by Joanne Fluke
“I can do that. It’s perfect for me. I love kids, and Mac and I never had any of our own. He never really cared one way or the other, but I always wanted to be a mother.”
“You would have been a good one,” Marge told her. “You sure were good with mine. How about you two?” She smiled at Andrea and Hannah. “What are your plans for the day?”
“We’re going out for pizza,” Hannah said, motioning to Andrea.
“You’re hungry? You can’t be hungry! You just had a big pancake breakfast!”
“We’re not going for the food,” Andrea said, catching on to her sister’s agenda. “We’re going fishing.”
“For information?” Michelle asked.
“Exactly right,” Hannah said. “It’s about Mary Jo Kuehn and the night she died in that car crash. There are still some people around town who think that it was Gus’s fault.”
Marge looked sick. “We heard that back then. And he said he wasn’t driving, but…”
“Looking back on it, we think he could have been.” Patsy gave a little sigh. “Do you think that Bert could have killed Gus because he believed that Gus was driving that night?”
“It’s a possibility,” Andrea said.
“And we won’t know until we check out his alibi,” Hannah added. “We need to ask Bert where he was between one and three on Monday morning.”
“I’ll watch Tracey,” Michelle promised. “And if you’re not back by eleven, I’ll take her out to the raft to judge the swimming races with me.”
Patsy looked horrified. “Oh, don’t do that! What if she falls in the water?”
“It’s okay. Tracey can swim,” Andrea reassured her. “As a matter of fact, she’s entered in the kindergarten races.”
“She learned to swim this early?” Marge asked.
“Oh, yes. When Tracey was in preschool, Janice Cox taught the whole class to swim. And this year Tracey’s in kindergarten, so she gets to use the school pool.”
“I’ll make sure I go to the races to cheer her on,” Marge promised.
“How long do you think you’ll be gone?” Patsy asked, stacking up the plates on the table.
“An hour at the most,” Hannah told her.
“You should be fine then,” Patsy said with a nod. “I looked at the schedule when I thought I’d have to be a judge, and the kindergarten race is the last one.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
When Hannah and Andrea pulled up in Bertanelli’s parking lot, it was far from packed. It was clear that pizza was not the breakfast of choice in Lake Eden. Hannah parked her cookie truck near the door, and they hopped out.
“How are we going to do this?” Andrea asked her.
“We’ll just wing it. Do you think you can eat a pizza?”
Andrea thought about it as they went through the door and headed to the main room to find a booth. “I think so,” she said. “But only if it’s sausage, pepperoni, and extra cheese.”
“No anchovies?” Hannah teased her.
“Not before noon. There’s something about anchovies in the morning that’s just not right, you know?”
Hannah knew. It was a lot like orange juice on corn flakes, a combination she’d once seen a friend attempt to eat when she was out of milk. It wasn’t that it was so awful. It was just that it wasn’t right.
“Hi, ladies,” a waitress came over to greet them a moment after they’d taken a booth near the back of the room. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Coffee would be good,” Hannah told her.
And almost simultaneously, Andrea said, “I’ll have coffee, please.”
“Two coffees coming right up.”
Andrea waited until they were alone again, and then she leaned closer to Hannah. “You mentioned that Norman was out of town. Did he go where I think he went?”
“That depends on where you think he went.”
“Atlantic City?”
“That’s right.”
“To check out Mood Indigo?”
“Right, again. He said he’d call me on my cell phone just as soon as he found out anything at all.”
“And you’ve got your cell phone with you?”
“I do,” Hannah said, patting her oversize purse.
“And you remembered to plug it into the charger last night?”
“I did.”
“And you’ve got it turned on?”
“I do.”
The waitress came back to their booth with two mugs of coffee. “Here you go,” she said, setting a mug in front of each of them.
“Thanks.” Hannah decided that there was no time like the present to find out about Bert. “Is Bert in?”
“Not yet.”
“How about Ellie?” Andrea asked.
“She’s not here yet, either. They’re still catching up on sleep from Sunday night.”
Hannah and Andrea exchanged glances. “What happened on Sunday night?” Andrea asked.
“The weekly cash register tapes didn’t tally with the orders from the kitchen, and we had to find the error.”
Hannah picked up on the collective pronoun. “Who’s we?” she asked.
“Bert, Ellie, and me. I’m the head waitress, so I’m responsible for the others. We went through everything until we found it.”
“What was it?” Andrea asked her.
“One of the new waitresses transposed a couple of numbers. It was an honest mistake, but the register was short and we had to account for it.”
“So how late were you here?” Hannah asked the critical question.
“Until a quarter to three. We close at midnight on Sundays, so it took us two hours and forty-five minutes to find it.”
“I’m glad you found it,” Hannah said. And in her mind she added, in more ways than one.
“So am I! I’m just glad that nobody had a hand in the till. That happens sometimes in the restaurant business. Would you ladies like a menu? Or do you know what kind of pizza you want?”
“We’d like a medium sausage with pepperoni, and extra cheese.” Hannah ordered what Andrea had dictated.
“And mushrooms,” Andrea added. “And black olives, too. What other toppings do you have?”
