“Do you keep in touch with her?”
To break the tension, I asked, “Do Moe and Jack have kids who work here, too?”
Manny smiled at that, which was what I was going for. I also called for a carafe of coffee and the last bits of cherry cheesecake mousse—the best I could do to give Manny a chance to catch his breath and tell his story. Annie transported everything to our table, then took a seat. Her volunteers stayed in the kitchen with the rest of my helpers.
“There’s really not much to tell,” Manny said.
It was impossible to control our laughter at that sentiment, or gauge whose was the loudest, the most contained, the deepest, the most sustained.
“Okay, okay,” Manny said. He cleared his throat. “First, my name is Arnold Quinlan, the father of Oliver Quinlan.”
“Did I walk into a Fathers Anonymous meeting by mistake?” Chris asked. Another round of laughs, briefer this time.
“I met Oliver’s mother in school, of course. Olivia and I, we were in love the way teenagers can be, I guess. I won’t bore you—”
“Bore us,” my mom said.
“Well, you know, she got pregnant. Nowadays, you’d say ‘we got pregnant,’ right? We were barely sixteen and our parents were not happy. Actually, they’d have nothing to do with us. But we were determined to do this, together, have the baby, set up housekeeping. That’s what we called it back then.” Arnold shook his head. “On less than two bucks an hour, right? Without even a high school diploma between us.”
“I can’t imagine,” Annie said. “No one at the school would help?”
“You have to understand how it was in those days, especially miles from a city, which we were. There was no place in a high school classroom for a pregnant girl. No programs for pregnant teens. No group counseling. No family counseling. No nothing.”
Arnold reached for the coffee and we all made a move to pour, Annie winning the contest.
She also moved a menu from the holder on the table to right under his nose. “I’ll bet you haven’t had a good meal this week.”
Arnold looked longingly at the prospects that lay before him, but seemed too frazzled to make a decision.
“Never mind. I got this,” I said. I pressed my back into the Naugahyde and called out over Annie’s shoulder toward the kitchen window.
“Two dots and a dash.”
I heard Victor explain to Pierre, who shook his head, “That means two fried eggs and a strip of bacon.”
“Such a long expression,” Pierre said, extending his fingers to illustrate.
“Yeah, well, I had French One in high school,” Victor said. “I’ll bet it would be longer in French.”
I noticed Pierre did not volunteer the French translation.
“Here’s where it gets tough, to this day,” Arnold said, waiting for the kitchen banter to die down. “We made our way to Anchorage, one crap job at a time. Liv had no medical care until we pulled up to an ER at the last minute.” He paused, took a sip of coffee to cover his cracking voice. “Bottom line, the baby made it. His mother . . . Olivia didn’t.”
Annie gasped. We all drew in our breaths, one way or another.
“You’ll think I’m a poor excuse for a man, and—”
“Don’t you say that, Manny. It’s okay if I still call you Manny, right?” my mom asked.
He nodded. “All I said to the nurses before I disappeared was, ‘His name’s Quinlan. Oliver Quinlan.’”
* * *
* * *
When Manny returned from the restroom (we thought he’d disappeared again), Tammy quickly slipped two dots and a dash in front of him. He moved his fork around in the eggs. I was glad to see that he added a lot of salt, as usual. Not that it was good for him, but I took it as a sign that he was heading back to normal. He ate a few small bites.
“Thanks,” he said, to no one in particular.
He was ready to talk again and revealed how he’d found his son two years ago: A magazine article on classic American diners listed his name as head chef at a diner in Elkview, Alaska.
“There was a small photo, and even though he’d changed his name to Whitestone, I knew it must be him. The shape of his face just like his mother’s, and he was not far from where he started out. And when I came in here and looked at him, I knew he was my son. I started getting friendly with the other guys, Moe and Jack, so it wouldn’t look funny, me hanging out. I thought for sure Oliver would recognize me, and after a while, when he didn’t, it just got too awkward to say anything.”
