C Corwin - Dig

“Good gravy! Is he dead?”

“Not yet.”

“Please don’t tell me it was intentional.”

“He left a note.”

“Good gravy! Where was he? And where was Gwen?”

“Gwen was in the kitchen. Rollie was in his den.”

“Good gravy! Don’t tell me that.”

Wednesday, July 25

Ike was wearing a beautiful gray suit. I was wearing my navy blue funeral suit, the one I wished fit better. “You up for all this?” he asked as he helped me down my front steps.

“I’m okay,” I said. I had my arms around a crock pot full of baked beans.

Ike put the beans in his trunk. We headed for Greenlawn, the leafy, upscale suburb north of the city. The morning rush hour was long over. There was only a dribble of traffic on Cleveland Avenue now.

Why was Ike coming with me? In March, I’d asked Eric to go with me to Gordon’s funeral. And he was a pain in the ass the whole time. This time I wanted a little maturity at my side.

We pulled into the Umplebee amp; Meyer Funeral Home. It was, as you might expect, Hannawa’s most prestigious. Its white brick facade was trimmed with oodles of columns and fancy cornices. It looked like the bottom layer of a wedding cake.

Ike parked his modest Chevrolet next to a big boaty Lincoln. We headed for the entrance, elbow to elbow like an old married couple. A pasty man in a baggy black suit held the door for us, his right eye studying Ike’s brown skin, his left eye studying my white skin. We followed the organ music to the chapel. There had to be a hundred chairs set up and ninety of them had to be empty.

The minister was already leaning on the pulpit next to Rollie’s urn, ready to start as soon as somebody nudged the organist. Ike and I hurried to the front and sat behind Chick and Effie. Effie looked over her shoulder and smiled. Chick looked over his shoulder and frowned.

It was terrible seeing all those empty chairs. But I was hardly surprised. Rollie had committed suicide. He’d left a note taking responsibility for two murders-a note The Herald-Union saw fit to print on the front page. Still, how could you not feel bad for Gwen? She’d spent a lifetime befriending Hannawa’s rich and powerful. She’d worked at it with the tenacity of a stamp collector. And now the whole kit and caboodle had abandoned her. The only people brave enough to show up were a few relatives and a handful of old beatniks.

To tell you the truth, I’d debated about coming myself. It was, after all, my harebrained scheme that pushed Rollie over the edge. “Quit wallowing in guilt,” Dale Marabout hissed at me one afternoon when I was feeling especially sorry for myself. He had a ballpoint clenched in his teeth. He was typing like a madman to meet his deadline. “Rollie Stumpf meted out his own punishment. He saved taxpayers a bundle.”

I’ll never know for sure, of course, but Rollie certainly must have known that he was a suspect well before Louise’s feature on his dandy den ran that Sunday. How could he not have known? That press conference by Scotty Grant? Those repeated visits by detectives? Every day he must have worried a little more.

Gwen’s first statement to the police did give me a pretty good picture of what happened that Sunday morning: Rollie got up at nine. He crawled into a sweat suit. Let the dogs out for their morning pee. Got the paper from the driveway. He poured a cup of coffee in the kitchen. Buttered two slices of wheat toast. He joined Gwen at that same tiny bistro table by the bay window where she’d served me the poached salmon and pea pods. He pulled the paper from its plastic bag and saw Louise’s story on Page One. He turned to the jump page and saw Weedy’s photo of him by the mantel, with all of his college debate trophies. All of them but one.

Rollie knew I’d been investigating Gordon’s death. And when he saw that photo he knew for sure I’d made the link between the two murders. He knew I was not only behind that story on his den, but also the story that followed Detective Grant’s press conference. And he knew one other thing. He knew he’d ruined Gwen’s life. The woman to whom he owed everything.

So while Gwen called her important friends to make sure they’d seen the paper, Rollie finished his breakfast. Then he slipped upstairs. He got the bottle of antidepressants Gwen kept in her nightstand. According to the police report, there was a three-month supply in the bottle. He went back down to the kitchen. Gwen was still chatting away. He got a bottle of lemon-flavored Perrier from the refrigerator. He headed for his den. He closed the door. He sat at his enormous oak desk. He pulled out the box of expensive Italian stationery Gwen had given him one year for Christmas. His name was printed in gold across the top: ROLLAND H. STUMPF. He wrote a note. He positioned it in the exact center of his leather desk pad. He started putting pills in his mouth. Sipping the expensive water.

The headline above Dale’s story in the Monday paper said this: INSURANCE EXEC ROLLIE STUMPF OVERDOSES AMID MURDER PROBE

Gwen told police she did not find Rollie until a quarter after ten. By then he was already on the floor behind his desk, gasping, convulsing. Gwen said she shook him and screamed at him and then called 911. By the time Detective Grant called me that afternoon with the news, Rollie was in Hannawa General Hospital, in a coma, on life support.

Dale worked the story hard for Tuesday. I still wasn’t talking to him but apparently Detective Grant was. Said the headline: POLICE HINT MISSING TROPHY LINKS STUMPF TO PAIR OF MURDERS

Detective Grant was smart enough not to go on the record. But Dale’s story did contain plenty of quotes from a “veteran detective close to the investigation.” Among them was this telling gem:

“We cannot at this delicate juncture say with acceptable certainty that Mr. Stumpf killed either or both men,” the detective said, “but the trophy is unaccounted for, and given all the interesting coincidences we’re encountering, we are confidently pursuing that scenario with a cautious head of steam.”

Now who in Hannawa but Detective Scotty Grant gives quotes like that?

Anyway, there was no story on Wednesday or Thursday. But Friday’s headline gave me a pretty good idea where things were headed: SUSPECT STUMPF LINGERS IN COMA

It was during this lingering that Gwen gave detectives her second statement, the one detailing how David Delarosa died.

Gwen had indeed gone home with David that night in 1957. “When Jericho’s closed David asked me to drive him home,” she told them. “And when we pulled up to his apartment building he asked me to come inside for coffee. And I said yes.”

Gwen was a worldly girl. Certainly she understood that coffee had nothing to do with David’s invitation. Given his letter to Gordon that Christmas, it’s very likely he’d been working his “ample animal charm” on her all winter. And by the time Easter vacation rolled around-and Rollie conveniently out of sight and mind in Columbus-Gwen was ready to surrender her own ample charms. “I had sexual intercourse with David Delarosa,” she told detectives.

“Was it consensual?” they asked.

“I suppose it was,” she answered.

Rollie showed up at David’s door at three in the morning. Assuming that the bus from Columbus reached Hemphill College at two, that meant Rollie stood outside David’s apartment building for a good long time, waiting for Gwen to appear, slowly coming to a boil.

We’ll never know for sure, but Rollie must have been aware of David’s interest in Gwen. And he must have sensed that Gwen was interested in him. There’s one thing we can assume with some confidence: When Rollie saw Gwen’s pink Buick in front of that apartment building on Hester Street, he knew who lived there. He knew behind which door he’d find his fiancee.