An Equal Opportunity Death Read Free Page B

worth being unfriendly over. To make up, I could (openly, since it would be after five and after my working hours) show Frank how to read his meter and see that he was allowing himself to be overcharged. At a saving of fifty dollars a month, he would be well-recompensed for a few minutes of inconvenience.
    After I had washed and dried my hair and spent a little time on my face and clothes, it was five-fifteen when I drove across the main bridge toward Frank’s Place.
    The side parking lot, where Chris had been, was full when I arrived. I had expected a couple of cars. Frank’s opened officially at four-thirty. I pulled in, stopped, and, as I looked around, I realized that the cars were official. County sheriff cars. And a van.
    I hurried up the steps to the bar. There was a young officer at the door. No one, he told me, could go in.
    “Is Frank okay?” I asked. “I’m a friend of his.”
    “Everyone’s a friend of Frank’s,” he said. “But I can’t let you in.”
    “What happened?”
    “Frank’s dead. Shot.”
    “What? But I was …”
    The kid, the deputy, looked as shocked as I felt. He paid no attention to my abandoned sentence.
    I stood, trying to decide what to do. It was hard, impossible, to imagine Frank dead—Frank, who was going to take me to a Japanese movie this evening. I needed to see Frank’s body to believe he was dead. I waited, standing against the building wall.
    The door opened. An older man stepped out. He nodded to the young officer, then looked at me.
    “Who’s she?” he said to the cop.
    “She says she’s a friend of Frank’s.”
    “They’re all friends of Frank’s,” he said, and it was apparent from his tone that the “they” he meant was female.
    “What’s your name?” he asked me.
    “Vejay Haskell. Veronica Haskell.”
    “Haskell.” His face lightened. He almost smiled. “Good. I want to talk to you. You’re the one who was here at noon, the one who argued with Frank Goulet. I was going to send a squad car for you.”

CHAPTER 3
    S HERIFF W ESCOTT TOOK ME inside and sat me at one of the tables by the front window. I thought I needed to see Frank’s body to convince me he was dead, but when I saw the oblong form covered by two tablecloths, it was enough. Plenty.
    As I sat waiting for Sheriff Wescott, I thought how odd it was I was here, staring at Frank’s corpse, when I had imagined I’d be sitting at the bar with Frank, apologizing for behaving like a jerk. I felt a tear roll down my cheek. It was irrational, I knew, but I hated to think that the last time Frank Goulet saw me I was slamming out of his bar. I took a breath and reminded myself that someone had come here afterward and shot Frank. There had been more important things on Frank’s mind than my pique.
    The section of Frank’s Place where I sat held only eight tables. Legal occupancy 44, a sign said. It was cold by the window; Frank would have put the heat on an hour ago to warm the early customers. In another hour he would have turned it off. There would have been ample heat by now. I would have apologized; Frank would have shrugged it off and given me another hot buttered rum. I could use that now.
    The sheriff sat in the chair opposite me. He was a neat, compact man about thirty-five with just the beginnings of age apparent on his face. His light, curly mustache was almost the same color as his skin. In ten years his hair would be dusted with gray and he would be described as “handsomely weathered.” Now his features merely looked un-smoothed, as if he needed one more run through the factory before he could be marked finished.
    “So you were here around noon, right?” he asked.
    “Yes, but how did you know?”
    “Tell me about that,” he said, paying no heed to my question. But I didn’t need his explanation. Coming out of the kitchen was Rosa Fortimiglio, Chris’s mother. Chris had promised me silence. He meant it then. But Chris was no match for his mother, and gossip was as