She blushed again and hurried off.
I put my elbows on the table, clasped my hands, and rested my chin on them before batting my eyelashes at Jack. "Doesn't it get tiresome? The way women fall at your feet wherever you go?"
A ridiculously wicked grin spread across his unfairly gorgeous face. "I keep hoping you will."
I had to laugh. "Sadly, if I fell at your feet, we both know it would be out of sheer klutziness."
During the next ten minutes while we waited for our food, almost every Dead Ender in the diner found a reason to stop by our table and talk to us about Lorraine. We just smiled and pretended to have no idea what they were talking about until even the most nosy of them gave up. After that, Jack stacked sugar packets in various geometrically shaped towers, and I stared out the window and wondered longingly what normal people might be doing on a free Sunday.
"What I can't quite figure out is who left that ledger for Lorraine," Jack finally said quietly. "It doesn't make sense that Nigel would, or he wouldn't have lied to us about Earl's debts."
"Erin wouldn't do it, either. It points to motive for Nigel. She'd rather drown us than give us a reason to suspect him."
It hit us at the same time. "She'd rather drown us? Do you think Erin could have been the shooter?"
He shrugged. "Maybe. Naiads are known for being deadly. If she thought we were threatening Nigel—"
"Which she clearly did."
"Then maybe. We should ask them if she has a rifle, when we go back."
"We're going back?"
"We need to confront him about lying. The—" He broke off as the server approached with our drinks and his special.
She carefully unloaded his plates and our glasses, but when she put my soda down, she almost touched my hand. I yanked it away.
She bit her lip and looked like she was going to cry. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bump you."
"No, you didn't, it's fine. I just can't touch people."
Her face cleared. "Oh, I get it. My Aunt Beatrix is a germaphobe too."
I started to explain but decided against it. Not every person on the planet needed to know my story. So I just smiled and nodded, and she wandered off after promising to bring Jack his cake when he was ready for it.
"And what about this first wife revelation? How are we going to find a stripper with the stage name of Bubbles McHotpants? I mean, you're good, but that might be a tall order."
Jack grinned. "Hopefully she's an ex-stripper. I'd hate to think Bubbles is still at it, fifty years later."
I tried really hard not to picture that.
"I'm going to head to Orlando tomorrow and see what I can learn. Nobody will answer my questions over the phone about a stripper from the 1960s or 70s, but if I can find some old codgers who want to reminisce about back in the day, I might learn something."
I narrowed my eyes. "Oh, poor you. Such a tedious chore to go visit multiple strip clubs."
"Maybe I'll get lucky—so to speak—at the first one."
"We could ask Nigel. If Earl brought her to the gambling den, Nigel might know her real name or where she worked or something?"
"Not a bad idea. Or I could ask around for Mrs. Packard?"
"It feels like a wild goose chase, any way you look at it. And these places didn't have websites back then, so you can't exactly Google Bubbles McHotpants."
Jack grimaced. "I'd hate to imagine what a search like that might bring up."
"Better not to even think about it."
The server, who told us her name this time—Monica—poured Jack more lemonade and started off to other tables but then bent down and picked something up off the floor behind my chair.
