by C. R. Corwin
The one thing I didn’t do was call Detective Grant and confess my stupidity. Pride trumps fear every time.
***
Tuesday, May 22
After five sleepless nights in that booby-trapped bungalow of mine I called Detective Grant to confess. Even a proud woman needs her eight hours.
I caught him just as he was leaving for the day. We traded hellos and our thoughts about the rainy weather and then I got right to the heart of the matter. “I may have done something a little on the stupid side,” I began.
“A little on the stupid side?” he asked. “I hope you’re not just being modest.”
“You and me both,” I said. I swallowed the last half-inch of cold tea in my mug, motioned for Eric to turn around and mind his own business, and then told Grant about my encounter with the Kingzettes.
“What’s done is done,” he said.
I wasn’t expecting sympathy, but I was surprised by the indifference in his voice. “That’s it? What’s done is done?”
“What do you want me to do? Put a moat filled with alligators around your house?”
I didn’t like that smart-ass question of his one bit. “I just want you to tell me if I’m in any danger, Detective Grant, that’s all.”
He snapped right back at me. “You’ve inserted yourself into a murder investigation, Mrs. Sprowls. Of course you’re in danger. But probably not from the Kingzettes.”
“Probably not? I was hoping for a little more reassurance than that.”
He rattled my eardrum with a long, late-afternoon yawn. Then he said this: “Just hang in there for a few more days, Mrs. Sprowls. Okie-dokie?”
***
Thursday, May 24
And so I hung in there—not that I had any choice—lights on, squeak toys in the hallway, knives under the pillow, water glasses on the window sills, wondering exactly what Detective Grant was hinting at. The answer came at three-thirty Thursday afternoon. It was in the budget for the next day’s paper. I was so angry I screeched like a 500-pound piece of chalk.
Eric was bent over his new issue of Spider Man, feeding miniature doughnuts into his mouth. “And just who’s ruffling your feathers today?” he asked.
I tossed the budget at him. “Grant!”
I should explain that the budget has nothing to do with money. Not directly, anyway. The budget is the list of the stories the paper will be covering for the following day’s edition. It includes local stories as well as the big national and international stories. Among the dozens of stories listed was this one:
Story name: DUMPERDEAL
Reporter: Margaret Newman
Length: 14 inches
Photo: File headshot
Description: The Ohio EPA has entered into a consent agreement with convicted toxic waste dumper Kenneth Kingzette. In exchange for immunity from future prosecution in the O.E. Madrid case, Kingzette has revealed the location of still-missing toluene.
I took two minutes to decide how nasty I should be, then called Detective Grant. He was not surprised that I’d called. Nor was he surprised that I began our conversation with the salutation, “You sneaky son-of-a-bee!”
“Now, now, Mrs. Sprowls—you know darn well I couldn’t tell you until it was a sure thing.”
All I knew about Kingzette’s deal with the Ohio EPA, of course, was what I’d just read in the Friday budget. “And just where was the missing toluene?”
“Buried in an abandoned chicken house, over in Hinckley Township.”
“They dig up anything else out there?”
He knew what I was getting at. “There is no evidence that Donald Madrid is dead. Or that Leonard Kingzette killed him if he is.”
“How about evidence that he’s still alive?”
He chose his words carefully. “Suffice it to say, there are strong indications that Mr. Madrid’s disappearance was of his own doing.”
“Other than the wrinkle-free chinos and Indiana Jones hat?”
I couldn’t see him, of course, but I could tell from his noisy nostrils that he wasn’t pleased with my knowledge of those things. “You conveniently left out the luggage,” he said.
“Well, placing an order with Lands’ End does suggest some planning,” I admitted. “But if he was going to run away, why did he first tell the EPA he’d hired Kingzette to do the dumping? Why didn’t he just keep his lip zipped and vanish into the good night?”
“Because he wanted to make it look like he was being cooperative,” Grant said.
