“Is cake less suspicious than pie?”
“No,” Sherry said, after she’d suppressed her latest fit of giggles. “I meant we should order something either way, so we don’t look suspicious just skulking around the diner and not eating anything.”
“Obviously,” Charlotte said. “Ooh, maybe I’ll get pieandFrench fries.”
“As long as you stayfocused,” Sherry said severely. Charlotte seemed to be enjoying herselfslightlytoo much to take helping with Sherry’s investigations seriously. Then they arrived at the diner and swept inside like an entire post-prom limousine’s worth of excited giggling. It was only once they were settled into a corner booth—it was a good position for keeping an eye on everything going on in the rest of the diner, though Charlotte complained about having to face the wrong direction—that it occurred to Sherry that she was, perhaps,slightly too tipsy to be engaging in sensitive conversations with a murder suspect. It was too late now, though: they were here, and Sherry was exactly tipsy enough to feel as if they would therefore be forced to complete the mission. She ordered a coffee and a slice of coconut cake. Charlotte ordered a plate of French fries and a chocolate milkshake, the idea of pie having apparently been mutually abandoned. Then they tucked in and waited.
They didn’t have to wait for a particularly long time. The diner patrons of Winesap preferred to eat early. Sherry was only about halfway through her coconut cake when Jason emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron and leaning over to say something to one of the waitresses to make her laugh. Sherry gave him a small wave, and he noticed and smiled at her. She gestured for him to come over.
“Are you waving at him?” Charlotte hissed. “What’s going on? Is he coming over?”
“He’s walking over,” Sherry whispered back. “Just act normal!”
“I can’t!” Charlotte said, then lapsed into silence as Jason appeared next to their booth.
“Evening, ladies,” he said. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s perfect,” Sherry told him. “We were just wondering if you might have time to talk.”
He raised his eyebrows. “To talk? Hold on, let me check.” He headed back to the counter, consulted briefly with the waitress, then returned. “Yeah, I can take a minute. What’s going on, Miss Sherry?”
“I’ve been looking into Alan’s death,” Sherry said, “and digging into his past a little. To try to figure out why someonemight want to hurt him.” She paused, watching his expression. He looked calm. Not upset. Not confused by where this was going, either. “You knew him before you moved to Winesap, didn’t you? He was your defense attorney.”
Jason nodded. “Yeah. I guess you know the whole story, huh?”
“I do,” she said. She was still paying close attention to his expression. “If I were you, I would have hated him.”
He laughed. There was no hesitation when he responded, as if he’d anticipated the question and thought through his answer many times before. “Yeah. I hated him the whole time I was in prison, and I hated him for years after I got out, too. He really screwed me over. But it’s been thirty years now. I got a wife and two great kids and a good job. It freaked me out a little the first time I recognized him in here, but I just stayed back in the kitchen and out of his way. I spent five years locked up for looking like some other dude; I’m not about to go back to prison for popping off at a customer in the Winesap Diner. No way would that be worth it.”
“You have to realize that it seems like an awfully strange coincidence that you happened to move here not long after Alan did,” Sherry said. “How exactly did that happen?”
“I just saw a want ad posted up outside a grocery store in Schenectady while I was visiting my folks,” Jason said. “They’re getting older now, and LA’s too expensive to raise a family. I had my girls in this little apartment we couldn’t afford. I came up here to check it out and I thought, man, Tiff and the girls wouldloveit here. Tiff likes thatGilmore Girlsshow, you know? That’s what it’s like up here. So we moved. I knew I was probably going to run into someone who was involved in mycase back then eventually. I just figured it’d be in a bar in Albany or something, like maybe the judge was going to be a senator or something now.”
“And you really weren’t feeling angry with Alan anymore?” Sherry pressed. “Maybe you were surprised to find him here. But once you did see him here, you really never had a moment of thinking about getting back at him? It’s not a small thing, someone messing up at their job so badly that you end up in prison for years. You’d have the right to be angry.”
He raised his hands slightly. “I don’t know what to tell you. It was a long time ago, and the older I got, the more I started feeling kind of bad for the guy, like, damn, he kind of messedhislife up, too. You know he wrote me a letter after I got released? I threw it away without reading it, but when I moved here I found out he’d quit being a defense attorney and moved to the city after he fu—sorry, ma’am—messed up my case. I figure he was probably writing to apologize, right? I mean, if he knew he messed up so bad he straight up just quit his whole job and moved away to where no one knew him.”
He seemed to Sherry to be genuinely asking, as if he truly was hopeful that Alan had felt remorse for his colossal mistake. “I think he really did feel ashamed of it,” she said. “He never even mentioned to me that he’d been a defense attorney once. I think he probably didn’t want anyone to know.” Whether that was from a true sense of remorse for his failures or the baser desire to protect his good reputation was harder to say.
“Yeah, I thought so,” he said, nodding. “And like I said, even if I didn’t think he already felt bad about it, I have it really good now. I mean, my life is great. No way would I mess it upjust to get back at Alan Thompson. I’ve barely even thought about him for the past ten years.”
“I believe you,” Sherry said, looking him right in the eye as she said it. “But you know that the police are going to ask you where you were last Saturday night.”
For the first time in the course of the conversation, Jason paused before he responded. “It was Tiff’s birthday, and she asked me to take the night off so I could cook something special for her instead of the customers. I spent most of the afternoon at home cooking, then we had dinner after the kids were in bed and watched a movie I rented. I was home with her all night.”
“I’m sure she’ll confirm that for you,” Sherry said, keeping her voice conversational. “Thanks for your time, Jason. And oh, one more thing. Do you know of anyone else who might have had reason to be angry with Alan?”
He shook his head. “Like I said. It’s been twenty years since I’ve cared enough about the guy to keep track of what he was doing.” Then he gave her a quick nod clearly meant to end the conversation, and headed back toward the kitchen.
As soon as he was out of sight, Sherry looked back toward Charlotte, who had sucked down half her milkshake as she watched the conversation like a tennis match. “So what do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Charlotte said. “He sounded like he might have meant it about not caring about Alan, but the guy would have to be a saint to not still be mad, wouldn’t he? And that alibi was garbage. What kind of wife asks to stay home for her birthday on a Saturday night?”
“A frugal wife, maybe,” Sherry said. “Or a wife who’sexhausted from her full-time job and two small children and would rather just stay in. Or a wife who’s helping her husband with an alibi.”
“So you think he did it,” Charlotte said.
“I didn’t say that,” Sherry said. “But no matter what he said about how he feels now, his motive is stronger than his alibi. And—I don’t know. He sounded convincing. But he also sounded as if he was prepared for the questions.”
