Murder Has a Sweet Tooth - By Miranda Bliss Page 0,9
his head. “The woman not only read me the riot act, she punctuated every word of it with an exclamation mark. She said—”
“That she was just out for a few laughs. That she had no intention of getting serious with you or anyone else. That you should have realized it from the start, and that now that she knew you didn’t, she couldn’t believe you weren’t willing to just back off and forget the whole thing.”
Alex looked at me in wonder. “Aye. That’s pretty much exactly what she said. How did you know?”
It didn’t take a rocket scientist. Or a detective. I explained. “Call it woman’s intuition. You tried to kiss her. You told her you liked her. It’s pretty obvious the story doesn’t have a happy ending. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here. So naturally, I deduced that she freaked, and freaking doesn’t make any sense in light of the fact that she was willing to meet you at Swallows every Tuesday. What that tells me is she liked you just as much as you liked her. But she still objected when you asked about dating. So she pulled out every generic excuse in the book, but none of them really explain anything about what she was really thinking or what was really going on.”
“You mean excuses like just being out for a few laughs, things like that.” Following my logic, Jim nodded. “Is it important?” he asked me.
“Not as important as what Alex did after.” I’d been looking Jim’s way, and now I turned my attention to Alex. “Was Vickie just sitting there saying all this to you? Or did she get up? Was she standing, like she wanted nothing more than to race out of there?”
“Aye. Exactly.” Alex pushed back his chair and stood. He paced over to the far wall. “I tried to reason with her, but she was beyond listening. And as God is my witness, I can’t say why. I hadn’t said I wanted to run away to Vegas and marry her or anything. I told her only that I thought it would be nice if we saw more of each other. Does that seem such a bad thing?”
It didn’t, at least not to me. I wondered why to Vickie it was life and death.
The thought was a sobering reminder that we had yet to hear the whole story.
“I told her she was out of her head,” Alex continued. “I asked if she’d had too much to drink perhaps, and she didn’t take that well, either. I told her I’d call a cab for her and that I’d accompany her home if she wasn’t well. And Vickie . . .” He stared at the blank wall behind us, no doubt reliving the whole ugly scene. “She ran out of the place so fast, I never had a chance to stop her.” Alex turned and walked away and his shoulders rose and fell. “I went after her, of course,” he said, his voice muffled because his back was to us. “I pushed through the front door and stepped outside. I saw a bus go by. Then . . .” His voice trailed away.
By now, I wasn’t just eager to hear the rest of the story, I knew that if we didn’t hear it—and fast—we might not have time before the guard came to take Alex back to his cell. I didn’t dare get up and walk over to Alex; I didn’t want that guard to suspect we were up to anything. Instead, I kept my place and did my best to calm the urgency in my voice. “What happened when you got outside, Alex?” I asked.
“Well, that’s the thing.” He turned toward us, his expression grim and his face paler than ever. “Inside the restaurant, I remember tryin’ to reason with Vickie well enough. I remember how she stormed out of the place and I remember going after her. You know, the front door and the bus. But after that . . .” Alex pounded back to the table and dropped into his chair. “After that, I swear to God I don’t remember another thing. Not until this morning. Not until . . .” Again his voice faded, and this time, I knew it would do me no good to egg him on. Alex was dealing with something traumatic. Something ugly. He needed to do it at his own pace.
His hands trembling, he sank back in his chair. “The next thing I remember, there was a