He joined her laughing, shaking his head at her unassuming directness. He liked this woman a lot.
She took a deep draw from the milkshake's straw and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "So," she announced, redirecting the conversation, "Lonely Norm Chesbro. Now, there's a man who makes me look good."
"Pretty solitary?"
"The loner's loner. Used to sit on the last stool, right up against the wall, and keep completely to himself, every night of the week. Never said a word to anyone but me, and most of the time that was just to order another one."
"Most of the time?"
"I gave it a shot," she admitted, "like I do sooner or later with all the regulars. Open them up a little, make them feel more at home. All I got was his first name."
"And nobody ever joined him?"
"They'd try. People from work would find him there and try to make conversation. He wouldn't have anything to do with them. It wasn't hostile," she added quickly. "It was pretty clear he was just really unhappy and wanted to be left alone, so in the end, that's just what we did. Who was he, anyway?"
"Who knows?" Joe admitted. "Foster child, early drinker. He was a thief when I knew him, which is why we thought he might've had something to do with this homicide, because of the money. But after he disappeared, I have no idea what became of him. I did find a woman he lived with for a while, but thirty years is a long time, and there's no telling what he was up to."
"I would say, nothing," Evelyn said quietly.
"Because of the way he was with you?"
She turned toward him. "This'll sound pretty stupid, but I think he had a broken heart. It's hard to get motivated when you have one of those."
For no reason he could determine, he took her hand in his. "That the voice of experience?"
He could just make out her sad smile. "I mentioned the twenty-year-old." She squeezed his fingers. "Her father's long gone."
"Right. I'm sorry."
She retrieved her hand to take another bite of lobster roll. "So was I, for a long time."
He nodded, taking her cue to move on. "Tell me about the last night you saw Norm."
"There was a stag party going. Having seen the place, you can guess how those go. They were holding it in the back of the room, around the pool table, and had the usual high jinks. You know, strippers, lots of screaming and yelling. Place was packed."
"Lot of new faces?"
"Oh, sure. People come off the street when they hear all the noise."
Joe stared off into the surrounding night, filling his brain with an image of the bar's layout. "That would mean Norm had his back to it all, if he was on his usual stool."
"And never turned around once. As if the whole thing wasn't happening. Not that I blamed him."
"You stayed behind the bar?"
"You bet. If ever that's my safety zone, it's during one of those parties. The girls do whatever they can to keep things going, including doing a little servicing in the bathroom afterward. It's no time for me to go wandering around the room."
"So, you had a clear view of the party in the back, Norm pretty nearby, and the comings and goings through the door." It wasn't phrased as a question.
Evelyn nodded thoughtfully, seeing where he was going. "Yeah, although Norm, as usual, might as well have been invisible."
"That's okay," Joe reassured her. "It's not him I want you to remember. Think back and tell me: Of all the people in motion, regulars and not, does anyone stick out who either approached Norm or seemed to take interest in him?"
She thought for a while, her eyes focused on some invisible middle space, and then she smiled broadly. "Yeah, there was one. As he was ordering, a guy asked me if that was Norm Chesbro. I didn't think of it till now, 'cause that was the beginning and the end of it, and like I said, it was super busy." Her eyes widened, and she put her hand on Joe's knee. "Is that who killed him?"
He smiled and this time left her hand alone. "Could be. Can you describe him?"
"About my height," she answered quickly, the trained observer brought to life. "Medium build. Light brown hair and a mustache, no beard. What else? Let's see… Oh, there was a scar on the hand that handed me the cash. Left hand, so he was a lefty, probably. The scar ran right along the back, dead center." She paused. "Is that enough?"
"That's pretty good," he admitted. In fact, better than he'd hoped. "Do you remember seeing him again that night?"
"I didn't serve him again. I know that, which is kind of unusual." She thought for a while longer. "No. He might've been there-for hours, even-I just don't know."
"How 'bout what time you served him?"
She straightened at first, as if to tell him how unlikely her memory of that would be, when she suddenly stopped short. "It was late. God, this is weird. I can see it like it was a photograph. I can see his face looking at me, and behind him, one of the strippers doing her whipped cream thing. They never get into that until they're almost out of tricks. The reason I remember is because at the time, only the guy with the mustache and Norm were facing me. Every other head in the whole place was turned toward the stripper. I remember thinking that was like noticing the only face at a tennis game not following the ball going back and forth. I saw that in a movie once. Never forgot it."
A small silence grew between them as Joe ran out of questions. "Well," he finally said. "I guess that's it, then."
"What happens now?"
"Nothing too exciting," he allowed. "I pass that description on to the locals, leaving your name out of it, of course, and then I go home-assuming they've never heard of Mr. Mustache-and I begin to put the computers to work. The scar will be handy, and the left-handedness. They collect details like that when they arrest people, exactly for situations like this."
"Unless he's never been arrested," she suggested.
He stood up. "Well, there's that. But at least we can try. Plus, the PD here and the state trooper assigned to the case will be working on it. Maybe one of us'll get lucky."
She rose with him, crumpling the small paper bag and dropping it into a trash barrel beside the bench.
They stood facing each other awkwardly for a moment. "So, it's back to Vermont," she concluded for him.
"Yeah."
"Joe Gunther."
He nodded. "I never did get your last name, Evelyn."
She stretched up on her toes and kissed him lightly, her hand on his cheek. Her warmth mingled with the cool night air.
"Don't worry about it," she said, stepping back. "Take care of yourself, okay?"
"I promise," he replied. "You, too."
And he watched her vanish as she'd appeared, into the dark.
Chapter 14
The noise reminded him of the bar in Gloucester, except that, in every sense, this was as far from there as Joe could imagine.
People were happy, even ecstatic. It was now September, and Gail had just won her primary race. Two more months, and the die would be cast on whether she or Ed Parker got to hang their hat in the state senate for a couple of years.
Joe stood against the wall in Gail's converted living room, a plastic glass of cranberry juice in his hand. The furniture and computers and phones and faxes and all the rest had been shoved to one side, and everyone was milling around, exchanging hugs and talking loudly. "Send Gail to the Senate" signs were hung on the walls around the room, as they'd been adorning car bumpers and yard signs across the county for the past few months, although here they were accompanied by a few hand-lettered "Send Ed to Bed" ones as well.
"What do you think?"
Joe glanced down to his side. Susan Raffner, the epitome of the satisfied campaign manager, was sharing the wall beside him, watching the crowd like a pleased raptor.