Read Online The Gorgon Festival by John Boyd - Free Book Online

miss a thing on TV. It’s my side vision. The bun does it. Well, he put his gear in her kitchen and went out back and got Ruth. They came in together and I couldn’t see anything…”
    “What time did he arrive, ma’am?”
    “Seven-thirty-two. Two minutes into Jackie Gleason’s show… I didn’t see anything interesting till Lawrence Welk, when the man went across the hall to her bathroom with his tool box and pretty soon she came out of her bedroom in a bathrobe and she went into the bathroom with him. Well, they were in there together, but not long enough to do anything. Finally, he came out, but he stood by the door of her bathroom, like he was listening.”
    “For how long, ma’am?”
    “One Geritol commercial… Then, he went into the kitchen, and pretty soon, Ruth comes out in her robe, almost skipping, and she’s supposed to have arthritis. Hah! Officer, if you’re investigating a sex crime, I think Ruth Gordon was willing. Most of these so-called sex crimes wouldn’t bear investigation, if you want my opinion.”
    “Go on, ma’am. Then what happened?”
    “Before Engelbert Humperdink, that’s ten o’clock, they came out of the kitchen. Ruth left her light on in the kitchen. Something she don’t usually do. They came down the hall arm in arm, him walking tippy-toed, like the front end of a little pig tripping to the trough, her strutting beside him as proud as a hen with a prize rooster. Officer, I was born on a farm in the Middle West and I know animals. I knew which room they were going to before they got there, and her complaining about arthritis. Hmmph!”
    “They went into the bedroom.”
    “Yes, sir. Went and stayed, plumb through Humperdink, the eleven o’clock news, and well into Johnny Carson. A little before midnight, he comes out, not strutting, now, but walking fast. Not carrying a thing. He shut the door behind him and got into his car, but he didn’t start that car. No, sir. He let it roll, sneaky-like, with the lights off, down Pinyon Verde Lane. About two blocks down, I heard him start the motor.”
    “Can you describe his car to me?”
    “One of those little foreign cars you can’t tell whether they’re coming or going.”
    “Did you report this to the police, Mrs. Moresby?”
    “Me? I’m no nosey busybody, snooping around, prying into my neighbor’s affairs.”
    Cabroni’s second interview was with Doctor Carrick.
    Carrick’s office was in the administration building on the campus, a corner room on the fourth floor. Though the carpet was linoleum and Carrick’s desk was made of something resembling deal, Cabroni’s intuition told him that the office was the academic equivalent of an executive suite.
    After Cabroni explained the purpose of his call, Carrick remarked, “I haven’t seen Ruth since the party, which is unusual. She generally drops by the faculty club for lunch two or three times a week.”
    “I’m trying to get a line on who her close friends were,” Cabroni said.
    “Doctor Ward’s her closest friend,” Carrick said, “and has been…”
    “Platonic or romantic?”
    “Doctor Gordon is seventy years old, Lieutenant. I hardly think…”
    Cabroni cut across his protestations. “Did they ever engage in joint experiments together?”
    “Unequivocally, no,” Carrick said. “Ward would not let his grandmother into his…”
    “What’s Ward researching?”
    “Finding that out would be a good project for you, Lieutenant. Ward never publishes. He talks only to Ruth, and Ruth talks only to her hamsters. I asked Ester point-blank what he was doing; all I got from her was… a dismissal.”
    To Cabroni, Carrick’s sudden hesitancy meant a cover-up of some sort. The detective’s voice flicked across the desk like a switchblade. “What precisely did she say, Doctor Carrick?”
    “Well, that he was running a carpenter’s shop, fixing broken ladders.”
    “DNA ladders?”
    “Not a chance,” Carrick answered emphatically, but the expression in