sense. They couldn’t have brought her out the way she was.”
Her mouth set in a straight line of disapproval, Edna reached across the table to the coffee cake and helped herself to a second slice. “It was a full half-hour before Molly’s lawyer came downstairs. He’s the same one who handled her trial.”
“Then what happened?” Marta asked eagerly.
“Mr. Matthews-that’s the lawyer-said that he was going to make a statement on behalf of his client. He said that Molly had met Annamarie Scalli in the diner the night before because she wished to bring closure to the terrible tragedy of her husband’s death. They were together for fifteen or twenty minutes. Annamarie Scalli left the diner while Molly paid the check. Molly went directly to her car and came home. She learned of Ms. Scalli’s death on the news and extends her sympathy to the family. Beyond that, she has no knowledge of what might have happened.”
“Edna, did you see Molly after that?”
“She came down the minute the police left. She must have been listening from the upstairs hallway.”
“How did she act?”
For the first time in this exchange, Edna showed a hint of sympathy for her employer. “Well, Molly’s always quiet, but this morning was different. She seemed almost like she wasn’t in touch with what was going on. I mean, it was like the way she wandered around after Dr. Lasch died, as though she wasn’t quite sure where she was or what had happened.
“The first thing she said to Mr. Matthews was, ‘They believe I killed her, don’t they?’ Then that Fran Simmons said to me that she’d like to talk to me in the kitchen, which was just a way of not letting me hear what they were planning.”
“So you don’t know what they talked about?” Marta asked.
“No, but I can guess. The police want to know if Molly killed that nurse.”
“Mom, is somebody being mean to Molly?”
Startled, Edna and Marta looked up to see Wally standing in the doorway.
“No, Wally, not at all,” Edna said soothingly. “Don’t you worry yourself. They’re just asking her some questions.”
“I want to
“Now, Wally, we don’t talk about that,” Edna said nervously, hoping that Marta would not read any significance into the anger in Wally’s voice, or notice the terrible scowl that distorted his features.
Wally walked over to the counter and turned his back on them. “He stopped over to see me yesterday,” Marta whispered. “He was talking about wanting to visit with Molly Lasch. Maybe you should take him over to say hello to her. It might satisfy him.”
Edna was no longer listening. Her full attention was focused on her son. She realized that Wally was fishing in her pocketbook. “What are you doing, Wally?” she asked sharply, her voice thin and high.
He turned to her and held up a key ring. “I’m just going to get Molly’s key, Mom. I promise, this time I’ll put it back.”
39
On Monday afternoon, waitress Gladys Fluegel willingly accompanied Detective Ed Green to the courthouse in Stamford, where she related what she had observed of the meeting between Annamarie Scalli and Molly Carpenter Lasch.
Trying to contain her pleasure at the level of deferential treatment accorded her, Gladys allowed herself to be led into the courthouse by Detective Green. There they were met by another youngish man who introduced himself as Assistant State Attorney Victor Packwell. He led them to a room with a conference table and asked Gladys if she’d like coffee or a soda or water.
“Please don’t be nervous, Ms. Fluegel. You can be a great help to us,” he assured her.
“That’s why I’m here,” Gladys responded with a smile. “Soda. Diet.”
Fifty-eight-year-old Gladys had a face that was creased with wrinkles, the result of forty years of heavy smoking. Her bright red hair showed gray roots. Thanks to her slavish devotion to on-line shopping, she was always in debt. She had never married, never had a serious boyfriend, and she lived with her contentious elderly parents.
As her thirties had yielded to her forties, and then her forties blended almost unnoticeably into her fifties, Gladys Fluegel found her outlook on life souring. Eventualities no longer seemed to hold even possibilities. She was no longer sure that someday something wonderful would happen to her. She had waited patiently for excitement to enter her life, but it never had. Until now.
She genuinely enjoyed waitressing, but over the years she had become impatient and abrupt with customers, at least on occasion. It hurt her to see couples linking hands across tables, or to watch parents having a festive night out with their kids, knowing that she had missed that kind of life.
As her resentful attitude had deepened, it had cost her a number of jobs, until finally Gladys had become a fixture at the Sea Lamp, where the food was poor and the patronage sparse. The place seemed to fit her personality.
On Sunday evening she had felt particularly edgy, due to the fact that the other regular waitress had called in sick and Gladys had been forced to cover for her.
“A woman came in sometime around 7:30,” she explained to the detectives, enjoying the feeling of importance it gave her to have these policemen pay such close attention, not to mention the clerk, who was taking down her every word.
“Describe her, please, Ms. Fluegel.” Ed Green, the young detective who had driven her to Stamford, was being very polite.
I wonder if his parents are divorced, Gladys thought. If they are, I wouldn’t mind meeting his father. “Why don’t you just call me Gladys? Everybody does.”
“If that’s what you prefer, Gladys.”
Gladys smiled, then touched her hand to her mouth as though she were thinking, trying to remember. “The woman who came in first…Let’s see…” Gladys pursed her lips. She wasn’t going to tell them that she’d been irritated at that woman because she’d insisted on a booth way in the back. “She looked like she was somewhere around thirty, she had short, dark hair, was maybe a size 14. It was hard to tell for sure. She was wearing slacks and a parka.”
She realized that they certainly knew what that woman looked like and that her name was Annamarie Scalli, but she understood also that, step by step, they needed to nail down the facts. Besides, she was enjoying all this attention.
She told them that Ms. Scalli had ordered only coffee, not even so much as a roll or a piece of cake, which of course meant that the tip wouldn’t be enough for Gladys to buy a stick of gum.
They smiled when she said that, but their smiles were benign, and she took them as encouragement.
“Then that really classy-looking lady came in, and right away you could tell there was no love lost between the two of them.”
Detective Green held up a picture. “Is this the woman who joined Annamarie Scalli?”
“Absolutely!”
“What exactly was their attitude to each other, Gladys? Think carefully-this could be important.”
“They were both nervous,” she said emphatically. “When I brought the tea to the second lady, I heard the other one call her Mrs. Lasch. I couldn’t hear what they said to each other, except little bits of talk when I brought the tea and when I tidied up a table near them.”
Gladys could tell that this information had disappointed the detectives, so she rushed to add, “But business was real slow, and since I was just moping around and there was something about those two women that made me curious, I sat on a stool at the counter and watched them. Of course, later I realized I’d seen Molly Lasch’s picture in the paper last week.”
