Dig (Morgue Mama Mysteries)

by C. R. Corwin

  There was one angle of the story that we weren’t covering. The angle that affected me. With Richard Depew safely locked away, Scotty Grant just might find a little more time for Sweet Gordon’s murder. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure if I liked that prospect or not.

  ***

  I stayed in the morgue until six-thirty and drove down to pick up Ike. The lights in his shop were already turned off. He flipped the CLOSED sign. Locked the door behind him. Trotted to my car. “If I’m going to close early for you, the least you can do is get here when you say,” he complained.

  Downtown Hannawa doesn’t have much rush hour traffic anymore, and what little it does have was over long ago. I made a wide U-turn and headed south. “I’m a woman with responsibilities,” I said.

  He laughed until I laughed.

  And I needed to laugh. I was so nervous about seeing Shaka Bop I could barely breathe.

  “He knows you’re coming?” Ike asked.

  “What fun would that be?” I asked back.

  We were in Thistle Hill in two minutes. The streets there were narrow, mostly brick, mostly one-way. The houses were a hundred years old and looked it. Many yards were surrounded with chain-link fences. Many of those fences featured BEWARE OF THE DOG signs.

  We passed Garfield High School and a half-dozen abandoned factories. We crossed Sixth Street and pulled into the bumpy, gravel-covered parking lot that surrounded Shaka Bop’s garage. We wound through the uneven rows of old cars until we found a place to park.

  The garage was modest but it was big. It was constructed of cement blocks. It had five bays. A hand-painted sign ran the full length of the building. SHAKA BOP’S AUTO RUN RIGHT it said.

  A tall, wide-shouldered man appeared out of nowhere at my car door. He bent low and smiled at me through the window. It was Shaka Bop himself. He wasn’t wearing his signature dashiki or porkpie hat that day. He was wearing a crisp white shirt and a blood-red necktie, a navy blue spring jacket zipped tight around his ample belly.

  I rolled down the window. “You remember me?” I asked.

  He squinted at me and then smiled. “Pop your hood for me, Dolly.”

  “I didn’t come for my car, though God knows the old thing needs plenty of work,” I said. “I came to see you about Gordon.”

  Shaka’s smile faded. Then recovered. “Pop it!” he said.

  So I popped my hood and he strolled slowly to the front of my car. He lifted the hood and hooked it open. Ike and I joined him.

  Shaka rested his hands on the grill and leaned over the engine. He studied all the dirty old parts, scatting some wonderful jazz under his breath. I introduced him to Ike. “This is my friend, Ike,” I said. “Ike’s Coffee Shop downtown.”

  Shaka didn’t take his eyes off my engine. “Oh yes. Ike’s Coffee Shop. Good to see you making a stand down there, Ike.”

  Ike put out his hand, but when no hand came back at him, withdrew it into his coat pocket. He remained cordial nonetheless. “Maddy’s told me all about those years in Meriwether Square.”

  Shaka looked up now. “Too bad you couldn’t have been there,” he said.

  I’m sure Ike knew what he meant. I know I did. Meriwether Square was as segregated as every other neighborhood in Hannawa in those years. Unless a black man had a saxophone or a trumpet or a pair of drumsticks, he was not welcome in any of those clubs.

  Shaka checked my oil and antifreeze. He carefully lowered the hood, as if it might disintegrate if he let it drop. “You’ve got some catastrophically cracked belts and hoses, Dolly. God knows you need a tune-up. But other than that, everything appears surprisingly copacetic for an old honey wagon like this.”

  Shaka wrapped his arm around me and walked me to the garage. Ike followed. By the time we reached his office, Shaka had my car keys and my agreement to let a couple of his miracle men give my Dodge Shadow a good going over while we talked.

  Shaka had a huge wooden desk, piled high with car parts, diet Coke cans, old newspapers and magazines. He sat behind the clutter. He folded his hands across his belly. Ike and I sat across from him, on an old car seat propped against the wall.

  “The love sure flowed back then, didn’t it, Dolly?” Shaka said. He was swiveling back and forth in his chair, like the confident king he was. “Though I don’t recall any of your love ever flowing my way.” His eyes studied my reaction, then shifted to Ike, to study his.

