Tuesday, April 10
Eric found a ton of clips on Gwen. There was the huge society page story on her June 1957 wedding to Rollie. There was that horrible Page One story on the plane crash that killed her only child, her 19-year-old son, Rolland Jr. And there was story after story about her good works.
Over the years Gwen had raised her public profile-and the profitability of her husband’s insurance agency-by raising money for good causes. She’d raised money for every hospital in the city. She’d raised money for the art museum. For the symphony. The zoo. For Hemphill College. Over the years The Herald-Union must have run two or three dozen photos of Gwen handing one of those phony tablecloth-sized checks to some thrilled-to-death recipient.
But it wasn’t all hoity-toity, high profile stuff. Gwen also raised money for women’s shelters, for food banks, for inner city scholarships, for poor families whose houses burned down around them. After a spate of rapes downtown in the early eighties, she’d even organized self-defense classes for women through the city’s Adult Enrichment Program. We’d run a number of stories on that, including a photo of her throwing former Mayor Jerry Hazel for a loop in a jujitsu class.
Gwen was also a big supporter of the democratic process. Her fundraising parties for Republican presidential candidates over the years had won her five invitations to the White House. Her parties for Democratic mayoral and council candidates won Rollie’s insurance agency a wheelbarrow full of city contracts.
All in all, Gwen was a real mover and shaker. And even though I’d known her since she was a silly college girl, I was shaking in my boots all the way to her house.
Maybe I’d never been to her house. But I sure knew where it was. It was on Hardihood Avenue, Hannawa’s ritziest quarter-mile. And she and Rollie not only lived on Hardihood, they lived within squinting distance of Trawsfyndd Castle, the grand Tudor-style mansion built in 1911 by Richard Pembrook Hooley, an impoverished Welsh immigrant whose life took a turn for the better when he invented a faster way to bottle beer. Trawsfyndd today is owned by the Hooley family trust. They offer tours seven days a week, at $9.50 a pop. They make you wear those embarrassing elastic booties that look like shower caps.
Gwen and Rollie’s house wasn’t as big as Trawsfyndd, but it was still a castle, a monstrous gray-bricked Georgian with way too many windows and dozens of shrubs trimmed into perfect circles. I parked under the portico.
I was half expecting to be greeted at the door by a stuffy butler. But it was Gwen herself. And a pair of tap-dancing dachshunds.
Gwen made eye contact with my Dodge Shadow before she made eye contact with me. “Maddy-isn’t it good to see you?”
She was wearing a bright yellow cashmere turtleneck and matching silk slacks. She looked like a fancy banana. “And isn’t it good to see you?” I said.
She hugged me. She let me hug her back. She threw back her arm like one of those prize girls on The Price Is Right and welcomed me inside. The floor in the foyer was covered with alternating black and white tiles. I felt like the last remaining pawn on a giant chessboard, cornered by a crafty queen. “This is just beautiful, Gwen.”
She started telling me about the trouble her designer had finding wall sconces that matched the urns she bought on her Aegean cruise, but the dachshunds were begging for attention. I bent as low as I could go and scratched the tops of their flat heads. “And what are your names?”
Gwen introduced them: “This sweet old girl is Queen Strudelschmidt and this handsome fellow is her son and heir, Prince Elmo IV.” They dutifully sat back on their long hind-ends and lifted their stubby right paws, which I dutifully shook.
“You a dog person, Maddy?”
“Sort of.” I told her about my temporary acquisition of James. About my total ineptitude in canine care.
My misery made her laugh. “All you’ve got to do is love them,” she said.
“Apparently wiener dogs don’t have digestive systems,” I said.
