“What exactly do you hope to find in his clips?”
“Something I’m not looking for,” I said.
Eric retrieved the same bath towel he’d used to keep his front door from locking. We finished the dishes and then started looking for his keys. We were still looking when the pizza came. And still looking when the pizza was gone.
“I heard a lot of what you and Effie were talking about,” Eric admitted. We were in his living room now, digging into the cracks between his cushions.
“And?”
“She slept with a lot of guys.”
“Apparently.”
“You think she’s still active in that department?”
“She does have sex on the brain, doesn’t she?”
Eric was flat on his belly now, his left arm under the sofa up to his shoulder. “I don’t pretend to understand the libidos of old people but-”
I didn’t just pretend to be offended. I was offended. “Old people?”
He wisely ignored my outburst. “All that erotica. That boy-toy stuff. Every other word out of her mouth. It seems to me she may be a little obsessed.”
“Effie is still Effie.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, Maddy. At one time or the other she’s slept with just about every guy in your investigation.”
I pawed at the seriousness of his suggestion. “Which means what? That’s she’s some kind of sexual psychopath?”
Eric rolled over and started flipping through the comic books and newspapers piled under his coffee table. “Maybe she and the professor were involved in some kind of wacky lovers’ triangle with somebody. Maybe she’s aware of something so weird that even she can’t talk about it.”
I was furious. “Why does everybody think Gordon’s murder is about sex?”
“Can you be sure it isn’t?”
I struggled to my feet and headed for the mess that surely awaited me in his bathroom. “You’ve got to understand something,” I growled. “In Effie’s world, having sex with a lot of people is like me having lunch with a lot of people.”
Before he could respond with one of his smart-ass remarks, I yelled, “Bingo!”
I’d found his keys. In his shower. In a soggy, half-eaten bag of microwave popcorn stuffed in the soap holder.
I didn’t ask him for an explanation and he didn’t volunteer one.
Chapter 11
Monday, April 2
The coroner finally released the autopsy report on Gordon’s death. Dale brought me a copy as soon as he got to the newsroom. “No surprises,” he said, flopping it into my hands.
The coroner officially listed Gordon’s death as a homicide. The cause of death was a single shot in the back of his head, right on that bump where the spine joins the skull. The barrel of the gun was less than a foot from his head when the fatal shot was fired. The coroner knew that because there were particles of gunpowder embedded in the skin around the wound. The bullet dug from Gordon’s brain was a 9mm, jacketed in brass, in all probability fired from a semiautomatic pistol. “The cops found only one cartridge in the grass,” Dale said. “The round that hit him was almost certainly the only one fired.”
“The killer knew what he was doing then,” I said.
Dale nodded. “A well-planned assassination, apparently. Coolly carried out.”
The coroner’s report also supported the police department’s belief that the murder occurred approximately 36 to 48 hours before the first officers responded to Andrew J. Holloway III’s call from the landfill. “The rigor mortis that stiffens up a body had already faded,” Dale said. “And there was very little decomposition. So they figure he was shot sometime Thursday.”
“Sometime Thursday afternoon or evening,” I said.
Dale squinted at me. “And how do you know that?”
“According to Andrew, he and Gordon had lunch at Wendy’s at noon that Thursday, as they did every Thursday. So if Andrew is to be believed-”
“Andrew didn’t happen to mention what the professor ordered, did he?” Dale asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes. Andrew said they always ate there because Gordon liked their chili.”
Dale grinned and turned the page for me. “I guess you can believe him on that point, at least,” he said.
I read the paragraph he was snapping with his index finger and thumb. “Well, well,” I whispered. According to the coroner, Gordon’s stomach was filled with undigested chili.
I knew Dale had a story or two to write. I put the report in my top drawer for closer study later. “Any idea when they’re releasing Gordon’s body?”
Dale was ready for me. “Already been released. To Godfrey amp; Sons.”
Godfrey amp; Sons was a small funeral home known for its no-frills burials and cremations. I immediately called them. According to the sleepy girl on the other end, Gordon’s interment was scheduled for Wednesday, at 2 PM, at the old Lutheran Hill Cemetery east of downtown.
Wednesday, April 4
I took half a vacation day to attend Gordon’s burial. And it immediately raised suspicions. “What gives here, Maddy?” Suzie squeaked when I turned in my planned absence form. “Two weeks ago a sick day and now four full hours of vacation time?”
I knew she was joking but it still made me uneasy. “I’m not trying to ease myself into retirement, if that’s what you’re hoping,” I snapped.
Well, you can see the predicament I was in, can’t you? I couldn’t exactly run around town on company time investigating Gordon’s murder. It would give Bob Avery the ammunition he needed to give me the boot. But if I kept taking sick days and vacation days, that would raise eyebrows, too. Until two weeks ago, I hadn’t taken a sick day in thirty years. And I probably hadn’t used a tenth of the vacation time I had coming. And now if I wasn’t careful, the pathetic life I’d lived was going to rear up and bite me.
So as silly as it seems, taking those four hours made me as anxious as an earthworm at a robin convention. But no way in hell was I going to miss Gordon’s burial!
I left the morgue at noon. I had a bagel and tea at Ike’s then drove to Lutheran Hill. It was one of those April days in Ohio when Mother Nature can’t decide which would make people more miserable, freezing rain or slushy snow, so she decides to give them both, with a knock-you-on-your-keister wind thrown in just for fun.
Lutheran Hill is located just east of downtown. In the old days it was packed with German immigrants. Now it’s a rich mix of Blacks, Pakistanis, Koreans, Mexicans and Appalachian Whites. The cemetery sits right in the middle of this gumbo, like a big saltine cracker.
I drove through the wrought-iron arch and crackled slowly along the winding gravel drive, past a million forgotten tombstones. Just beyond the statue honoring the city’s Civil War dead, I spotted a small caravan of vehicles parked half on the drive and half on the mushy brown grass. There was a hearse, a rusty pickup truck pulling a small yellow forklift, and one of those cute little Subaru station wagons with an empty antler-like rack on the roof. I kept my distance, parking a good hundred yards away. I rolled down my window and watched.
The doors of the three vehicles opened together, as if on cue. From the hearse emerged a man wearing a black topcoat and bright blue earmuffs. From the pickup emerged a bony man in a faded flannel shirt and tattered, insulated vest. From the Subaru with the antlers emerged a hairy young man wearing a buckskin coat with fringed sleeves, and a black cowboy hat with silver discs around the brim.
They gathered in the driveway and talked for a minute. Then the man in the flannel shirt went to his truck and unhitched the forklift. He maneuvered it to the back of the hearse, raised the tongs high and removed Gordon’s casket. He drove to a freshly dug grave on a small knoll above the drive. While the other men dug their hands into their pockets and watched, Flannel Man guided the casket onto the metal frame erected over the grave. They watched, and I watched, as he lowered the casket to the bottom of the rectangular hole. Good gravy, was I the only one of Gordon’s friends who knew he was being buried that day?