  I wanted to see Ike’s reaction, too. But I didn’t dare look at Ike. Instead I watched as my car disappeared into one of the bays at the other end of the garage. “I guess by now you know I’m looking into Gordon’s murder,” I said.

  Shaka sifted through the newspapers on his desk, pulling out a copy of The Harbinger. He snapped the story about me with his thumb and forefinger and grinned. “Soon as I saw this little nugget of journalistic joy, I knew it would just be a matter of time before I saw you, too.”

  I stretched my neck toward his desk like an ostrich, as if I’d never seen the story before. “You did?”

  He handed me the paper. “Murder ain’t a big thing in Thistle Hill. I’ve been to more premature funerals over the years than I care to think about. But over on your side of town, Dolly? Around that happy little college? Those happy little neighborhoods filled with all those happy, happy people? There’ve been just two murders in fifty years and both involving Sweet Gordon. Next stop Coincidence City and don’t forget your luggage. First his libidinous chum. Then the professor himself. Oh, yes! Soon as I saw that little write-up, I knew the sagacious Dolly Madison Sprowls must’ve put two and two together. Knew sooner or later she’d squeeze the saxophone man into her math.”

  Shaka always had a way with words. They were musical notes to him, to be arranged in surprising ways, to agitate and enlighten. So while I was prepared for all sorts of interesting things to come out of his mouth that evening, I hadn’t expected anything quite as poetic as libidinous chum. “Why’d you call David Delarosa that?”

  “Because that young beagle was always sniffing for a snuggle bunny. You remember that night at Jericho’s, don’t you, Dolly? That sucker punch I took for you?”

  A squeaky self-conscious giggle spilled out of me. “I don’t think many men ever took me for a snuggle bunny, no matter how drunk they were.”

  Shaka laughed like a horse. “That had more to do with your attitude than your attributes, Dolly. And you stuck to that boyfriend of yours like wallpaper on a convent wall.”

  “Lawrence and I were engaged by then,” I said.

  “Indeed, you were,” said Shaka. “But that night, as I recall, you were quite alone.”

  I told him that Lawrence was in Columbus, covering the state debate tournament.

  “Doesn’t matter where he was,” he said. “You were alone. And David Beaglerosa was on the hunt.”

  I didn’t much like it that Shaka was questioning me—after all I’d come to question him—but I did want his impression of David Delarosa. “He never hit on me,” I said.

  Shaka horse-laughed again. “But he sure hit on me.”

  “But that was a racial thing, wasn’t it?”

  Shaka was studying Ike again. “The fact that I was of the Negro persuasion didn’t help matters, I’ll give you that. And to tell you the truth, I don’t know if he specifically had designs on you or not. Chances are you were just a handy feminine foil. A way to keep me from digging any and all the white birds perched around the table that night.”

  “Chances are,” I agreed.

  He playfully patted his stomach. “I’m a fat old man now. Can’t get a bird of any feather to look at me twice. But in my prime I rarely had the pillows to myself.”

  “Including that night I understand.”

  Memories of a different time drained the confidence from Shaka’s eyes. “Thank God I didn’t.”

  “And thank God it was Effie sharing the pillows?”

  He nodded. “Imagine if I’d gone home with some other white girl that night? It took some real cojones for her
to tell the police she’d been with me, I’ll tell you that.”

  Ike hadn’t said a word since we’d lowered ourselves onto that old car seat. He said something now: “They would have strapped you in the electric chair fast as they could.”

  Shaka’s answer was little more than a whisper. “That they would have, my brother.”

  “Let’s hope they don’t get any ideas now,” I said.

  Shaka leaned back in his chair. He put his hands behind his head and rocked. “That your way of asking me if I have an alibi for the day Sweet Gordon was killed?”

  “She’s not the most subtle woman,” Ike said.

  Shaka winked at him. “No, she’s not. But as long as I’ve got her old Dodge hostage in there, I’m going to operate on the assumption she’s on my side.”

  “I’m on Gordon’s side,” I said.