Dog talk out of the way, Gwen gave me the nickel tour of her million-dollar house. There was one white-walled room after another, every one of them filled with white rugs and white furniture. The only room that even came close to feeling comfortable was Rollie’s den. But even that looked more like a display in a fancy furniture store than a real room. The walls were covered with expensive paneling. The drapes and rugs were hunter green. The pillows on the leather sofa bore the embroidered heads of horses. There was a pair of battered duck decoys on the coffee table. It was a man’s room, no doubt painstakingly put together by Gwen to give poor Rollie a bit of self-confidence. The wall behind the enormous oak desk was filled with his many awards for selling insurance. The mantel above the fireplace was lined with Rollie’s college debate trophies. They were as shiny as the day he won them. I went to admire them. “With Rollie’s gift of gab I always figured he’d go into politics,” I said.
Gwen scowled. “Thank God he got that dream out of his system.”
She led me through the solarium-a tad bit more opulent than the one in Chick Glass’ house-to the natatorium and the new lap pool she’d bragged about on the phone. “It was hugely expensive, as you can imagine,” she said. “But Rollie simply had to have it.”
Well, I knew who simply had to have it. Gwen simply had to have it. To keep her husband healthy, wealthy and by all means alive. I crept across the fancy green tiles and peered into the clear, blue-tinged water. I could imagine poor Rollie churning through the water, back and forth and back and forth, while Gwen sat in a lounge chair timing his laps with a stopwatch.
Finally we made it to the kitchen. It was as big as my entire house. Newly remodeled, too, like one of those gourmet pleasure palaces they create right before your eyes on HGTV. She sat me at a tiny bistro table by the bay window overlooking their outdoor pool. She bustled to the kitchen, returning with two crystal bowls filled with unappetizing brown balls. To my relief, she put them on the floor for the dogs. Her second trip to the kitchen produced two steamy black plates, which, to my joy, she put on the table. She introduced me to my lunch: “Poached salmon with basil mayonnaise, saffron rice, and a medley of snow peas, yellow bell pepper and Portobello mushrooms.”
“Beats the vending machines at the paper,” I said, wishing I hadn’t.
She trotted to the serving island for a bottle of blush wine and two slender goblets. “I admire your decision to be a career woman, Maddy. And stay in that same job all those years. It’s all I can do to get Rollie out the door in the morning.”
The lunch was delicious. The conversation was sometimes hard to digest.
“Are you really investigating Gordon’s murder?” she asked as soon as our forks were clinking. “Or is that all just a bunch of media hooey?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it an investigation,” I said, trying to spear a wedge of the flaky salmon. “I’m just curious about a few things.”
She was having no trouble at all with the salmon. “Aren’t we all.”
My goal that afternoon, of course, was to get more out of Gwen than she got out of me. To do that I’d have to watch what I said. And listen carefully to what she said. “To tell you the truth,” I said, “I’m worried that the police will start barking up the wrong tree.”
“Barking up Chick’s tree, you mean?”
She was taking me in the direction I wanted to go. I proceeded gingerly. “Up any number of wrong trees. Though Chick could find himself out on a rather flimsy limb, couldn’t he? That fight with Gordon at the Kerouac Thing, I mean. Over that damn cheeseburger.”
Gwen snapped a snow pea in half with her big white expensive teeth. “They got into that same fight every year.”
“This was the first year Gordon ended up dead,” I pointed out.
Gwen grew a little testy. “You weren’t there, Maddy. This year or any of the others.”
I retreated. “You’re right. I wasn’t. But neither were the police. I want to make sure they see that little annual brouhaha in the right light.”
She retreated, too. “Their argument was a little more intense than other years, I guess.”
“Really got into it, did they?”
She put down her fork. Folded her hands in her lap. “More than they should have, let’s say that.”
“They didn’t actually slug each other, did they?”
“No, but Chick did throw a bowl of baked beans into the fireplace.”
“That’s not too bad,” I said.
“It was Gordon’s bowl of beans,” she said.
“I see. Were they drinking?”
“We were all drinking. But no one was intoxicated. Not especially.”
“When exactly did the argument start?” I asked her. “Was it right away? Later in the evening?”
