If Eric had been there, I’m sure that’s when I would have made my excuses and fled. But he was back in the erotica, immersed in stories about God knows what. I had no choice but to plow on. “There are lots of other possibilities, of course,” I said, “but I think maybe Gordon was looking for the weapon used to kill David Delarosa. And maybe somebody figured that out. And killed him.”
Effie was sitting two feet away from me, but she might as well have pushed her chair across the street. “I don’t know anything about that,” she said.
The eyes inside Effie’s lollypop glasses widened. “So you really have no idea what Gordon may have been digging for?”
“No, I do not.”
I bent forward and grabbed her hands. “Oh, Effie, I don’t want to see anybody put through the wringer if they don’t deserve it,” I said. “Not Andrew or Chick or anyone else.”
I got exactly the reaction I wanted. “Chick?”
“That old argument over the cheeseburger,” I explained. “They fought about it at the Kerouac Thing, two days before Gordon was killed. You saw them, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but it was nothing.”
“But the police might interpret it as something,” I said. “You remember what happened to Sidney after that little incident at Jericho’s. If you hadn’t come forward the way you did?who knows what would have happened.”
Effie laughed. Not like a flock of ducks. Like a single, very nervous duck. “How in the world do you know about that?”
I pawed the air, to make her believe I’d known forever. “It took a lot of guts, Effie, times being what they were. I don’t think I could have done it.”
“Slept with Sidney or told the police about it?”
I stood and buttoned my coat, to make her think I was finished prying. “I promised to get Eric home by six,” I said.
We put our arms around each other and headed for the back of the store to extricate Eric from his fantasies. “Why do you think Chick and Gordon fought about such a stupid thing all those years?” I asked her. “It’s so absurd.”
“Absurd but not absurd,” Effie said. “Both Gordon and Chick considered themselves Kerouac’s apostle at the college. They were the best of friends, but they also wanted their version of his legendary visit to prevail. To fortify their own legends. So if Chick was right, and Jack had a cheeseburger, then Chick would be the rock upon which Kerouac’s Hemphillite church was built. But if Gordon was right, and Jack ordered a plain burger-well, they’re hardly the first college professors to get caught up in some meaningless turf war.”
“No, I guess not,” I said. I got Eric’s attention and impatiently motioned for him. He put the tiny green book he was reading back on the shelf and sheepishly trotted toward us. Effie drilled both of us in the elbow before we made it out of the store.
It was exactly six o’clock. The westbound lane was clogged with cars fleeing downtown. Our side of the road was nearly empty. We zoomed along at thirty-five, missing as many red lights as we hit. “You learn anything useful in there?” Eric asked.
“Not as much as you did, apparently,” I said.
“It was erotica, Maddy. High art.”
I groaned. “Unfortunately, so is reading Effie’s mind.” I turned onto Pershing Avenue and headed north toward Cedar Hill. “Either I learned a lot from her or nothing at all. Either intentionally or unintentionally.”
“You think she’s covering up for someone?”
“Protecting maybe.”
“Protecting a murderer?”
“Good gravy, no! Protecting the right of people to be different. To be left the hell alone. Fredricka Fredmansky marched to a different drummer long before she ever read Thoreau. Her father was a rabbi and her mother danced in a burlycue, if that tells you anything. She’s the most virtuous woman you’ll ever meet, but for better or worse her personal morality is cherry picked from a rather large and varied orchard of truths.”
“She sounds a lot like you,” Eric said.
Eric opened the car door, swung his sneakers into the puddle along the curb, grinned at me over his shoulder. “You want to come in for a bite?”
I’d been in his apartment. It was not an invitation I welcomed. “That depends what’s going to bite me? A spider? Cockroach? Rat?”
“I thought maybe we could call out for a pizza,” he said.
“Something to nibble on while we’re looking for your keys, I gather?”
So I followed him up the slippery, noisy iron stairs to his apartment. He’d lost his apartment keys too, of course, and so the door was not only unlocked, but wedged shut with a huge yellow bath towel. He took hold of the towel, and then the knob, and pushed the door open. He explained: “I was afraid if I closed the door I might accidentally lock it-you know how I am-and then I’d really be up shit creek.”
We went inside. “Speaking of shit creek,” I said.
Eric was genuinely surprised by my commentary on his housekeeping skills. “It’s not that bad, is it?”
I stepped over a duffel bag of dirty clothes and crackled across the crumb-laden carpet to the kitchen. I hung my coat on the only chair that didn’t already have a coat hanging on it. “Anything but onions or anchovies,” I said.
And so Eric called the pizza shop and I got busy washing his sink full of dishes. “When you get some time, there’s a couple people I want you to locate for me,” I said.
Eric got a Mountain Dew from the refrigerator and then a paper towel and a ballpoint. “Shoot.”
“The first is a man named Howard Shay,” I said. “I know where he lives in Mallet Creek, but supposedly he’s in Florida for the winter. See if he has a house or a trailer down there. He was an education major, so more than likely it’s a trailer.”
“One of your old beatnik friends?”
“David Delarosa’s college roommate.”
Eric was having trouble writing on the bumply towel. “You’re thinking he wasn’t really in Florida when Sweet Gordon was murdered?”
“Oh, I suspect he was,” I said. “But he might remember something interesting about the hoopla surrounding Delarosa’s murder.”
I found a Brillo pad under the sink and attacked a sauce pan caked with the remains of something red. “I also want you to find my husband Lawrence’s fourth and final wife. Her name is Dory. D.O.R.Y. But I suppose her real name is Dorothy, or maybe Doreen.”
“And her last name is still Sprowls?” Eric asked.
“Lawrence died fifteen years ago. She could be remarried. But start with Sprowls. And start in Pittsburgh. That’s where they were living when he died.”
Eric folded the paper towel and put it in his shirt pocket. “Does this have something to do with the professor’s murder? Or are you just taking advantage of my generosity to satisfy your jealous curiosities?”
“Jealous curiosities?” I hooted. “Believe me, jealousy does not describe my feelings for Lawrence’s ex wives.”
“More like empathy?”
I began searching his kitchen drawers for a clean dishtowel. “More like pity. But this isn’t about ex wives, Eric. This is about a dead husband’s old college clippings.” I told him about my visit to the college newspaper office the week before, how I’d learned that the paper’s old files were destroyed in a fire, how I’d hoped to search them for clues.
“Lawrence wrote for The Harbinger all through college,” I said. “He kept every story he ever wrote. And I’m sure he never threw them out. Journalists just don’t do that. They keep every word they’ve ever written. They lug them from house to house, and spouse to spouse, like they’re ancient biblical texts, written by The Almighty himself.”
Eric showed me where he kept his towels. The drawer was empty. “So Lawrence covered the Delarosa murder for the college paper?”
“Actually, he didn’t,” I said. “The editor wanted him to-he was the best reporter on the paper by far-but Lawrence told him he was a personal acquaintance of David’s and couldn’t possibly be objective. Lawrence just oozed integrity back then.”