was going to knock a lot of politically sensitive socks off. I wanted to be there to see them fly.
According to well-placed sources, after weeks of pressuring police to speed up their investigation into her brother’s death, the congresswoman was now warning them to move slowly. I’d stayed around long enough Thursday night to see the story before it went to press. The headline was wordy but wonderful:
Zuduski-Lowell To Police:
“Don’t you dare embarrass me”
I’d caught Dale just as he was getting into the elevator. “This well-placed source wouldn’t happen to include a certain detective of Scottish heritage, would it?” I asked. He’d done his best to speak in a brogue: “Now lassie, behave,” he croaked, poking the elevator button. “You know darn well that’s something I’ve got to keep under me kilt.”
So that morning I ate half of my oatmeal and left the rest to harden into cement. I threw on my coat and headed for the garage. And wouldn’t you know it the damn phone rang. It was Eric Chen. “I think I lost my truck keys,” he said.
“You think you lost them?”
“Well, I know I lost them. Just not how thoroughly.”
So instead of zooming straight downtown, I had to zigzag north through the morning traffic to the old Cedar Hill apartments where Eric lived.
“You should have a second set,” I snarled when he got into my Shadow with his daily six-pack of Mountain Dew.
“That was my second set,” he said.
I fought my way over to Cleveland Avenue and started south through an exasperating gauntlet of traffic lights.
Eric took my cursing at the red lights personally-which he was smart to do-and did his best to get my mind on something else. “Any of that toxic waste stuff I gave you panning out?” he asked.
“Too early to tell,” I said. “But I have confirmed that eighteen drums of toluene are still out there somewhere. And I did learn that Gordon was involved with the original EPA investigation. And that the Wooster Pike landfill was one of the suspected sites. And that Kenneth Kingzette was paroled in November.”
Eric added another and. “And you think he killed Sweet Gordon before he could find those other drums?”
The light ahead of us turned red. “I think it’s a possibility,” I said.
It was only eight-thirty on a very chilly day, but Eric couldn’t resist the temptation. He twisted the cap off one of his Mountain Dews and took a long chug of the green goop. “How would Kingzette even know Gordon was digging out there?” he asked. “He’s been in prison for several years, right?”
“In prison in Lucasville, not on the moon,” I said.
“You ever been to Lucasville?”
I jabbed my finger at the canvas bag crowding his feet and told him to find the folder marked ROWE/DIG. “You remember that day at the bookstore when you called me a sweet potato?” I asked.
He pulled the bag onto his lap and dug through the thick stack of folders. “I think you called yourself a sweet potato, Maddy.”
The light turned green, but not long enough for me to get through it. “I guess it was me,” I admitted. “But only because you were already thinking it. I don’t know why you think I’m incapable of doing a computer search on my own.”
He found the folder and opened it. “Fifteen years of empirical experience-whoa!”
He was looking at the printout of a story written by Doris Rowe. Read the headline: GORDON’S GOLD MINE
College garbology class is a blast from the past
“As you can see, it’s hardly an in-depth story. It ran in that Our Crazy Town column that used to run in the back of the Sunday magazine. Four summers ago. When Gordon first started digging out there.”
“So you think Kingzette may have seen this, held his breath hoping the professor wouldn’t find the missing toluene, and then when he got out- bang -to make sure he never did?”
Not only did I get caught by another red right, I found myself in the left turn-only lane. I had to detour off Cleveland Avenue through a maze of one-way streets. “I checked with the prison library,” I said. “They don’t have a subscription for The Herald-Union. But Kingzette’s son has one. And apparently he’s pretty thick with his father. At least he brought him into his moving business as soon as he was paroled. Maybe they were in cahoots back then, too.”
Eric finished his Mountain Dew. “Good work.”
I found my way back to Cleveland Avenue and headed for the Memorial Bridge. “Maybe it’s all just a bunch of rubbish. But it keeps Kingzette in the mix a while longer.”
I still don’t know why I had such a bug up my behind about Kenneth Kingzette and those missing drums of toluene.
It was such a silly probability. As silly as thinking Andrew J. Holloway III killed Gordon. As silly as thinking Gordon’s murder had something to do with David Delarosa’s murder. As silly as thinking Chick Glass killed Gordon over that alleged slice of cheese. There could be a million things buried out there that somebody didn’t want found. And there could be a million other reasons somebody wanted Gordon dead.
But, good gravy, my dander was up. And so was my curiosity. As silly as those four possibilities were, and as silly as I knew I’d look when Scotty Grant arrested the real murderer, I knew I simply could not stop my silly investigation.
The worst thing about Eric losing his keys, which he manages to do three or four times a year, is that he attaches himself to me like a barnacle on a shrimp boat until he finds them. But that particular Friday I was glad he’d lost those damn keys again. Right after work I was going to see Effie. It would be good to have Eric with me. Not for physical protection, of course. And certainly not for moral support. He was absolutely worthless in both of those departments. But Eric’s irritating presence would make it easier for me to make a quick exit if things didn’t go well. “I’d love to stay and talk,” I could say to Effie, “but I promised to get Eric home by six. Bye-bye!”
So at five o’clock I herded Eric into the elevator, and into my Dodge Shadow, and headed across town to Hemphill College.
Effie’s used book store, Last Gasp Books she called it, was located in a ramshackle shopping plaza at the corner of White Pond and Parvin, just two blocks west of H.E. Hemphill’s glorious statue. It was a narrow storefront sandwiched between rival Mexican restaurants.
I made Eric open the door for me. I protectively covered my elbows with my hands and went inside. “Maddy!” Effie sang out. She was wearing a sleeveless denim jumper and a pair of lace-up boots better suited for marching across the Gobi desert. Several turquoise necklaces were orbiting her wrinkly neck. And of course she was wearing those big yellow lollypop glasses.
Seeing that my elbows were covered, she drilled Eric’s. “This your boy toy, Maddy?”
“I’m too old for boys or toys,” I said. “This is Eric Chen, my assistant at the paper.”
Effie tried to give him a welcoming hug. But Eric, still rubbing the pain out of his elbow, kept backing away. Effie loved that. “I like skittish,” she said.
She gave us the nickel tour. The front of the store was bright and airy. There were tables piled high with newer books. There was a rack of humorous greeting cards and a display of fancy pens and stationery. The middle section of the store was dark and cramped, a claustrophobic maze of ceiling-high shelves crammed with thousands and thousands of musty books. “These are my meat and potatoes,” Effie said. “When you can’t find it anywhere else, you find it here, and you pay dearly.” At the back of the store was a narrow doorway. The sign above the arch said, in Old English, Ye Dirty Stuff. “My erotica collection,” she said. “None of it later than the Kennedy administration.”
We headed back toward the front of the store, to Effie’s tiny office behind the counter. Eric immediately
