Margaritas, Marzipan, and Murder

by Harper Lin

  “Sorry. Thanks. I actually kind of like it sometimes when people ask me just to get them whatever. Gives me a chance to get creative.”

  “You’re good at it.”

  “Thanks. So what did you want to talk about?”

  “Well, I’ve, uh, I’ve been kind of looking into that suicide the other night.”

  Dawn laughed her biggest, fullest, Dawn-est laugh. “Oh, I love it. Mike tells you to stay out of it, and the first thing you do is go poking your nose into things. You know, I think you’re cooler than you act, Fran.”

  “Thank you?” I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to take that as a compliment.

  “It’s a good thing.” She answered my unspoken question. “But I’m guessing you’re not here just to fill me in on that fact.”

  “Well, no.” I sat down on a chair opposite her. “First thing, I don’t think it was a suicide.”

  “There wouldn’t really be anything for you to investigate if it was, would there?”

  “Not really. The reason I’m here, though, is that I found out who the guy was and talked to somebody who saw him with a girl the other night.”

  “Wasn’t me,” she said immediately.

  “No, I know it wasn’t you. But I think she might work here.”

  Dawn raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything.

  “Mid to late twenties, blond, really tan, busty. Dresses kind of provocatively. Well, at least when she’s going back to a guy’s hotel room. The person I talked to said he thinks she’s a waitress here.”

  “Who’d you talk to? Eh, it doesn’t matter,” she said when I hesitated.

  I took a sip of my margarita and swallowed hard. “So, do you know who she is?”

  Dawn narrowed her eyes at me and pursed her lips. “Yup.”

  Chapter 14

  “You do?” I couldn’t believe Dawn would be able to identify the girl I was looking for based on a description that probably fit fifty different girls in Cape Bay.

  Dawn nodded. “You think she killed him?”

  I opened my mouth to say no then reconsidered. “Maybe. I don’t know her. Do you think she could kill a man?”

  Dawn thought for a minute. “Depends on what he did to her.”

  I let that sink in. I hadn’t put much thought into why Abraham Casey was murdered, just who he was and why he was in town. I still wanted to know why he was in town, but now that I was talking to people who had interacted with him, I needed to be on the lookout for potential suspects. And potential motives. If Abraham Casey had taken a girl up to his hotel room, maybe under duress, coercion, or something worse, she might have a motive. But I wouldn’t know until I talked to her.

  “I need to talk to her, Dawn.”

  She stared at me for so long that I was sure she was going to say no. Then she sighed. “Her name’s Suzy. Suzy Frazier.”

  “Is she here tonight?”

  Dawn nodded. “I’ll point her out to you.”

  “Could you introduce her to me?”

  “You’re pushing your luck.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Oh, come on. Of course I’m going to introduce you to her. You’re going to tell her I told you who she was anyway, right? I may as well be there to make sure she knows you’re not some stark raving lunatic or the dead guy’s wife or something.”

  “Thank you.”

  She shook her head and rolled her eyes again. I watched in hopes they would stick, but they didn’t. They went right back to their normal place in her head.

  “You ready?”

  “To talk to her?”

  “No, to go to the mall. Of course to talk to her.” It was painfully obvious that even if Dawn was willing to defend me against a potential suggestion that I was a lunatic, she was completely convinced I was the dumbest person she’d ever met. But for some reason, probably Sammy, she was nice to me.

  “Yes, I’m ready.”

  Dawn reluctantly got up and walked to the door. With her hand on the doorknob, she turned and looked at me. “Get ready.” She opened the door, and the screaming music blared into the room. It was so much worse than I remembered. She gestured for me to follow her, and we made our way across the barroom floor. I waved and smiled at Matt as we passed. He tipped his beer glass at me.

  Dawn walked up to a girl who fit Ed Martin’s description of the woman he’d seen almost exactly. The only thing I would have added was that she wore a lot of makeup. But I expected he hadn’t been paying that much attention to her face.

  Dawn put her mouth to Suzy’s ear and gestured at me. Suzy looked at me and nodded a couple of times, listened again, and nodded some more. I couldn’t imagine what Dawn was saying except maybe, “Take pity on her. She’s stupid, but she’s my best friend’s boss.” As long as Suzy talked to me, I didn’t care what Dawn told her.

  Finally, they walked back in my direction. Dawn breezed by me, but Suzy came up to me and assumed the now-familiar mouth-to-ear position.

  “You want to go outside?” she bellowed into my ear.

  I nodded and followed her outside, pausing to drop my now-empty margarita glass at the bar as I went. She walked a short distance past the people gathered outside the door, most of whom had cigarettes between their fingers or dangling from their lips. Once we were out of earshot, Suzy stopped and leaned against the building. She pulled a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of her pocket. “Want one?” She held a cigarette out to me.

  “No thanks.” My voice sounded very strange in the relative quiet of the outdoors after all the noise inside the bar.

  Suzy put the cigarette in her mouth and lit it, taking a long draw. “So, Dawn said you want to talk to me?”

  “Yeah, if you have a minute.”

  “I got about ten.” She held out her cigarette and nodded at it.

