C.R. Corwin - Morgue Mama 02 - Dig by C.R. Corwin

Author:C.R. Corwin [Corwin, C.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery: Cozy - Newspaper Librarian - Ohio
ISBN: 1590582039
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 2005-11-25T06:00:00+00:00

Eric had one hand on the steering wheel and the other around the neck of a huge milk-chocolate rabbit. He’d already eaten one ear and was making quick work of the other. “She was nice, wasn’t she?” he said.

I was nibbling on a marshmallow peep. “Yes, she was.” I just love those marshmallow peeps, especially when they’re stale and chewy. This one, unfortunately, was still fresh. But I knew that wasn’t going to stop me from eating ten or twelve of the damn things before we got back to Hannawa.

Eric finished the other ear. “No offense, but she reminded me of you.”

I had to agree. “Spooky wasn’t it—almost like Lawrence came back to me after all those years of flopping around.”

The rabbit’s entire head now disappeared into his mouth. “Feel vindicated, do you?”

“Vindicated? It made me feel like shit.”

And it did make me feel like shit. Lawrence, I’m sure, had loved me well enough. But he threw it away for better sex. For twenty-five years he hopped from one anatomically advantaged woman to another, marrying some of them, not marrying most. Then in middle age—older and wiser, his body parts apparently starting to wear out—he married me again. Or at least he married a woman exactly like me. And then the bastard cheated on me all over again! By proxy!

Meanwhile, I’d holed myself up in that damn little convent of mine on Brambriar Court. Pitying myself for the way I was. Pitying Lawrence for the way he was. Romanticizing that nano second of a marriage we had until it was right up there with Romeo and Juliet. In all those years the only man I’d been intimate with was Dale Marabout. He was just an awkward horny kid at the time, twenty years my junior. As nice as it was—and it was nice—it was only a brief sexual vacation. Dale moved on to a woman his own age. I slinked back into my emotional exile, into my martyrdom, into my Morgue Mama-ness.

And now, thanks to the beast who put that bullet in Sweet Gordon’s head, I was being forced to fall in love with Lawrence Sprowls all over again. To dream about a future with him all over again. To have my soul shattered by his infidelities all over again. One thing was clear—I was going to get the sonofabitch who killed Gordon if it killed me.

I made Eric stop his truck, right in the middle of the road. I slid out and went to the back. I pulled out the plastic tub and lugged it back to the cab. I squeezed in next to it. I ordered Eric to “Drive!” I put an entire marshmallow chick in my mouth. I pulled out a folder full of Lawrence’s clippings and started to dig.

Every clipping I read dislodged a memory. Every memory stirred an emotion:

There was Lawrence’s story on Adlai Stevenson’s suffocating speech at the college in the fall of 1955. I remember Effie leading us in a hilarious fake prayer afterward at Mopey’s.

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