Out at Night (20 page)

Grace took Bartholomew’s photo to IHOP and flashed it around. None of the servers recognized him; the same with the Denny’s on East Palm Canyon Drive. But at the Denny’s on North Palm Canyon Drive, she hit pay dirt.

The place was jammed with college-age students and families with restless kids drawing on place mats, enjoying a late breakfast or early lunch.

Grace walked through the restaurant and spotted a table toward the back with three old guys in shirt sleeves and bifocals, all finishing Senior Grand Slams. They were drinking coffee, the
Desert Sun
spread out next to their plates.

“Yeah, it’s Ted. Helluva thing.” The man speaking had a voice box he had to touch to get sound, and when the sound came out, it was mechanical and tinny. “Who are you again?”

“Manners, Arnie,” a sunburned man in the chair across from him chided gently. He was wearing a hot pink shirt and a pair of lime yellow shorts with athletic socks and loafers. His legs were white and knobby. “I’m Wes. Arnie’s our version of Mr. Inquisitor, and the guy over there buried in the sports page is Raymond.”

Raymond looked up and grunted a greeting, his blunt finger on the line he was reading about high school girls’ tennis.

“Grace Descanso. I’m from the crime lab in San Diego, here giving a hand to the FBI, trying to get a bead on what happened.”

They shook hands all around. Wes smiled benignly up at her and blinked and his lenses caught the light.

“Is it okay if I sit, have a cup of coffee?”

“Oh. Sorry.” Wes pulled out the empty seat and she sat. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a pretty girl join us for breakfast. I forgot how to do it.”

“You pull the chair out,” Arnie squawked through his box.

“Even longer since a pretty girl joined one of us for breakfast after joining one of us for dinner,” Raymond said under his breath.

“You’ll have to excuse Raymond, he’s never had a pretty girl join him for
anything
. Arnie and me are widowers. Raymond’s like that Lonesome George tortoise in the Galápagos they keep trying to find a mate for. He’s way past confirmed bachelorhood.”

“At least I’m not crazy about interior decorating.” Raymond turned the page and kept reading.

Wes shifted in his chair. “So I like to freshen up my place, is that a crime?”

“How did you find us?” It was Arnie, the voice box man again. Through his glasses, his eyes were shrewd and penetrating.

Grace thought about the coupons in Bartholomew’s wallet in the police property room.

“I got to thinking,” Grace said. “Mr. Bartholomew was a widower. And breakfast is a pretty intense meal to make, especially when you’re on your way to work. I remembered my own grandfather used to gather with a bunch of guys once a week in a coffee shop. Every week for years.”

“Your grandmother was dead?” Raymond took a bite of bacon and a swallow of coffee.

“No, just she just made lousy pancakes.”

Raymond smiled. He had wavy silver hair he wore parted and age spots freckled his broad expanse of forehead. “So you went from restaurant to restaurant until somebody recognized that photo?”

“Something like that.”

A waitress stopped momentarily in her path across the floor holding steaming plates of food, caught Grace’s eye, and nodded. Grace nodded back.

“It was like that for us,” Raymond said. “How many years now?”

“Two,” Arnie said.

“And a couple of months,” Wes added. “Remember, Lizzie, Ted’s wife, died of cancer that summer and then we saw Ted there at the counter all by himself, looking like a lost kid. We folded him in. First thing he did, he got us all together and took our picture.”

Grace blinked.

“Didn’t even have a moment to prepare.” Wes shook his head. “I use this cucumber scrub if I know I’m going to photographed, gives my skin a nice, peachy glow. The rest of us have been coming here for what? A decade?”

“A decade,” Raymond agreed.

“When did you last see him?”

“Tuesday morning,” Arnie said. His finger on the voice box trembled. “We always get together Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays.”

Raymond nodded and shook his head. “Terrible thing.”

“Tuesday,” Wes repeated. “He didn’t show up Thursday, and didn’t call.”

“He always calls if he has to cancel,” Arnie said.

“And then he didn’t.” Raymond poured himself another cup of coffee.

“I get the special on Thursdays.” Wes smoothed a wrinkled hand over his shorts. “We’d just ordered from Janey. Raymond here had gone outside to buy the papers. We take turns getting them. At our age, it’s a long walk outside to that machine.”

