward us. Effie drilled both of us in the elbow before we made it out of the store.

  ***

  It was exactly six o’clock. The westbound lane was clogged with cars fleeing downtown. Our side of the road was nearly empty. We zoomed along at thirty-five, missing as many red lights as we hit. “You learn anything useful in there?” Eric asked.

  “Not as much as you did, apparently,” I said.

  “It was erotica, Maddy. High art.”

  I groaned. “Unfortunately, so is reading Effie’s mind.” I turned onto Pershing Avenue and headed north toward Cedar Hill. “Either I learned a lot from her or nothing at all. Either intentionally or unintentionally.”

  “You think she’s covering up for someone?”

  “Protecting maybe.”

  “Protecting a murderer?”

  “Good gravy, no! Protecting the right of people to be different. To be left the hell alone. Fredricka Fredmansky marched to a different drummer long before she ever read Thoreau. Her father was a rabbi and her mother danced in a burlycue, if that tells you anything. She’s the most virtuous woman you’ll ever meet, but for better or worse her personal morality is cherry picked from a rather large and varied orchard of truths.”

  “She sounds a lot like you,” Eric said.

  ***

  Eric opened the car door, swung his sneakers into the puddle along the curb, grinned at me over his shoulder. “You want to come in for a bite?”

  I’d been in his apartment. It was not an invitation I welcomed. “That depends what’s going to bite me? A spider? Cockroach? Rat?”

  “I thought maybe we could call out for a pizza,” he said.

  “Something to nibble on while we’re looking for your keys, I gather?”

  So I followed him up the slippery, noisy iron stairs to his apartment. He’d lost his apartment keys too, of course, and so the door was not only unlocked, but wedged shut with a huge yellow bath towel. He took hold of the towel, and then the knob, and pushed the door open. He explained: “I was afraid if I closed the door I might accidentally lock it—you know how I am—and then I’d really be up shit creek.”

  We went inside. “Speaking of shit creek,” I said.

  Eric was genuinely surprised by my commentary on his housekeeping skills. “It’s not that bad, is it?”

  I stepped over a duffel bag of dirty clothes and crackled across the crumb-laden carpet to the kitchen. I hung my coat on the only chair that didn’t already have a coat hanging on it. “Anything but onions or anchovies,” I said.

  And so Eric called the pizza shop and I got busy washing his sink full of dishes. “When you get some time, there’s a couple people I want you to locate for me,” I said.

  Eric got a Mountain Dew from the refrigerator and then a paper towel and a ballpoint. “Shoot.”

  “The first is a man named Howard Shay,” I said. “I know where he lives in Mallet Creek, but supposedly he’s in Florida for the winter. See if he has a house or a trailer down there. He was an education major, so more than likely it’s a trailer.”

  “One of your old beatnik friends?”

  “David Delarosa’s college roommate.”

  Eric was having trouble writing on the bumply towel. “You’re thinking he wasn’t really in Florida when Sweet Gordon was murdered?”

  “Oh, I suspect he was,” I said. “But he might remember something interesting about the hoopla surrounding Delarosa’s murder.”

  I found a Brillo pad under the sink and attacked a sauce pan caked with the remains of something red. “I also want you to find my husband Lawrence’s fourth and final wife. Her name is Dory. D.O.R.Y. But I suppose her real name is Dorothy, or maybe Doreen.”

  “And her last name is still Sprowls?” Eric asked.

  “Lawrence died fifteen years ago. She could be remarried. But start with Sprowls. And start in Pittsburgh. That’s where they were living when he died.”

  Eric folded the paper towel and put it in his shirt pocket. “Does this have something to do with the professor’s murder? Or are you just taking advantage of my generosity to satisfy your jealous curiosities?”

  “Jealous curiosities?” I hooted. “Believe me, jealousy does not describe my feelings for Lawrence’s ex wives.”

  “More like empathy?”

  I began searching his kitchen drawers for a clean dishtowel. “More like pity. But this isn’t about ex wives, Eric. This is about a dead husband’s old college clippings.” I told him about my visit to the college newspaper office the week before, how I’d learned that the paper’s old files were destroyed in a fire, how I’d hoped to search them for clues.

  “Lawrence wrote for The Harbinger all through college,” I said. “He kept every story he ever wrote. And I’m sure he never threw them out. Journalists just don’t do that. They keep every word they’ve ever written. They lug them from house to house, and spouse to spouse, like they’re ancient biblical texts, written by The Almighty himself.”

  Eric showed me where he kept his towels. The drawer was empty. “So Lawrence covered the Delarosa murder for the college paper?”