  “I’m Fran.” I figured my name was a reasonable place to start.

  “Suzy.”

  “Hi Suzy.” I smiled.

  “What is this? AA?”

  “Sorry,” I muttered. I felt like we were already getting off on the wrong foot. I took a deep breath. “Look, let me cut to the chase. I heard you might have gone back to a guy’s hotel room with him Thursday night.”

  “So what if I did? You his wife or something?”

  “Dawn said she was going to tell you that I’m not.”

  “She did. She said you’re a friend of hers.”

  “She did?” I was shocked Dawn had called me a friend.

  “Yeah, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Suzy gave me her version of the look Dawn liked to give me—the “are you stupid?” look. “You guess so? You don’t know who your friends are?”

  “No, I do, it’s just that Dawn-I-well, never mind. We’re friends. I’m not the guy’s wife. I just want to know if you’re the girl who went up to his room, and, if you are, maybe you could answer a few questions for me.”

  “You police?”

  “No.”

  “Then why you asking questions?”

  “Curious, I guess.”

  “About whose hotel room I’m going to.”

  “No, I’m curious about the guy. He—you know the guy they found in the alley the other day?”

  “Yeah?” Of course she did. Everybody did.

  “I think that was him. The same guy. The guy whose hotel room you went to, I mean. If that was you.” We were back on the wrong foot, and I was struggling to get things back on track. It seemed as though her cigarette was disappearing into thin air right before my eyes. Which I guess, in a way, it was.

  “Hmph.” I couldn’t tell if she didn’t care, wasn’t surprised, or was glad he was dead. Two of the three possibilities interested me. One concerned me.

  “So, it was you?”

  “Yeah, it was me.”

  “Did you happen to know his name?”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  I realized how my question must have sounded. “No, I just mean—I want to make sure it w
as the same guy. And I’m curious as to whether he gave you his real name.”

  She looked at me through narrowed eyes as she took a long drag from her cigarette. “It was the same guy.”

  My heart thudded. What was she saying? “How do you know?”

  “You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t. You didn’t find me by accident.”

  I wasn’t sure if her answer made me more or less suspicious of her. I tried to refocus her on my questions, and I was now uneasy enough that I knew I needed to pay close attention to her reactions. “What did he tell you his name was?”

  “Abe. He didn’t offer a last name, and I didn’t ask. Wasn’t like I told him mine either.”

  Abe. I wondered if that was what he went by all the time, what his wife called him. “Did you know he was married?”

  She shrugged. “Didn’t care.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “Here. He came in looking for a buzz and a good time. I was waiting on him. He was flirting pretty hard. Stayed around until closing time and asked me what I was up to after. I didn’t have any plans, so I went back to his room with him.”

  “And did you—” I started to ask, then stopped. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

  Suzy looked at me out of the corner of her eye and smirked. I got the feeling she thought I was as much of an uptight prude as Dawn thought I was a dumb bore.

  “I mean…just never mind.” I took a deep breath. “What was he like?”

  Now Suzy smiled for real. “He was real nice. Real friendly. A charmer. Knew how to make a girl feel good about herself. And he threw around money like it was nothing.”

  “Really?” I was surprised even though her statement was consistent with what Ed Martin had said about Abraham Casey’s tipping habits.

  “Yeah, only wanted the top-shelf stuff, bought a round for the whole bar, gave me a tip that was more than I usually make in a whole night. Nice guy. Real shame.”

  The way she spoke, I couldn’t tell if she honestly thought his death was a real shame, or if she meant it the way movie mob bosses said “it would be a real shame if something happened to that nice new car of yours.”

  “Did he tell you anything about himself? About his family?”

  “What, do you think we sat around and talked all night?” She rolled her eyes.

  I wondered if eye rolling was something the bar taught in its new-employee orientation. I decided it was more likely part of the interview process.

  “No, he didn’t talk about his family or anything. I knew he was like a pharmacist or something because he—” She paused and cast a sideways glance at me. “Because he mentioned it. And he didn’t have to tell me he was from Boston because I could hear it when he talked. Southie, I think. Could be wrong about that, though.”

  Her cigarette was almost gone, and I searched my mind frantically for other important questions to ask. I got the feeling there would be no doorknob questions—no turning around at the last second to ask one more thing. When Suzy Frazier was done with her cigarette, she was going to be done with me.

  “Did he mention anyone who might have wanted to kill him?”

  “You mean other than himself?”

  “He told you he wanted to kill himself?” If that were true, then the whole murder theory might be dead in the water. A man who said he wanted to kill himself and then died, apparently by his own hand, looked an awful lot like a suicide, no matter how many souvenirs he bought just before his death.

  “No, but he did, didn’t he? Kill himself?”

  “I think it was murder.”

  “Oh, you do, do you now? And what makes you think that?”

  “He bought a bunch of souvenirs just before he died. A big bag of them. Stuff for his wife and kid. Why would a man buy presents for his family and kill himself right after?”

  Suzy seemed to go pale, though it was hard to tell from the dim parking lot lights. “He didn’t say anything about anyone wanting to kill him. Until just right now, I didn’t hear anything about anything but suicide, okay? I can’t help you with that.”

