Low/high. Low: I know that I didn’t do it. High: was last person to see Alan alive. Probably police’s #1 suspect. Might have done it while possessed by demon.
Find whoever actually did it.
Sherry stared at what she’d written for a while, feeling a headache start to build behind her eyes. Then she sighed, put away everything that she’d pulled, and went to the front desk to call Alice.
The phone rang for a long time before Alice picked up. When she did, she sounded groggy, as if she’d been asleep.Not unreasonable, since it was still only about eight thirty. Sherry pretended not to notice. “Good morning! Did you get a chance to find one of Mr. Kaminski’s business cards?”
“Huh?” Alice said.
“That antiques dealer,” Sherry said, with what she thought was very admirable patience. “The one you said spoke to Alan the other day. Mike Kaminski. You said that you’d get me one of his business cards.”
“Oh,” Alice said after a pause. “Right. Uh, hold on.” There was the sound of the telephone clattering down onto a hard surface, then another, longer pause. Eventually Alice spoke again. “I found it. Do you have a pen?”
“Yes,” Sherry said, and Alice read off the number. Sherry wrote it down, thanked her, and hung up. Then she immediately picked up the receiver again to make another call.
This time it was picked up almost immediately. “Hello?”
“Mr. Kaminski? This is Sherry Pinkwhistle,” Sherry said. “I’m with the sheriff’s office up in Winesap. I’m calling about Alan Thompson.” In her experience, it was best to load a whole stream of very crisp, professional-sounding words at the front end of a conversation, to lull your interlocutor into the mental state of a person on an airplane being told what to do by the flight attendant.
“Oh, I heard about his having been killed,” said the man who presumably was Mr. Kaminski. “Awful to hear, he was a great guy. So how can I help you?”
“I just had a few questions,” she said. “Did you notice anything off about him when you spoke with him the other day? Anything he said, or anything unusual about his behavior?”
“Yeah,” Mr. Kaminski said immediately. “He was definitely off.”
Sherry blinked. She hadn’t expected that. “He was? In what way?”
“He was worried about the shop,” Mr. Kaminski said. “Stressed about the finances. Said he was glad I’d come by because he couldn’t guarantee that it would be around in a few months, between how the books looked and his ex wanting to talk to him.”
Sherry was glad she wasn’t talking to him face-to-face: there was no way for him to see her expression.What were you up to, Alan? Why didn’t you tell me that you were worried about the shop?“He said that his ex wanted to see him? Did he mention why?”
“Said he didn’t know. Thought she probably wanted to ask for money, though.”
“I see,” Sherry said, and furiously underlinedFind Susanin her chart. It had definitely been her, then: now the question was what she wanted, and whether or not she had an alibi. “Thank you, that’s very helpful. And I apologize for asking, but where were you between ten and midnight Saturday night? Just so that we can eliminate you from our investigation.” She was proud of herself for getting that line out so smoothly: she’d learned it from TV and thought it sounded very convincing.
“Club Sixty-Three,” Mr. Kaminski said. “It’s a cigar lounge on the Upper East Side. I have three friends I meet there every Saturday night. I took a cab home after. Will you need the receipts? Or numbers for the guys I was with?”
“That probably won’t be necessary,” Sherry said. He’d started out as her weakest suspect, and nothing that he’d said had moved him even slightly farther up her list. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Kaminski. I’ll call back if there’s anything else.”
“No problem,” Mr. Kaminski said. “I hope you catch the guy.”
“Me, too,” Sherry said, with feeling. Then she said goodbye, hung up, and made some changes to her chart with a different pen.
