chapter Eight
The restaurant where Alicia had worked was called The Slope, and it seemed to be walking a slippery one. Casey took a booth at the back, where she could sit against the far wall and see both the front door and the doors to the kitchen and unisex bathroom. It resembled the restaurant from the day before, where Casey had found the pay phone amidst the competing smells of stale fry oil and dead rats. She could hardly imagine her mother there, trying not to touch anything, and only picking at the food she was served for fear of contracting some deadly—or just gross—disease.
“You know,” Death said. “I think I’m going to leave you to it. I’m feeling all…greasy.” And Death evaporated in a cloud of french-fried mist.
After a few minutes of examining the cover of the not-quite-clean-enough menu, Casey studied the waitress who sauntered over to her table. Her name tag had been made with an old-fashioned Labelmaker; dark green tape with raised white letters, which read simply, “Bailey.” The girl’s brown uniform shirt strained at the seams around her ample breasts, and her jeans were so tight they couldn’t possibly have been easy to move in, let alone allow circulation. Dark circles surrounded her washed out blue eyes, as if she hadn’t had enough sleep in the last year, and her skin would charitably be called pale and pasty. But that could have been the poor lighting.
“Get you something?” Bailey held her order pad and pen at the ready.
Casey pushed the menu away. It wasn’t likely she’d be eating anything out of that. “You know Alicia? The woman who got killed?”
Bailey fumbled with her pen, almost dropping it. She snatched it up and scribbled something on her pad, avoiding Casey’s eyes. “Of course I knew her. We worked together.”
“Here at The Slope?”
Bailey gave a jerky nod. “Where else? She started back a few months ago, in the summer. I’ve been here for, like, ever.”
“What can you tell me about her?”
Bailey’s eyes narrowed. “You a reporter?”
“Do I look like a reporter?”
Bailey checked out the pale blue warm-ups. “Hardly. You look like a soccer mom.”
Casey kept her face neutral. “I’m not that, either. So what was she like?”
“Why do you care?”
Casey refrained from jabbing the girl’s pen in her eye. “Because I want to know what happened to her.”
“Why?”
What was this girl? A four-year old? “I think they have the wrong guy in prison.”
Bailey sucked in a breath, and her eyes went wide. “You do?”
Casey almost laughed. “Why is that such a surprise?”
Bailey looked over her shoulder, then scooted in the opposite bench, leaning forward on the table. “Because nobody else seems to think so. Everybody just wants to think he’s the guy and forget about it.”
“Why?” Now Casey was asking.
“Dunno. Scared, I guess. I mean, if it wasn’t Ricky, who was it?”
Casey felt like she’d been punched in the gut. Hearing this girl use her brother’s name so casually, naming him a scapegoat, was too much. “But you feel differently?”
Bailey’s eyes shot first one way, then the other, before settling on Casey’s. “Look, Leesh and I didn’t get along, okay? I wanted to be friends, but she was all ‘I’m too good for you.’ I didn’t hold it against her, though. We did fine here, but it’s not like we were close.” She messed with the salt shaker. “Ricky was out of her league. I told him so, too, whenever he stopped by and she wasn’t here. Or even if she was, but, like, in the back. He should have found somebody better.”
“Like you?”
Her chin jutted out. “What? You don’t think I’m good enough for him? Not like her?”
“Didn’t say that.”
“Oh, I get it. You want him for yourself. Well, I was the one who was here first, not you, so you can just—”
“He’s my brother.”
She paused, her mouth hanging open. “What? Your brother? Oh, gosh, Sorry. That’s kind of gross, isn’t it? Me thinking you wanted to hook up with him. Anyway, unlike some people, like Alicia, at least I tell the truth. I don’t lie about—” She stopped.
“Don’t lie about what?”
She shook her head again, like it was an automatic reflex. “Look. This restaurant, they don’t ask a lot of questions, okay? People like me, I do all right. I have a real driver’s license, and folks in town actually know me. Other guys, like our dishwasher, or even the janitors, they don’t always have the right stuff. The Slope helps them out. But then Alicia comes along…” She picked at a dried glob of ketchup on the table.
“And?”
“I don’t know. Her story, it’s all wrong. She’s just this white woman from ‘out of town,’ she says. Looking for a job while she ‘gets her head together.’” She rolled her eyes. “Whatever that’s supposed to mean. Says she’s trying to stay under the radar just for a while. So Karl, he’s the manager, he says it’s no problem, she can just fill out what she wants on the application. See, we had another waitress quit—ran off with some ski instructor from up the hill—and Karl was freaking out. Girls don’t want to come work here. They’d rather work across town with all the rich folks.” She went back to picking at the ketchup.
“You don’t want to work up there?”
“Nah. Rich folks can be a real pain in the ass. Anyway, she comes in here all quiet and hot, and Karl signs her up. Just like that. No questions asked.”
“And you think she lied about herself?”
“I’m sure of it. The first time I called her Alicia I had to say it like five times before she answered me. And another time…” She lowered her voice and leaned forward again. “She was dealing with this old lady who comes in here, who couldn’t hear a bomb go off in her underwear, and it was taking her, like, forever just to take the woman’s order. I went into her locker and looked through her purse. And guess what?”
Casey sighed. “What?”
“No license. No credit cards. Nothing with her name on it. Just cash and chap stick and some lame picture.”
“Picture of what?”
“I don’t know. Some old guy. I didn’t look real close because I heard her coming.”
She looked at Casey all knowingly, like Casey should be able to read her mind.
“What?” Casey said.
“Didn’t you hear me? She had zero papers with her ID. If Alicia McManus was her real name, where was her stuff? Driver’s license? Bank card? Heck, even a note or a frequent customer card or something. She wasn’t only flying under the radar, she’d completely dropped off the map.”
Which Casey happened to understand.
“Bailey!” A man was calling. Karl the Manager, Casey assumed. He leaned over the cook counter that separated the kitchen from the rest of the room and was pointing to a couple who had come into the restaurant and stood uncertainly at the front door.
Bailey pushed herself out of the bench seat, her lack of excitement oozing from every pore.
“Bailey…”
Casey sat so Bailey blocked the view of her manager. She lowered her voice.
“You want to help me get Ricky out of jail, right?”
“Sure. Don’t know what I can do, though.”
“Think you can get me a copy of Alicia’s employee file? The fake application and whatever else?”
Bailey’s eyes did the swivel thing, and she gave a little smile. “I’m sure I can. Not right now, though.”
“That’s fine. I’ll come back. It’ll have to be later, though. I’m going to see Ricky this afternoon.”
“Try tomorrow, or later tonight. I get off at eight. Karl will have to leave at some point to go to the store or bank or some other place. I’ll try then. And give Ricky a hug for me, okay?” She went off to put the other customers at a table, leaving Casey in view of the manager. He made no secret of watching her.
Casey decided to go somewhere else to wash her hands, although she really would have preferred a complete shower and a dry cleaner. She stood, and tried very carefully not to touch anything else until she was out in the fresh air.