Friday, April 6
I had a nice, peaceful lunch at Ike’s and then took my good old time walking back to the paper. It was only fifty degrees outside but the sun was shining like it was the middle of July. I didn’t dare do it, of course, but I felt like whistling that peppy theme song from The Andy Griffith Show.
On my way through the newsroom I wiggled my fingers at Louise and Margaret and even Ed Boyer in sports. Two out of three wiggled back. Then the second I lowered my happy behind into my chair, Suzie appeared out of the ether. “Mr. Averill wants to see you,” she whispered. “Immediately.”
I let the elevator take me to the fifth floor. I squeaked along the old hardwood floor to the sterile gray office at the end of the hall. I hate to admit it, but I was trembling like a just-hatched peep.
Bob Averill has been editor-in-chief for fifteen years. The owners of The Herald-Union, the Knudsen-Hartpence chain, sent him here to boost the paper’s sagging circulation. They’ve pretty much given up on that impossible dream. Nobody reads newspapers anymore. So Bob’s top priority now, or so it seems, is to coax me into retirement. But as you know, Dolly Madison Sprowls has no plans to hippity-hop into that briar patch any time soon.
I took half a minute outside Mr. Averill’s office to get myself under control-and pick the dog hair off my sweater-then knocked on his door with as much vinegar as I could muster under the circumstances.
“No need to knock, Maddy!”
I was not only confronted by Bob Averill’s sour frown. But also the sour frown of Managing Editor Alec Tinker, and even worse, the sour frown of Detective Scotty Grant. They were slumped in the leather swivel chairs that surrounded the glass-topped coffee table in the middle of the office, a star chamber of medieval inquisitors with a pinch of Larry, Curly and Moe. “My three favorite men,” I said.
There were several empty chairs. Mr. Averill pointed to the one he wanted me to sit in.
I sat. I pressed my nervous knees together.
Tinker handed me a small folded newspaper. It was a copy of the Hemphill College student newspaper, The Harbinger. The story across the top was about a proposed tuition hike. The story across the bottom was about me.
It was not a hard news story, but one of those “notes” columns all newspapers run these days, where style and speculation take precedence over documented fact. The column was cleverly called “Campus Claptrap.” The headline asked this question:
Is Maddy Sprowls At It Again?
As bad as that headline was, it was the byline under it that made me wilt:
By Gabriella Nash
Harbinger Editor
“Heavens to Betsy,” I heard myself hiss, “that horrible girl with the green hair.” I started to read:
Just eight months ago, Hemphill College alumna Dolly Madison “Maddy” Sprowls led police to the real killer of television evangelist Buddy Wing. Now it appears she is trying to beat baffled detectives to the person who murdered archaeology professor Gordon Sweet.
After graduating from HC in 1957, Sprowls went to work for The Hannawa Herald-Union. But not as a reporter. As a librarian. That’s right, the diminutive, 68-year-old Sprowls is the desk-bound gnome who watches over the newspaper’s morgue, where the stories real reporters write are filed away for future reference.
And why is Sprowls so interested in Professor Sweet’s murder? It seems that she and Sweet were old college friends. In fact, both were members of a quixotic band of campus bohemians called The Meriwether Baked…
“Did you get to the sentence about you not being a reporter?” Tinker asked.
“I sure did,” I said. “It’s right above the one that calls me a gnome.”
Tinker was too agitated to let me read in peace. “We’d like to believe this claptrap is exactly that, Maddy.”
Detective Grant seconded the motion. “And so would we baffled detectives.”
I knew it would be hard to plead guilty and not guilty at the same time. But I knew I’d have to try. I finished reading, let out a long, Reaganesque “Welllll” and then launched into a breathless explanation that I hoped would save me from collecting my pension: “It’s true enough that I’ve been asking a few people a few questions, about Gordon’s murder, and other things that may or may not be related, or even important, but I sure as heck didn’t tell that girl at the college what I was up to.”
“Or us,” Tinker pointed out.
“Or us,” Scotty Grant added.
Now Mr. Averill took a turn at me. “So this Miss Nash didn’t give you a heads-up about her story? Didn’t give you a chance to respond?”
