Tuesday, June 5
Effie called me. Bright and early Tuesday morning while I was reading the obits. She told me she’d bought all of Gordon’s old books from his nephew. She was driving down to Harper’s Ferry to pick them up. On Thursday. In a U-Haul van she’d rented. She begged me to come along. “It’ll be like old times,” she said. “Two old beatnik broads killing the road.”
Killing the road. Now there was a phrase I hadn’t heard in a while. When we Baked Beaners were flitting around in Gwen’s pink Buick, we didn’t take the road, or travel the road, or even hit the road. We killed the road. We gave the road, and ourselves, all we had.
I hemmed and hawed. I was way too old to kill the road. Especially with someone who may have had something to do with killing Sweet Gordon. On the other hand, who knows what I might wheedle out of Effie on that long drive to the eastern tip of West Virginia? Or from Mickey Gitlin when we got there? “I’m not a wealthy tycoon who can come and go as she pleases, like you can, Effie,” I joked. “I’ll have to see if I can get a couple days off.”
As soon as Effie hung up I called Detective Grant, while the receiver was still tucked under my chin. I told him about Effie’s offer. My fingers were crossed that he’d say no. But he said, “Sure-knock your socks off.”
“But didn’t you tell me to stay away from Gordon’s nephew?” I protested.
“Two months ago I did.”
“And what’s changed in two months?”
“Unfortunately not that much,” he admitted.
“In other words, nothing at all?”
“Now, now,” he growled. “Would I be giving you the green light if I thought you were in any real danger?”
I growled right back. “So you’re saying I’ll be in un-real danger?”
I expected him to backtrack a bit. But he didn’t. “We’ve talked to both Mickey Gitlin and Miss Fredmansky several times now,” he said. “There is nothing to believe that either is involved in Professor Sweet’s murder.”
“Then why should I bother going?”
“You tell me,” he said.
So I told him. About the pine cones. About Effie’s copy of The Harbinger ending up on Shaka Bop’s desk. About Howard Shay and Penelope Yarrow. About Gordon’s ambiguous relationship with Chick, Andrew J. Holloway III and David Delarosa.
“Then by all means go,” he said.
“You’re sure you’re not just dangling me out there as bait?” I asked.
“The Hannawa police don’t dangle,” he said. “As much as we’d sometimes like to.”
Then I called Suzie and made an appointment to see Managing Editor Alec Tinker. He was so happy that I’d kept them in the loop that he gave me Thursday and Friday off without counting it against my vacation time.
Finally, I called Effie back. I told her I’d love to kill the road with her. “But there is just one small complication,” I said.
I could hear the suspicion in her voice. “How small?”
“Actually, not so small,” I said. “A rather rotund water spaniel named James.”
Thursday, June 7
Effie pulled into my driveway at five o’clock-in the morning. It was still dark. Very dark. And drizzly. I dragged James across the slippery grass to the van. Effie helped me lift him inside.
To be honest with you, I could have pawned James off on Eric for a couple of days. Or even put him in a kennel. But I just felt more comfortable bringing James along. I knew he’d be worthless if I got into trouble. But Effie wouldn’t know that. And neither would Mickey Gitlin. So James was just a big, happy, tail-wagging St. Christopher’s statue.
We took Route 21 south. Right past the entrance ramp for the interstate. “Did we miss that on purpose?” I asked Effie as we flew by in the dark.
“You bet we did,” she said. “As Sweet Gordon used to say, ‘If it ain’t a back road, it ain’t a road worth taking.’”
“He said that, did he?”
Effie laughed. “Well, somebody said it.”
I poured Effie a cup of coffee from her Thermos. I poured a cup of Darjeeling tea from mine. I gave James a big shrimp-flavored fire hydrant from the Ziploc bag of doggie treats I’d brought. Effie started singing that awful Willie Nelson song: “On the road again, da-da-da-da, I’m on the road again…”
“Is it necessary to be cheery this early in the morning?” I snarled.
“I can’t help it,” she said. “I’m a morning person.”
“I thought you were a night person?”
She knew I was alluding to the romantic excesses of her youth. “I’m that, too,” she said. She kept on singing.
A few miles south of Massillon we picked up U.S. 250 and headed east. At six-thirty we stopped at a roadside park so James could pee. And frankly, so we could pee, too. I’ve never understood it, but there’s something about a long drive that puts a woman’s bladder in a tizzy. Men can bounce along all day and not have to pee once. Which wouldn’t be fair if it wasn’t the only biological advantage their gender has. Anyway, the sun was coming up now and I could finally see how Effie’s traveling outfit stacked up against mine. She was wearing a baggy pair of khakis and a bright blue denim shirt with a big Tweetie Bird embroidered on the back. Her shirttails were down to her knees. She was also wearing a pink baseball hat and those big yellow glasses. Suffice it to say, I didn’t look much better.
