Part 7 (1/2)

”Personally?” Kim picked a thread from the skirt of her black suit. ”Well, I didn't know him all that well. I mean, why would I? This is my first job since I graduated from Kent State. But I'll tell you what . . .” She looked left and right and out the front window. A TV sound truck from another station had just pulled up and as if there were any chance the people inside could hear, Kim lowered her voice.

”Professionally is one thing. But I hear that personally, Jack was a sc.u.mbag.”

This was something. At least more something than the nothing I'd already gotten from her. I inched nearer and lowered my voice, too, the better to make it seem as if we were trading confidences. Would she open up? I was about to find out.

”A sc.u.mbag, like a sc.u.mbag who cheats on his taxes? Or shoplifts in the grocery store? Or-”

”Women.” Kim's lips pinched. ”A couple ex-wives, a couple girlfriends and, from what I heard, the wives and the girlfriends all happened at the same time. If you know what I mean.” She winked.

”So you think one of them might have a motive to kill Jack?”

”You mean, if this Owen guy didn't do it.” She considered this for a moment before she scooted a little closer. ”There were plenty of fights. And I'm not just saying that because I got some information from somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody. I heard a couple of them myself. You know, the phone would ring in Jack's office and he'd pick it up and the fireworks would start.”

”Who was he fighting with?”

”From what I heard, it had to be one of the exes. It was always all about money. How Jack still owed and Jack didn't pay and Jack had to abide by the decisions of the court. Only of course . . .” She looked away. ”Of course, I didn't hear that part of the fight because that's the stuff the woman on the other end of the phone would be saying. I filled in the blanks. You know, the way you do when you're in on only one side of the conversation. Over in my cubicle, I only heard the fights from Jack's side of the phone. So I guess technically-I mean if I was reporting what I heard-I'd have to say it was more like Jack didn't owe a dime, Jack always paid on time, and he followed the letter of the law, well . . . to the letter!”

”You heard more than one fight like that?”

”Absolutely. But then, like I said, there's been more than one Mrs. Jack Lancer. I have no idea which of them he was fighting with.”

”So at least one woman was angry with him.” I made a mental note of this and I couldn't help myself, it brought back memories of all the high-powered, high-visibility, high-voltage Hollywood marriages I'd watched dissolve. Meghan's friends were a lot like Meghan herself: self-centered to the max. When their relations.h.i.+ps imploded there was fallout of epic proportions.

I found myself thinking about the time an actor famous for playing superheroes (I'm not going to name names) showed up on our doorstep in Tuscany drunk as a skunk and crying like a baby.

Or the woman with three Oscars to her name who was so screwed up after her husband dumped her for a younger, more beautiful woman that she disappeared for six months and was found wandering the streets of LA and sleeping under a bridge. No, that story didn't make the tabloids. But then, the actress had a PR agent who was obviously worth his weight in golden statuettes.

Love did crazy things to people's brains.

Love gone bad only made things worse.

Suckers.

If they'd learned like I had-early on and with constant reinforcement-that nothing lasted forever, maybe they wouldn't have taken it all so personally.

Maybe Jack's ex-wives wouldn't have had those screaming matches with him on the phone.

”It really doesn't make sense, though,” I said, more to myself than to Kim. ”If one of those women was mad at Jack for not paying what he owed in alimony or child support . . . Well, he for sure couldn't pay if he was dead.”

Something told me Kim had already thought of this. ”I'm looking into his will,” she told me. ”You know, for my story. Jack, he didn't strike me as that stupid, but you never know, do you? If he married one wife and never took the other wife off as the beneficiary in his will-or of his life insurance policy-well, that would be a pretty good motive for murder, wouldn't it? I mean, if that Quilligan kid really didn't do it.”

It would.

But not murder in a closed train station restaurant.

”Well, it looks like you're going to be plenty busy tracking down suspects.” I ushered Kim to the door. ”I'm sure you'll need to look into Owen's background, and then there are all those wives and girlfriends of Jack's. What did you say their names were?”

