“Did he talk about his wife much?” Joanna asked. “About his ex-wife?”
A curtain seemed to fall over Butch’s face. He didn’t answer right away. “The man’s dead,” Butch said finally. “It doesn’t seem right for us to be picking him apart when he isn’t even buried yet.”
“Don’t go invoking client/bartender privilege on me again,” Joanna said. “Dave Thompson is dead all right, and I’m trying to find out who killed him.”
“Hey, barkeep.” Three stools down the bar, a grizzled old man raised his glass. “Medic,” he said.
Butch hurried away to fill his thirsty customer’s drink order. He returned to where Joanna was sitting with a thoughtful expression on his face.
“As in murder?” he asked. “That’s right.”
Butch shook his head. “What the hell’s going on? First Serena Grijalva and now Dave Thompson. Does someone have a grudge against my customers, or what?”
Joanna reached in her purse and pulled out the videotape. “That’s what I was hoping you could tell me. Would you take a look at this and see if there are any other familiar faces on it?”
“You think someone’s knocked off more of my customers? If that’s the case, before long, I’ll be out of business completely,” Butch said. But he took the video and slipped the tape into the VCR that sat on the counter behind the bar. “What is it?” he asked as the television set blinked over from an afternoon talk show to the tape.
“The news,” Joanna answered. “From Tuesday night.”
“Oh, that,” he said. “I think I already saw it.”
Moments later, the now-familiar face of the studio anchor came on the screen introducing the equally familiar reporter, Jill January. As the taped newscast ran its course, Joanna watched Butch Dixon’s face for any sign of recognition. There wasn’t any in the first segment. Both Rhonda and Dean Norton’s flashed across the screen without any noticeable response from Butch. That changed when Ceci Grijalva’s face appeared in the second segment.
“Damn!” he said. “That poor little kid. What’s going to happen to her?” Then later, when Joanna’s name was mentioned, he looked and nodded. “I’ll bet this is the part I saw already.”
The taped Joanna Brady was just beginning to answer Jill January’s question when Butch Dixon clicked the remote.
“Wait a minute. Let me play that back. I don’t want to miss anything.”
The action on the screen slipped into reverse. Joanna Brady and Leann Jessup were walking, backward up the aisle at the end of the vigil rather than down it.
“Hey, looky there,” the old man down the bar exclaimed, squinting up at the television set. “Isn’t that there Larry Dysart?”
“Where?” Butch asked.
The old man pointed. “Right there, over that one broad’s shoulder. Nope, now he’s gone.”
Butch grabbed the remote and stopped the action once again. “Where?” he said.
“Right there,” the old man said. “Wait’ll they get almost up to the camera. See there?”
“I’ll be damned,” Butch said. “It is him. And he looks like he’s all bent out of shape. That sly old devil. He never once said anything about going to the damn vigil. If he had, I would have made arrangements