The waitress looked up from her order pad. “How about onions, fresh tomatoes, and anchovies?”
“Yes on the onions and fresh tomatoes,” Hannah told her, “but no anchovies.” She motioned toward Andrea. “She doesn’t like anchovies before noon.”
“Can’t say I blame her for that!” the waitress said, grinning at Andrea. And then she looked down at her order pad again. “That’s a medium sausage pizza with pepperoni, extra cheese, mushrooms, onions, ripe olives, and tomatoes. Is that right?”
“That’s right,” Hannah said.
“Can I give you ladies a little tip?”
Hannah began to smile. “Absolutely. And if it’s a good tip, we’ll give you a good tip, too.”
“Believe me, it’s a good tip!” the waitress said. “You ordered a medium sausage pizza with six extra toppings. Each extra topping is fifty cents and that means you’ve got an extra three dollars tacked onto your one-topping pizza, okay?”
Both Andrea and Hannah nodded.
“A medium garbage pizza is only a dollar fifty more than a one-topping pizza. And a garbage pizza has all the toppings you just ordered plus anchovies. Do you follow me so far?”
“I think I’m beginning to,” Hannah said, starting to smile. “What are you telling us?”
“Why don’t you just order a garbage pizza and tell me to hold the anchovies? If you order that way, it’ll save you a dollar fifty.”
“Good tip!” Hannah said.
“It sure is.” Andrea looked delighted. “We’ll be sure to double that and add it on to what we would have given you anyway.”
“I can’t believe we ate the whole thing!” Hannah said, staring down at the empty pizza pan.
“Neither can I. I don’t know what got into us.”
“That would be pizza,” Han
nah said, laughing as she glanced around the room. It was filling up for lunch and…
“What is it?” Andrea asked, when Hannah’s laughter stopped abruptly.
“Déjà vu. Again.”
“Very funny,” Andrea said, but when she caught sight of Hannah’s face she began to frown. “What’s wrong, Hannah?”
“Remember the time we came in here for lunch and we spotted Mike with Shawna Lee?”
“I remember. You were really upset.”
“That’s what I meant about déjà vu.”
Andrea looked truly mystified. “What are you talking about, Hannah? Mike can’t be here with Shawna Lee. She’s dead!”
“I know that. It’s not Shawna Lee. It’s somebody else, but it’s like déjà vu because they’re sitting in the same booth and she’s wearing a tight yellow sweater.”
Andrea glanced over at the booth in question. “It’s silk,” she said. “I can tell from here. She’s got clothes sense, whoever she is.”
“Do you recognize her?” Hannah asked.
“No. All I can see is the back of her head. Nice hair, but she could be anyone. We’d better look away, Hannah. We’re staring too much.”
“Why should we look away? They’re sitting with their backs to us. They won’t know we’re staring.”
“You don’t know that for sure. They might.”
“How? Do you think they have eyes in the backs of their heads?”
“Of course not, but maybe one of them is sensitive.”
“Sensitive?”
“Like Grandma Elsa,” Andrea explained. “I had to sit next to her at church, remember?”
“I remember.”
“Well, she used to whisper to me if she thought someone was staring at her, and I’d turn around and look. She was always right. She said she could feel their eyes boring right into the back of her head.”
“And you think Mike and that woman, whoever she is, might be able to feel us staring at them?”
Andrea gave a little shrug. “Maybe.”
“Okay. We won’t stare then. We’ll just get up and go over there to see who it is.”
“But…” Andrea hesitated, and then she shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why? We’re all adults here.”
“Maybe, but your voice is tight. “
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It means you’re all wound up. It’s like that windup frog toy Mother bought for Bethany. You wind it and it puffs up. And when you let it go, it spins all over the floor and croaks.”
“And you think that if I walk over to find out who that woman is, I’ll spin all over the floor and croak?”
Andrea thought it over for a moment, and then she sighed deeply. “Well, maybe not the croaking part.”
That did it. Hannah started to laugh. The mental image was just too much to handle.
“Shh!” Andrea warned her. “If you laugh too much, everybody’s going to look at us.”
Of course that made Hannah laugh harder. And since laughter was contagious, it was too much for Andrea to resist. She began to laugh, too, until both of them were nearly howling with mirth.
“Ronni Ward!” Andrea gasped, clutching Hannah’s arm.
“What?” Hannah asked, still in the throes of laughter.
“She’s in the booth with Mike. She turned around to look at us, and I saw her face.”
If ever there was a sobering thought, a thought that could erase all traces of Hannah’s laughter and even her smile, it was the thought of Ronni Ward.
“Are you sure?” she asked, hoping Andrea had laughed herself into a massive hallucination.
“I’m sure. Are you okay, Hannah? You look a little funny.”
“That’s because I’m turning green. You might have been wrong about the croaking, you know?”
Andrea looked worried. “You mean…you’re so jealous, you want to die?”
“Not me. I was thinking more of Ronni Ward. And maybe Mike, too.”
“Are you serious?” Andrea’s worried look grew into something approaching panic.
“Relax. I’m not that jealous. I’m just teasing you, that’s all.”
Andrea let her breath out in a relieved sigh. “For a second there, I thought you were serious. Jealousy can make you…who’s double-oh-seven?”
