“Pretty much. I own the place.”
“No kidding?” I pulled a notebook out of my back pocket and set it on the table. I had to make it obvious now or risk unsettling her after she started talking. Barbara gave it a glance and continued.
“Yeah. Dingus and I had some land that I got in the divorce. Turned out there was a whole bunch of natural gas beneath it. I sold the mineral rights and took the cash and put it all down on this place.”
“But you still work at Glen’s?”
“Just a few hours, Tuesdays and Thursdays. I worked there a long time before I got this place and I liked it. Anyway, I just can’t be in here all day.” She leaned in like she was divulging a secret. “I never thought I’d learn to hate the smell of Italian dressing.” She laughed her big laugh again.
“Hey, I love Italian dressing,” I said. I reached for the notebook with one hand and took a pen out with the other. “Do you mind?”
“You won’t say anything bad about me?”
I really didn’t know, but I said, “I doubt it.”
“You’re Bea’s boy. I’m sure you’ll be nice.”
“Can you spell your name?”
“Are you going to put my name in the paper?”
“I might.”
She thought about it for a few seconds, then spelled her name. I wrote it and the date at the top of the first page in my notebook. “So,” I said, “just so I understand, you were living where when Blackburn died?”
“I was in Starvation, but that’s not what you want to know. You want to know whether I was still married to Dingus then, and the answer is yes, barely.”
“Barely?”
“Feel free to come to the point, Gus.”
“Yes, ma’am. For some reason, I’d thought maybe you divorced earlier.”
“Barbara, please. You thought we split before Jack died, because Jack and I, we had this, this relationship.” She stopped and drew on the straw in her drink. She sat up straight. “Good Lord, I sound like I’m on Oprah. Jack and I had been fooling around. Everyone knew that. You probably knew it.”
“I was living downstate then.”
“Why am I talking to you about this?”
“I’m sorry. I was just trying to get a time frame.”
She gave me a dismissive little wave. “You want to know what’s really silly? This is going to sound like bull, but you’ll just have to take my word.”
“OK.”
“Everyone thought we were fooling around, if you know what-well, of course you know what I mean-but we never actually did fool around. You see, Jack…” She fixed her gaze on the ceiling for a second. “Oh, good Lord,” she said. “Why am I telling you this? Jack’s idea of fooling around…”
I was leaning into the table for the end of her sentence, telling myself to keep my mouth shut and let her talk. Nor did I dare turn the page in my notebook lest I remind her that all of Starvation Lake was listening. Again, I felt like I was hearing about a stranger, a man I’d never known. Barbara seemed as frustrated as I was.
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I can’t tell you that. That’ll just have to do. We didn’t really fool around, per se, OK?”
“Sure.” I turned the notebook page.
“He had plenty of girlfriends. Jack could be a very charming man, but-well, let’s just say he was a very complicated man.”
“Can I ask how you got to know him?”
“You just did. Back then, I worked at the IGA in Starvation. He always seemed to come in when there was no one around, and Dingus was always working nights, and I was going out of my mind with boredom. We’d talk. One time-oh, God-I was the only one there and he opened two bottles of beer and we sat there drinking and talking.” She looked past me out the window toward the parking lot. “It was one of those things, you know, my midlife crisis? Women can have them, too, you know.” She looked to me like she was in her early to mid-fifties, which would’ve made her about forty when she and Blackburn had their dalliance, or whatever it was.
“And all this happened when?” I said.
Instead of answering she said simply, “Dingus,” punctuating it with an exasperated sigh. “He just gave up. I thought he was a man’s man, too, but he just gave up.” She reached across the table and grasped my free hand. “Don’t ever do that, young man. Everyone goes through a stupid period in their lives. Hopefully only one. You have to hang in there with them.”
“So you were actually with Dingus when Blackburn died?”
“Yes, yes, I’m sorry, I’m rambling.” She let go of my hand. “Dingus and I got married in 1978. He joined the department right before our wedding, and he just loved his job, just loved it. Jack and I had our little whatever you want to call it beginning in eighty-five or so, and it lasted about a year, no more. And, yes, before you ask, I actually left Dingus for a while, but just a couple of weeks, and then I didn’t really stay with Jack, only for a few days, and I didn’t really stay with him, if you know what I mean. It was weird, anyway, with those little houses and the boys around.”
The billets. His players. His hockey.
I stopped writing. “Why are you telling me this?”
She looked at the table and decided not to answer. “I went back to Dingus eventually, for a little while. Things seemed to get better at first, and I thought we’d be OK, and then Jack died.”
I must have looked confused then. Barbara said, “Gus, I know what you’re thinking, but Jack’s dying didn’t help Dingus a bit. It might have been better if the sheriff had let Dingus do his job, but he didn’t, so Dingus just never got over the whole thing, despite Jack’s being dead and gone- especially because he was dead and gone.”
“The sheriff?”
“Jerry Spardell. What a dope. He had to have his blessed cruiser. I’m sorry-do you want anything to eat?”
“No, I’m fine, thanks. What about Dingus? Are you saying the Blackburn case bothered him? Kept him up nights?”
“Oh, yes,” Barbara said. She leaned in closer and whispered. “When he came home that morning Jack died, the first thing he said was, ‘Leo is lying like a rug.’” She imitated the lilt of Dingus’s voice, affectionately, not mocking. She sat up straight again. “God,” she said. “I’ve never told anyone that.”
I told her about Leo.
“Gracious,” she said. “They were such a strange pair, he and Jack. I used to tell Dingus, like an old married couple. I mean, Leo, the only woman he was ever with was his silly ice machine. What did he call it? Agnes?”
“Ethel.”
“Oh, of course, Ethel. How ridiculous can you get? I swear that man was jealous of me. Jack would make all these sneaky arrangements to meet me, and it was like he was more worried about Leo finding out than Dingus.” She shook her head and laughed. “What an idiot I was.”
“What was it Leo lied about?”
“I don’t remember exactly. Dingus may not have told me. He may have just had a feeling.” She stared into her paper cup as if the answer might be there. “Didn’t Dingus go to your house that night?”
“My mother’s house. Yes. That’s where Leo went to call the police.”
Barbara screwed up her face as if she were trying to remember. “I think that may have been it. Your mother told him something. Oh, God, Gus, please don’t tell your mother I told you that.”
“Don’t worry. So what did Dingus do?”
“Not much. Spardell wouldn’t let him.”
“The sheriff didn’t want to solve a murder?”
“Oh, no, there was no murder to solve. Not in Jerry Spardell’s Starvation Lake. We hadn’t had a murder here in a million years, and Spardell-who had a pretty tough election that year, as I recall-wasn’t about to have one on his watch. He told Dingus he believed Leo. After all, they used to play poker Friday nights, and what better bona fides are there than that?”
