She looked at the ceiling like the answer to all her troubles just might be there. Then she sighed: it didn’t seem to be. She looked back at me and said, “If he burned that thing down, would that mean for sure they couldn’t get him on the murder?”
I sighed. “I wish it was that simple. As of now, no, it’s not definitive, because we’re not exactly sure when Karl died. But it’s an important piece of the puzzle, because it makes it a whole lot less likely.”
“I tell you what,” she said. Her arms were still crossed, and she’d tilted her head, cocking her jaw at me defiantly. “If you find some other piece of your puzzle, so I know this’ll help him instead of hurting him, then you come back and let me know. Then I might just remember something else about that night.”
I looked her in the eye. I could tell she wasn’t going to say one more word right now.
“Okay, then,” I said. “I’ll keep digging.”
That evening, when I did my nightly swing past the Broke Spoke, Pat’s beat-up gray pickup was out front. I toured the lot for a minute, trying to find a parking spot that made me feel confident nobody was going to bang into Roy’s Malibu when they came out drunk and yanked open their door. The lot was crowded, and there was no such confidence to be had. I pulled back out and parked on the side street.
Inside, there had to be twice as many people as the last time I’d been there. A dozen or more guys were crushed up against the stage, stuffing some woman’s thong with bills. It seemed darker, somehow. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I looked around for Pat. I didn’t see him, and the colored lights didn’t help; they were flicking back and forth across the crowd, making the place feel like some shabby little knockoff of a rock concert.
Dunk wasn’t at the bar, and I didn’t recognize the angry little man who was. He glared at me when I ordered my Schweppes.
After a minute, my talkative waitress came and found me. Over the music, she yelled, “Hi, honey!”
“Hey, Cheryl! How you doing?”
“Better now you’re here!”
The bartender slammed my tonic water down—just the bottle, no glass—and went away. Cheryl threw her head back and laughed. “Oh my goodness,” she said. “Don’t pay him no mind.”
I smiled and said, “He don’t seem to like me much.”
“Oh, he don’t like nobody.”
I laughed. “Hey,” I said, “tell me—you ain’t seen Pat Warton tonight, have you?”
“Why you always looking for somebody other than me?”
“Somebody in addition to you,” I said. “And hell, he ain’t no competition.”
She laughed and pointed him out at a table by the wall.
“Thank you.” I pulled out my wallet and handed her a ten-dollar bill. “This here’s all I’m ordering tonight,” I said, holding up the tonic water, “so you just keep the change.”
“Aw, thank you!”
I gave her a nod and headed over to Pat.
“Hey there,” I half yelled. The music was louder here.
I could tell he didn’t recognize me for a second. When he did, he wasn’t friendly.
“I was talking to your brother the other day,” I said. “He said I should come over here some night and talk with you.”
“What about?”
“Mind if I sit down?”
He hesitated, then shrugged. When I set my Schweppes down, he smiled at it like I was an idiot and asked, “What the hell is that?”
“Got a medical condition,” I said. “It’s a damn shame, but it is what it is.” Lately I’d decided that was going to be my excuse. If I told a man who was drinking that I didn’t want to drink and drive, he might take it as an insult to his own choices. And if I told him I could not bear to drink after what had happened to my wife… well, at that point I might as well go straight to an Al-Anon meeting and give up on any kind of normal conversation.
He was watching the stage show without much interest. If he was really here that often, maybe it was all too familiar by now but he was still trying to avoid interacting with me.
“So, your brother told me something interesting,” I said. “About that Mustang Karl had.”
Without looking away from the stripper, he said, “Why the hell you still so interested in that?”
“I was just wondering,” I said, “were you at the card game where he won it?”
He turned his head so fast I thought he might get whiplash. It was too dark to be sure, but I could’ve sworn I saw a flash of fear in his eyes.
“Okay, I don’t know what you’re up to,” he said, pulling out his wallet. “But I got nothing to say to you.” He peeled off a twenty, slid it under his half-empty beer glass, and stood up.
I was glad I’d already paid Cheryl. Pat wasn’t three steps away when I stood up myself and followed him.
Out in the parking lot, the door slammed behind us and he turned on me. He looked around like he was making sure nobody else was in the lot, and then he hissed, “I don’t know what the hell you’re playing at, but I got nothing to say to you. Them card games, that was Karl and Pete’s thing. I never had nothing to do with that.”
I deployed my poker voice. I didn’t want him sensing that all my attention had zeroed in on that name, the trucker Kitty had mentioned. Terri was still trying to track Pete down.
“Look,” I said, holding my hands palms-out to say I was no threat, “I got nothing against you at all. If I saw you doing lines off a stripper’s ass, I’d look the other way. I do not care. All I’m interested in is how your brother got killed.”
“He beat his
