C Corwin - Dig

Gwen handed me a soapy bowl. “I’m glad you came today, Maddy. I know it had to be awkward for you.”

“I was afraid it would be awkward for you.”

Gwen smiled weakly. “You didn’t know where things would lead.”

I dunked the bowl in the rinse water. Handed it to Chick. I felt like someone who’d stupidly signed up for skydiving lessons, and was now crouched in the open door of an airplane, about to jump for the first time. “Gwen,” I said. “I don’t think Rollie shot Gordon.”

Gwen didn’t say anything. Chick did. “Maddy-this is hardly the time for your cockamamie theories.”

If ever a magic genie had given me a wish, I would have used it right then. I would have turned myself invisible and tiptoed the hell out of there. “You’re right, Chick. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Ike’s low, adamant voice shook the kitchen, like a commandment from God. “Say what’s on your mind, Maddy.”

I glared at him over my shoulder. He was licking his big spoon. And grinning. It was a reassuring grin that said, “Go ahead, Morgue Mama, you’ve got it right-and if things get too crazy, I’m here.”

So I proceeded, shaking like a baby bunny. “First of all,” I began, “I’m sure David’s death occurred exactly as you said in your statement, Gwen. Your account certainly fits everything I’ve learned. And I’m sure Rollie’s trophy ended up in the Wooster Pike dump. From what Gordon’s graduate assistant told me-confirmed I should say-all of the city’s garbage from the neighborhoods around the college was dumped out there in those years. From the end of World War II until the early seventies. That’s why Gordon was confident he’d find that cocoa can full of pine cones Jack Kerouac gave him.

“Anyway, Gwen, you told police that you threw the bag with Rollie’s bloody clothes and the trophy in the dumpster behind the old A amp;P on Tuckman. That’s just a block west of the campus. Back then we all knew the local garbage ended up at the Wooster Pike dump. Students went out there all the time. To drink beer and make out. Dig around for interesting things for their rooms.” I shook the rinse water off the bowl in my hand. Held it up to the light. Dug off a stubborn nip of dried bacon with my thumbnail. Handed the bowl to Chick. “Which makes you wonder why you threw the trophy in that dumpster, doesn’t it? But killers stupidly put bodies and guns and other evidence in the garbage all the time, don’t they? You see it all the time in the news. And you and Rollie were certainly in a panic that night. You drove around until dawn. Good gravy! What do you do with a bag of bloody evidence? Then you saw that big metal box behind the A amp;P. A mound of rotting fruit and vegetables would be as good as any place.” I peeked at Gwen for her reaction. She didn’t have one. She just handed me another soapy bowl. “Of course you and Rollie began to worry about your choice almost immediately,” I said.

Gwen’s voice was no louder than a breath. “And kept on worrying for the next fifty years.”

I finished rinsing the bowl and handed it to Chick. Continued my rambling soliloquy. “You’d think your sleeping with David would have ended your engagement. But Rollie needed a woman like you. And you needed a man like Rollie. And I’m sure you truly loved each other. And you were certainly tied to the hip after the murder, weren’t you? So you went ahead with the wedding, forgiving and forgetting the best you could. Life got easier for you after the city built the new landfill and pushed all that new dirt on top of the old dump. Then Sweet Gordon starts digging. And the old worries came back.”

It was clear from Chick’s squinty-eyed scowl that he hadn’t forgiven me for my unannounced visit to his house in April, and the insinuations I’d made about his relationship with Gordon. “Jesus H. Christ, Maddy! Why are you putting Gwen through this? Rollie confessed to both murders!”

“In a suicide note lacking any details,” I pointed out. “Which means we have to fill in the blanks for ourselves.”

Chick gave me another shot: “Lucky for us you’re good at that.”

I shook the hot water off the bowl in my hand. If we weren’t standing right next to each other, I would have thrown it at him, the way he threw Gordon’s bowl in the fireplace that night at the Blue Tangerine. Instead I handed it to him and went on, as if he’d given me a compliment. “Let’s say that Rollie did kill Gordon. He certainly had a motive. Any day now Gordon’s students were going to find his trophy. It wouldn’t have Rollie’s name on it. That would have been engraved on later. But Gordon would have known whose trophy it was and put two and two together.”

“Maybe he’d already done the math,” Ike said.

“Maybe,” I admitted. “But if I had to bet my 401K on it, I’d say the only thing Gordon wanted to find was that cocoa can. Not Rollie’s trophy. And in case you’re wondering, Chick, not that order slip from Mopey’s proving what Jack Kerouac had on his hamburger.”

To say the least, that hit a nerve. “I never once suspected Gordon was looking for that,” he fumed.

I fumed right back, quoting that awful poem he’d recited at Gordon’s memorial service: “ And now that weighty question that never mattered much matters not at all! Good gravy! If it didn’t matter you wouldn’t have written the damn poem!”

“It mattered,” Chick said, nervously twisting his towel. “But not so much that I killed him.”

I took the towel from him. Shook out the damp twists. Handed it back. Continued rinsing and explaining: “Nobody has an alibi for the evening Gordon was killed. Not you, Chick. Not Effie. Not Shaka. Not Andrew Holloway. Not Gordon’s nephew. Not Gwen. Not even me. But let’s focus on Rollie. After all his success, and all the money he’d made, Rollie still worked late at the office almost every night. In fact, you had to drive to the Kerouac Thing by yourself that Wednesday night, didn’t you, Gwen? And we know Rollie was working late again on Thursday, the day Gordon was killed.”

I played devil’s advocate now, recreating Gordon’s murder as if Rollie did do it: “Rollie told detectives he worked alone in his office until eight o’clock that Thursday. He said the three women who work for him left at five. And that’s probably right. I checked it out myself.”

Gwen handed me the last bean bowl. “Rollie always sends them home at five,” she said. “He knows they have families.” She started washing the wine goblets.

I could have bawled when she spoke of Rollie in the present tense like that. But I’d gotten myself into this mess. I had no choice now but to buck up and see my foolishness through. “Andrew Holloway found Gordon’s car at the ball fields north of the campus,” I said. “Gordon must have met Rollie there and then driven out to the landfill with him. Or maybe they took Gordon’s car. It could have happened either way, of course, but I think Gordon drove his car to the landfill. When Andrew found it, the doors were unlocked, the keys were in the ignition and Gordon’s briefcase was in the back seat. It’s hard to believe that even an absent-minded professor would leave his car like that and drive off with somebody else.”

“Unless maybe he was forced at gunpoint,” Ike pointed out.

Gwen handed me the first soapy goblet. I swished it in the rinse water and passed it on to Chick. “Okay,” I said, “let’s say it was at gunpoint. Why didn’t Rollie just shoot him right there by the ball fields? Nobody’s around there in March. No, I think Gordon willingly drove his killer to the landfill. He loved showing people the dig site. Even on a crappy evening in March he would have happily driven out there.”

The goblet slipped from Chick’s hands. Hit the rim of the granite counter. The delicate bowl of the goblet shattered. The stem snapped in two. He screeched at me like an entire flock of cockatoos. “First you tell us Rollie didn’t kill Sweet Gordon, then step-by-stupefying-step you prove he could have!”