Gordon’s dig wasn’t completely selfish. Above all, Gordon was a teacher. A dedicated teacher. Yes, he was looking for a can of pine cones. But he was also doing important academic work. His students were learning how to be good archeologists. How to patiently pursue the truth.
Gordon also subliminally instructed his students to be on the lookout for cocoa cans: “Anything interesting today, boys and girls?” he’d regularly ask. “Old soda pop bottles? Betsy Wetsy dolls? Perhaps an old cocoa can or two?” Over the years he’d collected a whole shelf full of cocoa cans. But apparently not the one he was looking for. All of the cans I’d bought from his nephew were as empty as the feeling I’m sure Gordon felt when he opened them.
So, if Gordon was murdered because of what he was looking for, then what he was looking for was not what the murderer thought he was looking for! And Gordon was murdered for nothing!
Chapter 21
Tuesday, June 5
Effie called me. Bright and early Tuesday morning while I was reading the obits. She told me she’d bought all of Gordon’s old books from his nephew. She was driving down to Harper’s Ferry to pick them up. On Thursday. In a U-Haul van she’d rented. She begged me to come along. “It’ll be like old times,” she said. “Two old beatnik broads killing the road.”
Killing the road. Now there was a phrase I hadn’t heard in a while. When we Baked Beaners were flitting around in Gwen’s pink Buick, we didn’t take the road, or travel the road, or even hit the road. We killed the road. We gave the road, and ourselves, all we had.
I hemmed and hawed. I was way too old to kill the road. Especially with someone who may have had something to do with killing Sweet Gordon. On the other hand, who knows what I might wheedle out of Effie on that long drive to the eastern tip of West Virginia? Or from Mickey Gitlin when we got there? “I’m not a wealthy tycoon who can come and go as she pleases, like you can, Effie,” I joked. “I’ll have to see if I can get a couple days off.”
As soon as Effie hung up I called Detective Grant, while the receiver was still tucked under my chin. I told him about Effie’s offer. My fingers were crossed that he’d say no. But he said, “Sure-knock your socks off.”
“But didn’t you tell me to stay away from Gordon’s nephew?” I protested.
“Two months ago I did.”
“And what’s changed in two months?”
“Unfortunately not that much,” he admitted.
“In other words, nothing at all?”
“Now, now,” he growled. “Would I be giving you the green light if I thought you were in any real danger?”
I growled right back. “So you’re saying I’ll be in un-real danger?”
I expected him to backtrack a bit. But he didn’t. “We’ve talked to both Mickey Gitlin and Miss Fredmansky several times now,” he said. “There is nothing to believe that either is involved in Professor Sweet’s murder.”
“Then why should I bother going?”
“You tell me,” he said.
So I told him. About the pine cones. About Effie’s copy of The Harbinger ending up on Shaka Bop’s desk. About Howard Shay and Penelope Yarrow. About Gordon’s ambiguous relationship with Chick, Andrew J. Holloway III and David Delarosa.
“Then by all means go,” he said.
“You’re sure you’re not just dangling me out there as bait?” I asked.
“The Hannawa police don’t dangle,” he said. “As much as we’d sometimes like to.”
Then I called Suzie and made an appointment to see Managing Editor Alec Tinker. He was so happy that I’d kept them in the loop that he gave me Thursday and Friday off without counting it against my vacation time.
Finally, I called Effie back. I told her I’d love to kill the road with her. “But there is just one small complication,” I said.
I could hear the suspicion in her voice. “How small?”
“Actually, not so small,” I said. “A rather rotund water spaniel named James.”
Thursday, June 7
Effie pulled into my driveway at five o’clock-in the morning. It was still dark. Very dark. And drizzly. I dragged James across the slippery grass to the van. Effie helped me lift him inside.
To be honest with you, I could have pawned James off on Eric for a couple of days. Or even put him in a kennel. But I just felt more comfortable bringing James along. I knew he’d be worthless if I got into trouble. But Effie wouldn’t know that. And neither would Mickey Gitlin. So James was just a big, happy, tail-wagging St. Christopher’s statue.
We took Route 21 south. Right past the entrance ramp for the interstate. “Did we miss that on purpose?” I asked Effie as we flew by in the dark.
“You bet we did,” she said. “As Sweet Gordon used to say, ‘If it ain’t a back road, it ain’t a road worth taking.’”
“He said that, did he?”
Effie laughed. “Well, somebody said it.”
I poured Effie a cup of coffee from her Thermos. I poured a cup of Darjeeling tea from mine. I gave James a big shrimp-flavored fire hydrant from the Ziploc bag of doggie treats I’d brought. Effie started singing that awful Willie Nelson song: “On the road again, da-da-da-da, I’m on the road again…”
“Is it necessary to be cheery this early in the morning?” I snarled.
“I can’t help it,” she said. “I’m a morning person.”
“I thought you were a night person?”
She knew I was alluding to the romantic excesses of her youth. “I’m that, too,” she said. She kept on singing.
A few miles south of Massillon we picked up U.S. 250 and headed east. At six-thirty we stopped at a roadside park so James could pee. And frankly, so we could pee, too. I’ve never understood it, but there’s something about a long drive that puts a woman’s bladder in a tizzy. Men can bounce along all day and not have to pee once. Which wouldn’t be fair if it wasn’t the only biological advantage their gender has. Anyway, the sun was coming up now and I could finally see how Effie’s traveling outfit stacked up against mine. She was wearing a baggy pair of khakis and a bright blue denim shirt with a big Tweetie Bird embroidered on the back. Her shirttails were down to her knees. She was also wearing a pink baseball hat and those big yellow glasses. Suffice it to say, I didn’t look much better.
We took U.S. 250 all the way to the Ohio River. We crossed into Wheeling. We looked for a cozy mom and pop diner for breakfast. We settled for a Burger King. Disappointed, but full, we continued our journey southward through West Virginia’s knobby hills. In the bustling metropolis of Pruntytown, we picked up U.S. 50. It would take us all the way to Harper’s Ferry.
We’d been on the road for four hours already and neither of us had said boo about Gordon’s murder. We just rattled on about our families, the television shows we watched, or refused to watch, and of course the beautiful green mountains. Which was fine with me. Even though I had my suspicions, Effie was an old friend. Someone whose company I’d always enjoyed. There would be plenty of time for me to wheedle.
Harper’s Ferry! Of all places, why did Mickey Gitlin have to live in Harper’s Ferry? Harper’s Ferry was that historic old town on the Potomac where the abolitionist John Brown tried to start a slave revolt by raiding the union arsenal there. You all know what happened. The revolt fizzled and John Brown was hanged. So chugging along U.S. 50 in that U-Haul with Effie, I couldn’t help but wonder whether my visit to Harper’s Ferry would go as badly as his.
U.S. 50 is one of America’s great old highways. It runs from Ocean City, Maryland, to Sacramento, California, some 3,000 miles, straight across the middle of the country. Except that here in West Virginia U.S. 50 isn’t quite so straight. It’s as wiggly as a worm. Between the harrowing mountain curves, and the pee breaks, and lunch at a roadside drive-in in the ominously named town of Mount Storm, it took us five more hours to reach Harper’s Ferry. Another hour after that to find Mickey Gitlin’s kayak livery.