“I’m as surprised by this as you are, Bob.”
I watched Mr. Averill’s troubled eyes drift along his office walls. They were lined with a century’s worth of important front pages, in thick black frames, from the Wright Brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk, to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, to the most recent addition, the one revealing Buddy Wing’s real killer. “I suppose you’ve earned the right to explain yourself,” he said. “If you think that’s possible.”
So that was the start of my visit to the woodshed. It was the longest damn hour of my life. I apologized for my secretiveness. I apologized for my carelessness. I apologized for my impulsiveness and my loose-cannonness. I agonized out loud over my incurable curiosity, like some bad actor in a Shakespearean play. I also told them everything I knew about Gordon’s murder, who I suspected and why. By the time I finished, they were as exhausted as I was.
Mr. Averill made a motorboat sound with his lips. He drummed his fingers on the armrests. He stood up and buttoned his suit coat over his middle-aged belly. “I don’t think we need to take any disciplinary action here, do you Alec?”
Tinker gave him a terse, “No, sir.”
“How about you, Detective Grant? Mrs. Sprowls hasn’t broken any laws, has she?”
“Not yet,” Grant said.
Mr. Averill walked me to the door. “Now you keep yourself out of trouble, Maddy,” he said. “And if you can’t, I hope you’ll at least keep us in the loop. We do like to sell newspapers around here.”
“And we like to solve crimes,” Detective Grant said.
I squinted at them until their cat-like grins withered. “You bastards,” I said.
I got off the elevator and went straight for the ladies room. Not to pee. To seethe. That hadn’t been Shakespeare up there. That had been a goddamned puppet show. And I’d been the puppet. Detective Grant wanted Gordon’s murderer. Tinker and Mr. Averill wanted a good story. They knew I just might deliver both. I sized myself up in the mirror, my silly hair and my wrinkled face, my gravity-ravaged boobs and shoulders. I took a deep breath and stood as tall as I could. “We’ll just see who’s gonna pull whose strings,” I said.
I went back to my desk. I got my tea mug and headed for the cafeteria. It was empty, except for one rumpled man slumped over a bottle of tomato juice. Detective Grant.
I filled my mug with hot water and dunked my teabag. I walked toward him, not like the frightened puppy I’d been upstairs. Like a full-grown Doberman pinscher. “If you’re staking out the cafeteria to see who’s been stealing the cheese and crackers from the vending machine, I confess. A totally justifiable act of mercy.”
He gave me a culpable smile. “Sorry about that little kabuki dance in Averill’s office.”
I sat across from him. “Did they call you or did you call them?”
He toasted my pugnacity. Took a painful sip of tomato juice. “If I hadn’t called them, I’m sure they would have called me.”
“I’m sure they would have, too.”
He turned sideways, propped his feet on the chair next to him. Started retying his shoes. “You promised me you weren’t going to get involved, you know.”
“I guess I just couldn’t stop myself.”
“And I guess I’m glad you couldn’t.”
“So we’re even-steven then?”
“Oh no, Mrs. Sprowls. We are not even-steven. I’m still the big bad police detective and you are still the private citizen who’s going to mind her p’s and q’s.”
“And it will forever be thus?” I asked
“Sayeth the Lord,” he said.
Our verbal duel was put on hold for a few minutes, while Dusty Eiffel, The Herald-Union’ s talented young political cartoonist, shaking a double handful of quarters like a rattlesnake’s tail, planted himself in front of the candy machine. He bought a bag of M amp;Ms, a Baby Ruth, a Butterfinger, and a package of Strawberry Twizzlers. He grinned at us. “Drawing funny pictures is hell,” he said.
After Dusty went off for his afternoon sugar buzz, Detective Grant got serious. “The fact is, Mrs. Sprowls, I’m running in place with this investigation. In a big pair of muddy clown shoes. As far as physical evidence is concerned, I’ve got zilch. No fingerprints, no footprints, no tire tracks, no nothing. As far as-”
I stopped him. “What about Andrew Holloway’s vomit?”
His Golden Arches eyebrows shot up. “Oh, I’ve got a whole bag of that. But no proof he didn’t throw up when he said he did.”
