by Thom Whalen
* * *
Chief Albertson finally got around to questioning Gwen on Friday afternoon. This was the biggest case that Wemsley had ever seen but it still took him that long to get around to interviewing the victim’s estranged wife. Albertson was no ball of fire. Hassling kids was more his speed.
I was in the back showing the new new guy, Rick, how to use the mill to mash potatoes when Gwen called me to the order counter.
The old new guy, Halliday, was already history. When Mrs. Everett had come in on Thursday morning, she’d informed Randal that she’d let Halliday go at the end of his shift on Wednesday. “He was worse than useless,” she said. “He kept getting in my way, slowing me down.”
The thought of Mrs. Everett cooking any slower was patently ridiculous and I had to turn away so that she wouldn’t see my smirk.
Randal had more self-control. He kept a straight face and said that he’d find a replacement right away.
The replacement was Rick and I knew from the minute I started teaching him the ropes that he was even less useful than Halliday. He found the concept of mashing potatoes with a vegetable mill arcane. The knack of it eluded him. The reason why eluded me. Nothing could be simpler than throwing the chunks of potato into the top and turning the handle. We’re not talking quantum mechanics. “Clockwise, Rick. Always turn the handle clockwise. To the right. To the right.”
But I had to get the fresh meat ready by next Wednesday because, come hell or high water, Randal and I would be searching the Adirondack Mountains for an outlaw biker gang and Rick would be in the kitchen helping Mrs. Everett cook.
Lunch was over and Gwen was about to go on break so she had come to the counter to ask me to cook a chicken breast and coleslaw for her. She wasn’t calling me C.B. any more, for which I was grateful. Instead, she had begun calling me Gunner. When Randal said it, it sounded like I was his buddy. When Gwen said it, it sounded like she was laughing at me. But when Katie heard Gunner she didn’t snicker like she did when she heard C.B., so that was a mercy.
Looking past Gwen, I saw Albertson come in the front door. He waved Katie away and looked around. The front was mostly empty so he didn’t have to look hard to find a table. When he saw Gwen, he came straight to the counter.
“We need to talk,” he said to her.
“Okay,” she said.
“You can come with me.”
“Here is fine. I’m going to take my break in a minute.”
Albertson looked at me on the other side of the order counter, then back at Gwen.
“I don’t care if he hears what I say,” she said to him.
“You didn’t tell me that you were Billy Paul’s wife.”
“No? It must have slipped my mind.”
“That’s a pretty important fact to forget when you’re talking to the police during a murder investigation, don’t you think? That you’re the widow of the victim?”
She snorted. “Billy Paul hasn’t been important to me for years. I hadn’t seen him for more than a decade. He took off when my youngest was a newborn baby and that was fine by me. I was better off without him.”
“But he came back.”
“He thought that he could move back in with me. I set him straight and that was the end of it.”
“When was that? That you set him straight?”
“A few days before he disappeared.”
“How many days?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what day he disappeared. I don’t keep a diary and if I did, Billy wouldn’t be important enough for me to write anything down about him. All I know is that I hadn’t seen him for a while when you came around and said that he was dead.”
“How, exactly, did that go? You setting him straight?”
“Let’s go talk outside,” she said. “There’s a picnic table around the back.” She looked at me. “Bring me my chicken when it’s ready.”
A few minutes later, when I brought the chicken and slaw out to the picnic table, Gwen was saying, “…clocked me one. I had a black eye for a few–” She stopped talking when she saw me coming.
Albertson was sitting across from her, leaning close to catch every word. A notepad was open on the table in front of him.
When I set the chicken in front of Gwen, I could see that the page was half-filled with scrawl. I wondered if Albertson could read his own notes.
They both watched me until I went away. The last thing that I heard before I walked away was Albertson saying, “Go on. Billy hit you…”
It was almost an hour before Gwen came back inside. She went straight to Randal and said, “He asked all about me and Billy. Then he asked about you and Billy. I didn’t have much to say about that. He didn’t ask about me and you at all.”
Randal nodded. “He’ll be back. He’s got the scent now. He’ll find out where it leads, quick enough.”
I snagged Katie when she was leaving for the day and asked her if she wanted to go out again.
She said that she did.
She looked kind of vague about it. But she often looked kind of vague when she was talking to me. I was happy enough with, “Yeah, okay,” vague though it was.