C Corwin - Dig

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.