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Chapter 17

Sunday, May 6

I had a couple of those awful frozen toaster waffles for breakfast and then headed for Mallet Creek. By myself. To see David Delarosa’s old college roommate and wrestling buddy, Howard Shay.

Eric had never been able to find him in Florida, but I’d kept calling his house and just that past Wednesday I’d finally connected with him. He’d been back in Ohio just three days. “The house is still a mess,” Howard said, “but if you want to come out, that’s fine with me.”

“I don’t mind a mess,” I said.

Mallet Creek is in neighboring Wyssock County, a tiny crossroads community surrounded by miles of cornfields. If you ignore the 35 mph limit on those empty county roads you can get there in an hour. I easily spotted all the landmarks he’d told me to look for: the fire station, the Methodist church, the meat packing plant with the huge plastic bull on the roof. The bull was sitting back on his haunches, joyfully eating a hamburger made out of the same plastic he was. Just two houses west of that monument to bad taste stood Howard Shay’s house, a brick, sixties-style ranch at the end of long driveway. The lawn was choking with a half-foot of unmowed grass.

Howard was waiting for me on his front steps. If he hadn’t spent the winter in Florida, he’d sure gone to great efforts to make it look like he had. His skin was as orange as a flower pot. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts. His only concession to the chilly Ohio climate was the white socks under his sandals.

He waited until I got to the steps before he stood up. He was a huge man, well over six feet, with wide shoulders and a barrel chest. “No problem finding me?” he asked.

Up close his tan looked real enough. His perfect white teeth did not. “Mallet Creek isn’t exactly New York City,” I said.

“Thank God for that,” he said. He led me inside. When he’d told me on the phone that his house was a mess, he wasn’t kidding. It was a pigsty. I quickly found out why.

“I suppose you know my wife died,” he said, steering me to his dining room table where amongst the clutter he had a pitcher of lemonade waiting. He poured me a glass. I took a sip. It was sour as hell.

“No, I didn’t know that.”

He poured himself a glass. “Two years in August. She had a heart attack driving back from my grandson’s tenth birthday party. Who ever heard of a woman having a heart attack?”

“I guess it happens.”

He nodded. Changed the subject. But didn’t really. “As you can see, I’m not the housekeeper she was.”

“So you went to Florida by yourself?” I asked.

“We always went together. Every winter for eight years, Nanzie and me. Since we retired from the school system here. We were both teachers.”

A man losing his wife is a sad thing. But I was there to talk about Gordon’s murder, not his loneliness or inability to plug in a vacuum cleaner. “I guess you didn’t hear about Gordon’s murder while you were down there.”

“It wouldn’t have meant much to me if I had.”

“But in college you knew David hung around with him, didn’t you?”

Howard took his first sip of the lemonade. “Wooooo!” He trotted to the kitchen for the sugar bowl. “Christ, why didn’t you say anything?”

One of my famous nervous giggles leaked out. “I figured that was the way you liked it.”

He emptied the entire bowl in the pitcher. Swirled it until it was dissolved. “I don’t think there’s much I can tell you—about David or your friend.”

Howard was a man in pain. A man trying to maneuver through the complexities of life without the woman who’d obviously done all the heavy lifting for him. I wasn’t about to point out that our glasses were still filled with the old sugarless lemonade. I took another sip and tried not to pucker. “Were you at the college the night David was murdered?”

“Home for Easter like everybody else,” he said. “At our family’s farm on York Road. Just a quarter mile north of my place here. My brother Don has it now. It’s a wonderful old place, Maddy, you should see—”

I interrupted him. He was getting nostalgic, and much too familiar. I had no interest in him doing either. “Being David’s roommate, I suppose the police gave you a thorough going over when you got back to school the next week.”

“Hell—they came out to the farm that same day.”

“The Friday his body was found?”

Howard now was smiling at me like we were on a first date. “They were disappointed to hear I wasn’t anywhere near the college the night before.”

“So the police suspected you?”

“Yessirreebob, they did. I could tell by their hungry eyes they wanted to wrap it up right there. They figured I’d gone nuts and killed him because he hadn’t put the cap on the toothpaste or something.”

Howard was one to talk about hungry eyes. His were all over me, trying to find something to like. “But you were here in Mallet Creek?” I asked.

“Snug as a bug in my old twin bed. Donny in the other one. My mama and daddy right across the hall. I hope you believe me.”

I pawed the air. “I didn’t drive out here for your alibi. I’m just trying to see if there’s a connection between David’s death and Gordon’s.”

His eyes were studying my ringless fingers now. “You a divorced lady or a widow?”

“Happily divorced.”

The hint went over his head—as high as a damn weather satellite. “Divorce is easier than death, I suppose,” he said.

“Everything’s easier than death,” I said.

