Chapter Seventeen

Seventeen

Sherry felt her own eyes widen. "Jason Martinez ? Our Jason? From the diner? Are you sure? I don't think that they look that much alike, do you? Could it be just that they're both…"

"I can tell two Hispanic guys apart, Sherry," Charlotte said. "Once I dated a Guatemalan DJ with four brothers who all got their hair cut at the same place; that could have gotten crazy . And yeah, I think it's him. The picture's blurry, but look at his ear." She stabbed at the photo with a fingertip. "Ears never change. I notice ears. They're hard to draw. Jason's have this funny fold thing at the top. It's him."

"Jason," Sherry repeated, truly gobsmacked. "It can't be him, though. He's such a sweet young man."

"He's got to be in his forties," Charlotte said. She was still squinting at the picture. "And, anyway, the conviction was overturned."

"I didn't mean that," Sherry said. "I meant—can you imagine Jason whacking Alan over the head with a lamp?"

Charlotte put the article down. "No," she admitted. "But I can't really imagine anyone I know doing it. It seems like such a dramatic way to kill someone."

"How would you kill someone?" Sherry asked, curious.

"I don't know. I've thought about it. On TV, pushing people down the stairs works really well to avoid suspicion, but on TV, everyone seems to fall down a few steps and then die instantly. In real life I think they're more likely to just sprain their wrist or something, unless they're about ninety years old. You'd probably have to push them down the stairs once a day for a month until you got lucky and they banged their head at the right angle, and that would definitely look suspicious. Or I thought about hiring a hit man, but then you have to rely on the guy you hire not being either completely incompetent or an undercover FBI agent. Really, I think the best way to kill someone and get away with it is to buy an unlicensed gun from a criminal, wear gloves while you shoot a stranger in the middle of the night, and then throw the gun into the Hudson. It would have to be a stranger because as soon as you have a decent motive, you're a suspect. But I wouldn't have any reason to want to kill a stranger, so now there's no point to killing someone in the first place. You might as well skip the whole thing."

"You have thought about this," Sherry said, impressed. "And you're right. It's the motive that always catches people out. That's why serial killers who get away with it aren't particularly impressive. Killing poor ladies of the evening who you've never met before and no one cares about isn't much of a trick, when there's nothing to connect the two of you and no one's hounding the police to solve the case, anyway. A woman who tells everyone about how much she hates her middle-class husband, kills him, clears out the bank accounts, and gets away free and clear, that's smart." An image of Caroline flitted through her head. Caroline, crying over her husband's cruelty, shedding what looked like real tears. Sherry blinked the thought away. "The diner's still open," she said abruptly. "Should we go talk to him?"

Charlotte looked skeptical. "Talk to Jason ? Like an interrogation? Would that be safe?"

"We're not going to cuff him to a table and shine a light in his eyes," Sherry said. "Just talk to him. He won't murder us in the diner."

"He might ," Charlotte said, and then threw back the rest of her third glass of wine. "All right. Let's do it."

They had a brief battle over the check—Sherry won—and then marched off toward the diner in the cold, both giggling a little from the combination of wine and nerves. "If he's not there, we should get pie," Charlotte said. "They have great pie."

"We should get pie either way," Sherry said firmly. "Or cake. To avoid suspicion."

"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 pie and French fries."

"As long as you stay focused ," Sherry said severely. Charlotte seemed to be enjoying herself slightly too 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 someone might 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 would love it here. Tiff likes that Gilmore Girls show, 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 my case 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 messed his life 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 up just 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's exhausted 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."

"I probably would be, too," Charlotte said. "If a guy who'd screwed me over that badly suddenly showed up dead, I'd be practicing my lines in the mirror."

"You're right," Sherry said, after a moment of reflection. "He's not stupid, is he? It would be the smart thing to do to practice a bit." She chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment. "All the same. A strong motive and a weak alibi."

"A really awful alibi," Charlotte agreed. "Kind of embarrassing." She ate a few more French fries. "What are you going to do?"

"Let the police know, I suppose," Sherry said. "Let them follow up. They'll be able to do things like check—" She paused, and blinked. There was something that the police should be able to check, something that might be able to confirm whether or not Jason really had spent all night at home, but she couldn't remember what it was. She huffed out a frustrated breath. "I forgot what I was just about to say. Anyway, I think that with a lead this strong I really should hand it over to them."

"Hm," Charlotte said, after a pause.

Sherry frowned. "What?"

"Nothing," Charlotte said. "I was just thinking about how it doesn't feel right."

"What doesn't?"

"Jason being the killer," Charlotte said. "It just feels wrong. Narratively, I guess."

" Narratively ," Sherry repeated.