  “Actually, he didn’t,” I said. “The editor wanted him to—he was the best reporter on the paper by far—but Lawrence told him he was a personal acquai
ntance of David’s and couldn’t possibly be objective. Lawrence just oozed integrity back then.”

  “What exactly do you hope to find in his clips?”

  “Something I’m not looking for,” I said.

  Eric retrieved the same bath towel he’d used to keep his front door from locking. We finished the dishes and then started looking for his keys. We were still looking when the pizza came. And still looking when the pizza was gone.

  “I heard a lot of what you and Effie were talking about,” Eric admitted. We were in his living room now, digging into the cracks between his cushions.

  “And?”

  “She slept with a lot of guys.”

  “Apparently.”

  “You think she’s still active in that department?”

  “She does have sex on the brain, doesn’t she?”

  Eric was flat on his belly now, his left arm under the sofa up to his shoulder. “I don’t pretend to understand the libidos of old people but—”

  I didn’t just pretend to be offended. I was offended. “Old people?”

  He wisely ignored my outburst. “All that erotica. That boy-toy stuff. Every other word out of her mouth. It seems to me she may be a little obsessed.”

  “Effie is still Effie.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying, Maddy. At one time or the other she’s slept with just about every guy in your investigation.”

  I pawed at the seriousness of his suggestion. “Which means what? That’s she’s some kind of sexual psychopath?”

  Eric rolled over and started flipping through the comic books and newspapers piled under his coffee table. “Maybe she and the professor were involved in some kind of wacky lovers’ triangle with somebody. Maybe she’s aware of something so weird that even she can’t talk about it.”

  I was furious. “Why does everybody think Gordon’s murder is about sex?”

  “Can you be sure it isn’t?”

  I struggled to my feet and headed for the mess that surely awaited me in his bathroom. “You’ve got to understand something,” I growled. “In Effie’s world, having sex with a lot of people is like me having lunch with a lot of people.”

  Before he could respond with one of his smart-ass remarks, I yelled, “Bingo!”

  I’d found his keys. In his shower. In a soggy, half-eaten bag of microwave popcorn stuffed in the soap holder.

  I didn’t ask him for an explanation and he didn’t volunteer one.

  Chapter 11

  Monday, April 2

  The coroner finally released the autopsy report on Gordon’s death. Dale brought me a copy as soon as he got to the newsroom. “No surprises,” he said, flopping it into my hands.

  The coroner officially listed Gordon’s death as a homicide. The cause of death was a single shot in the back of his head, right on that bump where the spine joins the skull. The barrel of the gun was less than a foot from his head when the fatal shot was fired. The coroner knew that because there were particles of gunpowder embedded in the skin around the wound. The bullet dug from Gordon’s brain was a 9mm, jacketed in brass, in all probability fired from a semiautomatic pistol. “The cops found only one cartridge in the grass,” Dale said. “The round that hit him was almost certainly the only one fired.”

  “The killer knew what he was doing then,” I said.

  Dale nodded. “A well-planned assassination, apparently. Coolly carried out.”

  The coroner’s report also supported the police department’s belief that the murder occurred approximately 36 to 48 hours before the first officers responded to Andrew J. Holloway III’s call from the landfill. “The rigor mortis that stiffens up a body had already faded,” Dale said. “And there was very little decomposition. So they figure he was shot sometime Thursday.”

  “Sometime Thursday afternoon or evening,” I said.

  Dale squinted at me. “And how do you know that?”

  “According to Andrew, he and Gordon had lunch at Wendy’s at noon that Thursday, as they did every Thursday. So if Andrew is to be believed—”

  “Andrew didn’t happen to mention what the professor ordered, did he?” Dale asked.

  “As a matter of fact, yes. Andrew said they always ate there because Gordon liked their chili.”

  Dale grinned and turned the page for me. “I guess you can believe him on that point, at least,” he said.

  I read the paragraph he was snapping with his index finger and thumb. “Well, well,” I whispered. According to the coroner, Gordon’s stomach was filled with undigested chili.

  I knew Dale had a story or two to write. I put the report in my top drawer for closer study later. “Any idea when they’re releasing Gordon’s body?”

  Dale was ready for me. “Already been released. To Godfrey & Sons.”

  Godfrey & Sons was a small funeral home known for its no-frills burials and cremations. I immediately called them. According to the sleepy girl on the other end, Gordon’s interment was scheduled for Wednesday, at 2 PM, at the old Lutheran Hill Cemetery east of downtown.

  ***

  Wednesday, April 4

  I took half a vacation day to attend Gordon’s burial. And it immediately raised suspicions. “What gives here, Maddy?” Suzie squeaked when I turned in my planned absence form. “Two weeks ago a sick day and now four full hours of vacation time?”

