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 excused himself. “Think I’ll browse a bit,” he said. He headed straight for Ye Dirty Stuff.
Effie didn’t have any tea bags, but she did have a coffee maker. She divided what was left of the sludge in the carafe. “I guess I’m having trouble with Gordon’s death,” I began.
“Aren’t we all,” she answered.
She offered me an ancient jar of artificial creamer. I waved it off. “I’m afraid the police may get the wrong idea, Effie,” I said. “About some people.”
“Some people like Andrew Holloway?” she wondered.
I nodded. “He seems like a nice boy. And a smart boy. But I gather he’s pretty thin in the alibi department. And God knows what his relationship with Gordon was.”
She put a lethal dose of the creamer in her mug and stirred it with her pinky. She took a bitter slurp. “I can’t vouch for Andrew’s predilections.”
“How about Gordon’s?”
She laughed like a flock of ducks. “If you didn’t know me as well as you do, I think I’d have to be insulted.”
More than likely I was blushing. “You know what I mean, Effie.”
“Yes I do, Maddy. And I can swear on a stack of Masters amp; Johnson studies that Gordon was quite fond of the opposite sex.” She paused and took a quick sip. “If he went the other way, too, well, I never saw any evidence of it.”
“Which brings me to David Delarosa,” I said.
The ducks were back. “I’ll have to put on another pot of coffee if you’re going to bring up every man I’ve slept with.”
I forced a smile. “I can’t help but think Gordon’s friendship with Andrew was a little like his friendship with David.”
Effie spread her fingers across her necklaces, like she was Scarlett O’Hara or something. “My oh my! I don’t think you’re getting enough sleep, Maddy.”
This time I made sure I was frowning. “As I recall, Gordon’s friendship with David Delarosa was quite intense, and quite out of the blue. And then a few weeks later David was dead.”
Effie now told me something I hadn’t known. “The way I remember it, David hired Gordon to tutor him. In biology. And they just hit it off.”
“Gordon did do a lot of tutoring,” I said. “So I suppose you’re right.”
Effie backtracked a little. “But, to tell you the truth, I’m not sure David was as crazy about Gordon as Gordon was about him.” Her voice shrank to a whisper now, as if we were surrounded by ghosts. “I think he latched onto Gordon to get laid. He was a horny boy from the boondocks. And Gordon was up to his armpits in female acquaintances majoring in liberal arts. So he figured he could put up with a little poetry and bebop jazz in exchange for a little beatnik-”
The store’s heavy wooden door squealed open. The windows shook from the hurricane of cold air gushing inside. “That’ll be Edward,” she said.
A man hidden deep inside a fur-lined parka appeared at the counter. Effie excused herself. She handed him a stack of discreetly wrapped books from under the counter. He handed her a Ziploc bag filled with half dollars. “One of my regulars,” she said when the man named Edward left. “He likes Victorian stories about bisexual pirates.”
If I was going to get anything useful out of Effie, I knew I’d have to risk telling her my discreetly wrapped theories. “At the memorial service, you said maybe Gordon had been digging where he shouldn’t have been digging.”
“Ah-so you’re the one who put that bug in Detective Grant’s ear.”
“He’s already talked to you about all this?”
“Not the David Delarosa stuff,” she said. “That’s all yours.”