Murder Has a Sweet Tooth (6 page)

She walked away, and really, what choice did we have but to finish every last bite of that cheesecake? If we didn’t, we would look suspicious. Then again, it seemed Eve and I weren’t the only ones at Swallows interested in the murder. Just as we finished up, a camera crew from Channel 4 arrived and set up outside. While everyone else in the small post-lunch crowd concentrated on the news crew, we left a nice-sized tip for Stacie to share with her fellow employees, sauntered over to the bar, and sat down.

Jason ran a bar cloth over the counter in front of us. “What, you two gonna wash down your cheesecake and coffee with a shot or two?”

I excused the sarcasm. He’d already seen us talking to Stacie, so there was no use pretending we were there just for the cheesecake. “I hear you were the first one in here this morning.”

Even though neither of us asked for it, he poured two glasses of ice water and set them down in front of us. “You’re reporters.”

I took a sip—and ignored the question. “You were here when the cops arrived. You saw the body. What I don’t understand is how anybody knew the woman was there in the first place. That alley’s a dead end.”

Jason looked over to where Stacie was delivering beers to another table. “Stacie has a big mouth.”

“She didn’t say anything that wasn’t true. But that’s not why you care, is it? You don’t want her telling the story because then you won’t have a chance to tell it. And to collect some big, fat tips in the process.” I propped my elbows on the bar and leaned forward. “You’d better tell me everything. You know, before Stacie spoils it for you. At least if you tell us, we’ll know we’re getting our information straight from the only person who was here when it happened.”

“I wasn’t here. Not when it happened.”

I had to control myself or I would have rolled my eyes. When it comes to murder, people are so literal. “I didn’t mean in the alley,” I explained. “I meant here. In the restaurant. Did you work last night?”

“I didn’t see a thing. I was too busy pouring Guinness all night.”

“And the guy they think killed the victim, did you pour for him?”

I wasn’t done with it, but Jason whisked my glass away. “I don’t pay any attention to where the drinks are going. I don’t have the time. The waitresses give me their orders and—”

“So if a waitress served them, they weren’t here at the bar, they were sitting at a table.” This fit with what Alex had told me. I scanned the restaurant, wondering which table was Vicki and Alex’s
usual
. “It wasn’t their first time here. They came every Tuesday.”

“And every Tuesday, we’re slammed.”

I was getting nowhere fast and nowhere wasn’t where I wanted to be. A man down at the other end of the bar signaled to Jason for a refill on his scotch, and I waited as patiently as I was able. With no cheesecake to nibble and no one to talk to, I felt self-conscious. There was a stack of Swallows coasters in front of the seat to my right and I grabbed one. I didn’t have to pretend to be interested in it. It was an attractive advertising piece, round and made of heavy cardboard, just a little bigger than the bottoms of the glasses stacked neatly behind the bar. It featured a sepia-toned photo of the sign that hung above the front door. The coasters were eye-catching, cheap souvenirs. I had no doubt many a patron left with one.

Once a business manager, always a business manager: I showed the coaster to Eve before I slipped it in the pocket of my jacket. “I just wonder. That’s all. I wonder how much they cost per thousand.”

By the time Jason came back, I was ready to steer our conversation in another direction. With any luck, Stacie was right, and he’d be more forthcoming when it came to making it sound like he was at the center of the morning’s excitement.

I caught Jason’s eye. “Stacie tells me you saw what happened this morning.”

“I might have.” He glanced down at the empty bar in front of me.

And I got the message.

I reached into my purse, fished out a twenty, and set it on the bar. Frugal business manager that I am, I kept my fingers on it. After all, I was paying for information. And so far, I wasn’t getting much of anything from Jason.

“The man who was arrested—”

“Drunk as a skunk. Even this morning.” Suddenly more talkative, Jason glanced briefly at the twenty before he returned his gaze to me and Eve. “When the cops tried to walk him to the patrol car, he couldn’t even stand up. They had to call an ambulance.”

This tallied with what Alex had said. He said he didn’t remember anything that happened after he ran out of the restaurant after Vickie. If he’d been that drunk . . .

