C Corwin - Dig

And even if he hadn’t recognized my name at first-even if he’d arrived at my house thinking I was just some sweet old penny-pinching broad-I’d sure given him a lot to worry about. I told him I knew he’d been in prison. I told him I’d checked him out. What if I’d made him as nervous as I’d made myself? Nervous enough to check me out?

I sat by that picture window all evening. The darker it got outside the madder I got inside. Mad at myself for concocting such a damned-fool idea. Mad at myself for not realizing it was a damned-fool idea until it was too late.

What exactly had I expected Kingzette to do? Confess his sins to me? Somehow convince me with his body language, or some soulful Bambi-like look in his eyes, that while he’d once been callous enough to dump those drums of toluene, he wasn’t the kind of man who shot people in the back of the head?

The thing that was bothering me most, of course, was that little quip he’d made about his son. The one when he went rushing by us, and I commented about him being all business. And he said: “He sees to it I don’t get into any more trouble-that’s for sure.” Good gravy! What did he mean by that? Was I worried about the wrong Kingzette?

I kept my vigil by the window until midnight. Then I Kingzette-proofed my bungalow. I put spoons and forks in empty water glasses and put two glasses on every window ledge, so there’d be plenty of clanging and crashing if somebody tried to crawl in that way. I slid my dining room table against my front door and my kitchen table against the back. I turned on every light. I mined the hallway floor with James’ squeak toys. I tethered James to my dresser. I got into bed, fully dressed, with my phone and my butcher’s knife. I even put a paring knife under my pillow as a backup.

The one thing I didn’t do was call Detective Grant and confess my stupidity. Pride trumps fear every time.

Tuesday, May 22

After five sleepless nights in that booby-trapped bungalow of mine I called Detective Grant to confess. Even a proud woman needs her eight hours.

I caught him just as he was leaving for the day. We traded hellos and our thoughts about the rainy weather and then I got right to the heart of the matter. “I may have done something a little on the stupid side,” I began.

“A little on the stupid side?” he asked. “I hope you’re not just being modest.”

“You and me both,” I said. I swallowed the last half-inch of cold tea in my mug, motioned for Eric to turn around and mind his own business, and then told Grant about my encounter with the Kingzettes.

“What’s done is done,” he said.

I wasn’t expecting sympathy, but I was surprised by the indifference in his voice. “That’s it? What’s done is done?”

“What do you want me to do? Put a moat filled with alligators around your house?”

I didn’t like that smart-ass question of his one bit. “I just want you to tell me if I’m in any danger, Detective Grant, that’s all.”

He snapped right back at me. “You’ve inserted yourself into a murder investigation, Mrs. Sprowls. Of course you’re in danger. But probably not from the Kingzettes.”

“Probably not? I was hoping for a little more reassurance than that.”

He rattled my eardrum with a long, late-afternoon yawn. Then he said this: “Just hang in there for a few more days, Mrs. Sprowls. Okie-dokie?”

Thursday, May 24

And so I hung in there-not that I had any choice-lights on, squeak toys in the hallway, knives under the pillow, water glasses on the window sills, wondering exactly what Detective Grant was hinting at. The answer came at three-thirty Thursday afternoon. It was in the budget for the next day’s paper. I was so angry I screeched like a 500-pound piece of chalk.

Eric was bent over his new issue of Spider Man, feeding miniature doughnuts into his mouth. “And just who’s ruffling your feathers today?” he asked.

I tossed the budget at him. “Grant!”

I should explain that the budget has nothing to do with money. Not directly, anyway. The budget is the list of the stories the paper will be covering for the following day’s edition. It includes local stories as well as the big national and international stories. Among the dozens of stories listed was this one:

Story name: DUMPERDEAL

Reporter: Margaret Newman

Length: 14 inches

Photo: File headshot

Description: The Ohio EPA has entered into a consent agreement with convicted toxic waste dumper Kenneth Kingzette. In exchange for immunity from future prosecution in the O.E. Madrid case, Kingzette has revealed the location of still-missing toluene.

I took two minutes to decide how nasty I should be, then called Detective Grant. He was not surprised that I’d called. Nor was he surprised that I began our conversation with the salutation, “You sneaky son-of-a-bee!”

“Now, now, Mrs. Sprowls-you know darn well I couldn’t tell you until it was a sure thing.”

All I knew about Kingzette’s deal with the Ohio EPA, of course, was what I’d just read in the Friday budget. “And just where was the missing toluene?”

“Buried in an abandoned chicken house, over in Hinckley Township.”

“They dig up anything else out there?”

He knew what I was getting at. “There is no evidence that Donald Madrid is dead. Or that Leonard Kingzette killed him if he is.”

“How about evidence that he’s still alive?”

He chose his words carefully. “Suffice it to say, there are strong indications that Mr. Madrid’s disappearance was of his own doing.”

“Other than the wrinkle-free chinos and Indiana Jones hat?”

I couldn’t see him, of course, but I could tell from his noisy nostrils that he wasn’t pleased with my knowledge of those things. “You conveniently left out the luggage,” he said.

“Well, placing an order with Lands’ End does suggest some planning,” I admitted. “But if he was going to run away, why did he first tell the EPA he’d hired Kingzette to do the dumping? Why didn’t he just keep his lip zipped and vanish into the good night?”

“Because he wanted to make it look like he was being cooperative,” Grant said.

I offered an alternative because. “Or because it wasn’t the EPA he was running from, but Kenneth Kingzette.”

Grant countered with a string of other becauses: “Because his company’s finances were in shambles. Because his beloved Woolybears were in last place. Because his wife was already seeking half of everything in divorce court. Because the last thing he needed on top of all his other problems was three or four years in federal prison.”

Being an obnoxious old nag wasn’t getting me anywhere. I tried a mix of contrition and vulnerability. “Well, I suppose you know more about the case than I do,” I said.

“Infinitely more,” he said.

“And I suppose there’s no chance that Kingzette got to Madrid before Madrid got to the airport, or the bus station, or whatever mode of transportation I’m sure you’ve already checked out.”

Grant cackled at me like a hen on helium. “Mrs. Sprowls-I am not going to dig up that entire landfill out there just because you’ve got some crazy-ass idea rattling around in your coconut.”

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.