  Shaka took off an imaginary hat and tipped it to me. “So am I. He was a fine man.”

  “And you’re a fine man,” I said.

  Shaka didn’t quite know what to do with that. First he smiled and then he frowned. “I was here until ten-thirty that Thursday. Seeing if I couldn’t coax another hundred-thousand miles out of the Apple Street Baptist Church’s old Sunday school bus.”

  “Have the police talked to you?” I asked.

  “I’ve told them that, yes. But I was here alone. From five on, anyway.” He hesitated. “I don’t know if that gets me off the hook or not.”

  The coroner’s report, of course, had put Gordon’s death sometime between noon and midnight that Thursday, anywhere between 36 and 48 hours before Andrew J. Holloway called from the landfill. “Neither do I,” I said.

  Shaka rubbed the twitch out of his nostrils. “Well, they haven’t hauled me downtown yet.”

  I struggled off the car seat and peered through the glass office door. My car was high on a rack. Two young mechanics were standing underneath it, heads tipped back like a pair of bewildered turkeys trying to figure out where the rain was coming from. “Did the police ask you why you weren’t at this year’s Kerouac Thing?”

  “No, they didn’t ask me that.”

  “And what would you have told them?”

  “The brutal truth, Dolly. That sometimes those stuffy old poops are more than I can take. Every damn year reading those same old cob-webby poems. Telling those same old hyperventilated stories. Living in the past like they’re already dead.”

  “One of them is,” I said.

  “Another premature funeral,” Shaka said.

  I asked him what he knew about Gordon’s argument with Chick over Jack Kerouac’s hamburger. “Another reason why I didn’t go,” he said. “Who wants to listen to two old white men argue about cheese?”

  “They really got into it this year,” I said.

  “That’s what I hear,” he said.

  I asked him what he knew about Gordon’s relationship with Chick.

  “Sometimes I got one vibe, sometimes I got another,” he said.

  I asked him if he thought Chick could have murdered Gordon.

  “No more than I could’ve,” he said.

  Then I asked him if he thought Gordon could have murdered David Delarosa.

  “I’d like to give you the same answer,” he said. “But the truth is, after those unrequited fisticuffs at Jericho’s, I was neither surprised nor dismayed to learn of that boy’s fatal fall. There was something infinitely unlikable about Mr. Delarosa.”

  Finally I asked him if he knew what Gordon might have been looking for at the landfill. “The young cat he used to be,” he said. “That’s what I always figured.”

  “So, you were aware of his digging out there—long before he was murdered?”

  “Long, long before,” he said. “Like all the beans in the jar.”

  I was following Shaka’s jive just fine, but Ike’s Republican mind was having trouble with it. “Beans in the jar?” he asked.

  I explained: “Members of the Baked Bean Society,” I said. “And by virtue of that membership, the sizable number of suspects in Gordon’s murder.”

  “Right-o-roonie,” said Shaka. “One big black bean and a whole bunch of little white ones.”

  ***

  My Dodge Shadow had new belts and hoses, a tune-up, five quarts of fresh oil, the proper amount of air in the tires. It was scooting through Thistle Hill like a rocket ship on its way to the moon. The ancient streetlights were as dim as stars. “I’m glad you came along, Ike,” I said.

  I was expecting him to say something supportive, something like I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Instead he said this: “Wish I hadn’t.”

  “Wish you hadn’t? You begged to come along.”

  “I know I did. He just seemed so life size.”

  “Heavens to Betsy, he’s big as a bear.”

  “It was just tough watching him squirm, I guess.”

  I wasn’t smart enough to let up. “Squirm? Were you and I looking at the same man?”

  “No, I don’t think we were.”

  “Good gravy, Ike.”

  “Don’t good gravy me, Maddy. He’s an important man in the black community.”

  “I know that.”

  “Not the way I know it, you don’t.”

  It was my turn to be the bear. “This is not a black and white thing. A friend of mine has been murdered.”

  “Oh yes, and you just wanted some impressions.”

  “That’s right. I would never do anything to get Shaka in trouble. Not if he didn’t deserve it.”

  “And you think there’s a chance he does?”

