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The door opened almost at once, and Hazel looked out at us. She was dressed in a black shirt and black pants, but she was wearing a sparkly headband with cat ears on it in honor of the day.
“Marauding trick-or-treaters are headed this way,” I warned her as we came inside.
“No worries,” she replied, and pointed at a large orange plastic bowl filled with fun-size candy bars that waited on a table next to the front door. “I’m ready for anything. Come on in — we’ve got a bottle of wine open and waiting for you.”
That sounded great. Calvin and I went inside, but Hazel left the door open, since the group of kids we’d spied as we left the car were now coming up the front walk.
The house didn’t really have an entryway, so we spotted Chuck immediately. He was sitting on the couch, an open bottle of a local red blend from one of our favorite wineries in Gilbert waiting on the coffee table, stemless wine glasses clustered around it.
“Happy Halloween!” he said. Like Hazel and me, he was dressed pretty much in civvies, although since his usual attire consisted of a western-style shirt, faded jeans, and cowboy boots, all he needed was a hat to complete the cowboy impression. “Ready for some wine?”
“Absolutely,” I replied. After that not-quite confrontation with Archie, I needed something to settle my nerves.
Chuck filled all four glasses while Hazel handed out candy at the door. After the kids were gone, she came over to the coffee table and collected one of those wine glasses, although she remained standing, obviously ready to leap for the door to pass out treats to the next group of kids.
“We might as well go ahead and order the pizza,” Chuck said. “What’s your preference?”
“Anything except anchovies,” I said promptly.
“Extra cheese,” Calvin added.
“Canadian bacon and pineapple?” Hazel said, her tone half hopeful, half wistful, as if she already knew that request was going to get shot down immediately.
As she’d probably guessed, the rest of us responded to her suggestion with various noises of disgust.
“Sorry, hon,” Chuck said with a grin. “Sounds like you’re outvoted.”
“I knew I would be,” she replied. “But hope springs eternal. I’m fine with anything you guys order, since anchovies are out of the picture.”
We ended up agreeing on one pepperoni with extra cheese, and one with the works. While Chuck made the call, a family with one little girl who looked to be about four, dressed as a fairy, and another child wearing a bee costume getting pushed along in a stroller, showed up for candy. Hazel handed out fun-size bars to everyone, including the parents, and then shut the door.
“It’s busy tonight,” she said. “I’m kind of surprised, since it’s a Monday. Usually, I get the most trick-or-treaters when Halloween falls on the weekend.”
“But the weather’s really nice,” I pointed out, which was only the truth. I supposed that sooner or later, this run of lovely, mild days would end and I’d get a taste of real fall, but for now, everything seemed just about perfect.
Well, except for Danny Ortega dropping dead at Josie’s Halloween party.
Speaking of which….
“Chuck,” I said. “What can you tell me about Susan Laughlin?”
He blinked, obviously surprised by thenon sequitur.“Why do you want to know about Susan?”
I sipped some of my wine. “Because I guess she was dating Danny Ortega over the summer and they broke up, and I want to know whether Susan is the sort of person to slip poison into someone’s drink in retaliation for that sort of thing.”
Hazel stared at me, positively owl-eyed. “He was poisoned?”
Right — my friend hadn’t exactly been in the loop on this one. “It’s not confirmed yet, but my instincts are telling me that’s what happened. Anyway, Jennifer Espinoza said I should talk to Chuck because he and Susan were part of the same crowd back in the day.”
As soon as I mentioned his name, Chuck looked a little uncomfortable, while Calvin appeared more resigned than anything. Then again, I’d already let him know what I was up to. He wasn’t exactly approving, but he also knew better than to stop me from asking the necessary questions.
To my relief, though, Chuck didn’t try to deny knowing Susan — a denial that would have been disingenuous at best, considering how small Globe’s high school was and how everyone pretty much knew everyone else, even if they hadn’t all been besties.
“Yeah, she was part of our gang,” he said, then drank some of his own wine, as if he needed the fortification before he took a trip down memory lane. “She dated my best friend Ellis for a couple of years, but they broke up when he went off to ASU and she stayed here. Her father’s a vice president at the mine,” Chuck added. “Their family does pretty well for themselves, so she didn’t see the need to get a degree. All she ever wanted was to get married and have a family.”
“Why didn’t she?” I asked. It wasn’t that I knew Susan Laughlin intimately, but the few times I’d seen her around, whether at the local Walmart or pumping gas, she definitely appeared to always be alone.
Chuck ran a hand over the stubble on his chin. “Oh, she got married, but it didn’t last. She’s been divorced for about four years now. No one was too surprised when she started dating Danny, since she probably saw him as a ticket to the life she wanted.”
