32
Violet slouched in a booth at Bessie’s Diner with a decent view of the police station diagonally across the street. She held a mug of smoldering-hot coffee, amazed she hadn’t been turned away at the door, and even more so that she hadn’t been asked to leave in the hours she had occupied the booth. She’d come in around breakfast, and now folks were finishing late lunch.
“You thinking about something else to eat?”
Violet clutched her coffee and smiled at the waitress. Despite the black-and-white cow on the diner’s menus, she thought this might actually be Bessie. The place had customers, but not enough to warrant more than one waitress and one cook.
“Thanks for being so patient with me,” Violet said.
The waitress raised her eyebrows and lowered her voice. “Honey, you came in here looking like you been through the war. I’m not gonna ask how your morning went, nor last night neither, but it’s pretty clear you needed a little break.”
“You’re an angel.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say there’s a man involved.”
Violet glanced out the window at the police station. “Isn’t there always?”
The waitress understood. “So that’s it.” She smiled sadly. “You’re not the first girl to park in one of these booths and wait for her troubles to start up again.”
“It’s not like that.”
“You’re not the first girl to say that, either.”
Weary, Violet smiled. “Maybe it is a little like that.”
The waitress tapped the menu on the table. “The ham and eggs you had this morning won’t get you through the day. How about a chicken salad sandwich? I make up the chicken salad myself. Put it on two slices of rosemary sourdough and it’s just dandy.”
“You make that rosemary bread yourself, too?”
“Baked it at five o’clock this morning,” the waitress said.
Violet stared at her. “If I were a man, I’d marry you.”
“You’re not the first girl to come in here and say that, either.”
She walked away without taking an order, which led Violet to assume she was about to have chicken salad on rosemary sourdough. If there was a fat, tangy pickle on the plate, she’d consider herself in heaven, at least long enough to eat her lunch. After that, it was back to this hell she’d gotten herself into by falling in love not once but twice.
The train wreck had left her without a change of clothes. She wore dark gray woolen trousers and the sweater she’d borrowed from a stranger’s suitcase and never returned. Her coat had been on the train as well, lost in the wreckage. The outfit would have been plenty warm if the stolen VW hadn’t run out of gas, forcing her to walk two hours into Crowson in a rainstorm. Some of the mud and blood from the scene at the crash site had stained, but it was blotchy and drenched, and that made it difficult to distinguish from the dirt. Her short boots were soft black leather, perfect for travel this time of year, far more stylish than Elkhart had demanded, but at least they’d been comfortable until the rain had soaked them. The hours in the diner had dried her clothes, but the boots were still wet inside. Her feet hurt from walking so far in them, and they’d tightened as they dried, until at last she’d taken them off and hidden her feet under the table out of embarrassment.
Someone dropped a spoon. The metal clattered loudly, and a middle-aged couple holding hands across their table jumped a bit, turned to look at the door, and generally looked guilty enoughthat Violet assumed they were not local, that they’d met here because it was out of the way and their spouses would never know.
Ordinary life. Ordinary people.
How much would they scream if they’d seen what she’d seen?
Her view of the police station included the side of the property, where Alfie and Benjy stood in the rain. In the sullen, gray daylight, they looked carved of stone, some kind of lawn ornamentation. Alfie’s bright orange hair lay flat, rain-slicked to his scalp, turned dark by a soaking. The boy seemed smaller than before, like damp cloth plastered to bones. Violet watched them, and they watched the police station, waiting for a chance at Malcolm and Jennie, waiting for a chance to get their hands on Maggie’s body.
She glanced at the clock behind the lunch counter. It had the Bessie’s logo painted on the face. The passing hours had pressed their weight on Violet, but still it shocked her to see it was past two o’clock. Her pulse quickened. The time to get them out of jail had come and gone. Another couple of hours and it might be too late.
“Here you go, honey,” the waitress said as she slid the sandwich plate onto the table.
Violet thanked her, gratified to see her lunch did come with a pickle. The rosemary baked into the bread smelled wonderful. As she took her first bite, she wondered if the money tucked inside her brassiere would be enough to pay the bill for both breakfast and lunch. Anytime she traveled, she put a few dollars there just in case her purse might be stolen. On this trip, she hadn’t even carried her purse. She’d had some other money in her traveling bag, and otherwise, she’d relied on Malcolm.
Seven or eight dollars. She figured the little billfold in her bra was that much, at least.
Nothing to be done about it now. The sandwich was just as delicious as the waitress had promised.
When she glanced up, Alfie and Benjy had moved.
