4
Ernie Scollay excused himself and headed to the men’s room. I went to the bar to retrieve the coffee pot in order to freshen our cups. Jackie Garner walked in while I was waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. Jackie occasionally did a little work for me, and he was a bosom buddy of the Fulcis, who looked up to him the way they did to the handful of people whom they considered saner than themselves without being square. He was carrying a bunch of flowers, and a box of fudge from the Old Port Candy Company on Fore Street.
‘For Mrs Fulci?’
‘Yeah. She likes fudge. Not almond, though. She has an allergy.’
‘We wouldn’t want to kill her,’ I said. ‘It might cast a pall over the celebrations. You okay?’
Jackie looked flustered, and distracted. ‘My mom,’ he said.
Jackie’s mother was a force of nature. She made Mrs Fulci look like June Cleaver.
‘Acting up again?’
‘Nah, she’s sick.’
‘Nothing serious, I hope.’
Jackie winced. ‘She doesn’t want people to know.’
‘How bad is it?’
‘Can we talk about it another time?’
‘Sure.’
He slipped past me, and there were cries of delight from the Fulcis’ table. They were so loud that they made Dave Evans drop a glass and reach for the phone to call the cops.
‘It’s okay,’ I told them. ‘That’s their happy sound.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘Nobody got hit.’
‘Oh thank God. Cupcake Cathy’s made her a cupcake birthday cake. She likes cupcakes, right?’
Cupcake Cathy was one of the Bear’s waitstaff. She had a sideline in baking the kind of cupcakes that led strong-willed men to propose marriage in the hope of ensuring a regular supply, even if they were married already. They figured their wives would probably understand.
‘She likes cake, as far as I know. Mind you, if there are nuts in it, it could kill her. Apparently she has an allergy.’
Dave paled. ‘Jesus Christ, I better check.’
‘Can’t hurt. Like I told Jackie Garner, hard to see the evening recovering from the death of the birthday girl.’
I took the coffee pot to the table, refilled our cups, then gave it to one of the waitresses to bring back. Marielle Vetters sipped delicately from her cup. Her lipstick left no mark.
‘It’s a nice bar,’ she said.
‘It is.’
‘How come they let you use it for . . . this?’
Her left hand drifted lightly through the air, her index finger raised, a gesture that contained both elegance and amusement. Something of it was in her face too: the faintest hint of a smile despite the nature of the story that she was engaged in telling.
‘I work the bar sometimes.’
‘So you’re a part-time private investigator?
‘I prefer to think of myself as a part-time bartender. Anyway, I like it here. I like the staff. I even like most of the customers.’
‘And I guess it’s different, right? Different from “not hunting animals”.’
‘That’s right.’
‘You weren’t just kidding either.’
‘No, I wasn’t.’
The smile came again, a little uneasier this time. ‘I’ve read about you in the newspapers, and on the Internet. What happened to your wife and child – I just don’t know what to say.’
Susan and Jennifer were gone, taken from me by a man who thought that, by spilling their blood, he could fill the emptiness inside himself. The subject of them frequently came up with new clients. I had come to realize that whatever was said came with the best of intentions, and people needed to mention it, more for their own sakes than for mine.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘I heard – I don’t know if it’s true – that you have another daughter now.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Does she live with you? I mean, are you still, you know . . .’
‘No, she lives with her mother in Vermont. I see her as often as I can.’
‘I hope you don’t think that I was prying. I’m not a stalker. I just wanted to find out as much as I could about you before I started sharing my father’s secrets with you. I know some cops in the County,’ – nobody in Maine ever referred to it as Aroostook County, just ‘the County’ – ‘and I was tempted to ask them about you as well. I figured they might be able to tell me more than I could find online. In the end, I decided it would be better to say nothing and just see what you were like in person.’
‘And how’s that working out?’
‘Okay, I guess. I thought you’d be taller.’
‘I get that a lot. Better than “I thought you’d be slimmer,” or “I thought you’d have more hair.”’
She rolled her eyes. ‘And they say women are vain. Are you fishing for compliments, Mr Parker?’
‘No. I figure that pond is all fished out.’ I let a few seconds elapse. ‘Why did you decide not to ask the police about me?’
‘I think you know the answer already.’