Always Say Goodbye: A Lew Fonesca Mystery Read Free

you?”
    “A car,” Lew said.
    “Going?”
    “Tampa airport. Be gone I don’t know how long.”
    “Business?”
    “I’m going to find the person who killed my wife,” Lew said.
    “Good luck,” Alan said. “Take whatever car you want. The Saturn’s still in good shape. A few scratches. I think you put a few of them there.”
    “How much?”
    He shrugged and looked for secrets or the face of his dead partner in the coffee cup.
    “I don’t know,” he said. “Twenty-five.”
    “A day?”
    “No, for whatever time you have it. Hell, you can own the
damned thing for fifty bucks. I’m having a going-out-of-business sale.”
    “Since when?”
    “Now.”
    He reached into the desk drawer, came up with two keys on a small metal hoop and tossed them to Lew.
    Lew expected a joke, a jibe, a half-witty insult, but without Fred, Alan couldn’t find one.
    “Any jokes for me?” asked Lew, who had been assigned by his therapist, Ann Horowitz, to come up with a joke for each of their sessions. Usually Alan and Fred could be relied on for at least a backup.
    “No. Not anymore. Papers are in the glove compartment. Bon voyage,” Alan said, sitting slumped behind the desk, not looking at Lew.
    “I liked Fred,” Lew said.
    “Who didn’t? Wait. I take that back. A lot of people didn’t,” said Alan. “It’s this business.”
    Alan tightened his lips and looked around.
    Lew wanted to tell him that he didn’t want to own a car, fill it with gas, have it repaired, have to report it if it were stolen, which was highly unlikely unless the thief couldn’t see. Simply put, Lew Fonesca didn’t want the responsibility. He didn’t want any responsibility. He had spent four years trying to avoid owning or caring for anything. He had succeeded in avoiding everything but people.
    He wanted to say something hopeful, helpful to the man behind the desk, who avoided meeting Lew’s eyes, but he could think of nothing to say, nothing he was capable of saying that wouldn’t be a lie.
    Lew would either return the car when he was finished using
it or he would give it away. He would probably return it. He didn’t want the responsibility of finding a new owner.
    Lew stopped at the DQ lot to get his already packed carry-on duffel bag and drop it on the passenger seat.
    Dave, the owner of the DQ, was out on his boat in the water. His arms and face were tanned, lined and leathered from years on the deck. Lew tried going with him once. Once was fine. He handed the girl behind the window a folded note and asked her to give it to Dave. The girl was new, couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Her face was freckle-covered, her eyes sleepy, her mouth partly open and her hair struggling to escape the rubber band that held it back.
    “There are almost six thousand DQs in the world,” said Lew.
    The girl, note in hand, looked at him and crinkled her nose.
    “Twenty-two countries,” Lew went on. “Company started in an ice cream shop in Kankakee, Illinois, in 1938. First franchise was in Joliet, Illinois, in 1940.”
    The girl’s mouth opened a little wider, showing not-quite-even teeth.
    “The original DQ motto was ‘We treat you right.’ Now it’s … ?”
    “I don’ know,” said the girl.
    “‘DQ something different,’” said Lew. “I prefer ‘We treat you right,’ and I try to have at least two chocolate cherry Blizzards every week. You do good work.”
    “Thank you,” the girl said. “Almost six thousand around the world you say? Maybe some day I could work at a DQ in England or Japan or some place like that.”
    “It could happen,” said Lew.
    The girl was smiling to herself as he left.
    He got to the Texas Bar & Grille where the morning crowd was dwindling after plates of barbecue breakfast burritos and Texas fries. No lights were on but the sun spread through the tinted windows. Ames McKinney—seventy-four, tall, lean, white hair, and wearing a flannel shirt—came around the tables and looked down at the