I don’t really know much about him, other than he won’t eat Chinese food and people say he cheats to win—cheated, I guess. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I could see it.”
It certainly had become a theme of the case.
“There’s no hard evidence of that,” Brooks said.
I looked down at my plate. No, there wasn’t. Because Daisy and I had it.
“There is,” I said quietly. “We found the playbook.”
Brooks’s eyes grew wide. “You what?”
“Daisy and I found a few things in his office, including the playbook.” Brooks and I had locked eyes again, only this time all I could feel was regret.
“What playbook?” Mister Wok asked.
“Never mind,” we both said at the same time. I tried to look away, but Brooks’s stare lingered on me a moment longer.
Mister Wok shook his head and tsk’ed. “You really think it was murder?”
“Yes,” I said.
“It’s an ongoing investigation,” Brooks said. “There are new developments all the time.” This last part he said to me.
We stared each other down for far longer than was comfortable for anyone sitting at the table. Finally, Mister Wok gazed out the window and said, “Well, look at that. Speak of the devil and she arrives.” He scootched out of the booth.
I turned just in time to see Wilma Louise walking through the front door, a designer purse looped over one arm. Her blonde hair was perfect—not a single strand out of place—and her dress looked like it had fallen right off the pages of a trendy catalog and onto her body. My silk capris suddenly felt like ugly old sweat pants in comparison. She had lifted one foot and was fiddling with the buckle on the side of one very high heel. I wondered if it would be poor form to excuse myself from the table to go ask her some questions. I had already made things uncomfortable enough with my admission about the playbook. I decided to leave her alone, and made a silent vow to catch up with her another time.
“Mrs. Farley,” Mister Wok cried, heading toward her, arms open. “I just heard. I’m so sorry.”
She stopped messing with her shoe, looked up in surprise, then burst into loud tears and unintelligible words. Everyone in the restaurant—all eight of us—stopped talking and stared. Some clucked their tongues in pity.
“Yes, yes, it was so sudden,” Mister Wok said as he crammed take-out boxes into a paper sack. She garbled another sentence at him and he nodded. “Oh, I know. He was a great guy.” She choked out another statement and he stopped, a fistful of fortune cookies poised over the open bag. “Heart attack?” His eyes flicked to Brooks and me and then back to her.
“You haven’t even told the widow the truth?” I whispered.
Brooks shrugged. “That’s Chief Henderson’s duty. I thought he had.”
“Apparently, you thought wrong. Just look at the poor thing. You should tell her.”
“Hollis. I like having a job. I’m not going over my boss’s head on this one.”
“Then maybe I’ll tell her myself, since you won’t.”
He reached over and took my arm before I could slide out of the booth. “Don’t.”
“She deserves to know what really happened. Just like the whole rest of the town. Only no. She deserves it more than the rest of the town. It was her husband. What if whoever killed him decides he wants her dead, too?”
“Just…let the police handle it, okay?”
“Ah.” My stomach dropped with understanding. “The chief doesn’t want her to know it was murder because she might guess that his son was the murderer.”
“No.”
“That’s…obstruction of justice. Or evidence tampering. Or…or I don’t know! I know it breaks a law, and that’s all that really matters, right?”
“No, it’s just…We’re really narrowing in on a suspect.”
I paused, surprised. “You are?”
“It’s not just an idea anymore—we’re starting to turn up evidence.”
Mister Wok had finished loading the paper sack and consoling the watery Wilma Louise Farley. He stapled a take-out menu and receipt to the bag, and handed it over. “How about I carry this to the car for you?”
She sniffed very loudly and followed him, her back hunched and twitching with hiccups.
“It wasn’t Kermit, if that’s what you’re thinking. He’s got video proving that he was in a whole other part of the stadium when it went down. Plus, his story seems legit to me.”
“You’re believing someone because they seem legit to you? Not very scientific, Hollis.”
Mister Wok and Wilma Louise had gone outside, but that didn’t stop her tears from being audible. I watched them make their way to Farley’s—and now her—enormous and highly expensive white truck. I could only imagine the bells and whistles inside that thing.
“We don’t think it’s Kermit, anyway,” Brooks said.
“I already told you it wasn’t Wickham.”
He waved away Wickham’s name. “No, it wasn’t. We never even considered him.”
“Well, then who, if not Paulie?”
He looked tortured, and I almost felt bad enough to drop it and go back to our getting-to-know-you conversation. Almost. “Fine. This is completely off the record.” I nodded eagerly. He licked his lips and glanced around. “Evangeline Crane.”
“Evangeline?” I barked, and then when he shushed me, lowered my voice. “Why on earth would Evangeline want to kill him?”
“We’re still trying to figure that out. We know that she used to work in the River Fork cafeteria, and from what we’re able to glean, they did nothing but fight with each other even then. Rumor has it he cut her son from the team, and that’s why she and her son moved to Parkwood.”
Wow, had I ever been fooled. Even though they’d found a hairnet in the parking lot that was almost certainly hers, I never in a million years would have suspected Evangeline.
Although…she did really seem to dislike Coach Farley. And she was pretty adamant about me leaving the case alone. And she was working on the day I’d dropped my notepad in the parking lot only to later find it missing. Had she been watching?