Howard finally took another sip of his lemonade. His lips twitched and his eyes quivered. Like all men, he was too proud for his own good. He kept sipping. “This Gordon wasn’t your boyfriend, was he?” he asked.

“Just an old friend, Mr. Shay. Now about David—did you have any suspicions at the time, about who might have killed him?”

It finally dawned on him that Dolly Madison Sprowls was not going to be the next Mrs. Howard Shay. Not his girlfriend. Not his housekeeper. Not anything. He settled back in his chair. “Not many people liked David Delarosa. Including me. He was a real so-and-so. Nasty off the mat as on it.”

“That’s right—you were on the wrestling team together.”

“That’s how we ended up as roomies,” he said. “A lot of athletes shared apartments over there.”

He was referring, of course, to the row of brick apartment buildings on Hester Street, on the eastern edge of the campus. They were privately owned apartments but approved by the college for upperclassmen and, as he said, athletes. “Girls seemed to like him,” I pointed out.

Howard grinned at some old memory or the other. “David was a very handsome boy, wasn’t he? And he knew it, too.”

“Some people I’ve talked to think that’s why he hung around with Gordon—to get girls.”

Howard stuck out his bottom lip and nodded. “I can believe that.”

“Believe, Mr. Shay? But not know for certain?”

“We didn’t exactly have a lot of heart-to-hearts,” he said. “But he sure didn’t think much of those stupid beatniks, I can tell you that.”

I confessed. “I was one of them.”

“Whoops.”

Now I got a chance to grin. “No need for a
whoops
. It was a long time ago, and besides,
stupid
would have pretty much summed up my opinion of the boys on the wrestling team.”

He held up his lemonade glass. “Touché.”

“No need for a
touché
, either.” I let him squirm a bit then asked my big question: “Do you think there was any chance that David Delarosa was gay?”

“Hoo! He sure hid it well if he was. From himself especially.”

“He definitely liked girls then?”

“He definitely liked what they had to offer—if you get my drift.”

“I get it.”

Howard now leaned forward on his elbows and whispered, as if he were in a crowded restaurant. “The truth is I’ve always wondered if it wasn’t a girl who killed him.”

I took both our lemonade glasses to the sink and emptied them. I filled them with the sweet lemonade from the pitcher. I had the feeling I was finally getting somewhere and I wanted him to feel he was getting somewhere, too. “And just what makes you think it was a girl, Howard? He was overpowered and beaten to death.”

He took a long, happy sip. I’d finally loosened up and called him by his first name. “I know it’s hard to imagine how a girl could get the best of a guy like David,” he said. “He was one of the best wrestlers in the state of Ohio. In the whole fudgin’ country. But it’s just as hard to see how another guy could’ve gotten the best of him, isn’t it?”

“Another athlete might’ve.”

He shook his head, resolutely. “He was a real alpha male, Maddy. He would have been on his toes for another athlete. Even for a guy who wasn’t a jock.”

I tried not to show my disappointment. “So that’s what leads you to believe it was a girl?”

His dentures lit up. “That and the upside-down seven.”

“The upside-down seven?”

He explained: “David and I lived in 207. Those numbers were on the door, held with little brass screws. And David took the bottom screw out of the seven. So he could swing it up. Into an L. He used that as his signal that he had a girl in the room.”

I made my thumb and index finger into a seven and then twisted my wrist to make an L. “So if you came in at night and saw that upside-down seven, that L, then you were supposed to go somewhere else?”

“That’s right. ‘That L means
later,
Howie,’ he used to say. ‘It means I’m getting
laid
.’”

I knew exactly where Howard was going with this. But I figured I’d let him tell it in his own words. I topped off his lemonade. “And?”

“And that next week when I got back to my room to pick up my things—the police wouldn’t let me stay there while they were still investigating—the seven was upside-down.”

“But you were back here in Mallet Creek that week, weren’t you? Why would he bother turning the seven upside-down?”

“The upside-down seven was for everybody. You remember how it was in college, Maddy. Somebody was always banging on your door.”

I did remember. And David was hardly the only college student—boy or girl—to have some kind of discreet “do not disturb” sign for their doors. “Were there any signs that he’d had a girl in there?”

He knew what I meant. “None that I saw.”

“Did you share this suspicion of yours with the police?”

“I did. With the officer who let me in to get my things. God only knows if he passed it along.”

In the all the weeks I’d been picturing David Delarosa’s murder in my head, I’d never seen a girl taking that fateful swing at him, or beating the life out of him on the floor below. It had always been a male. A faceless male. Now I pictured a faceless female. “Why would a girl who willingly came back to David’s room suddenly turn on him?” I asked. “And so viciously? Even the dumb clucks in my day knew what going back to a boy’s room meant.”