I offered an alternative because. “Or because it wasn’t the EPA he was running from, but Kenneth Kingzette.”
Grant countered with a string of other becauses: “Because his company’s finances were in shambles. Because his beloved Woolybears were in last place. Because his wife was already seeking half of everything in divorce court. Because the last thing he needed on top of all his other problems was three or four years in federal prison.”
Being an obnoxious old nag wasn’t getting me anywhere. I tried a mix of contrition and vulnerability. “Well, I suppose you know more about the case than I do,” I said.
“Infinitely more,” he said.
“And I suppose there’s no chance that Kingzette got to Madrid before Madrid got to the airport, or the bus station, or whatever mode of transportation I’m sure you’ve already checked out.”
Grant cackled at me like a hen on helium. “Mrs. Sprowls—I am not going to dig up that entire landfill out there just because you’ve got some crazy-ass idea rattling around in your coconut.”
Chapter 20
Saturday, June 2
I bribed James into a quick walk up and down Brambriar Court. Then I headed for Speckley’s. Not to have lunch with Dale or Detective Grant. To have breakfast with Gordon’s old girlfriend, Penelope Yarrow.
It had taken Eric a month to find her. Her name was Penelope Oakar now. She was living three hours away, in Ottawa Hills, a suburb of Toledo. She was married to a Lebanese dentist. She was the mother of twin girls, both now in medical school.
When I’d told her on the phone that Gordon had been murdered, there was a deep rattle in her throat, as if she were taking her dying breath. When I asked if I could drive up to Toledo to see her, she said, “No—I’ll come to see you.” She said she wanted to visit Gordon’s grave. See the college again. When I suggested that we meet at Speckley’s for lunch, she laughed in that same sad way people laugh at funerals, and said, “Don’t tell me that old place is still open.”
I pulled in right at ten. Looking for a place to park. Speckley’s is always a zoo on Saturday mornings. I spotted a car that just had to be hers. It was a freshly washed and waxed silver Volvo with Lucas County license plates.
Penelope was waiting for me inside, at an elf-sized table-for-two by the men’s room door. I weaved through the crowded tables. We smiled at each other. Took inventory of each other. We both ordered the Spam and eggs, a Speckley’s specialty nearly as famous as its meatloaf sandwiches, au gratin potatoes on the side.
Penelope was in her mid fifties but looked as good in her Ann Taylor jeans as any woman in her thirties. She folded her hands under her chin and listened patiently while I gave her a breathless account of my investigation into Gordon’s death. “How is it you even know I exist?” she asked as soon as she could get a word in edgewise.
“I saw the photo you took at Jack Kerouac’s grave,” I said.
She squinted quizzically. “And just where did you see that?”
“At Chick’s house,” I said. “He told me you were Gordon’s old girlfriend.”
“He told you I was Gordon’s girlfriend?”
“You weren’t Gordon’s girlfriend?”
“Later on I was. When that photo was taken I was still Chick’s girlfriend.”
“Oh my.”
She poured the silverware out of her white linen napkin and spread the napkin across her lap. “What can I say? It was the Age of Aquarius.”
“And it was a long time ago,” I said. �
�Why wouldn’t Chick want me to know you were his girlfriend?”
“Maybe because he was still married to his first wife at the time,” she offered.
Penelope was a good fifteen years younger than me. By the time she was in the picture—with Gordon and Chick and others at the college—I was long out of it. “Exactly what years are we talking about here?” I asked.
“I started seeing Chick my junior year,” she said. “The fall of 1968.”
I did the math in my head while the waitress brought our little blue teapots in for a landing. Gordon and Chick were both just a year older than me. In 1968 they would have been thirty-four. Penelope would have been just twenty or twenty-one. “And you were still with Chick in the summer of 1970?” I asked. “When the three of you went to Massachusetts to visit Kerouac’s grave?”
There was a residue of bitterness behind her smile. “He gave me the heave-ho a couple weeks after we got back,” she said. “Cleared the deck for the fall semester.”