We took U.S. 250 all the way to the Ohio River. We crossed into Wheeling. We looked for a cozy mom and pop diner for breakfast. We settled for a Burger King. Disappointed, but full, we continued our journey southward through West Virginia’s knobby hills. In the bustling metropolis of Pruntytown, we picked up U.S. 50. It would take us all the way to Harper’s Ferry.
We’d been on the road for four hours already and neither of us had said boo about Gordon’s murder. We just rattled on about our families, the television shows we watched, or refused to watch, and of course the beautiful green mountains. Which was fine with me. Even though I had my suspicions, Effie was an old friend. Someone whose company I’d always enjoyed. There would be plenty of time for me to wheedle.
Harper’s Ferry! Of all places, why did Mickey Gitlin have to live in Harper’s Ferry? Harper’s Ferry was that historic old town on the Potomac where the abolitionist John Brown tried to start a slave revolt by raiding the union arsenal there. You all know what happened. The revolt fizzled and John Brown was hanged. So chugging along U.S. 50 in that U-Haul with Effie, I couldn’t help but wonder whether my visit to Harper’s Ferry would go as badly as his.
U.S. 50 is one of America’s great old highways. It runs from Ocean City, Maryland, to Sacramento, California, some 3,000 miles, straight across the middle of the country. Except that here in West Virginia U.S. 50 isn’t quite so straight. It’s as wiggly as a worm. Between the harrowing mountain curves, and the pee breaks, and lunch at a roadside drive-in in the ominously named town of Mount Storm, it took us five more hours to reach Harper’s Ferry. Another hour after that to find Mickey Gitlin’s kayak livery.
Mickey’s place was actually located two miles north of Harper’s Ferry, in a thick woods right on the banks of the Potomac. I’d been expecting some dark, seedy looking place, with rusty pickups and pot-smoking mountain men. Instead we found a freshly paved parking lot filled with expensive SUVs. On the hillside to the left stood a modern two-story cabin, made of beautiful butterscotch-colored logs. On the right stood a long, sturdy barn, painted a happy green. The mural above the barn door featured a toothsome black bear skillfully paddling his tiny kayak through the rapids. Below the paddling bear it read: MICKEY’S KAYAKS
Rentals, Lessons, Sales
Effie and I slid out of the van and stomped some life back into our wobbly legs. There was no one around, but in the distance we could hear splashing water and people having way too much fun. We helped James out. I snapped on his leash. We headed off to find Mickey.
First we went to the cabin. Then to the barn. We finally found him on the riverbank, scrunched down in an huge Adirondack chair, bare-chested, in baggy shorts and sneakers, hair in a ponytail, clipboard in his lap, cell phone pushed into his ear, can of beer balancing atop his raised naked knee. A serious businessman at work. In the fast water just below him were a half-dozen frolicking kayakers.
Mickey spotted us right away but he made us wait for ten minutes while he finished his call. “Sorry about that,” he said. He was not the sourpuss I’d encountered the day of Gordon’s burial. A wide, friendly smile was hooked over his sunburned ears.
Mickey took a minute to scratch James’ ears then walked back to the van with us. He carried our suitcases to the cabin. Showed us our rooms. They were spotless. The beds were covered with colorful country quilts. Effie’s room was decorated with the head of a huge buck deer. Mine with a stuffed owl. When we came downstairs Mickey was waiting with two tall tumblers of iced tea. “There’s enough daylight left for a quick kayak lesson,” he said. “If you ladies are game.”
Effie was. I wasn’t. But she skillfully teased me into it anyway. “Oh, come on, Maddy,” she said, squeezing Mickey’s elbow. “Do you think this beautiful specimen of a man is going to let anything happen to us?” Ten minutes later Effie and I were outfitted in baggy men’s swimming trunks and tee shirts that said “Capsizing Is Fun.”
Well, you can imagine all the crazy thoughts going through my head as we walked back down the trail toward the river: Effie and Mickey were in cahoots, and they planned to drown me in the Potomac. My death would look like an accident. Mickey and Effie would get away with another murder. They’d divide Gordon’s estate. Carry on some sick May-December romance. Or maybe it was just Mickey who wanted me dead. Maybe it was his idea that Effie bring me along. Effie never said it wasn’t. Maybe Mickey said, “Say, why don’t you bring Maddy Sprowls along with you?” Or maybe it was just Effie. Or Effie and some other cohort. Somebody hiding in the trees. Chick or Shaka or God knows who. With a rifle. Or a crossbow. Or a big feather pillow to smother me in my sleep. Oh, my synapses were snapping with all sorts of crazy scenarios.