Howard shrugged. Frowned like a frog. “Who knows? Maybe the girl changed her mind. Before they even got in the room. Maybe she went in but didn’t like the way she was treated.”

“That ever happen before? To your knowledge?”

He jiggled his head no.

“So all you’ve got is that upside-down seven? That L?”

“That and my knowing the way David was,” he said.

Chapter 18

Tuesday, May 8

I gave the leash another hard yank. “You’ve got to go to the mountain, James. The mountain won’t come to you.”

James was not in the mood for proverbs. Nor for his morning walk. I’d gotten him as far as my front lawn and now he was planted like a petrified woolly mammoth in my pachysandra. I wrapped the leash around my knuckles and pulled harder. I was leaning backward like the damn Tower of Pisa. “For Pete’s sake, James, get off your big curly duff and walk!”

James sank onto his front elbows. He laughed silently at me, the way dogs do. I dug a biscuit out of my raincoat and waved it in front of his nose. I showed him that it was in the shape of a mailman. I told him how “yummy wummy” it was. He sprang up on all fours and snapped it from my fingers. While he chewed I pulled. Soon we were making our way along the sidewalk. So far, so good.

“You’re one of the smarter dogs in the neighborhood,” I said as we headed up Brambriar Court. “Who do you think shot Sweet Gordon?”

James didn’t answer. He was preoccupied with a chipmunk hole on June Cardwell’s tree lawn.

“I don’t have a clue either,” I admitted. I went over my list of suspects: “First, there’s Andrew Holloway III, his graduate assistant. Andrew had lunch with Gordon only a few hours before he was killed. And he can’t account for his time the rest of that Thursday. He not only found Gordon’s body, he found his car, fifteen miles away. A tad fishy, I think. And I think Detective Grant thinks so, too. But Andrew had been tickled pink to get his assistantship with Gordon. He clearly admired him. From the time Gordon gave him every week, I’d say Gordon admired him right back. The question, of course, is whether that mutual admiration went beyond student and professor. Whether it led to a jealous pique that left Gordon dead.”

James had given up on the chipmunk hole. He was waddling along at my side again. “Of course, if it was a jealousy thing, a gay thing, then maybe it wasn’t Andrew who killed Gordon, but somebody upset about their relationship. Which, as you might imagine, James, leads us right to Chick Glass. I’ve known Gordon and Chick forever, but I can’t for the life of me figure their relationship out. And that goofy argument over Jack Kerouac’s cheeseburger! Good gravy! Were they really that vexed over
Ti-Jean’
s lunch? Or was it something deeper? All I know is that they had one helluva brouhaha at the Kerouac Thing, just a day before Gordon was killed.”

James lifted his leg on Mindy Craddock’s prized pink azalea. Then we turned north on Teeple and headed for the park. I continued: “Chick originally played down their argument at the Blue Tangerine. And so did Effie. But then Gwen told me how serious it was, the bean throwing and the wrestling match. And Chick was forced to admit it when I went to see him again. Maybe it was over the cheeseburger. Over which one of those two old fools would be, as Effie put it, ‘the rock upon which Kerouac’s Hemphillite Church was built.’ Or maybe it was over something else. Which now brings us to David Delarosa.”

I explained to James how Gordon was David’s tutor. That they’d gotten very close in a very short time. “Then David was murdered. Brutally murdered. The same night he’d had a very public confrontation with Sidney Spikes at Jericho’s. I don’t know if you’re a jazz fan or not, James, but today he calls himself Shaka Bop. Anyway, you can see where I’m going, can’t you? Maybe Chick didn’t like it when Gordon got too close to other men. David in 1957. Andrew now.”

We were at the corner of White Pond Drive now, waiting for a break in the traffic to cross. “Yet there are a couple of big differences that make that particular theory unlikely, aren’t there? In that first murder, it was Gordon’s young friend who was killed. In the second it was Gordon himself. That was Gwen’s point the other day at Pettibones. Remember what she said, James? If Chick was going to shoot somebody, why didn’t he shoot Andrew? A very good point, don’t you think?”

The last car passed. I gave James a yank and we trotted across the street. “Which brings us right back to Jack Kerouac’s cheeseburger. Which is such a silly idea I don’t even want to think about it.”

We reached the park, a tiny wedge of grass at the intersection of White Pond and West Tuckman, Hannawa’s main east-west artery. I sat on the park’s only bench. It gave me a wonderful view of the gas station across the street. James made a couple of quick, territory-marking pees and then plopped down at my feet. I gave him another biscuit and continued my evaluation of Gordon’s murder: “We also have to consider the possibility that Effie and Sidney are in cahoots. What if Sidney killed David Delarosa just as the police back then suspected? And what if Effie lied to protect him? And now all these years later, they learn that Gordon is looking for the murder weapon in that old dump? Or maybe they just suspect he’s looking for it? Or fear he’ll stumble across it? Because that’s where they threw it? It’s no coincidence that Effie’s copy of
The Harbinger
showed up on Sidney’s desk—that’s for damn sure.”

