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