she yanked open the oven door and took from it a steaming cake. “Caught it just in time,” she said, and put it down on the counter top. “I bake one every Christmas,” she said.
“What is it, ma’am?”
“An apple upside down cake.”
“I’ll bet it’s delicious,” Ollie said.
But she didn’t offer him any.
Instead, she suddenly burst into tears. Sometimes apple upside down cakes did that to people. Or maybe she had just realized her husband was dead. Either way, if she wasn’t going to offer him anything to eat, he had no sympathy at all for the woman.
“Ma’am,” he said, “weren’t you concerned when your husband didn’t come home last night?”
“He’s often gone a lot,” Clara said.
“Were you expecting him home?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Well, did he call to say hewouldn’t be home?”
“No, he didn’t. But that’s usual. I don’t worry about him. He comes and goes.”
“What does he do for a living, ma’am?”
“He sells books.”
“He works in a bookstore?”
“No, he’s a booksalesman. For Wadsworth and Dodds. The publishing house. His territory is the entire northeast corridor. He goes all the way up to Maine and down to Washington, D.C. He’s gone a lot.”
Ollie tried to think if there were any bookstores in Diamondback. He couldn’t recall a single one.
“Does he make stops in Diamondback?” he asked.
“I don’t know where he makes stops,” Clara said, and yanked a Kleenex from a box on the counter. “Can’t you see I’m crying here?” she said. “Don’t you have any sensitivity at all?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m trying to learn who might have killed him. Your husband wasn’t doing drugs, was he?”
“What!”
“I said …”
“I heard what you said. Howdare you?”
“Mrs. Hoskins, I was simply asking a question. Your husband was found in a garbage can in Diamon …”
“A garbage can!”
“Yes, ma’am, with a bullet hole in the back of …”
“A bullet hole!”
“Yes, ma’am, which all sounds very strange for a man who sells books for a living, wouldn’t you say? Did you know that he carried a gun?”
“A gun!”
“Yes, ma’am, a P-38 Walther was the make. In a holster on his right side. Was he left-handed, ma’am?”
“Yes. I have to tell you, Detective Weeks, I find all of this extremely upsetting.” She pulled another tissue from the box, and blew her nose. Ollie hoped she wouldn’t get snot all over the cake. She still hadn’t offered him a piece. “I can’t imaginewhat my husband was doing up there in Diamondback, or why he was carrying a gun, or why anyone would want to kill him. This is all simply beyond belief,” she said, and blew her nose again.
“Yes, well, I’m terribly sorry it happened, too, ma’am, or even that I had to report it to you.”
He was thinking he would like a piece of her apple upside down cake.
He was also thinking he would like to grab her ass.
“Your husband had a permit for the gun,” he said.
“A permit!”
She had a very bad habit of repeating the key words in everything he said and shouting them back at him, very loudly, as if he were deaf. Each time she did that, he winced. The kitchen was redolent with baking smells. He felt like grabbing that cake in both his hands and gobbling it down.
“You sure he wasn’t doing drugs?” he asked.
“No, I’mnot sure, how would Iknow if he was doing drugs or not? He was on the road two, three weeks at a time, for all I know he was robbing banks with his goddamn P-thirty-six …”
“Eight, ma’am.”
“Whatever, and shooting heroin in his veins, how the hell wouldI know what he was doing when he wasn’t here? He ends up in a garbage can, how the hell doI know what he was or evenwho he was?”
“That’s just my point, ma’am.”
