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Slowly, I nodded my head. "Yeah. I guess I am. Look – all I know is that John didn’t inject himself with heroin. His death was staged to make him look like he was an addict. Someone wanted to get rid of him for a reason."
"But who would go to that much trouble over a harmless old guy like him?" asked Daniel. "Do you think he was dealing, and some other dealer wanted him out of the way?"
"No. I don't think he was dealing. He wasn't the type, like I said."
Daniel picked up another forkful of chicken and green pepper. "Yeah, you're probably right. If nothing else, he would have had some money if he'd been selling the stuff."
My thoughts turned to one particular man who was determined to get rid of the homeless in West River – but then I stopped myself. Surely someone in local power wouldn’t stoop to murdering one homeless person at a time to reach his goal.
Would he?
I found I didn't quite have the nerve to put that thought into words. At least, not yet.
Instead, I had tears burning my eyes. I was going to miss John. I wished I'd known his last name. I knew very little about him except that he had one brother, Steven, who was in prison for attempting to sell cocaine. I wondered how Steven would take the news of his brother's death. From what John had told me, there had been a close connection between them – at least at one time.
We finished our dinner, with Daniel wolfing his down and me just nibbling at my food. Finally I got up and cleared the dishes from the table, and started rinsing them off.
Daniel placed his hand on my arm. "Hey, don't worry about that right now. Let’s take the dogs for a walk. We all need some fresh air. Come on."
He was right. A walk in the cool evening air sounded good. But it was hard to forget the death of a man when I felt certain he'd been murdered.
Once we were out on the sidewalk with the dogs, I turned to Daniel again. "Okay. You know that I think somebody murdered John. And if I'm going to prove that, then the first step would be to prove that he was not an addict."
Daniel shook his head, watching Benji run around at the end of his leash. "I'm not sure how you can do that. That's a very serious charge you're making."
I pulled hard on Thor's leash, trying to keep him away from the cars parked on the street. "Yeah. It is. And I doubt that anyone will take it seriously. The homeless don’t matter to most people. But I have to try – for John."
He placed his free arm around my shoulders. "All right, Laila. I guess I know your next request."
I couldn't help grinning a little. "We both know you've got inside friends, Daniel. I want to see a copy of that autopsy report. There has to be one for John, even though he was homeless – right?"
Daniel sighed, and reached over to help me with my Doberman's leash. "Yes, that's right. Any questionable or unattended death requires an autopsy."
He turned and glanced at me, even as we struggled with Thor. "Okay, Laila. I’m doing this for you. I h
ope you remember that." His teasing smile told me we were all right again.
We ended the night after our walk and Thor and I headed back home.
Chapter Three
When I parked my car in the little lot beside Roasted Love the next morning, I glanced at the front sidewalk. No cocoon-like figure sat there today. My heart dropped as the reality that I would never see John again began to sink in. He wasn’t a member of my family, of course, but he'd become part of our life here at Roasted Love in West River.
And now he was gone.
But I had work to do. Several customers were already at the tables, sipping their morning lattes and espressos. Lily, the other waitress, was taking bagels and Danish from the glass case. She greeted me as she headed for the tables with the plates. I clocked in, washed my hands, and right away took a tray of scones from my boss, Jacob Weaver.
I figured it would be good to keep busy when I had something as serious as the death of a friend on my mind. A death that might be murder.
I headed out towards the counter display with the scones. "Say, Laila, that’s too bad about what happened to John," said a voice from the other side of the counter.
I turned to see a regular customer sitting there, and tried to smile a little. His name was Walter Schubert. He was an older man, retired and a widower, and always gave John at least a dollar when he saw him. "I didn’t have any idea he was on drugs," Walter said. "Did you?"
"No. Because he wasn’t." I started placing the scones inside the display case. "John told me yesterday that he was completely against that kind of stuff. He'd seen what drugs did to his brother. I know he wasn’t using."
"Laila, this might surprise you – " I braced myself for more talk about how there was no way to recognize an addict just by looking at them – "but I agree with you."
I closed up the display case and turned to look at Walter. "You do?"