That didn’t tally with what I knew about Alex. He liked a beer or two or three. But in the weeks I’d known him, I’d never seen him drunk.

“They say there was a knife in his hands.” Eve must have known I was lost in thought. That’s why she asked the question.

“Obviously not when I saw him.” Jason glanced at the money again before he looked toward three women who’d walked in the door. They were loaded with shopping bags and I heard them say something about martinis. I knew Jason had to take care of the paying customers before he worried about the nosy ones, so I had to move fast.

“How did the police know the body was there?” I asked him.

Jason grabbed one bottle of gin and one of vodka. “I heard one of the cops say something about an anonymous tip.”

That might be helpful. It might not. I filed it away for future consideration and drummed my fingers against the twenty. “Who worked the tables last night?”

“Jennifer does an extra shift on Tuesday nights.”

“And Jennifer is . . . ?”

He glanced over to where a platinum-haired waitress with a nose piercing had finished taking an order and was walking toward the kitchen.

Just before I popped up to follow her and signaled Eve to come along, I slipped my hand off the twenty.

Surprise, surprise! Jason, it seemed, was something of a magician as well as a bartender. The money disappeared in a flash.

So did we. While the door that led into the kitchen was still swinging, Eve and I slipped inside. We were just in time to see Jennifer go out the back door, and before anybody even noticed us, much less had time to stop us, we followed her outside.

By the time we got there, she was already angled against the back wall of the restaurant, lighting a cigarette.

“You worked last night. You waited on Vickie, the woman who got killed.”

Something told me it wasn’t the first time that day that Jennifer had been singled out. That’s why she wasn’t surprised by us or by what I was talking about. No doubt I’d see her quoted in the next day’s newspaper, or on TV that night. She naturally assumed Eve and I were just part of the army of reporters who had already talked to her that day. She pulled in a lungful of poison and before she let a stream of smoke out of her mouth, she turned her head away. I liked Jennifer already.

“Waited on them every Tuesday. I thought they were a cute couple.”

“But not last night.”

Jennifer flicked ash off the end of her cigarette. “Nothing seemed strange to me. Not until right before the woman ran out of here.”

I was getting good at picking up on nuances. “Alex didn’t drink more than usual?” I asked.

“Alex? Oh, the red-haired guy. Yeah, you’re right. I remember a couple weeks ago, he told me that was his name. He was really nice and really funny. I didn’t think—” Beneath a heavy coating of blush too orange for Jennifer’s pale complexion, she blanched, and I knew I had to get her back on track before she was derailed by the emotional strain of knowing a murdered woman and the man who supposedly killed her.

“He was drunk.” It wasn’t a question, but still, I hoped she’d answer.

She pulled on her cigarette for a couple long moments before she said, “I didn’t think so. I mean, I wouldn’t have served him if I thought he was. It’s against company policy. Did he have a couple pints? Sure. I delivered his last Guinness just as he and that Vickie woman were getting up to dance. But hell, I’d seen him drink more than that on some nights and still leave here as sober as a judge. He’s a big guy. He can hold his liquor. And he seemed fine to me. Right up until the very end, anyway.”

Jennifer’s cigarette was almost gone and I knew when it was, she’d have to get back on the floor. I didn’t wait to ask my next question. “What happened right at the end?”

“Well, they had a fight. I didn’t catch exactly what was going on, but . . .”

“But?”

Someone in the kitchen called out to Jennifer that the two bowls of clam chowder she was waiting for were ready. She took another long drag on her cigarette, dropped the butt, and ground it under the sole of her black work shoe. “Vickie said something about him not understanding and trying to push her when she didn’t want to be pushed.”

This meshed with what Alex had told us about how he’d confessed to Vickie that he wanted to date her and that Vickie had reacted badly. “And when Vickie said that, what did Alex say?”

“Well, that’s when he said he wished she was dead.”

The news hit me somewhere between my heart and my stomach, and for a while, all I could do was stare at Eve. Since she was staring right back at me, I guess she knew exactly how I felt. It wasn’t until I realized I was wasting precious seconds that I forced myself to speak. “He said—”

“‘ I wish you were dead.’ Yeah, that was it. I mean, at least I think it was. The music was kind of loud.” Jennifer turned to go back into the kitchen.