Her smile was as stiff as meringue. ”I didn't. And I'm not going to. Not until I confirm my information and my sources. And not until the cops eliminate Quilligan as a suspect. It wouldn't be ethical, would it, to go chasing off after some grieving woman when there's no reason.”

Ethics and local news?

I was stunned.

But not as stunned as I was when Kim opened the door, stopped, and turned to me one last time.

”You know,” she said, ”if you're looking for viable suspects, there's one you shouldn't eliminate from the list. In fact, I'd say his name would have to be right at the top.”

”Somebody else?” I was thinking that it might have been easier to ask Kim who liked Jack rather than who had reason to want him dead. ”Who? And for what reason?”

”It's my turn to be an anonymous source.” Grinning, she stepped outside. ”Just ask your cook.”

Chapter 7.

My cook was George Porter, who appeared at exactly the stroke of seven and filled the front door top to bottom and side to side. George had hands like hams and enough tattoos on his arms to cover nearly every inch of skin. Just for the record, that was a lot of inches.

Even though I insisted on ”Laurel,” he called me ”ma'am,” and when we spoke, he looked at the floor, the ceiling, and the train that whizzed by on the tracks out back. Anywhere and everywhere but at me.

I never had a chance to ask him what Kim was talking about when she dropped his name in connection with the late, great Lance of Justice because Denice Lacuzzo showed up hot on George's heels and as soon as she did, George melted into the background and hurried into the kitchen.

Denice watched him go. ”You're lucky to have him,” she said, though I was pretty sure I wouldn't know that until I tasted his cooking. ”He loves this place almost as much as Sophie does. Been here nearly as long as I have.”

”And you've been here . . .”

She was a short woman and so wiry, I could see the muscles bunch along her arms when she slipped out of her lightweight jacket. Denice's brown hair was scooped up into a ponytail and she wore black pants and a yellow polo s.h.i.+rt with the outline of the Terminal embroidered over her heart. She took her plastic name tag out of her pocket and pinned it beneath the embroidered picture. She smelled slightly of cigarettes. Believe me, once I got my footing and established my position, she would hear about this.

”I've been here twelve years,” she said, and something about the way she s.h.i.+fted from foot to foot told me I was disrupting the morning routine. I motioned her away from the front door and followed her through the restaurant and into the kitchen, where Denice went straight for the coffee machine.

”Hey, you made coffee!” She poured one cup for herself and another for George and drank it while she wiped down the plastic-coated menus on the counter. Denice was quick and efficient. Done with the menus, she filled tiny cream pitchers, set them on a tray, and put them in the cooler. She looked over the recipe for the day's special-meat loaf-and helped George get ground beef and bread crumbs and eggs out so he could start mixing.

It wasn't until she was done that we heard the front door open and slap shut.

”I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.” The woman who scurried into the kitchen was my age, with curly dark hair that hung over her shoulders and big, dark eyes. She peeled out of her jacket and hung it on a peg next to Denice's, then zipped over to the far end of the counter and started refilling sugar shakers even before she caught her breath.

”Mauro had a stomachache this morning,” she said. ”I had to wait to take him to day care. You know, to see if he was going to throw up. If he was really sick, I would have called my mom to come over and watch him.”

Behind the woman, Denice rolled her eyes.

I stepped forward. ”You must be . . .”

The young woman's mouth fell open. ”I'm so sorry.” She wiped her hands against the yellow polo s.h.i.+rt that matched Denice's. ”I'm Inez Delgado and really, I'm not usually late. It was just my little Mauro. You know, because he wasn't feeling so good.”

Denice whizzed by with an armload of loaves of bread and took them over to the grill for George. ”Sophie's having her surgery this morning,” she reminded Inez. ”This is Laurel.”

”Sophie's niece.” Inez grabbed my hand and pumped it. ”I'm so glad to meet you. Sophie talks about you all the time. And I'm really sorry I'm late. Really. I won't-”

”I'm sure it won't happen again,” I said. ”You know how important it is to keep everything on schedule in a restaurant.”