When we reached the river I froze, wrapping the end of James’ leash around my hands like it was the ripcord on an inflatable lifeboat. I’d seen the river before, of course, but now I had a stake in its ferocity. Good gravy! The slate-blue water was flying past us at a million miles an hour, exploding over sharp half-submerged rocks, swirling into whirlpools. The kayakers dumb enough to be out were all young and muscular. “We’re going to get lifejackets and helmets like those guys, aren’t we?” I asked Mickey.
“If I’ve got any left,” he said. I was too preoccupied with my impending death to know if he was kidding or not.
Mickey led us along the bank through a thicket of wild rhododendrons. We emerged on the rim of a small, square pond. Kayaks were stacked on the bank, along with a pile of helmets and lifejackets. “The practice pool,” he said.
I was embarrassed. But not enough to keep me from asking how deep it was.
“Three feet,” he said. “And all the alligators and piranha are vegetarians.”
I tied James to a tree. Gave him an hour’s worth of biscuits to gnaw on. Effie and I fought over the pile of lifejackets and helmets like it was a sale table at Wal-Mart.
Mickey dragged two small kayaks to the edge of the water. He helped us squeeze into the cockpits, those little round holes in the middle where the Eskimos stick out. He showed us where to put our feet and our knees. How to hold the paddles. How to use our hips to stay balanced.
He towed me into the water first. When we got to the center of the pond, he gently pulled his hands away. “Feeling steady?” he asked.
“Like an oyster cracker in a big bowl of soup,” I said.
He backed away from me and pulled Effie into the water. The second he let go of her kayak, she flopped over like a porpoise at Sea World. Mickey quickly uprighted her. She came up spitting and coughing and swearing a blue streak. “Just remember what your tee shirt says,” he said. My giggling made me wobble, but my ample post-menopausal bottom kept me stable.
Mickey showed us how to paddle forward. How to paddle in reverse. How to stop and how to turn. Soon Effie and I were scooting around the little pond like a couple of water bugs.
It was right in the middle of all that mindless, childlike glee that my fears came back to me like an iceberg full of hungry polar bears. I heard a low, long growl. I twisted my head toward James. A few feet behind him, in the shadows of the rhododendrons, stood a man. A tall, bulky man. Even at that distance I recognized his eyebrows. It was Detective Grant.
The rational front part of my brain told me to be happy. That he’d followed me, and now revealed himself to me, just so I wouldn’t worry. But the old reptilian stalk at the back of my head told me to be afraid. That Detective Grant wouldn’t be hiding in those rhododendrons if he didn’t think I was in danger. I instinctively threw up my left hand. I’m not sure if I intended to wriggle my fingers hello or just flash one particular finger. But the next thing I knew, the top of my head was scraping the bottom of the pond, wrapped in a swirl of air bubbles. I felt a pair of strong hands on my shoulders. I saw a flash of sunlight and heard Effie’s hyena laugh.
Mickey was laughing, too. He started to give that same line about my “Capsizing Is Fun” tee shirt he’d used on Effie: “Just remember what your-”
“Finish that sentence and this paddle will be sticking from your ass like a beaver’s tail,” I said.
I said nothing to Effie or Mickey about seeing Detective Grant in the rhododendrons. By the time Mickey pulled me out of the water he was gone. And maybe while the two halves of my brain couldn’t agree on what his presence in Harper’s Ferry meant, they did agree on one thing: Grant had wanted to keep his presence a secret. Good gravy! If James hadn’t growled, I wouldn’t have known he was there either. What a good dog.
Mickey chased the last two kayakers away. He lit the propane grill on his porch. He put on an entire package of chicken legs, slathered with thick brown sauce, and a wire basket of fresh vegetables-green peppers, zucchini, fat rings of sweet onion, pea pods and mushrooms. We ate like pigs.
At ten o’clock or so, Mickey led us to the barn. Gordon’s belongings, what he hadn’t sold already, were stacked in an orderly mound. I bet there were two dozen boxes of books.
Mickey had refused to sell Effie the books while they were still in Gordon’s house in Hannawa. Now Effie was paying him back. She wanted to look at every book. If it wasn’t sellable, she wasn’t going to buy it. “Nothing sinks a bookstore faster than books nobody wants to read,” she told us. Mickey and I sat in aluminum lawn chairs and watched in awe as she evaluated the books.
