Chapter 16
Saturday, May 5
My washing machine was whirring through the spin cycle. My Reeboks were bumping in the dryer. My radio was turned to the smart-alecky quiz show guy on NPR. Somehow I heard the phone ringing. I clicked off my iron and hurried upstairs to the kitchen. It was Gwen. “How’s your dog-watching going?” she asked.
I looked out my window at James. I had him tied to my pin oak in the backyard. He was howling at Jocelyn’s house like a lovesick wolf. “Just fine.”
“You seemed a little frazzled by it the other day.”
“Frazzled? I’ve never been frazzled in my life.”
We both laughed at my lie. And then she got to the point of her call. “Anyhoo,” she said, “I was telling Rollie about your unexpected house guest and he suggested we take you with us to Pettibones.”
I knew what Pettibones was. It was the new pet supermarket in West Hannawa. According to a story we ran in the business section a few weeks ago, the store lets you bring your dogs with you-to bark, sniff and sample the snacks, and even pee on the floor if they’re so inclined. I’d been thinking of taking James there myself.
So an hour later Gwen and Rollie were sitting in my driveway and I was loading James into the backseat of their enormous Mercedes-Benz SUV. Gwen was behind the wheel. Rollie was riding shotgun with two squiggly dachshunds on his lap. “Your house is just darling,” Gwen said after I’d squeezed in alongside James. “It reminds me of that cubby hole we rented when Rollie was getting his insurance agency off the ground. Remember that awful little place, Rollie?”
Rollie was fighting a losing battle with Queen Strudelschmidt’s affectionate tongue. His face was shiny with dog saliva. “That was eleven houses ago, Gwendolyn.”
Gwen talked dogs and houses all the way to Pettibones. Rollie and I listened all the way.
The dachshunds were eager to get inside. They pulled Rollie across the parking lot like a couple of huskies in the Iditarod. I had to drag James to the door. “You look like a prospector pulling a pack-mule,” Gwen happily observed.
“James’ personality skews toward the cautious side,” I said.
James balked completely when we reached the automatic door. Unfortunately so did my brain. While I was trying to drag him inside, I let go with that biblical verse about it being easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Oh, the look Gwen gave me.
“Present company excepted,” I said, trying to make light of my faux pas.
Gwen pulled a Ziploc bag from her purse and with her thumb and forefinger extracted a cube of pink steak. James followed her inside. I followed James.
Pettibones was everything I’d read about. It was a big as a people supermarket, with long, wide aisles and five busy checkouts. There was one aisle for cats, one for fish, one for birds, one for rodents, reptiles, spiders and the like, and five for dogs.
While Rollie headed for the squeak toys with Queen Strudelschmidt and Prince Elmo, Gwen and I got shopping carts. I tethered James to the handle of mine and away we went.
Gwen let the dachshunds pick out their own toys. They passed up the rubber hotdogs and hamburgers-too working class apparently-and chose T-bone steaks. James chose a rubber skunk. We headed for the aisle marked “Yummies!”
As James was sniffing the biscuit bins, debating between red fire hydrants and green mailmen, Prince Elmo turned up his stubby hind leg on the wheel of my shopping cart. James’ territorial instinct ignited. He swung around angrily, growled his way to my cart and showed the little prince what peeing was all about. When Rollie tried to pull the dachshunds out of the path of the spreading puddle, he backed into a pyramid of Milkbone boxes. The boxes went down, Rollie went down, and their royal highnesses, frightened out of their wits, wound around Gwen’s legs, who, wouldn’t you know it, twirled right into James’ pee. She joined Rollie on the floor.
Were this still the 1950s, and Gwen, Rollie and I still beatniks, this unfortunate chain reaction would have been accompanied with as much laughing as barking. But it was not the fifties anymore. And we were anything but beatniks. Now there was only the barking and my breathless apologizing.
“I was afraid something like this would happen,” Gwen snarled at me, dabbing at her white slacks with Rollie’s handkerchief.
My attempt at a joke landed with a thud. “And yet you went right ahead and invited us along. How courageous.”
Gwen answered with a string of blue words. But it was a short string. Her good breeding kicked in. Her grace and good humor quickly restored. She sent Rollie and the dachshunds back to the SUV to wait, and then led James and me to the book section. “‘I hope you’ve got your credit cards, Maddy dear,” she said. “Because you and Bladder Boy here have a lot of reading to do.”
I was leafing through a book called I’m OK, My Dog’s OK, when Gwen suddenly brought up Gordon’s murder. “You remember the other day at lunch how we talked about Chick maybe losing his head?”
I figured when Gwen invited me along there was more on her mind than my struggles with James. I put the book back on the shelf. “Yes, but I don’t think it’s worth worrying about. The odds of Chick shooting Gordon over a questionable piece of cheese are right up there with me being crowned Miss Universe.”
“It’s not just the cheeseburger. It’s that other stuff.”
I knew where she was going. I played dumb. “Other stuff, Gwen?”
“Their relationship.”
“I’ve had a few uneasy thoughts about that myself,” I said. “But I can’t believe there’s anything there.”
“I hope you’re right, Maddy.”
“But you don’t think I’m right?”
“I’ve heard some things. About Gordon and his graduate assistant.”
I’d wondered about Gordon’s relationship with Andrew J. Holloway III, too, of course. But I figured it best to keep my lip buttoned-and do my best to unbutton hers. “That nice young man, Andrew? Wherever did you hear that?”
Gwen knelt in front of James and started scratching his ears. So she didn’t have to look me in the eyes, I think. “Let’s just say through the proverbial grapevine.”
“Do you think it’s true?” I asked, certain the busybody on the other end of that grapevine was Effie.
Gwen gently kissed James on the top of the head. Went back to scratching his ears. “I think it’s possible that Gordon and Chick were something more than friends. And maybe Gordon and that kid-”
She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t need to. “And their argument at the Kerouac Thing was about more than cheese? And the next day Chick killed him in a fit of jealousy? That’s what you think, Gwen?”
Now she lifted her eyes. “No, Maddy. That’s not what I think at all.” She stood up. Put that book I was looking at in my cart. “If Chick was going to shoot anybody,” she said, “wouldn’t he shoot Andrew?”
Chapter 17
Sunday, May 6
I had a couple of those awful frozen toaster waffles for breakfast and then headed for Mallet Creek. By myself. To see David Delarosa’s old college roommate and wrestling buddy, Howard Shay.
Eric had never been able to find him in Florida, but I’d kept calling his house and just that past Wednesday I’d finally connected with him. He’d been back in Ohio just three days. “The house is still a mess,” Howard said, “but if you want to come out, that’s fine with me.”
“I don’t mind a mess,” I said.
Mallet Creek is in neighboring Wyssock County, a tiny crossroads community surrounded by miles of cornfields. If you ignore the 35 mph limit on those empty county roads you can get there in an hour. I easily spotted all the landmarks he’d told me to look for: the fire station, the Methodist church, the meat packing plant with the