We finally let Manny go home, with a “doggy bag” so big it took Victor and Pierre to help carry the boxes to his trunk.
Manny wasn’t out the door two minutes when Trooper half stood in the booth, looked at me, then to my mom, then to Chris, then back to me. “You have his home address?”
“We have it,” I said. “The three truckers all have tabs here.”
“Okay, then.” And he sat down.
“Were you going to follow him home otherwise?” Chris asked, with a big grin.
“Darn right.”
“I was kidding,” Chris said.
“I’m not.”
“You don’t think?” my mom said.
“You can’t think he’d kill his own son,” Annie finished.
He scanned our faces. “Any of you know who killed Oliver yet?”
Noes all around. Two of us in particular were especially shamefaced about that.
“Then how else are we going to find out? Everyone’s a suspect—” Trooper began.
“Until they’re not,” Chris and I finished.
“Where’s Manny been all these years?” Trooper asked. “He never said, far as I heard.”
“But what possible reason could he have?” my mom asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe he told Oliver that day. ‘By the way, I’m your father’”—Trooper tried to imitate Manny’s gravelly voice—“and Oliver got angry that he’d been abandoned. It couldn’t have been easy growing up without a father. Or a mother. Group homes aren’t always pretty. And before you know it, they’re fighting, and things get out of hand. That kind of thing.”
“If it was a kind of accident, like Oliver fell and hit his head or something, Manny would have confessed.” My mom, playing defense attorney.
“The way he did to fatherhood? Fifty years later?” Trooper asked.
“That’s mean,” said my mom, who was the only one of us who could get away with talking to Trooper like that.
“Maybe we should all take a breath and come up with a plan to find out the answers to these questions,” I said.
“And more,” Trooper said.
By now Pierre and the two volunteers had been driven back to the inn by Victor. I’d noticed a tender moment, a lingering goodbye hug between Pierre and Annie before he left the diner. Could this really work out for Annie? I didn’t like the picture of her packing up for the Alps, but realized immediately that was selfish.
I tuned back in to Trooper. “Let’s go with your idea of a plan, Charlie. Let’s see who can do what.”
Chris went first. He’d been typing on his phone much of the time in the booth. I assumed he’d been taking notes, and not answering spam from a mosquito control service or an ad for a home warranty, which accounted for more than half my emails these days.
“I can find out what that magazine article was that Manny mentioned. The one with the list of chefs. See if that holds up.”
“Good, Chris. I’d like to know for sure how he found Oliver after all these years,” Trooper said.
“I’m on it.”
“About Moe and Jack. They couldn’t have been called that without Manny. They ought to be interviewed. Find out when that all started,” Trooper noted.
I hated to be the one to bring it up, but I did remember one pertinent fact. “Manny ca
me late to dinner that day. Monday. The day Oliver died. Moe and Jack said he’d been running late all day.” I left out the part where he’d looked disheveled and upset and had immediately asked where Oliver was. Even so, my mom trained a frown on me.
“You and Chris take the truckers, Charlie,” Trooper said.
“Okay,” we both said.
“And Stanley came into the Bear Claw twice looking for Oliver. Once he found him working and they had words. Plus, I didn’t finish with Gert at the chapel,” I said, reporting on her three alibis.
“I can do something,” my mom said.
“Me, too,” said Annie. “I know Pierre would love to help. If the new car part is the wrong one, he’ll have to stay the weekend.”
Trooper didn’t respond except to raise his eyebrows. Wanting to keep the team local?
“I’ll track Gert down. And Lana, too,” my mom said.
“And Stanley, Oliver’s brother. I spoke to him for a few minutes and he seemed friendly,” Annie said. “In fact, he stayed at the inn not too long ago. He’d come up from Anchorage and a storm blew in and he needed a bed for the night. It’s a little strange that he didn’t mention he was Oliver’s brother, or that he knew anyone in town.”