  “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “I ain’t upset.”

  “I’m—I’m sorry,” I said again. “Can you just tell me one last thing?” I asked as she dropped her cigarette and ground it out with the toe of her worn boot.

  “What?”

  “Did he tell you why he was in town?”

  She stared at me, and I could see her tongue working around in her mouth. She was either debating with herself whether she wanted to tell me something or trying to get something out of her teeth. “No. He didn’t say. Like I said, we didn’t talk much.”

  I decided to make one last effort. “Is there anything else I should know about him?”

  She stared at me again for an uncomfortably long period of time. Finally, she closed her eyes and sighed. She shook her head. “He could help you relax. If that was something you needed. And that’s it. That’s all I got to say to you. I got to get back to work.” She brushed past me and headed for the door.

  I stared after her for a second, not sure what had happened or what she meant. She had taken offense at almost everything I had said and seemed to be lying or hiding something in her responses. I didn’t know if there was actually something to it or if she just didn’t like me.

  Slowly, I walked back into the bar. The music was louder and worse than I remembered. I wound my way through the tables to Matt. He was halfway through what I guessed was his second beer based on the fresh margarita sitting across from him.

  I hopped into my seat and took a sip of the drink. It was as delicious as the first one. “Thank you,” I mouthed to him, lacking the energy to scream after my conversation with Suzy. He pointed past me in the direction of the bar.

  I turned around and saw Dawn looking at me. She raised her eyebrows and gave a thumbs up. Understanding that she was asking how the drink was, I smiled and gave her a thumbs up in response. Maybe she knew I would need another drink after talking to Suzy, or maybe we really were friends.

  Matt and I finished our drinks without trying to talk. When we were done, he pointed toward the door, and I nodded. We slid off our chairs then made our way through the bar with me in the lead and Matt following with his hand gently brushing the small of my back. When we got outside, he took my hand.

  “How did that go?” he asked loudly.

  “I don’t think you have to talk that loud,” I said at what I thought was an appropriate volume.

  “What?” he asked, even louder this time.

  “Shh!” I whisper-shouted. I pulled him down toward me. “You’re going to wake up the whole town,” I said into his ear.

  “Sorry.” He spoke more quietly this time, but still on the loud side. “How did it go?”

  I gave him the highlights of my chat with Suzy in as loud a voice as I dared. He nodded at appropriate parts, giving me the impression he understood at least most of what I was saying.

  “There’s something more to the story she’s not telling you.” His voice was a much more appropriate volume now. I was glad, not just because I didn’t want him waking up the neighbors but also because I had been starting to worry about long-term hearing damage.

  I agreed with him. “I just wish I knew what it was. Or at least whether it’s important or not. I mean, it could be anything from she stole twenty dollars from him to she killed him. I just don’t know.”

  “Add that to your list of things you have to figure out.”

  That list was getting pretty long.

  Chapter 15

  As I lay in bed that night with Latte by my side, I was unable to fall asleep for the life of me. I just couldn’t get the information I’d learned about Abraham—Abe, according to Suzy—out of my head. I’d started the day with my perception of him completely shaped by his social media profile—an outgoing, open, gregarious type of guy, a clean-cut family man. Now that I’d talked to a couple of people who had actually int
eracted with him while he was in Cape Bay, I was getting a completely different perspective of him.

  He still seemed outgoing, open, gregarious, and generous with his money to boot, but perhaps he wasn’t as much of a family man as he’d made himself out to be. The realization was unsettling and made me question even more strongly what he had been doing in Cape Bay.

  It was clear his visit hadn’t been an end-of-summer family vacation. He was here alone. He was living it up, unhindered by his wife and family obligations. He was drinking high-end alcohol and hooking up with a bar waitress he’d only just met and hadn’t even given his last name to. Just two nights before, he’d been out to dinner with his wife and young son. And a day later, he was dead. Had his activities while he was away caused his death? Or was it whatever had brought him to Cape Bay in the first place? And why didn’t I know what that was?

  I tried to clear my mind and allow the sandman a chance to come, but it wasn’t working. Something about my conversation with Suzy was bothering me. In all honesty, a lot of it bothered me, but there was something in particular I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I tried to remember what it was, but my mind was going so fast over the facts of the case that I couldn’t pin it down.

  Just relax, Fran. You need to relax.

  And there it was: relax. That was what had been bothering me. Suzy had said Abraham could help you “relax.” Ed Martin had mentioned her saying something similar when she was at the hotel with Abraham—that she was stressed out and needed to relax. Was waitressing really so stressful?

  As soon as that thought crossed my mind, I dismissed it as ridiculous. My old New York friends would ask the same thing about working at the café—is working at a coffee shop really so stressful? Yes. Yes, it was.

  But I didn’t go around talking about how I needed to relax. And what did Suzy mean when she said he could help her relax? Suzy didn’t seem like the type to beat around the bush about much. So what was she trying to hide? Something illegal? Drugs? I knew more about drugs from watching TV than I did from personal experience, but I did remember from my middle school health teacher that some drugs were called “uppers” and “downers.”