  I knew she was joking but it still made me uneasy. “I’m not trying to ease myself into retirement, if that’s what you’re hoping,” I snapped.

  Well, you can see the predicament I was in, can’t you? I couldn’t exactly run around town on company time investigating Gordon’s murder. It would give Bob Avery the ammunition he needed to give me the boot. But if I kept taking sick days and vacation days, that would raise eyebrows, too. Until two weeks ago, I hadn’t taken a sick day in thirty years. And I probably hadn’t used a tenth of the vacation time I had coming. And now if I wasn’t careful, the pathetic life I’d lived was going to rear up and bite me.

  So as silly as it seems, taking those four hours made me as anxious as an earthworm at a robin convention. But no way in hell was I going to miss Gordon’s burial!

  I left the morgue at noon. I had a bagel and tea at Ike’s then drove to Lutheran Hill. It was one of those April days in Ohio when Mother Nature can’t decide which would make people more miserable, freezing rain or slushy snow, so she decides to give them both, with a knock-you-on-your-keister wind thrown in just for fun.

  Lutheran Hill is located just east of downtown. In the old days it was packed with German immigrants. Now it’s a rich mix of Blacks, Pakistanis, Koreans, Mexicans and Appalachian Whites. The cemetery sits right in the middle of this gumbo, like a big saltine cracker.

  I drove through the wrought-iron arch and crackled slowly along the winding gravel drive, past a million forgotten tombstones. Just beyond the statue honoring the city’s Civil War dead, I spotted a small caravan of vehicles parked half on the drive and half on the mushy brown grass. There was a hearse, a rusty pickup truck pulling a small yellow forklift, and one of those cute little Subaru station wagons with an empty antler-like rack on the roof. I kept my distance, parking a good hundred yards away. I rolled down my window and watched.

  The doors of the three vehicles opened together, as if on cue. From the hearse emerged a man wearing a black topcoat and bright blue earmuffs. From the pickup emerged a bony man in a faded flannel shirt and tattered, insulated vest. From the Subaru with the antlers emerged a hairy young man wearing a buckskin coat with fringed sleeves, and a black cowboy hat with silver discs around the brim.

  They gathered in the driveway and talked for a minute. Then the man in the flannel shirt went to his truck and unhitched the forklift. He maneuvered it to the back of the hearse, raised the tongs high and removed Gordon’s casket. He drove to a freshly dug grave on a small knoll above the drive. While the other men dug their hands into their pockets and watched, Flannel Man guided the casket onto the metal frame erected over the grave. They watched, and I w
atched, as he lowered the casket to the bottom of the rectangular hole. Good gravy, was I the only one of Gordon’s friends who knew he was being buried that day?

  The young man stayed until Gordon’s casket was covered. He knelt and patted the mound of dirt. Then he got in his Subaru and drove off. I followed him.

  He wound through downtown—having the same trouble with the one-way streets that all strangers have—then sped out West Tuckman. At one traffic light I got close enough to see that the Subaru had West Virginia plates. We reached Meriwether Square and then the campus. He took a sudden wide turn onto Sunflower Court, a narrow brick street lined with wonderful old Arts and Crafts bungalows. I did not make the turn. I was afraid the man in the Subaru might rightfully think I was following him. Instead I zigzagged aimlessly through the campus for ten minutes or so. Finally I drove back to Sunflower Court. I stopped one house away from the gray clabbered house Gordon Sweet bought the same year he returned to Hemphill College with his Ph.D. The Subaru was in the driveway. I mustered all the fortitude I could, which didn’t feel like much, and shuffled up the walk to the door.

  I only had to knock once.

  The young man raked the hair out of his eyes and made sure he was smiling. “Ah,” he said, “the mysterious woman in the Dodge Shadow.”

  I made sure there was a smile on my face, too. “You saw me, did you?”

  He motioned me inside. “At the cemetery and in my rearview mirror.”

  I stuck out my hand. “I’m Maddy Sprowls. I’m an old friend of your—you are Gordon’s nephew, aren’t you? The one from Harper’s Ferry?”

  He grimaced. “Yup. Mickey Gitlin.”

  With all that hair in his face, and that stubble on his chin, it was hard to tell if Mickey shared many of Gordon’s features. He did have brown eyes like Gordon. And I guess the same nose. But unlike Gordon, who was always a little on the pasty side, Mickey had outdoorsy pink skin.

  He led me into the living room. We looked for a good place to sit and decided on the swayback, 1960s-style sofa under the picture window. “I didn’t know the burial was going to be private,” I said. “So I kept my distance. But I did want to express my sympathy to the family.”