She not only judged the books by their subject and the author, but also by their condition, whether they were first editions or not. And she flipped carefully through the pages to see what might be tucked inside.
“I’ve already looked for hundred dollar bills,” Mickey said with a laugh.
“I hope you found plenty,” Effie said. “Because that’s not what I’m looking for. I’m looking for old letters, clippings, that sort of thing. What we in the antiquarian book biz call ephemera. Sometimes it’s more valuable than the book itself.”
“For you or for Mickey?” I teased.
“For both of us,” she said. “To be honest with you, I normally wouldn’t tell anyone about that. But Sweet Gordon was like a brother to me. Which sort of makes Mickey my nephew, too. And I would never screw a relative.” She threw back her head and ha-ha’d like Bette Davis. “Although he is kind of cute.”
It was two in the morning before Effie was finished evaluating the books. She offered Mickey a rather impressive sum and he quickly accepted it. We headed for the cabin and our beds.
When I got to my room I put on my travel pajamas, a baggy blue-flannel pair that covers every inch of me. I bought them during the Nixon presidency when I was still foolishly filled with the notion of being a world traveler. I figured if I ever had to flee a motel because of a fire or hurricane, I could run out into a crowd of people without worrying about hypothermia or embarrassment.
I locked the door. I pulled a small braided rug in front of the door for James to sleep on. I positioned my new Indian moccasin slippers on the floor. I peeked out the window hoping to spot Detective Grant leaning against a tree. If he was out there I didn’t see him. I turned the stuffed owl around so I wouldn’t have its bulging glass eyes staring at me all night. I knelt by James and gave him a final good-night ear-scratch. “Just in case you haven’t read your watch dog manual lately,” I whispered to him, “you’re supposed to sleep with one ear cocked.” I bent his ear to show him. When I let go it flopped like a dish rag. I clicked off the light and felt my way to the bed.
There is nothing more comforting in the world than sinking your head into a big, cool, fluffy pillow. And there’s nothing more disconcerting than a loud crackle. I popped up like a slice of toast. There was a note on the pillow. I fumbled for the lamp. I read:
Mrs. Sprowls,
I need to see you without Effie.
Meet me on the back porch when you think she’s asleep.
Mickey.
Good gravy! What possibly did Mickey want? Did he want to threaten me? Strangle me? Did he have some important information about Effie? And how did I know that the note was really from Mickey? I considered my meager options: I could stay put. “I didn’t see your note until this morning,” I could whisper to Mickey, when Effie was taking her turn in the bathroom. I could open the window and scream at the top of my lungs for Detective Grant. Or I could stop being such a melodramatic old fool and meet Mickey on the back porch.
As usual, my curiosity outweighed my better judgment. I swung out of bed and put on my slippers. I folded the note into a small square and wedged it under my left heel. Detective Grant would need it for evidence if I ended up dead. I started to snap the leash on James’ collar but thought better of dragging him along. His obstinacy would surely wake up Effie. I gave him a rawhide instead.
I unlocked the door and slipped into the hallway. I padded down the stairs. Crossed the dark kitchen. Opened the screen door. Peeked outside. Mickey was comfortably wedged in a wicker chair. His bare feet were propped on the porch post. His hands were cradled around a beer bottle, standing straight up in his lap. I heard myself say what only someone with Effie’s deviant mind would say. “That is a beer bottle, isn’t it?”
He grinned. Toasted me with it.
I sat in the chair next to his.
“I hope the note didn’t scare you,” he began.
“I’m here,” I answered.
He offered me a swig from his beer. To my surprise, I took him up on it. “I know you’ve got your suspicions about me,” he said.
“Don’t take it personally,” I said, handing the bottle back. “These days I’ve got suspicions about everybody.”
“That’s why I wanted to see you without Effie.”
He pulled an envelope from his shirt pocket. “That stuff Effie said about ephemera tonight? About it sometimes being more valuable than the book? I already knew that.” He watched me open the envelope. “I found it in an old archeology book, by Heinrich Schliemann, on his excavation of the lost city of Troy. It’s from David Delarosa. To my uncle. It’s dated December 26, 1956.”
I unfolded the letter but I didn’t read it. “Who told you I’m interested in David Delarosa?”
“Effie,” he said. “During one of her calls I told her I’d met you. I may have said something about you being nice but nosy.”
“You were half right,” I said.
Mickey took a swig of his own. Handed the bottle back to me. “She said you were running all over Hannawa investigating my uncle’s murder. Suspecting everybody. Even trying to link it to a murder fifty years ago. A young wrestler named David Delarosa. I’d already gone through his books looking for money and personal stuff. So the name rang a bell.”