"Yeah. I mean, think about it. This demon's been freaking out for ages about how you have to investigate, you need to investigate. So you poke around a little, and the librarian in Schenectady sends you that article, and I recognize Jason in the picture. Then we come over here, and he's pretty polite over the whole thing, and you decide you want to tell the cops and let them sort it out. It just feels kind of…"

"Anticlimactic?" Sherry suggested. She was thinking about it, too, now.

" Right. I took a class on short story writing a while ago. There was this guy who wanted to write noir stories in the class. He got the vibe right, with the detectives and the dames and everything, but the plots all went like that. Like, the guy looks around for a while and then he finds who did it. No twist."

"But we're not in a book," Sherry said. "There's not always a twist in real life. Most murders are straightforward." Even as she said it she knew that she was kidding herself. Murders were never straightforward in Winesap.

It was as if Charlotte had read her mind. "Not in Winesap," she said. "And now we know that there's something supernatural involved. I don't know, I just think it doesn't feel right."

"You're right," Sherry said. "It doesn't work, narratively speaking. I wasn't particularly necessary. Why badger me into investigating when the whole thing could easily unravel on its own?" She paused. "Maybe the demon's like your classmate who wrote the bad noirs. Like a sort of—scriptwriter, for all of these deaths and investigations." She bit her cheek again. "That would make sense, wouldn't it? If what it's after is the investigation itself, and not the person being caught at the end. But why?"

"I don't know," Charlotte said. "Maybe it's about the"—she waved her hand through the air—"energy. You know? Someone dying, and then all of this energy goes into catching whoever did it, or not getting caught."

Sherry blinked. It sounded oddly plausible. Plausible in a context in which they'd already established that they were suffering from an acute case of demon problems, at least. "That makes a lot of sense," she said. "As much as anything, at least. Too bad your witch friend can't come to test the theory. She does energy things, didn't you say that? With crystals? I don't think poor Father Barry would know how."

"Poor Father Barry," Charlotte said. "He always seems so stressed-out. So is the twin hot?"

Sherry squirmed slightly. "Todd? He looks like Father Barry," she said. "But more…fashionable."

"Oh, God, he is hot," Charlotte said. "Barry's so hot. They should have rules about that, for priests. They should have to have lazy eyes or something. If Barry was my priest I'd go to church just to sin in my heart the whole time."

" Charlotte ," Sherry said reprovingly, even though she really wanted to laugh. "Don't say that around Father Barry, the poor thing would probably have a heart attack."

"I wonder if he's a virgin," Charlotte said, a little dreamily. "Too bad Todd's gay."

" Charlotte! " Sherry said, truly somewhat scandalized this time. Speculating about a priest's virginity! "That's his private business. And, anyway, I don't know if Todd is gay. I just thought he looked like he was being very flirtatious with Corey. He could just be…friendly. Or diverse in his interests." Somehow, speculating on whether or not a priest's twin brother might be bisexual felt inappropriate by proxy.

"Diverse in his interests," Charlotte repeated. "That sounds like one of those old euphemisms. He appreciates Grecian marbles. "

"I'm just trying to be respectful," Sherry said. Her cheeks felt warm. "Why don't we talk about you . How have you been feeling? Have you decided what you want to do with the gallery?"

"Run it," Charlotte said promptly. "Which is going to be hard if I can't leave town. I need to go down to the city and talk to some of the people I know there. I've been thinking, I have all of this extra space in the building, and there's that little kitchen downstairs in the studio. I could set it up as an apartment and bring artists in to do residencies."

Sherry expressed interest—she really was interested—and just let Charlotte talk for a while, prompting her with more questions whenever the conversation lagged. It felt almost possible to be optimistic about the state of Winesap and the world at large when she was eating coconut cake and listening to Charlotte being very enthusiastic and charming about her plans for art exhibitions. By the time she'd finished the last bits of her cake, the sleepiness from the drinks they'd had earlier had caught up to both of them. They paid and left, then hugged at the door before they went their separate ways.

Sherry trudged back up the hill to home, the evening feeling even darker and quieter than it usually did, the silence broken only by the sound of a motorcycle driving through the village. The lights from the streetlamps and the few other houses seemed muted, as if everyone on her street had collectively decided to turn off the lights and go to bed early. It made her uneasy. Her home didn't feel any stranger, at least, and the cat's demands were of the usual cat variety. She dedicated five minutes to petting him, then brushed her teeth twice—she knew her breath would smell like alcohol in the morning—drank a big glass of water, and went to bed. She expected to wake up in the middle of the night with the start of a hangover. She didn't expect to be woken up at eight in the morning by the police knocking on her door.