“That’s probably one of the times he came in looking for Oliver,” I said. “You might ask him about that.”
“Will do.”
“And, Trooper, you can tell us what’s going on with Oliver’s phone dump, things like that,” I said.
Trooper turned his head so he could look at me out of the corner of his eye. His look said, Not so fast, young lady, a phrase I seemed to remember from a decade or two ago.
I smiled weakly. “It was worth a shot.”
Trooper didn’t acknowledge my request for intel, but I didn’t think it was a big deal, since Oliver was so unconnected, with no email, no cell phone. The most he had was a landline, and I doubted he used it that much.
Trooper pointed back and forth between Mom and Annie. “You two maybe could work together? I don’t like to send my deputies out by themselves.”
The two women looked surprised and pleased.
“Deputies,” Mom said, a little too euphoric.
Trooper stepped out of the booth and motioned for the women to join him.
“Raise your right hands and repeat after me. I solemnly swear to uphold the laws of Matanuska-Susitna Borough in the State of Alaska, so help me God.”
They repeated it.
“Wow, I didn’t know this was a thing,” Annie said.
“It isn’t,” Trooper said. “But it felt good, didn’t it?”
* * *
* * *
Mom and I left the Bear Claw around three in the afternoon. The kitchen was spotless, the appliances shiny, all the food wrapped and put away.
It was the first time I could remember Evelyn and Charlotte Cooke locking the diner doors and hanging a CLOSED sign, with no intention of returning for thirty-eight hours. We’d decided to open at five on Saturday morning to accommodate the weekend truckers, hikers, fishermen, and the occasional eager tourist.
Nina had printed out a new sign with all the information, on paper that had a narrow black border. I’d have to remember to compliment her, and ask her where in the world she’d found that paper.
Mom sat quiet all the way home. I didn’t disturb her, with either music or talk. I was counting on Benny to help us both recover from the day.
The last of the memorial service for Oliver Quinlan was over. All that remained was to find his killer.
SEVENTEEN
After the sadness of the past couple of days, watching the second joyful greeting between Mom and Benny was almost too much for me. A roller coaster would be a fitting image for my emotions. But my mom did not need to see me break down, so I left the two of them on the recliner—cheek to cheek, Benny perched high on Mom’s chest, relishing the rhythmic scratching behind his ears and under his chin—and wended my way to the kitchen.
We were at my place on the way from the Bear Claw, to pick up my mom’s luggage, then take her home.
“Maybe I could stay here one more night,” she said, shifting her head around Benny’s. “It’s going to be freezing at our place.”
“I’d love that.” That was true, and was the reason I didn’t remind her that she had a space heater that could be operated remotely to whatever temperature she wanted before she arrived. “I’ll bring the food in.”
By the time I trekked in from the Outback to my house, Mom was asleep, Benny still on her chest. I couldn’t tell whether Benny was asleep without disturbing Mom, so I took an afghan from my sofa and placed it around both of them. If Benny was awake, he was doing a good job pretending otherwise.
I carried the extra food from the day’s menu into my kitchen and pulled out a tower of containers with sandwiches and sides of potato salad and slaw. Surely one of the small sacks held a bear claw or two. I rummaged and found them. Whether he heard the crinkle of the paper sack or smelled a combination of delicious aromas, I didn’t know, but Benny answered the call and bounded into the kitchen. I looked to his feeder, hoping I hadn’t forgotten to fill it. No, that wasn’t it; he simply wanted a treat. Or, he thought I might be envious of his attention to my mom and came to give me some love.
I heated up a mug of coffee from breakfast and carried it with a bear claw to the sofa across from Mom. I recognized the very soft sound (not a snore, she’d always insisted) and knew she wouldn’t wake too soon, no matter how loudly I chewed. I realized it was the first bear claw I’d tasted since my experiment with chocolate in the middle—the experiment Oliver had ridiculed. Both Trooper and Chris had nixed the samples, thumbs-down, so my final argument with Oliver hadn’t needed to happen. Another reminder of my part in sending Oliver out of the diner and to his death. It seemed that burying my hand in Benny’s fur was the only way to talk myself out of the overwhelming guilt I felt.