I stopped her with one last question. “Do you think Alex could have been drugged?”

It was Jennifer’s turn to be shocked, but she was a good sport. She thought about it for a minute. “I had a friend that happened to in a bar over in Reston,” she finally said. “Creep who slipped something into her drink tried to get her into his car, but a couple of us, we saw her leaving with him and we knew something was wrong. It’s scary, but yeah, you hear it happening to women all the time. But why would somebody drug a guy?”

It was a good question and, convinced it was important to find the answer, we thanked Jennifer and I called Tyler as soon as we stepped out of Swallows and were out of range of that news crew.

“Why am I not surprised you’re all over this murder like flies at a Sunday picnic?” he asked.

I didn’t take it personally. I mean, I did, but I didn’t let Tyler know it. Again, I asked what I’d asked the second he picked up his phone. “Is it possible Alex might have been drugged?”

Tyler thought about it before he said, “Anything’s possible.”

“He says anything’s possible,” I told Eve in a stage whisper before I spoke again in a normal tone of voice. “And you could find out, right? If you did some kind of blood test or something?”

“Paramedics drew blood. Procedure. But don’t get your hopes up. Those party drugs are hard to find after they’ve been in the system more than a couple hours, and nobody looks for them as part of any of the standard tests. You think it’s possible?”

“I think it explains why Alex can’t remember what happened after Vickie ran out of the restaurant.”

“If he’s telling the truth.”

No, Tyler couldn’t see me, but that didn’t mean I didn’t react to his accusation. My shoulders shot back. “Alex isn’t the type of man who lies.”

“Which type is that, Annie? The type who’s trying to save his butt after he gets caught red-handed? If you’re going to play detective, you’d better learn not everybody is what they seem.”

“Alex is.” I was certain of it. Jim wouldn’t be his friend otherwise. Rather than argue with Tyler and get nowhere, I decided to stay with the tried-and-true. Nothing appeals to a cop like logic. “If he is telling the truth, then he could have been drugged, right?”

“If there are drugs involved—and this is a big if, remember—I think it’s more likely Alex intended to give them to Vickie.”

It was the second time that afternoon that I felt as if I’d been knocked for a loop. Since we were out on the sidewalk, I stepped over to the side to stay out of the way of other pedestrians so I didn’t get bowled over, and I motioned to Eve to stand aside, too. She, however, wasn’t paying attention. There was a pricey boutique next door and Eve had her eye on a green cocktail dress with skinny straps and a neckline cut down to there.

I left her at it and collected my thoughts. When I didn’t make any sense of what Tyler was saying—when I couldn’t—I stammered, “What on earth are you talking about, Tyler? Why would Alex want to drug Vickie? He admitted that he liked her, that he wanted to get more serious with her.”

“Uh-huh.” I could picture Tyler sitting at his desk. When he sat back, I heard his chair squeak. “But what Alex didn’t bother to mention was that Vickie wasn’t just Vickie. She was Vickie Monroe, Mrs. Edward Monroe.”

“She was married?”

“Married? Oh, yeah. And from what her husband said when he came in to identify the body—poor bastard—happily married. They live up in McLean. I can pretty much place the address. It’s one of those nice homes in an upscale development. Nice husband, too. He’s the owner of some hotshot company up that way. You see what I’m getting at here, Miss Annie the Detective? Home, husband, two little kids, too, by the way. Vickie was a member of the PTA at their school. She volunteered with her little girl’s Girl Scout troop. She was a member of the local garden club. She took cooking classes with her friends.” He let me digest this information before he added, “Sounds like Vickie Monroe had a nice life, so if your friend Alex was looking to take things to the next level, I can see why Vickie wasn’t all that thrilled about having it ruined by a guy she met once a week for a couple laughs. And if Vickie refused, Alex might have—”

“No. It’s not possible.”

Tyler chuckled. Not like it was funny, like he expected me to argue and he wasn’t disappointed. “When you’ve done this as long as I have, you know that anything and everything is not only possible, it happens all the time.”