Audrey scrunched up her face. “I can’t recall, exactly. Why?”
“I thought maybe she’d remember something from back then. Maybe not.”
Audrey glanced over at Elvis, then back at me. She didn’t tell many tales, certainly not with Elvis within earshot. But her look told me enough.
“Does she work over at Sandy Cove?” I said.
Audrey nodded yes.
“At the IGA? Think it’d be worth my trip?”
“She’s at Glen’s now, dear. And yes, my guess is, it would be worth it. Be careful in the snow.”
I stopped for a minute at the Pilot on the way to my truck. Tillie had called and said she’d be late. Joanie was going to the clerk’s office to check on Blackburn’s old property records, then to Soupy’s arraignment. I reminded her to keep working the Canada angle and see what else she could find out about Leo’s computer. When my phone started ringing, I figured it had to be Trenton and headed out.
In the parking lot I spotted Tatch trudging past and shouted at him. He heard me through his sweatshirt hood and veered in my direction, hands jammed in his jeans pockets. His name was Roy Edwards, but Soupy had long ago dubbed him Tatch, short for attachment, as in vacuum cleaner attachment that sucks pucks into the net. Although he worked for Soupy at the marina, he tended goal for Boynton’s Land Sharks and had skated the length of the rink to join the melee the night before.
“Hear anything on Teddy?” I said.
“Ain’t woke up yet’s all I know.” A tiny circular scar pocked his forehead, the lingering imprint of a goalie mask screw that had been pressed into his head by a Loob slapshot. “Total drag about Leo, man.”
“Yeah.”
“So what the hell are the cops thinking, taking Soup in? Seems to me, Leo kills himself, case closed, he whacked Jack.”
I reached through my truck window and cranked the ignition.
“Maybe the cops figure Soup done it to Jack because he damn near killed Ted,” Tatch continued. “But, hell, Soupy could barely kill a flea. Too drunk.” Tatch mustered a chuckle. “Him and Teddy don’t get along so well, but shit, you don’t need to half kill someone. Man, did you see that? He wound up on him like Babe Ruth.”
“Did you see Soupy yesterday?” I said. “Did he say anything?”
“Funny.” Tatch scratched at the silver whiskers on his neck. “Before a game, Soup’s usually giving me all sorts of shit about how he’s going to light me up. But yesterday he didn’t say nothing. Hell, he barely come out of his office. I asked him if he wanted to go over to Enright’s for a burger and he said, naw, he had to go to the rink and then he had the zoning thing.”
“He went to the rink during the day?”
“Said he had to check in on Leo.”
“For what?”
“You know, some damn superstition.”
Soupy had Leo sharpen his skates every Monday, whether they needed it or not.
“About when did he go over?”
“I guess about one or so. This some sort of interview?”
“No. I was over there myself about then and wondered why I didn’t see him.” So Soupy had discovered Leo gone, then apparently changed his mind about going to the zoning board. I got into my truck. “I’ll see you around.”
“Yeah, better get to work,” Tatch said. “Looks like I’m the boss today.”
Glen’s Supermarket anchored a strip mall along the highway a mile from downtown Sandy Cove. I parked next to a beeping dump truck. Barbara Lampley was working the register in the cash-out lane next to the bakery. I waited in line behind a woman unloading a cart full of groceries. Her little boy sat in the cart gnawing on a glazed doughnut.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi there,” I said.
“Hi.”
“Sir?” Barbara Lampley said. “The express lane is open.”
“That’s OK,” I said.
I waited while Barbara Lampley shared a laugh with the woman in front of me, who was telling how her husband had nearly sliced off his arm while using a chain saw to cut an old sofa in half so it would fit it in the back of his pickup. Barbara Lampley had a big, throaty laugh that I was sure they could hear at the other end of the store. She was tall and big-boned in her creamy yellow Glen’s smock, with a fresh, childlike face barely betrayed by the spidery crinkles at the corners of her eyes and the silver wisps in her chestnut hair. I could see why Dingus, and maybe Blackburn, had fallen for her. I wasn’t interested in her affair with Blackburn so much as how Dingus might have reacted. It wasn’t the easiest thing to ask about, but I had nothing to lose.
When the mother and her boy left, I grabbed two Snickers bars and set them on the conveyor belt. Barbara Lampley watched the candy bars feed toward her. “That do it?” she said.
“Yes,” I said. I looked around and saw no one was behind me. “You’re Barbara Lampley, right?”
“Yes?”
She smiled while the rest of her tried to remember whether she should recognize me. I’d never gotten used to confronting people cold, especially people who’d never had their names in a newspaper and didn’t care if they ever did.
“Gus Carpenter,” I said, offering my hand, which she took. “I’m with the Pilot. ”
“The newspaper? Oh.”
“Sorry, ma’am, I won’t take much of your time. I’m working on a story-”
“Wait. You’re Bea and Rudy’s boy.”
It felt strange but good to hear my father’s name again. “Yes, ma’am.”
“How is your mother? I haven’t seen her in ages.”
“She’s good, thanks.”
“We used to go to bingo together. That woman can talk, I’ll tell you. I used to think she was trying to distract me from my bingo cards, but she’s just your basic gabber. I mean in a good way. She’s so nice.”
“Yes, she is, ma’am.”
She finished ringing me up and handed me the candy bars in a small brown paper bag. “Give your mother my love, won’t you?”
“I will.”
I stood there holding the bag.
“Is there something else, um-?”
“Gus. Yes, ma’am, actually, I’m working on a follow-up story to the arrest last night-”
“And you want to ask me about Jack Blackburn.”
“Well, not exactly, ma’am, I-”
“Please call me Barbara, Gus. I’m not that old yet. You obviously know I knew Jack, and Leo. Not very well, it turns out, but if that’s what you’re looking for, I don’t know that I can help you very much.” She gave a little laugh and put a hand to her breast. “I’m not a suspect, am I?”
I almost laughed myself. “No. No, ma’am-that is, Barbara-not that I know of. I was actually hoping to ask a couple of questions about Sheriff Aho.”
Her voice softened then. “What is it you want to know?”
I looked around the store. I didn’t want to interview her there. “I wondered, do you think we could-?”
“Never mind,” she said. She turned around and shouted down the row of cash-out lanes, “Bert, I’m going out for a few.” She set a This Lane Closed sign on the conveyor belt and told me, “This way.”
At Mariner Mike’s, the submarine sandwich shop next door, Barbara Lampley pointed me to a booth and asked what I wanted.
“Just coffee,” I said. “I’ll get it.”
She ignored me and walked briskly behind the counter, where she told the teenage girl working there, “Hello, dear,” before she poured a coffee and a Diet Coke. She carried the drinks back to the booth.
“You must be a regular,” I said.