“What?”
“Whose ring tone is that?”
“What’s a ring tone?”
“I’ll explain later. Your cell phone’s ringing, and the person who’s calling you has the James Bond theme for a ring tone.”
“I was wondering where that music was coming from.” Hannah reached into her purse, pulled out her cell phone, and answered it. She talked for a moment, and then she turned to Andrea. “It’s Norman, calling from Atlantic City.”
“Uh-oh!”
“What’s an uh-oh?”
“Mike’s headed this way. Get up and go to the ladies’ room. I’ll keep Mike busy, and you can talk to Norman in there.”
“It’s weird knowing that I’m talking to you in the ladies’ room at Bertanelli’s,” Norman said.
“I know. It feels strange to me, too.” Hannah glanced around. The bathroom was neat and clean, but it certainly wasn’t a place for lounging or socializing. There was only one place to sit, and Hannah took it. “What time is it there?”
“Almost one in the afternoon.”
“Where are you?”
“At Mood Indigo.”
Hannah was surprised. “It’s open this early?”
“It’s open a lot earlier than this. Alison lets them in every day at eleven in the morning. She said they do a lot of business with the lunch crowd.”
“Who’s Alison?”
“Alison’s the…uh…headliner act at the club.”
“Her name is on the marquee?”
“That’s right.” Norman stopped talking for a moment, and then he came back on the line. “Hold on a second, Hannah. They’re about to start the next act, so it’s going to get really noisy. I’ll try to find a quieter spot.”
Norman must not have put her on hold, because Hannah heard a blast of music, followed by raucous shouts from the audience. She couldn’t quite make out the words, but it sounded like a boisterous crowd.
“This is fine, thanks,” Norman said to someone there.
“Another drink?” a female voice asked.
“No, this orange juice should do it,” Norman told her, and then Hannah heard a door shut and the music faded to a dull roar.
“Sorry about that, Hannah,” Norman said, picking up where they’d left off. “There’s a big lunch crowd today. The construction crew that’s been working down the street got paid.”
“So they went to a nightclub on their lunch hour?”
“That’s right. Except it’s not…” A blast of music drowned out the rest of Norman’s reply, and Hannah began to frown.
“I can’t hear you!” she said.
“I know. Hold on again, okay?”
There was a popping sound over the blaring music, and then Hannah heard Norman say, “Thanks, but I didn’t order champagne.”
A female voice replied, but Hannah couldn’t hear her. She did hear Norman’s laugh, however, and he sounded fascinated by whatever she’d said.
“It’s nice of you to offer, but I’d better pass. I’m talking to my girlfriend.”
There was another inaudible utterance by the female, and Norman laughed again. And then the door shut and the music was muted once again.
“What was all that about?” Hannah asked.
“You don’t want to know. She came in to bring me champagne. It’s what Gus told her to do whenever anyone came into his office and shut the door. It was some kind of signal, I guess.”
“Do they know he’s dead?”
“Not yet. And his name wasn’t Gus here at the club.”
“Then the detective Marge hired was right, and he did change his name.”
�
�That’s right. If he hadn’t mentioned Mood Indigo, I never would have found a trace of him.”
“What was his name there?” Hannah was curious.
“Grant Kennedy. Sounds impressive, huh?”
“Yes, it does. When are you going to tell his employees at the club that he’s dead?”
“I’ll tell Alison this afternoon when she takes me over to their apartment.”
“Alison shared an apartment with Gus?”
“That’s right. She says they’ve been together ever since she came to work here.”
“And that was…?”
“Three years ago. She’s very good at what she does…if you like that sort of thing, of course.”
“You don’t like blues singers?”
There was silence for a moment and then Norman spoke. “Alison doesn’t sing,” he said.
“What does she do?”
“Uh…she dances.”
“She dances,” Hannah repeated, still having trouble meshing the two mental pictures she had of Mood Indigo, one from Gus and the other from Norman. Gus had described his club as upscale and exclusive, catering to a moneyed clientele. It certainly didn’t sound exclusive to Hannah when construction workers came in on their lunch hour!
Since the two mental pictures weren’t compatible, Hannah decided to ignore what Gus had told her and concentrate on what Norman had said. Mood Indigo was a place construction workers came on their payday lunch hour to watch the dancers and…“Exactly what does it say on that marquee?” she asked Norman.
“Um…I told you. It has her name, ALISON WONDERLAND.”
“Oh, boy!” Hannah breathed. She was beginning to understand precisely the type of club Gus had owned. “What else does it say on the marquee?”
There was a long silence and then Norman sighed. “Okay. I was going to tell you anyway, except not on the phone. “It says, FULL FRONTAL NUDITY.”
“You’re in a strip club?”
“Not exactly, if you’re thinking of strippers like Gypsy Rose Lee. The talent at Mood Indigo is…uh…a few notches down on the socially acceptable scale.”
Hannah couldn’t help it. She started to laugh. She laughed so hard she couldn’t talk.
“What’s so funny?” Norman asked.
“I was just wondering what your mother would say if she knew you were in a sleazy strip club, drinking champagne.”
