Murder Has a Sweet Tooth - By Miranda Bliss Page 0,13
happen here. Not right inside,” Stacie said. “The police found the woman’s body out there.” She tipped her head in the direction of the alley we’d tried to check out before we walked in. Since there was crime scene tape draped between Swallows and the building next door and a uniformed police officer making sure no one crossed it (not even Eve, who did her best to charm him into making an exception), we didn’t get very far.
“They found a suspect, too, right? That’s what we heard on the news.” I’d coached Eve on the way over, and she played her part perfectly. She didn’t have to pretend to sound horror-struck, but she did manage to make it seem as if she’d never been so close to a murder before. “The woman’s body was out in the alley, and so was the guy who they think killed her. You must have been so scared when the cops showed up!”
“My shift doesn’t start until eleven,” Stacie said. “I wasn’t here when it all went down. From what I heard, there was a whole lot of blood.”
Just thinking about it made me second-guess my cheesecake. I didn’t want to ask for details, but I had to. Sure, it’s my nature to be thorough, but let’s face it, there were other things to consider. I knew Alex, and I was certain he wasn’t a violent man. More importantly, I knew Jim, and with all his heart, Jim believed Alex was innocent. If Alex’s word meant that much to Jim, then it meant that much to me, too. All I had to do to make everyone happy and ensure justice was done was prove that Alex wasn’t the killer.
With that in mind, I knew I couldn’t trust Eve to ask all the right questions. I took over. “So you weren’t here when the cops arrived,” I said, reinforcing the information Stacie had already given us. “But somebody was, right? Somebody actually saw it? The body? And the blood? And the guy they arrested?”
“He didn’t exactly see it.” Stacie looked over her shoulder at the bar. The only employee over there was the bartender, so I knew that was who Stacie was talking about. She bent close enough for me to get a good look at the tattoo on her neck. It was the Tasmanian Devil. “Truth be told, Jason didn’t even know anything was going on until he saw the police cars outside. At least that’s what he told all of us when we came in. But Jason’s pretty slick when it comes to getting tips. He knows that the better the story he tells, the more people will drink, and the more they drink . . .” Stacie made a face. “We’re supposed to pool our tips and share them at the end of the shift. But I’ve seen Jason over there. He’s talking up a storm and customers are slipping him money. He puts it right in his pocket. Every time he tells the story, he adds more detail and he makes it sound more gruesome. By the time tonight rolls around, he’ll claim he was there watching when the guy slit that woman’s throat.”
Both Eve and I had wedges of cheesecake on our forks. We didn’t need best-friend ESP to think the exact same thing. Two bodies with one mind, we set down our forks. While Eve took a big gulp from the cup of coffee in front of her, I cleared the sour taste from my throat and said, “So Jason didn’t even know the body was there. Don’t you think someone would have noticed?”
Stacie shook her head. “Nobody ever uses that alley. The kitchen door leads out back, not into the alley. That alley doesn’t even go anywhere. I guess it used to, before they built those condos back on Ninth Street. Now the alley’s just a dead end.”
“But someone must have known the body was there.” It was the first time the idea occurred to me, and I threw Eve a look to signal her that it might be important at the same time I wished I’d thought to ask Tyler about it. “If nobody uses the alley, how did the cops find the body in the first place?”
Stacie’s shoulders rose and fell, and when the hostess looked our way, she grabbed a nearby coffeepot and pretended to refill my cup. I had a feeling she wasn’t as worried about the hostess finding out what we were talking