I flashed back to a more pleasant time: Chris’s expressed wish to meet Benny. I considered inviting him over for a meal and meet-and-greet this evening. With Mom here, it wouldn’t seem like a date to him. On the other hand, it would seem like one to Mom.
Never mind.
“What do you say, Benny?” I whispered. As long as he’d hopped onto my lap to collect his treat, it seemed a good idea to query him. He was silent on the question of inviting Chris—no tail movement at all.
I moved on to the question of Oliver’s killer. From our last meeting in the diner, Trooper seemed okay with all of us newly sworn deputies, aka laypeople, carrying out interrogations. As long as we didn’t buy ourselves toy store badges, I gathered. I played back the assignments in my head and made a list. It always helped me to write out lists, even if I never consulted them. These days, I used a notes app on my phone.
I spoke softly into Benny’s ear and warned him that I was about to use his back as my desk. He settled in and obliged me.
Mom and Annie:
Stanley—why the argument in the kitchen?
Gert—why lie about alibi?
Chris and me:
Manny—check magazine article
verify points of story
why late day of murder?
Moe and Jack—did they know about Manny’s fatherhood?
verify Manny’s story
? Victor—why take over so soon?
? Kendra—why avoid us in Anchorage?
So many question marks left me discouraged. How did people like Trooper do this on a daily basis?
I hated to include Victor, especially after the way he’d stepped up this week. Today alone, he’d overseen the gathering after Oliver’s funeral, including packaging the food I’d just stuffed into my fridge. He was as competent an employee as one could ask for.
But, according to the oft-repeated phrase, he was a suspect until he was
not. I decided to ask Chris to take the lead on that one. Was I a coward? It seemed so. But wouldn’t it be better, if he turned up innocent, that he didn’t know his boss had suspected him of murder? Thinking of Victor reminded me that I still needed to go through the pile of papers he’d trashed, and that now resided in my tote. Next to Victor’s name on my list, I added the word “envelopes,” hoping that would be enough to jog my memory.
I could push Benny off my lap and get to work or stay with him and relax. Sometimes when I made a to-do list, I felt I’d actually done the tasks and I could take the rest of the day off.
* * *
* * *
The doorbell woke me up. Mom rubbed the top of my head as she passed me on her way to answering. For a moment I was in high school again, or even younger, when Mom would wake me for school with that gesture. Combined with a rare nap in the middle of the day, it was enough to disorient me. Chris’s voice in the entryway didn’t help. The aroma of stew—moose meat, carrots, potatoes, mixed spices—did the trick. I figured out that it was dinnertime and the world’s best cook was in my kitchen.
“What’s that delicious smell?” Chris asked. “Looks like I arrived just in time.”
“You’re right,” Mom said. “Welcome.” I heard her laugh as I turned away from the door and ducked into the bathroom, where I splashed my face with cold water and ran a brush through my unruly hair.
My thought as I approached the living room again: Glad I didn’t invite him. This one’s on Mom.
* * *
* * *
Not a date, but a business meeting. I’d taken a chance that Annie might be available, and she was. Her new assistant—for Annie that meant hired fewer than ten years ago—was working out well, and Pierre was on his way to pick up his car.
“I wanted to drive him, but Max said he’d pick him up since he had some errands downtown anyway.” Annie screwed up her face and shrugged. Resigned, it seemed.
I brought out copies of my notes. I’d printed out the page, in case anyone was willing to talk business after a scrumptious meal of moose stew and crusty bread. No one argued about putting off dessert for a while, especially after hearing that Victor had packed an entire pan of cherry cheesecake mousse for us. Apparently, he had been expecting an army.
Mousse and Murder Page 16
