Dying Echo: A Grim Reaper Mystery (Grim Reaper Series) (16 page)

They went in, Death following, still grumbling about the game. Casey caught Bailey’s eye, where she was waiting on a table of two elderly couples. When she’d gotten the order she came over. “Well, who’s this?” She eyed Eric up and down.

Casey stiffened. “A friend.”

“Eric.” He held out his hand.

Bailey took it, cocking her hips and shoving her chest a little more forward, as if that were possible. She leaned toward him, keeping a hold on his hand. “I’m Bailey. And I didn’t know Casey had any friends. Especially ones I’d like.”

Eric slid his hand from hers. “Nice to meet you.”

Bailey giggled, and flung her hair over her shoulder, pulling her shirt collar farther open.

Death laughed. “Whew! She’s something, isn’t she?

“So,
Bailey
,” Casey said, “can we talk to the guys?”

Bailey smirked, as if she knew exactly what she was doing to Casey
and
to Eric. “Let me make sure Karl’s busy in his office. He’d say you couldn’t be back there because of regulations. Yeah, I know. As if this place is big on that. Give me a minute. I’ll be right back.
Eric
.” She smiled and flung her hair again as she spun in a slow half-circle and meandered away, hips swinging.

“Well,” Eric said when she was gone. “At least one woman around here likes me.” He gave Casey a half-smile.

“That’s your opening to say you like him, too,” Death said.

“Well,” Casey said, “I never would have expected Bailey to have good taste in men.”

Eric’s smile grew, but he ducked his head, like he was embarrassed.

Casey looked around at the tables in the dining room. Mostly they were empty, with dirty dishes and cups of melting ice, surrounded by greasy, ketchup-ridden plates. But there were still a few tables with customers—mostly older couples, not exactly the blue-collar crowd Alicia had avoided and Bailey depended on. Maybe they would be willing to talk about Alicia.

Casey stopped by the first table, but the couple there hadn’t known any of the waitresses other than Bailey. The next group, the two couples Bailey had been serving when Casey and Eric had arrived, remembered Alicia, but didn’t have anything to say other than that she was polite and efficient and always kept their coffee hot.

“Um, I think someone over there is trying to get your attention.” Eric gestured to a group of five women, none under the age of eighty. They waved her over from across the room, eyes glistening, red lipstick smudged from breakfast.

“I don’t know,” Eric said. “It looks a bit dangerous.”

“We’re living on the edge.”

They made their way to the women, who sat around three two-person tables that had been pushed together. Death had taken the sixth chair, and was trying to avoid the dirty plates and crumpled napkins piled in the empty spot.

“Honey.” The woman in the nearest chair clutched Casey’s wrist with a bony, bejeweled hand.

Casey’s first instinct was to twist the woman’s arm behind her back and shove her face onto the table, but she had enough control to realize that would have been over-reacting. And she probably would have snapped that frail old radius right in half. Instead, she swallowed her defensive response and forced a smile.

“What are you going around talking to everyone about?” Ring Lady said. “There’s nothing boring old Pearl and Ethan over there know that we couldn’t tell you ten times more about. It’s a group effort here, you know, with centuries represented. Sort of like those groups of really smart people who all try to figure out how to make the world a better place, or stop it from ending, or whatever—what are they called?” She flapped her hand at the others.

“A brain trust!” one hollered.

“Mensa!”

“A consortium!”

A tiny woman with tortoise-shell glasses winked at Casey. “Librarians.”

The first one let go and patted her arm. “So what was it you wanted to know about, sweetie-pie?”

Death poked a finger at some congealing eggs. “Other than why they’re here eating in this dive when it’s obvious they could afford higher class cuisine?”

“There was another waitress here before,” Casey said. “Alicia McManus. Early thirties, brown hair, pretty.”

Several tongues clicked, and there was general shuffling around the table.

“You mean that poor girl who got…killed?” Ring woman leaned in like it was a secret.

“Yes. Did you know her?”

“Of course we did, dear.” This was a woman across the table. She wore a bright red hat, and the hair Casey could see was pure white. “She was our waitress whenever the other girl wasn’t here, ever since early summer.”

They looked at each other, their eyes shifting back and forth between their friends and the back counter.

“She was very different from the other girl, you know,” Ring woman confided.

“Not so…how might I say it?” said Red Hat, tapping her mouth with her fingers. “
Forward
.”

“Bailey is forward with you?”

The smallest, oldest woman cackled from her seat beside Death. “Hardly, honey. But with those working men…she doesn’t leave much to the imagination, if you know what I mean. But then, she’s got to use what she’s got, doesn’t she? I find her entertaining. I thought at first she was all hat and no cattle, but I was wrong. She’s got
spunk
.”

“I like this one,” Death said with a hoot. “Bet she was just like Bailey in her day. I mean,
look
at that
hair
.” The shellacked hairstyle was dyed black, as in midnight, darkest of dark. It made the woman’s wrinkled face seem ghostly white—except for the red spots she’d rouged onto her cheeks—as white as the huge, pearl clip-ons hanging from her stretched out lobes.

Blackie wasn’t finished. “I’m sure your young man here would agree. Bailey certainly has something that keeps the men interested.”

They all swung to look at Eric, who went beet red.

“Well?” Blackie said.

He cleared his throat. “She’s very…” He stopped and looked to Casey for help because he obviously didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t exactly say “busty” or “sex-riddled” to a group of female octogenarians.

“Anyway,” Ring Woman said, saving him, “we liked Alicia. She was very sweet.”