“And you started seeing Gordon?”
“Not right away,” she said. “I went home to Mount Gilead for a few months, but missed the big wicked city.” We both laughed, as anyone who’d spent time in Hannawa would do. “Then I came back, got a crappy job, and eventually bumped into Gordon.”
I asked the obvious question: “It didn’t bother Chick that Gordon was dating his old girlfriend? Age of Aquarius notwithstanding?”
“It was a little weird—for all three of us. But by then Chick had another gullible undergraduate on the side. And Gordon and I were in love.”
Our Spam and eggs arrived. We started shoveling the fluffy eggs and little cubes of fried pork like a couple of lumberjacks. “Actually in love?” I asked. It came out a little more sarcastic than I wanted. But she was not offended.
“As much above the neck as below it, surprisingly,” she said.
Well, I sure wondered what she meant by that! As you know, my head was filled with all those suspicions about Gordon and Chick’s sexuality, and how their relationship, whatever it had been, might have something to do with Gordon’s murder. “Surprisingly, you say?”
I got the exact opposite answer I expected. “Naturally, I’d always found Gordon physically attractive,” she said. “But you know what an egghead he was. All those philosophical soliloquies that used to bore me to tears when I was with Chick were suddenly loosening me up better than a rum and Coke.”
That was enough sex talk for me. For the moment at least. “So what eventually happened between you and Gordon?”
“I moved in with him—that’s what happened. For three less-than-wonderful weeks.”
“Not the love nest you expected?”
“Not the pig sty I expected.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “You committed the cardinal sin of a new relationship. You cleaned his apartment.”
She nodded like a fisherman’s bobber. “And I threw out his damn pine cones.”
“You threw out his pine cones?”
“The ones Jack Kerouac gave him. It all seems so silly now.”
“Jack Kerouac gave Gordon pine cones?” I squeaked. We’d both finished our Spam and eggs and were down to nibbling on the decorative orange slices.
“Little baby pine cones. No bigger than the tip of your little finger. A cocoa can full of them.”
I almost jumped up on the table and tap danced. I was learning more during that breakfast with Penelope Yarrow than I’d learned all spring talking to my old beatnik friends. And while lots of intriguing little pieces were coming together in my mind, I had the good sense to play dumb. “So when you threw out his pine cones, Gordon popped his cork and threw you out?”
“Not right away. But when we couldn’t find them at the dump—”
“What dump was that, dear?” I asked.
“That one on Wooster Pike,” she said. “We crawled around in the snow for a week looking for those blessed pine cones.”
I wasn’t just puzzled. I was flat out thrown for a loop. I’d known Sweet Gordon for fifty years. I’d been one of the founding members of the Baked Bean Society. I’d been there when Jack Kerouac came to town. And I’d been there through a thousand wine-inspired reminiscences of that famous visit. But I never knew about those pine cones! The question for me now, of course, was why I never knew about them. And maybe more importantly, did any of my other old beatnik friends know about them? I talked Penelope into sharing a piece of carrot cake with me.
“Did you know they were Jack Kerouac’s pine cones when you threw them out?” I asked.
“Good Lord, no,” she said. “That cocoa can was just one more piece of junk gathering dust on his window sill. Along with the empty beer bottles and dried up violets.”
I’d only been married to Lawrence for six years. But it was long enough to know that when it comes to the perceptions of men and women, you’re dealing with two distinct species. Where a woman sees a window full of junk, a man sees a well-ordered shrine. “And just how did Gordon react to your overzealous housekeeping?”
Penelope had the little frosting carrot on the end of her fork, deciding if she should surrender to temptation and eat it, as if that tiny half-inch of green and orange sugar was a time bomb packed with ten thousand calories. “A lot of yelling and screaming at first,” she said. “Then he sort of went catatonic. He curled up on his couch and put a pillow on top of his head. ‘Do you have any idea what you’ve done?’ he kept asking. In a low whisper. Like a Hindu mantra. ‘Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?’”