“They ordered for me, they always know what I want.” Raymond nodded and the ropey skin cording his neck swayed. “I brought the papers back in, sat down, and then I opened mine up so I could see the whole front page at a glance. That’s the way I like to do it. That way I can tell if there’s something I want to avoid.”

“Janey was the first one to see it,” Arnie said. “Ted’s face was right there.” He took his finger off his voice box and punched a place on the current paper, right under the fold.

“Exactly,” Wes said. “The order book fell from her hands.” His hand on his knee spasmed.

“And then she collapsed,” Raymond said. “Slipped to the ground like she’d been clubbed. I used to be a farmer. We used to club hogs.”

“We don’t need to hear about the hogs again.” Wes cleared his throat loudly.

“Just like a hog,” Raymond said. “You enjoy your bacon, Wes. Well, it comes from somewhere.”

Arnie sighed heavily and soundlessly, his finger off the speaker button.

“Did he seem upset, when you last saw him?”

The three men looked at each other and away. Nobody spoke.

“You must be Wes’s daughter, Amy. I’m Janey.” The waitress smiled down at Grace. She was tall, almost six feet, with dishwater hair turning to gray and her posture was hunched, as if she’d spent her lifetime apologizing for some wrong that had never quite been explained to her.

“Oh,” Grace and Wes said simultaneously.

“I’m Grace Descanso,” Grace said.

“Grace is a hotshot investigator,” Arnie said, his voice squawking at the last syllable. He adjusted his finger on the box.

“Who needs a cup of coffee, Janey. If it’s not too much trouble,” Raymond said. “Anything else?”

“Small salad and a cheeseburger sounds good,” Grace said.

“And a small salad and a cheeseburger,” Raymond warbled.

“No dressing, no french fries, cheddar for the cheese, and a to-go box just in case.”

“No dressing, no french fries,” Arnie chimed in, “cheddar for the —”

“I’m not hard of hearing.” Janey reached over to a nearby empty table and filched a cup. She poured from a pot on the table. “You investigating Ted’s murder?” Her voice had a quaver in it. Her eyes were deep wells of suffering.

Grace studied her. “Sounds like he was a good man.”

Janey’s eyes filled and she nodded a little too hard as she put the coffee down in front of Grace. She took her time refilling the other cups.

“Mine’s unleaded, Janey, you know that,” Wes said, putting his hand over the top of his cup.

He was avoiding looking at Janey, they all were, as if by ignoring her emotions long enough, the threatened tears would go back to whatever hormonally charged netherworld they’d originated in, instead of hovering behind her eyes, threatening to spill.

“You knew him pretty well, didn’t you?” Grace said softly.

Janey reared her head back, and Grace caught a glimpse of the whites of her eyes. She expelled a breath and half laughed. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“Excuse me, miss? Miss.” It was a well-fed man in a booth with a busy family, eating. He raised his voice. “Could we have some more butter here?”

Janey straightened, and the terrible softness hardened into a mechanical smile. “Be right there.” She turned back to Grace, all business. “Cheeseburger and small salad coming right up.”

“And a little more decaf,” Raymond reminded her.

She lifted their breakfast plates into a stack on her arm and escaped.

“So now you know,” Wes said.

“We would have told you,” Raymond said.

“Were planning to,” Arnie squawked.

“But you’re a hotshot investigator, didn’t need our help.”

“Must be why they pay you the big bucks.” Raymond leaned back and smiled.

“Not that big,” Grace said. “I’m not springing for breakfast.”

“She’s good,” Wes said.

Grace pulled out her notebook and put a pen down beside it. “I need your names and phone numbers.”

“Yippee.” Raymond reached for the pen.

“Why you? Why do you get to be first?” Wes grumped. “He’s not the most important one, I want you to know that.”

A young male Hispanic server came over with a pot of decaf and refilled Wes’s mug. Interesting that Janey had sent somebody else over. Grace waited as they finished writing. She took back the notebook and positioned the pen.

“Okay, so what’s the story here.”

They leaned in, exchanged a look. “It’s all confidential, right?” Raymond said.

She narrowed her eyes. “Guys, if you know anything, cough it up. He was your
friend
.”

Another look. An imperceptible nod and Raymond said, “Well, we first noticed it a couple weeks ago. He and Janey had been an item for—what, maybe six months?”