“It was a week night. So the party started early. Six-thirty. I suppose they started arguing about nine. After the poems and storytelling.”
“What time did the beans go into the fire?”
“Maybe nine-thirty.”
Maybe I hadn’t been to a Kerouac Thing in thirty years, but I’d attended any number of retirement parties at the Blue Tangerine. The party room there was very fancy and very small. It would have been impossible for Chick and Gordon to keep their argument to themselves. “It sure must have put the kibosh on the fun, huh?”
“At first it was amusing-you know, Chick and Sweet Gordon at it again-but it got uncomfortable after awhile. Embarrassing.”
I asked her what happened after the baked bean incident.
She tried not to giggle. “They tried to throw each other into the fireplace. I know it’s not funny, but they looked like a couple of bulimic sumo wrestlers.”
I had no trouble picturing those two old skinny men pushing at each other. “Did anybody try to stop them?”
“Effie herded Chick into one corner and I herded Gordon into the other.”
“You were able to cool them off then?”
Gwen squinted at her rice, as if she’d discovered one of those famous kernels inscribed with the Lord’s Prayer. “We tried,” she said, “but they were so worked up, Maddy.”
“Don’t tell me they started wrestling again?”
“No. But they kept sputtering at each other. Chick finally left without him.”
I wasn’t expecting that little nugget. “Left without him? They came together?”
“They always went to things together, Maddy. To parties. To movies. Even their vacations, I guess.”
“They were friends for a lot of years,” I said.
Gwen pressed her lips together, as if she were going to cry. “Effie used to say they were like an old married couple. God. I hope Chick didn’t lose his head.”
“You mean you hope he didn’t murder Gordon?”
She dabbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand. Reached for her wine goblet. “You don’t think it’s possible, do you?”
“Of course not. So who took Gordon home that night?”
Gwen peeked at me over the top of her goblet. “I did.”
We talked for another half hour, a little about my life and a lot about hers. We agreed it was a crying shame that it took a tragedy to bring us together again. Then it was time for me to beg off the cherry-almond clafouti she’d baked and head back to the morgue.
I went back to work with a lot of questions. Not the least among them how they got a snazzy place like the Blue Tangerine to serve baked beans.
Saturday, April 14
I’d learned the hard way to James-proof the house before leaving. I made sure the toilet seat was down. I put my slippers in the closet. I went to the kitchen and filled his food and water bowls to the brim. I left a mountain of assorted dog snacks and rawhide chewies on the throw rug in front of the sink. I turned on the TV and flipped the channels to CSPAN, in the hope the boring political talk would put him in a coma. I turned down the ring on my telephone. For some reason when he hears it he goes bananas and starts gnawing on the legs of my dining room table. Finally I gave him a good ear-digging and told him a dozen times what a good boy he was. I headed for the garage, serenaded by his anguished howls.
I drove to Chick’s house. This time he didn’t know I was coming. I ran through the icy rain to his porch. I rang the bell. I straightened my vertebrae and waited.
He came to the door in a baggy pair of walking shorts, inside-out sweatshirt, messy hair and bare feet. He was not exactly happy to see me. “Miss Marple, I presume?”
I smiled weakly. “I guess you saw the college paper.”
“Pretty hard to miss.”
“That’s why I came. I figured I should explain myself.”
He led me to the living room. He motioned for me to sit on the sofa. He sat in a wing-backed chair, on the other side of the room. “I didn’t want you to think I suspected you of anything,” I began. “Because you know I don’t.”
“Do I know that, Maddy?”
If he was going to be snippy with me, well, then I was going to be snippy right back. “If you don’t, you should.”
He softened a smidge. “Why didn’t you tell me you were looking into Gordon’s murder? I would have helped you any way I could.”
“That still goes?”
He leaned back in his chair and wrapped his arms around his skinny torso. Between his big pointy nose, scowling eyes and long bony legs, he looked like the freeze-dried cadaver of a whooping crane. “Of course it still goes,” he said.