If she wasn’t going to eat that damn carrot, I was. I scraped it off her fork with mine, and popped it in my mouth. She thanked me with a wide smile. I pressed on. “Do you remember much about the cocoa can?”
“It was a cocoa can.”
Since buying all those cans from Mickey Gitlin, I’d had Eric do a little research for me. “Was it a Hershey’s can? There were lots of different brands in those days. But Hershey’s is what most people bought.”
Penelope grinned with embarrassment. “In my mind I see it as a Hershey’s can—those silver letters on the brown background—but that was a long time ago.”
I nodded sympathetically. “Wait until you’re my age. You won’t be able to trust half your memories. But for the sake of discussion we’ll have to assume your mind is telling you the truth. Now, was it a real old can? An antique?”
Her eyes went back and forth like one of those Krazy Kat clocks. “I think it was just a regular cocoa can. I doubt I would’ve thrown it out if it looked real old or valuable.”
“That’s a good point,” I said. “Can you remember if it was made out of tin or cardboard?”
“Tin I guess. Why?”
“For a couple reasons,” I said. “First, it would help date the can. The real old cocoa cans were made out of tin. Then during World War II when metal was scarce the sides of the can were made out of cardboard, with a tin top and bottom. And it easily could have been one of those World War II cans. According to what Gordon told you, Kerouac found it in 1956. Just eleven years after the war ended. That’s not a long time for a can to be in a kitchen cupboard, let alone in a fire tower in the middle of nowhere. So if it was cardboard, it could have rotted in the dump along with the pine cones inside.” Now I contradicted myself. “Of course from what Gordon’s graduate assistant tells me, under the right conditions things made out of paper can survive underground for years and years.”
Surprisingly, Penelope was following me. “So even if it was a cardboard can, Gordon still might have hoped to find it intact thirty years after I threw it out?”
“Yes, I think so,” I said. “Anyway, Hershey went back to the all-tin cans in 1947. Other companies about that time, too. Everything’s made out of plastic now, of course.”
Penelope suppressed a yawn. “So it was probably an all-tin can, but it could have been part cardboard? But either way Gordon must have figured he had a good chance of finding it?”
“That’s right. Now, did it have one of those oval snap-in lids?”
She answered quickly. “I’m sure it did.”
I asked my next question slowly. “Did you bother looking inside the can before you threw it out?”
Now she suppressed a flash of anger. “That’s exactly what Gordon asked me. Only he was screaming at the time. And the truth is, yes, I did look inside. If there was cocoa inside I was going to put it back in the kitchen.”
“So you saw the pine cones?”
“I saw them.”
“Didn’t it occur to you that maybe he wanted them?” I asked.
The anger on her face was now directed toward herself. “I know I should have—but I was in a cleaning frenzy. Gordon had junk everywhere and I was going to get rid of it. To make him love me more. Consider me for a wife I suppose. God, I don’t know how many bags I carried out to the trash.”
***
The story Penelope told me that morning at Speckley’s—as bizarre as it sounded—nevertheless jelled with my own research into Jack Kerouac’s life. Or should I say Eric’s research. Earlier that spring he’d Googled up all sorts of interesting stuff for me. Anyway, it boiled down to this:
In June of 1956, Jack Kerouac hitchhiked from San Francisco to the Mt. Baker National Forest in Washington State. He worked as a fire lookout for 63 days, perched alone in a tower, atop a mountain, watching the horizon for wisps of smoke, bored to near insanity by the desolation of the place. Each night, to mark the passing of another interminable shift, he placed a tiny pine cone in an old cocoa can he found amongst the tower’s clutter. When he began working his way east at the end of the summer, he took that can of pine cones with him, as a souvenir of his foolishly spent summer. In November he dropped in on Gordon and Chick here in Hannawa. And before leaving for New York, he gave his pine cones to Gordon.
