Dying Echo: A Grim Reaper Mystery (Grim Reaper Series) (18 page)

He lifted up the lid and flipped the eggs again, this time transferring cheese to the burned patches on the grill. “Why do you care?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, just tell us your name.”

He waited several seconds, then grunted, “Pasha.”

“Okay. Pasha. What can you tell us about Alicia?”

“I already said. Nothing. We weren’t exactly friends.”

“You didn’t like her?”

“Didn’t feel any way about her. She worked. I worked. This ain’t exactly a social club.”

The toaster popped, but Pasha ignored it, instead dividing the egg pile into two revolting mounds, scraping them up, and slopping them onto plates. He yanked the bread from the toaster, buttered it, and threw it beside the eggs.

“Order up!” he yelled, and slid them into the opening.

Bailey appeared and lifted a piece of the toast. “Toast is supposed to be unbuttered. And whole wheat.”

“Oh, for—Do we even have whole wheat?” He grabbed the plates, threw the toast into the trash, and rummaged through the bags of bread on the counter. He found two pieces that looked like they might be wheat, and pushed them into the toaster. He looked up at Casey like he’d forgotten she was there. “I didn’t know her except to give her plates of food, okay? We never talked. She was all thinking she was better than me, so I didn’t give her no time.”

“Did you know Ricky?”

“Who’s that?”

“Her boyfriend.”

“Saw him a few times. Hear he’s the one who done her.” He shrugged. “Don’t make no difference to me if it was him or that other guy.”

Casey went still. “What other guy?”

“The one who was here the same week she got killed.”

“Who was he?”

The toaster popped and Pasha snatched the bread out and threw it on the plates. He grabbed a knife, stuck it in the butter tub, and pulled out a glob of butter. He stopped suddenly, knife in the air, then shoved the knife and the butter back in the tub. “Order!” he yelled, and Bailey came back just long enough to take the plates.

“
Who was he
?” Casey said again.

“Don’t know. He came up the alley out back when I was out for a smoke. Said he was looking for Alicia, and showed me a picture, but it didn’t hardly look like her, like it was from a long time ago. I told him she wasn’t here. I asked him should I give her a message, but he said no, he’d find her himself.” Regret filled his eyes for a moment. “Maybe he did.”

“Did you tell her about him?”

“Soon as he left I forgot he’d even been here.”

“Remember now. What did he look like?”

“I don’t know. Older guy.”

“Fifty? Sixty?”

“How should I know? It’s not like I asked how old he was.”

“Gray hair? Wrinkles? Glasses? Nice clothes? Nasty clothes?”

He held up his hands. “Lady, I don’t know. I didn’t notice. I told you he was old, that’s everything I remember.”

“Everything?”

“I guess his hair was gray, okay? And when he left he said, ‘Ya’ll have a nice day,’ or something lame like that. Happy?”

Happy? Hardly.

But suddenly Casey saw a speck of light at the end of what she’d thought was a very,
very
long tunnel.

Chapter Nineteen

“Hey, you two.” Karl followed them out to the parking lot, and they stopped by their car. He poked a finger at them, his entire body stiff with anger. “What’s your business here? Why do you keep coming back?”

“Alicia.”

His eyes narrowed. “What about her? She was a legitimate employee of this restaurant.”

And suddenly Casey got it. “Look, Karl, we’re not here to bust you for hiring her with fake information.”

“Who said it was fake?”

“Seriously. It doesn’t matter. We don’t care. All we want is to find out who killed her.”

“Well, it wasn’t me. And it wasn’t anybody here.”

“Never said it was.”

He glared at her for a few more moments, then relaxed his stance enough he didn’t look like he was going to explode. “You find out anything?”

“Nothing for sure. But maybe something. If it pans out, you’ll be one of the first to know.”

Sorrow shone in his eyes. “I did like her, you know.”

“Seems like most people did.”

He took a deep breath and let it out. “So are you done here?”

“I think so.”

“Give a call if you need anything else.”

“Will do. Thanks.”

He nodded shortly and headed back toward the front door.

“Hey, Karl,” Casey called.

He looked back.

“You might want to think about hiring a different cook.”

He shook his head. “You think I don’t know that?” And he disappeared behind the front door.

“Come on,” Casey said, jumping in the car. “We need to do some research.”

“On what?”

“The South. That’s where our killer was from. Maybe. If we’re lucky. And if the cook wasn’t making up that entire conversation.”

“The
south
?”

“Of course, the south. Who else says, ‘ya’ll?’”

“Isn’t that kind of stupid, though? I mean, to say something like that, if he’s a killer and he’s trying to keep a low profile. Somebody not from the South would remember that. Even somebody like Pasha.”

They were driving back to Ricky’s place.

“But the South is a big region,” he said. “Knowing he’s from ‘the South’ doesn’t exactly help us.”

“Just wait.”

“What? You know something else?”

“Not yet.”

She was out of the car almost before it was parked, and jogged into the house. Eric followed, catching up to her in the kitchen. She whipped open the pantry door and dug Ricky’s secret stash out of the cleaning supplies. “This is the candy he was hiding. And the book about Carol Burnett. What do they have in common?” She scoured the small print on the Chick-O-Sticks wrapper. “There. Made in Texas.” She tossed that aside and flipped through the biography. Eric read over her shoulder, and pointed at something on the inside flap. “Says Carol was born in Texas.”

Casey couldn’t breathe. “
Texas
.”

