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 amp; Sons.”
Godfrey amp; 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 watched, 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.”
The need to explain tightened his face. “I couldn’t make it to the memorial service. And my mother’s not too mobile these days.”
“The obituary said she lives in Florida.”
“Captiva Island. She has MS.”
I bobbed my chin sympathetically. “I knew your uncle since college, but I don’t think I ever met any of his family.”
“There never was much,” he said. “And there’s only Mom and me now.”
I couldn’t exactly ask him if he was Gordon’s heir. But that’s exactly what I wanted to know. “So I guess all the legal stuff has fallen on your shoulders.”
He was surprisingly candid. “It’s all a little weird. I really never knew the man. Saw him a few of times when I was a kid, funerals and things, but that’s about it. Then I get a call that he’s dead and I’ve inherited everything.”
Boy, did I want to know what everything meant. “I guess you’ve got your hands full.”
He chuckled wearily. “What I’ve got is an old house full of junk.”
I found a way to ask him if he had a wife, or children.
“I guess that’s the other thing I inherited from him,” he said. He heard what he’d said and laughed. “I don’t mean his gay gene. I mean his loner gene.”
I assured him I knew what he meant. “So what exactly do you do in Harper’s Ferry?”
“At the moment I’m going broke teaching people how to kayak.”
“The funny little Eskimo boats?”
“Yup. The funny little Eskimo boats.”
I maneuvered the conversation back to Gordon’s estate. “I guess you’ll have to sell the house.”
“It’s a great little house,” he said. “I wished there was some way I could zap it down there-or zap the Potomac River up here.”
“Well, I don’t think you’ll have trouble finding a buyer.”
He nodded with his eyebrows arched high and happy. Clearly he figured to make a pretty penny on Gordon’s house. “Getting rid of his stuff is the problem,” he said. “He’s got ten tons of rubble that could be worth a lot or nothing.”
“I wouldn’t give you a dime for this old couch,” I said. “But some of this other stuff looks like it might be worth something.”
“I’m not talking about his furniture. I’m talking about all that stuff from his archeological digs.”
I finagled a tour of the house. It was indeed filled with, well, junk: old bottles and cans and boxes, tools and toys, kitchen gadgets, kitschy wall plaques and dime store paintings. “I suppose you could hold a tag sale.”
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” Mickey said. “But not up here.”
“You’re hauling all this stuff down to Harper’s Ferry?”
“Summer’s coming fast. I’ve got a barn full of kayaks to get ready. And Harper’s Ferry is pretty much the flea market capital of the world.”
“I think the Hannawa Chamber of Commerce would challenge you on that,” I said.
We squeezed into Gordon’s small downstairs office. There were bookshelves on all four walls. “Boy, I bet our old friend Effie would love these for her shop,” I said.
“She’s been bugging me since the funeral,” he said.
“Since the funeral? You were there?”
He shook his head, sourly. “She called me down in Harper’s Ferry. About six times. A very persistent woman.”
“Yes, she is-you’re going to sell them to her?”
“At some point maybe,” he said. “But I’m going to take them back to Harper’s Ferry with everything else. I need to evaluate what I’ve got. Think things through.”
“That’s wise,” I said.
Effie’s eagerness to buy Gordon’s books didn’t surprise me at all. Effie had known Gordon forever. She’d undoubtedly rummaged through his library a thousand times. And she was a businesswoman. Collections like that didn’t come on the market every day.
We snooped around the kitchen then headed down the basement steps. I spread my fingers across my face. “Oh, my!” The basement walls were lined with crudely constructed shelves, all stuffed with junkyard treasure.
“It’ll be a bitch hauling this stuff out of here,” he said. “But it’ll make my creditors happy. One or two of them anyway.”
I circled the basement like a visiting head of state reviewing the troops on the White House lawn. I stopped in front of the shelves next to the furnace. I studied the rows of cocoa cans. I struggled to remember my conversation with Andrew Holloway, and the catchy little question Gordon always asked his students at the dig: “Anything interesting today, boys and girls?” he’d ask. “Old soda pop bottles? Betsy Wetsy Dolls? Perhaps an old cocoa can or two?”
Without appearing too nosy, I scanned the other shelves in the basement for old bottles or dolls. There weren’t any. I motioned for Mickey to join me. “You wouldn’t want to sell me these old cocoa cans, would you?”
He did want to sell them to me. For five dollars a can. There were twenty-two of them.
So I wrote Mickey a check for $110.00 and felt like an absolute fool carrying them out to my car.
I drove away with more than a back seat full of cocoa cans. I also had a brain full of unanswered questions: Did Gordon save those cocoa cans for a reason? Did they have a story to tell?
Was Mickey really surprised to learn that he was Gordon’s heir? And just how far in debt was his kayak business in Harper’s Ferry? Why hadn’t he come to Gordon’s memorial service? Harper’s Ferry isn’t that far from Hannawa. And why did he sneak into town to bury him now? The minute the coroner released his body? Without a minister for a graveside prayer? Without inviting any of Gordon’s friends?
And what was that crack about his not inheriting Gordon’s gay gene?
I drove home for what I planned to be the most boring evening of my life. I was going to eat popcorn and suck on peppermint swirls, and watch six or seven hours of old sitcoms on Nickelodeon, until Gordon’s murder, and David Delarosa’s murder, were no more a bother to me than the dust bunnies under my bed.
But when I pulled into my driveway, Jocelyn and James were waiting on my porch. Jocelyn’s usual happy-as-an-apple face was puckered with anguish. I struggled toward her with my three shopping bags of old cocoa cans. The first words out of her mouth were not exactly promising: “Oh Maddy, I don’t know how to ask you this.”
I put down my cocoa cans and scratched James’ ping-pong paddle ears. He reciprocated by slobbering on my elbows with his big pink tongue. “How long?” I asked.
Jocelyn pulled in her neck, as if I was about to pound her with a sledgehammer. “Five months?”
The last time she asked me to watch James it was for three days. “Five months?”
She started to cry-the kind of crying that includes a lot of shoulder shaking and throaty moans that sound like mating whales. She told me her daughter Deena’s husband had been swept into the Pacific Ocean while collecting mussels for a paella, for their fifteenth wedding anniversary dinner, and now Deena was going to be a young working widow with three daughters at that awkward age. Jocelyn was going to spend the summer in Eureka, California, while the kids were out of school. “I don’t know what’s going to happen after that, Maddy,” she said, “but if you could take in James until the end of August-I’ll pay for all his food, of course.”
I loved James. But I didn’t want to love him that much. But heavens to Betsy, what could I do? “When do you have to leave?”
“The funeral’s on Wednesday,” she said. “I was hoping you could drive me to the airport tonight.”
And so instead of watching old sitcoms on Nickelodeon, I was starring in a brand-new sitcom of my own: James amp; Me. My only hope was that it would merely be a summer replacement and not picked up for the fall.