“Seven,” Wes said. “This is November. Remember, I’d just given all of you flowers for Easter that I’d arranged—”

“Except I’m Jewish,” Arnie squawked.

“What, Jews don’t like flowers?” Wes folded his speckled arms.

“It’s not about the flowers, it’s about the event,” Arnie said.

“April,” Grace said. “They’d been an item since April. Ted Bartholomew and Janey here.”

Wes nodded, miffed, still not looking at Arnie. “Ted was getting all red-faced around Janey, and she was always standing next to him when she took our orders.”

“And Wes would notice something like that,” Raymond said. “Besides flower arranging and interior decorating over there at that night school, he was taking a class in body language.”

“Had just finished it. I wasn’t taking them all at the same time.” Wes tossed his head defensively. “So what if I’m exploring my feminine side. There’s nothing wrong with that. You guys could use a little of that yourself.”

“And so you noticed that Janey was attentive to him,” Grace prompted.

“Exactly. She’s here for the breakfast-lunch shift and, well, being us…” Wes squared his bony shoulders. “We started ribbing him about it.”

“We didn’t know there was anything to it,” Raymond said.

Arnie nodded. “Or we never would have.”

“I think our exact words were, ‘Teddy’s got a girlfriend, Teddy’s got a girlfriend.’” Wes rocked in his seat. “Only being guys, it was kinda high and singsong.”

“Like on the playground,” Grace said. She was poker-faced.

“Exactly.” Wes nodded. “Well, anyway, that’s when we realized, I saw it first, of course, and once you knew the signs, it was hard to miss, his face turning bright red, and this little grin.”

“So that’s when you realized—”

“There was more to it,” Arnie finished.

“Turns out they were dating, and had been for some time,” Raymond said. “He’d taken her on a tram ride.”

“And over to the Agua Caliente museum,” Wes said.

“And the Follies,” Arnie said.

Wes shook his head. “The Follies.” He fanned himself with his napkin.

“It’s all these retired blue-haired women in their twilight years, kicking it up in fishnets and flimsy little costumes,” Raymond explained.

“Not just the women, either,” Wes said.

His friends looked at him.

“Well, you need to be fair. The men in the Follies have had long and illustrious careers, too, and it’s no cakewalk wearing tights and an athletic cup so—”

“What happened at the Follies?” Grace asked.

Raymond sat back and folded his arms. Age spots covered the wrinkled skin of his forearms. He waited as Janey placed a cheeseburger and small salad in front of Grace and immediately retreated.

Grace doused her bun with catsup, closed the burger and took a big bite. She looked up. All three men were staring at her cheeseburger, mesmerized.

“Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be fifty again,” Wes said mournfully.

“The Follies,” Grace reminded. She lifted her cheeseburger to her lips and their eyes followed it as she bit into it.

“Oh, right, he took Janey opening night. Starts in November. Two weeks ago.”

“Only, well—”

Arnie leaned in and pressed the button on his voice box. In his eagerness, his finger slid off the
down
arrow and hit the arrow adjusting the volume up.

His voice pealed, “It was
over
. He had met somebody new. That’s what he told us on Tuesday.”

Diners looked at them. It was one of those slo-mo moments, where the forks froze halfway to mouths, people pouring syrup seemed to pause, the syrup itself seemed to freeze in its path to the plate.

Janey was bending over a nearby table, putting down plates. At the sound of Arnie’s voice, at what he said, she reared up, a look of pure panic on her face. She put down the last plate and fled through the double doors into the kitchen.

They watched her go. “That’s one way to find out,” Wes said.

“Any idea who it was?” Grace had finished half her burger by then and she took a long drink of water.

“We’ve got our theories,” Arnie squawked, “especially since—well, since he turned up
dead
. We’re pretty sure Janey didn’t do it. She doesn’t look like an ax murderer.”

There was a reverb problem developing in Arnie’s voice box, and the man with the family in the nearby booth turned around and glared at the words
ax murderer
. “I’ve got kids here, do you mind?”

“You shouldn’t use so much butter,” Arnie squawked. “It’s bad for your health, to say nothing of your kids. You want to make them huskier than they already are? Don’t you read the AP stories in the Desert Sun? We’re raising a nation of fatties and it starts with Y-O-U and those supersized waffles.”

The voice box was making him sound like some large, mechanical parrot. Grace half expected him to sing out:
Is that a tanker in the next booth, or is that just your wife?