It would have been a nice time for him to offer me a cup of tea, or even a glass of ice water. But he offered me nothing and I started into the speech I’d been rehearsing all morning and still didn’t know how to end: “I don’t suspect you of anything. But I’m not so sure the police don’t. I know you’re a private man, Chick, but unless you’re totally forthright about things, you might find yourself in a lot more trouble than you deserve.”
He hinged his knees and leaned forward, as if he was going to spring at me, and peck out my eyes. “And just what do you think I should be forthright about?”
“About anything you need to be forthright about,” I said. “Like your fight with Gordon at the Kerouac Thing. You told me it didn’t amount to anything. And you probably told the police it was nothing, too. But it did amount to something. And from what I hear, you can’t account for your time that Thursday.”
Chick unfolded from the chair and stalked to the fireplace. “I taught my morning class. Came home. Had lunch. Worked all afternoon grading papers. Had a sandwich. Curled up with Carl Sandburg and went to bed.”
I chose my words carefully. “It’s just that some people are questioning your relationship with Gordon.”
He swung around. His walking shorts fluttered. He knew what I was getting at. “Do I look like a homosexual to you?”
“Heavens to Betsy, Chick. At my age I don’t even remember what a heterosexual man looks like. But people are wondering.”
“You mean you’re wondering.”
He was right, of course, but I stuck to my guns. “People are wondering.”
He started to boil. “If Gordon and I were that-wouldn’t that make it less likely that I killed him?”
“People who are just friends rarely kill each other,” I said. “Lovers, all the time.”
He flopped next to me on the sofa. Rested his head on the Indian blanket across the back. “I did not kill him, Maddy.”
“And you’ve got Carl Sandburg to vouch for your evening?”
He threw up his hands, like an Italian waiter carrying giant bowls of pasta. “People can believe what they want to believe. You included.”
I stood up and fidgeted with the bottom of my sweater. “Would it be okay if I used your bathroom?”
My luck was with me. He told me the bathroom was upstairs. Which is exactly where I wanted to go.
I climbed the hollow steps. I leaned on the bathroom sink and took off my shoes. I remembered the day I’d visited how I could hear the floor squeaking above me. I slid carefully into the hallway and shuffled in my stocking feet to his office. I quietly orbited his big messy desk. I searched the row of photographs on his bookshelves, until I found the one I wanted-the one he’d shown me the day I came to lunch, the one of Gordon and him at Jack Kerouac’s grave.
I studied their young faces. Were those the faces of friends or lovers? I studied the easy, intimate way they were leaning against each other. Had I missed something all those years ago? Was I missing something now? Then I heard the floor squeak and saw Chick’s frozen silhouette in the doorway. He came toward me. He lifted his arm. He took the photograph. He studied it the way I’d been studying it.
I took a shaky breath. If he intended to kill me, it apparently was not going to be immediately. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to see it again,” I said. “It’s such a wonderful picture of you two.”
He looked at my feet. He smiled sadly. He wasn’t buying my explanation but he didn’t seem to care. “That was a long time ago, Maddy. A million years.”
I hadn’t come to wheedle a confession out of Chick. Or to convince myself that he was innocent. I’d come to see that photograph again and somehow get an answer to the question I was now going to ask: “Who took it, anyway?”
He glared at me over his beak.
I played down my curiosity. “It’s just something I always wonder when I see an old photo like that. Who was there but couldn’t be in the picture because they had to take it. My father took us all over the place on vacations-to Niagara Falls and Maine and Atlantic City and one year in the middle of summer to Florida-and it was like he never went along, because he was never in any of the pictures. Of course, maybe you had one of those cameras with a timer.”
He put the photo back on the shelf. “Penelope Yarrow took it,” he said.
“I don’t think I ever met her.”
“She was Gordon’s old girlfriend.”
“Oh.”