“So his alibi is pretty tight?”
“That’s my other problem,” he said. “Nobody’s alibi is tight. I’ve talked to everybody you have, and obviously a few more. None of them can prove where they were or weren’t that Thursday. Not Andrew Holloway, not Professor Glass, not Fredricka Fredmansky, not the Moffitt-Stumpfs, not the infamous nephew.”
Now I looked at him with surprise. “Infamous? What makes Gordon’s nephew infamous?”
“A nickel bag of drug convictions for one thing. Possession. Cultivating. Dealing. Selling pipes and bongs out of the trunk of his car. Thirty-seven months of accumulated prison time. The sheriff down there has good reason to believe he’s still active in that area, growing marijuana up in the mountains.”
I’d found Mickey Gitlin a little spooky, too. Still I felt he deserved the benefit of the doubt. “He wouldn’t exactly be the only person in West Virginia doing that, would he?”
“True enough. It’s the new moonshine. But his dealing-past and maybe present-does suggest a predilection for making money in less than legal ways.”
“It’s a big leap from marijuana to murder,” I said.
“A leap occasionally made. You are aware of the big monthly nut he has on his kayak business?”
I nodded. “He did say he was having money trouble. And he’s sure eager to sell Gordon’s house and belongings.”
Detective Grant ran his pinky around the inside rim of his empty bottle, collecting the last stubborn drops of tomato juice. He thoughtfully licked his finger like it was a miniature Popsicle. “Eager or desperate?”
I suppose that would have been a good time for me to tell Detective Grant about all those cocoa cans I bought from Mickey. But for some reason he was taking me seriously and I wanted to keep it that way. “Is it really that suspicious?” I asked. I presented him with a plausible scenario: “He hardly knew his uncle. He finds out he’s his heir. He quietly goes about his business collecting what’s legally his.”
“I can buy all that,” said Grant. “I can also buy it the other way.” He gave me his scenario: “He doesn’t know his uncle very well, just as you say. But somehow he does know that he’s his heir. Maybe his uncle actually told him. ‘Don’t worry Mickey, I’ve taken care of you.’ Maybe he snooped around and saw a copy of the will. And maybe he’s a greedy, cold-hearted bastard. The world’s full of them. And he says, ‘Hey, man, I need that inheritance now.’”
“If you can buy my theory, I guess I can buy yours,” I said. “But Gordon was hardly a rich man. He taught at a tiny college. He lived in a tiny house full of junk. I’m sure he must have had some insurance and some savings maybe, but heavens to Betsy, I bet I’m worth more than he was. I doubt any of my relatives are plotting to kill me.”
Detective Grant folded his arms. Puckered his lips. Let his eyes smile. “Well, I can’t offer an opinion on that. I don’t know your family. But I would guess you’ve probably inherited a few bucks here and there yourself, haven’t you?”
Boy, did that infuriate me. “You mean an old bag like me must have a lot of dead relatives?” Then I realized what he was saying. “Oh, I see-maybe Gordon had inherited some money himself?”
“More than maybe,” he said. “Two years ago Gordon and his sister inherited three hundred thousand each from their well-heeled, 92-year-old father.”
“So Mickey would know his uncle at least had that much,” I said.
“You’ve got to figure he did,” he said. “Add that three hundred grand to the value of the house and other assets, and I’d say Mountain Man Mickey will soon be worth a half-million more than he was before dear Uncle Gordon was murdered.”
“Oh my.”
He reached across the table and tapped my knuckles. “That’s why I want you to steer clear of him, Mrs. Sprowls. More than likely he’s just a lucky sonofabitch. But there’s also a chance he’s the kind of lucky sonofabitch who makes his own luck. Which brings us to Kenneth Kingzette.”
“You want me to steer clear of him, too, I gather?”
Detective Grant’s eyes narrowed, darted uneasily. “Don’t you think that theory of yours about the missing toluene is a little-how can I put this without you clunking my noggin with that tea cup of yours-far-fetched?”
