What the River Knows (34 page)

Glancing at the booth he had shared with Rica—maybe this wasn’t the best choice—he made his way to the opposite side of the restaurant to a booth in the corner, a few tables away from a family of six. A waitress approached with a glass of water and a menu. He studied her face a moment. No, not one they had interviewed about Delia; this was a new one.

“Bud light,” he ordered. And then, as another waitress carried a tray of burgers and chicken fries to the family table, he added, “cheeseburger and fries.”

“Coming right up.” She spun on her running shoe heel and left him alone. Seconds later, she was back with his Bud. With a long pull on the beer, ingrained habit made him study the customers. Couple of single ladies at the bar, both in their sixties, he would guess. Four guys that looked like oil roughnecks at a booth on the other side. A group of college students near the door. He watched families drift in and out of the restaurant. His waitress served the college students, and he caught her eye by raising his now-empty bottle.

A minute later, a different waitress arrived at his table with his burger and another beer. She leaned low over the table, probably to afford him a look down her low-cut blouse, and smiled at him as her face came into the light of the lamp hanging over the table. He recognized her as one of the women they had interviewed about Delia. Charlotte Daniels her name was. Her smile trembled a bit as she evidently recognized him as well. She blinked her long lashes slowly, and he stared into her pale hazel eyes.

She stood up quickly, while chills ran up and down his spine. “Will there be anything else, sir?” She had already turned toward the kitchen, poised to flee on her stilettos.

“Maybe,” he said, trying to keep her there. Could it be that what he had been searching for was in front of him all along? “Charlotte, right.”

She nodded, licking her lips. “You’re one of the officers that asked us questions about that girl that was killed?” Her voice caught on “that girl.” If Charlotte was who he suspected, “that girl” had once been her best friend.

He nodded. “Do you remember anything more about her?”

She shook her head and took a step toward the kitchen. “No, we get lots of customers in here.”

He let her go without further conversation, and took a long pull of the beer. Suddenly, Rica going on with her life without him didn’t seem to matter so much. He glanced around the room, spotting Charlotte working a table near the door, and picked up his burger. He might be a failure as a husband, but he was a damned good detective. And a hungry one. The burger and fries went down quickly.

Chapter 75

Charlotte concentrated on working tables on the opposite side of the room from Handsy. Sneaking a glance at him as she cleared a table and pocketed the tip, she wondered why she still thought of him by that ridiculous description. He had never acted like anything other than a perfect gentleman, albeit one very passionate about finding Delia’s killer. And that passion was what made him so dangerous.

She slipped into the locker room for a quick break. Hands shaking, she wished she smoked to have something to occupy them. She peeked into the mirror and rubbed her cheeks to bring back some color. Automatically, she reached for the ever-present makeup bag in her purse and touched up her blush, so no one would notice how pale she had turned. Dare she try to throw up and convince Harvey she was sick, so she could leave, before she had to take another beer to Handsy? No, Bethany and Andrea had already bailed on him, leaving her and Rachel as the only waitresses. She faced herself in the mirror and lifted her chin. She would just try to stay on the other side of the room. She paused, studying her face. She didn’t know why she wore the colored contacts so often. Her eyes were striking.

She smoothed her blouse over her breasts and minced back into the dining room.

****

When Scott finished his second beer, he caught Charlotte’s eye and signaled he wanted another. The other waitress delivered it. So he had to finish it, and watch until the other waitress was busy with a large family at a table. He raised his bottle as Charlotte left a table with an order. She nodded, and he waited several minutes, noting that the other waitress was still taking orders, before Charlotte glided up and set the bottle on his table, moving to glide away just as quickly. But he was ready and caught her hand.

“Daniels is your last name, right?”

She nodded and stood passively before him, waiting for him to let go. He dropped her hand gently. “Are you from around here?”

“No,” she said, taking a step away.

“I just got back from visiting my family for Thanksgiving.” He watched her face closely. “Did you visit yours?”

“No.” She took another step away.

“Not even your mom?”

She turned then. He couldn’t see her face, but he heard the tremor in her voice. “My mom…passed, several years ago.” She started for another table.

