As I shook my head, trying to get my hearing back after her drive-by shouting, she gave me a big smile and said, “Hey, babe. I’m Cheryl. Want something to eat?”
“Thank you kindly,” I said. “You folks have onion rings?”
“Yeah. They’re real good.”
“Okay, then—”
She leaned across the bar and screamed, “Onion rings!”
Between the stainless shelves, I thought I saw a fry cook flip her the bird.
She smiled at me again and said, “You want ketchup, honey? Anything you want, you just let me know.”
“You know what,” I said, raising my voice because the exotic dance music was reaching its crescendo, “I’d actually like to know, by any chance is Kitty Ives working tonight?”
She pouted like a child, jutting out her lipstick-bright lower lip. “Aw, honey,” she said. “Don’t you like me no more?”
I laughed. She was fishing hard for tips, and I couldn’t blame her. “Aw, Cheryl,” I said, “course I do! I just wanted to say hi if Kitty was here.”
“Well, she ain’t. You’ll just have to settle for me.”
“Now, that ain’t settling,” I said.
“Aw, thank you.”
I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Dunk had come down to our end of the bar to hand her the platters of wings the fry cook had just flung onto the shelves. She took them, said, “Back soon, babe,” and winked at me as she left.
Dunk growled, in a voice several octaves lower than Cheryl’s, “Evening, Leland. Something to drink?”
“Yeah, thanks, Dunk.” It hadn’t occurred to me that our town’s foremost businessman, or second foremost since Blue Seas Yacht Charter had come in and classed the place up, would know my name. “Wish I could order something good, but I’m driving, so it’s got to be tonic water.”
Without his blank expression changing one iota, he said, “You want a maraschino cherry in that? Or maybe a little umbrella?”
I wasn’t sure if he was straight-up insulting my manhood or if I was supposed to be in on the joke. It seemed wise not to take offense at anything said by a man his size, so I laughed and said, “Sure. Make it a pink umbrella and a diet maraschino cherry, if you got some.”
I heard a faint noise, like a car engine backfiring a couple blocks away, and then realized he was chuckling. “Diet maraschino cherry,” he said, enjoying the line, and then he headed back up the bar to get my tonic water.
As he was coming back with a bottle of Schweppes and a glass of ice, the fry cook slung my plate of onion rings onto the shelf. Cheryl materialized out of nowhere with a bottle of ketchup, tossed her long hair, and started shaking the bottle up and down in about as transparent an imitation of a hand job as I’d ever seen. “It’s hard to get the ketchup to come out,” she explained, with a suggestive smile. “I just thought I’d help you get it going.”
I resolved to leave her more of a tip than I could afford, partly out of pity for any woman so desperate for cash, but mainly because she seemed like the talkative type. I had long since realized that waitresses knew everything about their regulars, and for an investigator, a talkative waitress who liked you was pure gold.
Dunk set my rings and drink down. “Table six,” he told her, pointing off behind me.
She looked. “Oh, shit,” she said. She set my ketchup on the bar, smiled at me, and said, “Honey, I got some impatient folks over there. But you need anything, you just let me know.”
To Dunk, I said, “Nice girl. Kitty’s nice too. You hire good waitresses.”
He shrugged and said, “I got standards. For them and the dancers.”
“I guess you do.” I took a drink of the Schweppes. “Say, when’s Kitty on shift next? I was hoping to say hi.”
He was wiping the bar with a rag but looking me straight in the eye. “I guess she didn’t tell you,” he said. “She gave her notice a few weeks back. She done hightailed it.”
“Oh, yeah? Huh.” I took another drink.
“For a guy that’s been sniffing around,” he said, passing someone’s meal over the bar to Cheryl, “you don’t know much.”
“I guess not.” I started in on the onion rings. “Cheryl was right,” I said. “These are damn good.”
“My grandma’s recipe,” he said. “And I will take it to my grave.”
I nodded like that was the right thing to do. Then I said, “Karl Warton took a lot to his grave too. Lot of things I wish I knew.”
“Hell of a thing,” Dunk said, “getting offed by your own kid.”
I chuckled. “Well, you’re excused from jury duty, I can tell you that right now.”
“I ain’t never done jury duty.” He sounded proud. He was rubbing the bar down almost gleefully. “Been called a couple times, but I always get out of it.”
“Well, you got businesses to run. You’re a busy man.”
He stopped washing the bar and looked at me. I was chewing an onion ring and felt suddenly self-conscious.
“Munroe,” he said, “I don’t butter up easy.” His voice was cold. “And I don’t trust folks who try. What exactly is it you want from me?”
I washed the food down with a sip of my Schweppes. If he was suspicious of flattery, a straightforward approach was the only way. I asked, “You know Karl well?”
“Beers till five, then Jack straight up.”
“You ever know him to indulge in anything else? Illegal stuff? I’m not talking about here,” I said, waving an onion ring to take in the whole place. “Just anywhere.”
I did not like the look he was giving me.
After a second, he said, “What folks do on their own time is not my business.” Then, perhaps thinking a chess move or two ahead, he added, “But no, that’s not something I ever recall seeing Karl do. Why, would that get his kid out of jail?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Sure it is. Life is simple. If there’s smoke, there’s a fire.