I raised my mug playfully. He flinched playfully. I rattled off a string of questions: “Those eighteen drums of toluene are still missing, aren’t they? And the Wooster Pike landfill was one of the sites they checked, wasn’t it? And Gordon was on the EPA team, wasn’t he?”
“All true,” he said. “But there are things about that case you don’t know.”
I bristled. “I know that the president of Madrid Chemical is still missing.”
“Which is a good reason for you to stay away from Kingzette-yes?”
“But not the real reason?”
He smiled wearily. “Just do us both a favor, Mrs. Sprowls. Scratch Mr. Kingzette off your list of human curiosities.”
“Along with Mickey Gitlin?”
“If you can manage it.”
“Anybody else while I’m scratching?”
“That’ll do it for now.”
Detective Grant put on his overcoat. I rinsed out my mug. He walked me back to the newsroom. “I don’t know why you’re letting me talk to anybody at all,” I grumbled, “if I’m such a royal pain in the bum.”
“In a word, desperation,” he said. “That’s why I asked Tinker and Averill not to be too hard on you. It’s come down to either calling in a psychic or letting you dig around. And I must admit, you do have some good instincts for this kind of thing.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, I do.”
It was an opportunity I couldn’t let slip by. “Then let me ask you this-Do you think there might be a link between Gordon’s murder and the 1957 murder of David Delarosa?”
He chuckled deep in his throat, like a man who’d just been swindled out of his life savings. “So that’s why Marabout wanted that cold case file. You’re a real piece of work, Mrs. Sprowls.”
I admitted that I was. Then I told him about David’s murder. That David and Gordon had been friends. That the musician named Sidney Spikes who was questioned about that murder was the same Shaka Bop who’d played at Gordon’s funeral. “So, Detective Grant, do you think it’s possible?”
He answered with a sly smile and an indecipherable shrug.
My tete-a-tete with Detective Grant had been a boatload of fun. But it had left me exhausted. And frightened. And embarrassed. And confused about what to do next. If anything at all. And then there was that green-haired girl. I didn’t know how to feel about her. Should I cause a stink? Call her professors? Scream at her on the phone until she was reduced to tears? Destroy her skyrocketing journalism career while it was still on the launch pad? Or should I call her and thank her for the story? Yes, she’d broken one of the cardinal rules of journalism by not giving me a chance to respond. But everything she wrote was true. And it had forced me to fess up to Mr. Averill and Tinker. Something I should have done from the get-go.
While I was looking up the college paper in the phone book my own phone rang.
“That you, Maddy?”
It took me a few seconds to place the voice. “Gwen?”
“I’m not keeping you from your work, am I?”
“Other people have already accomplished that,” I said.
“Anyhoo-I just wanted you to know how impressed I am. I didn’t hear it myself. But Rollie did.”
“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about, Gwen.”
“Your trying to find Sweet Gordon’s killer. Charlie Chimera has been talking about you all afternoon. Rollie called me from the office.”
Charlie Chimera has that awful talk show on WFLO. He’s got quite a racket. He reads the morning headlines in The Herald-Union, decides which stories will get his readers’ juices flowing, throws in his own two cents, if that much, then yaps and yaps all afternoon like he’s a goddamned expert on the subject. Apparently he’d seen The Harbinger. “Good gravy! Exactly what is he saying?”
“Oh, you know-how sad it is that the police have to leave solving crimes to little old-”
“Don’t you dare finish the sentence.”
“Anyhoo-I think it’s just terrific that you’re taking an interest.”
The pythons were back in my stomach. “He’s not saying bad things about The Herald-Union, is he?”
She artfully evaded the question. “I’ve told Rollie a million times he’d be more productive if he listened to NPR.”
“That bad, is it?”
“I was thinking, Maddy. Why don’t you come over for lunch one of these days? You haven’t been to the house since we added the lap pool, have you?”
I’d never been to her house at all. Or any of the increasingly bigger houses she and Rollie had occupied over the years. I wasn’t exactly on their A list. Or their B, C, D or E lists. “No, I haven’t,” I said. “And I’d love to come for lunch. You just say when.”
To my surprise she did say when. “How about Tuesday?”
I asked Eric to find everything the paper had ever run on Gwendolyn Moffitt-Stumpf.