“I’m sorry. My dad died when I was fifteen.” When she was a few more steps away, he added softly, “Kyle.” He thought he saw her shoulders tense, but she kept going as if she didn’t hear him. He nursed the beer slowly, knowing he’d had enough, thinking he should switch to soda or tea if he had to stay longer. He waited, as the dinner rush slowed close to children’s bedtimes. Another type of customer began to filter in—the regulars, those who went to the bar every night, because there was nowhere else they belonged.

The other waitress disappeared, maybe taking a break, and Scott raised his water glass so Charlotte could see it. He thought her lips tightened a moment, but minutes later, she appeared with a pitcher of water. Good, it would take her a few seconds to fill it. While she focused on pouring, he spoke. “Did you ever know a boy named Kyle Dane?”

A drop of water sloshed onto the tabletop, but she presented him a composed face. “No.” She finished filling his glass and turned to leave. “Is he a suspect?”

Scott shook his head, watching her face. “He’s missing.”

“Good luck with finding him.”

He noticed that the hand she slipped quickly into her apron pocket shook just a little. “Thanks. Could you bring me a Coke?”

Chapter 76

Charlotte dashed into the locker room. In a moment, she wouldn’t have to fake throwing up. Handsy was on to her, had found her out. Once again, it was time to run. Only this time she couldn’t. At least not right away. She would have to make an excuse to quit her job, find another, start over again. She picked up her cell phone to call Devlyn before she realized that Dev was still at work and couldn’t receive a call. For now, she was on her own to handle this.

Her gaze fell on her purse. She had just refilled her prescription for sleeping pills; the full bottle was still in the sack in her purse. If it took one to make her drowsy, two to give her a good night’s sleep, how many would it take to make a man Handsy’s size pass out? He was tall, but not heavy. What would he weigh? 180? 200? Would it take three? Four?

She tore a corner off the sack and opened five capsules into it, then folded the corner securely closed. She’d dump it in his Coke, then Harvey would have to call him a cab. She’d phone in with her resignation to Harvey tomorrow, then stay home sick from work for a week while she hunted for a new city and a new job, with insurance. She knew Handsy would look her up, but maybe it would take him a little while, because she had not bothered to change her address at work from her apartment to Devlyn’s house. And by then she would be gone. At least the money she had put back to do improvements on Devlyn’s house would keep her going for a while, buy the meds she had to have, until the new insurance kicked in.

But what about Devlyn? Would she be begged to stay? Would she be allowed to go? Could she resolve the problem with Handsy? She stepped to the soda fountain and, with a smooth glance around to be sure no one was watching, poured the contents of the sleeping pills into a cup. She ran a generous spray of soda into the bottom of the cup before adding ice and filling it to the brim. Eyeing the cup, she was glad Harvey used cheap, textured red plastic glasses; they hid anything that hadn’t dissolved yet. Without fanfare, she delivered the cup to Handsy’s table.

“Thank you,” he said as she handed him a straw. “You know, I went to school with Kyle, but I barely remember him. He was a freshman when I was a junior.”

“Oh.” She forced disinterest into her voice. “What school was that?”

“Homedale High.”

The name turned her stomach into quaking Jell-O. “Sounds quaint.”

He laughed, a gentle laugh. “Kinda what we thought at the time we graduated.”

She smiled. “Don’t most teenagers?” She walked off to fill water glasses at another table, risking a look back at Handsy as she returned to the kitchen. He sat swirling his cola with the straw, but had yet to take a sip of it. She glanced at her watch. Two hours to close. She hoped he drank some of that soda by then.

She wandered by his table again as she carried an order to a couple two booths down. He smiled and nodded as she came back by, then turned himself so his feet were in her path. “Where did you go to school?”

She glanced down at him, noting that he no longer wore a wedding ring. She looked up again into his face. Such a handsome face! “All over. My family moved a lot.” She dodged around him and headed back to the kitchen for the next order.

