She trotted to the serving island for a bottle of blush wine and two slender goblets. “I admire your decision to be a career woman, Maddy. And stay in that same job all those years. It’s all I can do to get Rollie out the door in the morning.”
The lunch was delicious. The conversation was sometimes hard to digest.
“Are you really investigating Gordon’s murder?” she asked as soon as our forks were clinking. “Or is that all just a bunch of media hooey?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it an investigation,” I said, trying to spear a wedge of the flaky salmon. “I’m just curious about a few things.”
She was having no trouble at all with the salmon. “Aren’t we all.”
My goal that afternoon, of course, was to get more out of Gwen than she got out of me. To do that I’d have to watch what I said. And listen carefully to what she said. “To tell you the truth,” I said, “I’m worried that the police will start barking up the wrong tree.”
“Barking up Chick’s tree, you mean?”
She was taking me in the direction I wanted to go. I proceeded gingerly. “Up any number of wrong trees. Though Chick could find himself out on a rather flimsy limb, couldn’t he? That fight with Gordon at the Kerouac Thing, I mean. Over that damn cheeseburger.”
Gwen snapped a snow pea in half with her big white expensive teeth. “They got into that same fight every year.”
“This was the first year Gordon ended up dead,” I pointed out.
Gwen grew a little testy. “You weren’t there, Maddy. This year or any of the others.”
I retreated. “You’re right. I wasn’t. But neither were the police. I want to make sure they see that little annual brouhaha in the right light.”
She retreated, too. “Their argument was a little more intense than other years, I guess.”
“Really got into it, did they?”
She put down her fork. Folded her hands in her lap. “More than they should have, let’s say that.”
“They didn’t actually slug each other, did they?”
“No, but Chick did throw a bowl of baked beans into the fireplace.”
“That’s not too bad,” I said.
“It was Gordon’s bowl of beans,” she said.
“I see. Were they drinking?”
“We were all drinking. But no one was intoxicated. Not especially.”
“When exactly did the argument start?” I asked her. “Was it right away? Later in the evening?”
“It was a week night. So the party started early. Six-thirty. I suppose they started arguing about nine. After the poems and storytelling.”
“What time did the beans go into the fire?”
“Maybe nine-thirty.”
Maybe I hadn’t been to a Kerouac Thing in thirty years, but I’d attended any number of retirement parties at the Blue Tangerine. The party room there was very fancy and very small. It would have been impossible for Chick and Gordon to keep their argument to themselves. “It sure must have put the kibosh on the fun, huh?”
“At first it was amusing-you know, Chick and Sweet Gordon at it again-but it got uncomfortable after awhile. Embarrassing.”
I asked her what happened after the baked bean incident.
She tried not to giggle. “They tried to throw each other into the fireplace. I know it’s not funny, but they looked like a couple of bulimic sumo wrestlers.”
I had no trouble picturing those two old skinny men pushing at each other. “Did anybody try to stop them?”
“Effie herded Chick into one corner and I herded Gordon into the other.”
“You were able to cool them off then?”
Gwen squinted at her rice, as if she’d discovered one of those famous kernels inscribed with the Lord’s Prayer. “We tried,” she said, “but they were so worked up, Maddy.”
“Don’t tell me they started wrestling again?”
“No. But they kept sputtering at each other. Chick finally left without him.”
I wasn’t expecting that little nugget. “Left without him? They came together?”
“They always went to things together, Maddy. To parties. To movies. Even their vacations, I guess.”
“They were friends for a lot of years,” I said.
Gwen pressed her lips together, as if she were going to cry. “Effie used to say they were like an old married couple. God. I hope Chick didn’t lose his head.”
“You mean you hope he didn’t murder Gordon?”
She dabbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand. Reached for her wine goblet. “You don’t think it’s possible, do you?”
“Of course not. So who took Gordon home that night?”
Gwen peeked at me over the top of her goblet. “I did.”
We talked for another half hour, a little about my life and a lot about hers. We agreed it was a crying shame that it took a tragedy to bring us together again. Then it was time for me to beg off the cherry-almond clafouti she’d baked and head back to the morgue.
I went back to work with a lot of questions. Not the least among them how they got a snazzy place like the Blue Tangerine to serve baked beans.
Saturday, April 14
I’d learned the hard way to James-proof the house before leaving. I made sure the toilet seat was down. I put my slippers in the closet. I went to the kitchen and filled his food and water bowls to the brim. I left a mountain of assorted dog snacks and rawhide chewies on the throw rug in front of the sink. I turned on the TV and flipped the channels to CSPAN, in the hope the boring political talk would put him in a coma. I turned down the ring on my telephone. For some reason when he hears it he goes bananas and starts gnawing on the legs of my dining room table. Finally I gave him a good ear-digging and told him a dozen times what a good boy he was. I headed for the garage, serenaded by his anguished howls.
I drove to Chick’s house. This time he didn’t know I was coming. I ran through the icy rain to his porch. I rang the bell. I straightened my vertebrae and waited.
He came to the door in a baggy pair of walking shorts, inside-out sweatshirt, messy hair and bare feet. He was not exactly happy to see me. “Miss Marple, I presume?”
I smiled weakly. “I guess you saw the college paper.”
“Pretty hard to miss.”
“That’s why I came. I figured I should explain myself.”
He led me to the living room. He motioned for me to sit on the sofa. He sat in a wing-backed chair, on the other side of the room. “I didn’t want you to think I suspected you of anything,” I began. “Because you know I don’t.”
“Do I know that, Maddy?”
If he was going to be snippy with me, well, then I was going to be snippy right back. “If you don’t, you should.”
He softened a smidge. “Why didn’t you tell me you were looking into Gordon’s murder? I would have helped you any way I could.”
“That still goes?”
He leaned back in his chair and wrapped his arms around his skinny torso. Between his big pointy nose, scowling eyes and long bony legs, he looked like the freeze-dried cadaver of a whooping crane. “Of course it still goes,” he said.
It would have been a nice time for him to offer me a cup of tea, or even a glass of ice water. But he offered me nothing and I started into the speech I’d been rehearsing all morning and still didn’t know how to end: “I don’t
