He softened, too. “You pick up on something, did you?”
“You remember when he shuffled through all those papers on his desk and pulled out that copy of The Harbinger?”
Ike bristled. “You were surprised somebody from Thistle Hill reads the college newspaper?”
“Don’t go there again, Ike. The only thing that surprised me was the address on the mailing label. Last Gasp Books. Effie’s store.”
Ike pondered the implications of that. “I think I understand-no, I don’t think I do.”
I explained: “Effie, as I’m sure you’ve already gathered, was a lot closer to Shaka than the rest of us. She provided police with his alibi for the night David Delarosa was murdered. Now when she sees in the college paper that I’m looking into Gordon’s death, she goes straight to Shaka.”
Now Ike did understand. “Gave him a heads up?”
We were back downtown, where the streetlights were bright enough to illuminate the inside of the car. “When that story in The Harbinger came out, I’d already been to see Effie at her book shop. I’d asked her oodles of questions about David Delarosa. So she knew where my mind was going on this. And then she gets her copy of The Harbinger and sees that Maddy Sprowls isn’t just concerned about Gordon’s murder-she’s investigating it. ”
“It could be innocent enough,” Ike said.
I turned onto South Main and floated past the empty storefronts toward the Longacre Building. “You remember that libidinous chum stuff about David Delarosa? That beagle sniffing for a snuggle bunny stuff? Effie didn’t put it quite so colorfully, but she pretty much told me the same thing.”
“So you think she’s trying to get you to look under the wrong rock?”
I pulled up in front of Ike’s coffee shop. “I think maybe the rocks are in my head.”
He reached across the seat and gently patted my shoulder. I reached across the seat and gently patted his. He got out. Closed the door with a gentle kloomp. He bent low and waved good-bye through the window. I gently waved back.
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?”