Dying Echo A Grim Reaper Mystery - By Judy Clemens Page 0,47
said again.
“Don’t know. He came up the alley out back when I was out for a smoke. Said he was looking for Alicia, and showed me a picture, but it didn’t hardly look like her, like it was from a long time ago. I told him she wasn’t here. I asked him should I give her a message, but he said no, he’d find her himself.” Regret filled his eyes for a moment. “Maybe he did.”
“Did you tell her about him?”
“Soon as he left I forgot he’d even been here.”
“Remember now. What did he look like?”
“I don’t know. Older guy.”
“Fifty? Sixty?”
“How should I know? It’s not like I asked how old he was.”
He held up his hands. “Lady, I don’t know. I didn’t notice. I told you he was old, that’s everything I remember.”
“Everything?”
“I guess his hair was gray, okay? And when he left he said, ‘Ya’ll have a nice day,’ or something lame like that. Happy?”
Happy? Hardly.
But suddenly Casey saw a speck of light at the end of what she’d thought was a very, very long tunnel.
Chapter Nineteen
“Hey, you two.” Karl followed them out to the parking lot, and they stopped by their car. He poked a finger at them, his entire body stiff with anger. “What’s your business here? Why do you keep coming back?”
“Alicia.”
His eyes narrowed. “What about her? She was a legitimate employee of this restaurant.”
And suddenly Casey got it. “Look, Karl, we’re not here to bust you for hiring her with fake information.”
“Who said it was fake?”
“Seriously. It doesn’t matter. We don’t care. All we want is to find out who killed her.”
“Well, it wasn’t me. And it wasn’t anybody here.”
“Never said it was.”
He glared at her for a few more moments, then relaxed his stance enough he didn’t look like he was going to explode. “You find out anything?”
“Nothing for sure. But maybe something. If it pans out, you’ll be one of the first to know.”
Sorrow shone in his eyes. “I did like her, you know.”
“Seems like most people did.”
He took a deep breath and let it out. “So are you done here?”
“I think so.”
“Give a call if you need anything else.”
“Will do. Thanks.”
He nodded shortly and headed back toward the front door.
“Hey, Karl,” Casey called.
He looked back.
“You might want to think about hiring a different cook.”
He shook his head. “You think I don’t know that?” And he disappeared behind the front door.
“Come on,” Casey said, jumping in the car. “We need to do some research.”
“On what?”
“The South. That’s where our killer was from. Maybe. If we’re lucky. And if the cook wasn’t making up that entire conversation.”
“The south?”
“Of course, the south. Who else says, ‘ya’ll?’”
“Isn’t that kind of stupid, though? I mean, to say something like that, if he’s a killer and he’s trying to keep a low profile. Somebody not from the South would remember that. Even somebody like Pasha.”
They were driving back to Ricky’s place.
“But the South is a big region,” he said. “Knowing he’s from ‘the South’ doesn’t exactly help us.”
“Just wait.”
“What? You know something else?”
“Not yet.”
She was out of the car almost before it was parked, and jogged into the house. Eric followed, catching up to her in the kitchen. She whipped open the pantry door and dug Ricky’s secret stash out of the cleaning supplies. “This is the candy he was hiding. And the book about Carol Burnett. What do they have in common?” She scoured the small print on the Chick-O-Sticks wrapper. “There. Made in Texas.” She tossed that aside and flipped through the biography. Eric read over her shoulder, and pointed at something on the inside flap. “Says Carol was born in Texas.”
Casey couldn’t breathe. “Texas.”
“Is that our place?”
Casey dropped the book onto the counter and pulled Ricky’s scribbled note of sayings from her pocket. “Turn on your Internet. See if either of these come up.” While he set to work, she scoured the copy of the photo they’d gotten at the restaurant, but there was nothing that screamed “Texas.” The license plate on the car was hidden by the man’s body, and the visible background was made up of the sort of things one might see anywhere. Trees, sky, clouds. Nothing partial to any sort of specific geography.
Eric tapped on his screen and a web site came up. “Here it is. Texas Monthly. They have an article all about the things Texans say.” He held out his iPad. “It’s right there. Fine as cream gravy. It means you