“Do you want to know what we have or not?”
Now it was my turn to be uncomfortable. I wanted the information, that was for sure. But this guy was seriously pressing my buttons. And I wish he would stop looking at me with those gorgeous blue eyes.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go to the FastNHotz with you, but for information-sharing only. I’m not eating anything.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Chapter 12
I ordered a burger, large onion rings, and a chocolate milkshake. Stakeouts were hard work. I was hungry. Plus FastNHotz’s onion rings were legendary.
I was already three bites into my burger before Brooks sat down with his tray. He’d ordered an identical meal. I tried not to notice our similar tastes once again.
He nodded at my tray appreciatively. “The onion rings here—”
“Yep, I know,” I said, cramming a ring into my mouth.
He gazed around the dining room, taking it in. “There was a place I used to go to in my home town. Their onion rings were the best—super crunchy outside, soft onion inside, fried to a perfect brown. Probably terrible for you, and probably nowhere near as good as I remember them, but in my mind, nobody’s rings can touch theirs. You know what I’m talking about? You have a hometown favorite that can never be spoiled?”
“I’m from Chicago,” I said. “There are more five-star places to eat at than I could even think of.”
“No, I mean someplace like this place we’re in right now.”
I tried to imagine Mom and Aunt Ruta walking into a fast food place where the floors were slick from the grease. I almost laughed out loud. Mom and Ruta were always fretting about food-borne diseases they’d seen featured on mid-day talk shows. Not to mention, they’d have to first agree on a place to go. Someone could starve while waiting for that kind of war to resolve.
“Just a few hot dog places. I have to say, the people in this town don’t know how to do hot dogs. Who puts ketchup on a hot dog? It’s just wrong.” I downed another ring, then silently vowed to myself to slow down and savor the last three. As if. “So you’re from Kansas City?”
He had picked up his shake and was in mid-sip; he raised his eyebrows in silent surprise. He swallowed and put down the shake. “You’ve done your research.”
I shrugged as if it was my hard work and journalistic grit that got me the intel and not Daisy’s cherry chocolate chunk muffins.
“I did live in Kansas City for a time, yes.”
“What made you come here?”
His cheeks turned pink and he fiddled with his burger, looking very ill at ease.
He looked so uncomfortable, I decided not to pursue that one…for now. Mental checklist: there was a story there for later, when this murder has been solved and the truth revealed. Which reminded me…
“So we’re here. What do you know about the Coach Farley case?”
He seemed to take a long time chewing his burger, and even took a long sip of milkshake before answering. I was starting to think he was prolonging as part of his babysitting game. “He was holding a Mercedes hood ornament.”
“Got that. It’s Wickham Birkland’s. Nothing to do with this case, other than it was odd that he was holding it at that moment. He took it from the accident scene earlier in the day. I don’t think it was Wickham. There’s just no real motivation. If we went by who he was mad at, he’d be a serial killer. Next.”
He nodded appreciatively at my logic. “The witness said the car had rounded headlights, so we’re thinking—”
“BMW, Mercedes, Jeep—although you probably are staying away from that last one, for obvious reasons. Yeah, I know. What else do you have?”
“Well, if you already know everything.” He seemed half-exasperated, half-impressed.
“That’s it? That’s everything? I figured for sure the police would find evidence that I didn’t see with my naked eye right there in the parking lot in the middle of the night. Surely there’s something else.”
He shrugged. “That’s it. That’s all I know about, anyway. The hood ornament, the headlights, the hair net—”
I put down my burger, reached over, and grasped his arm. “Hold up. The hair net?”
He glanced at my hand and I jerked away, blushing. It was the first time we’d touched. And It wasn’t unpleasant.
I turned it into a joke to cut the awkwardness. “Is it considered assaulting an officer to leave greasy fingerprints on his uniform sleeve?” I forced a laugh and brushed off his sleeve where my hand had been. My cheeks were burning. Really, Hollis? Assaulting an officer?
He chuckled, then cleared his throat. “There was a hair net. We didn’t find it until the medical examiner cleared him and the ambulance took him away. He was lying on it.”
Darn it, I knew I should have stayed longer. “And…?”
“It had a few long, red, curly hairs in it. That’s all I know.”
I had seen a hair net with long, red, curly hairs underneath it. On Evangeline. I tried to remember whether or not she was still wearing her hair net when she joined me at the accident site. Maybe she wasn’t.
Could she have been the one who…? No way. Not her. She didn’t seem like the murdering type.
Although she had issued me that weirdly severe warning about staying out of the case. And she seemed to have opinions on Coach Farley. Lots of them.
“And have you followed up on that hair net?”
He shook his head. “Chief Henderson believes it was probably already in the parking lot and the coach just fell on it. There’s always all kinds of trash in that lot. The Boy Scouts only come out for clean-up once a month.”
True, I remembered the litter I’d seen on the crime scene. Cigarette butts, discarded take-out menus, pompom strands. Still, beneath the dead coach seemed awfully conveniently placed. And everything—even if it was obvious trash—needed to be examined as possible evidence.
“So you haven’t interviewed the concession stand
