Chick bleated at me like an angry goat. “It was not that heated!”
I shushed him with my finger and went on. “And then there was that horrible trip to Pettibones. It went right over my head at the time. But your invitation to tag along with you and Rollie had nothing to do with dog toys. It was about your guilt for trying to blame Chick for Gordon’s murder. You cleverly tried to put a bug in my ear about Gordon’s graduate assistant, Andrew Holloway. Remember what you said? ‘If Chick was going to shoot anybody, wouldn’t he shoot Andrew?’ Better for your conscience that I pin Gordon’s murder on a kid you never met than an old friend, I guess.”
Chick bleated at me like ten angry goats now. “Gordon and I were just friends!”
I handed him the goblet. “Take a pill, Chick. This is not about you and Gordon.”
I twisted back toward Gwen. “And then you called me out of the blue the other day to chat about your horrible summer. Your trouble finding the right tiles for your guest bathroom. The right therapist for your dogs. Good gravy, Gwen! You knew damn well I’d pointed the police in Rollie’s direction. You tried to make me have second thoughts. You put a bug in my ear about Sidney and Effie.”
Gwen didn’t say a thing. She just kept washing goblets.
“You’ve tried to put me on the wrong track from the start,” I said. “But there was one interesting fact you knew you couldn’t keep from me. And so you told me yourself. That you drove Gordon home from the Kerouac Thing. You wanted to make it sound as innocent as you could. Of course it was anything but innocent. You used that opportunity to seduce him. Not sexually. Not exactly. You soothed his battered ego. You showed interest in his dig. You asked him to show it to you sometime. Whether it was his idea or yours, the two of you agreed to drive out there the very next evening.
“Gordon was eager to show off his dig to anyone who showed even the slightest interest. He was especially eager to show it to you, Gwen. Gordon always had-what’s a good beatnik word for it? A thing for you? Remember that Halloween party at the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house? When you both came as scarecrows? And did a lot of things scarecrows usually don’t do? I’m sure Gordon was remembering that night when you suggested that you meet at the ball fields and drive out from there.”
I was finally ready to describe the murder. “So you drove out to the landfill with Gordon. In his old station wagon. You followed Gordon up the hill. You shot him. Just once. In the back of the head. You stayed just long enough to make sure he was dead. Then you drove back to Hannawa.”
Gwen handed me the last goblet. She started washing the spoons. “Can you actually prove that’s what happened, Maddy?” she asked.
I had to admit that I couldn’t. “Have I found a witness or uncovered some physical evidence that the police haven’t? No, I haven’t done that. But I have managed to catch you in a big lie. Of sorts.”
She handed me the dripping spoons as if they were a bouquet of flowers. “Of sorts?”
“It was in the transcript of that second statement you gave the police,” I said. “You told them you didn’t know that Rollie had a gun. Which made me wonder why Rollie didn’t shoot himself in the head the way he shot Gordon. Why he took himself out of the picture in such a messy, uncertain way. With that bottle of your antidepressants.”
“Because he threw his gun away after shooting the professor?” Chick offered.
I handed him the bouquet of spoons. “Why didn’t he just buy another gun?” I asked.
“Because he knew he was under surveillance?” Chick asked back.
I did not want to get in a verbal Ping-Pong game with Chick. I moved on before he could serve another impossible-to-answer question. “I was quite ready to believe that Rollie committed both murders. Then I got to thinking. About the murders. About human nature. Gordon’s murder was very tidy. A well-planned execution. In the middle of nowhere. David Delarosa’s was messy as the dickens. In the hallway of an apartment building. It’s a miracle no one else saw it or heard it. Whoever killed Gordon was exercising a boatload of self-control. Whoever killed David Delarosa was acting out raw spontaneous rage.”
Chick was playing with the broken glass again. “Those murders were a half-century apart, Maddy. Couldn’t somebody who went loony in 1957, kill somebody cool as a cucumber now?”
“Oh, I suppose it’s possible,” I admitted. “But not likely. Sidney may call himself Shaka Bop these days, but he’s the same old Sidney. Effie’s the same Effie. You’re the same Chick. God help us, I’m the same Maddy. Sweet Gordon was Sweet Gordon until the day he died.”
Gwen’s quivering lips struggled into a melancholy smile. “Rollie the same Rollie? Me the same me?”
I turned my back to Chick. Spoke to Gwen as if she and I were the only two people in the room. “I went back over all the clippings I have on you. It’s quite a bundle. Then I went to City Hall and had a nice long lunch with my old friend Rosemary Hicks. She’s head clerk in the records department. Been there for years. Back in the eighties, when we had all those awful rapes, you organized those self-defense courses for women. Rosemary is just like me. Never throws anything out. You not only organized those courses. You took every one of them yourself. Including the gun safety course. It was held at the indoor shooting range at police headquarters. I found the sergeant who taught that course. He’s retired now. Dick Drake. He had some old records, too. And a good memory. You passed the course with flying colors. The gun you bought for the course was a 9mm semiautomatic pistol. Like the one used to kill Gordon.”
Gwen wiped her hands on her expensive silk jacket. “I told Rollie to sell that gun years ago. I guess he didn’t.”
“The first and last time he didn’t do as you said, apparently.”
Gwen reached between Chick and me. Swept the broken glass into her hands. “I suppose you’ve discussed all this with Detective Grant?”
“Of course-and I wish you would, too.”
She motioned for me to open the cupboard under the sink. “I’ve already told him everything I can.”
I opened the cupboard. She deposited the glass in the wastebasket. It was a cheap plastic one. Just like the one under the sink in my little bungalow. “I guess that does it for the dishes,” she said.
“Except for Maddy’s crock pot,” Ike said. He started pulling the ceramic pot out of the metal liner.
Gwen quickly stood up. She reached into the dirty dishwater. Twisted the stopper. The suds began to swirl. “Maddy can wash it when she gets home-can’t you, dear?”
“Yes, I guess I can.” I let the rinse water out. Dried my hands on Chick’s damp towel. I took my crock pot from Ike. Tried to blink the tears out of my eyes. “I’m so sorry about all this, Gwen.”
There were tears in her eyes, too. “So am I.”
I tried to give her a good-bye hug but she pulled away.
As Ike and I were leaving, I saw Chick give her a kiss on the forehead. Heard Gwen beg him to stay a while longer. “Sorry babe,” he said. “Time for me to split, too.”
Chapter 26
Monday, August 6
It had been a long day. Mondays always are. Not only did I have to fend off requests for information from a dozen well-rested reporters, I had to mark up both the Saturday and Sunday papers. There was one front-page story from Sunday’s paper that I clipped for myself. It was a terrific piece. Dale Marabout had spent the whole week on it. The headline was terrific, too:
GWEN amp; ROLLIE
Sad, Secret Lives Shrouded By The Sweet Smell Of Success
Dale couldn’t report the whole story, of course-that it was Gwen, and not Rollie, who murdered Sweet Gordon-but he could recount their long climb to wealth and prominence. He could explore the long-ago sins that eventually destroyed them. He could ponder Gwen’s future.
Anyway, right at five I scooped up my purse and the shopping bag I’d kept under my desk all day and headed for the parking deck. I drove down the hill and parked in front of Ike’s.