  “I think we better talk about something else.”

  “I think we better talk about this.”

  I’d known Ike for twenty years. And he’d never spoken to me like that. Like a man that mattered. And, to tell you the truth, I rather liked it. “I don’t know what to think,” I whispered. “Not now.”

  He softened, too. “You pick up on something, did you?”

  “You remember when he shuffled through all those papers on his desk and pulled out that copy of The Harbinger?”

  Ike bristled. “You were surprised somebody from Thistle Hill reads the college newspaper?”

  “Don’t go there again, Ike. The only thing that surprised me was the address on the mailing label. Last Gasp Books. Effie’s store.”

  Ike pondered the implications of that. “I think I understand—no, I don’t think I do.”

  I explained: “Effie, as I’m sure you’ve already gathered, was a lot closer to Shaka than the rest of us. She provided police with his alibi for the night David Delarosa was murdered. Now when she sees in the college paper that I’m looking into Gordon’s death, she goes straight to Shaka.”

  Now Ike did understand. “Gave him a heads up?”

  We were back downtown, where the streetlights were bright enough to illuminate the inside of the car. “When that story in The Harbinger came out, I’d already been to see Effie at her book shop. I’d asked her oodles of questions about David Delarosa. So she knew where my mind was going on this. And then she gets her copy of The Harbinger and sees that Maddy Sprowls isn’t just concerned about Gordon’s murder—she’s investigating it. ”

  “It could be innocent enough,” Ike said.

  I turned onto South Main and floated past the empty storefronts toward the Longacre Building. “You remember that libidinous chum stuff about David Delarosa? That beagle sniffing for a snuggle bunny stuff? Effie didn’t put it quite so colorfully, but she pretty much told me the same thing.”

  “So you think she’s trying to get you to look under the wrong rock?”

  I pulled up in front of Ike’s coffee shop. “I think maybe the rocks are in my head.”

  He reached across the seat and gently patted my shoulder. I reached across the seat and gently patted his. He got out. Closed the door with a gentle kloomp. He bent low and waved good-bye through the window. I gently waved back.

  Chapter 16

  Saturday, May 5

 
My washing machine was whirring through the spin cycle. My Reeboks were bumping in the dryer. My radio was turned to the smart-alecky quiz show guy on NPR. Somehow I heard the phone ringing. I clicked off my iron and hurried upstairs to the kitchen. It was Gwen. “How’s your dog-watching going?” she asked.

  I looked out my window at James. I had him tied to my pin oak in the backyard. He was howling at Jocelyn’s house like a lovesick wolf. “Just fine.”

  “You seemed a little frazzled by it the other day.”

  “Frazzled? I’ve never been frazzled in my life.”

  We both laughed at my lie. And then she got to the point of her call. “Anyhoo,” she said, “I was telling Rollie about your unexpected house guest and he suggested we take you with us to Pettibones.”

  I knew what Pettibones was. It was the new pet supermarket in West Hannawa. According to a story we ran in the business section a few weeks ago, the store lets you bring your dogs with you—to bark, sniff and sample the snacks, and even pee on the floor if they’re so inclined. I’d been thinking of taking James there myself.

  So an hour later Gwen and Rollie were sitting in my driveway and I was loading James into the backseat of their enormous Mercedes-Benz SUV. Gwen was behind the wheel. Rollie was riding shotgun with two squiggly dachshunds on his lap. “Your house is just darling,” Gwen said after I’d squeezed in alongside James. “It reminds me of that cubby hole we rented when Rollie was getting his insurance agency off the ground. Remember that awful little place, Rollie?”

  Rollie was fighting a losing battle with Queen Strudelschmidt’s affectionate tongue. His face was shiny with dog saliva. “That was eleven houses ago, Gwendolyn.”

  Gwen talked dogs and houses all the way to Pettibones. Rollie and I listened all the way.

  The dachshunds were eager to get inside. They pulled Rollie across the parking lot like a couple of huskies in the Iditarod. I had to drag James to the door. “You look like a prospector pulling a pack-mule,” Gwen happily observed.

  “James’ personality skews toward the cautious side,” I said.