C Corwin - Dig

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?”

Friday, June 8

We had a good country breakfast-scrambled eggs and onions-and then headed out to load the books into the van. Effie saw to it that Mickey did most of the work. “Save your back, Maddy,” she said. “It’s just going to be me and you when we get to the bookstore.”

We wedged James into the small space we’d left for him behind the front seat. Then we crawled in ourselves, Effie behind the wheel, me shotgun. Our freshly filled Thermoses were lying between us on the seat like a couple of unexploded artillery shells. I cranked down my window to say good-bye to Mickey. “When you get back to Hannawa tell Detective Grant I said hello,” he said, grinning like a raccoon. “Assuming he didn’t fall in the river and drown yesterday.”

I didn’t say anything.

Effie did. “We can only hope he did.” She backed the van around and headed down the long drive, blowing a big, theatrical kiss at Mickey in her rearview mirror.

I felt foolish. Like this whole trip was a badly staged junior class play and I was the only one who thought it was real. But I was also relieved. Mickey and Effie were taking Detective Grant’s not-so-secret presence in good humor. The way people with nothing to hide would. I gave James a cat-shaped biscuit and nestled back in the seat for the long drive home.

We crossed the Potomac into Maryland and headed north on Route 65 toward Sharpsburg, where one of the Civil War’s most inconclusive bloodbaths took place, the Battle of Antietam Creek. I suggested we take a quick drive through the battlefield but Effie was in a hurry to get home. She had her books and most likely her fill of James and me. She planned to connect with the Pennsylvania Turnpike and shoot straight west into Ohio. No more of that, “If it ain’t a back road, it ain’t a road worth taking” stuff for her.

“I’ve been doing an awful lot of thinking about the old days,” I said after an hour of silence. “Who we were back then and what we meant to each other.”

“Those were special times,” Effie said.

“Yes,” I said. “Even the crappy times seem special now.”

Effie motioned for me to pour a cup of coffee for her. “There were plenty of those, too, weren’t there.”

I’d been maneuvering toward a particular crappy time, of course, and figured now was as good a time as any to bring it up. “None crappier than the night David Delarosa was killed.”

“That does win the Oscar,” she said.

“I didn’t know him as well as you, of course.”

Effie cackled. “I’ve already admitted to sleeping with him, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“He was quite the ladies’ man, I guess.”

Said Effie, “That’s putting it mildly. It was easier to keep track of who he didn’t sleep with than who he did.”

I handed her a sloshing cup of coffee and then screwed the lid off my Thermos of tea. “So-who didn’t he sleep with?”

“I’d say just you and Gwen. Unless you’ve been holding out on me.”

“Lawrence and I were already engaged that year,” I said. “Not that I would have slept with David otherwise. Or more accurately, not that he would have slept with me.” I finished pouring my tea. I took a cautious sip. It was plenty hot but not unswallowable. “You sure about Gwen?”

Effie hooted like an owl getting its belly feathers tickled. “I’m sure she didn’t even sleep with Rollie before they were married.”