“Is that our place?”

Casey dropped the book onto the counter and pulled Ricky’s scribbled note of sayings from her pocket. “Turn on your Internet. See if either of these come up.” While he set to work, she scoured the copy of the photo they’d gotten at the restaurant, but there was nothing that screamed “Texas.” The license plate on the car was hidden by the man’s body, and the visible background was made up of the sort of things one might see anywhere. Trees, sky, clouds. Nothing partial to any sort of specific geography.

Eric tapped on his screen and a web site came up. “Here it is.
Texas Monthly
. They have an article all about the things Texans say.” He held out his iPad. “It’s right there.
Fine as cream gravy.
It means you feel happy.
”

“And the other one?”

He scrolled down. “
Sharp as mashed potatoes.
Way of saying someone’s not too bright. Hey, you okay?”

Casey sank onto one of the kitchen chairs. “I didn’t really think we’d find anything. Especially not from some loser like that cook.”

Eric watched her like he was afraid she was going to do something rash. When she stayed put he said, “So now what? Do we tell the police?”

“Tell them what? That this woman who isn’t named Alicia McManus was maybe from the gigantic state of Texas at some point in her life?”

“I guess.”

“But we don’t even know that for sure, do we? Just because Ricky had these weird things hidden away. We don’t even know they had anything to do with Alicia at all.”

“You mean Elizabeth.”

Casey looked at him.

“It’s her name, right? We should probably use it.”

“Not around here. We start calling her that, people will wonder how we know.”

He looked at his iPad, then back at her. “And how exactly
do
we know her real name?”

“I thought you were going to wait until I was ready to tell you.”

“Aren’t you ready?” Casey jumped as Death’s whisper froze her ear.

“What’s wrong?” Eric’s eyes went wide.

Death swooped to the other side of the table and swirled around Eric’s head, stopping in front of his face. Eric shivered.

“Stop it,” Casey said.

“What?” Eric said. “Shivering? It’s cold in here.”

“All of a sudden.”

“Well, yeah. How come?”

Death reformed beside Eric and sat blinking at Casey, mimicking Eric’s posture even though Death didn’t have a chair. Didn’t need one, apparently. “Are you going to tell him? Or are you still ashamed of me?”

Casey rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be.”

“It’s okay,” Eric said. “You’ve been under a lot of stress the past few weeks. Or, well, years.”

Casey looked into his eyes and saw nothing but kindness and honesty.

“Oh, sure,” Death said. “He wins you over because he’s so
nice
.”

“I’ll tell you soon,” she said to Eric.

He held her gaze for a few moments. “Okay. When you’re ready, I’m here.”

Death made a gagging motion and was instantly on the counter, holding the Droid. “Hello, suicide hotline? I’m about to slit my wrists. The reason? Excessive sappiness.”

“So the cops,” Eric said. “Are we telling them?”

Casey pushed herself from the chair and looked out the back window toward the mountains. “We should, I guess, but I don’t know what I’d say. Telling them Ricky had a few Texas-themed items hidden away isn’t exactly a smoking gun. I wish we knew what he was doing with those things.”

Death laughed. “I guess the second Texas saying is supposed to apply to
you
. The one about being sharp as mashed potatoes. Or how about this one?” Death pointed at the Droid, which now displayed a site on the Internet. “‘
If dumb was dirt, she’d cover about an acre.
”

Casey shook her head, confused.

Death huffed. “Come on. Ricky’s not the
dead
one, remember? He may be in jail, but you can still ask him about the stash.”

Casey closed her eyes and pushed on her temples.

“What?” Eric said.

“I’ve been an idiot. We need to go back to jail.”

“Can we try something else first?” Eric poked at the iPad. “I want to see if Alicia shows up anywhere. Whoa. This says there have been hundreds of Elizabeth Mann’s in Texas. Although this one died in 1828. And this one five years ago.”

“Can we look at it on the way? Will the Internet work?”

“It’s 4G. I can get Internet anywhere.”

Death jumped down from the counter. “That is so
awesome
. Remember the old days when they used telegraphs? Or smoke signals? It took so long to forecast the weather that by the time they were done with the message a whole new front had gone through. Now—”

“—they’re never right anyway.”

Eric looked up. “One of them might be. But fine, let’s go. You want to drive, or check these over?”

Casey chose to study the names, and was both amazed and frustrated by the wealth of information available. “There’s no way to know which of these people is the right one. Except for the ones who are already dead, we know they’re not her.”

“Um, this Elizabeth Mann is dead,” Death reminded her.

“A baby,” Casey continued, “obviously not the right one. Old, dead, married to a Puerto Rican—although I guess we don’t know she wasn’t…nope, found a wedding photo. Definitely not her, unless her race has changed.”

By the time they arrived at the jail she’d made a shortlist of seven Elizabeth Manns who could fit the profile but had no photos. There were still more Elizabeths to go, but she was out of time, and who knew if they should even be concentrating on Texas, anyway.

“Think I could take this iPad in to ask Ricky questions?”

“You can ask.”

No go. Nothing but herself and the clothes she was wearing.

“I can show him mine,” Death said. “Except that would be pointless, since he wouldn’t be able to see it.”

Casey took as many notes as she could, finishing them up while they sat in the waiting room. Not being on that day’s visitor’s list meant it took longer to get through the screening process, but since she was Ricky’s sister, and she’d been there so recently before, they let her through after only forty minutes’ wait. Eric had to stay in the waiting room.