They chorused agreements, except for one woman who hadn’t yet said anything. She huddled in the seat by the wall, her thin hair pulled back in a tight bun, causing her cheekbones to poke out in an almost skeletal manner. Despite the hair and skull-like appearance, she was probably the youngest of the clan, a mere eighty or so, and her teeth—or dentures—were bright white. Casey could see them, because the woman was wrinkling her nose so hard her upper lip left them exposed.

“Oh, don’t mind her,” the librarian said. “Eleanor never likes anyone. Even us.”

Eleanor pinched her lips shut. “That is unfair, Rita. I have been a part of this group as long as the rest of you, haven’t I? If I hated you all so much I certainly wouldn’t have kept coming to breakfast.”

Rita patted her hand. “Of course, dear.”

Eleanor yanked her hand away. “Don’t patronize me. We all know that woman was hiding something.”

“You do?” Casey said.

“Well, of course. Why else would she change the subject every time we asked her a question other than the name of the daily special?”

“As if any of the food here could be special,” Death muttered.

“Not like that Bailey girl,” Eleanor continued. “I know more about her and her goings-on than I want to know about anybody. Why the rest of them encourage her, I’ll never know.”

There was collective eye-rolling around the table, but no one actually responded.

“So did you get any information from Alicia?” Casey asked. “Besides the food stuff?”

Ring woman sighed. “Not anything we could
use
.”

“Use?”

“To make up our scenarios. Not with any detail, anyway.”

Casey glanced at Eric, who shrugged.

“You see,” Ring Woman continued, “we love to come up with stories. Like after you leave we’ll talk all about you two and why it is you stand five feet away from each other, even though you’re together, and why you, honey, are wearing clothes that obviously haven’t been washed in some time, while he looks neat and clean. Even shaven. And you didn’t eat breakfast here, which makes us think you probably ate it elsewhere, and probably together, but that doesn’t add up with the awkward way you behave around each other. If you’d spent the night together, you would be much more comfortable.”

Casey was feeling anything but comfortable under the scrutiny—and imagination—of such a crew. Eric had gone from his reddish blush to almost as white as Blackie.

“So what kind of scenario did you come up with for Alicia?” Casey asked, for multiple reasons.

Ring Woman shook her head. “She was like one of those formula romance novels. She came out of nowhere, no history, no friends, nothing she would share with us. She could have been an exiled Romanian princess, for all we knew.”

“Except she had light hair,” Red hat said. “Romanian princesses wouldn’t have light hair.”

“The only clue we ever got about her personal life,” Ring woman continued, “was that sweet boy who apparently found out more than we ever did.”

Ricky.

“And,” Red Hat said, “
that
made for some good discussion because obviously the
other
girl—” she glanced toward the kitchen again “—felt like he should be with
her
. They certainly were opposites, the girls, I mean. Alicia the cold, silent type, and Bailey the…well, you know.
Warmer
type.”

Casey sighed. “So you’ve got nothing for me. I guess Pearl and Ethan do know as much as you.”

“Hold on now!” Ring Woman sat up, her expression almost panicked. “I’m sure we have something. Girls? Huddle.”

They leaned in toward the center of the table and began talking all at once. It was hard to pick out anything specific—Casey could only hear snippets.

“What about that horrible haircut?”

“I still think those circles under her eyes meant something.”

“Pinto beans and hot links, remember?”

“Working those double shifts for Bailey.”

“Sweetest smile when she flashed it.”

“Like a long-tailed cat in a room of rocking chairs.”

“Hid those tips away like they were pure gold.”

“What about that time she…?

They went silent, and Ring woman sat up, triumphant. “We know something.”

“Will you share?”

She looked smugly over at Pearl and Ethan, who were tucking into their biscuits and gravy, seemingly oblivious to the battle that was being waged. Rings cleared her throat, but still the couple ignored her.

“Go ahead,” the librarian said. “Tell her.”

Rings leaned forward. “She called him
Wayne
.”

“Who? Ricky?”

Rings blinked. “You know her young man’s name?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. But anyway, it wasn’t him. The one she called Wayne. That was the dishwasher.” They all very obviously didn’t look back toward the kitchen. Casey did, though, and she caught a glimpse of the kid through the window. He saw her, and went back to work, acting like he hadn’t noticed her looking.

“That’s not his name?”

“Hardly. This one’s name is Samuel.”

“Sammy,” Red Hat corrected.

“He’s worked here since he turned fourteen. He’ll come bus our tables sometimes, when we want to stay for coffee and the girls are busy.”

Blackie’s eyes sparkled. “Alicia didn’t even realize what she’d done until she asked why he was looking at her funny. He’d followed her out with a dish tub, you see.”

“And what did she do when he told her?”

“Looked like she’d swallowed an orange. Went all white, and closed her eyes for a second. I thought she was going to faint.”

“We all did.” Rings was back in charge. “Samuel wasn’t sure whether to put down the dish tub to catch her, or go running for someone bigger.”

“He’s kind of little,” the librarian explained.

“Did Alicia tell you why she called him that?”

“Nope, although we did ask her.”

Of course they did.

“So.” Casey looked at Eric for affirmation. “I guess the name Wayne must have meant something to her.”

He nodded. “Doesn’t help us a whole lot, though, since we don’t know his last name.”

“Unless—”

“Nope,” Rings said. “We have no idea. But it’s a start, right? Better than Pearl and Ethan.”

“A hundred percent.” Since the old couple had given them nothing.

“Hey.” Bailey was gesturing to them from the kitchen door. She glanced down the little hallway that led to the back and waved harder. “Karl’s in the back. Come on, quick.”