My misery made her laugh. “All you’ve got to do is love them,” she said.
“Apparently wiener dogs don’t have digestive systems,” I said.
Dog talk out of the way, Gwen gave me the nickel tour of her million-dollar house. There was one white-walled room after another, every one of them filled with white rugs and white furniture. The only room that even came close to feeling comfortable was Rollie’s den. But even that looked more like a display in a fancy furniture store than a real room. The walls were covered with expensive paneling. The drapes and rugs were hunter green. The pillows on the leather sofa bore the embroidered heads of horses. There was a pair of battered duck decoys on the coffee table. It was a man’s room, no doubt painstakingly put together by Gwen to give poor Rollie a bit of self-confidence. The wall behind the enormous oak desk was filled with his many awards for selling insurance. The mantel above the fireplace was lined with Rollie’s college debate trophies. They were as shiny as the day he won them. I went to admire them. “With Rollie’s gift of gab I always figured he’d go into politics,” I said.
Gwen scowled. “Thank God he got that dream out of his system.”
She led me through the solarium-a tad bit more opulent than the one in Chick Glass’ house-to the natatorium and the new lap pool she’d bragged about on the phone. “It was hugely expensive, as you can imagine,” she said. “But Rollie simply had to have it.”
Well, I knew who simply had to have it. Gwen simply had to have it. To keep her husband healthy, wealthy and by all means alive. I crept across the fancy green tiles and peered into the clear, blue-tinged water. I could imagine poor Rollie churning through the water, back and forth and back and forth, while Gwen sat in a lounge chair timing his laps with a stopwatch.
Finally we made it to the kitchen. It was as big as my entire house. Newly remodeled, too, like one of those gourmet pleasure palaces they create right before your eyes on HGTV. She sat me at a tiny bistro table by the bay window overlooking their outdoor pool. She bustled to the kitchen, returning with two crystal bowls filled with unappetizing brown balls. To my relief, she put them on the floor for the dogs. Her second trip to the kitchen produced two steamy black plates, which, to my joy, she put on the table. She introduced me to my lunch: “Poached salmon with basil mayonnaise, saffron rice, and a medley of snow peas, yellow bell pepper and Portobello mushrooms.”
“Beats the vending machines at the paper,” I said, wishing I hadn’t.
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.