I was not surprised that Effie knew I was investigating Gordon’s murder. My visit to her bookstore in March made that fairly obvious. “So it was your idea that I come down here with Effie? So you could give the letter to me?”
Mickey pushed himself out of the chair and pressed his face against the kitchen window, to make sure Effie hadn’t tip-toed after me. He sat on the edge of the porch in front of me, six inches from my moccasins. “I want to know who killed my uncle, too,” he said. “I thought maybe you could tell me something.”
I handed him the beer bottle. It was time for me to read the letter:
Gordon,
Christmas was just as wretched as I expected. My mother insisted on having her asshole boyfriend here. Christmas Eve right though this morning. This isn’t that truck driver I told you about before. This new goof works at the washing machine plant down the road in Clyde. Given all the ugly sounds at night, this one looks like true love. It might even last until Easter.
I’ll be glad to get back to the college. Thanks to your most-excellent tutoring, my grades were just good enough to keep the scholarship jack jingling in.
I know you don’t exactly dig the idea, but be warned my friend! I fully intend to resume my biological quest for Miss Forty Below. A little wine and Charlie Parker mixed and shaken with my ample animal charm, and that tiny chip of ice will just be a nightlight showing me the way.
See you after the ball drops!
David
I put the letter back in the envelope. I flashed an apologetic smile at Mickey. “There’s a lot to decipher here,” I said.
“Just tell me what you can when you can,” he said.
I promised I would. I went upstairs to bed. James was happily gnawing away. I took the rawhide from him. I clicked on the lamp by the bed. I crawled in with my moccasins on and started deciphering.
The first thing that struck me was the letter’s style. It was written in Beatnik. Or at least in what passed for Beatnik to a kid from Sandusky on a wrestling scholarship. Clearly he was trying to impress Gordon.
The next thing was David’s obvious hatred for his mother. Or more accurately, his hatred for the way his mother behaved with men. I know Sigmund Freud isn’t as popular as he was when I was taking college psychology, but I think that ugly sounds at night comment spoke volumes about his own sexual aggression.
David also made sure to show his appreciation for Gordon’s help with his grades. Thanks to your most-excellent tutoring, he wrote. I had no reason to doubt he was sincere about that.
But the real point of the letter, or so it seemed to me, was that last part about his intention to pursue Miss Forty Below. I know you don’t exactly dig the idea, David began. Now what exactly did that mean? Did it imply some kind of jealousy on Gordon’s part? Or was Gordon merely concerned about David’s pursuit of a particular woman? A woman he shouldn’t be pursuing? Whichever is was, it was clearly an issue between them. And David was telling him in no uncertain terms that he was going after Miss Forty Below whether Gordon approved or not.
And just who was this Miss Forty Below?
I’d overheard enough man-talk in the newsroom over the years to know that women unwilling to jump into bed after the first howdy-do are quickly labeled as frigid. I’d never heard the phrase before, but forty below was clearly shorthand for forty below zero. Based on everything I’d heard from Effie and Shaka, and especially from Howard Shay, the handsome David Delarosa was accustomed to bedding young women without much effort. Apparently Miss Forty Below was not thawing out as quickly as he wished.
The other intriguing line in that paragraph was the last one: A little wine and Charlie Parker mixed and shaken with my ample animal charm, and that tiny chip of ice will just be a nightlight showing me the way. David intended to loosen up the mystery woman with the help of alcohol and bebop and then close in for the kill with his enormous ego-not a particularly new strategy. What really made me squint, however, was the tiny chip of ice reference. That just had to mean a diamond ring. Apparently Miss Forty Below was engaged.
The final thing for me to ponder that night was why Gordon had kept David Delarosa’s letter all those years. One possibility was that Gordon didn’t even know he’d saved the letter. Maybe he’d stuck it in that old book and forgotten about it. But in a book by the famous Heinrich Schliemann? On his historic excavation of Troy? No, I think Gordon would have gone back to that book again and again.
So my guess was that Gordon not only knew he had the letter, but kept it in that safe, secret place for a reason. Was it simply because David had meant so much to him? Was it another very personal treasure? Like that can of Jack Kerouac’s pine cones? Or was it something else?
David’s murder hit Gordon hard. He sulked for days then took the bus to Sandusky for the funeral. He returned to Hannawa full of anger. He wanted David’s killer found. But he never believed it was Shaka. Maybe the letter held a clue to David’s real murderer.
I refolded the letter and put it in the envelope. I folded the envelope and wedged it under my other heel. I turned off the lamp. “Does it, Gordon?” I whispered. “Does that letter say who killed David? Who killed you?”