The bench was even more uncomfortable than it looked. I lowered myself to my knees and crawled over to James. I used his broad curly belly as a pillow. I didn’t give a rip what people in passing cars thought. “If this is boggling your brain, James, wait until you hear my other Effie theory. David’s old college roommate told me he’d always figured that David was murdered by a girl. Because David was too good an athlete to let another boy get the best of him. And because David was always luring girls back to their apartment. The seven was upside-down the night David was killed. So maybe David’s murder wasn’t about Gordon’s sex life. Or Sidney’s sex life. But Effie’s! Let’s say she went back to David’s room that night. And something went wrong. And she beat the bejesus out of David with something hard. Her alibi for Sidney was really an alibi for herself. And Sidney understood that. And protected her. Maybe out of gratitude. Maybe out of fear. The times being what they were, she easily could have let him take the fall for her. Plenty of other white girls would have. Which brings us back to the present. They’re afraid Gordon will find the murder weapon out there. Effie goes nuts and kills David Delarosa. Sidney coolly puts a bullet in Gordon’s head.”

I could hear James snoring. I gave him a gentle poke in the ribs. “Not yet, Mr. Coopersmith. I’ve still got more. Effie has known Gordon and Chick since they were in college. She knows their history. Their predilections. Their passions. She knows Chick won’t have an alibi. That he spends his evenings curled up with dead poets. And she knows they’ll get into it at the Kerouac Thing. Maybe she orchestrates a bigger fight than usual.” I turned over and buried my face in James’ soft neck. “There is one little problem with all this—which I’m sure you’ve already seen. Sidney doesn’t have much of an alibi. He told me he was at his garage that Thursday working on some old Sunday school bus. That after five he was working alone. According to the coroner, the murder occurred either Thursday afternoon or evening. If the police really pressed him, it would be hard for him to prove he was at the garage after his mechanics went home for the day. But maybe he and Effie figured half an alibi was enough. That there wasn’t a chance in hell the police would link two murders fifty years apart anyway. And they didn’t link them, James. I linked them. At least I’m trying to.”

I dug out another biscuit for James. I was so lost in my thoughts that I actually took a nibble out of it myself. I gagged and wiped my tongue on my sleeve. James snapped the biscuit from my hand before I could take another bite. “Bon appetite,” I said.

James swallowed the biscuit whole and then struggled to his feet. I’d been walking him enough mornings now to know what exactly was coming next. I reached into my coat for my wad of plastic bread bags. I waited patiently while he performed his ritual poop dance. He meandered across the park in ever-tighter circles until he found just the right spot. It was like cleaning up after a circus elephant. I tied a knot in the end of the bag, deposited it in the trash barrel and we headed for home.

“If you don’t mind, James,” I said, “there are two other people I’d like to run by you.”

He accepted another biscuit as a bribe and I continued: “First, there’s Mickey Gitlin and the greedy nephew theory. True enough, Mickey is a little shaggy around the edges. And a little secretive. And he’s had some trouble with the law. And he’s got financial problems. And he’s Gordon’s sole heir. But all in all, he seems like a good kid. Detective Grant wants me to stay clear of him. I suppose there’s a chance he knows something I don’t. But more than likely, he just doesn’t want me mucking things up in case there is something there. Which is fair enough either way.

“Then there’s Kenneth Kingzette. The toxic waste dumper. At best he’s an amoral, money grubbing creep. Detective Grant told me to scratch him from my list. And I’d be happy to—if there weren’t so many annoying coincidences. Gordon was not only involved in looking for the missing toluene, he started asking for permission to dig at the Wooster Pike dump just six months after the EPA called off its own search. And when does Gordon get killed? While Kingzette is safely behind bars? No. He gets killed four months after Kingzette is paroled. So why couldn’t the toluene be buried out there? Why couldn’t Kingzette’s old boss Donald Madrid be buried out there, too? And why is Grant so adamant about me staying away from Kingzette? Could it be he suspects him even more than I do? And the only reason he wants me to keep snooping around my crazy old beatnik friends is to keep me out of his precious little hair? I sure have my suspicions, James. I sure have my suspicions.”

We crossed back over White Pond Drive and headed down Teeple toward my bungalow. “So there you have it, James: Andrew Holloway, Chick Glass, Effie and/or Sidney, Mickey Gitlin or Kenneth Kingzette. Now what do you think?”

He looked up me at with sad, apologetic eyes. I stopped and scratched his big ears. “Don’t feel bad,” I whispered, “this is too much for my little brain, too.”