Was this some joke fate was playing on her? Finally, she found a man who fit all the requirements she had laid out long ago, and he was The-Cop-Who-Knew-Too-Much. Maybe he was just flirting with her, maybe wanted to take her home. She stopped her run into fantasy land. If he was just flirting with her, he would not have said that name.

Chapter 77

Scott downed half his water and just sipped on his soda. The beer, coupled with the fact that the burger was practically the only food he’d had in over twenty-four hours, had given him a bit of a buzz. He wanted to rehydrate before he used caffeine to overcome the buzz.

He watched the dinner crowd evaporate. All those remaining now were there to drink. A few ordered appetizers, but as he remembered from the menu, the kitchen closed at ten. He checked his watch. Nine-thirty. He supposed he could go home now; he was certain that Charlotte Daniels had once been Kyle Dane, but what reason was there to bring her in for questioning? Completely changing one’s identity was not a crime. But had she reconnected with Delia?

He drank his soda as he reviewed the facts of the case. Moran had admitted meeting Delia for a round of sex after she made the bank deposit. That could account for there being no signs of struggle in her car, but why leave it unlocked? The Casa Taco bordered a neighborhood of cheap apartments that meth and coke addicts could afford for a while. PD worked a lot of cases of purses stolen from locked and unlocked cars at the businesses there, as the addicts worked to finance the next fix. Unless she never intended to go with him and planned to hop right back in her car.

But the coroner had placed Delia’s time of death at around midnight. Moran could account for his time from about four-forty-five (Delia had been a quickie) until the next morning. Unless he and his wife slept in separate rooms. But she had testified that they had been in the hot tub until eleven, and then made love until the wee hours. Apparently, for them, infidelity spiced up their sex life. She didn’t seem the type to lie about her conquests, and the fact that her husband stayed with her despite the many affairs they both had seemed to say she had completely conquered him.

Delia’s husband wasn’t even a suspect, in Scott’s mind. The man loved Delia too much, was too devoted to the baby. He would never have left the sleeping child alone to go murder her mother. He—Scott lost the thought he was pursuing. The beer must have hit him more than usual. He took another sip of the cola to try to clear his head.

Who else would have had motive to kill Delia? Charlotte swayed seductively on her stilettos across the room to wait on a table of mid-thirties men already two sheets to the wind and working on their third. Could Delia have recognized Charlotte as her teenaged friend and threatened to out her? A pretty waitress who used to be a man wouldn’t get nearly the tips as simply a pretty waitress. He watched as Charlotte minced back to the kitchen. He still didn’t think that small, slender Charlotte, even as a man, would have the strength to gash a throat as thoroughly as Delia’s had been slashed. He tried to recall the details of the autopsy report. It had said—he shook his head to try to bring his memory into focus, and took another sip of the cola.

Chapter 78

Charlotte checked her watch. Thirty minutes to close. Harvey had already announced last call and the six regulars at the bar all had two drinks sitting before them. Handsy, though, continued to guzzle water and sip at his soda. At last he rose from his booth, but instead of heading for the door, he turned toward the men’s room. He lurched as he made his way around the first table, but steadied and walked slowly to the restroom.

Harvey, alert from long experience, noticed. “How many’s he had?”

“Three that I know of,” Charlotte answered.

Harvey glanced toward Rachel, who simply shrugged. “Keep an eye on him, then. If he stumbles again, we can’t let him drive out of here.”

“Okay.” Charlotte would make sure she reported a stumble to Harvey, whether Handsy did trip or not. She popped into the employee lounge one last time to check her makeup. Her cell phone vibrated as she was dropping her lip gloss back into her purse. She grabbed it. Devlyn, on “lunch” break for the eleven to seven shift, Dev’s second of the day. “Devlyn,” Charlotte whispered. “Hold on a second.” She slipped out the back door to have a private conversation. “We have a problem.”

“What is it?” She could hear Devlyn’s bag of chips rattling in the background.

She decided to be careful what she said, just in case. She had never allowed Mags to call her on the cell, in case Devlyn checked the call log. Now there was even more reason to be cautious. “That cop that interviewed me about…that girl that was killed came to the restaurant tonight.”

“And?” She heard Devlyn take a swig of soda.